M. de Savoie often met the Comtesse de Verrue, and soon found her much to his taste.  She saw this, and said so to her husband and her mother-in-law.  They praised her, but took no further notice of the matter.  M. de Savoie redoubled his attentions, and, contrary to his usual custom, gave fetes, which the Comtesse de Verrue felt were for her.  She did all she could not to attend them, but her mother-in-law quarrelled with her, said she wished to play the important, and that it was her vanity which gave her these ideas.  Her husband, more gentle, desired her to attend these fetes, saying that even if M. de Savoie were really in love with her, it would not do to fail in anything towards him.  Soon after M. de Savoie spoke to the Comtesse de Verrue.  She told her husband and her mother-in-law, and used every entreaty in order to prevail upon them to let her go and pass some time in the country.  They would not listen to her, and seeing no other course open, she feigned to be ill, and had herself sent to the waters of Bourbon.  She wrote to her father, the Duc de Luynes, to meet her there, and set out under the charge of the Abbe de Verrue; uncle of her husband.  As soon as the Duc de Luynes arrived at Bourbon, and became acquainted with the danger which threatened his daughter; he conferred with the Abbe as to the best course to adopt, and agreed with him that the Countess should remain away from Turin some time, in order that M. de Savoie might get cured of his passion.  M. de Luynes little thought that he had conferred with a wolf who wished to carry off his lamb.  The Abbe de Verrue, it seems, was himself violently in love with the Countess, and directly her father had gone declared the state of his heart.  Finding himself only repulsed, the miserable old man turned his love into hate; ill-treated the Countess, and upon her return to Turin, lost no opportunity of injuring her in the eyes of her husband and her mother-in-law.

The Comtesse de Verrue suffered this for some time, but at last her virtue yielded to the bad treatment she received.  She listened to M. de Savoie, and delivered herself up to him in order to free herself from persecution.  Is not this a real romance?  But it happened in our own time, under the eyes and to the knowledge of everybody.

When the truth became known, the Verrues were in despair, although they had only themselves to blame for what had happened.  Soon the new mistress ruled all the Court of Savoy, whose sovereign was at her feet as before a goddess.  She disposed of the favours of her lover, and was feared and courted by the ministry.  Her haughtiness made her hated; she was poisoned; M. de Savoie gave her a subtle antidote, which fortunately cured her, and without injury to her beauty.  Her reign still lasted.  After a while she had the small-pox.  M. de Savoie tended her during this illness, as though he had been a nurse; and although her face suffered a little by it, he loved her not the less.  But he loved her after his own fashion.  He kept her shut up from view, and at last she grew so tired of her restraint that she determined to fly.  She conferred with her brother, the Chevalier de Luynes, who served with much distinction in the navy, and together they arranged the matter.