For a while, Madame de Prie gave herself up to the enjoyment of all the luxury and splendour with which her princely lover hastened to surround her with the zest which only a pretty young woman can feel who, after once being in a position to indulge all her caprices, has for several years been compelled to deny herself even the necessaries--or what the feminine mind considers the necessaries--of existence. She passed long delightful hours in the shops of fashionable _couturiers_ and made extensive purchases, which, let us hope, _Monsieur le Duc_ paid for in hard cash, and not in the notes of his _protégé_ Law’s unfortunate bank. She visited the _ateliers_ of the artists, of whom she had in former days been a generous patron, and commissioned a portrait of herself from Van Loo, and another from Rosalba, whom she had patronised at Turin, and who had just completed a pastel of Madame de Parabère. Arrayed in ravishing toilettes and blazing with diamonds, she did the honours of the Hôtel de Condé, of Chantilly and of Saint-Maur, for, very opportunely for her, the unloved wife of _Monsieur le Duc_ had, after a long and painful illness, recently departed to another world, leaving the field quite free for the sultana. And she profoundly troubled the salons by launching an entirely novel method of arranging the hair, which became her _à merveille_, but caused serious inconvenience to some of the fashionable dames who felt constrained to adopt it. But, after some weeks, she was obliged to give her mind to more serious matters. The “elevation” of a _petite bourgeoise_, daughter of a fraudulent financier and of a woman universally despised, to be the favourite of a prince who stood so near the throne and might even one day ascend it, had not taken place without exciting the most rancorous jealousy and hatred. _Chansons_, venomous satires, slanders, calumnies, rained upon her, until, if she had been a more sensitive woman, she might well have been driven to the verge of despair. She was charged with having led a life of debauchery from her earliest youth; of having bewitched _Monsieur le Duc_ by initiating him into vices imported by her from Italy and hitherto unknown in France; of having ruined her husband by her scandalous extravagance; of having treated an unselfish and devoted mother with the most outrageous cruelty and ingratitude. She learned that in Madame de Pléneuf’s circle it was predicted that her triumph would be of very brief duration; that they would soon succeed in disgusting _Monsieur le Duc_ with his choice, and that when she had fallen from her high estate and had been abandoned by the prince, they would make her bitterly repent of her victory.