to whom she entrusted the care of her three children.

"Monsieur," said she to the President de Nesmond, "be kind to my son; he
has a right to your name and arms, and though he is my living image,
dearest Theodore is your son." Then turning to her father, who was
weeping, she said briefly, "All that to-day remains to you of Clorinde
are her two daughters.

"Pray love them as you loved me, and be more strict with them than you
were with me. M. de Nesmond owes these orphans nothing. All that
Melladoro owes them is affection. Tell him, I pray you, of my constancy
and of my death."

Such was the sad end of a young wife who committed no greater crime than
to love a man who was agreeable and after her own heart. M. de Nesmond
was just enough to admit that, in ill-assorted unions, good sense or good
nature must intervene, to ensure that the one most to be pitied receive
indulgent treatment at the hands of the most culpable, if the latter be
also the stronger of the two.




CHAPTER L.

Madame de Montespan's Children and Those of La Valliere.--Monsieur le
Dauphin.


I had successively lost the first and second Comte de Vegin; God also