The Marquis de Maupeou was very rich and very much in love; never could actress have desired a more generous admirer. He furnished a house for her, loaded her with presents, and decked her with magnificent diamonds. Moreover, he was as submissive as a slave, and obeyed without a murmur her slightest caprice. But Mlle. Contat must have been even more difficult to please than the generality of her sex, since even this paragon of lovers did not long satisfy her. Perhaps his very devotion and readiness to submit to her will constituted a fault in her eyes. Any way, she dismissed him, and, though the lovelorn marquis “became so distracted through grief, that he proposed to Mlle. Contat to marry her and take her away from France,” she declined the offer. For the lady had higher views. She had just made a conquest of the second gentleman in the land after the King, Madame Lebrun’s “excellent prince,” the Comte d’Artois, to wit. What woman could resist a Prince of the Blood? Certainly not an actress of the Comédie-Française. To have done so would have been to render herself guilty of _lèse-majesté_. Mlle. Contat was a proud woman indeed. Nevertheless, there were days when she regretted the time when the bottomless purse of the Marquis de Maupeou had been at her disposal. For the liberality of her royal lover was very far from being in accordance with what one might have expected from so great a personage. If his revenues were large, he told her, his expenses were enormous--it is probable that Mlle. Contat only possessed a fraction of the august heart--and often he was hard put for even a handful of louis. The actress received these excuses in good part; but, being privately of opinion that it was the will and not the means which the prince lacked, had recourse to a little ruse, in order to stimulate his generosity. On a piece of stamped paper she forged a judgment-summons, requiring her to pay a sum of 10,000 livres, and left it, as if by accident, on her chimney-piece. Soon afterwards, his Royal Highness, happening to call upon his inamorata, caught sight of the paper and wished to read it. Mlle. Contat begged him not to do so, and pretended to snatch it from him; but, at length, with much apparent reluctance, permitted him to satisfy his curiosity. The prince read the document, said that the actress was very wrong not to have taken him into her confidence in regard to her embarrassments, and, having promised to take the debt upon himself, carried the summons away with him. Next day, he sent her a letter, which she eagerly opened, only to find, instead of the expected 10,000 livres, another legal document, which provided that the warrant which she had been at such pains to fabricate should not be put in force for twelve months.