The Queen condescended to laugh at the quarrels of these two foolish women, and complimented the Chevalier de Grammont on his present.  ’But how is it,’ she asked, ’that you do not even keep a footman, and that one of the common runners in the street lights you home with a link?’

‘Madame,’ he answered, ’the Chevalier de Grammont hates pomp:  my link-boy is faithful and brave.’  Then he told the Queen that he saw she was unacquainted with the nation of link-boys, and related how that he had, at one time, had one hundred and sixty around his chair at night, and people had asked ’whose funeral it was?  As for the parade of coaches and footmen,’ he added, ’I despise it.  I have sometimes had five or six valets-de-chambre, without a single footman in livery except my chaplain.’

‘How!’ cried the Queen, laughing, ’a chaplain in livery? surely he was not a priest.’

’Pardon, Madame, a priest, and the best dancer in the world of the Biscayan gig.’

‘Chevalier,’ said the king, ’tell us the history of your chaplain Poussatin.’

Then De Grammont related how, when he was with the great Conde, after the campaign of Catalonia, he had seen among a company of Catalans, a priest in a little black jacket, skipping and frisking:  how Conde was charmed, and how they recognized in him a Frenchman, and how he offered himself to De Grammont for his chaplain.  De Grammont had not much need, he said, for a chaplain in his house, but he took the priest, who had afterwards the honour of dancing before Anne of Austria, in Paris.

Suitor after suitor interfered with De Grammont’s at last honourable address to La Belle Hamilton.  At length an incident occurred which had very nearly separated them for ever.  Philibert de Grammont was recalled to Paris by Louis XIV.  He forgot, Frenchman-like, all his engagements to Miss Hamilton, and hurried off.  He had reached Dover, when her two brothers rode up after him.  ‘Chevalier de Grammont,’ they said, ’have you forgotten nothing in London?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ he answered, ‘I forgot to marry your sister.’  It is said that this story suggested to Moliere the idea of Le Mariage force.  They were, however, married.

In 1669 La Belle Hamilton, after giving birth to a child, went to reside in France.  Charles II., who thought she would pass for a handsome woman in France, recommended her to his sister, Henrietta Duchess of Orleans, and begged her to be kind to her.

Henceforth the Chevalier De Grammont and his wife figured at Versailles, where the Countess de Grammont was appointed Dame du Palais.  Her career was less brilliant than in England.  The French ladies deemed her haughty and old, and even termed her une Anglaise insupportable.

She had certainly too much virtue, and perhaps too much beauty still, for the Parisian ladies of fashion at that period to admire her.