She went to Paris, and _Valérie_ was published in December 1803. All Madame de Krüdener's guns were primed, ready to salute the book. Not one missed fire. All the bells of criticism tolled. Like a good general, she was on the field of battle herself. She drove incognito from one fashionable shop to another, asking for hats, or scarfs, or feathers, or wreaths, or ribbons _à la Valérie_. When this elegant and still beautiful lady drove up in her carriage and asked with such assurance for these articles of her own invention, the shopkeepers did their utmost to come to an understanding of what she wanted and to provide it. And when astonished shop-girls denied the existence of such wares, Madame de Krüdener smiled so kindly and pitied them so much because they did not know _Valérie_ that she quickly transformed them into eager canvassers of readers for her book. She drove on with her purchases to other shops, and in a few days had produced amongst the shopkeepers such a furious competition in articles _à la Valérie_ that her friends, when they went at her instigation to ask for these wares, became innocent accomplices in her stratagem, and were constrained to bear witness to her triumph. Now Madame de Krüdener writes to her friend: "The success of _Valérie_ is complete and unprecedented. An acquaintance said to me the other day: 'There is something _supernatural_ about such success.' Yes, my friend, it is the will of Heaven that this purer morality should be diffused throughout France, where as yet it is not so well understood."