Such was the parsimony exercised by the great Monarch towards a woman who had laboured strenuously for French interests so long as her sway over Charles of England lasted, and which sway only ceased with his life. "Therein she employed unceasingly all her talent for politics, all her fascinations, all her wit," says the English chronicler already cited, and whose object has been, according to his translator, anonymous like himself, to demonstrate that if Charles II. acted in a way so little conformable to the interests not only of several foreign states, but still more of his own kingdom, it was the Duchess of Portsmouth who urged him to it, through the passion with which she had inspired him, by her cunning, and the power she possessed over his mind. The same translator afterwards remarks, that "this lady obtained more easily from the King in a moment and with a _coup de langue_ things the most unreasonable and the most contrary to true policy, than all the most judicious, the most voluble, the most insinuating persons could obtain from him in matters infinitely reasonable and just." Without attributing to the Duchess of Portsmouth a power of action so prejudicial to the interests of the British nation as her anonymous biographer has done, who wrote under the excitement of discontent caused, says Lyttleton, by "the strengthening of the alliance with France, the secret enemy of England and the Protestant religion, as well as by a costly war with Holland, her natural ally," Hume states that "during the rest of his life Charles II. was extremely attached to Querouaille, and that this favourite contributed greatly to the close alliance between her own country and England." Voltaire, without particularising the effects of the ascendancy of the Duchess of Portsmouth over Charles II., says that that monarch "was governed by her to the very last moment of his life." He adds that "her beauty equalled that of Madame de Montespan, and that she was in England what the other beauty had been in France, but with more influence." This assertion, accurate as it is so far as concerns political influence--for Madame de Montespan never exercised any over the government of Louis XIV.--is not equally so with regard to the question of beauty. On that head, indeed, the Duchess had her detractors. "I have seen that famous beauty, Mademoiselle Querouaille," wrote Evelyn in his _Diary_, about a month after her arrival in England; "but, in my opinion, she is of a childish, simple, and baby face." PART III. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. TWO LADIES OF THE BEDCHAMBER DURING THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, LADY CHURCHILL AND THE PRINCESS DES URSINS--POLITICAL MOTIVES FOR THEIR ELEVATION IN ENGLAND AND SPAIN.