The Mysteries of Paris, vol 3 | Page 2

of either the heart or the senses
disturb the stern and pitiless schemes of this intriguing, egotistical, and
ambitious girl.
Fortunately for her, her plans were assisted by one Dr. Polidori, a
learned but hypocritical man, who hoped to be the future Richelieu
over the puppet he trusted to convert Prince Rudolph into. The lady and
her brother combined with Polidori against the youthful prince, whose
only ally was his true friend, an English baronet, Sir Walter Murphy.

The Countess M'Gregor drove things to the end, and, during a brief
absence of the grand-duke, was secretly married to Prince Rudolph. In
time, about to become a mother, the artful woman began to clamor for
an acknowledgment of the union. She braved exposure, hoping to force
the prince into giving her the station she sought. All was discovered,
easily, therefore. But the old duke was all-powerful within his realm:
the clandestine union was pronounced null and void, and the countess
expelled. Her latest act of vengeance was to inform Rudolph that their
child had died. This was in 1827. But this assurance was on a par with
her former falseness: the child, a girl, was handed over to Jacques
Ferrand, a miserly notary in Paris, whose housekeeper got rid of it to a
rogue known as Pierre Tournemine. When he at last ran to the end of
his tether, and was sentenced to imprisonment in the Rochefort-hulks
for forgery, he induced a woman called Gervais, but nicknamed the
Screech-Owl (Chouette), to take the girl, now five or six years old, who
brought the little creature up in the midst of as much cruelty as
degradation.
Meanwhile the countess nursed the idea of wedding Prince Rudolph in
a more secure manner. When, in time, he became grand-duke, she was
more eager than ever to enjoy what she considered her own. Though he
had married, she hoped; and, the second wife having died childless, the
Countess M'Gregor followed Rudolph into Prance, where he traveled
incognito as Count Duren. As a last resort to force the grand-duke into
her ambitious aims, she sought for a girl of the age that her own would
have been, to pass it off as their child. By chance, the woman to whom
she applied was La Chouette, and hardly had she spoken of the likeness
which the counterfeit would have to bear to the supposed suppressed
child, than the woman recognized the very girl whom she had kept for
years by her, or in view.
Yes, the offspring of Prince Rudolph and the countess was a common
girl of the town, known as Fleur-de-Marie (the Virgin's Flower), for her
touching religious beauty, as La Goualeuse (the Songstress), for her
vocal ability, and La Pegriotte (Little Thief), out of La Chouette's anger
that she would not be what she styled her.

She had long shunned her sad sisters in shame, and, indeed, in all her
life had known but one friend. This was a sewing-girl known as
Rigolette, or Miss Dimpleton, from her continual smiles; a maid with
no strong ideas of virtue, but preserved from the miry path which poor
Fleur-de-Marie had been forced to use, merely by being too
hard-worked to have leisure to be bad.
Prince Rudolph entertained the most profound aversion for the mother
of his child, yet for the latter he mourned still, fifteen or eighteen years
after her reported decease. Weary of life, save for doing good, he took a
deep liking for playing the part of a minor providence, be it said in all
reverence.
Known to society as the grand-duke, otherwise Count Duren, he had
humble lodgings in No. 7, Rue du Temple, as a fan-painter, plain M.
Rudolph. To mask the large sums which on occasion he dispensed in
charity, he was wont to give out that he was the agent of wealthy
persons who trusted him in their alms-giving.
Events brought him into immediate contact with Fleur-de-Marie, and
Rigolette (who lived in his own house in the Rue du Temple).
The former he had rescued from her wretchedness and provided with a
home on a farm at Bouqueval, whence she had been abducted by
Chouette and comrades of hers, by orders of Jacques Ferrand, who
wanted her put out of the way.
The wretches who had undertaken to drown the girl with Ferrand's
housekeeper (become dangerous to him, as one aware of too many of
his secrets) murdered the latter, but the former, swept from their sight
by the Seine's current, had been saved by a former prison-mate of hers,
a girl of twenty, so wild in manner as to have won the nickname of
Louve (Wolf).
Snatched from death, the exhausted girl now lay, but a little this side of
life's confines, in the house of Dr. Griffon, at Asnières,