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36 smallest interests that ever agitated a whole country. High born—and, Heavens! how, at that time, the privilege of noble blood was honoured! the world seemed but made for "nous autres grands;" rich—for she was the greatest heiress in France; handsome—for she possessed that high and superb style of beauty which suited so well with her state,—it would seem as if fortune had delighted in heaping all her gifts on a favourite.

But fortune takes a strange pleasure in mocking herself, and sometimes bestows all her gifts only to show how unavailing she can make them. Few lives have had more mortifications crowded into their brief space than that of Mademoiselle la Grande, Mademoiselle Princesse, Duchesse, et Comtesse of domains and denominations enough to escape any memory save a herald's or her own. The usual history of the heart was reversed in her case. Generally speaking, ambition grows upon the ruins of disappointed love; and we ask from honours and interests that delusion which we can no longer find in affection. But with her, ambition came first, and love afterwards. A throne was the vision of her youth; and the Cardinal Mazarin's soul must have much to answer for in purgatory for the many disappointments which