centre of the court, 'the type of fashion and the mould of form,'
attached himself to her as an admirer who could condescend to honour
with his attentions those whom the king pursued. The once gay girl was
thus beset with snares: on one side was the king, whose disgusting
preference was shown when in her presence by sighs and sentiment; on the
other, De Grammont, whose attentions to her were importunate, but failed
to convince her that he was in love; on the other was the time-serving,
heartless De Richelieu, whom her reason condemned, but whom her heart
cherished. She soon showed her distrust and dislike of De Grammont: she
treated him with contempt; she threatened him with exposure, yet he
would not desist: then she complained of him to the king. It was then
that he perceived that though love could equalize conditions, it could
not act in the same way between rivals. He was commanded to leave the
court. Paris, therefore, Versailles, Fontainbleau, and St. Germains were
closed against this gay Chevalier; and how could he live elsewhere?
Whither could he go? Strange to say, he had a vast fancy to behold the
man who, stained with the crime of regicide, and sprung from the people,
was receiving magnificent embassies from continental nations, whilst
Charles II. was seeking security in his exile from the power of Spain in
the Low Countries. He was eager to see the Protector, Cromwell. But
Cromwell, though in the height of his fame when beheld by De
Grammont--though feared at home and abroad--was little calculated to win
suffrages from a mere man of pleasure like De Grammont. The court, the
city, the country, were in his days gloomy, discontented, joyless: a
proscribed nobility was the sure cause of the thin though few
festivities of the now lugubrious gallery of Whitehall. Puritanism drove
the old jovial churchmen into retreat, and dispelled every lingering
vestige of ancient hospitality: long graces and long sermons,
sanctimonious manners, and grim, sad faces, and sad-coloured dresses
were not much to De Grammont's taste; he returned to France, and