As for Charles, he was furious and stopped her pension. But Charles's furies never lasted long; like the Duchesse, whose character and exciting career closely resembled his own, he was too easy-going to cherish resentment. He gave her back her pension shortly afterwards, saying, "It was in repayment of sums advanced him years before by the Cardinal," and treated her henceforth as the best of friends. But this method of repaying debts was not at all to the fancy of the Duc de Mazarin. He despatched a friend to England to tell the King that he considered such payment valueless, to which Charles replied with a cynical laugh, "Quite so; I do not ask for a receipt."
Now began for the Duchesse the happiest and most brilliant period of her life. It lasted for the rest of the reign, during which, basking in the favour of the King and the Royal Family, and worshipped by the young Countess of Sussex, Charles's daughter by the Duchess of Cleveland, she gave herself up to a life of pleasure. The consideration she enjoyed gave her great influence, which, as she detested politics, she made no use of save to increase her credit with the tradespeople. At first she did not feel the chain of debt to which she was fastened. Courtin wrote to Louvois, "If you had seen her dancing the _furlano_ to the music of a guitar, which she thrummed herself, you would have been captivated." To which Louvois replied, "If I were at the English Court, I am sure that all I should do would be to feast my eyes on Madame de Mazarin"--a curious sidelight on despatches of State of that day, considering, as Forneron says, that "the only serious man at Whitehall was the French Ambassador."
The taste that she had developed during her stay in Savoy for art and letters was now assiduously cultivated. Like a true _femme galante_ of the seventeenth century, she coloured her very frivolities with an air of culture. But in the case of the Duchesse de Mazarin the cult of learning was not altogether an affectation by means of which she sought to gain the respect she had lost. She was an omnivorous reader, especially of philosophic works, and very fond of discussing what she read. If intellectually superficial, she was a brilliant conversationalist, and had the art of so disguising her thefts from the brains of the clever men whose society she really enjoyed that they were undiscovered. She could not write, but she could talk. In her _salon_, one of the first of the kind in England, all manner of subjects were discussed: philosophy, religion, history, wit, gallantry, the stage, music, art, ancient and modern literature. The use of the word "Vast" once gave rise to a controversy that was finally settled by an appeal to the French Academy. Intellectuality was the frame in which she set pleasure; for she still continued her life of aristocratic harlotry, and was sometimes among the number, from duchesses to demi-reps, that Chiffinch, the vicious but amusing _concièrge_ of the back-stairs of Whitehall, smuggled of nights into the royal bedchamber. But these blots on her spiritual life, which possibly in our times in the case of such a woman might be excused by the words, "artistic temperament," required no excuse at all then. Moreover, Madame de Mazarin kept a good table and an open house--two means of silencing scandal that are not yet ineffective.