Of course this story was much too good not to have a great success; it circulated not only through the Court, but all over Paris, and came at last to the ears of poor Mademoiselle de Gournay herself, who could not be consoled, as it revealed all the tricks to which she had been a victim. The illusions thus rudely destroyed were far more precious than the philosopher's stone she had so vainly sought, and involved a disappointment infinitely more painful. Who can help sympathizing with the poor woman, who thus saw all her fairy treasures resolved into their intrinsic worthlessness? However, good came out of evil. Cardinal Richelieu--who had been especially delighted with the story of the three Racans, and was never weary of hearing it repeated--took the fancy of wishing to see her that he might try to make a good story out of her himself. He sent for her, and indulged in some very clumsy pleasantry, of which he had the grace to feel afterward ashamed. Willing to make her some amends, he settled a pension upon her, in order that for the rest of her days, she, and her friend, and her cat, might live on something better than dry bread. Under the influence of this gleam of sunshine, Mademoiselle de Gournay edited another edition of Montaigne's work, with an abridgment of her former preface. She also published a fresh work of her own, entitled, "Avis et Présens de Mademoiselle de Gournay," which had a moderate success. Another edition of "L'Ombre" was also called for. All this, in some measure, consoled her for past humiliations. Her prosperity lasted until the death of Cardinal Richelieu. Mademoiselle de Gournay, then in extreme old age, still survived him. When the list of pensions granted by the Cardinal was submitted to the king, her name caught his eye. Louis the Thirteenth--who might have had some grateful recollection of the many hearty laughs his royalty had enjoyed at her expense--declared that the Cardinal must have been mad to grant such a woman a pension, and ordered it to be suppressed! Mademoiselle de Gournay passed the few remaining years of her life in a state of poverty painful to reflect upon. She died somewhere about 1646, at the age of eighty. Poor as she was, she made her will as became a person of her birth. She bequeathed her clothes to Mademoiselle Jamyn, who, old and infirm, survived her; a few books she left to different friends; and a curious old Map of the World, to the poet Gombauld--a personage as eccentric as herself, and one who lived and died in still greater penury, but who valued her legacy, and transmitted it to his heirs as the most precious treasure in the world. DILIGENCE IN DOING GOOD.