permitted to spend on earth.

"The great courtiers," says Evelyn, "and other dissolute
persons were playing at basset round a large table, with
a bank of at least £2000 before them. The King, though
not engaged in the game, was to the full as scandalously
occupied, sitting in open dalliance with three of the
shameless women of the Court, the Duchesses of
Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin, and others of the same
stamp, while a French boy was singing love-songs in that
glorious gallery. Six days after," he adds, "all was in
the dust."

As the end of that wasted Royal life drew near the Duchess's chief
concern--for it was her last opportunity of redeeming one of her pledges
to Louis, her paymaster--was that Charles should at least die an avowed
Catholic.

"I found her," Barillon wrote to Louis, "overcome with
grief. But, instead of bewailing her own unhappy and
changed condition, she led me into an adjoining chamber
and said: 'M. l'Ambassadeur, I want to confide a secret
to you, although if it were publicly known my head would
pay the forfeit. The King is a Catholic at heart, and yet
there he lies surrounded by Protestant bishops. I dare
not enter the room, and there is no one to talk to him of
his end and of God. The Duke of York is too much occupied
with his own affairs to trouble about his brother's
conscience. Pray go to him and tell him that the end is
near, and that it is his duty to lose no time in saving