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It was almost as difficult to preach to the Court as it was to act to it. The King invariably went to sleep, sitting bolt upright and facing the pulpit, as soon as the subject of the sermon had been announced. The Maids of Honour whispered among themselves, waved their fans at the men below, giggled and tried on one another’s jewellery and ribbons. The gallants craned their necks back up at the ladies’ gallery and compared notes on the previous night’s activities or pointed out the pretty women present. The politicians leaned their heads together and murmured in undertones, keeping their eyes ahead as though no one could guess what they were doing. Most of the older ladies and gentlemen, relics of the Court of the first Charles, sat soberly in their pews and listened with satisfaction to the warnings repeatedly given by the pulpit to a careless age; but even their good intentions often ended in noisy snores.

At last the young chaplain, newly preferred to his place by an influential relative, proclaimed the subject of his first sermon before the King and Court. “Behold!” he announced, giving another swipe of his black glove along his cheek, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made!”

Instantly the chapel was filled with laughter, and while the bewildered frightened young man looked out over his congregation, tears starting into his eyes, even the King had to clear his throat and bend over to examine his shoe-lace to conceal a smile. A finger poked him gleefully through the curtains, and Charles knew that it was Frances whom he could hear gasping with laughter. But the chapel finally grew quiet again, the terrified clergyman forced himself to go on, and Charles composed himself to sleep.

Frances Stewart had replaced Barbara Palmer as the most popular and successful hostess at Whitehall. The suppers she gave in her apartments overlooking the river were crowded with all the powerful and clever men and pretty women of the Court. Both Buckingham and Arlington were trying to enlist her support for their own projects, for they were convinced as was everyone else that the King could be led through a woman.

Buckingham strummed his guitar for her and sang songs, mimicked Clarendon and Arlington, played with her at her favourite game of building card-castles, and flattered himself that she was falling in love with him. The Baron had no such social tricks at his command, but he did unbend enough to talk to her with a certain air of gracious condescension which was the best he could do toward charming a woman. And when Louis XIV sent his new minister, Courtin, to try to persuade Charles to call off the Dutch War, the merry little Frenchman immediately applied himself to Mrs. Stewart.

“Oh, heavens!” she said one evening to Charles, when he had finally maneuvered her into a corner alone. “My head’s awhirl with all this talk of politics! One tells me this and another that and a third something else—” She stopped, looked up at him and then gave a sudden mischievous little burst of laughter. “And I don’t remember any of it! If they only guessed how little I listen to their prittle-prattle I warrant you they’d all be mightily out of sorts with me.”

Charles watched her, his eyes glowing with passionate admiration, for he still thought that she was the most perfectly lovely thing he had ever seen. “Thank God you don’t listen,” he said. “A woman has no business meddling in politics. I think perhaps that’s one reason why I love you, Frances. You never trouble me with petitions—your own or anyone else’s. I see asking faces everywhere I look—and I’m glad yours doesn’t ask.” His voice dropped lower. “But I’d give you anything you want, Frances—anything you could ask for. You know that, don’t you?”

(Across the room one young man, watching them, said to another: “His Majesty’s been in love with her for two years and she’s still a virgin. I tell you, it’s beyond credence!”)

Frances smiled, a gentle wistful smile so young and artless that it clutched at his heart. “I know that you’re very generous, Sire. But truly, there’s nothing I want but to live an honourable life.”

A look of quick impatience crossed his face and his eyebrows twisted with a kind of whimsical anger. But then he smiled. “Frances, my dear, an honourable life is exactly what he who lives it thinks it to be. After all, honour is only a word.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Sire. To me, I assure you, honour is much more than a word.”

“But nevertheless it must be one or several qualities you associate with a certain word. His Grace of Buckingham, for instance, over there at the card-table, has quite another definition from your own.”

Frances laughed at that, somewhat relieved that she could, for she did not like serious conversations and felt uneasy in the presence of an abstraction. “I don’t doubt that, your Majesty. I think that’s one subject where his Grace and I think no more alike than you and I do.”