eighteen years the idol of the faubourg Saint-Germain, he had, like
other heirs of great families led a dissipated life, spent solely on
pleasure. His father, ruined by the revolution, had somewhat recovered
his position on the return of the Bourbons, as governor of a royal
domain, with salary and perquisites; but this uncertain fortune the
old prince spent, as it came, in keeping up the traditions of a great
seigneur before the revolution; so that when the law of indemnity was
passed, the sums he received were all swallowed up in the luxury he
displayed in his vast hotel.

The old prince died some little time before the revolution of July
aged eighty-seven. He had ruined his wife, and had long been on bad
terms with the Duc de Navarreins, who had married his daughter for a
first wife, and to whom he very reluctantly rendered his accounts. The
Duc de Maufrigneuse, early in life, had had relations with the
Duchesse d'Uxelles. About the year 1814, when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse
was forty-six years of age, the duchess, pitying his poverty, and
seeing that he stood very well at court, gave him her daughter Diane,
then in her seventeenth year, and possessing, in her own right, some
fifty or sixty thousand francs a year, not counting her future
expectations. Mademoiselle d'Uxelles thus became a duchess, and, as
her mother very well knew, she enjoyed the utmost liberty. The duke,
after obtaining the unexpected happiness of an heir, left his wife
entirely to her own devices, and went off to amuse himself in the
various garrisons of France, returning occasionally to Paris, where he
made debts which his father paid. He professed the most entire
conjugal indulgence, always giving the duchess a week's warning of his
return; he was adored by his regiment, beloved by the Dauphin, an
adroit courtier, somewhat of a gambler, and totally devoid of
affectation. Having succeeded to his father's office as governor of