Antoinette Clavel had been engaged two or three years at the Strasburg theatre when there arrived in the city a man who described himself as director-general of the “Menus-Plaisirs” of the King of Prussia, and stated that the object of his visit was to seek for fresh talent for the French troupe at Berlin. In his presumed official capacity, he had no difficulty in procuring admission to the _coulisses_ of the theatre, where he soon became on terms of friendly intimacy with the actors and actresses, and with Antoinette in particular. Claude Croisilles de Saint-Huberty, for by that high-sounding name was the gentleman known, was still young, but had seen much of the world, of good appearance, and a fluent talker, whose honeyed words were well calculated to excite the imagination of inexperienced women, for whom he had all the attraction of the successful adventurer. He made such magnificent promises to Antoinette, and held out to her the hope of such a brilliant career, that, one fine day, in the spring of 1775, the young girl resolved to leave her parents secretly and follow M. Croisilles de Saint-Huberty to Berlin. Here disillusion awaited her. The pretended director of the “Menus-Plaisirs” of the King of Prussia proved to be merely the stage-manager of the French troupe, who could only very partially carry out the conditions of the engagement which had induced Mlle. Clavel to quit the paternal roof. Whether Antoinette was Saint-Huberty’s mistress, or only, as she herself asserted, an ambitious young artiste decoyed away by the promise of an advantageous engagement is uncertain. But, however that may be, Saint-Huberty was exceedingly anxious to become her husband; nor is his motive difficult to understand. So far from having any right to the aristocratic patronymic he bore, he was the son of a merchant at Metz, named simply Croisilles, and had left home in order to gratify a passion for the stage. A needy and unscrupulous adventurer, he foresaw for the young singer a successful, and possibly a brilliant, career, upon the emoluments of which he might levy toll; while if, by chance, her success was not in accordance with his expectations, he would always be able to obtain the annulment of a marriage contracted in a foreign country and without the consent of the parents of either party. And so from morning until night he importuned Antoinette to marry him, expatiating upon the vast possessions of the house of Saint-Huberty--possessions well-nigh as boundless as his love for her--which, he declared, would one day be his, the brilliant future he could assure his wife, and so forth. Nor did he plead in vain. At the end of four or five months, the poor girl, alone in a foreign city, friendless, and almost penniless, had the weakness to consent; and the marriage was celebrated on September 10, 1775, in the parish of St. Hedgwig, the so-called Saint-Huberty being described as “native of France, stage-manager of the French troupe of his Majesty the