forthwith be transferred to the ex-Queen Marguerite, to whom they rightfully belonged.  When this decision was pronounced, the Princess was assisting at the celebration of mass in the church of St. Saviour, whither M. Drieux, her chancellor, at once proceeded with the glad tidings, which he had no sooner imparted, than, overjoyed by the intelligence, she rose from her knees before the service was concluded, and leaving the church, hastened to the monastery of the Cordeliers, where she caused a “Te Deum” to be chanted in gratitude for her success.

A few days subsequently, while at the Louvre, the ex-Queen, in the presence of Marie de Medicis, made a donation of the recovered estates to the Dauphin, on condition that they should be annexed to the Crown, and never under any consideration, or upon any pretext, alienated.  Marguerite, however, reserved to herself the income derivable from these possessions during her life; and she no sooner found her means adequate to the undertaking than she commenced the enlargement of the hotel which she had previously purchased in the Faubourg St. Germain, near the Pre aux Clercs, and the embellishment of the spacious gardens which swept down to the bank of the river opposite the Louvre.

Here it was, under the very shadow of the palace which should have been her home, that Marguerite held her little court; passing from her oratory to scenes of vice and voluptuousness which, happily, are unparalleled in these times; one day doing penance with bare feet and a robe of serge, and the next reposing upon velvet cushions and pillowed on down—­now fasting like an anchorite, and now feasting like a bacchante; one hour dispensing charity so lavishly as to call down the blessings of hundreds on her head, and the next causing her lacqueys to chase with ignominious words and blows from beneath her roof the honest creditors who claimed their hard-earned gains.  Extreme in everything, she gave a tithe of all that she possessed to the monks, although she did not shrink from confessing that her favourites cost her a still larger annual sum; and while she encouraged and appreciated the society of men of letters, and profited largely by their companionship, she condescended to the most frivolous follies, and abandoned herself to the most licentious pleasures.[327]

The insipidity of Madame de Moret soon counteracted the spell of her beauty; and although on his return from Sedan the King had appeared to be more fascinated by her extraordinary loveliness than even at the first period of their acquaintance, it was not long ere he listened with a patience very unusual to him to the indignant remonstrances of the Queen on this new infidelity, and even assured her that her reproaches were misplaced.  Marie, who perceived the prodigality with which the King lavished upon the frail fair one the most costly gifts, and who saw her, through the mock marriage which she had contracted, assume a place at Court which occasionally even brought her into contact with