Such was the revolution that resulted from this country visit that Louise de Querouaille returned to Whitehall, the avowed maitresse en titre to the King. The French maid-of-honour had justified the confidence Louis reposed in her; and as reward she was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Catherine, and wore a coronet as Duchess of Portsmouth. More than this, the delighted Louis raised the wool merchant's daughter to the proud rank of Duchesse d'Aubigny, in exchange for which dignity she pledged herself to induce Charles to go to war with Holland; to avow himself a Catholic; and to persuade his brother and successor, the Duke of York, to take to wife a Princess of France.
Louise de Querouaille had now reached a dizzier height than, in the wildest dreams of her girlhood, she had ever hoped to climb. She was a double-Duchess, of England and of France, the mistress and counsellor of a puppet-King, and an arbiter of the destinies of nations. Well might her humble father, when he paid his Duchess-daughter a visit in London, throw up his hands in amazement at the splendours with which his "petite Louise" had surrounded herself! So high had she climbed that it seemed at one time that even the Crown of England was within her reach; for when Catherine was brought to the verge of death the Duchess was probably not alone in thinking that she might be her successor on the throne.
"She has got the notion," wrote the French Ambassador, "that it is possible she may yet be Queen of England. She talks from morning till night of the Queen's ailments as if they were mortal."
But at least, if the crown was not to be hers, there was as much gold to be had as she cared to garner. Not content with her allowance, which, nominally £10,000 a year, in one year reached the enormous sum of £136,000, she heaped fortune on fortune by trafficking in a wide range of commodities, from peerages and Court appointments to Royal pardons and slaves. A few years of such rich harvesting made her incomparably the richest woman in England, although she squandered her ill-gotten gold with a prodigal hand. Her apartments at Whitehall were crowded with the costliest furnishings and objects of art that money could buy. When Evelyn paid a visit to the Court he records:
"But that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice or thrice pulled down to satisfy her prodigality and expensive pleasures; while her Majesty's does not exceed some gentlemen's wives in furniture and accommodation.
"Here I saw the new fabrics of French tapestry, for design, tenderness of work and incomparable imitation of the best paintings, beyond anything I ever beheld. Some pieces had Versailles, St Germain's, and other palaces of the French King, with huntings, figures, and landscapes, exotic flowers and all to the life, rarely done. Then for Japan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great vases of wrought plate, table-stands, sconces, branches, braseras, etc., all of massive silver and out of number, besides some of his Majesty's best paintings!"
Probably at this time of her illicit queendom the only thorn in Louise de Querouaille's bed of roses was that vulgar, "gutter-rival" of hers, Nell Gwynn, with whom she suffered the indignity of sharing Charles's affection. To the high-born, blue-blooded daughter of centuries of French nobles (of whom her tradesman-father always affected a disconcerting ignorance) the very sight of her saucy and successful rival, the ex-orange-wench, was a contamination. She pretended to stifle in breathing the same air, and with high-tossed head sailed past Madame Nell (the mother of a duke), in the Court salons and corridors, as if she were carrion.
And to all these grand, disdainful airs Madame Nell only retorted with a Drury Lane peal of silvery laughter. She, who was accustomed to "chuck Charles's royal chin," and to call him her "Charles the third," in unflattering reference to his two predecessors of the name in her favour, could afford to snap her fingers at the French madame who, after all, was no better than herself.
"The Duchess," she would say, "pretends to be a person of quality. She says she is related to the best families in France; and when any great person dies she puts herself in mourning. If she be a lady of such quality, why does she demean herself to be what she is? As for me, it's my profession; I don't profess to be anything better. And the King is just as fond of me as he is of his French miss."
But while Her Grace of Portsmouth was revelling in her splendour and her gold, her mission as Louis's Ambassadress was making unsatisfactory progress. However disposed Charles may have been to change his faith to the advantage of his pocket, he was not prepared to risk his crown, possibly his head, for any Pope who ever lived; nor did the project of providing a French bride for his successor, the Duke of York, promise much better. Louis proposed the Duchess of Guise, his own cousin; but James had heard too much of this unamiable and unattractive Princess from his sister, Henrietta, to relish the venture. The Duchess herself suggested a Princess of Lorraine, as a suitable bride, but Louis, who had no love for the d'Elboeuf ladies, nipped this project in the bud.