THE TRUE MAID OF HONOUR. she return again, " and not marry," she would retire, and end her days among her friends. At Dover, she signed and delivered to him her will, before her maid, wherein she made him her ad- ministrator,-her husband having empowered her to dispose of what she pleased. On reaching Paris, Margaret wrote to him a pleasant account of her journey, together with a description of the Ambassador's magnificent entry and audience at the French Court. She was now again surrounded by gaieties, but she kept her resolution of not partaking of them. The Grande Monarque, Louis, had heard so much of her beauty and wit from some persons who had known her at the English Court, that he was, according to Evelyn, very desirous of seeing her at St. Germains ; still she had made up her mind not to trust herself again within those scenes which she so strongly dis- approved, and did not once, while in Paris, give her- self the gratification of beholding the splendour of the French Court. With horror she recoiled from the mad whirlpool of folly and depravity ; for the wickedness of the English Court was, after all, but a faint shadowing of that which prevailed at Versailles. " Why, people laugh at- everything here," naively remarked the young Duchess of Burgundy, when she went to the Court of France. Ladies of the highest rank turned their hotels into gambling-houses, from which they derived their only income. They cheated
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