stige of manliness, could make no appeal. She wanted
"men" to pay her homage; and, like Catherine of Russia, she had them in
abundance--lovers who were only too ready to pay court to a beautiful
Princess, who might one day be Queen of France. For the Dauphin was now
dead; his eldest son, the Duc de Bourgogne, had followed him to the
grave a few months later. Prince Philip had renounced his right to the
French crown when he accepted that of Spain; and, between her husband
and the throne there was now but one frail life, that of the
three-year-old Duc d'Anjou, a child so delicate that he might easily not
survive his great-grandfather, Louis, whose hand was already relaxing
its grasp of the sceptre he had held so long.

On the intrigues with which this Queen _in posse_ beguiled her days, it
is perhaps well not to look too closely. They are unsavoury, as so much
of her life was. Her lovers succeeded one another with quite bewildering
rapidity, and with little regard either to rank or good-looks. One
special favourite of our Sultana was La Haye, a Court equerry, whom she
made Chamberlain, and who is pictured by Saint-Simon as "tall, bony,
with an awkward carriage and an ugly face; conceited, stupid,
dull-witted, and only looking at all passable when on horseback."

So infatuated was the Duchesse with her ill-favoured equerry that
nothing less would please her than an elopement to Holland--a proposal
which so scared La Haye that, in his alarm, he went forthwith to the
lady's father and let the cat out of the bag. "Why on earth does my
daughter want to run away to Holland?" the Due exclaimed with a laugh.
"I should have thought she was having quite a good enough time here!"
And so would anyone else have thought.

And while his Duchesse was thus dallying with her multitude of lovers
and stupefying herself with her brandy bottle, her husband was driven to
his wits' end by her exhibitions of temper, as by her infidelities. In
vain he stormed and threatened to have her shut up in a convent. All her
retort was to laugh in his face and order him out of her apartment.
Violent scenes were everyday incidents. "The last one," says
Saint-Simon, "was at Rambouillet; and, by a regrettable mishap, the
Duchesse received a kick."

The Duc's laggard courage was spurred to fight more than one duel for
his wife's tarnished fame. Of one of these sorry combats, Maurepas
writes, "Her conduct with her father became so notorious that His Grace
th