This D’Aydie, it should also be known, was the lover of the Duchess de Berry, who naturally feared that the low-bred clerk might deprive her of her paramour by an untimely end. The tribunal recommended the Regent to imprison the lover of his daughter, as a punishment for having fought a low-born fellow, who, on account of his ignoble condition, was discharged as beneath their notice. The duchess, however, did not approve of this finding of the court; but, after procuring the liberation of her favourite, pursued the unfortunate clerk with such rancour that she at last got him hanged; thereby exciting, according to Madame de Crequi, “the horror and the animadversion of all Paris.” Strange to say, this despicable princess died a month after, on the very same day that the clerk was hanged: the execution took place on the 19th of June, and she breathed her last on the 19th of July! A duel took place between Contades and Brissac, when both were wounded, in the very conservatories of the palace. After a few days’ concealment, they appeared before the parliament as a mere matter of form, and Contades was made a marshal of France. Another duel, fought in open day on the quay of the Tuileries between two noblemen, Jonzac and Villette, was also passed over with little or no animadversion; and Duclos, in his Secret Memoirs, asserts that the Regent openly insinuated that duelling had gone too much out of fashion. Duelling was not only resorted to by men of the sword, but by men of finance; and the celebrated Law of Lauriston, who was placed at the head of this department, had commenced his famed career by several hostile meetings. Howbeit, he so managed matters as not to compromise the security of his gambling-house, in the Rue Quincampoix, by quarrels, although an assassination ultimately exposed this _hell_ to a serious investigation. One of the murderers was a Count Horn, a Belgian nobleman of distinguished family; but who, notwithstanding the powerful interest made in his behalf, was sentenced to be broken on the wheel. The Regent in this case was inflexible, nor would he even commute the punishment into a less degrading execution. This firmness was attributed to his partiality for his creature Law, whose bank was of great assistance to his constant debaucheries. Madame de Crequi, who was a relative of the criminal, and who exerted her best endeavours to save him, attributes this murder of what she calls “the Jew who had robbed him,” to other motives; and asserts that his Highness’s implacable hostility arose from having once found him with one of his favourites, the Countess de Parabère; when the duke disdainfully said to him, “_Sortez, Monsieur!_” to which the other replied, “your ancestors, sir, would have said _Sortons_!”