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24 she must undergo from persons who had no prospect of being repaid their advances on her account.

was in these disagreeable circumstances that I saw her for the first time in November 1752. They were hardly mended, when Le Blanc had recovered as much strength as to be able to come herself to tell me, that the Duke of Orleans, the inheritor of his father's virtues, had undertaken to pay the nine months board that had fallen due for her since his father's death, and that she had besides, some reason to hope to be put on that Prince's list, for a yearly pension of 200 livres for life; adding, at the same time, that until this last point should be settled, which could not happen till the month of January following, she had accepted of a small apartment, which a person she mentioned had offered her. But how, says I, do you propose to subsist in this apartment for two months, and perhaps more, in your sickly situation? For what purpose, answered she, with a firmness and confidence that surprised me, has God brought me from among wild beasts, and made me a Christian? not, surely, afterwards to abandon, and suffer me to perish for hunger: that is impossible; I know no other father but him, nor no other mother but the blessed