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INTRODUCTION.

wit and great facility of expression. She was universally popular in society, and possessed to a remarkable extent the talent of combining instruction with amusement in her most ordinary conversation. She had read much, travelled a little, and was gifted with an excellent memory. Whatever might be the subject under discussion, she is said to have always had some information to impart upon it. Nobody could relate an anecdote better or more seasonably, and her facility in composition equalled that evinced in her conversation. She left four daughters, the eldest of whom became Madame de Héere, to whom Monsieur le Président de Vertron addressed the following lines:—

"Dans la prose et les vers de l'aimable de Héere,
Je le dis comme je le croi,
La fille est semblable à la mère,
On y voit tout l'esprit de l'aimable d'Aulnoy."

The second married Monsieur de Preaux Dantigny, a gentleman of Berry.

The list of her works varies in every account I have seen of them; but in her preface to her "Mémoires de la Cour de France," or, as it is more generally called, "Memoires Historiques de ce qui s'est passé en Europe depuis 1672 jusqu'en 1679," Madame d'Aulnoy has given us one of her own, with this observation: "I profit by this opportunity to declare to the public, that they have printed in Holland some books in my name which are not mine, I having never written any others than these following:—

Hipolite Comte de Duglas.
Les Memoires de la Cour d'Espagne.
La Relation du Voyage en Espagne.
Jean de Bourbon, Prince de Carency.
Les Nouvelles Espagnoles.
Une Paraphrase sur le 'Miserere.'
Une Paraphrase sur le Pseaume,
'Benedic, anima mea, Domino.'

To which, of course, we must add the work in which this preface appears, "Mémoires Historiques," or "de la Cour de