What might make us doubt the truth of the anecdote is primarily the character of the author who related it to us. Madame de Genlis made a travesty of everything: the past, the present and even the future. She put romanticism and romance into her own existence as well as that of others; whether it is a question of events of which she was witness or of those which she relates from hearsay, it is never prudent to accept her word without confirmation. Let us apply the test. Neither in the memoirs nor in the letters of the first half of the eighteenth century have I discovered an allusion to the intrigue of one of the sisters of M. le Due with the gentleman whom a stag mortally wounded in the forest of Chantilly on August 30, 1724. I have questioned the man who today best knows the history of Chantilly, M. Gustav Macon: he told me that he has never met a mention of the adventure of Mlle, de Clermont before 1802, the date at which Madame de Genlis published her novel. We do not know much about the pretty naiad painted by Nattier. We know the charm of her features and we know that Montesquieu wrote for her the Temple de Guide, "with no other aim than to make a poetic picture of voluptuousness." But an anecdote told by Duclos will show us a person somewhat different from the heroine of Madame de Genlis. When the marriage of Louis XV with Marie Leczinska was decided upon, the Due d'Antin was sent to Strasbourg as an envoy to the Polish princess. He pronounced in these circumstances a discourse in which, with singular lack of tact, he found it necessary to make an allusion to the project which M. le Duc had recently conceived of marrying the King to the youngest of his sisters, Mlle, de Sens: the King, he said, having to choose between the Graces and Virtues, had taken the latter. Mile, de Clermont, superintendent of the future household of the Queen, heard this remark: "Apparently," she said, "d'Antin takes us, my sisters and myself, for prostitutes." This is not the tone of the romance of Madame de Genlis. [Illustration: 0389]