As it commonly happens in the sequel of such sudden and mournful events, the most absurd rumours did not fail to be circulated on the subject of Charles's death. According to one, the Duchess of Portsmouth had poisoned the King with a cup of chocolate; another asserted that the Queen had poisoned him with a jar of preserved pears. Time has done justice to these ridiculous suspicions; but that which will probably never be discovered is the exact nature of the unfortunate monarch's malady, whom a deplorable fatality caused to fall into the hands of ignorant physicians who, not being able to agree amongst themselves, tortured the patient haphazard for many hours together. Hume, at the end of his dissertation upon the hypothesis of the poisoning of Charles, relates the following anecdote:--"Mr. Henley, of Hampshire, told me that the Duchess of Portsmouth having come to England in 1699, he learned that she had caused it to be understood that Charles II. had been poisoned, and that, being desirous of ascertaining the fact from the Duchess's own mouth, she told him that she continually urged the King to place himself at his ease as well as his people, and to live in perfect understanding with his Parliament; that he had taken the resolution of sending his brother out of the kingdom, and to convoke a Parliament, which was to have been put in execution on the day after that upon which he was seized with his first access; that, above everything, the King recommended her to keep it secret, and that she had only revealed it to her confessor; but she believed that her confessor had revealed the secret to persons who made use of that evil means of preventing the _coup d'etat_." If such, indeed, was the political attitude of the Duchess during the last months of Charles's life, it may be conceived that the supreme recommendations of the dying monarch may have exercised little influence over the predetermined resolves of his ignoble successor, and it explains the sudden step she took to regain her native country. On her return to France she carried with her a large treasure in money and jewels. She had come to England poor, had lived there in splendour, but without much care for the future, and having proudly enjoyed a full-blown prosperity, was now about to endure adversity with courageous resolution. Having quarrelled with James II., the Duchess could not think of taking up her abode at Versailles, where her position would not have been tenable; she determined therefore to settle herself in Paris, where her house and surroundings became the object of a rigorous surveillance.