CHAPTER III

The Count de la Tour D’Auvergne and Madame D’Urfe—­Camille—­My Passion for the Count’s Mistress—­The Ridiculous Incident Which Cured Me—­The Count de St. Germain

In spite of my love for Mdlle.  Baletti, I did not omit to pay my court to the most noted ladies of the pavement; but I was chiefly interested in kept women, and those who consider themselves as belonging to the public only in playing before them night by night, queens or chamber-maids.

In spite of this affection, they enjoy what they call their independence, either by devoting themselves to Cupid or to Plutus, and more frequently to both together.  As it is not very difficult to make the acquaintance of these priestesses of pleasure and dissipation, I soon got to know several of them.

The halls of the theatres are capital places for amateurs to exercise their talents in intriguing, and I had profited tolerably well by the lessons I had learnt in this fine school.

I began by becoming the friend of their lovers, and I often succeeded by pretending to be a man of whom nobody need be afraid.

Camille, an actress and dancer at the Italian play, with whom I had fallen in love at Fontainebleu seven years ago, was one of those of whom I was most fond, liking the society at her pretty little house, where she lived with the Count d’Eigreville, who was a friend of mine, and fond of my company.  He was a brother of the Marquis de Gamache and of the Countess du Rumain, and was a fine young fellow of an excellent disposition.  He was never so well pleased as when he saw his mistress surrounded by people—­a taste which is rarely found, but which is very convenient, and the sign of a temperament not afflicted by jealousy.  Camille had no other lovers—­an astonishing thing in an actress of the kind, but being full of tact and wit she drove none of her admirers to despair.  She was neither over sparing nor over generous in the distribution of her favours, and knew how to make the whole town rave about her without fearing the results of indiscretion or sorrows of being abandoned.

The gentleman of whom, after her lover, she took most notice, was the Count de la Tour d’Auvergne, a nobleman of an old family, who idolized her, and, not being rich enough to possess her entirely, had to be content with what she gave him.  Camille had given him a young girl, for whose keep she paid, who lived with Tour d’Auvergne in furnished apartments in the Rue de Taranne, and whom he said he loved as one loves a portrait, because she came from Camille.  The count often took her with him to Camille’s to supper.  She was fifteen, simple in her manners, and quite devoid of ambition.  She told her lover that she would never forgive him an act of infidelity except with Camille, to whom she felt bound to yield all since to her she owed all.