[2] Madame de Motteville.

Mazarin, moreover, had never been displeasing to her. He had begun to ingratiate himself during the month preceding the death of Louis XIII.,[3] and she named him Prime Minister about the middle of May—partly through personal liking, but more through political necessity. Far from appearing to resemble the impassive and imperious Richelieu, Anne perhaps might have recalled with agreeable emotion the words of her deceased consort when he first presented Mazarin to her (in 1639 or 1640)—"He will please you, madame, because he bears a striking resemblance to Buckingham." By degrees the liking increased, and grew sufficiently strong to resist every assault from his enemies. At the same time the Minister to whom the Queen owed so much, instead of dictating to and presuming to govern her, was ever at her feet, and prodigal of that attention, respect, and tenderness to which she had been hitherto a stranger.

[3] Louis died May 14th, 1643.

It is a delicate matter to investigate with exactitude the means by which Mazarin obtained entire sway over the Queen-Regent, and one which La Rochefoucauld scarcely touches upon; but it is too interesting a point in history to be left in the dark, and thereby to altogether disregard that which first constituted the minister's strength, and soon afterwards became the centre and key of the situation. After a long season of oppression, regal powers and splendour gilded the hours of Anne of Austria, and her Spanish pride exacted the tribute of respect and homage. Mazarin was prodigal of both. He cast himself at her feet in order to reach her heart. In her heart of hearts she was not the less touched by the grave accusation brought against him that he was a foreigner, for was not she also a foreigner? Perhaps that of itself proved the source of a mysterious attraction to her, and she may have found it a singular pleasure to converse with her Prime Minister in her mother tongue as a compatriot and friend. To all this must be added the mind and manners of Mazarin—supple and insinuating, always master of himself, of an unchangeable serenity amidst the gravest circumstances, full of confidence in his good star, and diffusing that confidence around him. It must also be remembered that Cardinal although he was, Mazarin was not a priest; that imbued with the maxims which formed the code of gallantry of her native land, Anne of Austria had always loved to please the other sex; that she was then forty-one and still beautiful, that her Prime Minister was of the same age, that he was exceedingly well-made and of a most pleasing countenance, in which finesse, was blended with a certain air of greatness. He had readily recognised that without ancestry, establishment, or support in France, and surrounded by rivals and enemies, all his strength centred in the Queen. He applied himself therefore above all things to gain her heart, as Richelieu had tried before him; and as he happily possessed far other means for attaining success in that respect, the handsome and gentle-mannered Cardinal eventually succeeded. Once master of her heart, he easily directed the mind of Anne of Austria, and taught her the difficult art of pursuing ever the same end by the aid of conduct the most diverse, according to the difference of circumstances.

But favourable and indeed gracious as his royal mistress had shown herself towards him personally, and apart from any particular line of policy, at the outset of his premiership Mazarin had nevertheless to contend against a formidable host of enemies; and not the least redoubtable among them might be reckoned that intrepid political heroine the lately-banished Duchess de Chevreuse. No sooner did she again find herself at the side of Anne of Austria than the indefatigable Marie set to work with all her characteristic dash, spirit, and energy to attack Richelieu's system and its adherents, now directed by Mazarin.

The first point she sought to carry was the return of Chateauneuf to office. "The good sense and long experience of M. de Chateauneuf," says La Rochefoucauld, "were known to the Queen. He had undergone a rigorous imprisonment for his adhesion to her cause; he was firm, decisive, loved the State, and more capable than anyone else of re-establishing the old form of government which Richelieu had first begun to destroy. Firmly attached to Mdme. de Chevreuse, she knew sufficiently-well how to govern him. She therefore urged his return with much warmth." Chateauneuf had already obtained as a royal boon that the "rude and miserable condition" of close incarceration under which he had groaned for ten years should be changed for a compulsory residence at one of his country houses. Mdme. de Chevreuse demanded the termination of this mitigated exile, that she might once more behold him free who had endured such extremities for the Queen's sake and her own. Mazarin saw that he must yield, but only did so tardily, never appearing himself to repulse Chateauneuf, but always alleging the paramount necessity of conciliating the Conde family, and especially the Princess, who, as already said, bore bitter enmity towards him as the judge of her brother, Henri de Montmorency. Chateauneuf was therefore recalled, but with that reservation accorded to the last clause of the King's will, that he should not appear at Court, but reside at his own house of Montrouge, near Paris, where his friends might visit him.

The next step was to transfer him thence to some ministerial office. Chateauneuf was no longer a young man, but neither his energy nor his ambition had deserted him, and Mdme. de Chevreuse made it a point of honour to reinstate him in the post of Keeper of the Seals, which he had formerly held and lost through her, and which all Queen Anne's old friends now saw with indignation occupied by one of the most detested of Richelieu's creatures, Pierre Seguier. This last, however, was a man of capacity—laborious, well-informed and full of resources. To these qualifications he added a remarkable suppleness, which made him very useful and accommodating to a Prime Minister. He moreover had the support of friends who stood high in the Queen's favour, and was further strengthened by the opposition of the Condes and the Bishop of Beauvais to Chateauneuf. The Duchess perceiving that it was almost impossible to surmount so powerful an opposition, took another way of arriving at the same end. She contented herself with asking for the lowest seat in the cabinet for her friend; well knowing that once installed therein, Chateauneuf would soon manage all the rest and aggrandise his position.

At the same time that she strove to extricate from disgrace the man upon whom rested all her political hopes, Madame de Chevreuse, not daring to attack Mazarin overtly, insensibly undermined the ground beneath his feet, and step by step prepared his ruin. Her experienced eye enabled her promptly to perceive the most favourable point of attack whence to assail the Queen, and the watchword she passed was to fan and keep alive to the utmost the general feeling of reprobation which all the proscribed, on returning to France, had aroused and disseminated against the memory of Richelieu. This feeling was universal—among the great families he had decimated or despoiled;—in the Church, too firmly repressed not to be unmindful of its abasement;—in the Parliament, strictly confined to its judicial functions, and aspiring to break through such narrow limits. The same feeling was still alive in the Queen's bosom, who could not have forgotten the deep humiliation to which Richelieu had subjected her, and the fate for which he had probably reserved her. These tactics succeeded, and on every side there arose against the late violence and tyranny, and, by a rebound, against the creatures of Richelieu, a storm so furious that Mazarin's utmost ability was taxed to allay it.

Madame de Chevreuse likewise supplicated Anne of Austria to repair the long-endured misfortunes of the Vendome princes, by bestowing upon them either the Admiralty, to which an immense power was attached, or the government of Brittany, which the head of the family, Caesar de Vendome, had formerly held—deriving it alike from the hand of his father, Henry IV., and as the heritage of his father-in-law, the Duke de Mercoeur. This was nothing less than demanding the aggrandisement of an unfriendly house, and at the same time the ruin of two families that had served Richelieu with the utmost devotion, and were best capable of supporting Mazarin. The Minister parried the blow aimed at him by the Duchess by dint of address and patience, never refusing, always eluding, and summoning to his aid his grand ally, as he termed it—Time. Before the return of Madame de Chevreuse he had found himself forced to win over the Vendomes, and to secure them in his interest. On Richelieu's death he had strenuously contributed to obtain their recall, and had since made them every kind of advance; but he soon perceived that he could not satisfy them without bringing about his own destruction. The Duke Caesar de Vendome, son of Henry IV. and The Fair Gabrielle, had early carried his pretensions to a great height, and had shown himself restless and factious as a legitimate prince. He had passed his life in revolts and conspiracies, and in 1641 had been compelled to flee to England through suspicion of being implicated in an attempt to assassinate Richelieu. He did not dare return to France until after the Cardinal's death; and, as may well be imagined, he came back breathing the direst vengeance. Against the ambition of the Vendomes Mazarin skilfully opposed that of the Condes, who were inimical to the aggrandisement of a house too nearly rivalling their own. But it was very difficult to retain Brittany in the hands of its newly-appointed governor, the Marshal La Meilleraie, in face of the claim of a son of Henry the Great, who had formerly held it, and demanded it back as a sort of heirloom. Mazarin therefore resigned himself to the sacrifice of La Meilleraie, but he lightened it as much as possible. He persuaded the Queen to assume to herself the government of Brittany, and have only a lieutenant-general over it—a post, of course, beneath the dignity of the Vendomes, and which would, therefore, remain in La Meilleraie's hands. The latter could not take offence at being second in power therein to the Queen; and to arrange everything to the entire satisfaction of a person of such importance, Mazarin solicited for him soon afterwards the title of duke, which the deceased King had, in fact, promised the Marshal, and the reversion of the post of Grand Master of the Artillery for his son—that same son on whom subsequently Mazarin bestowed, with his own name, the hand of his niece, the beautiful Hortense.

Mazarin was so much the less inclined to favour the house of Vendome from having encountered a dangerous rival in the Queen's good graces, in Vendome's youngest son, Beaufort, a young, bold, and flourishing gallant, who displayed ostentatiously all the exterior signs of loyalty and chivalry, and affected for Anne of Austria a passionate devotion not likely to be displeasing. "He was tall, well-made, dexterous, and indefatigable in all warlike exercises," says La Rochefoucauld, "but artificial withal, and wanting in truthfulness of character. Mentally he was heavy and badly cultivated; nevertheless he attained his objects cleverly enough through the blunt coarseness of his manners. He was of high but unsteady courage, and was not a little envious and malignant."[4] De Retz does not, like La Rochefoucauld, accuse Beaufort of artificiality, but represents him as presumptuous and of thorough incapacity. His portrait of him, though over-coloured, like most others from the coadjutor's pen, is sufficiently faithful, but at the commencement of the Regency, the defects of the Duke de Beaufort had not fully declared themselves, and were less conspicuous than his good qualities. Some few days before her husband's death, Anne of Austria had placed her children under his charge—a mark of confidence that so elated him that the young Duke conceived hopes which his impetuosity hindered him from sufficiently disguising. Indeed, these were presumed upon so far as to give offence to the Queen; and, as the height of inconsistency, he committed at the same time the egregious folly of publicly enacting the led-captain in the rosy chains of the handsome but decried Duchess de Montbazon. It was only, however, by slow degrees that the Queen's liking for him abated. At first, she had proposed to confer upon him the post of Grand-Ecuyer, vacant since the death of the unfortunate Cinq-Mars, which would have kept him in close attendance upon her, and was altogether a fitting appointment—for Beaufort had nothing of the statesman in him; with little intellect and no reticence, he was also averse to steady application to business, and capable only of some bold and violent course of action. The Duke had the folly to refuse this post of Grand-Ecuyer, hoping for a better; and then, altering his mind when it was too late, he solicited it only to incur disappointment.[5] The more his favour diminished, the more his irritation increased, and it was not long ere he placed himself at the head of the Cardinal's bitterest enemies.

[4] La Rochefoucauld.

[5] Mazarin himself has furnished this fact, otherwise unknown, in one of his diaries (Carnet, pp. 72, 73). The Cardinal-Minister was in the habit of jotting down the chief events of each day in these small memorandum books (Carnets), which he kept in the pocket of his cassock.

Madame de Chevreuse hoped to be more fortunate in securing the governorship of Havre for a very different sort of person—for a man of tried devotedness and of a rare and subtle intellect—La Rochefoucauld. She would thereby recompense the services rendered to the Queen and herself, strengthen and aggrandize one of the chiefs of the Importants, and weaken Mazarin by depriving of an important government a person upon whom he had entire reliance—Richelieu's niece, the Duchess d'Aiguillon. The Cardinal succeeded in rendering this manoeuvre abortive, without appearing to have any hand in it. And herein, as in many other matters, the art of Mazarin was to wear the semblance of merely confirming the Queen in the resolves with which he inspired her.

In thus attributing these various designs, this connected and consistent line of conduct, to Madame de Chevreuse, we do not advance it as our own opinion, but as that of La Rochefoucauld, who must have been perfectly well informed. He attributes it to her both in his own affairs and in those of the Vendomes. Neither was Mazarin blind to the fact, for more than once in his private notes we read these words:—"My greatest enemies are the Vendomes and Madame de Chevreuse, who urges them on." He tells us also that she had formed the project of marrying her charming daughter Charlotte, then sixteen, to the Vendome's eldest son, the Duke de Mercoeur, whilst his brother Beaufort should espouse the wealthy Mademoiselle d'Epernon, who foiled these designs, and even greater still, by throwing herself at four-and-twenty into a convent of Carmelites. These marriages, which would have reconciled, united, and strengthened so many great houses, moderately attached to the Queen and her minister, terrified Richelieu's successor. He therefore sought to foil them by every means in his power, and succeeded in prevailing upon the Queen to frustrate them in an underhand way; having found that the union of Mademoiselle de Vendome with the brilliant but restless Duke de Nemours had caused him more than ordinary anxiety.

If the intricate details of those counter intrigues of Mazarin and Madame de Chevreuse be followed attentively, we are at a loss to say to which of the two antagonists the palm for skill, sagacity, and address should be given. Whilst Mazarin was astute enough to make a certain amount of sacrifice in order to reserve to himself the right of not making greater—treating everyone with apparent consideration, rendering no one desperate, promising much, holding back the least possible proprio motu of himself, and surrounding Madame de Chevreuse herself with attention and homage without suffering any illusion to beguile him as to the nature of her sentiments—she, on her part, paid him back in the same coin. La Rochefoucauld says that during these mollia tempora, Madame de Chevreuse and Mazarin actually flirted with each other. The Duchess, who had always intermingled gallantry with politics, tried, as it appears, the power of her charms upon the Cardinal. The latter, on his side, failed not to lavish honeyed words, and "essayoit meme quelque fois de lui faire croire qu'elle lui donnoit de l'amour."[6] There were other ladies also, it seems, who would not have been sorry to please the handsome First Minister a little. Amongst these might be numbered the Princess de Guemene,[7] one of the greatest beauties of the French Court, who, certainly, if only one half the stories related of her be true, was by no means of a ferocious disposition in affairs of gallantry. This lady, as well as her husband, were both favourable to Mazarin, in spite of all the efforts of Madame de Montbazon, and Madame de Chevreuse, her sister-in-law. It may be readily imagined that Mazarin devoted great attention to Madame de Guemene, and did not fail to pay her a host of compliments, as he did to Madame de Chevreuse; but as he went no further, the two gay ladies were at a loss to conceive what so many compliments coupled with so much reserve meant. They sometimes asked which of the two was really the object of his admiration; and as he still made no further advances at the same time that he continued his gallant protestations, "these ladies," says Mazarin, "si esamina la mia vita e si conclude che io sia impotente."[8]

[6] La Rochefoucauld, Memoirs, p. 383.

[7] Anne de Rohan, wife of M. de Guemene, eldest son of the Duke de Montbazon, and brother of Madame de Chevreuse.

[8] Carnet, iii. p. 39.

Political intrigue had become such an affair of fashion among the Court dames of that day, that those of the highest rank made no scruple of bringing into play all the artillery of their wit and beauty whenever they could contribute to the success of their enterprises. Still endowed with those two potent gifts to an eminent degree, Madame de Chevreuse brought all her various influences into perfect combination, and had grown so passionately fond of the fierce excitement of conspiring, that love was to her now merely a means and political victory the end. She devoted literally her entire existence to it, living in the confidence and intimacy of the Vendomes and other noble perturbators of the hour. Her activity, her penetration, her energy obtained for her among the party of the Importants the importance she coveted. It was not long, therefore, ere she begun to give Mazarin cause for grave anxiety. During the encounters resulting from this strenuous antagonism, reconciliations occasionally took place, in which even the Cardinal's coldness, caution, and his laborious occupation, could not, it is said, place him beyond reach of the Duchess's irresistible fascinations. But the latter, well aware that the role of Mazarin's mistress would not give to her grasp the helm of the State, which he reserved exclusively to himself, preferred, therefore, rather to remain his enemy, and figure at the head and front of the faction antagonistic to his government.

This flirting and skirmishing had gone on for some time, but at last natural feeling prevailed over political reticence. Madame de Chevreuse grew impatient at obtaining words only, and scarcely anything serious or effective. She had, it is true, received some money for her own use, either in repayment of that which she had formerly lent the Queen, or for the discharge of debts contracted during exile and in the interest of Anne of Austria. On returning to Court, one of her earliest steps was to withdraw her friend and protege, Alexandre de Campion, from the service of the Vendomes, and place him in a suitable position in the Queen's household. Chateauneuf had been reinstated in his former post of Chancellor (des Ordres du Roi), and later his governorship of Touraine was restored to him on the death of the Marquis de Gevres, who fell at the siege of Thionville; but the Duchess considered that that was doing very little for a man of Chateauneuf's merit—for him who had staked fortune and life, and undergone ten years' imprisonment. She readily perceived, therefore, that the perpetual delay of favours ever promised, ever deferred in the instances of the Vendomes and La Rochefoucauld, were so many artifices of the Cardinal, and that she was his dupe. This conviction put the spirited partisan upon her mettle. She began to titter, to mock, and to expostulate by turns, and sometimes twitted the minister in pert and derisive terms. This, however, betrayed a want of her ordinary precaution, and only served to fill Mazarin's quiver with shafts to be used against herself. He made the Queen believe that Madame de Chevreuse sought to rule her with a rod of iron; that she had changed her mask, but not her character; that she was ever the same impulsive and restless person, who, with all her talent and devotedness, had never worked aught but mischief around her, and was only instrumental in ruining others as well as herself. By degrees, underhand and hidden as it might be, war between the Duchess and the Cardinal declared itself unmistakably. The commencement and progress of this curious struggle for supremacy has been admirably depicted by La Rochefoucauld; and, while the autograph memoranda of Mazarin cast a fresh flood of light upon it, they enhance infinitely Madame de Chevreuse's ability by revealing to what an extent that Minister dreaded her.

In every page of these invaluable carnets he indicates her as being the head and mainspring of the Importants. "It is Madame de Chevreuse," he writes repeatedly, "who stirs them all up. She endeavours to strengthen the hands of the Vendomes; she tries to win over every member of the house of Lorraine; she has already gained the Duke de Guise, and through him she strives to carry away from me the Duke d'Elbeuf." "She sees clearly through everything; she has guessed very accurately that it is I who have secretly persuaded the Queen to hinder the restoration of the government of Brittany to the Duke de Vendome. She has said so to her father, the Duke de Montbazon, and to Montagu. She has quarrelled with Montagu, in fact, because he raises an obstacle to Chateauneuf by supporting Seguier." "Nothing discourages Madame de Chevreuse; she entreats the Vendomes to have patience, and sustains them by promising a speedy change of scene." "Madame de Chevreuse never relinquishes the hope of displacing me. The reason she gives for this is, that when the Queen refused to put Chateauneuf at the head of the government, she stated that she could not do it immediately, as she must have some consideration for me, whence Madame de Chevreuse concludes that the Queen has much esteem and liking for Chateauneuf, and that when I shall be no longer where I am, the post is secured for her friend. Hence the hopes and illusions with which they are buoyed up." "The Duchess and her friends assert that the Queen will shortly send for Chateauneuf; and by so doing they abuse the minds of all, and prompt those who are looking to their future interests to pay court to her and seek her friendship. They make an excuse for the Queen's delay in giving him my place, by saying that she has still need of me for some short time." "I am told that Madame de Chevreuse secretly directs Madame de Vendome (a pious person who has great influence over the bishops and convents), and gives her instructions, in order that she may not fall into error, and that all the machinery used against me may thoroughly answer its purpose." From this last entry it is clear that Madame de Chevreuse, without being in the smallest degree possible a devote, knew right well how to make use of the parti devot, which then exercised great influence over Anne of Austria's mind, and gave serious uneasiness to Mazarin.

The Prime Minister's chief difficulty was to make Queen Anne—the sister of the King of Spain, and herself of a piety thoroughly Spanish—understand that it was necessary, notwithstanding the engagements which she had so often contracted, notwithstanding the instances of the Court of Rome and those of the heads of the episcopate, to continue the alliance with the Protestants of Germany and Holland, and to persist in only consenting to a general peace in which the allies of France should equally find their account as well as that country itself. On the other side, it was continually dinned into the Queen's ear that it was practicable to make a separate treaty of peace, and negotiate singly with Spain on very fitting conditions, that by such means the scandal of an impious war between "the very Christian" and "the very Catholic" King would cease, and a relief be afforded to France very much needed. Such was the policy of the Queen's old friends. It was at least specious, and reckoned numerous partisans among men the most intelligent and attached to the interests of their country. Mazarin, the disciple and successor of Richelieu, had higher views, but which it was not easy at first to make Anne of Austria comprehend. By degrees, however, he succeeded, thanks to his judicious efforts, renewed incessantly and with infinite art; thanks especially to the victories of the Duke d'Enghien—for in all worldly affairs success is a very eloquent and right persuasive advocate. The Queen, however, remained for a considerable interval undecided, and it may be seen by Mazarin's own memoranda that during the latter part of May, as well as through the whole of June and July, the Cardinal's greatest effort was to induce the Regent not to abandon her allies, but to firmly carry on the war. Madame de Chevreuse, with Chateauneuf, defended the old party policy, and strove to bring over Anne of Austria to it. "Madame de Chevreuse," wrote Mazarin, "causes the Queen to be told from all quarters that I do not wish for peace, that I hold the same maxims as Cardinal Richelieu on the point—that it is both easy and necessary to make a separate treaty of peace." On several occasions he made indignant protestation against such arrangement, pointing out the danger with which it was fraught, and that it would render ineffectual those sacrifices which France had for so many years made. "Madame de Chevreuse," he exclaimed, "would ruin France!" He knew well that, intimately associated with Gaston, her old accomplice in all the plots framed against Richelieu, she had won him over to the idea of a separate peace by holding out the hope of a marriage between his daughter Mademoiselle de Montpensier and the Arch-duke, which would have brought him the government of the Low Countries. He knew that she had preserved all her influence with the Duke de Lorraine; he knew, in fine, that she boasted of having the power of promptly negotiating a peace through the mediation of the Queen of Spain, who was at her disposal. Thus informed, he entreated his royal mistress to reject all Madame de Chevreuse's propositions, and to tell her plainly that she would not listen to anything relating to a separate treaty, that she was decided upon not separating herself from her allies, that she desired a general peace, that with such view she had sent her ministers to Munster, who were then negotiating that important matter, and that it was superfluous to speak to her any more upon the subject.

Though baffled on these different points, Madame de Chevreuse did not consider herself vanquished. She rallied and emboldened her adherents by her lofty spirit and firm resolution. The party feud went on—intrigues were multiplied—but up to the close of August, 1643, no change had taken place, though the acrimony of party feeling had become largely increased. Finding that she had fruitlessly employed insinuation, flattery, artifice, and every species of Court manoeuvre, her daring mind did not shrink from the idea of having recourse to other means of success. She kept up a brisk agitation amongst the bishops and devotees, she continued to weave her political plots with the chiefs of the Importants, and at the same time she formed a closer intimacy with that small cabal which formed in some sort the advance-guard of that party, composed of men reared amongst the old conspiracies, accustomed to and always ready for coups de main, who had of old embarked in more than one desperate enterprise against Richelieu, and who, in an extremity, might be likewise launched against Mazarin. The memoirs of the time, and especially those of De Retz and La Rochefoucauld, make us sufficiently well acquainted with their names and characters. The former mistress of Chalais found little difficulty in acquiring sole sway over a faction composed of second-rate talents. She caressed it skilfully; and, with the art of an experienced conspirator, she fomented every germ of false honour, of quintessential devotedness, and extravagant rashness. Mazarin, who, like Richelieu, had an admirable police, forewarned of Madame de Chevreuse's machinations, fully comprehended the danger with which he was menaced. No one could have been better informed as to his exact position than the Cardinal: and the plans of the Duchess and the chiefs of the Importants developed themselves clearly under Mazarin's sharp-sightedness—either by their incessant and elaborately-concerted intrigues with the Queen, to force her to abandon a minister to whose policy she had not yet openly declared her adhesion, or, should it prove necessary, treat that minister as De Luynes had done the last Queen-mother's favourite d'Ancre, and as Montresor, Barriere, and Saint-Ybar would have served Richelieu. The first plan not having succeeded, they began to think seriously about carrying out the second, and Madame de Chevreuse, the strongest mind of the party, proposed with some show of reason to act before the return of the young hero of Rocroy, the Duke d'Enghien; for that victorious soldier once in Paris would unquestionably shield Mazarin. It became necessary, therefore, to profit by his absence in order to strike a decisive blow. Success seemed certain, and even easy. They were sure of having the people with them, who, exhausted by a long war and groaning under taxation, would naturally welcome with delight the hope of peace and repose. They might reckon on the declared support of the parliament, burning to recover that importance in the State of which it had been deprived by Richelieu, and which was then a matter of dispute with Mazarin. They had all the secret, even overt sympathy of the episcopate, which, with Rome, detested the Protestant alliance, and demanded the restoration of that of Spain. The eager concurrence of the aristocracy could not be doubted for a moment; which ever regretted its old and turbulent independence, and whose most illustrious representatives, the Vendomes, the Guises, the Bouillons, and the La Rochefoucaulds were strenously opposed to the domination of a foreign favourite, without fortune, of no birth, and as yet without fame. The princes of the blood resigned themselves to Mazarin rather than to liking him. The Duke d'Orleans was not remarkable for great fidelity to his friends, and the politic Prince de Conde looked twice ere he quarrelled with the successful. He coaxed all parties, whilst he clung to his own interests. His son, doubtless, would follow in his father's footsteps, and he would be won over by being overwhelmed with honours. The day following that on which the blow should be struck there would be no resistance to their ascendancy, and on the very day itself scarcely any obstacle. The Italian regiments of Mazarin were with the army; there were scarcely any other troops in Paris save the regiments of the guards, the colonels of which were nearly all devoted to the Importants. The Queen herself had not yet renounced her former friendships. Her prudent reserve even was wrongly interpreted. As it was her desire to appease and deal gently on all hands, she gave kind words to everybody, and those kind words were taken as tacit encouragement. Anne had not hitherto shown much firmness of character; a certain amount of liking for the Cardinal was not unjustly imputed to her, and undue significance already attributed to the steadily increasing attachment of a few short months.

Mazarin, on his own part, indulged in no illusions. He was decidedly not yet master of Anne of Austria's heart; since at that moment—that is to say, during the month of July, 1643—in his most secret notes he displays a deep inquietude and despondency. The dissimulation of which everybody accused the Queen obviously terrified him, and we see him passing through all the alternations of hope and fear. It is very curious to trace and follow out the varied fluctuations of his mind. In his official letters to ambassadors and generals he affects a security which he does not feel. With his own intimate friends he permits some hint of his perplexities to escape him, but in his private memoranda they are all laid bare. We therein read his inmost carks and cares, and his passionate entreaties that the Queen-Regent would open her mind to him. He feigns the utmost disinterestedness towards her; he simply asks to make way for Chateauneuf, if she has any secret preference for that minister. The ambiguous conduct of the Regent harasses and distresses him, and he conjures her either to permit him to retire or to declare herself in favour of his policy.

This exciting contest continued with the keenest activity, but no change had occurred up to the end of July, and even the first days of August, 1643, though this critical state of affairs had become greatly aggravated. The violence of the Importants increased daily; the Queen defended her minister, but she also showed consideration for his enemies. She hesitated to take the decided attitude which Mazarin required at her hands, not only in his individual interest, but in that of his government. Suddenly an incident, very insignificant apparently, but which by assuming larger proportions brought about the inevitable crisis—forced the Queen to declare herself, and Madame de Chevreuse to plunge deeper into a baleful enterprise, the idea of which had already forced itself upon her imagination. A great scandal occurred. We allude to a quarrel between the two duchesses, de Longueville and de Montbazon.



CHAPTER II.

THE DUCHESS DE MONTBAZON.—THE AFFAIR OF THE DROPPED LETTERS.—THE QUARREL OF THE TWO DUCHESSES.

ON declaring itself of the party of Mazarin, the house of Conde had drawn down the hatred of the Importants, though their hostility scarcely fell upon Madame de Longueville. Her gentleness in everything in which her heart was not seriously engaged, her entire indifference to politics at this period of her life, with the graces of her mind and person, rendered her pleasing to every one, and shielded her from party spite. But apart from affairs of State, she had an enemy, and a formidable enemy, in the Duchess de Montbazon. We have said that Madame de Montbazon had been the mistress of the Duke de Longueville, and as one of the principal personages of the drama we are about to relate, she requires to be somewhat better known.

We shall pass over in silence many of her foibles, without attempting to excuse any. Before sketching her life, or at least a portion of it, it will be necessary, in order to protect her memory against an excess of severity, to recall certain traditions and examples for which unhappily her family was notorious.

Daughter of Claude de Bretagne, Baron d'Avangour, she was on her mother's side granddaughter of that very complaisant Marquis de La Varenne Fouquet, who, successively scullion, cook, and maitre d'hotel of Henry the Fourth, "gained more by carrying the amorous King's poulets than basting those in his kitchen." Catherine Fouquet, Countess de Vertus, his daughter, Madame de Montbazon's mother, was beautiful, witty, somewhat giddy, and very gallant. Impatient of all hindrance, she had authorised one of her lovers to assassinate her husband; but it was the husband who assassinated the lover. The tragical termination of this rencontre does not seem to have cast a gloom over the life of the Countess de Vertus, for at seventy she began to learn to dance, and when seventy-three, married a young man over head and ears in debt.

In 1628, Marie d'Avangour quitted her convent to espouse Hercule de Rohan, Duke de Montbazon, who was the father, by his first marriage, of Madame de Chevreuse and of the Prince de Guemene. She was sixteen, and he sixty-one. Thorough fool as he was, the Duke did not conceal from himself, it is said, the conviction that such an union was fraught with some danger to him; but we may venture to affirm that he could not have foreseen all its dangers. Full of respect for the virtues of Marie de' Medicis, he recommended her example to his wife; then, with every confidence in the future, he conducted her to Court.

In beauty the daughter was worthy of the mother, but in vices she left her far behind. Tallemant says she was one of the loveliest women imaginable. Her mind was not her most brilliant side, and the little that she had was turned to intrigue and perfidy. "Her mind," says the indulgent Madame de Motteville, "was not so fine as her person; her brilliancy was limited to her eyes, which commanded love. She claimed universal admiration." In regard to her character, all are unanimous. De Retz, who knew her well, speaks of her in these terms: "Madame de Montbazon was a very great beauty. Modesty was wanting in her air. Her jargon might, during a dull hour, have supplied the defects of her mind. She showed but little faith in gallantry, none in business. She loved her own pleasure alone, and above her pleasure her interest. I never saw a person who, in vice, preserved so little respect for virtue." Supremely vain and passionately fond of money, it was by the aid of her beauty that she sought influence and fortune. She, therefore, took infinite care of it, as of her idol, as of her resources, her treasure. She kept it in repair, heightened it by all sorts of artifices, and preserved it almost uninjured till her death. Madame de Motteville asserts that, during the latter part of her life, she was as full of vanity as if she were but twenty-five years of age; that she had the same desire to please, and that she wore her mourning garb in so charming a manner, that "the order of nature seemed changed, since age and beauty could be found united." Ten years before, in 1647, at the age of thirty-five, when Mazarin gave a comedy in the Italian style, that is, an opera, there was in the evening a grand ball, and the Duchess de Montbazon was present, adorned with pearls, with a red feather on her head, and so dazzling in her appearance that the whole company was completely charmed. We can imagine what she was in 1643, at the age of thirty-one.

Of the two conditions of perfect beauty—strength and grace, Madame de Montbazon possessed the first in the highest degree. She was tall and majestic, and she had all the charms of embonpoint. Her throat reminded one of the fulness, in this particular, of the antique statues—exceeding them, perhaps, somewhat. What struck the beholder most were her eyes and hair of intense blackness, upon a skin of the most dazzling white. Her defect was a nose somewhat too prominent, with a mouth so large as to give her face an appearance of severity. It will be seen that she was the very opposite of Madame de Longueville. The latter was tall, but not to excess. The richness of her form did not diminish its delicacy. A moderate embonpoint exhibited, in full and exquisite measure, the beauty of the female form. Her eyes were of the softest blue; her hair of the most beautiful blonde. She had the most majestic air, and yet her peculiar characteristic was grace. To these were added the great difference of manners and tone. Madame de Longueville was, in her deportment, dignity, politeness, modesty, sweetness itself, with a languor and nonchalance which formed not her least charm. Her words were few, as well as her gestures; the inflexions of her voice were a perfect music.[1] The excess, into which she never fell, might have been a sort of fastidiousness. Everything in her was wit, sentiment, charm. Madame de Montbazon, on the contrary, was free of speech, bold and easy in her tone, full of stateliness and pride.

[1] Villefore, p. 32.

The Duchess was, nevertheless, a very attractive creature when she desired to be so, and such we must conceive her to have been if we would take account of the admiration she excited, and not exactly like the person which Cousin represents her when, at the age of nearly forty, she had become "a Colossus"—to use Tallemant's phrase. At the same time it is true that, even in youth, she had less grace than strength, less delicacy than majesty. It is also true that she was free of speech, and in tone was bold and offhand; but those very defects for which she was remarkable only the better assured her empire over what, in modern parlance, would be termed the "fast" portion of the Court, and the sentiments to which she gave utterance revealed the most singular extravagance. But not a single voice protested when the Duke d'Hocquincourt proclaimed her la belle des belles. In the eyes of the foreigner she was the marvel which the generals who dreamed of the capture of Paris coveted; in other words, she was par excellence "the booty" most desirable, on the subject of which the Duke of Weimar perpetrated a thoroughly German joke, which we must be pardoned for not repeating: Anne of Austria might have smiled at it without blushing, but it is too gross to risk raising a laugh by its repetition in our days.

She had a great number of adorers, and of happy adorers, from Gaston Duke of Orleans, and the Count de Soissons, slain at Marfee, to Rance, the young and gallant editor of Anacreon, and the future founder of La Trappe. M. de Longueville had been for some time her lover by title, and he afforded her considerable advantages. When he married Mademoiselle de Bourbon, Madame the Princess exacted—without, however, being very faithfully obeyed—the discontinuance of all intercourse with his old mistress. Hence, in that interested soul, an irritation, which wounded vanity redoubled, when she saw this young bride, with her great name, her marvellous mind, her indefinable charms, advance into the world of gallantry, without the least effort draw after her all hearts, and take possession of, or at least share that empire of beauty of which she was so proud, and which was to her so precious. On the other hand, the Duke de Beaufort had not been able to restrain a passionate admiration for Madame de Longueville, which had been very coldly received. He was wounded by it, and his wound bled for a long time, as his friend, La Chatre, informs us,[2] even after he had transferred his homage to Madame de Montbazon. The latter, as may be easily imagined, was again exasperated. Finally, the Duke de Guise, recently arrived in Paris, placed himself in the party of the Importants and at the service of Madame de Montbazon, who received him very favourably, at the same time she was striving to keep or recall the Duke de Longueville, and that she was ruling Beaufort, whose office near her was somewhat that of a cavalier servente. Thus it will be seen that Madame de Montbazon disposed through Beaufort and through Guise, as through her daughter-in-law Madame de Chevreuse, of the house of Vendome and that of Lorraine, and she employed all this influence to the profit of her hatred against Madame de Longueville. She burned to injure her, and was not long in finding an opportunity of doing it.

[2] Memoires of La Chatre. Petitot Collection, vol. li. p. 230.

One day when a numerous company was assembled in her salon, one of her young lady friends picked up a couple of letters which had been dropped on the floor, bearing no signatures, but in a feminine handwriting, and of a somewhat equivocal style. They were read, and a thousand jokes perpetrated concerning them, and some effort made to discover the author. They were from a woman who wrote tenderly to some one whom she did not hate. Madame de Montbazon pretended that they had fallen from the pocket of Maurice de Coligny, who had just gone out, and that they were in the handwriting of Madame de Longueville. The word of command thus once given, the Duke de Beaufort was amongst the first to spread the insinuation which was a calumny, all the echoes of the party of the Importants took it up, and Madame de Montbazon herself found pleasure in repeating it during several following days, so that the incident became the entertainment of the Court. A frivolous curiosity has very faithfully preserved the text of the two letters thus found at the Duchess's house.[3]

[3] Memoires of Madlle. de Montpensier, vol. i. pp. 62, 63.

I.

"I should much more regret the change in your conduct if I thought myself less worthy of a continuation of your affection. I confess to you that so long as I believed it to be true and warm, mine gave you all the advantages which you could desire. Now, hope nothing more from me than the esteem which I owe to your discretion. I have too much pride to share the passion which you have so often sworn to me, and I desire to punish your negligence in seeing me, in no other way than by depriving you entirely of my society. I request that you will visit me no more, since I have no longer the power of commanding your presence."

II.

"To what conclusion have you come after so long a silence? Do you not know that the same pride which rendered me sensible to your past affection forbids me to endure the false appearances of its continuation! You say that my suspicions and my inequalities render you the most unhappy person in the world. I assure you that I believe no such thing, although I cannot deny that you have perfectly loved me, as you must confess that my esteem has worthily recompensed you. So far we have done each other justice, and I am determined not to have in the end less goodness, if your conduct responds to my intentions. You would find them less unreasonable if you had more passion, and the difficulties of seeing me would only augment instead of diminishing it. I suffer for loving too much, and you for not loving enough. If I must believe you, let us exchange humours. I shall find repose in doing my duty, and you in doing yours, and you must fail in doing yours, in order to obtain liberty. I do not perceive that I forget the manner in which I passed the winter with you, and that I speak to you as frankly as I have heretofore done. I hope that you will make as good use of it, and that I shall not regret being overcome in the resolution which I have made to return to it no more. I shall remain at home for three or four days in succession, and will be seen only in the evening: you know the reason."

These letters were not forgeries. They had been really written by Madame de Fouquerolles to the handsome and elegant Marquis de Maulevrier, who had been silly enough to drop them in Madame de Montbazon's salon. Maulevrier, trembling at being discovered, and at having compromised Madame de Fouquerolles, ran to La Rochefoucauld, who was his friend, confided to him his secret, and begged him to undertake to hush up the affair. La Rochefoucauld made Madame de Montbazon understand that it was for her interest to be generous on this occasion, for the error or fraud would be easily recognised as soon as the writing should be compared with that of Madame de Longueville. Madame de Montbazon placed the original letters in the hands of La Rochefoucauld, who showed them to M. the Prince and to Madame the Princess, to Madame de Rambouillet, and to Madame Sable, particular friends of Madame de Longueville, and, the truth being well established, burned them in the presence of the Queen, delivering Maulevrier and Madame de Fouquerolles from the terrible anxiety into which they had been for some time thrown.

The house of Conde felt a lively resentment at the insult offered to it. The Duke and Duchess de Longueville desired, it is true, the one by a sentiment of interested prudence, the other by a just feeling of dignity, to take no further notice of the matter. But the Princess, impelled by her high spirit, and still intoxicated by her son's success, exacted a reparation equal to the offence, and declared loudly that, if the Queen and the government did not defend the honour of her house, she and all her family would withdraw from the Court. She was indignant at the mere idea of placing her daughter in the scales with the granddaughter of a cook. In vain did the whole party of the Importants, with Beaufort and Guise at their head, agitate and threaten; in vain did Madame de Chevreuse, who had not yet lost all her influence with the Queen, strive earnestly in behalf of her mother-in-law. It did not suffice for the resentment of the Princess and the Duke d'Enghien that Madame de Longueville's innocence was fully recognised; they demanded a public reparation. Madame de Motteville has left us an amusing recital of the "mummeries," as she terms them, of which she was a witness.

The Queen was in her state cabinet and the Princess beside her, in great emotion and looking very fierce, declaring the affair to be nothing less than the crime of high treason. Madame de Chevreuse, interested for a thousand reasons in the quarrel of her mother-in-law, was busy with Cardinal Mazarin arranging the composition of the apology to be made. At every word there was a pour-parler of half an hour. The Cardinal went from one side to the other to accommodate the difference, as if such a peace was necessary for the welfare of France, and his own in particular. It was arranged that the criminal should present herself at the Princess's hotel on the morrow.

The apology was written upon a small piece of paper and attached to her fan, in order that she might repeat it word for word to the Princess. She did it in the most haughty manner possible, assuming an air which seemed to say, "I jest in every word I utter."

Mademoiselle de Montpensier gives us the two speeches made upon the occasion. "Madame, I come here to protest to you that I am innocent of the wickedness of which I have been accused: no person of honour could utter a calumny such as this. If I had committed a like fault, I should have submitted to any punishment which it might have pleased the Queen to inflict upon me; I should never have shown myself again in the world, and would have asked your pardon. I beg you to believe that I shall never fail in the respect which I owe to you and in the opinion which I have of the virtue and of the merit of Madame de Longueville."[4] That lady was not present at the ceremony, and her mother, to whom the Duchess addressed herself, made a very short and dry reply. This reconciliation did not deceive any one of those present; it was, in fact, only a fresh declaration of war.

[4] Memoires, vol. i. p. 65.

Besides the satisfaction which she had just obtained, the Princess had asked and had been permitted the privilege of never associating with the Duchess de Montbazon. Some time after, Madame de Chevreuse invited the Queen to a collation in the public garden of Renard. This was then the rendezvous of the best society. It was at the termination of the Tuileries, near the Porte de la Conference, which abutted on the Cours de la Reine. In the summer, on returning from the Cours, which was the "Rotten Row" of the day, and the spot where the beauties of the time exercised their powers, it was customary to stop at the garden Renard for the purpose of taking refreshments, and to listen to serenades performed after the Spanish fashion. The Queen took pleasure in visiting this place during fine summer evenings. She desired Madame the Princess to partake with her the collation offered by Madame de Chevreuse, assuring her at the same time that Madame de Montbazon would not be present; but the latter person was really there, and even pretended to do the honours of the collation as mother-in-law of the lady who gave it. The Princess wished to withdraw, in order that the entertainment might not be disturbed: the Queen had no right whatever to detain her. She, therefore, begged Madame de Montbazon to pretend sickness, and by leaving the party, to relieve her from embarrassment. The haughty Duchess would not consent to fly before her enemy, and kept her place. The Queen, offended, refused the collation and quitted the promenade. On the morrow an order from the King enjoined upon Madame de Montbazon to leave Paris. This disgrace irritated the Importants. They thought themselves humiliated and enfeebled, and there were no violent or extreme measures which they did not contemplate. The Duke de Beaufort, smitten at once in his influence and his love, uttered loud denunciations, and it was reported that a plot had been formed against the life of Mazarin.



CHAPTER III.

THE IMPORTANTS.

IT is necessary, at this juncture, to have a just idea of the general position of political affairs in France, as well as of the attitude of the faction known as the Importants, who were then most active in opposing the government of Mazarin, in order to understand clearly the gravity of an incident which otherwise in itself might seem to be of little consequence.

La Rochefoucauld, the historian of that party, has made us tolerably familiar with the men who composed it. They were a band of eccentric and mischievous spirits, bold of heart, ready of hand, and of boundless fidelity to one another. Professing to hold the most outrageous maxims, incessantly invoking Brutus and old Rome, and intermingling gallant with political intrigues, they suffered themselves to be hurried beyond the bounds of reason through a Quixotic idea of always pleasing the ladies. They had all been more or less fellow-sufferers with Anne of Austria during the period of her affliction and persecution by Richelieu, and from the commencement of her Regency, these returning exiles and liberated prisoners had been gathering round her until at last, formed into a faction, they gave themselves out as the Queen's party, and by adopting a high-flown, turgid, and mysterious style of phraseology, and assuming bombastic and braggart airs of authority, coupled with an affectation of capacity and profundity, obtained for themselves from the wits of the Court and city the nickname of The Importants, under which they figured until absorbed a few years later in the more general and popular designation of Frondeurs. Their favourite chief was the Duke de Beaufort, of whom we have already spoken as possessing very nearly the same characteristics as the rest—at once artificial and extravagant, with great pretensions to loyalty and patriotism, professing to be a man of independent action, but in fact wholly ruled by Madame de Montbazon, who, in her turn, was swayed by the Duchess de Chevreuse.

On the sudden disappearance from Paris of one of the most distinguished of the lady leaders of the Importants—like a star of the first magnitude fallen from their system—the entire party was thrown into commotion, whilst the more intimate friends and admirers of the banished beauty raised a fierce outcry. Such an open disgrace of the young and beautiful Duchess sorely irritated her restless partisans. They considered themselves humiliated and weakened by it, and there was no violence or extremity to which they were not prepared to resort. Her slave and adorer, the Duke de Beaufort, assailed at once on the score of his political interest and personal gallantry, vapoured and stormed furiously. Thoughts of vengeance, which, like the mutterings of an approaching tempest, had begun to brood beneath the roof of the Hotel de Vendome, now became concentrated in a plot to get rid of Mazarin by fair means or foul, divers modes of its execution being earnestly discussed.

In such conjunctures, the Cardinal rose to the level of Richelieu. At the same time he had to secure safety and success mainly through his own courage and patience. But he knew right well how to play his part. The wily minister already stood well with the Queen—had begun to seem necessary, or at least very useful to her, though Anne of Austria had not yet formally declared her approval of his policy. Mazarin represented to her what she owed alike to the State and the royal authority now seriously threatened. That she must prefer the interest of her son and his crown to friendships—satisfactory enough at other times, but which had now become dangerous. He brought before her eyes most indubitable proofs of a conspiracy to take his life, and entreated her to choose between his enemies and himself. Anne of Austria did not hesitate, and the ruin of the Importants was decided upon.

More dangerous ground could scarcely have been found whereon to post the Importants. The Duchess de Montbazon, as disreputable in morals and character as she was remarkable for her beauty, had attacked a young wife, who, having just made her appearance at the Regent's court, had already become the object of universal admiration. To a loveliness at once so graceful and dazzling that it was pronounced to be angelic, Madame de Longueville added great intelligence, a most noble heart, and was a person of all others whom it behoved the Importants to conciliate; for her natural generosity of character had disinclined her to side with the party of repression, and thereby had even given some umbrage to the Prime Minister. At that moment, she was merely occupied with intellectual pursuits, innocent gallantry, and above all with the fame of her brother, the Duke d'Enghien; but there were, it must be owned, already perceptible in her mind, some germs of an Important, which, later, Rochefoucauld knew only too well how to develop. But the slanderous attack that had been made upon her, the disgraceful motive of which was sufficiently clear, revolted every honest heart. The ungovernable impetuosity of Beaufort on this occasion was—as it deserved to be—strongly stigmatised. Having formerly paid his addresses to Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and been rejected, his conduct assumed the aspect of an obvious revenge. Moreover, Madame de Chevreuse's every effort being directed towards depriving Mazarin of supporters, she incited the devotees of either sex who were about the Queen to act against him, and Madame de Longueville was no less the idol of the Carmelites and the party of the Saints than that of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Again, the Duke d'Enghien, already covered with the laurels of Rocroy, and about to entwine therewith those of Thionville, was so evidently the arbiter of the situation, that Madame de Chevreuse insisted, with much force, that Mazarin should be got rid of whilst the young Duke was occupied with the distant enemy, and before he should return from the army. To wound him through so susceptible a medium as that of an adored sister, to turn him against herself without any necessity, and hasten his return, would be a silly extravagance. Therefore, all who had any sense among the Importants—La Rochefoucauld, La Chatre, and Campion—anxiously sought to hush up and terminate this deplorable affair; and Madame de Chevreuse, sedulous to pay court to the Queen at the same time that she was weaving a subtle plot against her minister, had prepared the little fete for her at Renard's garden with the design of dispersing the last remaining cloudlets of the lately-spent tempest. But the Duchess's politic purpose was, as we have seen, destined to fail through the insane pride of a woman who was as senseless as she was heartless.[1]

[1] Alexandre de Campion, in the Recueil before cited, writes to Madame de Montbazon:—"Si mon avis eut ete suivi chez Renard, vous seriez sortie, pour obeir a la Reine, vous n'habiteriez pas la maison de Rochefort, et nous ne serions pas dans le peril dont nous sommes menaces."

Under these critical circumstances how did it behove Madame de Chevreuse to act? She was compelled to restrain Madame de Montbazon, but she could neither abandon her nor be false to herself. She resolved therefore to follow up energetically the formidable project which had become the last hope and supreme resource of her party. Through Madame de Montbazon, Beaufort had been dragged into it. The latter had mustered the men of action already mentioned, and who were wholly devoted to him. A plot had been devised and every measure concerted for surprising and perhaps killing the Cardinal.



CHAPTER IV.

THE CONSPIRACY OF THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE AND THE DUKE DE BEAUFORT TO GET RID OF MAZARIN.

ONE need not be greatly astonished at such an enterprise on the part of two women of high rank and a grandson of Henry the Great. At that stirring epoch of French history—the interval between the League and the Fronde—energy and strength were the distinctive traits of the French aristocracy. Neither court life nor a corrupting opulence had yet enervated it. Everything was then in extremes, in vice as in virtue. Men attacked and defended one another with the same weapons. The Marshal d'Ancre had been massacred; more than one attempt had been made to assassinate Richelieu; whilst he, on his side, had not been backward in having recourse to the sword and block. Corneille paints faithfully the spirit of the epoch. His Emilie is also involved in an assassination, and she is not the less represented as a perfect heroine. Madame de Chevreuse had long been accustomed to conspiracies; she was bold and unscrupulous. She did not gather round her such men as Beaupuis, Saint-Ybar, De Varicarville, and de Campion merely to pass the time in idle conversation. She had not remained a stranger to the designs they had formerly concocted against Richelieu, for in 1643 she fomented, as we have seen, their exaltation and their devotedness; and it was not unreasonable, certainly, that Mazarin should attribute to her the first idea of the project which Beaufort was to accomplish.

At the same time it must be remembered that the Importants and their successors the Frondeurs denied this project and declared it the invention of the Cardinal. It is a point of the highest historical importance and deserves serious examination, as upon this conspiracy, real or imaginary, as may be determined after careful investigation, rests the fact whether Mazarin owed in reality all his career and the great future which then opened before him to a falsehood cunningly invented and audaciously sustained; or whether Madame de Chevreuse and the Importants, after having tried their utmost against him, now resolving to destroy him with the armed hand, were themselves destroyed and became the instruments of his triumph. The evidence available irresistibly leads to the latter conclusion, and we think that we shall be able to show that the plot attributed to the Importants, far from being a chimaera, was the almost inevitable solution of the violent crisis just described.

La Rochefoucauld, without having indulged in the insane hopes of his friends and lent his hand to their rash enterprise, made it a point of honour to defend them after their discomfiture, and set himself to cover the retreat. He affects to doubt whether the plot which then made so much noise was real or supposititious. In his eyes, the greater probability was that the Duke de Beaufort, by a false finesse, endeavoured to excite alarm in the Cardinal, believing that it was sufficient to strike terror into his mind to force him to quit France, and that it was with this view that he held secret meetings and gave them the appearance of conspiracy. La Rochefoucauld constitutes himself especially the champion of Madame de Chevreuse's innocence, and declares himself thoroughly persuaded that she was ignorant of Beaufort's designs.

After the historian of the Importants, that of the Frondeurs holds very nearly the same arguments. Like La Rochefoucauld, De Retz has only one object in his Memoirs—that of investing himself with a semblance of capacity and making a great figure in every way, in evil as well as good. He is often more truthful, because he cares less about other people, and that he is disposed to sacrifice all the world except himself. In this matter it is hard to conceive the motive for his reserve and incredulity. He knew right well that the majority of the persons accused of having taken part in the plot had already been implicated in more than one such business. He himself tells us that he had conspired with the Count de Soissons, that he had blamed him for not having struck down Richelieu at Amiens, and that with La Rochepot, he, the Abbe de Retz, had formed the design of assassinating him at the Tuileries during the ceremony of the baptism of Mademoiselle (de Montpensier). The Co-adjutorship of the Archbishopric of Paris, which the Regent had just granted him, in consideration of his own services and the virtues of his father, had mollified him, it is true; but his old accomplices, who had not been so well treated as he, had remained faithful to their cause, to their designs, to their habitudes. Was De Retz then sincere when he refused to believe that they had attempted against Mazarin that which he had seen them undertake, and which he had himself undertaken against Richelieu? In his blind hatred he throws everything upon Mazarin: he pretends that he was terrified, or that he feigned terror. It was the Abbe de la Riviere, he tells us, who, in order to rid himself of the rivalry of the Count de Montresor in the Duke d'Orleans' favour, must have persuaded Mazarin that there was a plot set on foot against him, in which Montresor was mixed up. It was the Prince de Conde also who must have tried to destroy Beaufort through fear lest his son, the Duke d'Enghien, might engage with him in some duel, as he wished to do, to avenge his sister, during the short visit he made to Paris after taking Thionville.

To the suspicious opinions of de Retz and La Rochefoucauld let us oppose testimony more disinterested, and before all other the silence of Montresor,[1] who, whilst protesting that neither he nor his friend the Count de Bethune had meddled with the conspiracy imputed to the Duke de Beaufort, says not a single word against the reality of that conspiracy, which he would not have failed to ridicule had he believed it imaginary. Madame de Motteville, who was not in the habit of overwhelming the unfortunate, after having reported with impartiality the different rumours circulated at Court, relates certain facts which appear to her authentic, and which are decisive.[2] One of the best informed and most truthful of contemporary historians expresses not the slightest doubt on this head. "The Importants," says Monglat, "seeing that they could not drive the Cardinal out of France, resolved to despatch him with their daggers, and held several councils on this subject at the Hotel de Vendome." That opinion is confirmed by new and numerous particulars with which Mazarin's carnets and confidential letters furnish us.

[1] Memoires, Petitot Collection, t. lix.

[2] Memoires, t. i., p. 184.

The person whom Mazarin signalizes in his carnets and letters as the trusted friend of Beaufort and after him the principal accused, the Count de Beaupuis, son of the Count de Maille, had found means of sheltering himself from the minister's first searches; he had succeeded in escaping from France and sought an asylum at Rome under the avowed protection of Spain. Mazarin left no stone unturned to obtain from the Court of Rome the extradition of Beaupuis, in order that he might be legally tried. The Pope at first could not refuse, at least for form's sake, to have Beaupuis committed to the Castle of St. Angelo. But he was soon liberated, and provided with a State lodging wherein he was allowed to see nearly every one who came. Mazarin complained loudly of such indulgence. "It is all arranged," said he, "that when necessary he may escape, or at any rate the Duke de Vendome is furnished with every facility for poisoning him, in order that with Beaupuis may perish the principal proof of his son's treason. If all this happened in Barbary, people would be highly indignant. And this is suffered to take place in Rome, in the capital of Christianity, under the eyes and by the orders of a Pope!"

Failing Beaupuis, Mazarin would have liked to put his hand upon one of the brothers Campion, intimately connected as they were with Beaufort and Madame de Chevreuse, and too closely in the confidence of both not to know all their secrets. He himself complains, as we have seen, of being very badly seconded. And then he had to do with emerited conspirators, consummate in the art of concealing themselves and of leaving no trace of their whereabouts—with the active and indefatigable Duchess de Chevreuse, and with the Duke de Vendome, who, in order to save his son, set about forwarding the escape of all those whose depositions might help to convict him, or kept them somehow in his own hands, hidden and shut up close at Anet. Mazarin was thus only able to arrest a few obscure individuals who were ignorant of the plot, and could throw no light upon it.

But it is needless to exhaust existing proofs in demonstration of the fact that Mazarin did not enact a farce by instituting proceedings against the conspirators, that he pursued them with sincerity and vigour, and that he was perfectly convinced that a project of assassination had been formed against him, when the existence of that project is elsewhere averred, when, in default of a sentence of the parliament, which could not have been given in the teeth of insufficient evidence, neither Beaupuis, nor the Campions, nor Lie, nor Brillet having been arrested, better proof being extant in the full and entire confession of one of the principal conspirators, with the plan and all the details of the affair set forth in Memoirs of comparatively recent publication, but the authenticity of which cannot be contested. We allude to the precious Memoirs of Henri de Campion,[3] brother of Madame de Chevreuse's friend, whom that lady had introduced also to the service of the Duke de Vendome, and more particularly to that of the Duke de Beaufort. Henri had accompanied the Duke in his flight to England after the conspiracy of Cinq Mars, and he had returned with him; he possessed his entire confidence, and he relates nothing in which he himself had not taken a considerable part. Henri's character was very different to that of his brother Alexandre. He was a well-educated man, full of honour and courage, not in the least given to boasting, averse to all intrigue, and born to make his way through life by the straightest paths in the career of arms. He wrote these Memoirs in solitude, to which after the loss of his daughter and his wife he had retired to await death amidst the exercise of a genuine piety. It is not in such a frame of mind that a man is disposed to invent fables, and there is no middle way. What he says is that which we must believe absolutely, or if we have any doubt that he speaks the truth, he must be considered as the worst of villains. No interested feeling could have directed his pen, for he compiled his Memoirs, or at least he finished them, a short time after Mazarin's death, without thought, therefore, of paying court to him by making very tardy revelations, and scarcely two years before he himself died in 1663. Thus it may be fairly inferred that Henri de Campion wrote strictly under the inspiration of his conscience. One has only to open his Memoirs to see confirmed, point by point, all the particulars with which Mazarin's carnets are filled. Nothing is there wanting, everything coincides, all marvellously corresponds. It appears, indeed, as though Mazarin in making his notes had had before his eyes de Campion's Memoirs, or that the latter whilst penning them had Mazarin's carnets before him: he at once so thoroughly takes up the thread and completes them.

[3] "Memoires de Henri de Campion, &c.," 1807. Treuttel and Wuertz. Paris.

His brother Alexandre, in his letters of the month of August, 1643, had already let slip more than one mysterious sentence. He wrote to Madame de Montbazon in banishment:—"You must not despair, madam, there are still some half-a-dozen honest folks who do not give up.... Your illustrious friend will not abandon you. If to be prudent it were necessary to renounce your acquaintance, there are those who would prefer rather to pass for fools all their days." Like Montresor, he does not once say that there was no plot framed against Mazarin, which is a kind of tacit avowal; and when the storm burst, he took care to conceal himself, advised Beaupuis to do the same, and ends with these significant words:—"In embarking in Court affairs one cannot be certain of being master of events, and whilst we profit by the lucky ones, we must resolve to put up with the unlucky." Henri de Campion raises this already very transparent veil.

He declares plainly that there was a project on foot to get rid of Mazarin, and that that project was conceived, not by Beaufort, but by Madame de Chevreuse in concert with Madame de Montbazon. "I think," says he, "that the Duke's design did not spring from his own particular sentiment, but from the persuasion of the duchesses de Chevreuse and de Montbazon, who exercised entire sway over his mind and had an irreconcilable hatred to the Cardinal. What makes me say so, is that, whilst he was under that resolution, I always observed that he had an internal repugnance which, if I mistake not, was overcome by some pledge which he may have given to those ladies." There was, therefore, a plot, and its real author, as Mazarin truly said, and Campion repeats, was Madame de Chevreuse; if so, Madame de Montbazon was only an instrument in her hands.

Beaufort, once inveigled, drew in also his intimate friend, Count de Maille's son, the Count de Beaupuis, cornet in the Queen's horse-guards. To them Madame de Chevreuse adjoined Alexandre de Campion, the elder brother of Henri. "She loved him much," remarks the latter, and in a way which, added to certain ambiguous words of Alexandre, excites suspicion whether the elder Campion were not in fact one of the numerous successors of Chalais. He was then thirty-three, and his brother confesses that he had caught from the Count de Soissons the taste for and the habitudes of faction. Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion approved of the plot when communicated to them, "the former," says Henri, "believing that it would be a means for him of attaining to a position of greater importance, and my brother seeing therein Madame de Chevreuse's advantage and by consequence his own."

Such were the two first accomplices of Beaufort. A little later he opened his mind on the subject to Henri de Campion, one of his principal gentlemen; to Lie, captain of his guards; and to Brillet, his equerry. There the secret rested. Many other gentlemen and domestics of the house of Vendome were destined to take action in the affair, but were admitted to no confidence. The project was well conceived and worthy of Madame de Chevreuse. There were at most five or six conspirators—three capable of keeping the secret, and who did keep it. Below them, the men of action, who did not know what they would be called on to do; and in the background, the men of the morrow, who might be reckoned upon to applaud the blow, when it had been struck, without it being judged fitting to admit them to the conspiracy. At least Henri de Campion does not even name Montresor, Bethune, Fontraille, Varicarville, Saint-Ybar, which explains wherefore Mazarin, whilst keeping his eye upon them, did not have them arrested. Neither does Campion speak of Chandenier, La Chatre, de Treville, the Duke de Bouillon, the Duke de Guise, De Retz, nor La Rochefoucauld, whose sentiments were not doubtful, but who were not inclined to go so far as to sully their hands with an assassination. And that further explains the silence of Mazarin with regard to them in all that relates to Beaufort's conspiracy, although he did not cherish the slightest illusion as to their dispositions, and as to the part they would have taken if the plot had succeeded, or even if a serious struggle had taken place.

The conspiracy rested for some time between Madame de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, Beaufort, Beaupuis, and Alexandre de Campion. The final resolution was only taken at the end of July or in the first days of August, that is to say, precisely during the height of the quarrel between Madame de Montbazon and Madame de Longueville, which ushered in the crisis and opened the door to all the events which followed. It was then only that Beaufort spoke of it to Henri de Campion, in presence of Beaupuis. Mazarin's crime was the continuation of Richelieu's system. "The Duke de Beaufort told me that he thought I had remarked that the Cardinal Mazarin was re-establishing at court and throughout the kingdom the tyranny of Cardinal de Richelieu, with even more of authority and violence than had been shown under the government of the latter; that having entirely gained the Queen's mind and made all the ministers devoted to him, it was impossible to arrest his evil designs save by depriving him of life; that the public weal having made him resolve to take that step, he informed me of it in order that I might aid him with my advice and personally assist in its execution. Beaupuis next 'took up his parable,' and warmly represented the evils which the too great authority of Richelieu had caused France, and concluded by saying that we must prevent the like inconvenience before his successor had rendered matters remediless." Such conclusion embodied as nearly as possible the views and language of Importants and Frondeurs, of La Rochefoucauld and De Retz. Henri de Campion represents himself as having at first combatted the Duke's project with so much force that more than once he was shaken; but the two duchesses wound him up again very quickly, and Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion, instead of holding him back, encouraged him. Shortly afterwards, Beaufort having declared that he had made up his mind, Henri de Campion gave in on two conditions: "The one," he tells us, "of not laying his hand on the Cardinal, since I would rather take my own life than do a deed of such nature. The other, that if the Duke should arrange that the project should be put into execution during his absence, I would never mix myself up in it; whereas if he were himself to be present, I should without scruple keep myself near his person, in order to defend him against any mischance that might happen, my duty and affection towards him equally obliging me thereto. He granted me those two conditions, testifying at the same time that he esteemed me more for having made them, and added that he would be present at the execution of the project, so that he might authorise it by his presence."

The plan was to attack the Cardinal in the street, whilst paying visits in his carriage, commonly having with him only a few ecclesiastics, besides five or six lackeys. It would be necessary to present themselves in force and unexpectedly, stop the vehicle and strike Mazarin. To do that, it was necessary that a certain number of the Vendome domestics, who were not in the secret, should post themselves daily, from early morning, in the cabarets around the Cardinal's abode, which was then at the Hotel de Cleves, near the Louvre. Among the domestics let into the secret, Henri de Campion names positively Gauseville. Over them were placed "the Sieurs d'Avancourt and De Brassy, Picardians, very resolute men and intimate friends of Lie." The pretext given out was that the Condes proposing to put an affront upon Madame de Montbazon, the Duke de Beaufort, in order to oppose it, desired to have in hand a troop of gentlemen well mounted and armed. Their parts were allotted beforehand. A certain number were to pounce upon the Cardinal's coachman, at the same moment that others were to open the two doors and strike him, whilst the Duke would be at hand on horseback, with Beaupuis, Henri de Campion, and others, to cut down or drive off those who should be disposed to resist. Alexandre de Campion was to keep near the Duchess de Chevreuse and at her orders; and she herself ought more than ever to be assiduous in her attentions to the Queen, in order to smooth the way for her friends, and, in case of success, draw the Regent to the side of the victorious.

Several occasions favourable to the execution of this plan presented themselves. In the first instance, Henri de Campion being with his band in the Rue du Champ-Fleuri—one end of which joins the Rue Saint-Honore and the other approaches the Louvre—saw the Cardinal leave the Hotel de Cleves in his carriage with the Abbe de Bentivoglio, the nephew of the celebrated cardinal of that name, with a few ecclesiastics and valets. Campion inquired of one of them whither the Cardinal was going, and was answered—to visit the Marshal d'Estrees. "I saw," says Campion, "that if I had made use of the information, his death would have been inevitable. But I thought that I should be so guilty in the eyes of God and man that I resisted the temptation to do so."

The next day it was known that the Cardinal would be present at a collation to be given by Madame du Vigean at her charming residence of La Barre, at the entrance of the valley of Montmorency, where Madame de Longueville was staying, and which the Queen had promised to honour with a visit, and who had already set out. The Cardinal was repairing thither, having with him in his coach only the Count d'Harcourt. Beaufort ordered Campion to assemble his troop and to ride after him, but Campion represented to the Duke that if they attacked the Cardinal in the company of the Count d'Harcourt, they must decide upon killing both, Harcourt being too generous to see Mazarin stabbed before his eyes without defending him, and that the murder of Harcourt would raise against them the entire house of Lorraine.

Some days afterwards information was given that the Cardinal was engaged to dine at Maisons, with the Marshal d'Estrees, to meet the Duke d'Orleans. "I made the Duke consent," says Campion, "that should the minister be in the same carriage with his Royal Highness, the design should not be executed; but he said, that if he were alone, he must be killed. Early in the morning he had the horses out and kept himself in readiness at the Capucins with Beaupuis, near the Hotel de Vendome, posting a valet on foot in the street to tell him when the Cardinal should pass, and enjoining me to keep with those whom I was accustomed to muster at the Cabaret l'Ange, in the Rue Saint-Honore, very near the Hotel de Vendome, and if the Cardinal journeyed without the Duke d'Orleans, I should mount instantly with all my men, and intercept him when passing the Capucins. I was," adds Campion, "in a state of anxiety which may readily be imagined, until I saw the carriage of the Duke d'Orleans pass, and perceived the Cardinal inside with him."

At length, Beaufort's irritation being carried to the highest pitch by the banishment from court of Madame de Montbazon (which was certainly on the 22nd of August), goaded by Madame de Chevreuse, by passion, and by a false sense of honour, he became himself impatient to act. Seeing that, during the day, he encountered incessant difficulties of which he was far from divining the cause, he resolved to strike the blow at night, and prepared an ambuscade, the success of which seemed certain, and the details of which we have from Campion. The Cardinal went every evening to visit the Queen, and returned sufficiently late. It was arranged to attack him between the Louvre and the Hotel de Cleves. Horses were to be in readiness in some neighbouring inn. The Duke himself should keep watch with Beaupuis and Campion, during the time the minister should be with the Queen, and so soon as he came forth, all three should advance and make a signal to the rest, who, in the meanwhile, should remain on horseback on the quay, by the river side, close to the Louvre. All which could be very well done at night without awakening any suspicion.

It must be remembered that the person who furnishes these very precise details was one of the principal conspirators, that he wrote at sufficiently considerable distance from the event, in safety, and, to repeat it once again, with no interest, fearing nothing more from Mazarin, who had recently died, and expecting nothing from him. It must be also remembered that speaking as he has done, he accuses his own brother; that, without doubt, he attributes to himself laudable intentions and even some good actions, but that he confesses having entered into the plot, and that, if its execution had taken place he would have taken part in it, in fighting by the side of Beaufort. The process submitted to the parliament not having led to anything, through failure of evidence, Campion did not imagine that Mazarin had ever known "the circumstances of the plot, nor those acquainted with it to the very bottom, and who were engaged in it." He adds also, "that now the Cardinal is dead there is no longer any reason to fear injuring any one in stating matters as they are." He therefore does not defend himself; he believes himself to be sheltered from all quest, he writes only to relieve his conscience.

From these curious revelations we further learn what importance Mazarin attached to the arrest of Henri Campion; and that writer's statements are not only substantially confirmed by various entries in the carnets, but read like a translation into French of those pages from the Cardinal's Italian. "They threw," he says, "into the Bastille, Avancourt and Brassy, where they deposed that I had mustered them on several occasions, on the part of the Duke de Beaufort, for the interests of Madame de Montbazon, as I had told them. This did not afford any motive for interrogating the Duke, since they owned that he had not spoken to them; thus he would not have failed to deny having given the orders which I carried to them on his part. It was then seen that the process against him could not be carried on before I had been arrested, in order to find matter whereon to interrogate him after my own depositions, and so thoroughly to embarrass us both that every trace of the affair might be discovered. The proof of this conspiracy was of most essential importance to the Cardinal, who directing all his efforts to the establishment of his government, and affecting to do so by gentle means, had been unfortunate enough to be constrained, in the outset, to use violence against one of the greatest men in the realm, for his own individual interest, without a conviction to prove that he was compelled to treat the Duke with rigour. The Cardinal, despairing of being able to persuade others of that of which he was entirely assured, had a great desire to get me into his hands. He was nevertheless of opinion that he must give me time to reassure myself of safety in order to take me with the greater facility."

We may add to all this that Henri de Campion, sought after sharply, and closely shut up in his retreat at Anet, under the protection of the Duke de Vendome, having fled from France and joined his friend the Count de Beaupuis at Rome, gives an account of the obstinate efforts made by Mazarin to obtain the extradition of the latter, the resistance of Pope Innocent X., the regard shown to Beaupuis when they were compelled to confine him in the Castle of Saint-Angelo; all of which being equally to be met with in the carnets and letters of Mazarin and the memoirs of Henri de Campion, places beyond doubt the perfect sincerity of the Cardinal's proceedings and the accuracy of his information.

Are not these, we may ask, proofs sufficient to reduce to naught the interested doubts of La Rochefoucauld and the passionate denials of the chief of the Fronde, the very clever but very little truthful Cardinal de Retz, the most ardent and most obstinate of Mazarin's enemies? It would seem, indeed, either that there is no certitude whatever in history, or that it must be considered henceforth as a point absolutely demonstrated that there was a project determined upon to kill Mazarin; that that project had been conceived by Madame de Chevreuse, and in some sort imposed by her upon Beaufort with the aid of Madame de Montbazon; that Beaufort had for principal accomplices the Count de Beaupuis and Alexandre de Campion; that Henri de Campion had entered later into the affair, at the pressing solicitation of the Duke, as well as two other officers of secondary rank; that during the month of August there were divers serious attempts to put it into execution, particularly the last one after the banishment of Madame de Montbazon, at the very end of August or rather on the 1st of September; and that such attempt only failed through circumstances altogether independent of the will of the conspirators.



CHAPTER V.

FAILURE OF THE PLOT TO ASSASSINATE MAZARIN. ARREST OF BEAUFORT, BANISHMENT OF MADAME DE CHEVREUSE, AND DISPERSION OF THE "IMPORTANTS."

LET us now inquire how the last attempt against Mazarin's life—that nocturnal ambuscade so well planned and so deliberately set about on the 1st of September, 1643—chanced to fail, and what was the result of such failure. Without stopping to discuss the conjectures of Campion on this point, it may suffice to state that Mazarin, who was on his guard, evaded the blow destined for him by not visiting the Queen during the evening on which it was resolved to kill him as he should return from the Louvre. Next day the scene was changed. A rumour spread rapidly that the Prime Minister had expected to have been murdered by Beaufort and his friends, that he had escaped, fortune having declared in his favour. A plot to assassinate, more especially when it fails, invariably excites the strongest indignation, and the man who has extricated himself from a great peril and seems destined to sweep all such from his path, readily finds adherents and defenders. A host of people who would probably have supported Beaufort victorious, now flocked to offer their swords and services to the Cardinal, and on that morning he went to the Louvre escorted by three hundred gentlemen.

For several days previously, Mazarin had seen clearly that, cost what it might, he must cut his way through the knotted intricacy of the situation, and that the moment had arrived for forcing Anne of Austria to choose her part. The occasion was decisive. If the peril which he had just undergone, and which was only suspended over his head, did not suffice to draw the Queen from her incertitude, it would prove that she did not love him; and Mazarin knew well that, amidst the many dangers surrounding him, his entire strength lay in the Queen's affection, and that thereon depended his present safety and future fate. Whether, therefore, through policy or sincere affection, it was always to Anne of Austria's heart that he addressed himself, and at the outset of the crisis he had said to himself: "If I believed that the Queen was merely making use of me through necessity, without having any personal inclination for me, I would not stay here three days longer."[1] But enough has been said to show plainly that Anne of Austria loved Mazarin. Comparing him with his rivals, she appreciated him daily more and more. She admired the precision and clearness of his intellect, his finesse and penetration, and that extraordinary energy which enabled him to bear the weight of government with marvellous ease—his quick and accurate introspection, his profound prudence, and at the same time the judicious vigour of his resolves. She saw the affairs of France prospering on all sides under his firm and skilful hand. The Cardinal, it is true, was not quite a nullity, in the fierce war which had inaugurated the new reign so dazzlingly; but a power of no slight weight was manifest in the success which had followed his advent to office, and which proved to startled Europe that the victory of Rocroy was not a lucky stroke of chance. When every member of the Council was opposed to the siege of Thionville, and when Turenne himself, on being consulted, did not venture to declare his opinion on the subject, it was Mazarin who had insisted with an unflinching persistence that the victory of Rocroy should be profited by, and that France should extend her frontier to the Rhine. That proposition, doubtless, emanated from the youthful conqueror, but Mazarin had the merit of comprehending, sustaining, and causing it to triumph. If no first minister had ever before been so served by such a general, neither had general ever been so supported by such a minister; and thanks to both, on the 11th of August, whilst the chivalrous Importants were exhausting their combined talents in putting a shameful affront upon the noble sister of the hero who had just served France so gloriously, and who was about to aggrandize it further—whilst they were displaying their vapid and turgid eloquence in the salons, or sharpening their poniards in gloomy council chambers, Thionville, then one of the chief strongholds of the Empire, surrendered after an obstinate defence. Thus, the Regency of Anne of Austria had opened under the most brilliant auspices.

[1] Entry in Carnet, iii. p. 10, in Spanish:—"Sy yo creyera lo que dicen que S.M. se sierve di mi per necessidad, sin tener alguna inclination, no pararia aqui tres dias."

But in the height of this national glory and signal triumph, Queen Anne must indeed have shuddered when Mazarin placed before her all the proofs of the odious conspiracy formed against him. Explanations the most minute and confidential thereupon ensued between them. It was now more than ever compulsory for her to "raise the mask,"[2] to sacrifice to a manifest necessity the circumspection she was studious of preserving—to brave somewhat further the tittle-tattle of a few devotees of either sex, and at all events to permit her Prime Minister to defend his life. Up to this moment Anne of Austria had hesitated, for reasons which may be readily comprehended. But Madame de Montbazon's insolence had greatly irritated her; the conviction she acquired that numerous attempts to assassinate Mazarin had only by chance failed, and might be renewed, decided her; and it was, therefore, towards the close of August, 1643, when the date of that declared ascendancy, open and unrivalled, must be certainly fixed, of the Minister of the Queen Regent. These conspirators, by proceeding to the last extremities, and thereby making her tremble for Mazarin's life, hastened the triumph of the happy Cardinal; and on the morrow of the last nocturnal ambush in which he was marked for destruction, Jules Mazarin became absolute master of the Queen's heart, and more powerful than Richelieu had ever been after the Day of Dupes.

[2] "Quitarse la maschera." Carnet, ii. p. 65.

The minister's carnets will be searched in vain for any traces of the explanations which Mazarin must have had with the Queen during this grave conjuncture. Such explanations are not of a nature likely to be forgotten, and of which there is any need to take notes. An obscure passage, however, is to be met with, written in Spanish, of which the following words have a meaning clear enough to be understood: "I ought no longer to have any doubt, since the Queen, in an excess of goodness, has told me that nothing could deprive me of the post which she has done me the honour of giving me near her; nevertheless, as fear is the inseparable companion of affection, &c."[3] At this anxious moment, Mazarin was attacked with a slight illness, brought on by incessant labour and wearing anxieties, and an attack of jaundice having supervened, the Cardinal jotted down the following brief but highly suggestive memorandum:—"La giallezza cagionata da soverchio amore."[4]

[3] Carnet, iii. p. 45.—"Mas contodo esto siendo el temor un compagnero inseparabile dell'affection," &c.

[4] Carnet, iv. p. 3.

Madame de Motteville was in attendance on Anne of Austria when the rumour of the abortive attempt at assassination brought a crowd of courtiers to the Louvre in hot haste to protest their devotedness to the Crown. The Queen, with great emotion, whispered to her trusty lady-in-waiting: "Ere eight and forty hours elapse you shall see how I will avenge myself for the evil tricks these false friends have played me." "Never," adds Madame de Motteville, "can the remembrance of those few brief words be effaced from my mind. I saw at that moment, by the fire that flashed in the Queen's eyes, and in fact by what happened on that very evening and next day, what it is to be a female sovereign when enraged, and with the power of doing what she pleases."[5] Had the cautious lady-in-waiting been less discreet, she might have added, "especially when that sovereign lady is a woman in love."