e pretended to stifle
in breathing the same air, and with high-tossed head sailed past Madame
Nell (the mother of a duke), in the Court _salons_ and corridors, as if
she were carrion.

And to all these grand, disdainful airs Madame Nell only retorted with a
Drury Lane peal of silvery laughter. She, who was accustomed to "chuck
Charles's royal chin," and to call him her "Charles the third," in
unflattering reference to his two predecessors of the name in her
favour, could afford to snap her fingers at the French madame who, after
all, was no better than herself.

"The Duchess," she would say, "pretends to be a person of quality. She
says she is related to the best families in France; and when any great
person dies she puts herself in mourning. If she be a lady of such
quality, why does she demean herself to be what she is? As for me, it's
my profession; I don't profess to be anything better. And the King is
just as fond of me as he is of his French miss."

But while Her Grace of Portsmouth was revelling in her splendour and her
gold, her mission as Louis's Ambassadress was making unsatisfactory
progress. However disposed Charles may have been to change his faith to
the advantage of his pocket, he was not prepared to risk his crown,
possibly his head, for any Pope who ever lived; nor did the project of
providing a French bride for his successor, the Duke of York, promise
much better. Louis proposed the Duchess of Guise, his own cousin; but
James had heard too much of this unamiable and unattractive Princess
from his sister, Henrietta, to relish the venture. The Duchess herself
suggested a Princess of Lorraine, as a suitable bride, but Louis, who
had no love for the d'Elboeuf ladies, nipped this project in the bud.

After a long resistance, however, she had induced her Royal lover to
declare war on Holland; and Louis professed himself so pleased with this
concession to his schemes, that he dazzled her eyes with splendid
promises if she would but carry out his programme to the full. It had
become her crowning ambition to win the right to a _tabouret_ at the
Court of Versailles--the highest privilege accorded to the old
_noblesse_, that of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King; and
this proud distinction, which would raise her to the highest pinnacle in
France, inferior only to the crown itself, could be hers if Louis would
but grant her the d'Aubigny lands to accompany her title, for the
_tabouret_ went with th