granted, the king had promised
compliance from time to time, but had as frequently postponed the
fulfilment of his word. At last, weary of beseeching him, she devised
a speech which she trusted might have the desired effect. Accordingly,
when the monarch came to see her one day, he found her in a pensive
mood, playing with her pretty boy; and the lad, being presently set upon
his feet, he promptly tottered down the room, whereon she cried out to
him, "Come here, you little bastard!" Hearing this word of evil import
applied to his son, the monarch begged she would not use the expression,
"I am sorry," said she regretfully, "but, alas, I have no other name
to give him!" His majesty took the hint, and soon after bestowed on him
that of Charles Beauclerk, and created him Baron of Heddington, in Oxon,
and Earl of Burford in the same county; and finally, when he had reached
the age of ten years, raised him to the dignity of Duke of St. Albans.

After a reign of five years in the court of the merry monarch, her Grace
of Portsmouth was destined to encounter a far more formidable rival than
Nell Gwynn, in the person of the Duchess of Mazarine. This lady, on
her arrival in England in 1675, possessed most of the charms which had
rendered her notable in youth. To the attraction they lent was added an
interest arising from her personal history, in which King Charles had
once figured, and to which fate had subsequently added many pages of
romance.

Hortensia Mancini, afterwards Duchess of Mazarine, was descendant of a
noble Roman family, and niece of the great Julius Mazarine, cardinal of
the church, and prime minister of France. Her parents dying whilst she,
her sister and brother were young, they had been reared under the care
of his eminence. According to the memoirs of the duchess, the cardinal's
peace must have frequently been put to flight by his charges, whose
conduct, he declared, exhibited neither piety nor honour. Mindful of
this, he placed his nieces under the immediate supervision of Madame de
Venelle, who was directed to have the closest guard over them. A story
related by the duchess shows in what manner this lady's duty was carried
out, and what unexpected results attended it on one occasion.

When the court visited Lyons, in the year 1658, the cardinal's nieces
and their governess lodged in a commodious mansion in one of the public
squares. "Our chamber windows, which opened towards the market-place,"
writes Horten