There she assumed the rank of Baroness and recommenced her career, but this time in a more reasonable and businesslike manner. Her comments, written to her sister, on her fellow guests at the hotel are caustic. She mocks at some respectable married women who are trying to convert her to Catholicism. To others who refuse her recognition, she makes herself so mischievous and objectionable that in self-defence they are frightened into acknowledging her. Admirers among men she has many, ex-ministers, prefects. It was at Vittel that occurred the incident of the wounded pigeon. There had been some pigeon-shooting. One of the wounded birds flew into the room of the Baroness de la Cour. She took pity on it, tended it, taught it not to be afraid of her and to stay in her room. So touching was her conduct considered by some of those who heard it, that she was nicknamed "the Charmer." But she is well aware, she writes to her sister, that with the true ingratitude of the male, the pigeon will leave her as soon as it needs her help no longer. However, for the moment, "disfigured as it is, beautiful or ugly," she loves it. "Don't forget," she writes, "that a woman who is practical and foreseeing, she too enjoys her pigeon shooting, but the birds are her lovers." Shortly after she left Vittel an event occurred which afforded Jeanne de la Cour the prospect of acquiring that settled position in life which, "practical and foreseeing," she now regarded as indispensable to her future welfare. Her husband, Gras, died, as she had foretold, in the Charity Hospital. The widow was free. If she could bring down her bird, it was now in her power to make it hers for life. Henceforth all her efforts were directed to that end. She was reaching her fortieth year, her hair was turning grey, her charms were waning. Poverty, degradation, a miserable old age, a return to the wretched surroundings of her childhood, such she knew to be the fate of many of her kind. There was nothing to be hoped for from the generosity of men. Her lovers were leaving her. Blackmail, speculation on the Bourse, even the desperate expedient of a supposititious child, all these she tried as means of acquiring a competence. But fortune was shy of the widow. There was need for dispatch. The time was drawing near when it might be man's unkind privilege to put her scornfully aside as a thing spent and done with. She must bring down her bird, and that quickly. It was at this critical point in the widow's career, in the year 1873, that she met at a public ball for the first time Georges de Saint Pierre.(16) (16) For obvious reasons I have suppressed the real name of the widow's lover.