she took me to the Palais-Royal, and then, through a narrow staircase, to the apartments of the Duchess de Chartres.  I waited about a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time the duchess came in and loaded Camille with caresses for having brought me.  Then addressing herself to me, she told me, with dignity yet very graciously, the difficulty she experienced in understanding the answers I had sent and which she was holding in her hand.  At first I expressed some perplexity at the questions having emanated from her royal highness, and I told her afterwards that I understood cabalism, but that I could not interpret the meaning of the answers obtained through it, and that her highness must ask new questions likely to render the answers easier to be understood.  She wrote down all she could not make out and all she wanted to know.

“Madam, you must be kind enough to divide the questions, for the cabalistic oracle never answers two questions at the same time.”

“Well, then, prepare the questions yourself.”

“Your highness will excuse me, but every word must be written with your own hand.  Recollect, madam, that you will address yourself to a superior intelligence knowing all your secrets”

She began to write, and asked seven or eight questions.  She read them over carefully, and said, with a face beaming with noble confidence,

“Sir, I wish to be certain that no one shall ever know what I have just written.”

“Your highness may rely on my honour.”

I read attentively, and I saw that her wish for secrecy was reasonable, and that if I put the questions in my pocket I should run the risk of losing them and implicating myself.

“I only require three hours to complete my task,” I said to the duchess, “and I wish your highness to feel no anxiety.  If you have any other engagement you can leave me here alone, provided I am not disturbed by anybody.  When it is completed, I will put it all in a sealed envelope; I only want your highness to tell me to whom I must deliver the parcel.”

“Either to me or to Madame de Polignac, if you know her.”

“Yes, madam, I have the honour to know her.”

The duchess handed me a small tinder-box to enable me to light a wax-candle, and she went away with Camille.  I remained alone locked up in the room, and at the end of three hours, just as I had completed my task, Madame de Polignac came for the parcel and I left the palace.

The Duchess de Chartres, daughter of the Prince of Conti, was twenty-six years of age.  She was endowed with that particular sort of wit which renders a woman adorable.  She was lively, above the prejudices of rank, cheerful, full of jest, a lover of pleasure, which she preferred to a long life.  “Short and sweet,” were the words she had constantly on her lips.  She was pretty but she stood badly, and used to laugh at Marcel, the teacher of graceful deportment, who wanted to correct her awkward bearing.  She kept her head bent forward and her feet turned inside when dancing; yet she was a charming dancer.  Unfortunately her face was covered with pimples, which injured her beauty very greatly.  Her physicians thought that they were caused by a disease of the liver, but they came from impurity of the blood, which at last killed her, and from which she suffered throughout her life.