as to their future condition and the events which fate held in store for
them. They managed to be secretly taken to a woman famed for her talent
in casting the horoscope. But on seeing how overwhelmed by chagrin they
both were after consulting the oracle, I felt fearful as regarded myself,
and determined to let my star take its own course, heedless of its
existence, and allowing it complete liberty.

My mother occasionally took me out into society after the marriage of my
sister, De Thianges; and I was not slow to perceive that there was in my
person something slightly superior to the average intelligence,--certain
qualities of distinction which drew upon me the attention and the
sympathy of men of taste. Had any liberty been granted to it, my heart
would have made a choice worthy alike of my family and of myself. They
were eager to impose the Marquis de Montespan upon me as a husband; and
albeit he was far from possessing those mental perfections and that
cultured charm which alone make an indefinite period of companionship
endurable, I was not slow to reconcile myself to a temperament which,
fortunately, was very variable, and which thus served to console me on
the morrow for what had troubled me to-day.

Hardly had my marriage been arranged and celebrated than a score of the
most brilliant suitors expressed, in prose and in verse, their regret at
having lost beyond recall Mademoiselle de Tonnai-Charente. Such elegiac
effusions seemed to me unspeakably ridiculous; they should have explained
matters earlier, while the lists were still open. For persons of this
sort I conceived aversion, who were actually so clumsy as to dare to tell
me that they had forgotten to ask my hand in marriage!