at now I lived a little more openly, and
went by a particular name which he gave me abroad, but which I must
omit, viz., the Countess de ----; and had coaches and servants, suitable
to the quality he had given me the appearance of; and, which is more
than usually happens in such cases, this held eight years from the
beginning, during which time, as I had been very faithful to him, so I
must say, as above, that I believe he was so separated to me, that
whereas he usually had two or three women, which he kept privately, he
had not in all that time meddled with any of them, but that I had so
perfectly engrossed him that he dropped them all. Not, perhaps, that he
saved much by it, for I was a very chargeable mistress to him, that I
must acknowledge, but it was all owing to his particular affection to
me, not to my extravagance, for, as I said, he never gave me leave to
ask him for anything, but poured in his favours and presents faster than
I expected, and so fast as I could not have the assurance to make the
least mention of desiring more. Nor do I speak this of my own guess, I
mean about his constancy to me and his quitting all other women; but the
old harridan, as I may call her, whom he made the guide of our
travelling, and who was a strange old creature, told me a thousand
stories of his gallantry, as she called it, and how, as he had no less
than three mistresses at one time, and, as I found, all of her
procuring, he had of a sudden dropped them all, and that he was entirely
lost to both her and them; that they did believe he had fallen into some
new hands, but she could never hear who, or where, till he sent for her
to go this journey; and then the old hag complimented me upon his
choice; that she did not wonder I had so engrossed him; so much beauty,
&c.; and there she stopped.

Upon the whole, I found by her what was, you may be sure, to my
particular satisfaction, viz., that, as above, I had him all my own. But
the highest tide has its ebb; and in all things of this kind there is a
reflux which sometimes, also, is more impetuously violent than the first
aggression. My prince was a man of a vast fortune, though no sovereign,
and therefore there was no probability that the expense of keeping a
mistress could be injurious to him, as to his estate. He had also
several employments, both out of France as well as in it; for, as above,
I say he was not a subject of France, though he lived in that court. He
had a princess,