Suitor after suitor interfered with De Grammont's at last honourable
address to La Belle Hamilton. At length an incident occurred which had
very nearly separated them for ever. Philibert de Grammont was recalled
to Paris by Louis XIV. He forgot, Frenchman-like, all his engagements to
Miss Hamilton, and hurried off. He had reached Dover, when her two
brothers rode up after him. 'Chevalier de Grammont,' they said, 'have
you forgotten nothing in London?'

'I beg your pardon,' he answered, 'I forgot to marry your sister.' It is
said that this story suggested to Molière the idea of _Le Mariage
forcé_. They were, however, married.

In 1669 La Belle Hamilton, after giving birth to a child, went to reside
in France. Charles II., who thought she would pass for a handsome woman
in France, recommended her to his sister, Henrietta Duchess of Orleans,
and begged her to be kind to her.

Henceforth the Chevalier De Grammont and his wife figured at Versailles,
where the Countess de Grammont was appointed _Dame du Palais_. Her
career was less brilliant than in England. The French ladies deemed her
haughty and old, and even termed her _une Anglaise insupportable_.

She had certainly too much virtue, and perhaps too much beauty still,
for the Parisian ladies of fashion at that period to admire her.

She endeavoured in vain, to reclaim her libertine husband, and to call
him to a sense of his situation when he was on his death-bed. Louis
XIV. sent the Marquis de Dangeau to convert him, and to talk to him on a
subject little thought of by De Grammont--the world to come. After the
Marquis had been talking for some time, De Grammont turned to his wife