promises if she would but carry out his programme to the full. It had
become her crowning ambition to win the right to a _tabouret_ at the
Court of Versailles--the highest privilege accorded to the old
_noblesse_, that of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King; and
this proud distinction, which would raise her to the highest pinnacle in
France, inferior only to the crown itself, could be hers if Louis would
but grant her the d'Aubigny lands to accompany her title, for the
_tabouret_ went with the Duchy domains. Even this most coveted of all
the gifts in his power Louis promised to the little adventuress if she
would but carry out, not only all she had undertaken, but any future
commands he might lay upon her.

His immediate object now was to take advantage of the distraction caused
by the war between England and Holland to annex the Palatinate and the
Franche Comté, on which he had long set covetous eyes; but he quickly
discovered that for once his vaulting ambition had overleaped itself.
The whole of Europe took alarm; England to a man rose in angry protest,
sworn enemies joining hands to resist such an outrageous aggression; and
Charles, in a frenzy of fear for his crown, dismissed his hireling army
paid with Louis's gold. The proud edifice which the Duchess of
Portsmouth had so carefully reared was threatened with a cataclysm of
popular rage against the "painted French spy" who was regarded, and
perhaps rightly, as a prime instigator of the mischief, and the worst
enemy of the country that had given her such generous hospitality.

To add to the danger of her position she became seriously ill; sustained
heavy money losses; and even her supremacy with the King was gravely
imperilled by the arrival at Court of Mazarin's loveliest niece,
Hortense de Mancini, with whom Charles had flirted in the days of his
exile, and who now came to England in the full bloom of her peerless