Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/37

22 Provost. She owed her life to a guilty connection formed by the Comtesse d'Albon ; and it was only by concealing, at least from strangers, the secret of this origin that her mother was able to keep her with her and to treat her, if not publicly, at any rate iu reality, as her daughter, and perhaps as her best-loved child.

About this mystery which surrounded the life and youth of Mile, de Lespinasse, her contemporaries gathered only uncertain and often contradictory rumours. Grimm, and even La Harpe and Marmontel, who knew her intimately, do not agree in their narratives. At the period when they wrote nothing was clearly known of those early years ; to-day it is otherwise, and the testimony of Mme. du Deffand, a connec- tion of the d'Albon family, and that of M. de Guibert, who not only received the confidences of Mile, de Lespinasse, but to whom she read the narrative she had herself written on this period of her life, enable us to rectify all errors.

Mile, de Lespinasse was brought up by her mother, from whom she received a solid and even brilliant education, as to which all her contemporaries are agreed. The tenderness of the mother went so far as to think of having her recognized as a legitimate daughter, Mme, du Deffand, relating, in a letter to the Duchesse de Luynes, her first meeting with the young girl at the chateau de Chamrond, belonging to her (Mme. du Deffand's) brother, the Marquis de Vichy-Chamrond, who had married the legitimate and eldest daughter of Mme, d'Albon, speaks of her as " a person who has no relatives who acknowledge her, or at any rate none who will, or ought to acknowledge her. This," she adds, " will show you her position, I found her at Chamrond, where she has lived since the death of Mme. d'Albon (the mother of my sister-in-law), who had brought her up and, in spite of her youth, had given her marks of the greatest friendship." Elsewhere she says