"The petitioner, thus dishonoured no less than his daughters, would have taken proceedings in the ordinary way, if the ravisher had been a private individual; and the laws established by his Majesty and his august predecessors provide that abduction should be punished with death. It is a double crime. Two sisters are carried off, aged respectively eighteen and thirteen years. "But the petitioner, having to deal with a person of the rank of the Comte de Melun, is obliged to have recourse to the maker of the laws, and trusts that the King in his bounty will see that he has justice, and will command the Comte de Melun to espouse the elder daughter of the petitioner and to furnish the younger with a dowry. "In no other way can he make reparation for so terrible an outrage."[109] * * * * * The only effect the recital of the noble dancing-master's wrongs produced on the Cardinal seems to have been one of amusement; and, though, a week later, Mlle. Sophie returned to her indignant father, the elder sister, whom the rules of the Opera emancipated from parental control, remained at the Comte de Melun's hôtel. That nobleman, however, did not long enjoy a monopoly of the lady's favours, while her extravagance annoyed as much as it astonished him. He therefore secured to her an income of 1500 livres, and courteously intimated that they must part. The notorious Duc de Richelieu, who regarded himself as the principal cause of the ballerina's rupture with Melun, and desired to make amends, took the count's place; to be, in his turn, succeeded by the Marquis de Sourdis, for whom Mlle. de Camargo is said to have conceived "_une belle passion_." The marquis's predilection for the ladies of the Opera had already made serious inroads on his patrimony; but this did not prevent him from lavishing the most costly presents upon his inamorata. Before, however, he had succeeded in quite ruining himself, he was confronted by a rival whose pretensions it was impossible for him to oppose. The rival in question was a Prince of the Blood, Louis de Bourbon, Comte de Clermont, third son of Louis III. of that name and Mlle. de Nantes, legitimated daughter of _le Grand Monarque_ and Madame de Montespan. Born in 1709 and destined for the Church, or, more strictly speaking, for the emoluments thereof, he had been tonsured in infancy and loaded with benefices. Before he had completed his eighth year, he found himself in possession of the revenues of the rich abbey of Bec-Hellouin, in Normandy, to which by the summer of 1733, the date when he made Mlle. de Camargo's acquaintance, had been added some half-dozen others, with an aggregate income of over 200,000 livres.