In the lap of this noble lady reposed a pretty, but saucy and snubnosed Bologna spaniel, with the long ears and black silky hair of which the white fingers of one hand played involuntarily. Statues, bronzes, buhl tables, vases of flowers, and a hundred beautiful trifles, decorated this little room, which was her boudoir--her own peculiar sanctum sanctorum--and the windows of which overlooked a bastion, whereon were sixteen antique brass cannon; for the Chateau de Fontbrune, in which we have now the honour of finding ourselves, was an old baronial house, which, after being fortified by Louis de Foix, had given shelter to Charles VII., and been beleaguered by the Maréchal de Matignon. The productions of the popular men of the day strewed the apartment. The poems of Bernis, the comedies of the Abbé Boissy, the music of Lulli, with drawings and pictures without end, lay near, while a vaudeville by Panard was open upon the piano. Mademoiselle had evidently been sorely puzzled in her efforts to get through the long hours of this day of June, 1778. "Oh, Nanon!" she exclaimed to her attendant, a pretty girl of eighteen, who sat near her on a tabourette, sewing; "I am _so_ ennuyé--for in this dreary old chateau, which I am not permitted to leave, and to which no one comes but prosy old colonels and stupid magistrates, such as M. le Maire, or M. le Maitre du Palais, or still worse, those horrid counsellors of the Court of Admiralty, there is so little to rouse one from sad thoughts and drowsy lethargy." "Try another chapter of that new romance by M. de Marivaux." "Ah, _merci!_ he is a most tiresome fellow, Nanon, and odious, too." "Odious?" "Yes." "How, Mademoiselle Therese?" "I judge from his memoir of himself." "Explain, mademoiselle." "He was once in love with a young lady--" "Once, only--then he is no true romance writer." "She had black hair, hazel eyes and long lashes, divine little hands and feet--in fact, the counterpart of myself, as the old Abbé de Boissy told me--and was on the point of paying his most solemn and magnificent addresses to her; when, happening to enter her boudoir one day unexpectedly, he found--" "Not a lover?" exclaimed Nanon, becoming suddenly interested; "not a student or mousquetaire, I hope?" "_Ma foi!_ no--nothing half so pleasant." "What, then?" "Mademoiselle studying smiles and postures before her mirror." "And this--" "So shocked the staid and proper M. de Marivaux, that his passion passed away in a moment, and he took to novel writing." "It was no passion whatever, mademoiselle," replied Nanon, disgusted to find that a lady should lose a lover by the same arts which she practised daily to win one; and now ensued another long pause.