“The Comtesse d’Egmont heard this recital with horror.  At the same instant, her mother entered, and, on her knees, besought her daughter to avert her eternal damnation.  Madame d’Egmont tried to calm her own and her mother’s mind.  ‘What can I do?’ said she, to her.  ’Consecrate yourself wholly to God,’ replied the director, ’and thus expiate your mother’s crime.’  The Countess, in her terror, promised whatever they asked, and proposed to enter the Carmelites.  I was informed of it, and spoke to the King about the barbarous tyranny the Duchesse de Villars and the director were about to exercise over this unhappy young woman; but we knew not how to prevent it.  The King, with the utmost kindness, prevailed on the Queen to offer her the situation of Lady of the Palace, and desired the Duchess’s friends to persuade her to endeavour to deter her daughter from becoming a Carmelite.  It was all in vain; the wretched victim was sacrificed.”

Madame took it into her head to consult a fortuneteller, called Madame Bontemps, who had told M. de Bernis’s fortune, as I have already related, and had surprised him by her predictions.  M. de Choiseul, to whom she mentioned the matter, said that the woman had also foretold fine things that were to happen to him.  “I know it,” said she, “and, in return, you promised her a carriage, but the poor woman goes on foot still.”  Madame told me this, and asked me how she could disguise herself, so as to see the woman without being known.  I dared not propose any scheme then, for fear it should not succeed; but, two days after, I talked to her surgeon about the art, which some beggars practise, of counterfeiting sores, and altering their features.  He said that was easy enough.  I let the thing drop, and, after an interval of some minutes, I said, “If one could change one’s features, one might have great diversion at the opera, or at balls.  What alterations would it be necessary to make in me, now, to render it impossible to recognise me?”—­“In the first place,” said he, “you must alter the colour of your hair, then you must have a false nose, and put a spot on some part of your face, or a wart, or a few hairs.”  I laughed, and said, “Help me to contrive this for the next ball; I have not been to one for twenty years; but I am dying to puzzle somebody, and to tell him things which no one but I can tell him.  I shall come home, and go to bed, in a quarter of an hour.”—­“I must take the measure of your nose,” said he; “or do you take it with wax, and I will have a nose made:  you can get a flaxen or brown wig.”  I repeated to Madame what the surgeon had told me:  she was delighted at it.  I took the measure of her nose, and of my own, and carried them to the surgeon, who, in two days, gave me the two noses, and a wart, which Madame stuck under her left eye, and some paint for the eyebrows.  The noses were most delicately made, of a bladder, I think, and these, with the ether disguises, rendered it impossible to recognize the