But even at this supreme crisis he found time to write daily letters to the dear one who was awaiting the issue in Milan, begging her to share his life. "Your tears," he writes, "drive me to distraction; they set my blood on fire. Come to me here, that at least we may be able to say before we die we had so many days of happiness." Thus he pleads in letter after letter until Josephine, for very shame, is forced to yield, and to return to her husband, who, as Masson tells us, "was all day at her feet as before some divinity."

Such days of bliss were, however, few and far between for the man who was now in the throes of a Titanic struggle, on the issue of which his fortunes and those of France hung. But when duty took him into danger where his lady could not follow, she found ample solace. Monsieur Charles, Leclerc's adjutant, was all the cavalier she needed—an Adonis for beauty, a Hercules for strength, the handsomest soldier in Napoleon's army, a past-master in all the arts of love-making. There was no dull moment for Josephine with such a squire at her elbow to pour flatteries into her ears and to entertain her with his clever tongue.

But Monsieur Charles had short shrift when Napoleon's jealousy was aroused. He was quickly sent packing to Paris; and Josephine was left to write to her aunt, "I am bored to extinction." She was weary of her husband's love-rhapsodies, disgusted with the crudities of his passion. She had, however, a solace in the homage paid to her everywhere. At Genoa she was received as a Queen; at Florence the Grand Duke called her "cousin"; the entire army, from General to private, was under the spell of her beauty and the graciousness that captivated all hearts. She was, too, reaping a rich harvest of costly presents and bribes, from all who sought to win Napoleon's favour through her.

The Italian campaign at last over, Madame found herself back again in her dear Paris, raised to a higher pinnacle of Queendom than ever, basking in the splendours of the husband whose glories she so gladly shared, though she held his love in such light esteem. But for him, at least, there was no time for dallying. Within a few months he was waving farewell to her again, from the bridge of the Ocean which was carrying him off to the conquest of Egypt, buoyed by her promise that she would join him when his work was done. And long before he had reached Malta she was back again in the vortex of Paris gaiety, setting the tongue of scandal wagging by her open flirtation with one lover after another.

It was not long before the news of Madame's "goings-on" reached as far as Alexandria. The dormant jealousy in Napoleon, lulled to rest since Monsieur Charles had vanished from the scene, was fanned into flame. He was furious; disillusion seized him, and thoughts of divorce began to enter his brain. Two could play at this game of falseness; and there were many beautiful women in Egypt only too eager to console the great Napoleon.

When news came to Josephine that her husband had landed at Frejus, and would shortly be with her, she was in a state bordering on panic. She shrank from facing his anger; from the revelation of debts and unwifely conduct which was inevitable. Her all was at stake and the game was more than half lost. In her desperation she took her courage in both hands and set forth, as fast as horses could take her, to meet Napoleon, that she might at least have the first word with him; but as ill-luck would have it, he travelled by a different route and she missed him.

On her return to Paris she found the door of Napoleon's room barred against her. "After repeated knocking in vain," says M. Masson, "she sank on her knees sobbing aloud. Still the door remained closed. For a whole day the scene was prolonged, without any sign from within. Worn out at last, Josephine was about to retire in despair, when her maid fetched her children. Eugene and Hortense, kneeling beside their mother, mingled their supplications with hers. At last the door was opened; speechless, tears streaming down his cheeks, his face convulsed with the struggle that had rent his heart, Bonaparte appeared, holding out his arms to his wife."

Such was the meeting of the unfaithful Josephine and the husband who had vowed that he would no longer call her wife. The reconciliation was complete; for Napoleon was no man of half-measures. He frankly forgave the weeping woman all her sins against him; and with generous hand removed the mountain of debt her extravagance had heaped up—debts amounting to more than two million francs, one million two hundred thousand of which she owed to tradespeople alone.

But Napoleon's passion for his wife, of whose beauty few traces now remained, was dead. His loyalty only remained; and this, in turn, was to be swept away by the tide of his ambition. A few years later Josephine was crowned Empress by her husband, and consecrated by the Pope, after a priest had given the sanction of the Church to her incomplete nuptials.

She had now reached the dazzling zenith of her career. At the Tuileries, at St Cloud, and at Malmaison, she held her splendid Courts as Empress. She had the most magnificent crown jewels in the world; and at Malmaison she spent her happiest hours in spreading her gems out on the table before her, and feasting her eyes on their many-hued fires. Her wardrobes were full of the daintiest and costliest gowns of which, we are told, more than two hundred were summer-dresses of percale and of muslin, costing from one thousand to two thousand francs each.

Less than six years of such splendour and luxury, and the inevitable end of it all came. Napoleon's eyes were dazzled by the offer of an alliance with the eldest daughter of the Austrian Emperor. His whole ambition now was focused on providing a successor to his crown (Josephine had failed him in this important matter); and in Marie Louise of Austria he not only saw the prospective mother of his heir, but an alliance with one of the great reigning houses of Europe, which would lend a much-needed glamour to his bourgeois crown.

His mind was at last inevitably made up. Josephine must be divorced. Her pleadings and tears and faintings were powerless to melt him. And one December day, in the year 1809, Napoleon was free to wed his Austrian Princess; and Josephine was left to console herself as best she might, with the knowledge that at least she had rescued from her downfall a life-income of three million francs a year, on which she could still play the role of Empress at the Elysee, Malmaison, and Navarre, the sumptuous homes with which Napoleon's generosity had dowered the wife who failed.



CHAPTER XIII

THE ENSLAVER OF A KING

More than fifty years have gone since the penitent soul of Lola Montez took flight to its Creator; but there must be some still living whose pulses quicken at the very mention of a name which recalls so much mystery and romance and bewildering fascination of the days when, for them, as for her, "all the world was young."

Who was she, this woman whose beauty dazzled the eyes and whose witchery turned the heads of men in the forties and fifties of last century? A dozen countries, from Spain to India, were credited with her birth. Some said she was the daughter of a noble house, kidnapped by gipsies in her infancy; others were equally confident that she had for father the coroneted rake, Lord Byron, and for mother a charwoman.

Her early years were wrapped in a mystery which she mischievously helped to intensify by declaring that her father was a famous Spanish toreador. Her origin, however, was prosaic enough. She was the daughter of an obscure army captain, Gilbert, who hailed from Limerick; her mother was an Oliver, from whom she received her strain of Spanish blood; and the names given to her at a Limerick font, one day in 1818, two months after her parents had made their runaway match, were Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna.

When Captain Gilbert returned, after his furlough-romance, to India, he took his wife and child with him. Seven years later cholera removed him; his widow found speedy solace in the arms of a second husband, one Captain Craigie; and Dolores was packed off to Scotland to the care of her stepfather's people until her schooldays were ended.

In the next few years she alternated between the Scottish household, with its chilly atmosphere of Calvinism, and schools in Paris and London, until, her education completed, she escaped the husband, a mummified Indian judge, whom her mother had chosen for her, by eloping with a young army officer, a Captain James, and with him made the return voyage to India.

A few months later her romance came to a tragic end, when her Lothario husband fell under the spell of a brother-officer's wife and ran away with her to the seclusion of the Neilgherry Hills, leaving his wife stranded and desolate. And thus it was that Dolores Gilbert wiped the dust of India finally off her feet, and with a cheque for a thousand pounds, which her good-hearted stepfather slipped into her hand, started once more for England, to commence that career of adventure which has scarcely a parallel even in fiction. She had had more than enough of wedded life, of Scottish Calvinism, and of a mother's selfish indifference. She would be henceforth the mistress of her own fate. She had beauty such as few women could boast—she had talents and a stout heart; and these should be her fortune.

Her first ambition was to be a great actress; and when she found that acting was not her forte she determined to dance her way to fame and fortune, and after a year's training in London and Spain she was ready to conquer the world with her twinkling feet and supple body.

Of her first appearance as a danseuse, before a private gathering of Pressmen, we have the following account by one who was there: "Her figure was even more attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was. Lithe and graceful as a young fawn, every movement that she made seemed instinct with melody. Her dark eyes were blazing and flashing with excitement. In her pose grace seemed involuntarily to preside over her limbs and dispose their attitude. Her foot and ankle were almost faultless."

Such was the enthusiastic description of Lola Montez (as she now chose to call herself) on the eve of her bid for fame as a dancer who should perhaps rival the glories of a Taglioni. A few days later the world of rank and fashion flocked to see the debut of the danseuse whose fame had been trumpeted abroad; and as Lola pirouetted on to the stage—the focus of a thousand pairs of eyes—she felt that the crowning moment of her life had come.

Almost before her twinkling feet had carried her to the centre of the stage an ominous sound broke the silence of expectation. A hiss came from one of the boxes; it was repeated from another, and another. The sibilant sound spread round the house; it swelled into a sinister storm of hisses and boos. The light faded out of the dancer's eyes, the smile from her lips; and as the tumult of disapprobation rose to a deafening climax the curtain was rung down, and Lola rushed weeping from the stage. Her career as a dancer, in England, had ended at its birth.

But Lola Montez was not the woman to sit down calmly under defeat. A few weeks later we find her tripping it on the stage at Dresden, and at Berlin, where the King of Prussia himself was among her applauders. But such success as the Continent brought her was too small to keep her now deplenished purse supplied. She fell on evil days, and for two years led a precarious life—now, we are told, singing in Brussels streets to keep starvation from her side, now playing the political spy in Russia, and again, by a capricious turn of fortune's wheel, being feted and courted in the exalted circles of Vienna and Paris.

From the French capital she made her way to Warsaw, where stirring adventures awaited her, for before she had been there many days the Polish Viceroy, General Paskevitch, cast his aged but lascivious eyes on her young beauty and sent an equerry to desire her presence at the palace. "He offered her" (so runs the story as told by her own lips) "the gift of a splendid country estate, and would load her with diamonds besides. The poor old man was a comic sight to look upon—unusually short in stature; and every time he spoke he threw his head back and opened his mouth so wide as to expose the artificial gold roof of his palate. A death's head making love to a lady could not have been a more horrible or disgusting sight. These generous gifts were most respectfully and very decidedly declined."

But General Paskevitch was not disposed to be spurned with impunity. The contemptuous beauty must be punished for her scorn of his wooing; and, when she made her appearance on the stage the same night it was to a greeting of hisses by the Viceroy's hirelings. The next night brought the same experience; but when on the third night the storm arose, "Lola, in a rage, rushed down to the footlights and declared that those hisses had been set at her by the director, because she had refused certain gifts from the old Prince, his master. Then came a tremendous shower of applause from the audience, and the old Princess, who was present, both nodded her head and clapped her hands to the enraged and fiery little Lola."

A tumultuous crowd of Poles escorted her to her lodgings that night. She was the heroine of the hour, who had dared to give open defiance to the hated Viceroy. The next morning Warsaw was "bubbling and raging with the signs of an incipient revolution. When Lola Montez was apprised of the fact that her arrest was ordered she barricaded her door; and when the police arrived she sat behind it with a pistol in her hand, declaring that she would certainly shoot the first man who should dare to break in." Fortunately for Lola, her pistol was not used. The French Consul came to her rescue, claiming her as a subject of France, and thus protecting her from arrest. But the order that she should quit Warsaw was peremptory, and Warsaw saw her no more.

Back again in Paris, Lola found that even her new halo of romance was powerless to win favour for her dancing. Again she was to hear the storm of hisses; and this time in her rage "she retaliated by making faces at her audience," and flinging parts of her clothing in their faces. But if Paris was not to be charmed by her dainty feet it was ready to yield an unstinted homage to her rare beauty and charm. She found a flattering welcome in the most exclusive of salons; the cleverest men in the capital confessed the charm of her wit and surrounded her with their flatteries.

M. Dujarrier, the most brilliant of them all, young, rich, and handsome, fell head over ears in love with her and asked her to be his wife. But the cup of happiness was scarcely at her lips before it was dashed away. Dujarrier was challenged to a duel by Beauvallon, a political enemy; and when Lola was on her way to stop the meeting she met a mournful procession bringing back her dead lover's body, on which she flung herself in an agony of grief and covered it with kisses. At the subsequent trial of Beauvallon she electrified the Court by declaring with streaming eyes, "If Beauvallon wanted satisfaction I would have fought him myself, for I am a better shot than poor Dujarrier ever was." And she was probably only speaking the truth, for her courage was as great as the love she bore for the victim of the duel.

As a child Lola had shocked her puritanical Scottish hosts by declaring that "she meant to marry a Prince," and unkindly as fate had treated her, she had by no means relinquished this childish ambition. It may be that it was in her mind when, a year and a half after the tragedy that had so clouded her life in Paris, she drifted to Munich in search of more conquests.

Now in the full bloom of her radiant loveliness—"the most beautiful woman in Europe" many declared—mingling the vivacity of an Irish beauty with the voluptuous charms of a Spaniard—she was splendidly equipped for the conquest of any man, be he King or subject; and Ludwig I., King of Bavaria, had as keen an eye for female beauty as for the objects of art on which he squandered his millions.

It was this Ludwig who made Munich the fairest city in all Germany, and who enriched his palace with the finest private collection of pictures and statues that Europe can boast. But among all his treasures of art he valued none more than his gallery of portraits of fair women, each of whom had, at one time or another, visited his capital.

Such was Ludwig, Bavaria's King, to whom Lola Montez now brought a new revelation of female loveliness, to which his gallery could furnish no rival. At first sight of her, as she danced in the opera ballet, he was undone. The next day and the next his eyes were feasting on her charms and her supple grace; and within a week she was installed at the Court and was being introduced by His Majesty as "my best friend."

And not only the King, but all Munich was at the feet of the lovely "Spaniard"; her drives through the streets were Royal progresses; her receptions in the palace which Ludwig presented to her were thronged by all the greatest in Bavaria; on Prince and peasant alike she cast the spell of her witchery. As for Ludwig, connoisseur of the beautiful, he was her shadow and her slave, showering on her gifts an Empress might well have envied. Fortune had relented at last and was now smiling her sweetest on the adventuress; and if Lola had been content with such triumphs as these the story of her later life might have been very different. But she craved power to add to her trophies, and aspired to take the sceptre from the weak hand of her Royal lover.

Never did woman make a more fatal mistake. On the one hand was arrayed the might of Austria and of Rome, whose puppet Ludwig was; on the other hand was a nation clamouring for reforms. Revolution was already in the air, and it was reserved to this too daring woman to precipitate the storm.

Her first ambition was to persuade Ludwig to dismiss his Ministry, to shake himself free from foreign influence, and to inaugurate the era of reform for which his subjects were clamouring. In vain did Austria try to win her to its side by bribes of gold (no less than a million florins) and the offer of a noble husband. To all its seductions Lola turned as deaf an ear as to the offers of Poland's Viceroy. And so strenuous was her championship of the people that the Cabinet was compelled to resign in favour of the "Lola Ministry" of reformers.

So far she had succeeded, but the price was still to pay. The reactionaries, supported by Austria and the Romish Church, were quick to retaliate by waging remorseless war against the King's mistress; and, among their most powerful weapons, used the students' clubs of Munich, who, from being Lola's most enthusiastic admirers, became her bitterest enemies.

To counteract this move Lola enrolled a students' corps of her own—a small army of young stalwarts, whose cry was "Lola and Liberty," and who were sworn to fight her battles, if need be, to the death. Thus was the fire of revolution kindled by a woman's vanity and lust of power. Students' fights became everyday incidents in the streets of Munich, and on one occasion when Lola, pistol in hand, intervened to prevent bloodshed, she was rescued with difficulty by Ludwig himself and a detachment of soldiers.

The climax came when she induced the King to close the University for a year—an autocratic step which aroused the anger not only of every student but of the whole country. The streets were paraded by mobs crying, "Down with the concubine!" and "Long live the Republic!" Barricades were erected and an influential deputation waited on the King to demand the expulsion of the worker of so much mischief.

In vain did Ludwig declare that he would part with his crown rather than with the Countess of Landsfeld—for this was one of the titles he had conferred on his favourite. The forces arrayed against him were too strong, and the order of expulsion was at last conceded. It was only, however, when her palace was in flames and surrounded by a howling mob that the dauntless woman deigned to seek refuge in flight, and, disguised as a boy, suffered herself to be escorted to the frontier. Two weeks later Ludwig lost his crown.

The remainder of this strange story may be told in a few words. Thrown once more on the world, with a few hastily rescued jewels for all her fortune, Lola Montez resumed her stage life, appearing in London in a drama entitled "Lola Montez: or a Countess for an Hour." Here she made a conquest of a young Life Guardsman, called Heald, who had recently succeeded to an estate worth L5000 a year; and with him she spent a few years, made wretched by continual quarrels, in one of which she stabbed him. When he was "found drowned" at Lisbon she drifted to Paris, and later to the United States, which she toured with a drama entitled "Lola Montez in Bavaria." There she made her third appearance at the altar, with a bridegroom named Hull, whom she divorced as soon as the honeymoon had waned.

Thus she carried her restless spirit through a few more years of wandering and growing poverty, until a chance visit to Spurgeon's Tabernacle revolutionised her life. She decided to abandon the stage and to devote the remainder of her days to penitence and good works. But the end was already near. In New York, where she had gone to lecture, she was struck down by paralysis, and a few weeks before she had seen her forty-second birthday she died in a charitable institution, joining fervently in the prayers of the clergyman who was summoned to her death-bed.

"When she was near the end, and could not speak," the clergyman says, "I asked her to let me know by a sign whether she was at peace. She fixed her eyes on mine and nodded affirmatively. I do not think I ever saw deeper penitence and humility than in this poor woman."



CHAPTER XIV

AN EMPRESS AND HER FAVOURITES

When Sophie Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst was romping on the ramparts or in the streets of Stettin with burghers' children for playmates, he would have been a bold prophet who would have predicted that one day she would be the most splendid figure among Europe's sovereigns, "the only great man in Europe," according to Voltaire, "an angel before whom all men should be silent"; and that, while dazzling Europe by her statesmanship and learning, she would afford more material for scandal than any woman, except perhaps Christina of Sweden, who ever wore a crown.

There is much, it is true, to be said in extenuation of the weakness that has left such a stain on the memory of Catherine II. of Russia. Equipped far beyond most women with the beauty and charms that fascinate men, and craving more than most of her sex the love of man, she was mated when little more than a child to the most degenerate Prince in all Europe.

The Grand Duke Peter, heir to the Russian throne, who at sixteen took to wife the girl-Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, was already an expert in almost every vice. Imbecile in mind, he found his chief pleasure in the company of the most degraded. He rarely went to bed sober—in fact, his bride's first sight of him was when he was drunk, at the age of ten. He was, too, "a liar and a coward, vicious and violent; pale, sickly, and uncomely—a crooked soul in a prematurely ravaged body."

Such was the Grand Duke Peter, to whom the high-spirited, beautiful Princess Sophie (thenceforth to be known as "Catherine") was tied for life one day in the year 1744—a youth the very sight of whom repelled her, while his vices filled her with loathing. Add to this revolting union the fact that she found herself under the despotic rule of the Empress Elizabeth, who made no concealment of her hatred and jealousy of the fair young Princess, surrounded her with spies, and treated her as a rebellious child, to be checked and bullied at every turn—and it is not difficult to understand the spirit of recklessness and defiance that was soon roused in Catherine's breast.

There was at the Russian Court no lack of temptation to indulge this spirit of revolt to the full. The young German beauty, mated to worse than a clown, soon had her Court of admirers to pour flatteries into her dainty ears, and she would perhaps have been less than a woman if she had not eagerly drunk them in. She had no need of anyone to tell her that she was fair. "I know I am beautiful as the day," she once exclaimed, as she looked at her mirrored reflection in her first ball finery at St Petersburg, with a red rose in her glorious hair; and the mirror told no flattering tale.

See the picture Poniatowski, one of her earliest and most ardent slaves, paints of the young Grand Duchess. "With her black hair she had a dazzling whiteness of skin, a vivid colour, large blue eyes prominent and eloquent, black and long eyebrows, a Greek nose, a mouth that looked made for kissing, a slight, rather tall figure, a carriage that was lively, yet full of nobility, a pleasing voice, and a laugh as merry as the humour through which she could pass with ease from the most playful and childish amusements to the most fatiguing mathematical calculations."

With the brain, even in those early years, of a clever man, she was essentially a woman, with all a woman's passion for the admiration and love of men; and one cannot wonder, however much one may deplore, that while her imbecile husband was guzzling with common soldiers, or playing with his toys and tin cannon in bed, vacuous smiles on his face, his beautiful bride should find her own pleasures in the homage of a Soltykoff, a Poniatowski, an Orloff, or any other of the legion of lovers who in quick succession took her fancy.

The first among her admirers to capture her fancy was Sergius Soltykoff, her chamberlain, high-born, "beautiful as the day," polished courtier, supple-tongued wooer, to whom the Grand Duchess gave the heart her husband spurned. But Soltykoff's reign was short; the fickle Princess, ever seeking fresh conquests, wearied of him as of all her lovers in turn, and his place was taken within a year by Stanislas Poniatowski, a fascinating young Pole, who returned to St Petersburg with a reputation of gallantry won in almost every Court of Europe.

Poniatowski had not perhaps the physical perfections of his dethroned predecessor, but he had the well-stored brain that made an even more potent appeal to Catherine. He could talk "like an angel" on every subject that appealed to her, from art to philosophy; and he had, moreover, a magnetic charm of manner which few women could resist.

Such a lover was, indeed, after her heart, for he brought romance and adventure to his wooing; and whether he found his way to her boudoir disguised as a ladies' tailor or as one of the Grand Duke's musicians, or made open love to her under the very nose of her courtiers, he played his role of lover to admiration. Once Peter, in jealous mood, threatened to run his rival through with his sword, and, in his rage, "went into his wife's bedroom and pulled her out of bed without leaving her time to dress." An hour later his anger had changed to an amused complaisance, and he was supping with the culprits, and with boisterous laughter was drinking their healths.

When at last a political storm drove Poniatowski from Russia, Catherine, who never forgot a banished lover, secured for him the crown of Poland.

Thus the favourites come and go, each supreme for a time, each inevitably packed off to give place to a successor. With Poniatowski away in Poland, Catherine cast her eyes round her Court to find a third favourite, and her choice was soon made, for of all her army of admirers there was one who fully satisfied her ideal of handsome manhood.

Of the five Orloff brothers, each a Goliath in stature and a Hercules in strength, the handsomest was Gregory, "the giant with the face of an angel." Towering head and shoulders over most of his fellow-courtiers, with knotted muscles which could fell an ox or crush a horse-shoe with the closing of a hand, Gregory Orloff was reputed the bravest man in Russia, as he was the idol of his soldiers. He was also a notorious gambler and drinker and the hero of countless love adventures.

No greater contrast could be possible than between this dare-devil son of Anak and the cultured, almost feminine Poniatowski; but Catherine loved, above all things, variety, and here it was in startling abundance. Nor was her new lover any the less desirable because he was some years younger than herself, or that his grandfather had been a common soldier in the army of Peter the Great.

And Gregory Orloff proved himself as bold in wooing as he was brave in war. For him there was no stealing up back stairs, no masquerading in disguises. He was the elect favourite of the future Empress of Russia, and all the world should know it. He was inseparable from his mistress, and paid his court to her under the eyes of her husband; while Catherine, thus emboldened, made as little concealment of her partiality.

But troublous days were coming to break the idyll of their love. The Empress Elizabeth, as was inevitable, at last drank herself to death, and her nephew Peter, now a besotted imbecile of thirty-four, put on the Imperial robes, and was free to indulge his madness without restraint. The first use he made of his freedom was to subject his wife to every insult and humiliation his debased brain could suggest. He flaunted his amours and vices before her, taunted her in public with her own indiscretions, and shouted in his cups that he would divorce her.

Not content with these outrages on his Empress, he lost no opportunity of disgusting his subjects and driving his soldiers to the verge of mutiny. Such an intolerable state of things could only have one issue. The Emperor was undoubtedly mad; the Emperor must go.

Over the coup d'etat which followed we must pass hurriedly—the conspiracy of Catherine and the Orloffs, the eager response of the army which flocked to the Empress, "kissing me, embracing my hands, my feet, my dress, and calling me their saviour"; the marching of the insurgent troops to Oranienbaum, with Catherine, astride on horseback, at their head; and Peter's craven submission, when he crawled on his knees to his wife, with whimpering and tears, begging her to allow him to keep "his mistress, his dog, his negro, and his violin."

The Emperor was safe behind barred doors at Mopsa; Catherine was now Empress in fact as well as name. Three weeks later Peter was dead; was he done to death by Catherine's orders? To this day none can say with certainty. The story of this tragedy as told by Castera makes gruesome reading.

One day Alexis Orloff and Teplof appeared at Mopsa to announce to the deposed sovereign his approaching deliverance and to ask a dinner of him. Glasses and brandy were ordered, and while Teplof was amusing the Tsar, Orloff filled the glasses, adding poison to one of them.

"The Tsar, suspecting no harm, took the poison and swallowed it. He was soon seized with agonising pains. He screamed aloud for milk, but the two monsters again presented poison to him and forced him to take it. When the Tsar's valet bravely interposed he was hurled from the room. In the midst of the tumult there entered Prince Baratinski, who commanded the Guard. Orloff, who had already thrown down the Tsar, pressed upon his chest with his own knees, holding him fast at the same time by the throat. Baratinski and Teplof then passed a table-napkin with a sliding knot round his neck, and the murderers accomplished the work of death by strangling him."

Such is the story as it has come down to us, and as it was believed in Russia at the time. That Gregory Orloff was innocent of a crime in which his own brother played a leading part is as little to be credited as that Catherine herself was in ignorance of the design on her husband's life. But, however this may be, we are told that when the news of her husband's death was brought to the Empress at a banquet, she was to all appearance overcome with horror and grief. She left the table with streaming eyes and spent the next few days in unapproachable solitude in her rooms.

Thus at last Catherine was free both from the tyranny of Elizabeth and from the brutality of her bestial husband. She was sole sovereign of all the Russias, at liberty to indulge any caprice that entered her versatile brain. That her subjects, almost to a man, regarded her with horror as her husband's murderer, that this detestation was shared by the army that had put her on the throne, and by the nobles who had been her slaves, troubled her little. She was mistress of her fate, and strong enough (as indeed she proved) to hold, with a firm grasp, the sceptre she had won.

High as Gregory Orloff had stood in her favour before she came to her crown, his position was now more splendid and secure. She showered her favours on him with prodigal hand. Lands and jewels and gold were squandered on her "First Favourite"—the official designation she invented for him; and he wore on his broad chest her miniature in a blazing oval of diamonds, the crowning mark of her approval. And to his brothers she was almost equally generous, for in a few years of her ascendancy the Orloffs were enriched by vast estates on which forty-five thousand serfs toiled, by palaces, and by gold to the amount of seventeen million roubles. Such it was to be in the good books of Catherine II., Empress of Russia.

With riches and power, Gregory's ambition grew until he dreamt of sitting on the throne itself by Catherine's side; and in her foolish infatuation even this prize might have been his, had not wiser counsels come to her rescue. "The Empress," said Panine to her, "can do what she likes; but Madame Orloff can never be Empress of Russia." And thus Gregory's greatest ambition was happily nipped in the bud.

The man who had played his cards with such skill and discretion in the early days of his love-making had now, his head swollen by pride and power, grown reckless. If he could not be Emperor in name, he would at least wield the sceptre. The woman to whom he owed all was, he thought, but a puppet in his hands, as ready to do his bidding as any of his minions. But through all her dallying Catherine's smiles masked an iron will. In heart she was a woman; in brain and will-power, a man. And Orloff, like many another favourite, was to learn the lesson to his cost.

The time came when she could no longer tolerate his airs and assumptions. There was only one Empress, but lovers were plentiful, and she already had an eye on his successor. And thus it was that one day the swollen Orloff was sent on a diplomatic mission to arrange peace between Russia and Turkey. When she bade him good-bye she called him her "angel of peace," but she knew that it was her angel's farewell to his paradise.

How the Ambassador, instead of making peace, stirred up the embers of war into fresh flame is a matter of history. But he was not long left to work such mad mischief. While he was swaggering at a Jassy fete, in a costume ablaze with diamonds worth a million roubles, news came to him of a good-looking young lieutenant who was not only installed in his place by Catherine's side, but was actually occupying his own apartments. Within an hour he was racing back to St Petersburg, resting neither night nor day until he had covered the thousand leagues that separated him from the capital.

Before, however, his sweating horses could enter it, he was stopped by Catherine's emissaries and ordered to repair to the Imperial Palace at Gatshina. And then he realised that his sun had indeed come to its setting. His honours were soon stripped from him, and although he was allowed to keep his lands, his gold and jewels, the spoils of Cupid, the diamond-framed miniature, was taken away to adorn the breast of his successor, the lieutenant.

Under this cloud of disfavour Orloff conducted himself with such resignation—none knew better than he how futile it was to fight—that Catherine, before many months had passed, not only recalled him to Court, but secured for him a Princedom of the Holy Empire. "As for Prince Gregory," she said amiably, "he is free to go or stay, to hunt, to drink, or to gamble. I intend to live according to my own pleasure, and in entire independence."

After a tragically brief wedded life with a beautiful girl-cousin, who died of consumption, Orloff returned to St Petersburg to spend the last few months of his life, "broken-hearted and mad." And to his last hour his clouded brain was tortured with visions of the "avenging shade of the murdered Peter."



CHAPTER XV

A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CINDERELLA

It was to all seeming a strange whim that caused Cardinal Mazarin, one day in the year 1653, to summon his nieces, daughters of his sister, Hieronyme Mancini, from their obscurity in Italy to bask in the sunshine of his splendours in Paris.

At the time of this odd caprice, Richelieu's crafty successor had reached the zenith of his power. His was the most potent and splendid figure in all Europe that did not wear a crown. He was the avowed favourite and lover of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, to whose vanity he had paid such skilful court—indeed it was common rumour that she had actually given him her hand in secret marriage. The boy-King, Louis XIV., was a puppet in his strong hands. He was, in fact, the dictator of France, whose smiles the greatest courtiers tried to win, and before whose frowns they trembled.

In contrast to such magnificence, his sister, Madame Mancini, was the wife of a petty Italian baron, who was struggling to bring up her five daughters on a pathetically scanty purse—as far removed from her magnificent brother as a moth from a star. There was, on the face of things, every reason why the great and all-powerful Cardinal should leave his nieces to their genteel poverty; and we can imagine both the astonishment and delight with which Madame Mancini received the summons to Paris which meant such a revolution in life for her and her daughters.

If the Mancini girls had no heritage of money, they had at least the dower of beauty. Each of the five gave promise of a rare loveliness—with the solitary exception of Marie, Madame's third daughter, who at fourteen was singularly unattractive even for that awkward age. Tall, thin, and angular, without a vestige of grace either of figure or movement, she had a sallow face out of which two great black eyes looked gloomily, and a mouth wide and thin-lipped. She was, in addition, shy and slow-witted to the verge of stupidity. Marie, in fact, was quite hopeless, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, and for this reason an object of dislike and resentment to her mother.

Certainly, said Madame, Marie must be left behind. Her other daughters would be a source of pride to their uncle; he could secure great matches for them, but Marie—pah! she would bring discredit on the whole family. And so it was decided in conclave that the "ugly duckling" should be left in a nunnery—the only fit place for her. But Marie happily had a spirit of her own. She would not be left behind, she declared; and if she must go to a nunnery, why there were nunneries in plenty in France to which they could send her. And Marie had her way.

She was not, however, to escape the cloister after all, for to a Paris nunnery she was consigned when her Cardinal uncle had set eyes on her. "Let her have a year or two there," was his verdict, "and, who knows, she may blossom into a beauty yet. At any rate she can put on flesh and not be the scarecrow she is." And thus, while her more favoured sisters were revelling in the gaieties of Court life, Marie was sent to tell her beads and to spend Spartan days among the nuns.

Nearly two years passed before Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure, graceful and self-possessed; a face piquant and full of animation, illuminated by a pair of glorious dark eyes, and with a dazzling smile which revealed the prettiest teeth in France. Above all, and what delighted the Cardinal most, she had now a sprightly wit, and a quite brilliant gift of conversation. It was thus a smiling and gratified Cardinal who gave greeting to his niece, now as fair as her sisters and more fascinating than any of them. There was no doubt that he could find a high-placed husband for her, and thus—for this was, in fact, his motive for rescuing his pretty nieces from their obscurity—make his position secure by powerful family alliances.

It was not long before Mazarin fixed on a suitor in the person of Armande de la Porte, son of the Marquis de la Meilleraye, one of the most powerful nobles in France. But alas for his scheming! Armande's heart had already been caught while Marie was reciting her matins and vespers: He had lost it utterly to her beautiful sister, Hortense; he vowed that he would marry no other, and that if Hortense could not be his wife he would prefer to die. Thus Marie was rescued from a union which brought her sister so much misery in later years, and for a time she was condemned to spend unhappy months with her mother at the Louvre.

To this period of her life Marie Mancini could never look back without a shudder. "My mother," she says, "who, I think, had always hated me, was more unbearable than ever. She treated me, although I was no longer ugly, with the utmost aversion and cruelty. My sisters went to Court and were fussed and feted. I was kept always at home, in our miserable lodgings, an unhappy Cinderella."

But Fortune did not long hide his face from Cinderella. Her "Prince Charming" was coming—in the guise of the handsome young King, Louis XIV. himself. It was one day while visiting Madame Mancini in her lodgings at the Louvre that Louis first saw the girl who was to play such havoc with his heart; and at the first sight of those melting dark eyes and that intoxicating smile he was undone. He came again and again—always under the pretext of visiting Madame, and happy beyond expression if he could exchange a few words with her daughter, Marie; until he soon counted a day worse than lost that did not bring him the stolen sweetness of a meeting.

When, a few weeks later, Madame Mancini died, and Marie was recalled to Court by her uncle, her life was completely changed for her. Louis had now abundant opportunities of seeking her side; and excellent use he made of them. The two young people were inseparable, much to the alarm of the Cardinal and Madame Mere, the Queen. The young King was never happy out of her sight; he danced with her (and none could dance more divinely than Marie); he listened as she sang to him with a voice whose sweetness thrilled him; they read the same books together in blissful solitude; she taught him her native Italian, and entranced him by the brilliance of her wit; and when, after a slight illness, he heard of her anxious inquiries and her tears of sympathy, his conquest was complete. He vowed that she and no other should be his wife and Queen of France.

But these halcyon days were not to last long. It was no part of Mazarin's scheming that a niece of his should sit on the throne. The prospect was dazzling, it is true, but it would inevitably mean his own downfall, so strongly would such an alliance be resented by friends as well as enemies; and Anne of Austria was as little in the mood to be deposed by such an obscure person as the "Mancini girl." Thus it was that Queen and Cardinal joined hands to nip the young romance in the bud.

A Royal bride must be found for Louis, and that quickly; and negotiations were soon on foot to secure as his wife Margaret, Princess of Savoy. In vain did the boy-King storm and protest; equally futile were Marie's tearful pleadings to her uncle. The fiat had gone forth. Louis must have a Royal bride; and she was already about to leave Italy on her bridal progress to France.

It was, we may be sure, with a heavy heart that Marie joined the cavalcade which, with its gorgeous procession of equipages, its gaily mounted courtiers, and its brave escort of soldiery, swept out of Paris on its stately progress to Lyons, to meet the Queen-to-be. But there was no escape from the humiliation, for she must accompany Anne of Austria, as one of her retinue of maids-of-honour. Arrived too soon at Lyons, Louis rides on to give first greeting to his bride, who is now within a day's journey; and returns with a smiling face to announce to his mother that he finds the Princess pleasing to his eye, and to describe, with boyish enthusiasm, her grace and graciousness, her magnificent eyes, her beautiful hair, and the delicate olive of her complexion, while Marie's heart sinks at the recital. Could this be the lover who, but a few days ago, had been at her feet, vowing that she was the only bride in all the world for him?

When he seeks her side and shamefacedly makes excuses for his seeming recreancy, she bids him marry his "ugly bride" in accents of scorn, and then bursts into tears, which she only consents to wipe away when he declares that his heart will always be hers and that he will never marry the Italian Princess.

But Margaret of Savoy was not after all to be Queen of France. She was, as it proved, merely a pawn in the Cardinal's deep game. It was a Spanish alliance that he sought for his young King; and when, at the eleventh hour, an ambassador came hurriedly to Lyons to offer the Infanta's hand, the Savoy Duke and his sister, the Princess, had perforce to return to Italy "empty-handed."

There was at least a time of respite now for Louis and Marie, and as they rode back to Paris, side by side, chatting gaily and exchanging sweet confidences, the sun once more shone on the happiest young people in all France. Then followed a period of blissful days, of dances and fetes, in brilliant succession, in which the lovers were inseparable; above all, of long rambles together, when, "the world forgetting," they could live in the happy present, whatever the future might have in store for them.

Meanwhile the negotiations for the Spanish marriage were ripening fast. Louis and Marie again appeal, first to the Cardinal, then to the Queen, to sanction their union, but to no purpose; both are inflexible. Their foolish romance must come to an end. As a last resource Marie flies to the King, with tender pleadings and tears, begging him not to desert her; to which he answers that no power on earth shall make him wed the Infanta. "You alone," he swears, "shall wear the crown of Queen"; and in token of his love he buys for her the pearls that were the most treasured belongings of the exiled Stuart Queen, Henrietta Maria. The lovers part in tears, and the following day Marie receives orders to leave Paris and to retire to La Rochelle.

At every stage of her journey she was overtaken by messengers bearing letters from Louis, full of love and protestations of unflinching loyalty; and when Louis moved with his Court to Bayonne, the lovers met once more to mingle their tears. But Louis, ever fickle, was already wavering again. "If I must marry the Infanta," he said, "I suppose I must. But I shall never love any but you."

Marie now realised that this was to be the end. In face of a lover so weak, and a fate so inflexible, what could she do but submit? And it was with a proud but breaking heart that she wrote a few days later to tell Louis that she wished him not to write to her again and that she would not answer his letters. One June day news came to her that her lover was married and that "he was very much in love with the Infanta"; and even her pride, crushed as it was, could not restrain her from writing to her sister, Hortense, "Say everything you can that is horrid about him. Point out all his faults to me, that I may find relief for my aching heart." When, a few months later, Marie saw the King again, he received her almost as a stranger, and had the bad taste to sing the praises of his Queen.

But Marie Mancini was the last girl in all France to wed herself long to grief or an outraged vanity. There were other lovers by the score among whom she could pick and choose. She was more lovely now than when the recreant Louis first succumbed to her charms—with a ripened witchery of black eyes, red lips, the flash of pearly teeth revealed by every dazzling smile, with glorious black hair, the grace of a fawn, and a "voluptuous fascination" which no man could resist.

Prince Charles of Lorraine was her veriest slave, but Mazarin would have none of him. Prince Colonna, Grand Constable of Naples, was more fortunate when he in turn came a-wooing. He bore the proudest name in Italy, and he had wealth, good-looks, and high connections to lend a glamour to his birth. The Cardinal smiled on his suit, and Marie, since she had no heart to give, willingly gave her hand.

Louis himself graced the wedding with his presence; and we are told, as the white-faced bride "said the 'yes' which was to bind her to a stranger, her eyes, with an indescribable expression, sought those of the King, who turned pale as he met them."

Over the rest of Marie Mancini's chequered life we must hasten. After a few years of wedded life with her Italian Prince, "Colonna's early passion for his beautiful wife was succeeded by a distaste amounting to hatred. He disgusted her with his amours; and when she ventured to protest against his infidelity, he tried to poison her." This crowning outrage determined Marie to fly, and, in company with her sister, Hortense, who had fled to her from the brutality of her own husband, she made her escape one dark night to Civita Vecchia, where a boat was awaiting the runaways.

Hotly pursued on land and sea, narrowly escaping shipwreck, braving hardships, hunger, and hourly danger of capture, the fugitives at last reached Marseilles where Marie (Hortense now seeking a refuge in Savoy) began those years of wandering and adventure, the story of which outstrips fiction.

Now we find her seeking asylum at convents from Aix to Madrid; now queening it at the Court of Savoy, with Duke Charles Emmanuel for lover; now she is dazzling Madrid with the Almirante of Castille and many another high-placed worshipper dancing attendance on her; and now she is in Rome, turning the heads of grave cardinals with her witcheries. Sometimes penniless and friendless, at others lapped in luxury; but carrying everywhere in her bosom the English pearls, the last gift of her false and frail Louis.

Thus, through the long, troubled years, until old-age crept on her, the Cardinal's niece wandered, a fugitive, over the face of Europe, alternately caressed and buffeted by fortune, until "at long last" the end came and brought peace with it. As she lay dying in the house of a good Samaritan at Pisa, with no other hand to minister to her, she called for pen and paper, and with failing hand wrote her own epitaph, surely the most tragic ever penned—"Marie Mancini Colonna—Dust and Ashes."



CHAPTER XVI

BIANCA, GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY

More than three centuries have gone since Florence made merry over the death of her Grand Duchess, Bianca. It was an occasion for rejoicing; her name was bandied from lips to lips—"La Pessima Bianca"; jeers and laughter followed her to her unmarked grave in the Church of San Lorenzo. But through the ages her picture has come down to us as she strutted on the world's stage in all her pride and beauty, with a vividness which few better women of her time retain.

It was in the year 1548, when our boy-King, the sixth Edward, was fresh to his crown, that Bianca Capello was cradled in the palace of her father, one of the greatest men of Venice, Senator and Privy Councillor. As a child she was as beautiful as she was wilful; the pride of her father, the despair of his wife, her stepmother—her little head full of romance, her heart full of rebellion against any kind of discipline or restraint.

Before she had left the schoolroom Capello's daughter was, by common consent, the fairest girl in her native city, with a beauty riper than her years. Tall, and with a well-developed figure of singular grace, she carried her head as proudly as any Queen. Her fair hair fell in a rippling cascade far below her waist; her face, hands, and throat, we are told, were "white as lilies," save for the delicate rose-colour that tinted her cheeks. Her eyes were large and dark, and of an almost dazzling brilliance; and her full, pouting lips were red and fragrant as a rose.

Such was Bianca Capello on the threshold of womanhood, as you may see her pictured to-day in Bronzino's miniature at the British Museum, with a loveliness which set the hearts of the Venetian gallants a-flutter before our Shakespeare was in his cradle. She might, if she would, have mated with almost any noble in Tuscany, had not her foolish, wayward fancy fallen on Pietro Bonaventuri, a handsome young clerk in Salviati's bank, whose eyes had often strayed from his ledgers to follow her as, in the company of her maid, the Senator's daughter took her daily walk past his office window.

At sight of so fair a vision Pietro was undone; he fell violently in love with her long before he exchanged a word with her, and although no one knew better than he the gulf that separated the daughter of a nobleman and a Senator from the drudge of the quill, he determined to win her. Youth and good-looks such as his, with plenty of assurance to support them, had done as much for others, and they should do it for him. How they first met we know not, but we know that shortly after this momentous meeting Bianca had completely lost her heart to the knight of the quill, with the handsome face, the dark, flashing eyes, and the courtly manner.

Other meetings followed—secret rendezvous arranged by the duenna herself in return for liberal bribes—to keep which Bianca would steal out of her father's palace at dead of night, leaving the door open behind her to ensure safe return before dawn. On one such occasion, so the story runs, Bianca returned to find the door closed against her by a too officious hand. She dared not wake the sleepers to gain admittance—that would be to expose her secret and to cover herself with disgrace—and in her fears and alarm she fled back to her lover.

However this may be, we know that, for some urgent reason or other, the young lovers disappeared one night together from Venice and made their way to Florence to find a refuge under the roof of Pietro's parents. Here a terrible disillusion met Bianca at the threshold. Her husband—for, on the runaway journey, Pietro had secured the friendly services of a village priest to marry them—had told her that he was the son of noble parents, kin to his employers, the Salviatis. The home to which he now introduced her was little better than a hovel, with poverty looking out of its windows.

Here indeed was a sorry home-coming for the new-made bride, daughter of the great Capello! There was not even a drudge to do the housework, which Bianca was compelled to share with her bucolic mother-in-law. It is even said that she was compelled to do laundry-work in order to keep the domestic purse supplied. Her husband had forfeited his meagre salary; she had equally sacrificed the fortune left to her by her mother. Sordid, grinding poverty stared both in the face.

To return to her own home in Venice was impossible. So furious were her father and stepmother at her escapade that a large reward was advertised for the capture of her husband, "alive or dead," and a sentence of death had been procured from the Council of Ten in the event of his arrest. More than this, a sentence of banishment was pronounced against Pietro and Bianca; the maid who had connived at their illicit wooing and flight paid for her treachery with her life; and Pietro's uncle ended his days in a loathsome dungeon.

Such was the vengeance taken by Bartolomeo Capello. As for the runaways, they spent a long honeymoon in concealment and hourly dread of the fate that hung over them. It was well known, however, in Florence where they were in hiding; and curious crowds were drawn to the Bonaventuri hovel to catch a glimpse of the heroes of a scandal with which all Italy was ringing. Thus it was that Francesco de Medici first set eyes on the woman who was to play so great a part in his life.

There could be no greater contrast than that between Francesco de Medici, heir to the Tuscan Grand Dukedom, and the beautiful young wife of the bank-clerk, now playing the role of maid-of-all-work and charwoman. It is said that Francesco was a madman; and indeed what we know of him makes this description quite plausible. He was a man of black brow and violent temper, repelling alike in appearance and manner. He was, we are told, "more of a savage than a civilised human being." His food was deluged with ginger and pepper; his favourite fare was raw eggs filled with red pepper, and raw onions, of which he ate enormous quantities. He drank iced water by the gallon, and slept between frozen sheets. He was a man, moreover, of evil life, familiar with every form of vicious indulgence. His only redeeming feature was a love of art, which enriched the galleries of Florence.

Such was the Medici—half-ogre, half-madman, who, riding one day through a Florence slum, saw at the window of a mean dwelling the beautiful face of Bianca Bonaventuri, and rode on leaving his heart behind. Here indeed was a dainty dish to set before his jaded appetite. The owner of that fair face, with the crimson lips and the black, flashing eyes, must be his. On the following day a great Court lady, the Marchesa Mondragone, presents herself at the Bonaventuri door, with smiles and gracious words, bearing an invitation to Court for the lady of the window. "Impossible," bluntly answers Signora Bonaventuri; her daughter-in-law has no clothes fit to be seen at Court. "But," persists the Marchesa, "that is a matter that can easily be arranged. It will be a pleasure to me to supply the necessary outfit, if the Signora and her daughter-in-law will but come to-morrow to the Mondragone Palace." The bride, when consulted, is not unwilling; and the following day, in company with her mother-in-law, she is effusively received by the Marchesa, and is feasting her eyes on exquisite robes and the glitter of rare gems, among which she is invited to make her choice. A moment later Francesco enters, and with courtly grace is kissing the hand of his new divinity....

Then followed secret meetings such as marked Bianca's first unhappy wooing in Venice—hours of rapture for the Tuscan Duke, of flattered submission by the runaway bride; and within a few weeks we find Bianca installed in a palace of her own with Francesco's guards and equipage ever at its door, while his newly made bride, Giovanna, Archduchess of Austria, kept her lonely vigil in the apartments which so seldom saw her husband.

Francesco, indeed, had no eyes or thought for any but the lovely woman who had so completely enslaved him. As for her, condemn her as we must, much can be pleaded in extenuation of her conduct. She had been basely deceived and betrayed. On the one side was a life of sordid poverty and drudgery, with a husband for whom she had now nothing but dislike and contempt; on the other was the ardent homage of the future ruler of Tuscany, with its accompaniment of splendour, luxury, and power. A fig for love! ambition should now rule her life. She would drain the cup of pleasure, though the dregs might be bitter to the taste.

She was now in the very prime of her beauty, and a Queen in all but the name. Between her and her full Queendom were but two obstacles—her lover's plain, unattractive wife, and her own worthless husband; and of these obstacles one was soon to be removed from her path.

Pietro, who had been made chamberlain to the Tuscan Court, was more than content that his wife should go her own way, so long as he was allowed to go his. He was kept very agreeably occupied with love affairs of his own. The richest widow in Florence, Cassandra Borgianni, was eager to lavish her smiles and favours on him; and the knowledge that two of his predecessors in her affection had fallen under the assassin's knife only lent zest to a love adventure which was after his heart. Warnings of the fate that might await him in turn fell on deaf ears. When his wife ventured to point out the danger he retorted, "If you say another word I will cut your throat." The following night as he was returning from a visit to the widow, a dagger was sheathed in his heart, and Pietro's amorous race was run.

Such was the end of the bank-clerk and his eleventh-hour glories and love adventures. Now only Giovanna remained to block the way to the pinnacle of Bianca's ambition; and her health was so frail that the waiting might not be long. Giovanna had provided no successor to her husband (who had now succeeded to his Grand Dukedom); if Bianca could succeed where the Grand Duchess had failed, she could at least ensure that a son of hers would one day rule over Tuscany.

Thus one August day in 1576 the news flashed round Florence that a male child had been born in the palace on the Via Maggiore. Francesco was in the "seventh heaven" of delight. Here at last was the long-looked-for inheritor of his honours—the son who was to perpetuate the glories of the Medici and to thwart his brother, the Cardinal, who had so confidently counted on the succession for himself. And Madame Bianca professed herself equally delighted, although her pleasure was qualified by fear.

She had played her part with consummate cleverness; but there were two women who knew the true story of the birth of the child, which had been smuggled into the palace from a Florence slum. One was the changeling's mother, a woman of the people, whom a substantial bribe had induced to part with her new-born infant; the other was Bianca's waiting woman. These witnesses to the imposture must be silenced effectually.

Hired assassins made short work of the mother. The waiting-maid was "left for dead" in a mountain-pass, to which she had been lured; but she survived long enough at least to communicate her secret to the Grand Duke's brother, the Cardinal Ferdinand de Medici.

Bianca was now in a parlous plight. At any moment her enemy, the Cardinal, might betray her to her lover, and bring the carefully planned edifice of her fortunes tumbling about her ears. But she proved equal even to this emergency. Taking her courage in both hands, she herself confessed the fraud to the Grand Duke, who not only forgave her (so completely was he under the spell of her beauty) but insisted on calling the gutter-child his son.

The tables, however, were soon to be turned on her, for Giovanna, who had long despaired of providing an heir to her husband, gave birth a few months later to a male child. Florence was jubilant, for the Grand Duchess was as beloved as her rival was detested; and the christening of the heir was made the occasion of festivities and rejoicing. Bianca's day of triumph seemed at last to be over. For a time she left Florence to hide her humiliation; but within a year she was back again, to be received with open arms of welcome by the Duke. During her absence she had made peace with her family, and when her father and brother came to Florence to visit her, they were received by Francesco with regal entertainments, and sent away loaded with presents and honours.

Bianca had now reached the zenith of her power and splendour. Before she had been back many months the Grand Duchess died, to the undisguised relief of her husband, who hastened from her funeral to the arms of her rival. Her position was now secure, unassailable; and before Giovanna had been two months in the family vault, Bianca was secretly married to her Grand ducal lover.

Florence was furious. But what mattered that? The Venetian Senate had recognised Bianca as a true daughter of the Republic. She was the legal wife of the ruler of Tuscany. She was Grand Duchess at last, and she meant all the world to know it. That she was cordially hated by her husband's subjects, that the air was full of stories of her extravagance, her intemperance, and her cruelty, gave her no moment's unhappiness. For eight years she reigned as Queen, wielding the sceptre her husband's hands were too weak or indifferent to hold. Giovanna's son had followed his mother to the grave; and the child of the slums, who had been so fruitlessly smuggled into her palace, had been legitimated.

The only thorn now left in her bed of roses was the enmity of the Grand Duke's brother, the Cardinal; and her greatest ambition was to win him to her side. In the autumn of 1787 he was invited to Florence, and as the culmination of a series of festivities, a grand banquet was given, at which he had the place of honour, at her right hand. The feast was drawing near to its end. Bianca, with sparkling eyes and flushed face, looking lovelier than she had ever looked before, was at her happiest, for the Cardinal had at last succumbed to her bright eyes and honeyed words. It was the crowning moment of her many triumphs, when life left nothing more to desire.

Then it was, at the supreme moment, that tragedy in its most terrible form fell on the scene of festivity and mirth. While Bianca was smiling her sweetest on the Cardinal she was seized by violent pains, "her mouth foams, her face is distorted by agony; she shrieks aloud that she is dying. Francesco tries to go to her aid, but his steps are suddenly arrested. He too is seized by the same terrible anguish. A few hours later both she and he breathe their last breath."

"Poison" was the word which ran through the palace and soon through Florence from blanched lips to blanched lips. Some said it was the Cardinal who had done the deed; others whispered stories of a poisoned tart designed by Bianca for the Cardinal, who refused to be tempted. Whereupon the Grand Duke had eaten of it, and Bianca, "seeing that her plot had so tragically miscarried, seized the tart from her husband's hand and ate what was left of it."

The truth will never be known. What we do know is that within a few hours of the last joke and the last drained glass of that fatal banquet the bodies of Francesco and Bianca were lying in death side by side in an adjacent room, the door of which was locked against the eyes of the curious—even against the physicians.

In the solemn lying-in-state that followed Bianca had no place. Francesco alone, by his brother's orders, wore his crown in death. As for Bianca, her body was hurried away and flung into the common vault of San Lorenzo, with the light of two yellow wax torches to bear it company, and the jibes and jeers of Florence for its only requiem.



CHAPTER XVII

RICHELIEU, THE ROUE

In the drama of the French Court many a fine-feathered villain "struts his brief hour" on the stage, dazzling eyes by his splendour, and shocking a world none too easily shocked in those days of easy morals by his profligacy; but it would be difficult among all these gilded rakes to find a match for the Duc de Richelieu, who carried his villainies through little less than a century of life.

Born in 1696, when Louis XIV. had still nearly twenty years of his long reign before him, Louis Francois Armand Duplessis, Duc de Richelieu, survived to hear the rumblings which heralded the French Revolution ninety-two years later; and for three-quarters of a century to be known as the most accomplished and heartless roue in all France. Bearer of a great name, and inheritor of the splendours and riches of his great-uncle, the Cardinal, who was Louis XII.'s right-hand man, and, in his day, the most powerful subject in Europe, the Duc was born with the football of fortune at his feet; and probably no man who has ever lived so shamefully prostituted such magnificent opportunities and gifts.

As a boy, still in his teens, he had begun to play the role of Don Juan at the Court of the child-King, Louis XV. The most beautiful women at the Court, we are told, went crazy over the handsome boy, who bore the most splendid name in France; and thus early his head was turned by flatteries and attentions which followed him almost to the grave.

The young Duchesse de Bourgogne, the King's mother, made love to him, to the scandal of the Court; and from Princesses of the Blood Royal to the humblest serving-maid, there was scarcely a woman at Court who would not have given her eyes for a smile from the Duc de Fronsac, as he was then known.

How he revelled in his conquests he makes abundantly clear in the Memoirs he left behind him—surely the most scandalous ever written—in which he recounts his love affairs, in long sequence, with a cold-blooded heartlessness which shocks the reader to-day, so long after lover and victims have been dust. He revels in describing the artifices by which he got the most unassailable of women into his power—such as the young and beautiful Madame Michelin, whose religious scruples proved such a frail barrier against the assaults of the young Lothario. He chuckles with a diabolical pride as he tells us how he played off one mistress against another; how he made one liaison pave the way to its successor; and how he abandoned each in turn when it had served its purpose, and betrayed, one after another, the women who had trusted to his nebulous sense of honour.

A profligate so tempted as the Duc de Richelieu was from his earliest years, one can understand, however much we may condemn; but for the man who conducted his love affairs with such heartlessness and dishonour no language has words of execration and contempt to describe him.

From his earliest youth there was no "game" too high for our Don Juan to fly at. Long before he had reached manhood he counted his lady-loves by the score; and among them were at least three Royal Princesses, Mademoiselle de Charolais, and two of the Regent's own daughters, the Duchesse de Berry and Mademoiselle de Valois, later Duchess of Modena, who, in their jealousy, were ready to "tear each other's eyes out" for love of the Duc. Quarrels between the rival ladies were of everyday occurrence; and even duels were by no means unknown.

When, for instance, the Duc wearied of the lovely Madame de Polignac, this lady was so inflamed by hatred of her successor in his affections, the Marquise de Nesle, that she challenged her to a duel to the death in the Bois de Boulogne. When Madame de Polignac, after a fierce exchange of shots, saw her rival stretched at her feet, she turned furiously on the wounded woman. "Go!" she shrieked. "I will teach you to walk in the footsteps of a woman like me! If I had the traitor here, I would blow his brains out!" Whereupon, Madame de Nesle, fainting as she was from loss of blood, retorted that her lover was worthy that even more noble blood than hers should be shed for him. "He is," she said to the few onlookers who had hurried to the scene on hearing the shots, "the most amiable seigneur of the Court. I am ready to shed for him the last drop of blood in my veins. All these ladies try to catch him, but I hope that the proofs I have given of my devotion will win him for myself without sharing with anyone. Why should I hide his name? He is the Duc de Richelieu—yes, the Duc de Richelieu, the eldest son of Venus and Mars!"

Such was the devotion which this heartless profligate won from some of the most beautiful and highly placed ladies of France. What was the secret of the spell he cast over them it is difficult to say. It is true that he was a handsome man, as his portraits show, but there were men quite as handsome at the French Court; he was courtly and accomplished, but he had many rivals as clever and as skilled in courtly arts as himself. His power must, one thinks, have lain in that strange magnetism which women seem so powerless to resist in men, and which outweighs all graces of mind and physical perfections.

The Duc's career, however, was not one unbroken dallying with love. Thrice, at least, he was sent to cool his ardour within the walls of the Bastille—on one occasion as the result of a duel with the Comte de Gace. His lady-loves were desolate at the cruel fate which had overtaken their idol. They fell on their knees at the Regent's feet, and, with tears streaming down their pretty cheeks, pleaded for his freedom. Two of the Royal Princesses, both disguised as Sisters of Charity, visited the prisoner daily in his dungeon, carrying with them delicacies to tempt his appetite, and consolation to cheer his captivity.

In vain did Duc and Comte both declare that they had never fought a duel; and when, in the absence of proof, the Regent insisted that their bodies should be examined for the convicting wounds, the impish Richelieu came triumphantly through the ordeal as the result of having his wounds covered with pink taffeta and skilfully painted!

It was a more serious matter that sent him again to the Bastille in 1718. False to his country as to the victims of his fascinations, he had been plotting with Spain, France's bitterest enemy, for the seizure of the Regent and the carrying him off across the Pyrenees; and certain incriminating letters sent to him by Cardinal Alberoni had been intercepted, and were in the Regent's hands. The Regent's daughter, Mademoiselle de Valois, warned her lover of his danger, but too late. Before he could escape, he was arrested, and with an escort of archers was safely lodged in the Bastille.

Our Lothario was now indeed in a parlous plight. Lodged in the deepest and most loathsome dungeon of the Bastille—a dungeon so damp that within a few hours his clothes were saturated—without even a chair to sit on or a bed to lie on, with legions of hungry rats for company, he was now face to face with almost certain death. The Regent, whose love affairs he had thwarted a score of times, and who thus had no reason to love the profligate Duc, vowed that his head should pay the price of his treason.

Once more the Court ladies were reduced to hysterics and despair, and forgot their jealousies in a common appeal to the Regent for clemency. Mademoiselle de Valois was driven to distraction; and when tears and pleadings failed to soften her father's heart, she declared in the hearing of the Court that she would commit suicide unless her lover was restored to liberty. In company with her rival, Mademoiselle de Charolais, she visited the dungeon in the dark night hours, taking flint and steel, candles and bonbons, to weep with the captive.

She squandered two hundred thousand livres in attempts to bribe his guards, but all to no purpose: and it was not until after six months of durance that the Regent at last yielded—moved partly by his daughter's tears and threats and partly by the pleadings of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris—and the prisoner was released, on condition that the Cardinal and the Duchesse de Richelieu would be responsible for his custody and good behaviour.

A few days later we find the irresponsible Richelieu climbing over the garden-walls of his new "prison" at Conflans, racing through the darkness to Paris behind swift horses, and making love to the Regent's own mistresses and his daughter!

But such facilities for dalliance with the Regent's daughter were soon to be brought to an end. Mademoiselle de Valois, in order to ensure her lover's freedom, had at last consented to accept the hand of the Duke of Modena, an alliance which she had long fought against; and before the Duc had been a free man again many weeks she paid this part of his ransom by going into exile, and to an odious wedded life, in a far corner of Italy—much, it may be imagined, to the Regent's relief, for his daughters and their love affairs were ever a thorn in his side.

It was not long, however, before the new Duchess of Modena began to sigh for her distant lover, and to bombard him with letters begging him to come to her. "I cannot live without your love," she wrote. "Come to me—only, come in disguise, so that no one can recognise you."

This was indeed an adventure after the Lothario Duc's heart—an adventure with love as its reward and danger as its spur. And thus it was that, a few weeks after the Duchess had sent her invitation, two travel-stained pedlars, with packs on their backs, entered the city of Modena to find customers for their books and phamphlets. At the small hostelry whose hospitality they sought the hawkers gave their names as Gasparini and Romano, names which masked the identities of the knight-errant Duc and his friend, La Fosse, respectively.

The following morning behold the itinerant hawkers in the palace grounds, their wares spread out to tempt the Court ladies on their way to Mass, when the Duchess herself passed their way and deigned to stop to converse graciously with the strangers. To her inquiries they answered that they came from Piedmont; and their curious jargon of French and Italian lent support to the story. After inspecting their wares she asked for a certain book. "Alas! Madame," Gasparini answered, "I have not a copy here, but I have one at my inn." And bidding him bring the volume to her at the palace, the great lady resumed her devout journey to Mass.

A few hours later Gasparini presented himself at the palace with the required volume, and was ushered into the august presence of the Duchess. A moment later, on the closing of the door, the Royal lady was in the "hawker's" arms, her own flung around his neck, as with tears of joy she welcomed the lover who had come to her in such strange guise and at such risk.

A few stolen moments of happiness was all the lovers dared now to allow themselves. The Duke of Modena was in the palace, and the situation was full of danger. But on the morrow he was going away on a hunting expedition, and then—well, then they might meet without fear.

On the following day, the coast now clear, behold our "hawker" once more at the palace door, with a bundle of books under his arm for the inspection of Her Highness, and being ushered into the Duchess's reading-room, full of souvenirs of the happy days they had spent together in distant Paris and Versailles. Among them, most prized of all, was a lock of his own hair, enshrined on a small altar, and surmounted by a crown of interlocked hearts. This lock, the Duchess told him, she had kissed and wept over every day since they had parted.

Each day now brought its hours of blissful meeting, so seemingly short that the Princess would throw her arms around her "hawker's" neck and implore him to stay a little longer. One day, however, he tarried too long; the Duke returned unexpectedly from his hunting, and before the lovers could part, he had entered the room—just in time to see the pedlar bowing humbly in farewell to his Duchess, and to hear him assure her that he would call again with the further books she wished to see.

Certainly it was a strange spectacle to greet the eyes of a home-coming Duke—that of his lady closeted with a shabby pedlar of books; but at least there was nothing suspicious in it, and, getting into conversation with the "hawker," the Duke found him quite an entertaining fellow, full of news of what was going on in the world outside his small duchy.

In his curious jargon of French and Italian, Gasparini had much to tell His Highness apart from book-talk. He entertained him with the latest scandals of the French Court; with gossip about well-known personages, from the Regent to Dubois. "And what about that rascal, the Duc de Richelieu?" asked the great man. "What tricks has he been up to lately?" "Oh," answered Gasparini, with a wink at the Duchess, who was crimson with suppressed laughter, "he is one of my best customers. Ah, Monsieur le Duc, he is a gay dog. I hear that all the women at the Court are madly in love with him; that the Princesses adore him, and that he is driving all the husbands to distraction."

"Is it as bad as that?" asked the Duke, with a laugh. "He is a more dangerous fellow even than I thought. And what is his latest game?"

"Oh," answered the hawker, "I am told that he has made a wager that he will come to Modena, in spite of you; and I shouldn't be at all surprised if he does!"

"As for that," said the Duke, with a chuckle, "I am not afraid. I defy him to do his worst; and I am willing to wager that I shall be a match for him. However," he added, "you're an entertaining fellow; so come and see me again whenever you please."

And thus, by the wish of the Duchess's husband himself, the ducal "hawker" became a daily visitor at the palace, entertaining His Highness with his chatter, and, when his back was turned, making love to his wife, and joining her in shrieks of laughter at his easy gullibility.

Thus many happy weeks passed, Gasparini, the pedlar, selling few volumes, but reaping a rich harvest of stolen pleasure, and revelling in an adventure which added such a new zest to a life sated with more humdrum love-making. But even the Duchess's charms began to pall; the ladies he had left so disconsolate in Paris were inundating him with letters, begging him to return to them—letters, all forwarded to him from his chateau at Richelieu, where he was supposed to be in retreat. The lure was too strong for him; and, taking leave of the Duchess in floods of tears, he returned to his beloved Paris to fresh conquests.

And thus it was with the gay Duc until the century that followed that of his birth was drawing to its close; until its sun was beginning to set in the blood of that Revolution, which, if he had lived but one year longer, would surely have claimed him as one of its first victims. Three wives he led to the altar—the last when he had passed into the eighties—but no marital duty was allowed to interfere with the amours which filled his life; and to the last no pity ever gave a pang to the "conscience" which allowed him to pick and fling away his flowers at will, and to trample, one after another, on the hearts that yielded to his love and trusted to his honour.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE INDISCRETIONS OF A PRINCESS

It was an ill fate that brought Caroline, Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel to England to be the bride of George, Prince of Wales, one April day in the year 1795; although probably no woman has ever set forth on her bridal journey with a lighter or prouder heart, for, as she said, "Am I not going to be the wife of the handsomest Prince in the world?" If she had any momentary doubt of this, a glance at the miniature she carried in her bosom reassured her; for the pictured face that smiled at her was handsome as that of an Apollo.

No wonder the Princess's heart beat high with pride and pleasure during that last triumphal stage of her journey to her husband's arms; for he was not only the handsomest man, with "the best shaped leg in Europe," he was by common consent the "greatest gentleman" any Court could show. Picture him as he made his first appearance at a Court ball. "His coat," we are told, "was of pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat of white silk, embroidered with various-coloured foil and adorned with a profusion of French paste. And his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in number, with a button and a loop of the same metal, and cocked in a new military style." See young "Florizel" as he makes his smiling and gracious progress through the avenues of courtiers; note the winsomeness of his smiles, the inimitable grace of his bows, his pleasant, courtly words of recognition, and say if ever Royalty assumed a form more agreeable to the eye and captivating to the senses.

"Florizel" was indeed the most splendid Prince in the world, and the most "perfect gentleman." He was also, though his bride-to-be little knew it, the most dissolute man in Europe, the greatest gambler and voluptuary—a man who was as false to his friends as he was traitor to every woman who crossed his path, a man whom no appeal of honour or mercy could check in his selfish pursuit of pleasure.

"I look through all his life," Thackeray says, "and recognise but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then—nothing. French ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procuresses, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel and gimcrack-merchants—these were his real companions."

Such was the husband Princess Caroline came so light-heartedly, with laughter on her lips, from Brunswick to wed, little dreaming of the disillusion and tears that were to await her on the very threshold of the life to which she had looked forward with such high hopes.

We get the first glimpse of Caroline some twelve years earlier, when Sir John Stanley, who was making the grand tour, spent a few weeks at her father's Court. He speaks of her as a "beautiful girl of fourteen," and adds, "I did think and dream of her day and night at Brunswick, and for a year afterwards I saw her for hours three or fours times a week, but as a star out of my reach." Years later he met her again under sadly changed conditions. "One day only," he writes, "when dining with her and her mother at Blackheath, she smiled at something which had pleased her, and for an instant only I could have fancied she had been the Caroline of fourteen years old—the lovely, pretty Caroline, the girl my eyes had so often rested on, with light and powdered hair hanging in curls on her neck, the lips from which only sweet words seemed as if they would flow, with looks animated, and always simply and modestly dressed."

Lady Charlotte Campbell, too, gives us a glimpse of her in these early and happier years, before sorrow had laid its defacing hand on her. "The Princess was in her early youth a pretty girl," Lady Charlotte says, "with fine light hair—very delicately formed features, and a fine complexion—quick, glancing, penetrating eyes, long cut and rather small in the head, which gave them much expression; and a remarkably delicately formed mouth."

It was in no happy home that the Princess had been cradled one May day in 1768. Her father, Charles William, Duke of Brunswick, was an austere soldier, too much absorbed in his military life and his mistress, to give much thought to his daughters. Her mother, the Duchess Augusta, sister of our own George III., was weak and small-minded, too much occupied in self-indulgence and scandal-talking to trouble about the training of her children.

Princess Caroline herself draws an unattractive picture of her home-life, in answer to Lady Charlotte Campbell's question, "Were you sorry to leave Brunswick?" "Not at all," was the answer; "I was sick tired of it, though I was sorry to leave my fader. I loved my fader dearly, better than any oder person. But dere were some unlucky tings in our Court which made my position difficult. My fader was most entirely attached to a lady for thirty years, who was in fact his mistress. She was the beautifullest creature and the cleverest, but, though my fader continued to pay my moder all possible respect, my poor moder could not suffer this attachment. And de consequence was, I did not know what to do between them; when I was civil to one, I was scolded by the other, and was very tired of being shuttlecock between them."

But in spite of these unfortunate home conditions Caroline appears to have spent a fairly happy girlhood, thanks to her exuberant spirits; and such faults as she developed were largely due to the lack of parental care, which left her training to servants. Thus she grew up with quite a shocking disregard of conventions, running wild like a young filly, and finding her pleasure and her companions in undesirable directions. Strange stories are told of her girlish love affairs, which seem to have been indiscreet if nothing worse, while her beauty drew to her many a high-placed wooer, including the Prince of Orange and Prince George of Darmstadt, to all of whom she seems to have turned a cold shoulder.

But the wilful Princess was not to be left mistress of her own destiny. One November day, in 1794, Lord Malmesbury arrived at the Brunswick Court to demand her hand for the Prince of Wales, whom his burden of debts and the necessity of providing an heir to the throne of England were at last driving reluctantly to the altar. And thus a new and dazzling future opened for her. To her parents nothing could have been more welcome than this prospect of a crown for their daughter; while to her it offered a release from a life that had become odious.

"The Princess Caroline much embarrassed on my first being presented to her," Malmesbury enters in his diary—"pretty face, not expressive of softness—her figure not graceful, fine eyes, good hands, tolerable teeth, fair hair and light eyebrows, good bust, short, with what the French call 'des epaules impertinentes,' vastly happy with her future expectations."

Such were Malmesbury's first impressions of the future Queen of England, whom it was his duty to prepare for her exalted station—a duty which he seems to have taken very seriously, even to the regulating of her toilette and her manners. Thus, a few days after setting eyes on her, his diary records: "She will call ladies whom she meets for the first time 'Mon coeur, ma chere, ma petite,' and I am obliged to rebuke and correct her." He lectures her on her undignified habit of whispering and giggling, and impresses on her the necessity of greater care in her attire, on more constant and thorough ablution, more frequent changes of linen, the care of her teeth, and so on—all of which admonitions she seems to have taken in excellent part, with demure promises of amendment, until he is impelled to write, "Princess Caroline improves very much on a closer acquaintance—cheerful and loves laughing. If she can get rid of her gossiping habit she will do very well."

Thus a few months passed at the Brunswick Court. The ceremonial of betrothal took place in December—"Princess Caroline much affected, but replies distinctly and well"; the marriage-contract was signed, and finally on 28th March the Princess embarked for England on her journey to the unseen husband whose good-looks and splendour have filled her with such high expectations. That she had not yet learnt discretion, in spite of all Malmesbury's homilies, is proved by the fact that she spent the night on board in walking up and down the deck in the company of a handsome young naval officer, conduct which naturally gave cause for observation and suspicion in the affianced bride of the future King of England.

It was well, perhaps, that she had snatched these few hours of innocent pleasure: for her first meeting with her future husband was well calculated to scatter all her rosy dreams. Arrived at last at St James's Palace, "I immediately notified the arrival to the King and Prince of Wales," says Malmesbury; "the last came immediately. I accordingly introduced the Princess Caroline to him. She very properly attempted to kneel to him. He raised her gracefully enough, and embraced her, said barely one word, turned round and retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling to me said: 'Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.' I said, 'Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?' Upon which he, much out of humour, said with an oath: 'No; I will go directly to the Queen,' and away he went. The Princess, left during this short moment alone, was in a state of astonishment; and, on my joining her, said, 'Mon Dieu, is the Prince always like that? I find him very fat, and not at all as handsome as his portrait.'"

Such was the Princess's welcome to the arms of her handsome husband and to the Court over which she hoped to reign as Queen; nor did she receive much warmer hospitality from the Prince's family. The Queen, who had designed a very different bride for her eldest son, received her with scarcely disguised enmity, while the King, although, as he afterwards proved, kindly disposed towards her, treated her at first with an amiable indifference. And certainly her attitude seems to have been calculated to create an unfavourable impression on her new relatives and on the Court generally.

At the banquet which followed her reception, Malmesbury says, "I was far from satisfied with the Princess's behaviour. It was flippant, rattling, affecting raillery and wit, and throwing out coarse, vulgar hints about Lady——, who was present. The Prince was evidently disgusted, and this unfortunate dinner fixed his dislike, which, when left to herself, the Princess had not the talent to remove; but by still observing the same giddy manners and attempts at cleverness and coarse sarcasm, increased it till it became positive hatred."

"What," as Thackeray asks, "could be expected from a wedding which had such a beginning—from such a bridegroom and such a bride? Malmesbury tells us how the Prince reeled into the Chapel Royal to be married on the evening of Wednesday, the 8th of April; and how he hiccuped out his vows of fidelity." "My brother," John, Duke of Bedford, records, "was one of the two unmarried dukes who supported the Prince at the ceremony, and he had need of his support; for my brother told me the Prince was so drunk that he could scarcely support himself from falling. He told my brother that he had drunk several glasses of brandy to enable him to go through the ceremony. There is no doubt that it was a compulsory marriage."

With such an overture, we are not surprised to learn that the Royal bridegroom spent his wedding-night in a state of stupor on the floor of his bedroom; or that at dawn, when he had slept off the effects of his debauch, "pages heard cries proceeding from the nuptial chamber, and shortly afterwards saw the bridegroom rush out violently."

Nor, we may be sure, was the Prince's undisguised hatred of his bride in any way mitigated by the stories which Lady Jersey and others of hex rivals poured into his willing ears—stories of her attachment to a young German Prince whom she was not allowed to marry; of a mysterious illness, followed by a few weeks' retreat; of that midnight promenade with the young naval officer; of assignations with Major Toebingen, the handsomest soldier in Europe, who so proudly wore the amethyst tie-pin she had presented to him—these and many another story which reflected none too well on her reputation before he had set eyes on her. But it needed no such whispered scandal to strengthen his hatred of a bride who personally repelled him, and who had been forced on him at a time when his heart was fully engaged with his lawful wedded wife, Mrs Fitzherbert, when it was not straying to Lady Jersey, to "Perdita" or others of his legion of lights-o'-love.

From the first day the ill-fated union was doomed. One violent scene succeeded another, until, before she had been two months a wife, the Prince declared that he would no longer live with her. He would only wait until her child was born; then he would formally and finally leave her. Thus, three months after the birth of the Princess Charlotte, the deed of separation was signed, and Caroline was at last free to escape from a Court which she had grown to detest, with good reason, and from a husband whose brutalities and infidelities filled her with loathing.

She carried with her, however, this consolation, that the "great, hearty people of England loved and pitied her." "God bless you! we will bring your husband back to you," was among the many cries that greeted her as she left the palace on her way to exile. But, to quote Thackeray again, "they could not bring that husband back; they could not cleanse that selfish heart. Was hers the only one he had wounded? Steeped in selfishness, impotent for faithful attachment and manly enduring love—had it not survived remorse, was it not accustomed to desertion?"