progress through France, acclaimed and fêted as a Queen. At her castle
of d'Aubigny she held a splendid court and dispensed a regal hospitality
to the greatest in the land, who had scarcely deigned to notice her in
her days as maid-of-honour. When, according to St Simon, she paid a
visit to the Capucines in Paris her approach was heralded by a
procession of monks, scattering incense and bearing aloft the holy
cross. "She was received," we are told, "as if she were a Queen, which
quite overwhelmed her, as she was not prepared for such an honour." To
such a pitch indeed did this popular idolatry reach that she was
actually painted as a Madonna to grace the altar of the richest convent
in France.

On her return to England from this tour of conquest she found a
reception almost equally regal awaiting her. She was reinstated as chief
favourite of the King, all his other mistresses--even the Queen herself
being relegated to the background; and high statesmen and Ambassadors
did their homage to her before they sought audience with Charles
himself. She was, in fact, as Louis's deputy, Vice-Queen of
England--_plus roi que le Roi_.

Thus secure of her power the Duchess was not unwilling to indulge once
more her old propensity for flirtation (to give it its mildest name).
The handsome and graceless Duke of Monmonth, Charles's favourite son,
Danby and many another gallant, succeeded one another in her favours,
which she dispensed without any care for concealment. But the only one
of her lovers of this time who made any real impression on such heart as
she had was the rakish Philippe de Vendôme, grandson of Henri IV. and
nephew of her first lover, the Admiral, Duc de Beaufort, who, as we have
seen, gave her the first start on her career of infamy and conquest. She
seems to have conducted an open and shameless intrigue with De