“‘I remember being struck with the reflection which forced itself upon me at the time, and being lost in admiration as I gazed upon the Comtesse de la Motte, at the extreme ease and facility with which she had acquired the jargon and petty graces of high society. Her manners certainly gave the lie direct to the old prejudice, that it requires many years of apprenticeship to become an adept in the fashionable art. Neither did she betray at first, by any one triviality or vulgarity of expression or pronunciation, that she had not all her life been accustomed to the society in which she then found herself. The only peculiarity which might have excited suspicion in _very_ particular persons, was the hurry and agitation in which she seemed to exist—a perpetual restlessness—an over-desire to excite interest and to produce effect. Mind you, I am speaking of the first hour or so, while yet she was uncertain as to the opinion which the princess might have formed of her. But after this restraint had a little worn off, and she had grown a little less guarded in her conversation, I began to perceive many incongruities in her behaviour. The effect was most extraordinary—she appeared, at one and the same moment, two distinct characters; her very voice altered, sometimes before she had concluded her sentence. “‘I must do the Princesse de Guéménée the justice to declare that, throughout the whole evening, her conduct was perfect. She listened in silence, but without any evidence of ill-humour or contempt, to all the _agaceries_ and lively sallies with which the comtesse sought so earnestly to divert her. She even condescended, now and then, to applaud, but without favour, and from a distance, as she would have done from her box at the Opera to the successful efforts of the actress whose talent might for a moment have succeeded in charming her into this demonstration of approval. But it was when, at the solicitation of the cardinal, excited with the wine, of which she had partaken unsparingly, and elevated by the hope of winning the good graces of the company, Madame de la Motte launched forth into the eternal history of her “_infortunes_,” which had been her great _moyen de succès_ with the numberless dupes she had made, that to me all delusion ceased at once. The imposture was easy to discover beneath the envelope of affected high breeding with which she had at first concealed her determination of charming the princess, and the _aventurière_ stood revealed without disguise.