Source note

VIRGINIE, mistress of a Provencal soldier, who, at a later period, during Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt, was lost for some time in a desert, where he lived with a female panther. The jealous mistress was constantly threatening to stab her lover, and he dubbed her Mignonne, by antiphrasis; in memory of her he gave the same name to the panther. [A Passion in the Desert.]