It was not
difficult for a girl who had been making it her business to frequent
the wineshops of the suburbs with a brother, earning a precarious
living by singing and playing on the harp, to accept such a
proposition, and consent to bestow happiness upon an excessively
amorous man, who offered to share with her a luxurious and tranquil
life in one of the finest residences in the suburb Saint Germain.
Although most of his life had been passed at court as the governor of
M. de Vendome, and tutor of Louis XIII, he had always desired to lead
a life of peace and quiet in retirement. The pleasures of a sylvan
life which he had so often described in his lectures, ended by leading
his mind in that direction. The young girl he found on his doorstep
had offered him his first opportunity to have a Phyllis to his Corydon
and he eagerly embraced it. Both yielded to the fancy, she dressed in
the garb of a shepherdess, he playing the role of Corydon at the age
of seventy years.
Sometimes stretched out on a carpet of verdure, he listened to the
enchanting music she drew from her instrument, or drank in the sweet
voice of his shepherdess singing melodious pastorals.
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