“‘Curiosity was of course excited; the event had given variety to the amusements of the evening. Madame de Boulainvilliers questioned the child, who told her history in a plain and artless manner, and, when she had concluded, drew from the lining of her _casaquin_ the papers relating to her birth, which Madame la Marquise read aloud to the astonished assembly. There was a universal movement in favour of the orphans; a most liberal subscription was raised on the instant, everybody present proposed assistance in some way or another to get a _placet_ presented to the king, and so great was the interest excited, that the worthy marquise hurried them away to bed, fearing lest some one else might rob her of her _bonne œuvre_, by taking charge of the children, concerning whom she had already formed a multitude of projects in support of her favourite theory. Here was a fine occasion for displaying the superiority of the philosophy of Jean Jacques! What good fortune to have discovered these children, fresh from the hands of nature, uncorrupted by intercourse with the world, and yet of noble, nay more, of royal blood! How she would love to show to the incredulous and scoffers at the new doctrines the wondrous effects to be produced by the new system of education—the candour, the innocence, the absence of all artifice, which characterise the human heart when untrammelled by the hypocritical conventions of society! She really was alarmed lest any of her friends should beg the children of her, and so ordered them to be put to bed in the apartment adjoining her own. “‘Had they not better have a hot bath first?’ drily exclaimed the old Chevalier de Meylau. “‘Fie, chevalier; there is no disgrace in their neglected state. In all artificial communities like ours, it is the seal affixed to poverty!’ exclaimed the marquise, indignantly. “‘Ay, or the _soil_,’ retorted the chevalier; but fortunately the marquise did not hear him; she had been seized with one of her most desperate fits of coughing. “‘Behold, meanwhile, the orphan mendicants, whose resting-place the night before had been a heap of filthy straw, beneath the manger of a cowshed, reclining on a bed of down, beneath a velvet canopy! But Jeanne declared to us that she did not sleep a whit the sounder, so tormented was she the whole of that night with the fear that Madame de Boulainvilliers might keep and appropriate to her own use the title-deeds which she had imprudently suffered to pass from her hands, and which she had been used to regard as the means whereby she should one day be raised to a level with royalty itself. So much for the candour and innocence, and freedom from suspicion, upon which poor Madame de Boulainvilliers had reckoned so blindly!