white stones.  I looked at it and said, “That is not to be despised.”  I put it on, and admired it greatly.  The Count begged me to accept it.  I refused—­he urged me to take it.  Madame then refused it for me.  At length, he pressed it upon me so warmly that Madame, seeing that it could not be worth above forty louis, made me a sign to accept it.  I took the cross, much pleased at the Count’s politeness and, some days after, Madame presented him with an enamelled box, upon which was the portrait of some Grecian sage (whose name I don’t recollect), to whom she compared him.  I shewed the cross to a jeweller, who valued it at sixty-five louis.  The Count offered to bring Madame some enamel portraits, by Petitot, to look at, and she told him to bring them after dinner, while the King was hunting.  He shewed his portraits, after which Madame said to him, “I have heard a great deal of a charming story you told two days ago, at supper, at M. le Premier’s, of an occurrence you witnessed fifty or sixty years ago.”  He smiled and said, “It is rather long.”  “So much the better,” said she, with an air of delight.  Madame de Gontaut and the ladies came in, and the door was shut; Madame made a sign to me to sit down behind the screen.  The Count made many apologies for the ennui which his story would, perhaps, occasion.  He said, “Sometimes one can tell a story pretty well; at other times it is quite a different thing.”

“At the beginning of this century, the Marquis de St. Gilles was Ambassador from Spain to the Hague.  In his youth he had been particularly intimate with the Count of Moncade, a grandee of Spain, and one of the richest nobles of that country.  Some months after the Marquis’s arrival at the Hague, he received a letter from the Count, entreating him, in the name of their former friendship, to render him the greatest possible service.  ’You know,’ said he, ’my dear Marquis, the mortification I felt that the name of Moncade was likely to expire with me.  At length, it pleased heaven to hear my prayers, and to grant me a son:  he gave early promise of dispositions worthy of his birth, but he, some time since, formed an unfortunate and disgraceful attachment to the most celebrated actress of the company of Toledo.  I shut my eyes to this imprudence on the part of a young man whose conduct had, till then, caused me unmingled satisfaction.  But, having learnt that he was so blinded by passion as to intend to marry this girl, and that he had even bound himself by a written promise to that effect, I solicited the King to have her placed in confinement.  My son, having got information of the steps I had taken, defeated my intentions by escaping with the object of his passion.  For more than six months I have vainly endeavoured to discover where he has concealed himself, but I have now some reason to think he is at the Hague.’  The Count earnestly conjured the Marquis to make the most rigid search, in order to discover his son’s retreat, and to endeavour to prevail upon him to return