Annie Lucie, notwithstanding this apparent encouragement of the king’s addresses, was perfectly indifferent to his admiration.  She was secretly attached to the Marquis de Richelieu, who had, or pretended to have, honourable intentions towards her.  Everything was tried, but tried in vain, to induce the poor girl to give up all her predilections for the sake of a guilty distinction—­that of being the king’s mistress:  even her mother reproached her with her coldness.  A family council was held, in hopes of convincing her of her wilfulness, and Annie Lucie was bitterly reproached by her female relatives; but her heart still clung to the faithless Marquis de Richelieu, who, however, when he saw that a royal lover was his rival, meanly withdrew.

Her fall seemed inevitable; but the firmness of Anne of Austria saved her from her ruin.  That queen insisted on her being sent away; and she resisted even the entreaties of the queen, her daughter-in-law, and the wife of Louis XIV.; who, for some reasons not explained, entreated that the young lady might remain at the court.  Anne was sent away in a sort of disgrace to the convent of Chaillot, which was then considered to be quite out of Paris, and sufficiently secluded to protect her from visitors.  According to another account, a letter full of reproaches, which she wrote to the Marquis de Richelieu upbraiding him for his desertion, had been intercepted.

It was to this young lady that De Grammont, who was then, in the very centre of the court, ‘the type of fashion and the mould of form,’ attached himself to her as an admirer who could condescend to honour with his attentions those whom the king pursued.  The once gay girl was thus beset with snares:  on one side was the king, whose disgusting preference was shown when in her presence by sighs and sentiment; on the other, De Grammont, whose attentions to her were importunate, but failed to convince her that he was in love; on the other was the time-serving, heartless De Richelieu, whom her reason condemned, but whom her heart cherished.  She soon showed her distrust and dislike of De Grammont:  she treated him with contempt; she threatened him with exposure, yet he would not desist:  then she complained of him to the king.  It was then that he perceived that though love could equalize conditions, it could not act in the same way between rivals.  He was commanded to leave the court.  Paris, therefore, Versailles, Fontainbleau, and St. Germains were closed against this gay Chevalier; and how could he live elsewhere?  Whither could he go?  Strange to say, he had a vast fancy to behold the man who, stained with the crime of regicide, and sprung from the people, was receiving magnificent embassies from continental nations, whilst Charles II. was seeking security in his exile from the power of Spain in the Low Countries.  He was eager to see the Protector, Cromwell.  But Cromwell, though in the height of his fame when beheld by De Grammont—­though feared at home and