His love, indeed, for Emilie seems to have been as pure and deep as any of which he was capable.  It was no fleeting passion, but an affection based on a sincere respect for her character and mental gifts.  So highly, indeed, did he think of her judgment that she became his most trusted counsellor.  She sat by his side when he received ambassadors; he consulted her on difficult problems of State; and it was her advice that he often followed in preference to the wisdom of all his ministers; for, as he said to Dubois, “Emilie has an excellent brain; she always gives me the best counsel.”

When at last he had to part from the modest and accomplished actress it was under circumstances which speak well for his generosity.  A former lover, the Marquis de Fimarcon, on his return from fighting in Spain, sought Emilie out, and, blazing with jealousy, insisted that she should leave the Regent and return to his protection.  He vowed that, if she refused, he would murder her; and when, in her alarm, she sought refuge in a convent at Charenton, he threatened to burn the nuns alive in their cells unless they restored her to him.  Thus it was that, rather than allow Emilie to run any risks from her revengeful and brutal lover, the Regent relinquished his claim to her; and only when Fimarcon’s continued brutality at last made intervention necessary, did he order the bully to be arrested and consigned to the prison of Fort l’Eveque.

It is, however, in the story of Mademoiselle Aisse, the Circassian slave, that we find the best illustration of the chivalry which underlay the Regent’s passion for women, and which he never forgot in his wildest excesses.  This story, one of the most touching in French history, opens in the year 1698, when a band of Turkish soldiers returned to Constantinople from a raid in the Caucasus, bringing with them, among many other captives, a beautiful child of four years, said to be the daughter of a King.  So lovely was the little Circassian fairy that when the Comte de Feriol, France’s Ambassador to Turkey, set eyes on her, he decided to purchase her; and she became his property in exchange for fifteen hundred livres.

That she might have every advantage of training to fit her for his seraglio in later years, the child was sent to Paris, to the home of the Ambassador’s brother, President de Feriol, where she grew to beautiful girlhood as a member of the family, as fair a flower as ever was transplanted to French soil.  Thus she passed the next thirteen years of her young life, charming all by her sweetness of disposition, as she won the homage of all by her remarkable beauty and grace.