It was no other than Madame de Liliengarten, the mistress, or as some said the morganatic wife, of the old Duke of X——­, Duke Victor’s father.  She had left X——­a few months after the elder Duke’s demise, had gone to Paris, as I heard, where some unprincipled adventurer had married her for her money; but, however, had always retained her quasi-royal title, and pretended, amidst the great laughter of the Parisians who frequented her house, to the honours and ceremonial of a sovereign’s widow.  She had a throne erected in her state-room, and was styled by her servants and those who wished to pay court to her, or borrow money from her, ‘Altesse.’  Report said she drank rather copiously—­certainly her face bore every mark of that habit, and had lost the rosy, frank, good-humoured beauty which had charmed the sovereign who had ennobled her.

Although she did not address me in the circle at Ranelagh, I was at this period as well known as the Prince of Wales, and she had no difficulty in finding my house in Berkeley Square; whither a note was next morning despatched to me.  ’An old friend of Monsieur de Balibari,’ it stated (in extremely bad French), ’is anxious to see the Chevalier again and to talk over old happy times.  Rosina de Liliengarten (can it be that Redmond Balibari has forgotten her?) will be at her house in Leicester Fields all the morning, looking for one who would never have passed her by twenty years ago.’

Rosina of Liliengarten it was indeed—­such a full-blown Rosina I have seldom seen.  I found her in a decent first-floor in Leicester Fields (the poor soul fell much lower afterwards) drinking tea, which had somehow a very strong smell of brandy in it; and after salutations, which would be more tedious to recount than they were to perform, and after further straggling conversation, she gave me briefly the following narrative of the events in X——­, which I may well entitle the ‘Princess’s Tragedy.’

’You remember Monsieur de Geldern, the Police Minister.  He was of Dutch extraction, and, what is more, of a family of Dutch Jews.  Although everybody was aware of this blot in his scutcheon, he was mortally angry if ever his origin was suspected; and made up for his fathers’ errors by outrageous professions of religion, and the most austere practices of devotion.  He visited church every morning, confessed once a week, and hated Jews and Protestants as much as an inquisitor could do.  He never lost an opportunity of proving his sincerity, by persecuting one or the other whenever occasion fell in his way.

’He hated the Princess mortally; for her Highness in some whim had insulted him with his origin, caused pork to be removed from before him at table, or injured him in some such silly way; and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both in his capacity of Protestant, and because the latter in some haughty mood had publicly turned his back upon him as a sharper and a spy.  Perpetual quarrels were taking place between them in council; where it was only the presence of his august masters that restrained the Baron from publicly and frequently expressing the contempt which he felt for the officer of police.