idea to visit her former suitors in turn, she decided upon going to England, which she reached in the month of December, 1675, and where she was destined to remain till her death in 1699, twenty-four years later. The real motive of the greatest heiress in Europe, now become a pure adventuress, in going to England was, no doubt, to lay siege to the heart of Charles II. But her ostensible motive was to visit her cousin by marriage, Mary of Modena, whom she had met when that princess passed through Savoy on her way to marry the Duke of York, and with whom she had struck up a friendship. The Duchess of York, as she expected, welcomed her warmly. Charles II. fell an instant victim to her charms, and she entered London society with unprecedented éclat.

She was now thirty, and of the fourteen years since her marriage she had passed seven principally on the highway dressed as a man. This life, which would have broken the health of any other woman, had agreed with her wonderfully. Her appearance on her arrival in London may be imagined by the following description by Forneron: "The Duchesse de Mazarin was one of those Roman beauties in whom there is no doll-prettiness, and in whom unaided nature triumphs over all the arts of the coquette. Painters could not say what was the colour of her eyes. They were neither blue nor grey, nor yet black nor brown nor hazel. Nor were they languishing nor passionate, as if either demanding to be loved or expressing love. They simply looked as if she had basked in love's sunshine. If her mouth were not large, it was not a small one, and was suitably the fit organ for intelligent speech and amiable words. All her motions were charming in their easy grace and dignity. Her complexion was softly toned and yet warm and fresh. It was so harmonious that though dark she seemed of beautiful fairness. Her jet-black hair rose in strong waves above her forehead, as if proud to clothe and adorn her splendid head. She did not use scent." Though fond of it, he might have added, and unlike her uncle the Cardinal, who was always perfumed like the garden of Armida.

Ruvigny, the French Ambassador, wrote to Louis: "She is to all appearances a finely developed young girl. I never saw any one who so well defies the power of time and vice to disfigure. When she arrives at the age of fifty she will have the satisfaction of thinking when she looks in the mirror that she is as lovely as she ever was in her life."

King Charles, in that characteristic way that made him most popular when most undeserving popularity, gave this superb beauty apartments in St. James's Palace and a pension of four thousand pounds sterling a year. The ball was at the feet of the adventuress. She at once became the centre of State intrigues, a party was formed around her. She saw herself on the point of dethroning, not the Queen, but the favourite, the all-powerful Duchess of Portsmouth. The corruption of the Court had reached the Parliament, and tinged even the patriotism of the people. The Duchess of Mazarin was chosen by Protestant England as the means of ridding the country from the harlot who had made it the satellite of France. They accepted her as the avenging champion; she at least was above-board and never resorted to trick or artifice. The situation is one of the most extraordinary spectacles in English history. Louis XIV. became alarmed. Ruvigny, honest Huguenot, was not the man to succeed in threading the maze of the foul diplomatic labyrinth in which he suddenly found himself by the success of the Duchesse de Mazarin. He suggested that, as the star of the Duchess of Portsmouth appeared to be declining, the French Court should throw her over and make terms with her rival. But the shrewd French Court was unwilling to desert a harlot whom they could trust for a harlot who had a grievance against them.

Ruvigny was replaced by the crafty Courtin, one of Louis' ablest servants. Before going to England he went to see the Duc de Mazarin in the hope of ingratiating himself with that Tartuffe-ridden man, as well as the nation to which he was accredited, by bringing the Duchesse news that her plea for a fitting maintenance, strongly backed by Charles to Louis, was heard. But he little understood the man he had to deal with. The Duc de Mazarin, thoroughly unable to admit that he had ever given the least cause for the scandalous conduct of his wife, demanded that she should return to France and suffer herself to be incarcerated in a convent. The answer of Madame de Mazarin, who was living sumptuously at St. James's and the object of almost universal admiration, was such as might have been expected.

When Courtin arrived in London the French influence seemed ruined at Whitehall. Every night Charles visited the fascinating Duchesse, and every day on repairing to the Duchess of York, his sister-in-law, who was ill at the time, he found the enchantress at her bedside. Nevertheless Courtin paid his court to the new favourite and studied her every action. "I saw Madame de Mazarin at High Mass at the chapel of the Portuguese ambassador, who is dying of love for her," he wrote to Louis, "but could not help noticing that she betrayed disgust at the length of the service." The conversion of England to Catholicism, no less than the French influence, seemed doomed by the sway of the fair agnostic. Her position was so important that Courtin advised Louis to force the Duc de Mazarin to accede to her demand that he should allow her fifty thousand a year of the Cardinal's fortune, send her her jewels, laces, and precious furniture, and swear never more to molest her if she returned to France. The great Louis humbled himself to plead with her; even the Abbé de St. Réal, who still hung about her and talked of Charles like an aggrieved husband, was not neglected. Courtin promised him the favour of the French Court.

But suddenly in the heyday of her triumph the fears and hopes that the Duchesse had raised to such a pitch were dashed by the Duchesse herself. She was not equal to the position; none of the Mancinis had the ambition or political instinct of their famous uncle, the Cardinal. Pleasure, not power, was what Madame de Mazarin really craved. Never had the enemies of the Duchess of Portsmouth leant on a weaker reed. As usual the Duchess let her heart get the better of her head; she flung herself, cost what it might, into the arms of the dashing Prince of Monaco, who was on a two months' visit to the English Court and stayed two years for sake of La Belle Mazarin. Her political rôle was over, and perhaps to no one connected with this intrigue did it give greater relief than to the protagonist herself. St. Réal, who had got together for his light-hearted mistress a good library, including such works as Appian and Tacitus, eaten up with jealousy, took the violent resolution of leaving England in the hope that she would call him back at Dover. But, as Forneron says, "she bore his absence with Roman fortitude and perhaps, like Louvois, who had perused some of his letters seized in the post, thought his room more agreeable than his company."

As for Charles, he was furious and stopped her pension. But Charles's furies never lasted long; like the Duchesse, whose character and exciting career closely resembled his own, he was too easy-going to cherish resentment. He gave her back her pension shortly afterwards, saying, "It was in repayment of sums advanced him years before by the Cardinal," and treated her henceforth as the best of friends. But this method of repaying debts was not at all to the fancy of the Duc de Mazarin. He despatched a friend to England to tell the King that he considered such payment valueless, to which Charles replied with a cynical laugh, "Quite so; I do not ask for a receipt."