the plan
of that of Louis XIV., which he had admired for its gaiety and spirit.
Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, were encouraged by _le Grand
Monarque_. Wycherley and Dryden were attracted by Charles to celebrate
the festivities, and to amuse the great and the gay. In various points
De Grammont found a resemblance. The queen-consort, Catherine of
Braganza, was as complacent to her husband's vices as the queen of
Louis. These royal ladies were merely first sultanas, and had no right,
it was thought, to feel jealousy, or to resent neglect. Each returning
sabbath saw Whitehall lighted up, and heard the tabors sound for a
_branle_, (Anglicised 'brawl'). This was a dance which mixed up
everybody, and called a brawl, from the foot being shaken to a quick
time. Gaily did his Majesty perform it, leading to the hot exercise Anne
Hyde, Duchess of York, stout and homely, and leaving Lady Castlemaine to
his son, the Duke of Monmouth. Then Charles, with ready grace, would
begin the coranto, taking a single lady in this dance along the gallery.
Lords and ladies one after another followed, and 'very noble,' writes
Pepys, 'and great pleasure it was to see.' Next came the country dances,
introduced by Mary, Countess of Buckingham, the grandmother of the
graceful duke who is moving along the gallery;--and she invented those
once popular dances in order to introduce, with less chance of failure,
her rustic country cousins, who could not easily be taught to carry
themselves well in the brawl, or to step out gracefully in the coranto,
both of which dances required practice and time. In all these dances the
king shines the most, and dances much better than his brother the Duke
of York.

In these gay scenes De Grammont met with the most fashionable belles of
the court: fortunately for him they all spoke French tolerably; and he
quickly made himself welcome amongst even the few--and few indeed there
were--who plumed themselves upon untainted reputations. Hitherto those
French noblemen who had presented themselves in England had been poor
and absurd. The court had been thronged with a troop of impertinent
Parisian coxcombs, who had pretended to despise everything English, and
who treated the natives as if they were foreigners in their own country.
De Grammont, on the contrary, was familiar with every one: he ate, he
drank, he lived, in short, according to the custom of the country that
hospitably received him, and accorded him the more res