With her, however, love was very far from being the consuming fire it is with so many of her sex; she was of the race of tender, not of passionate lovers; of the race, too, of those who, scorning the lighter forms of gallantry, and yet unable to preserve their virtue, are so often destined to bitter disappointment, disillusion, and remorse. "Relative of the Monimes, the Bérénices, the La Vallières, and the Aïssés," says M. Paléologue, in his fine study of the actress, "she has their melting tears, their touching grace, and their voluptuous modesty. But her true originality among the women of her time lay in the conception that she formed of love. We know the singular change that this sentiment had undergone beneath the dissolving influence of the morals of the Regency; all that had made up to that time for the nobility and poetry of passion had fallen beneath the blows of the reigning philosophy and the persiflage of the salons. In this transformation the woman had lost more than the man. She had been taught that modesty and fidelity were grandiloquent words devoid of meaning, and, freeing herself from all romantic illusion, and clinging only to the positive and agreeable in her amorous intrigues, she displayed everywhere a cynical libertinism. "It was the honour of Adrienne to resist this contagion. The gift of her person was always a pledge of the heart. She loved not by caprice, not by vanity, but by a moral inclination, with an ardour, a conscientiousness, and a gravity profound."[66] The first of the actress's adorers was the Baron D----, a young officer of the Régiment de Picardie, which formed part of the garrison of Lille. Of him we know nothing, save that, after the _liaison_ had lasted some months, he died suddenly, an event which occasioned his mistress such terrible grief that she is said to have seriously contemplated destroying herself. To the baron succeeded a certain Philippe Le Roy, "officer of the Duke of Lorraine," by whom, in 1710, Adrienne had a daughter, baptized as Élisabeth Adrienne. M. Le Roy, however, appears to have proved fickle, for, soon afterwards, we hear of a third lover, a provincial actor named Clavel, brother of Mlle. Fonpré. With Clavel Adrienne corresponded, and two of her letters to him have fortunately been preserved, the only love-letters of this woman who loved so much that have come down to us. It is much to be regretted that the rest of this correspondence has been lost, as they reveal the actress in a very favourable light: warm-hearted, sincere, loyal, and disinterested. The first letter, written some time in the year 1710, is in reply to one from Clavel, which she has been impatiently awaiting:-- * * * * *