The Cadignans bear:  or, five lozenges sable appointed, placed fess-wise, with the word “Memini” for motto, a crown with a cap of maintenance, no supporters or mantle.  In these days the great crowd of strangers flocking to Paris, and the almost universal ignorance of the science of heraldry, are beginning to bring the title of prince into fashion.  There are no real princes but those possessed of principalities, to whom belongs the title of highness.  The disdain shown by the French nobility for the title of prince, and the reasons which caused Louis XIV. to give supremacy to the title of duke, have prevented Frenchmen from claiming the appellation of “highness” for the few princes who exist in France, those of Napoleon excepted.  This is why the princes of Cadignan hold an inferior position, nominally, to the princes of the continent.

The members of the society called the faubourg Saint-Germain protected the princess by a respectful silence due to her name, which is one of those that all men honor, to her misfortunes, which they ceased to discuss, and to her beauty, the only thing she saved of her departed opulence.  Society, of which she had once been the ornament, was thankful to her for having, as it were, taken the veil, and cloistered herself in her own home.  This act of good taste was for her, more than for any other woman, an immense sacrifice.  Great deeds are always so keenly felt in France that the princess gained, by her retreat, as much as she had lost in public opinion in the days of her splendor.

She now saw only one of her old friends, the Marquise d’Espard, and even to her she never went on festive occasions or to parties.  The princess and the marquise visited each other in the forenoons, with a certain amount of secrecy.  When the princess went to dine with her friend, the marquise closed her doors.  Madame d’Espard treated the princess charmingly; she changed her box at the opera, leaving the first tier for a baignoire on the ground-floor, so that Madame de Cadignan could come to the theatre unseen, and depart incognito.  Few women would have been capable of a delicacy which deprived them of the pleasure of bearing in their train a fallen rival, and of publicly being her benefactress.  Thus relieved of the necessity for costly toilets, the princess could enjoy the theatre, whither she went in Madame d’Espard’s carriage, which she would never have accepted openly in the daytime.  No one has ever known Madame d’Espard’s reasons for behaving thus to the Princesse de Cadignan; but her conduct was admirable, and for a long time included a number of little acts which, viewed single, seem mere trifles, but taken in the mass become gigantic.