ote to Louis, "overcome with
grief. But, instead of bewailing her own unhappy and
changed condition, she led me into an adjoining chamber
and said: 'M. l'Ambassadeur, I want to confide a secret
to you, although if it were publicly known my head would
pay the forfeit. The King is a Catholic at heart, and yet
there he lies surrounded by Protestant bishops. I dare
not enter the room, and there is no one to talk to him of
his end and of God. The Duke of York is too much occupied
with his own affairs to trouble about his brother's
conscience. Pray go to him and tell him that the end is
near, and that it is his duty to lose no time in saving
his brother's soul.'"

The remainder of the Duchess's life-story is soon told. The days of her
queendom and glory were at an end. She was glad to escape to France
before James's tempestuous reign ended in tragedy. Here trouble and loss
were largely her portion. She lost favour with Louis to such an extent
that, at one time, he seriously thought of exiling her; her son deserted
and disgraced her; her ill-gotten riches took wings, until only a
pension of L800, wrung from Louis, saved her from absolute destitution.
True, she was still able to claim her _tabouret_ at the Court of
Versailles, and, for a few hours occasionally, to revive the glories of
the past; but apart from these ironical spasms of splendour she spent
her last years in loneliness and sadness, turning to a tardy piety as a
refuge from the coldness of the world, and as a solace for its lost
vanities. She saw all the great figures, among whom she had moved, pass
one by one behind the veil before she died, a wrinkled hag of
eighty-five, shorn of the last vestige of the charms which had wrought
such havoc in the world.

CHAPTER XV

THE MERRY DUCHESS

When Elizabeth Chudleigh first opened her eyes on the world, nearly two
centuries ago, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, of which her father was
Deputy-Governor, we may be sure that her parents little anticipated the
romantic and adventurous _role_ Fate had assigned to her on the stage of
life. A member of an ancient family, whose women had ever been
distinguished for their virtue as its men for their valour, the Chelsea
infant was destined to shock Society by the laxity of her morals as she
dazzled it by her beauty and charm, and to make herself conspicuous, in
an age none too strait-laced, as an adventuress of