Then she came to France, but Fanny cannot have been
Thackeray's 'Queen Oglethorpe' at Bar-le-Duc. In the first place, she
was not there; in the second, a lady of Lorraine was reigning
monarch.[39]
[Footnote 39: Wolff, _Odd Bits of History_ (1844), pp. 1-58.]
With the fall of Oxford in 1714 ended Anne's chief opportunity of
serving her King. The historian therefore turns to her sister Eleanor,
who had been with her in the Fanny Shaftoe affair, but remained in
France. Penniless as she was, Eleanor's beauty won the heart of the
Marquis de Mezieres, a great noble, a man over fifty, ugly, brave,
misshapen. Theirs, none the less, was a love match, as the French
Court admiringly proclaimed. 'The frog-faced' Marquis, the vainest of
men, was one of the most courageous. Their daughters became the
Princesses de Montauban and de Ligne, whose brilliant marriages caused
much envy. Of their sons we shall hear later. Young Fanny Oglethorpe,
a girl of twenty in 1715, resided with her sister Eleanor (Madame de
Mezieres), and now Bolingbroke, flying from the Tower, and become the
Minister of James, grumbles at the presence of Fanny, and of Olive
Trant, among the conspirators for a Restoration.
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