itself by looks and words such as could hardly have been expected from a
man so eminently distinguished by good humour and good breeding. It was
not supposed however that his constitution was seriously impaired. [210]

His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous appearance
than on the evening of Sunday the first of February 1685. [211] Some
grave persons who had gone thither, after the fashion of that age, to
pay their duty to their sovereign, and who had expected that, on such a
day, his court would wear a decent aspect, were struck with astonishment
and horror. The great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the
magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and gamblers. The
king sate there chatting and toying with three women, whose charms were
the boast, and whose vices were the disgrace, of three nations. Barbara
Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, was there, no longer young, but still
retaining some traces of that superb and voluptuous loveliness which
twenty years before overcame the hearts of all men. There too was the
Duchess of Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up
with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, and
niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group. She had been early
removed from her native Italy to the court where her uncle was supreme.
His power and her own attractions had drawn a crowd of illustrious
suitors round her. Charles himself, during his exile, had sought her
hand in vain. No gift of nature or of fortune seemed to be wanting
to her. Her face was beautiful with the rich beauty of the South,
her understanding quick, her manners graceful, her rank exalted, her
possessions immense; but her ungovernable passions had turned all these
blessings into curses. She had found the misery of an ill assorted
marriage intolerable, had fled from her husband, had abandoned her
vast wealth, and, after having astonished Rome and Piedmont by her
adventures, had fixed her abode in England. Her house was the favourite
resort of men of wit and pleasure, who, for the sake of her smiles
and her table, endured her frequent fits of insolence and ill humour.
Rochester and Godolphin sometimes forgot the cares of state in
her company. Barillon and Saint Evremond found in her drawing room
consolation for their long banishment from Paris. The learning of
Vossius, the wit of Waller, were daily employed to flatter and amuse
her. But her diseased m