There was the king once more; and England, breaking through its long period of Puritanism, laughed and danced with more vivacity than ever the French had shown.  All the pipers and the players and panderers to vice, the mountebanks, the sensual men, and the lawless women poured into the presence of the king, who had been too long deprived of the pleasure that his nature craved.  Parliament voted seventy thousand pounds for a memorial to Charles’s father, but the irresponsible king spent the whole sum on the women who surrounded him.  His severest counselor, Lord Clarendon, sent him a remonstrance.

“How can I build such a memorial,” asked Charles, “when I don’t know where my father’s remains are buried!”

He took money from the King of France to make war against the Dutch, who had befriended him.  It was the French king, too, who sent him that insidious, subtle daughter of Brittany, Louise de Keroualle—­Duchess of Portsmouth—­a diplomat in petticoats, who won the king’s wayward affections, and spied on what he did and said, and faithfully reported all of it to Paris.  She became the mother of the Duke of Lenox, and she was feared and hated by the English more than any other of his mistresses.  They called her “Madam Carwell,” and they seemed to have an instinct that she was no mere plaything of his idle hours, but was like some strange exotic serpent, whose poison might in the end sting the honor of England.

There is a pitiful little episode in the marriage of Charles with his Portuguese bride, Catharine of Braganza.  The royal girl came to him fresh from the cloisters of her convent.  There was something about her grace and innocence that touched the dissolute monarch, who was by no means without a heart.  For a time he treated her with great respect, and she was happy.  At last she began to notice about her strange faces—­faces that were evil, wanton, or overbold.  The court became more and more a seat of reckless revelry.

Finally Catharine was told that the Duchess of Cleveland—­that splendid termagant, Barbara Villiers—­had been appointed lady of the bedchamber.  She was told at the same time who this vixen was—­ that she was no fit attendant for a virtuous woman, and that her three sons, the Dukes of Southampton, Grafton, and Northumberland, were also the sons of Charles.

Fluttered and frightened and dismayed, the queen hastened to her husband and begged him not to put this slight upon her.  A year or two before, she had never dreamed that life contained such things as these; but now it seemed to contain nothing else.  Charles spoke sternly to her until she burst into tears, and then he petted her and told her that her duty as a queen compelled her to submit to many things which a lady in private life need not endure.

After a long and poignant struggle with her own emotions the little Portuguese yielded to the wishes of her lord.  She never again reproached him.  She even spoke with kindness to his favorites and made him feel that she studied his happiness alone.  Her gentleness affected him so that he always spoke to her with courtesy and real friendship.  When the Protestant mobs sought to drive her out of England he showed his courage and manliness by standing by her and refusing to allow her to be molested.