;
and of the sisters Laure, the elder, was a pleasing brunette with a
handsome face, about twelve or thirteen years of age; the second
(Olympe), also a brunette, had a long face and pointed chin. Her eyes
were small, but lively; and it might be expected that, when fifteen
years of age, she would have some charm. According to the rules of
beauty, it was impossible to grant her any, save that of having dimples
in her cheeks."

Such, at the age of nine or ten, was Olympe Mancini, who, in spite of
her childish lack of beauty, was destined to enslave the handsomest King
in Europe; and, after a life of discreditable intrigues, in which she
incurred the stigma of witchcraft and murder, to end her career in
obscurity, shunned by all who had known her in her day of splendour.

It was a singular freak of fortune which translated the Mancini girls
from their modest home in Italy to the magnificence of the French
Court, as the adopted children of their uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, the
virtual ruler of France, and the avowed lover (if not, as some say, the
husband) of Anne of Austria, the Queen-mother. "See those little girls,"
said the wife of Marechal de Villeroi to Gaston d'Orleans, pointing to
the Mancini children, the centre of an admiring crowd of courtiers.
"They are not rich now; but some day they will have fine chateaux, large
incomes, splendid jewels, beautiful silver, and perhaps great
dignities."

And how true this prophecy proved, we know; for, of the Cardinal's five
Mancini nieces (for three others came, later, as their uncle's
protegees), Laure found a husband in the Duc de Mercoeur, grandson of
Henri IV.; two others lived to wear the coronet of Duchess; Olympe, as
we shall see, became Comtesse de Soissons; and Marie, after narrowly
missing the Queendom of France, became the wife of the Constable
Colonna, one of the greatest nobles of Italy.

Nor is there anything in such high alliances to cause surprise; for
their future was in the hands of the most powerful, ambitious, and
wealthy man in France. From their first appearance as his guests they
were received with open arms by Louis' Court. They were speedily
transferred to the Palais Royal, to be brought up with the boy-King,
Louis XIV., and his brother, the Prince of Anjou; while the Queen
herself not only paid them the most flattering attentions and treated
them as her own children, but herself undertook part of their education.

It was under such enviable conditio