The novelist-heroine's actual name was Marie Catherine Hortense des Jardins, and she never was really Mme. de Villedieu at all, though there was a real M. de Villedieu whom she loved, went through a marriage ceremony and lived with, left, according to some, or was left by, according to others. But he was already married, and this marriage was never dissolved. Very late in life she seems actually to have married a Marquis de Chaste, who died soon. But most of the time was spent in rather scandalous adventures, wherein Fouquet's friend Gourville, the minister Lyonne, and others figure. In fact she seems to have been a counterpart as well as a contemporary of our own Afra, though she never came near Mrs. Behn in poetry or perhaps in fiction. Her first novel, _Alcidamie_, not to be confounded with the earlier _Alcidiane_, was a scarcely concealed utilising of the famous scandal about Tancrede de Rohan (Mlle. des Jardins' mother had been a dependant on the Rohan family, and she herself was much befriended by that formidable and sombre-fated enchantress, Mme. de Montbazon). In fact, common as is the real or imputed "key"-interest in these romances from the _Astree_ onwards, none seems to have borrowed more from at least gossip than this. Her later performances, _Les Annales Galantes de la Grece_ (said to be very rare), _Carmente_, _Les Amours des Grands Hommes_, _Les Desordres de l'Amour_, and some smaller pieces, all rely more or less on this or that kind of scandal. Collections appeared three or four times in the earlier eighteenth century. [Sidenote: _Le Grand Alcandre Frustre._]