There was Olympe de Mancini, whose Italian eyes had first taught him that there is a power which can rule over a king; her sister, too, Marie de Mancini; his wife, with her dark little sun-browned face; Henrietta of England, whose death had first shown him the horrors which lie in life; La Valliere, Montespan, Fontanges.

BORA MUZIO CLEMENTI HECTOR BERLIOZ CHARLES GOUNOD GIOACCHINO A. ROSSINI OLYMPE PELISSIER, AS "JUDITH" IN THE PAINTING

Two years later he married Olympe Pelissier, who had been his mistress in Paris and had posed for Vernet's "Judith."

De toutes celles que possède le Turc, c'est la plus considérable; elle est grande, marchande, et située au pied et au nord du mont Olimpoa (Olympe), d'où descend une rivière qui la traverse et qui, se divisant en plusieurs bras, forme comme un amas de petites villes, et contribue à la faire parôitre plus grande encore.

L. Heuzey, Le Mont Olympe et l'Acarnanie (Paris, 1860), pp.

Two Mancini sisters and the nephew were the children of the youngest sister of his Eminence; and of the sisters Laure, the elder, was a pleasing brunette with a handsome face, about twelve or thirteen years of age; the second (Olympe), also a brunette, had a long face and pointed chin.

" Such, at the age of nine or ten, was Olympe Mancini, who, in spite of her childish lack of beauty, was destined to enslave the handsomest King in Europe; and, after a life of discreditable intrigues, in which she incurred the stigma of witchcraft and murder, to end her career in obscurity, shunned by all who had known her in her day of splendour.

It was under such enviable conditions that the young daughters of a poor Roman baron grew up to girlhoodthe pets of the Queen and the Court, the playfellows of the King, and the acknowledged heiresses of their uncle's millions; and of them all, not one had a keener eye to the future than Olympe of the long face, pointed chin, and dimples.

And she succeeded to such an extent that it was always the company of Olympe, and not of her more beautiful sisters, Hortense, Laure, or Marie, that Louis most sought.

Not that Olympe was always to remain the plain, unattractive child Madame de Motteville describes in 1647.

And thus it was that, without any consultation of her heart, Olympe's hand was formally given to Prince Eugene de Savoie, Comte de Soissons, a man in whose veins flowed the Royal strains of Savoy and France.

" Thus raised to the rank of a Princess of the Blood, Olympe was by no means the proud and happy woman she ought to have been.

"He continued to visit her with the greatest regularity," to quote Mr Noel Williams; "indeed, scarcely a day went by on which His Majesty's coach did not stop at the gate of the Hôtel de Soissons; and Olympe, basking in the rays of the Royal favour, rapidly took her place as the brilliant, intriguing great lady Nature intended her to be.

" It is little wonder, perhaps, that Olympe's foolish head was turned by such flattering attentions from her sovereign, or that she began to give herself airs and to treat members of the Royal family with a haughty patronage.

But Olympe's supremacy was not to remain much longer unchallenged.