There was one thing in my horoscope which struck me, that was the comforter; because one of my uncles had taken great care of me, and had rendered me the most essential services.  It is also true that I afterwards had an important lawsuit; and, lastly, there was the money which had come into my hands through Madame de Pompadour’s patronage and bounty.  As for Madame, her husband was represented accurately enough by the man with the coffer; then the country of which she became Queen seemed to relate to her present situation at Court; but the most remarkable thing was the crooked and lame man, in whom Madame thought she recognized the Duc de V-----, who was very much deformed.  Madame was delighted with her adventure and her horoscope, which she thought corresponded very remarkably with the truth.  Two days after, she sent for M. de St. Florentin, and begged him not to molest the fortuneteller.  He laughed, and replied that he knew why she interceded for this woman.  Madame asked him why he laughed.  He related every circumstance of her expedition with astonishing exactness;—­[M. de St. Florentin was Minister for Paris, to whom the Lieutenant of Police was accountable.]—­but he knew nothing of what had been said, or, at least, so he pretended.  He promised Madame that, provided Bontemps did nothing which called for notice, she should not be obstructed in the exercise of her profession, especially if she followed it in secret.  “I know her,” added he, “and I, like other people, have had the curiosity to consult her.  She is the wife of a soldier in the guards.  She is a clever woman in her way, but she drinks.  Four or five years ago, she got such hold on the mind of Madame de Ruffec, that she made her believe she could procure her an elixir of beauty, which would restore her to what she was at twenty-five.  The Duchess pays high for the drugs of which this elixir is compounded; and sometimes they are bad:  sometimes, the sun, to which they were exposed, was not powerful enough; sometimes, the influence of a certain constellation was wanting.  Sometimes, she has the courage to assure the Duchess that she really is grown handsomer, and actually succeeds in making her believe it.”  But the history of this woman’s daughter is still more curious.  She was exquisitely beautiful, and the Duchess brought her up in her own house.  Bontemps predicted to the girl, in the Duchess’s presence, that she would marry a man of two thousand Louis a year.  This was not very likely to happen to the daughter of a soldier in the guards.  It did happen, nevertheless.  The little Bontemps married the President Beaudouin, who was mad.  But, the tragical part of the story is, that her mother had also foretold that she would die in childbirth of her first child, and that she did actually die in child-birth, at the age of eighteen, doubtless under a strong impression of her mother’s prophecy, to which the improbable event of her marriage had given such extraordinary weight.  Madame told