her royal lover; and
that supposition becomes almost a certitude, when one reads this passage
of a letter which Saint-Evremond addressed to his fair countrywoman:--

"Suffer yourself rather to follow the bent of your temptation,
instead of listening to your pride. Your pride would soon cause you
to be sent back to France, and France would fling you, as has been
the lot of many others, into some convent. But allowing that you
should choose of your own free will that dismal kind of retreat,
still it would be necessary beforehand to render yourself worthy of
entering therein. What a figure you would cut there, if you had not
the character of a penitent! True penitence is that which afflicts
and mortifies us at the recollection of our faults. Of what has a
good girl to be penitent who has done nothing wrong? You would
appear ridiculous in the eyes of the other nuns, who, repenting
from just motives, should discover that your repentance was only
grimace."

Louise committed the error of not only approving the advice of that
equivocal monitor, but the greater error of following it. Experience
came very soon to open her eyes.

In 1672, as has been said, the Querouaille having presented the King
with a son, her favour increased considerably. In 1673 she was created
_Duchess of Portsmouth_, and at the close of the same year Louis XIV.,
alike to flatter the King of England, and to confirm him in his alliance
with himself against Holland, as to reward the good offices of Louise
Querouaille, conferred upon the latter the domain of D'Aubigny, in
Berry. This domain given, in 1422, by Charles VII. to John Stuart, "as a
token of the great services which he had rendered in war to that King,"
had reverted to the crown of France. In the letter of donation which
Louis sent to Charles, it stated that "after the death of the Duchess of
Portsmouth, the demesne of Aubigny shall pass to such of the natural
children of the King of Great Britain as he shall nominate." Charles II.
nominated Charles Lennox (his son by Querouaille), and created him Duke
of Richmond on the 19th of August, 1675.

Although _maitresse-en-titre_, and favourite mistress as she became, she
could not, however, prevent the unworthy and frequent resort of the
debauched prince to rivals of a lower grade, and Madame de Sevigne
penned some amusing lines on the subject of those duplicate
amours:--"Querouaille has