monds in pledge at Bordeaux to support the cost of the
war. But had she not, as a set-off to her prodigality, brought to the
Duke d'Enghien and his father her share of Richelieu's wealth? That
prudent advice of the excellent son was followed: the Princess was still
a prisoner at Chateauroux, when the Prince her husband died, in 1686;
and by way of a precaution--which cannot be thought of without a
shudder, giving as it does the measure of an implacable hatred--he
recommended that she should be so kept after his decease. This once,
Mademoiselle did find a word of pity for the persecuted wife and mother.
"I could have wished," says she, when speaking of the last moments of
the Prince, "that he had not prayed the King to let his wife always be
kept at Chateauroux, and I was very sorry for it...."

And it was there, doubtless, that she died in 1694, at the age of
sixty-six. The collections of funeral orations and sermons of celebrated
preachers of that day will be searched in vain for any funeral tribute
to her memory. And a feeling of disappointment arises that Bossuet, in
his panegyric of the hero, could not find a word of praise, of
consolation, or even of pity for the ill-fated shadow he left sorrowful
and abandoned by all, to bear his name in pitiless obscurity to the
grave.

Mysterious destiny! strange fatality! which neither personal demerits,
wrongs, nor faults justified, which neither love, devotedness, nor
unfailing virtue, approved and respected even by the calumnious, could
avert.

PART II.

THE DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH.

VERY little is known for certain concerning the antecedents of Louise
Querouaille before she figured at the Court of France as one of the
maids of honour to the unfortunate Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, sister
of Charles the Second of England. The contemporaries of the merry
monarch, witnesses and censors of his political errors, in tracing them
to their source, have attributed them primarily to the foreign
favourite, who was, more than any other of the many mistresses of that
Prince, odious in the eyes of the English people.

At the commencement of 1670, the splendour and corruption of the French
Court had reached their acme. The seraglio of the great King recalled to
mind that of Solomon, whilst his brother, enslaved by effeminacy and
debauchery, had only to hold up his finger and the most important
personages of the state were suitably provided with mistresses to such
an