beginning to show the ravages of time. Its rich
interior decorations had lost their splendour and become antiquated.
Fashion had taken up its abode in the Marais, near the Place Royale, and
it was thither that profligate women and celebrated beauties now enticed
the humming swarm of old rakes and young libertines. Not one of them all
would have thought of residing in the mansion, or even in the quarter,
wherein the king's mistress had once dwelt. It would have been a step
downward in the social scale, and equivalent to a confession that their
charms were falling in the public estimation. Still, the old palace was
not empty; it had, on the contrary, several tenants. Like the provinces
of Alexander's empire, its vast suites of rooms had been subdivided;
and so neglected was it by the gay world that people of the commonest
description strutted about with impunity where once the proudest nobles
had been glad to gain admittance. There in semi-isolation and despoiled
of her greatness lived Angelique-Louise de Guerchi, formerly companion
to Mademoiselle de Pons and then maid of honour to Anne of Austria.
Her love intrigues and the scandals they gave rise to had led to her
dismissal from court. Not that she was a greater sinner than many who
remained behind, only she was unlucky enough or stupid enough to be
found out. Her admirers were so indiscreet that they had not left her a
shred of reputation, and in a court where a cardinal is the lover of a
queen, a hypocritical appearance of decorum is indispensable to success.
So Angelique had to suffer for the faults she was not clever enough to
hide. Unfortunately for her, her income went up and down with the
number and wealth of her admirers, so when she left the court all her
possessions consisted of a few articles she had gathered together out of
the wreck of her former luxury, and these she was now selling one by one
to procure the necessaries of life, while she looked back from afar with
an envious eye at the brilliant world from which she had been exiled,
and longed for better days. All hope was not at an end for her. By
a strange law which does not speak well for human nature, vice finds
success easier to attain than virtue. There is no courtesan, no matter
how low she has fallen, who cannot find a dupe ready to defend against
the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the
virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe
when he disc