Where had she been all this time? Who had died, if not she? Her story, although clear, precise, and supported by evidence, was most extraordinary. To understand it we must go back and trace her history and that of the Champignelles family as given in the memoir prepared by the claimant for the courts.
[Illustration: GRAND FRONT OF LA SALPÊTRIÈRE ASYLUM, PARIS.]
Adelaide Marie had been married at twenty-three to the Marquis de Douhault, who coveted her dowry, and did not prove a good husband. He was subject to epileptic fits, eventually went out of his mind, and, after wounding his wife with a sword, was shut up in Charenton. The wife led an exemplary life till his death, which was soon followed by that of her father. Her brother now became the head of the family, and is said to have been a frank blackguard, the real cause of his father's death. He proceeded to swindle his mother, who was entitled by settlement to a life interest in the Champignelles estates, subject to pensions to her children, and he persuaded her to reverse that arrangement--she to surrender her property, he to pay her an annual allowance. He had gained his sister's concurrence by obtaining her signature to a blank document, which he filled up as he wished.
The son, of course, did not pay the allowances, and very often the mother was in sad straits, reduced at times to pawn her jewels for food. She appealed now to her daughter, who naturally sided with her, and wrote in indignant terms to her brother. There was an angry quarrel, with the threat of a lawsuit if he did not mend his ways. For the purpose of conferring with her mother, whom she meant to join in the suit, the Marquise de Douhault proposed to start for Paris.
(_From the Contemporary Portrait by Mme. Le Brun._)]
Having a strange presentiment that this journey would be unlucky, she postponed it as long as possible, but went at length on the day after Christmas Day, 1787. Arrived at Orleans, she accepted the hospitality of a M. de la Roncière and rested there some days. On the 15th of January, 1788, she was to continue her journey, but in the morning she took a carriage drive with her friends. All she remembered afterwards was that Madame de la Roncière offered her a pinch of snuff, which she took, and that she was seized with violent pains in the head, followed by great drowsiness and stupor; the rest was a blank.