It was with the utmost difficulty that they dishabituated her from eating raw flesh, and, by slow degrees, reconciled her to our cooked victuals. The first trials she made to accustom herself to victuals drest with salt, and to drink wine, cost her her teeth, which, together with her nails, were preserved as a curiosity. She recovered, indeed, a set of new teeth just like ours, but she irrecoverably hurt her health, which continues to be extremely delicate. From one dangerous disorder, she immediately fell into another, all occasioned by intolerable pains in her stomach and bowels, but especially in her throat, which became parch'd and inflam'd, owing, as the physicians asserted, to the little exercise and nourishment derived to these parts from her new regimen, in comparison of what they had received from the raw victuals she formerly fed upon. These pains frequently produced an universal spasm over her whole body, and weaknesses irreparable by all the arts of cookery. It was, perhaps, on account of some of these disorders which threatned her with instant death, that they thought proper to hasten her baptism. Of this ceremony, she does not retain the least remembrance. She only mentions her having heard afterwards, that it was intended to give her for god-father and god-mother, either M. de Beaupré, governor of Champagne, and a Lady called Madame Dupin; or M. de Choiseul bishop ofChalons,
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The History of
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