ed out, collected all the black cats they could find, tied
their tails together, and brought them howling and spitting into the
porch, crying out that they were devils who were following the
Comtesse."

In the face of such chilling hospitality Madame de Soissons was not
tempted to make a long stay in Brussels; and after a few months of
restless wandering in Flanders and Germany, she drifted to Spain where
she succeeded in ingratiating herself with the Queen. She found little
welcome however from the King, who, as the French Ambassador to Madrid
wrote, "was warned against her. He accused her of sorcery, and I learn
that, some days ago, he conceived the idea that, had it not been for a
spell she had cast over him, he would have had children.... The life of
the Comtesse de Soissons consists in receiving at her house all persons
who desire to come there, from four o'clock in the evening up to two or
three hours after midnight. There is, sire, everything that can convey
an air of familiarity and contempt for the house of a woman of quality."

That Carlos' suspicions were not without reason was proved when one day
his Queen, after, it is said, drinking a glass of milk handed to her by
the Comtesse, was taken suddenly ill and expired after three days of
terrible suffering. That she died of poison, like her mother, the
ill-fated sister of our second Charles, seems probable; but that the
poison was administered by the Comtesse, whose friend and protectress
she was and who had every reason to wish her well, is less to be
believed, in spite of Saint-Simon's unequivocal accusation. Certainly
the crime was not proved against her; for we find her still in Spain in
the following spring, when Carlos, his patience exhausted, ordered her
to leave the country.

After a short stay in Portugal and Germany, Madame de Soissons was back
in Brussels, where she spent the brief remainder of her days--"all the
French of distinction who visited the City" (to quote Saint-Simon)
"being strictly forbidden to visit her." Here, on the 9th October, 1690,
her beauty but a memory, bankrupt in reputation, friendless and poor,
the curtain fell on the life so full of mis-used gifts and baffled
ambitions.

CHAPTER XXVIII

AN ILL-FATED MARRIAGE

Few Kings have come to their thrones under such brilliant auspices as
Milan I. of Servia; few have abandoned their crowns to the greater
relief of their subjects, or have been followed to their exile by s