a long list of lovers,--for the most part, persons of quality, marshals,
counts, and so forth. The only man, however, who really attached her to
him, was an actor at the Theatre Francois, a famous player in his day,
named Quinault Dufresne. Mademoiselle Gautier seems to have loved him
with all the ardour of her naturally passionate disposition. At first,
he returned her affection; but, as soon as she ventured to test the
sincerity of his attachment by speaking of marriage, he cooled towards
her immediately, and the connection between them was broken off. In all
her former love-affairs, she had been noted for the high tone which she
adopted towards her admirers, and for the despotic authority which she
exercised over them even in her gayest moments. But the severance of
her connection with Quinault Dufresne wounded her to her heart. She had
loved the man so dearly, had made so many sacrifices for him, had
counted so fondly on the devotion of her whole future life to him, that
the first discovery of his coldness towards her broke her spirit at once
and for ever. She fell into a condition of hopeless melancholy, looked
back with remorse and horror at her past life, and abandoned the stage
and the society in which she had lived, to end her days repentantly in
the character of a Carmelite nun.

So far, her history is the history of hundreds of other women before her
time and after it. The prominent interest of her life, for the student
of human nature, lies in the story of her conversion, as told by
herself. The greater part of the narrative--every page of which is more
or less characteristic of the Frenchwoman of the eighteenth century--may
be given, with certain suppressions and abridgments, in her own words.
The reader will observe, at the outset, one curious fact. Mademoiselle
Gautier does not so much as hint at the influence which the loss of her
lover had in disposing her mind to reflect on serious subjects. She
describes her conversion as if it had taken its rise in a sudden