Five or six of us eat together one meal a day for a pistole a week; but all of us owe, for God knows how many weeks, to the poor woman that feeds us." He adds that he wanted shoes and shirts, and that the marquis of Ormond was in no better condition. The court of Charles was as much rent with divisions and jealousies as it was poor. His brave conduct in England raised great hopes of him, but on his return to France he relapsed into all sorts of dissipations and intrigues, which made him contemptible. Amongst a troop of mistresses, Lucy Walters, or Barlow, as she was called, the mother of the afterwards celebrated duke of Monmouth, was the most notorious.
View in the Mountains of Piedmont.
As Mazarin saw the growing power of Cromwell, he was glad to get Charles removed from Paris, and he took no his abode at Cologne, but remained still the pensioner of France, and was equally capable of annoying England from that place, as the late outbreaks showed. These circumstances no doubt rendered it very difficult for the conclusion of a peace betwixt Cromwell and France, for Cromwell must insist on the withdrawal of the French support from the exiled family, and though France was fully disposed to abate the evil as far as possible, it could not in honour entirely abandon them. Mazarin made every possible concession on other points, and the French ambassador, Bordeaux,
