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THE HOUSEHOLD DEITY OF WHITEHALL.

with the nature of the stars in the firmament--but you are wholly ignorant of the luminaries in the terrestrial globe."

He then announced his intention to persevere, notwithstanding all the obstacles which attached to the suit of a man without either fortune or character, who had been exiled from his own country, and whose chief mode of livelihood was dependent on the gaming-table.

One can scarcely read of the infatuation of La Belle Hamilton without a sigh. During a period of six years their marriage was in contemplation only; and De Grammont seems to have trifled inexcusably with the feelings of this once gay and ever lovely girl. It was not for want of means that De Grammont thus delayed the fulfillment of his engagement. Charles II., inexcusably lavish, gave him a pension of 1500 Jacobuses: it was to be paid to him until he should be restored to the favor of his own king. The fact was that De Grammont contributed to the pleasures of the court, and pleasure was the household deity of Whitehall. Sometimes, in those days of careless gayety, there were promenades in Spring Gardens, or the Mall; sometimes the court beauties sallied forth on horseback; at other times there were shows on the river, which then washed the very foundations of Whitehall. There in the summer evenings, when it was too hot and dusty to walk, Old Thames might be seen covered with little boats, filled with court and city beauties, attending the royal barges; collations, music, and fireworks completed the scene, and De Grammont always contrived some surprise-some gallant show: once a concert of vocal and instrumental music, which he had privately brought from Paris, struck up unexpectedly: another time, a collation brought from the same gay capital surpassed that supplied by the king. Then the count, finding that coaches with glass windows, lately introduced, displeased the ladies, because their charms were only partially seen in them, sent for the most elegant and superb calèche ever seen: it came after a month's journey, and was presented by De Grammont to the king. It was a royal present in price, for it had cost two thousand livres. The famous dispute between Lady Castlemaine and Miss Stuart, afterward Duchess of Richmond, arose about this calèche. The Queen and the Duchess of York appeared first in it in Hyde Park, which had then recently been fenced in with brick. Lady Castlemaine thought that the calèche showed off a fine figure better than the coach; Miss Stuart was of the same opinion. Both these grown-up babies wished to have the coach on the same day, but Miss Stuart prevailed.

The queen condescended to laugh at the quarrels of these

A CHAPLAIN IN LIVERY.

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two foolish women, and complimented the Chevalier de Grammont on his present. "But how is it," she asked, "that you do not even keep a footman, and that one of the common runners in the street lights you home with a link ?"

"Madam," he answered, "the Chevalier de Grammont hates pomp: my link-boy is faithful and brave." Then he told the queen that he saw she was unacquainted with the nation of link-boys, and related how that he had, at one time, had one hundred and sixty around his chair at night, and people had asked "whose funeral it was?" "As for the parade of coaches and footmen," he added, "I despise it. I have sometimes had five or six valets-de-chambre, without a single footman in livery except my chaplain."

"How!" cried the queen, laughing, "a chaplain in livery? surely he was not a priest.'

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Pardon, Madame, a priest, and the best dancer in the world of the Biscayan jig.'

"Chevalier," said the king, "tell us the history of your chaplain Poussatin."

Then De Grammont related how, when he was with the great Condé, after the campaign of Catalonia, he had seen. among a company of Catalans, a priest in a little black jacket, skipping and frisking: how Condé was charmed, and how they recognized in him a Frenchman, and how he offered himself to De Grammont for his chaplain. De Grammont had not much need, he said, for a chaplain in his house, but he took the priest, who had afterward the honor of dancing before Anne of Austria, in Paris.

Suitor after suitor interfered with De Grammont's at last honorable address to La Belle Hamilton. At length an incident occurred which had very nearly separated them forever. Philibert de Grammont was recalled to Paris by Louis XIII. 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 appoint

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DE GRAMMONT'S LAST HOURS.

ed Dame de 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 endeavored, 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 and said, "Countess, if you don't look to it, Dangeau will juggle you out of my conversion." St. Evremond said he would gladly die to go off with so successful a bon-mot.

He became, however, in time, serious, if not devout or penitent. Ninon de l'Enclos having written to St. Evremond that the Count de Grammont had not only recovered but had become devout, St. Evremond answered her in these words:

"I have learned with a great deal of pleasure that the Count de Grammont has recovered his former health and acquired a new devotion."*

A report having been circulated that De Grammont was dead, St. Evremond expressed deep regret. The report was contradicted by Ninon de l'Enclos. The count was then eighty-six years of age; "nevertheless he was," Ninon says, 66 so young that I think him as lively as when he hated sick people, and loved them after they had recovered their health ;" a trait very descriptive of a man whose good-nature was always on the surface, but whose selfishness was deep as that of most wits and beaux, who are spoiled by the world, and

"The Count de Grammont fell dangerously ill in the year 1696, of which the King (Louis XIV.) being informed, and knowing, besides, that he was inclined to libertinism, he was pleased to send the Marquis of Dangeau to see how he did, and to advise him to think of God. Hereupon Count de Grammont, turning toward his wife, who had ever been a very devout lady, told her, 'Countess, if you don't look to it, Dangeau will juggle you out of my conversion.' Madame de l'Enclos having afterward written to M. de St. Evremond that Count de Grammont was recovered, and turned devout, I have learned,' answered he to her, 'with a great deal of pleasure that Count de Grammont has recovered his former health, and acquired a new devotion. Hitherto I have been contented with being a plain, honest man; but I must do something more; and I only wait for your example to become a devotee. You live in a country where people have wonderful advantages of saving their souls: there, vice is almost as opposite to the mode as virtue; sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks decency and good manners as much as religion. Formerly it was enough to be wicked, now one must be a scoundrel withal, to be damned in France.""

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who, in return, distrust and deceive the spoilers. This long life of eighty-six years, endowed as De Grammont was with elasticity of spirits, good fortune, considerable talent, an excellent position, a wit that never ceased to flow in a clear current; with all these advantages, what might he not have been to society had his energy been well applied, his wit innocent, his talents employed worthily, and his heart as sure to stand muster as his manners?