But Calais soon palled on her exacting taste. It was too dull, too
cabined for her activities. So away she sailed in a splendid yacht to St
Petersburg where Catherine received her as a sister-Empress, and gave
balls, banquets, and receptions in her honour. From St Petersburg she
continued her journey to Poland, and made a conquest of Prince
Radzivill, who exhausted his purse and ingenuity in devising
entertainments for her, including the excitement of a bear-hunt by
torchlight.

Back again in France, flushed with her triumphs, she purchased a Palace
in Paris, and the chateau of Sainte Assize in the country, at which
alternately she held her Court, and moved among her courtiers an obese
Queen, alternately charming them with her graciousness and shocking them
by her profanity and indelicacies. Here she made her will, leaving most
of her jewels to her "dear friend," the Russian Empress; a large diamond
to her equally good friend the Pope; and an extremely valuable pearl
necklace and earrings to my Lady Salisbury, for no other reason than
that they had been originally worn some centuries earlier by a lady who
bore the same title.

But the career of the profligate and eccentric Duchess was nearing its
close, and she died as she had lived, game and defiant. While she was
sitting at dinner news came that a lawsuit had been decided against her.
She broke out in a violent passion and burst a blood-vessel. But, even
dying as she was, she refused to remain in bed. "At your peril, disobey
me!" she said to her protesting attendants. "I _will_ get up!" She got
up, dressed, and walked about the room. Then, calling for wine, she
drained glass after glass of Madeira. "I will lie down on the couch,"
she then said. "I can sleep, and after that I shall be quite well
again."

From that sleep she never awoke. The maidservants who held her hands
felt them grow gradually cold. The Duchess was dead. After life's fitful
fever, she had found rest. Thus died, in the sixty-ninth year of her
life Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, who had drunk deep of life's cup of
pleasure; who had alternately shocked and dazzled the world; and who had
found that the greatest triumphs of her beauty and the most prodigal
indulgence of her appetites were "all vanity."

CHAPTER XVI

THE KING AND THE PRETTY HAYMAKER

If ever woman was born to romance it was surely the Lady Sarah Lennox,
whose beauty and witchery nearly won for her a crown as England's Q