on the eve of publication. She ran about to all the fournisseurs in Paris, asking them for bows à la Valerie, caps and gowns à la Valerie.
They heard the name for the first time, but naturally proceeded to call a variety of articles by an appellation presumably so fashionable, and the success of the novel was assured. Madame de Krüdener, promptly and conveniently oblivious of the sources of this sudden triumph, allowed herself to become somewhat intoxicated by it, and wrote to a friend that the "dear woman" (meaning Madame de Staël) was jealous of her. The person at whom this accusation was levelled probably never heard of it. She certainly would never have divined it; and, the little difficulty about Jordan once overcome, she appears to have found Madame de Krüdener's society more than tolerable. Indeed they ended by becoming affectionate friends; but that was after the authoress of Valerie had undergone the mystic change which transformed her from a flirt into a priestess.
She had always been immensely admired, and had not preserved a spotless reputation. But she had one of those emotional natures in which a restless vanity, love of novelty, a morbid sensibility and an excess of imagination, combine to produce religious fervours.
Standing at a window in Riga one day, she saw an old admirer drop dead at the very moment that he was lifting his hat to salute her. This event made on her one of those terrifying and ineffaceable impressions which in regenerate circles is known as "a call." She plunged into mysticism; became the exponent of a new dogma, and finally claimed for herself the gift of prophecy. People were, of course, not wanting to declare that her predictions had in several instances
