The Story of the Diamond Necklace by Henry Vizetelly

1717–1764.

For a couple of centuries there had resided at Bar-sur-Aube, in the Champagne, certain Barons de Saint-Remi, the first of whom was Henri de Saint-Remi, an illegitimate son of Henri II. of Valois, King of France, lover of the beautiful Diana of Poitiers; the same who had the ill luck to be accidentally killed at a tilting-match by a lance thrust in his right eye from the captain of his Scottish guards, the Count de Montgomerie, ancestor of our Earls of Eglinton. This son of his, Henri de Saint-Remi, was, in heralds' language, "High and Puissant Lord and Knight, Baron and Seigneur of the Manors of the Chatellier, Fontette, Noez and Beauvoir, Knight of the King's Order, Gentleman of the Bedchamber in ordinary, Colonel of a regiment of horse and a regiment of foot, and Governor of Château-Villain. " In the course of a few generations, however, the Saint-Remis appear to have fallen from their high estate, and their broad manors to have become entirely alienated from them, inasmuch as we find that Nicolas de Saint-Remi, the great-grandson of the Henri before mentioned, instead of being styled "High and Puissant Lord and Knight," and Seigneur of various extensive domains, and the holder of numerous offices about the person of the sovereign, was merely one of the king's body-guard in the Duke de Charost's company. He married the daughter of Nicolas-Francois de Vienne, a great man in the royal bailiwick of Bar-sur-Aube, who seems at this period to have been the possessor of two of the Saint-Remi manors, namely, Noez and Fontette. The children that sprung from this marriage were two sons, the elder of whom was slain in battle, while the younger, Jacques de Saint-Remi, was father of the little beggar girl whom we found running beside the Boulainvilliers' carriage asking alms.