Exceedingly handsome, Maurice was a master of all the arts that pleased, with just a touch of roughness, which seemed not unfitting in so gallant a soldier.  His troops adored him and would follow wherever he might choose to lead them; for he exercised over these rude men a magnetic power resembling that of Napoleon in after years.  In private life he was a hard drinker and fond of every form of pleasure.  Having no fortune of his own, a marriage was arranged for him with the Countess von Loben, who was immensely wealthy; but in three years he had squandered all her money upon his pleasures, and had, moreover, got himself heavily in debt.

It was at this time that he first came to Paris to study military tactics.  He had fought hard against the French in the wars that were now ended; but his chivalrous bearing, his handsome person, and his reckless joviality made him at once a universal favorite in Paris.  To the perfumed courtiers, with their laces and lovelocks and mincing ways, Maurice de Saxe came as a sort of knight of old—­jovial, daring, pleasure-loving.  Even his broken French was held to be quite charming; and to see him break a horseshoe with his fingers threw every one into raptures.

No wonder, then, that he was welcomed in the very highest circles.  Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, a beautiful woman of the blood royal.  Of her it has been said that she was “the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the ideal of a dream of love.”  Her chestnut hair was tinted with little gleams of gold.  Her eyes were violet black.  Her complexion was dazzling.  But by the king’s orders she had been forced to marry a hunchback—­a man whose very limbs were so weakened by disease and evil living that they would often fail to support him, and he would fall to the ground, a writhing, screaming mass of ill-looking flesh.

It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much at his abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments.  When her eyes fell on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her from her bondage.  By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invade the sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that she was not alone.  The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left her husband, having won the sympathy of her own world, which held that she had been insulted.  But it was not she who was destined to win and hold the love of Maurice de Saxe.

Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited to dine with the “Queen of Paris,” Adrienne Lecouvreur.  Saxe had seen her on the stage.  He knew her previous history.  He knew that she was very much of a soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, so utterly dissimilar, leaped together, as it were, through the indescribable attraction of opposites.  He was big and powerful; she was small and fragile.  He was merry, and full of quips and jests; she was reserved and melancholy.  Each felt in the other a need supplied.