ress, without
announcing her title, was entitled to the privilege of her rank.

"I could be sworn," said a nobleman in attendance, "that it is some whim
of the Duchess of Newcastle."

The attendant who brought the message, said that he did indeed believe
it to be the Duchess, both from the singularity of the message, and that
the lady spoke with somewhat a foreign accent.

"In the name of madness, then," said the King, "let us admit her.
Her Grace is an entire raree-show in her own person--a universal
masquerade--indeed a sort of private Bedlam-hospital, her whole ideas
being like so many patients crazed upon the subjects of love and
literature, who act nothing in their vagaries, save Minerva, Venus, and
the nine Muses."

"Your Majesty's pleasure must always supersede mine," said the Queen. "I
only hope I shall not be expected to entertain so fantastic a personage.
The last time she came to Court, Isabella"--(she spoke to one of her
Portuguese ladies of honour)--"you had not returned from our lovely
Lisbon!--her Grace had the assurance to assume a right to bring a
train-bearer into my apartment; and when this was not allowed, what
then, think you, she did?--even caused her train to be made so long,
that three mortal yards of satin and silver remained in the antechamber,
supported by four wenches, while the other end was attached to
her Grace's person, as she paid her duty at the upper end of the
presence-room. Full thirty yards of the most beautiful silk did her
Grace's madness employ in this manner."

"And most beautiful damsels they were who bore this portentous train,"
said the King--"a train never equalled save by that of the great comet
in sixty-six. Sedley and Etherege told us wonders of them; for it is one
advantage of this new fashion brought up by the Duchess, that a
matron may be totally unconscious of the coquetry of her train and its
attendants."

"Am I to understand, then, your Majesty's pleasure is, that the lady is
to be admitted?" said the usher.

"Certainly," said the King; "that is, if the incognita be really
entitled to the honour.--It may be as well to inquire her title--there
are more madwomen abroad than the Duchess of Newcastle. I will walk into
the anteroom myself, and receive your answer."

But ere Charles had reached the lower end of the apartment in his
progress to the anteroom, the usher surprised the assembly by announcing
a name which had not for many a year been heard in these co