Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/814

800 father, who was by profession a painter, was for some reasons obliged to quit France, and settle in England, leaving his wife and daughter in Paris; who, having nothing to support them, were reduce to the utmost indigence, till relieved by some friends, who generously contributed to their support. The prioress of a convent, at Rouen, very humanely took care of Mademoiselle de Launai, whom she educated, and treated in all respects like the other pensioners, though some were of high rank, "by which means," says Mademoiselle de Launai, in her Memoirs, "I received an education much superior to what my birth and condition entitled me. It happened to me, just the reverse to that which we find in a romance, where the heroine is brought up as a simple shepherdess, and at last finds herself an illustrious princess: whereas, I was treated in my infancy as a person of distinction, and afterwards discovered, to my great mortification, that I had sprung from nothing, and had nothing in the world belonging to me. My mind not yielding to my bad fortune, I never was able to submit easily to be under the subjection and tyranny of others, or suffer quietly those indignities to which my situation so often subjected me."

In short, Mademoiselle de Launai, after having acquired a taste for the elegancies of high life, and experiencing every kind of indulgence, found herself, at the age of sixteen or seventeen, reduced to the most humiliating condition, turned out into the wide world, without