“But, dearest, you will do your duty, I know. And in a little while you will forget Marie. There will be so many women to love you. Believe me, dearest, the one you marry need not necessarily come between you and your pleasures. Give France royal sons; and give as many sons as you wish to others. You will enjoy the begetting, and there is no woman in France who would not be proud to bear the King’s sons, even though they be bastards.”

“Such behavior seems wrong.”

“What is wrong for ordinary men is right for kings. Never forget, my loved one, your brilliant destiny. You are not to be judged as ordinary men. Oh, my beloved, do not turn from your mother because she cannot give you what you want. How willingly would I give my consent if I could! My one wish is to give you all you ask. There! See how I love you! I have been unable to eat my breakfast.”

He stooped and kissed his mother’s cheek.

“Then you do not blame me, dearest?” she said anxiously.

“I understand, of course,” answered Louis. “But, Mama, I cannot marry Henriette. Do not ask that of me.”

“Why are you so much against her?”

“I think it is because I am sorry for her. I do not like to be sorry for girls. I like to admire, not to pity. And she is too learned. She spends too much time in study. No! It must not be Henriette.”

“How vehement you are against this poor child, Louis. One would think you hated her.”

Louis shook his head. He did not understand his feelings for his cousin. He protected her when he could from slights and insults; but he was determined on one thing; he would not marry her.

Sorrowfully he left his mother and went to the riding school, where he forgot his problems temporarily as he galloped round the school, picking up rings on his lance and holding them suspended during the gallop.

He was an expert at such feats, but as the cheering of his attendants filled his ears that day he began to think of what he would tell Marie; yet he found that it was the tall figure of Henriette which troubled his mind.

Shortly after that interview with her son, Anne, in panic, invited to the Court of France the Dowager Duchess of Savoy, a daughter of Henri Quatre. The Dowager Duchess had a daughter. This was the Princess Marguerite, a small, dark-skinned girl, very plain, and, knowing the purpose of her visit to the French Court, very nervous.

Louis received her with all the courtesy he could muster, but it was impossible to hide his feelings of distaste. It seemed to him that, the more he saw of other women, the more he was in love with Marie.

“I shall not marry my cousin Marguerite,” he told his mother. “I could not entertain the idea.”

“You need see very little of her,” said Anne. “And you would soon grow accustomed to her.”

“Dear Mother, that is not my idea of marriage.”

“You will have neither Marguerite nor Henriette then!”

“Neither,” he said firmly.

The Cardinal would have liked to see a marriage between his niece and the King, but he realized that such an alliance was inadvisable. He knew that if the royal tradition of the house of France was so flouted, not only the nobility but the people would rise against him. They would blame him, as they were always ready to blame him for France’s troubles. He remembered the wars of the Fronde, and the unpopularity he had suffered at that time; and he could see that such a marriage would do him more harm than good.

“Sire,” he said, “if you should persist in making this marriage against my advice, I should have no alternative but to give up my office as your minister.”

Louis was morose; he felt inadequate to deal with the situation. He thought continually of Henriette, because he knew that if he declared he would marry her, there would be no objection.

He wished that he had studied more assiduously; he wished he was more learned. It was all very well to be able to leap and vault to perfection, to outstrip all others in the hunt. But there was more to life than that. If he had had more book-learning, he might have been able to confute the Cardinal’s arguments; he would certainly have been able to state his feelings with more clarity; he realized that well-chosen words were weapons which he had never before appreciated.

His cousin Marguerite returned to Savoy, and the Cardinal decided to send his niece away from Court.

Louis did not protest; he knew that what had been done was right for the King of France, no matter how disappointing it was to Louis the man.

He declared himself heartbroken, and then he found a lady of his mother’s bedchamber who comforted him with great skill, and he was soon feeling as grateful to her as he had, during a previous period, been to Madame de Beauvais.

Court gossip reached Henriette at Colombes. Her attendants chattered about the King’s passion for the Cardinal’s niece and the arrival of his cousin Marguerite.

“She was small and plain … and Louis would have none of her.”

“It would have been such a suitable match,” murmured Henriette.

“Ah yes, but he could not find it in his heart to love her. And he is so handsome … so romantic … so made for love.”

Henriette pictured that poor plain Marguerite who had failed to charm the King. She was very sorry for her; she knew how the poor child must have suffered.

Henriette wept silently for Marguerite … and for herself.

Lucy was tired, but she still walked through the streets of Paris. She was frequently ill now; she knew that she had changed, all in a few short months. She grew breathless at the least effort, and worse, she was suffering from an illness which she knew would not allow her many more months of life.

There were times when her mind wandered a little, when she thought she was back in the past, when men and women whom she had known would seem to walk beside her and talk to her.

Her father was often there. He said: “We shall have to marry that girl quickly.” And her mother nodded and understood.

I was born that way, Lucy told herself. ’Twas no fault of mine. It was something which had to be. It was as natural to me as breathing. If I had been born ill favored like poor good Ann Hill, I should have been different. So who should blame such as I? Is it our fault that some of us are born with bodies which demand the satisfaction of physical love with such an intensity that we are not strong enough to deny it? Some have a love of mental exercise, and they become wise and are applauded; others have great skill in the art of war, and they win honors; but those who love—and love is all taking and giving pleasure, for the two go hand in hand—come to this sad end.

She would wander past the new houses in the Place Royale and the Place Dauphine; she did not notice the fruit trees and the flowers which grew in the gardens and nearby meadows. She was looking at the men who passed her by. They scarcely threw her a look nowadays—they who had once sought her so eagerly. She had sauntered through Paris; she had wandered along the north and south banks; she had strolled from the Place de Carrousel to the Porte St. Antoine, from the Porte du Temple to the Porte Marceau, and she found not one man who was ready to be her lover even for an hour.

To this had she sunk.

The roundness had left her face, and her cheeks hung in flabby folds; there were dark shadows under her still beautiful, large brown eyes. Her hair had lost its luster, and she had no money to buy colored ribands with which to adorn it.

Her good health had begun to desert her during her stay in the Tower; but her troubles had been slight then. When she had arrived in Holland she had still been a comely girl. There were lovers in Holland, but it seemed to her that one followed another in too rapid succession; they grew a little less courtly, less of the gentleman.

“I dislike this country,” she had declared to the faithful Ann. “I hate the flatness and the wind.”

By degrees they had made their way to Paris, going from town to town. Ann worked in some of the big houses, sometimes in gardens, often in the fields. Lucy plied the only trade for which she had any aptitude. And eventually they had come to Paris. But how changed was everything! She had hoped to find the King there, for she heard little news during her wanderings. She thought: He will not desert me. He will want to help me, if only for Jemmy’s sake.

But there were rumors in Paris. The King of England never came there now. The French were friendly with his enemies. The Queen of England and the Princess Henriette were rarely seen in the capital; they attended few state functions; they lived in obscurity.

And so here was Lucy in Paris, trying to find lovers who would support her and her children, feeling too old and too ill to struggle any longer.

She sat on the bank and stared at the river.

It would have been better, she thought, if I had stayed in London. Jenny, the brothel keeper, was right. I should have been better off had I followed her advice, for what is there for such as I when we grow old and ill and are no longer desirable!

She sat dreaming of her lovers. There were two whom she remembered best. The first because he was the first: she recalled the copse at twilight, the light in the sky, the shouts of Roundhead soldiers, and the sudden understanding of herself. She would never forget her first lover, and she would never forget Charles Stuart.

“Charles,” she murmured, “where are you now? Yes, the most exalted of them all, would be the one above all others to help me now.”

She thought of the children. What would become of them when she died?

Panic seized her, for she knew that she must soon die. She had known others who had contracted this disease which now threatened her life. She had seen how death came. It was the result of promiscuous pleasure. It was inevitable, mayhap, when one took lovers indiscriminately.