With the laudable desire of upholding the honour of France, both the Ambassador and his wife had incurred heavy expenditure during their residence in Italy; de Prie’s small fortune was entirely exhausted, and very little was left of Agnès’s dowry. It was to the purse of Pléneuf that they had been looking to replenish their empty coffers, and here he was quartered upon them, with a healthy appetite and extravagant tastes, but without a crown in his pocket. In short, the ambassadorial _ménage_ found itself reduced to the direst extremities, and it was only by pawning his plate and borrowing money at usurious interest that the unfortunate representative of the might and majesty of France was able to continue at his post. Towards the end of the year 1718, matters had reached such a pass that no hope of escaping from his difficulties remained to him save by the intervention of his Government. Again and again he had appealed to Torcy, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, for assistance; but the answer was always the same: the Royal Treasury was empty; it was impossible at present even to pay his Excellency’s salary, much less to discharge his debts. In despair, the Ambassador determined to send his wife to Paris to plead their cause with the Government, and at the beginning of December Madame de Prie set out for France. The young woman who returned to Paris was a very different person from the girl who had quitted it five years before. Not only had she gained in outward attractions, but she had gained enormously in worldly knowledge. She had learned the ways of Courts, and had learned them at one where falsehood and dissimulation were considered the first essentials of every good politician. She had learned some of the subtleties of diplomacy, for the Marquis de Prie, who had been no match for Victor Amadeus and his Ministers, had been only too thankful to avail himself of the advice and assistance of his clever wife and father-in-law; indeed, for some months past it was they who had conducted the real work of the embassy. She had learned too to understand the power of her beauty, for, though there would appear to be no reason to believe that she had ever surrendered to love, she had certainly known how to inspire it, and a prince of the Royal House of Savoy--the Prince di Carignano--the Baron Ferron, Prime Minister of Victor Amadeus, the Chevalier de Lozilières, first secretary to the embassy, and the Marquis d’Alincourt, son of the Maréchal de Villeroy, who stayed for some time in Turin on his return from a campaign against the Turks, had been all devoted admirers. “But, above all,” observes her admiring biographer, M. Thirion, “she had learned how to toil, to suffer, to defend herself against the ills of life, to struggle and to combat, in order to satisfy the exigencies of an uncertain hand-to-mouth existence, in such fashion that, beneath the frail envelope of this adorable young body, there beat an almost virile