The marquise turned pale and uttered a faint cry of terror; the answer
was so perfectly correct in regard to the past as to call up a fear that
it might be equally accurate in regard to the future.

The truth is that the unknown lady wrapped in a mantle whom we have
escorted into the modern sibyl's cavern was no other than the beautiful
Marie de Rossan, who before her marriage had borne the name of
Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc, from that of an estate belonging to her
maternal grandfather, M. Joannis de Nocheres, who owned a fortune of five
to six hundred thousand livres. At the age of thirteen--that is to say,
in 1649--she had married the Marquis de Castellane, a gentleman of very
high birth, who claimed to be descended from John of Castille, the son of
Pedro the Cruel, and from Juana de Castro, his mistress. Proud of his
young wife's beauty, the Marquis de Castellane, who was an officer of the
king's galleys, had hastened to present her at court. Louis XIV, who at
the time of her presentation was barely twenty years old, was struck by
her enchanting face, and to the great despair of the famous beauties of
the day danced with her three times in one evening. Finally, as a
crowning touch to her reputation, the famous Christina of Sweden, who was
then at the French court, said of her that she had never, in any of the
kingdoms through which she had passed, seen anything equal to "the
beautiful Provencale." This praise had been so well received, that the
name of "the beautiful Provencale" had clung to Madame de Castellane, and
she was everywhere known by it.

This favour of Louis XIV and this summing up of Christina's had been
enough to bring the Marquise de Castellane instantly into fashion; and
Mignard, who had just received a patent of nobility and been made painter
to the king, put the seal to her celebrity by asking leave to paint her