Thus, one May day in 1714, the Duchesse found herself a widow, within four years of her wedding-day; and the last frail barrier was removed from the path of self-indulgence and low passions to which her life was dedicated. When, with the aged King's death in the following year, her father became Regent of France, her position as daughter of the virtual sovereign was now more splendid than ever; and before she had worn her widow's weeds a month, she had plunged again, still deeper, into dissipation, with Madame de Mouchy, one of her waiting-women, as chief minister to her pleasures. It was at this time, before her husband had been many weeks in his grave, that the Comte de Riom, the last and most ill-favoured of her many lovers, came on the scene. Nothing but a perverted taste could surely have seen any attraction in such a lover as this grand-nephew of the Duc de Lauzun, of whom the austere and disapproving Palatine Duchess draws the following picture: "He has neither figure nor good-looks. He is more like an ogre than a man, with his face of greenish yellow. He has the nose, eyes, and mouth of a Chinaman; he looks, in fact, more like a baboon than the Gascon he really is. Conceited and stupid, his large head seems to sit on his broad shoulders, owing to the shortness of his neck. He is shortsighted and altogether is preternaturally ugly; and he appears so ill that he might be suffering from some loathsome disease." To this unflattering description, Saint-Simon adds the fact that his "large, pasty face was so covered by pimples that it looked like one large abscess.'" Such, then, was the repulsive lover who found favour in the eyes of the Regent's daughter, and for whom she was ready to discard all her legion of more attractive wooers. With the coming of de Riom, the Duchesse entered on the last and worst stage of her mis-spent life. Strange tales are told of the orgies of which the Luxembourg, the splendid palace her father had given her, was now the scene--orgies in which Madame de Mouchy and a Jesuit, one Father Ringlet, took a part, and over which the evil de Riom ruled as "Lord of merry disports." The Duchesse, now sunk to the lowest depths of degradation, was the veriest puppet in his strong hands, flattered by his coarse attentions and submitting to rudeness and ridicule such as any grisette, with a grain of pride, would have resented. When these scandalous "carryings-on" at the Luxembourg Palace reached the Regent's ears and he ventured to read his daughter a severe lecture on her conduct, she retaliated by snapping her fingers at him and telling him in so many words to mind his own business. And to the tongue of scandal that found voice everywhere, she turned a contemptuous ear. She even locked and barred her palace gates to keep prying eyes at a safe distance.