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The wheel of circumstance had turned once more and a few days later Julie changed her appartements for some on a higher landing. What vice! What intrigue! What corruption! Versailles seemed but a vast conservatory sheltering the vile soil from which sprang the lilies of France La Belle France, as Edgar Sheepmeadow so eloquently puts it.

It was, Sheepmeadow writes, like the meeting of flint and tinder these two so widely different in the essentials and yet so akin in their physical beauty. As was inevitable, from the first they loved he with the flaming passion of a hell-rake, she with the sweet, appealing purity of one whose whole life had been peculiarly virginal.

A few moments later they were on a sturdy mare, she riding pillion, he riding anyhow. Not a sound had been heard, not a dog had barked, not a bird had called. Once, Sheepmeadow informs us, Lady Ffraddle turned over in her sleep. Poor, unsuspecting mother! On and on through the snow rode the feckless couple. Once Sarah rested her hand lightly on her lover's arm.

Whenever there were theatricals given, Sheepmeadow tells us, Sarah invariably appeared as Diana or Minerva, preferring these parts on account of their suitability to her youth and figure. All these events took place long after Punter's portrait, though several others were done latterly. Her wit and gaiety were of course world-famed, and her political treatises are preserved to this day.

Sarah a rose-leaf, a crumpled atom, dropped as it were from some heavenly garden into the black times of the Merry Monarch when, according to Bloodworthy, virtue was laughed to scorn and evil went unpunished; when, according to Follygob, virginity was a scream, and harlotry a hobby; and when, according to Sheepmeadow, homeliness was sin, and beauty but a gilded casket concealing vice and depravity unutterable.