“_I am convinced she rivalled, at fifty, the exquisite Diane de
Poitiers herself, in the brightness of her wit and the perfection of
her form, and might have passed as triumphantly a like test of the
marble._”
The Marquis de C---- in his “Foreword.”
If the public seeks any apology for this introduction to it, at a
late date, of the extraordinary woman whose self-dictated Memoirs form
the staple of the following pages, it must look for it in the
references of her contemporaries; it will be far from gathering it
from her own autobiography.
Diane Rosemonde de St. Croix (to give her her proper mother-title)
considered that she owed to Romance, in a glowing age, what, in a
practical one, is conceded by a thousand dull and petty vanities to a
vulgar curiosity--her personal reminiscences. She had at least the
justification of her qualities, and the good fortune to find, in her
latter-day friend, the Marquis de C----, an enthusiastic historian of
them. In the question of their appeal, one way or the other, to the
English reader, the present transcriber (from the original French
notes) must hold himself responsible both for choice and style.
Madame de St. Croix was a “passionist,” as the French called Casanova;
and, indeed, she had many points in common with that redoubtable
adventurer: an unappeasable vagabondism; a love of letters; an ardent
imagination; an incorruptible self-love; and, lastly, what we may term
an exotic orthodoxy. If, subscribing to the universal creed which
makes man’s soul his fetish, she worshipped an exacting god, she was
at least always ready to sacrifice the world to gratify it, and now,
no doubt, very logically sings among the angels.
In the matter of her more notorious characteristics, M. de C----, lest
her part on earth should suffer misconstruction by the censorious, is
so good as to speak with some show of finality. “I deny,” he says,
“the title adventuress to my charming and accomplished friend. It is
nothing if not misleading. Every day we venture something, for love,
for hunger, for ambition. He who deviates from rice and barley-water,
venturing on spiced dishes, makes every time an assault on his
epigastrium. He who is not content with an ignoble mediocrity, though
he do no more than take pains with a letter, is a candidate for fame.
And as for love, it does not exist on the highway. Why should it imply
distinction to call a man an adventurer, and be invidious to style a
woman adventuress? Ulysses dallying in Ææa is surely no more
honourable a sight than Godiva traversing Coventry in an adorable
deshabille. To have the wide outlook, the catholic sympathy--is that
to merit defamation? No, it is to be heroically human. Better sin like
an angel, I say, than be a sick devil and virtuous.”
It remains only to mention that the present transcript conducts no
further than to the finish of a dramatic period of Madame de St.
Croix’s story; and to that, even, at the expense of a considerable
lacuna (referred to in its place), which no research has hitherto been
successful in filling. It is hoped, however, that, in what is given,
enough will be found to interest.