Vendôme--a man who, according to St Simon, had never gone sober to bed
for a generation, who was a swindler, liar, and thief, and the most
despicable and dangerous man living. When the Duchess, realising that
her intrigue with this handsome scoundrel was going too far, sought to
withdraw, he threatened to show certain incriminating letters she had
written to him, to the King; and it was only when Louis intervened and,
by bribes and commands, induced her lover to return to France, that she
was able to breathe again.

Not content with setting such a shameless example to the Court, she was
the arch-priestess of the gaming-tables at which Charles and his
courtiers spent their nights to the chink of glasses and gold. She made
light, we learn, of losing 5,000 guineas at a sitting. No wonder Pepys
was shocked at such scenes.

"I was told to-night," he writes, "that my Lady
Castlemaine is so great a gamester as to have won £15,400
in one night, and lost £25,000 in another night at play,
and has played £1000 and £1500 at a cast."

The Duchesse de Mazarin, he tells us,

"won at basset, of Nell Gwynne 1400 guineas in one night,
and of the Duchess of Portsmouth above £8000, in doing
which she exerted her utmost cunning and had the greatest
satisfaction, because they were rivals in the Royal
favour."

But the end of these saturnalia was at hand. The last glimpse we have of
them was on the night of 1st February 1685--the last Sunday Charles was