person of Charles, her affection for him seems to have been no bar to her conferring her favours on others. Lord Danby, who possessed considerable advantages of person and fortune, as well as the gallant and handsome Grand Prior of Vendôme, the soldier, the statesman, and the priest, were believed to have shared her favours with the King. Unlike the Duchess of Cleveland, she was particularly circumspect in the manner in which she carried on her amours, and consequently Charles seems to have been kept in happy ignorance of her infidelities. Unlike her predecessor in another respect, she was respectful in her manner to the Queen, with whom her appointment as lady of the bedchamber constantly brought her in

contact.

When Charles was suddenly attacked by his last illness at Whitehall, the Duchess hung over her senseless paramour in an agony of despair. There were those, however, not far off,-the Queen and the Duchess of York,— who had more legitimate claims to watch by the dying monarch, and accordingly the royal concubine was compelled to retire to the solitude of those gorgeous apartments, which she was destined so soon to quit for ever. It was in those moments of suspense and misery that she received a welcome visit from M. Barillon. "I went," he writes to Louis the Fourteenth, "to the apartments of the Duchess of Portsmouth. I found her overwhelmed with grief, the physicians having deprived her of all hope."

The Duchess is far from having been a solitary exception of a beautiful woman leading a life of sin and pleasure, and yet at the same time taking a deep interest in the precarious state of her own soul, and the spiritual welfare of her lover. She had probably, on more than one occasion, conversed on religious subjects with her dying paramour; since in her heart was locked the

dangerous secret that Charles had long since clandestinely embraced the faith of Rome. Accordingly, when Barillon visited her, he found her deeply affected by the perilous state of the soul of the departing monarch, and in the greatest despair lest he should die without having partaken of the last sacrament. "I have a thing" she said, "of great moment to tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King is really and truly a Catholic; but he will die without being reconciled to the church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant clergymen. I cannot enter it without giving scandal. The Duke is thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remember that there is a soul at stake. He is master now. He can clear the room. Go this instant, or it will be too late." The result of Barillon's spiritual mission we have related elsewhere.*

Charles, in his last moments, spoke with great affection of his foreign mistress; nor is there reason to doubt that she shed many bitter tears at his death. The new monarch, in gratitude probably for the zeal which she had shown for the spiritual welfare of his brother, which he had himself lost sight of in watching over his own selfish interests, paid her a visit of condolence after their mutual bereavement, and probably rendered her fall easier than it would otherwise have been.

Having no longer any tie to bind her to England, she retired, with what money and jewels she had amassed, to her native country. Unfortunately the taste she had acquired for splendour, and a fatal addiction to play, proved so destructive to her fortunes, that at the close of life she was compelled to subsist on a small pension which she received from the French Government. Voltaire, who saw her at the age of seventy, mentions,

*See vol. ii. p. 505.

in his Siècle de Louis XIV. that years had but little impaired her beauty, and that her face was still lovely, and her person commanding. Lady Sunderland speaks of her in 1690, as "scandalous and poor." Some years afterwards also, we find her mentioned in the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint Simon, as very old, very penitent, and very poor-"fort vieille, très convertie et pénitente, et trés mal dans ses affaires."

The Duchess after the death of Charles paid at least two visits to England, once in 1699, and again in 1715, when she was presented to Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales. On the latter occasion she is said to have had the effrontery to apply for a pension to George the First. She was certainly a devotee in her old age. Her death took place at Aubigny in France, in November 1734, having survived her royal lover nearly fifty years. George Selwyn, who saw her in the year 1733, assured Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, that she was even then "possessed of many attractions, though verging towards fourscore."

It may be incidentally mentioned that Lee inscribed to her his two plays of "Sophonisba " and "Gloriana.” In his fulsome dedication to the latter play, "I pay," he says, "my adorations to your Grace, who are the most beautiful, as well in the bright appearances of body, as in the immortal splendours of an elevated soul."

The Duchess had a sister, Henriette de Quéroualle, who married Philip seventh Earl of Pembroke. He treated her brutally, but she had the good fortune to survive him. This lady, who afterwards married the Marquis of Troy, died in old age at Paris, on the 1st November, 1728. Her only daughter, Lady Charlotte Herbert, became the wife of John Lord Jeffries, the only son of the merciless judge.

207

HORTENSIA MANCINI,

DUCHESS OF MAZARIN.

Character of the Duchess-Her Lineage-Anecdotes connected with her early History-Her Marriage wtih the Duke de Meilleraye-Her extraordinary Conduct-The Duchess institutes a Suit for a Separation-Her wild Frolics-She flies from Paris in male AttireHer subsequent Adventures-Arrives in England and becomes the Mistress of Charles II.-St. Evremond's Admiration of her Person and Talents—Charming Society of her House at Chelsea—Rochester lampoons her-Her Poverty-Her Death supposed to have been hastened by drinking strong Spirits-Her body is seized by her Creditors St. Evremond's characteristic Lament.

THE Duchess of Mazarin was unquestionably the most remarkable woman who languished in the seraglio of Charles. In her youth she was considered the most beautiful woman and the wealthiest heiress in Europe. During the King's early days of poverty and exile, when the almost infant niece of the powerful Mazarin was courted by the most illustrious families in Europe for their sons, Charles had been an eager suitor for her hand. The offer, however, was rejected by the haughty cardinal. The fact is singular that she should have afterwards become the mistress of her admirer, and indebted to his bounty for the ordinary luxuries, if not the necessaries, of life.

The character of this beautiful woman was scarcely less eccentric than her accomplishments were brilliant. Reckless, impetuous, and devoid of principle, she sacrificed her splendid fortunes to the whim of the moment, and to the gratification of her ungovernable passions.

Hazardous adventures and indelicate frolics were preferred to the advantages of fair fame and substantial grandeur. With all her wit, she became the scorn of fools; and finally, having exhausted wealth that had once appeared boundless, she died impoverished and in exile, bequeathing to her family and to posterity nothing but a melancholy moral and a tarnished name.

Hortensia Mancini was the daughter of Lorenzo Mancini, a nobleman of Rome, by Jeronima Mazarin, sister of the celebrated cardinal. She was born in 1647, and at the age of six years was sent into France to be educated. Her vivacity and love of frolic appear to have been early conspicuous. When a girl she used to amuse herself by throwing handfuls of gold out of the windows of the Mazarin palace in the French capital, for the mere pleasure of seeing the scrambles among the mob.

It would seem that she early discovered a distaste for her religious duties, a circumstance particularly displeasing to the cardinal. He once said to her, "If you will not attend mass for the sake of God, at least do it out of fear of the world." The girlhood of the volatile beauty was vigilantly watched, and, from her own. Memoirs, we glean that the precaution was not unnecessary. "We lived at Lyons," she says, “in a room which looked into the market-place, the windows of which were low enough for any one to get in. Madame de Venelle, our governess, was so accustomed to her trade of watching us, that she rose even in her sleep to see what we were about. One night, as my sister lay asleep with her mouth open, Madame de Venelle, according to custom, coming to grope in the dark, happened to thrust her finger into her mouth. My sister, starting up, nearly made her teeth meet in surprise. You may judge of the amazement of both, when they found themselves awake