[5] Memoires, vol. i. p. 185.

The break-up and dispersion of the Importants once decided upon, the first step was to arrest Beaufort, and bring him to trial. To this the Queen gave her consent. Of the authority Mazarin had acquired, such proceeding was a striking indication, and showed how far Anne of Austria might one day go in defence of a minister who was dear to her. The Duke de Beaufort had been, before her husband's death, the man in whom the Queen placed most confidence, and for some time he was thought destined to play the brilliant part of a royal favourite. In a brief space he had effectually thrown away his chance by his presumptuous conduct, his evident incapacity, and yet more by his public liaison with Madame de Montbazon. Still the Queen had shown a somewhat singular weakness in his favour, and at the expiration of three short months to sign an order for his arrest was a great step—necessary, it is true, but extreme, and which was the manifest sign of an entire change in the heart and intimate relations of Anne of Austria. The dissimulation even with which she acted in that affair marks the deliberative firmness of her resolution.

The 2nd of September, 1643, was truly a memorable day in the career of Mazarin, and we may say, in the annals of France; for it witnessed the confirming of the royal power, shaken to its base by the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and the ruin of the party of the Importants.

On the morning of the 2nd, all Paris and its Court rang with the report of the ambuscade laid for Mazarin the night previous, between the Louvre and the Hotel de Cleves. The five conspirators who had joined hands with Beaufort in it had taken flight and placed themselves in safety. Beaufort and Madame de Chevreuse could not imitate them: flight for them would have been a self-denunciation. The intrepid Duchess therefore had not hesitated to appear at Court, and she was at the Regent's side during the evening of the 2nd together with another person, a stranger to these dark plots and even incapable of putting faith in them—a very different enemy of Mazarin—the pious and noble Madame de Hautefort. As for the Duke, careless and courageous, he had gone to the chase in the morning, and at his return he went, according to his custom, to present his homage to the Queen. On entering the Louvre he met his mother, Madame de Vendome, and his sister the Duchess de Nemours, who had accompanied the Queen all day and remarked her emotion. They did all they could to prevent him going up stairs, and entreated him to absent himself for a while. He, without troubling himself in the slightest degree, answered them in the words of the doomed Duke de Guise—"They dare not!"—and entered the Queen's great cabinet, who received him with the best grace possible, and asked him all sorts of questions about his hunting, "as though," says Madame de Motteville, "she had no other thought in her mind." The Cardinal having come in in the midst of this gentle chat, the Queen rose and bade him follow her. It appeared as if she wished to take counsel with him in her chamber. She entered it, followed by her Minister. At the same time the Duke de Beaufort, about to leave, met Guitant, captain of the guard, who arrested him, and commanded the Duke to follow him in the names of the King and Queen. The Prince, without showing any surprise, after having looked fixedly at him, said, "Yes, I will; but this, I must own, is strange enough." Then turning towards Mesdames de Chevreuse and de Hautefort, who were talking together, he said to them, "Ladies, you see that the Queen has caused me to be arrested." The young nobleman then submitted to the royal mandate without offering the slightest resistance; slept that night at the Louvre, and the next morning was taken to the donjon of Vincennes, while a general decree of banishment was pronounced against all the principal members of the faction.

The Vendomes were ordered to retire to Anet; and the Chateau d'Anet having soon become what the Hotel de Vendome at Paris had been, a haunt of the conspirators, Mazarin demanded them from the Duke Caesar, who took good care not to give them up. The Cardinal was almost reduced to the necessity of laying siege to the chateau in regular form. He threatened to enter the place by main force and lay hands on Beaufort's accomplices; unable to endure the scandal that a prince even of the blood should brave law and justice with impunity, he had determined to push matters to the uttermost, and was about to take energetic measures, when the Duke de Vendome himself decided on quitting France, and went to Italy to await the fall of Mazarin, as formerly he had awaited in England that of Richelieu.

The arrest of Beaufort, the dispersion of his accomplices, his friends and his family, was the first indispensable measure forced upon Mazarin to enable him to face a danger that seemed most imminent. But what would it have availed him to lop off an arm had he left the head untouched—had Madame de Chevreuse remained at Court, ever ready to surround the Queen with attention and homage, assiduous to retain and husband the last remnant of her old favour, in order to sustain and secretly encourage the malcontents, inspire them with her audacity, and stir them up to fresh conspiracies? She still held in her grasp the scarcely-severed threads of the plot; and at her right hand there was a man too wary to allow himself to be again compromised by such dark doings, but quite ready to profit by them, and whom Madame de Chevreuse had sedulously exhibited not only to Anne of Austria, but to France and all Europe, as a man singularly capable of conducting State affairs. Mazarin, therefore, did not hesitate; but on the day following Beaufort's arrest, Chateauneuf, Montresor, and St. Ybar were banished. The first-named was invited to present himself at Court, kiss the Queen's hand, and then betake himself to his government in Touraine. Richelieu's late Keeper of the Seals deemed it something to have escaped an open disgrace, to have resumed the eminent post he had formerly occupied under the Crown, and the government of a large province. Yet did his ambition soar far higher still: but he kept it in check, and merely postponed its flight for a less stormy hour—obeyed the Queen, skilfully remained friends with her, and likewise kept on very good terms with her Prime Minister—biding his time until he might displace him. He had to wait a long time, however; but eventually did not quit life without once more grasping, for a moment at least, that power which the indulgence of an insensate passion had lost him, but which an inviolable and unswerving friendship in the end restored to him.[6]

[6] Chateauneuf held the seals from March, 1650, when Mazarin went into voluntary exile, until April, 1651. He died in 1653, at the age of seventy-three.

Madame de Chevreuse unhappily lacked the wisdom displayed throughout this fiery ordeal by Chateauneuf. She forgot for once to look with a smiling face upon the passing storm, in which she was too suddenly caught to escape altogether scatheless. La Chatre—one of her friends, and who saw her almost every day—relates that during the very same evening on which Beaufort was arrested at the Louvre, "Her Majesty told the Duchess that she believed her to be innocent of the prisoner's designs, but that nevertheless to avoid scandal she deemed it fitting that Madame de Chevreuse should quietly withdraw to Dampierre, and that after making some short sojourn there she should retire into Touraine."[7] The Duchess, therefore, saw plainly that she had nothing for it but to go at once to Dampierre; but no sooner did she arrive at her favourite chateau than, instead of remaining quiet, she began to move heaven and earth to save those who had compromised themselves for her sake. She began, indeed, to knot the meshes of a new web of intrigue, and even found means of placing a letter in the Queen's own hand. Message after message was, however, sent to hasten her departure—Montagu being despatched to her on the same errand, as was also La Porte. She received them haughtily, and deferred her journey under divers pretexts. It will be remembered that on going to meet the Duchess when on her road from Brussels, Montagu had offered her, on the Queen's part as well as that of Mazarin, to discharge in her name the debts she had contracted during so many years of exile. The Duchess had already received heavy sums, but was unwilling to set forth for Touraine until after the Queen should have performed all her promises. Marie de Rohan had left the Louvre and Paris, her bosom swelling with grief and rage, as Hannibal had quitted Italy. She felt that the Court and capital and the Queen's inner circle formed the true field of battle, and that to remove herself from it was to abandon the victory to the enemy. Her retreat, indeed, was an occasion of mourning to the entire Catholic party, as well as to the friends of peace and the Spanish alliance, but, on the contrary, of public rejoicing for the friends of the Protestant alliance. The Count d'Estrade actually went to the Louvre on the part of the Prince of Orange, from whom he was accredited, to thank the Regent officially for it.

[7] "Allontanar Cheverosa che fa mille cabelle." Mazarin's Carnet, iii. 81, 82.

Madame de Chevreuse made her way, therefore, to her estate of Duverger, between Tours and Angiers. The deep solitude that there reigned around her embittered all the more the feeling of defeat. She kept up, however, a brisk correspondence with her stepmother, Madame de Montbazon—banished to Rochefort; and the two exiled Duchesses mutually exhorted each other to leave no stone unturned towards effecting the overthrow of their common enemy. Vanquished at home, Madame de Chevreuse centred all her hopes in foreign lands. She revived the friendly relations which she had never ceased to cherish with England, Spain, and the Low Countries. Her chief prop, the centre and interposer of her intrigues, was Lord Goring, our ambassador at the French Court; who, like his ill-starred master, and more especially his royal mistress, belonged to the Spanish party. Croft, an English gentleman who had figured in the train of the Duchess some years previously, bestirred himself actively and openly in her behalf, whilst the Chevalier de Jars intrigued warily and in secret for Chateauneuf. Beneath the mantle of the English embassy a vast correspondence was carried on between Madame de Chevreuse, Vendome, Bouillon, and the rest of the Malcontents.



CHAPTER VI.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE DUCHESSES DE LONGUEVILLE AND DE MONTBAZON.—FATAL DUEL BETWEEN THE DUKE DE GUISE AND COUNT MAURICE DE COLIGNY.

AS has been said, the 2nd of September, 1643, had been truly a memorable day in the career of Mazarin, and, indeed, in the annals of France; for it witnessed the confirming of the royal power, shaken to its base by the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and the ruin of that dangerous faction the Importants. The intestine discords which threatened the new reign were thus forced to await a more favourable opportunity for development. They did not raise their heads again until five years afterwards—on the breaking out of the Fronde, in which they showed themselves just the same men as ever, with the same designs, the same politics, foreign and domestic; and after raising sanguinary and sterile commotions, re-appeared only to break themselves to pieces once more against the genius of Mazarin and the invincible firmness of Anne of Austria.

Mazarin, therefore, who soon found himself without a rival in the Queen's good graces, continued steadily to carry on within and without the realm the system of his predecessor, and royalty, as well as France, reckoned upon a succession of halcyon years, thanks to the re-union of the Princes of the blood with the Crown, to the tactics and personal conduct of the Prime Minister, and to his political sagacity, seconded by the military genius of the Duke d'Enghien. The imprudence of Madame de Montbazon and her lover Beaufort in the affair of the dropped letters had the effect of increasing Mazarin's power incalculably, and that at the very moment that a splendid victory gained by the young Duke d'Enghien had made him and his sister paramount at Court—paramount by a popularity so universal that it almost made the Queen and her minister their proteges rather than their patrons.

The Duke d'Enghien had returned to Paris after Rocroy, and at the end of a campaign in which he had taken a very important stronghold, passed the Rhine with the French army, and carried the war into Germany. The Queen had received him as the liberator of France. Mazarin, who looked more to the reality than the semblance of power, intimated to the young conqueror that his sole ambition was to be his chaplain and man of business with the Queen. At a distance, the Duke d'Enghien had praised everything that had been done, and came from the camp over head and ears in love with Madlle. du Vigean, and furious that any one should have dared to insult a member of his house. He adored his sister, and he had a warm friendship for Coligny.[1] He was aware of and had favoured his passion for that sister. Engaged himself in a suit as ardent as it was chaste, he readily comprehended that his beautiful sister might well have been not insensible to the fervent assiduities of the brave Maurice, but he revolted at the thought of the amatory effusions of a Madame de Fouquerolles being attributed to her, and he assumed a tone in the matter which effectually arrested any further insinuation from even the most insolent and daring.

[1] Grandson of the famous Admiral de Coligny, who perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Amongst the especial friends of Beaufort and Madame de Montbazon, foremost of all stood the Duke de Guise.[2] They had manoeuvred to secure him as well as the rest of his family to their party, through Gaston, Duke d'Orleans, who had espoused as his second wife a princess of the house of Lorraine—the lovely Marguerite, sister of Charles IV. and second daughter of Duke Francis. The Duke de Guise had already played many strange pranks and committed more than one folly, but he had not as yet signally failed in any serious enterprise. His incapacity was not patent. He had the prestige of his name, youth, good looks, and a courage carried even to temerity. The avowed slave of Madame de Montbazon, he had espoused her quarrel, and to gratify her had joined in propagating those calumnious reports, but without exhibiting the violence of Beaufort, and had remained erect, confronting and defying the victorious Condes.

[2] Henry, son of Charles de Guise, and grandson of the Balafre.

Coligny had had the good sense to keep aloof during the storm, for fear of still further compromising Madame de Longueville by exhibiting himself openly as her champion: but a few months having elapsed, he thought that he might at last show himself, and, as a certain authority[3] tells us, "the imprisonment of the Duke de Beaufort having deprived that noble of the chance of measuring swords with him, he addressed himself to the Duke de Guise." La Rochefoucauld says, "the Duke d'Enghien, unable to testify to the Duke de Beaufort, who was in prison, the resentment he felt at what had passed between Madame de Longueville and Madame de Montbazon, left Coligny at liberty to fight with the Duke de Guise, who had mixed himself up in this affair." The Duke d'Enghien, therefore, knew and approved of what Coligny did. In fact, he found himself without an adversary in the affair of sufficient rank to justify a prince of the blood in drawing his sword against him. So far as regards Madame de Longueville, it is absurd to suppose that, desirous of vengeance, she it was who had urged on Coligny, for everybody ascribed to her a line of conduct characterised by great moderation, as contrasted with that of the Princess de Conde. Far from envenoming the quarrel, she wished to hush it up, and Madame de Motteville thus significantly alludes to that fact: "The enmity she bore Madame de Montbazon being proportionate to the love she bore her husband, it did not carry her so far but that she found it more a propos to dissimulate that outrage than otherwise."

[3] An inedited Memoir upon the Regency.

La Rochefoucauld gives some particulars which explain what follows. Coligny, just risen out of a long illness, was still very much enfeebled, and, moreover, not very "skilful of fence." Such was his condition when, as the champion of Madame de Longueville, he confronted the Duke de Guise in mortal duel, whilst the latter, like most heroes of the parade-ground, possessed rare cunning at carte and tierce. With regard to the seconds chosen, they are in every respect worthy of notice. In those days, seconds were witnesses of the duel in which they themselves fought. Coligny selected as his second, and to give the challenge, as was then the custom, Godefroi, Count d'Estrades, a man of cool and tried courage. The Duke de Guise's second was his equerry, the Marquis de Bridieu, a Limousin gentleman and brave officer, faithfully attached to the house of Lorraine, who, in 1650, admirably defended Guise against the Spanish army and against Turenne, and for that brave defence, during which there were twenty-four days of open trenches, he was made lieutenant-general.

It was arranged that the affair should come off at the Place Royale—the usual arena for those sort of encounters, and which had been a hundred times stained with the best blood of France. The mansions around the Place Royale were then tenanted by ladies of the highest rank and fashion, amongst the rest, Marguerite, Duchess de Rohan, Madame de Guemene, Madame de Chaulnes, Madame de St. Geran, Madame de Sable, the Countess de St. Maure, and many others, under the influence of whose bright eyes those volatile and valiant French gentlemen delighted to cross swords. And there many a noble form had been struck down never to rise again, and many a noble heart had throbbed its last. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the duel was a custom at once useful and disastrous, inasmuch as it kept up the warlike spirit of the nobles, but which mowed them down as fast as war itself, and but too frequently for frivolous causes. To draw swords for trifles had become the obligatory accompaniment of good manners; and as gallantry had its finished fops, so the duel had its refined rufflers. In the comparatively short period of a few years, nine hundred gentlemen perished in these combats. To stop this scourge, Richelieu issued a royal edict, which punished death by death, and sent the offenders from the Place Royale to the Place de Greve. On this head Richelieu showed himself inflexible, and the examples of Montmorency-Bouteville, beheaded with his second, the Count Deschappelles, for having challenged Beuvron and fought with him on the Place Royale at mid-day, impressed a salutary terror, and rendered infraction of the edict very rare. Coligny, however, braved everything; he challenged Guise, and on the appointed day the two noble adversaries, accompanied by their seconds, D'Estrades and Bridieu, met upon the Place Royale.

Of this memorable duel, thanks to contemporary memoirs as well as various kinds of MSS., the minutest details have been preserved.

On the 12th of December, 1643, D'Estrades went in the morning to call out the Duke de Guise on the part of Coligny. The rendezvous was fixed for the same day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the Place Royale. The two adversaries did not appear abroad during the whole morning, and at three o'clock they were on the ground. A sentence is ascribed to Guise which invests the scene with an unwonted grandeur, and arrays for the last time in bitterest animosity and deadly antagonism the two most illustrious representatives of the League wars in the persons of their descendants. On unsheathing his sword Guise said to Coligny: "We are about to decide the old feud of our two houses, and to see what a difference there is between the blood of Guise and that of Coligny."

Coligny's only reply was to deal his adversary a long lunge; but, weak as he was, his rearward foot failed him, and he sank upon his knee. Guise advanced upon him and set his foot upon his sword, in such manner as though he would have said, "I do not desire to kill you, but to treat you as you deserve, for having presumed to address yourself to a prince of such birth as mine, without his having given you just cause,"—and he struck him with the flat of his sword-blade. Coligny, furious, collected his strength, threw himself backwards, disengaged his sword, and recommenced the strife. In this second bout, Guise was slightly wounded in the shoulder, and Coligny in the hand. At length, Guise, in making another thrust at his adversary, grasped his sword-blade, by which his hand was slightly cut, but, wresting it from Coligny's grasp, dealt him a desperate thrust in the arm which put him hors de combat. Meanwhile D'Estrades and Bridieu had grievously wounded each other.

Such was the issue of that memorable duel—the last, it appears, of the famous encounters on the Place Royale. We thus see that, though cowed, the French noblesse had not been tamed by Richelieu's solemn edict. This last duel did very little honour to Coligny, and almost everybody took part with the Duke de Guise. The Queen manifested very lively displeasure at the violation of the edict, and the Duke d'Orleans, urged thereto by his wife and the Lorraine family, made a loud outcry. The Prince and Princess de Conde also found themselves compelled to declare against Coligny—doubly in the wrong, both because he had been the challenger and been unfortunate in the result. Proof that there was an understanding between Coligny and the Duke d'Enghien is evident from the latter not deserting the unlucky champion of his sister, that he received the wounded man into his house at Paris, afterwards at Saint Maur, and that he did not cease from surrounding him with his protection and care in spite of his father, the Prince de Conde. When the matter was referred to the Parliament, conformably to the edict, and the two adversaries were summoned to appear, the Duke de Guise announced his intention of repairing to the chamber with a retinue of princes and great nobles; whilst, on his side, the Duke d'Enghien threatened to escort his friend after the same fashion. But the initiative proceedings were stayed through the deplorable condition into which poor Coligny was known to have fallen.

That unfortunate young man languished for some months, and died in the latter part of May, 1644, alike in consequence of his wounds and of despair for having so badly sustained the cause of his own house, as well as that of Madame de Longueville.

This affair, with all its dramatic features and tragical termination, created an immense and painful impression not only in Paris, but throughout France. It momentarily awakened party feelings which had for some time slumbered, and suspended the festivals of the winter of 1644. It not only occupied the families more closely concerned and the Court, but forcibly affected the whole of the highest class of society, and long remained the absorbing topic of every saloon. It may be readily conceived that the story in spreading thus widely became enlarged with imaginary incidents one after another. At first, it was supposed that Madame de Longueville was in love with Coligny. That was necessary to give the greater interest to the narrative. From thence came the next invention, that she herself had armed Coligny's hand, and that D'Estrades, charged to challenge the Duke de Guise, having remarked to Coligny that the Duke might probably repudiate the injurious words attributed to him, and that honour would thus be satisfied, Coligny had thereupon replied: "That is not the question. I pledged my word to Madame de Longueville to fight him on the Place Royale, and I cannot fail in that promise."[4] There was no stopping a cavalier in such a chivalrous course as that, and Madame de Longueville would not have been the sister of the victor of Rocroy—a heroine worthy of sustaining comparison with those of Spain, who beheld their lovers die at their feet in the tournament—had she not been present at the duel between Guise and Coligny. It is asserted, therefore, that on the 12th of December she was stationed in an hotel on the Place Royale belonging to the Duchess de Rohan, and that there, concealed behind a window-curtain, she had witnessed the discomfiture of her preux chevalier.

[4] Mad. de Motteville.

Then, as now, it was verse—that is to say, the ballad—which set its seal on the popular incident of the moment. When the event was an unlucky one, the song was a burlesquely pathetic complaint, and always with a vein of raillery running through it. Such was the effusion with which every ruelle rang, and it was really set to music, for the notation is still to be found in the Recueil de Chansons notees, preserved at the Arsenal at Paris. It ran thus:—

"Essuyez vos beaux yeux, Madame de Longueville, Coligny se porte mieux. S'il a demande la vie, Ne l'en blamez nullement; Car c'est pour etre votre amant Qu'il veut vivre eternellement."



BOOK III.



CHAPTER I.

THE DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE AND THE DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

THAT Madame de Longueville witnessed the duel on the Place Royale seems to rest on no reliable authority. Such a trait is so utterly at variance with her character that its attribution would impute to her the manners of a semi-Italianised princess of the Valois race. There are besides no sufficient grounds for believing that her affections had for a moment been given to Coligny, though doubtless her innate tenderness must have been touched by his chivalrous love and devotion. Miossens, afterwards better known as Marshal d'Albret, next tried in vain to win a heart which had hitherto appeared insensible to the master-passion, but after an obstinate persistence was ultimately constrained to relinquish all hope. When, in 1645, M. de Longueville went as minister-plenipotentiary to the Congress of Muenster, the young Duchess remained in Paris, her element being still the social sphere of the Court solely—a taste for political life not having yet been developed through the impulse of her affections. Let us here add that, notwithstanding the almost unanimous assertion of contemporaries at this period that even women could not behold Madame de Longueville without admiration, the heart of this preeminently gifted creature seems amidst the universal homage to have been proof against all and every repeated assault. Anne of Austria loved her but little, partly through a jealous feeling created by her singular beauty, partly from her great reputation for wit, and also from her perpetual wranglings for precedence with other princesses of the blood. In fact, in order to lose no tittle of the prerogatives derived from her birth, Madame de Longueville had obtained a royal brevet from the king which maintained her in the rank which she would have otherwise lost by her marriage. A pride so exacting does not appear to agree with the peculiar nonchalance that was one of her striking characteristics; but, later in life, when she had become devout and penitent, she took care to explain that seeming contradiction. "I have been defined," said she, "as having, as it were, two individualities of opposite nature in me, and that I could interchange them at any moment; but that arose from the different situations in which I was placed, for I was dead, like unto the dead, to aught which slightly affected me, and keenly alive to the smallest things which interested me." Reading and study were never among the things which stirred her into animation. Entirely occupied with her fascinations and individual sentiments, at no period of her life did she ever think of repairing the early neglect of her education. In this respect she was inferior, on the authority even of her apologists, to many ladies of the Court and city. Intoxicated as she had been by the fumes of the incense which flattery had wafted around her in the circle of the Hotel de Rambouillet, she probably had no perception of her failings on that essential point. The spontaneity of her wit, her natural aptitude to comprehend and decide upon all sorts of questions, made up for her deficiency in that kind of information which is acquired from books and other modes of study, and often stood her in good stead, both on the part of her detractors and of her partisans, of the lofty characteristics of "great genius." M. Cousin, who is by no means severe as regards the errors or demerits of the Duchess, says that "she did not know how to write." Mademoiselle de Montpensier and Madame de Motteville, however, both express the very opposite opinion. The first remarks, speaking of the Countess de Maure:—"The precision and the polish of her style would be incomparable if Madame de Longueville had never written." The second declares that "this lady has ever written as well as any one living." The fact is, so far as may be judged from those of her letters which have come down to us, that Madame de Longueville's style bore the reflex of her conversation: there are some passages very remarkable in their force, some phrases altogether trite and insignificant. This opinion is quite beside the consideration of her diction in a grammatical point of view. In her written as in her spoken language, she seems to have been impassive or to have kindled into animation according as her thoughts were "dead or living," to use her own phrase. Speaking and writing, however, are two very different things, both requiring an especial cultivation; and as Madame de Longueville was defective in anything like what is termed "regular education" or "sound instruction," that fact became apparent so soon as she took her pen in hand. Her great natural endowments shone on paper with difficulty, through faults of every kind which escaped her notice. It is really no small gift to be able to express one's sentiments and ideas in their natural order, and with all their true and various shades, in terms neither too homely nor far-fetched, or which neither enfeeble nor exaggerate them. It is by no means rare to meet with men in society remarkable for intelligence, nerve, and grace when they speak, but who become unintelligible when they commit their thoughts to writing. The fact is, that writing is an art—a very difficult art, and one which must be carefully learned. Madame de Longueville was ignorant of this, as were some of the most eminent women of her time. There exists unquestionable evidence to prove that the Princess Palatine was a person of large intelligence, who was able to hold her own with men of the greatest capacity. De Retz and Bossuet tell us so. Some letters of the Palatine, however, are extant in which, whilst there is no lack of solidity, refinement, and ingenuity of thought, it will be seen that they often abound with errors, obscure phraseology, and not unfrequently outrageously violate even the commonest rules of orthography. It must not, however, by any means be inferred from this that the Palatine had not a mind of the first order, but only that she had not been trained to render clearly and fittingly her ideas and sentiments in writing. Madame de Longueville had been no better taught. Therefore all that has been said about her on this score must be restricted, alike as to the defects of her education and the brilliancy of her genius. With those Frenchwomen who have written at once largely and loosely, it is pleasant to contrast their contemporaries, Madame de Sevigne and Madame la Fayette, both of whom always wrote well.

In the first place, these two admirable ladies had received quite another sort of education to that of Madame de Longueville. They had had the advantage of being instructed by men of letters skilled in the art of teaching. Menage was the chief instructor both of Mademoiselle de Rabutin and Mademoiselle de Lavergne—to call those accomplished letter-writers by their maiden names. Menage trained them carefully in composition, correcting rigidly their themes, pointing out their errors, cultivating their happy instincts, and modelling and polishing their vein and style. That talented tutor appears also to have been their platonic adorer—more platonic indeed than he desired. In his verses he celebrated by turns la formosissima Laverna and la bellissima Marchesa di Sevigni, and his lessons were doubtless given con amore.

Nature had been lavish indeed in all her gifts to the latter, giving her a precision and solidity allied to an inexhaustible playfulness and sparkling vivacity. Art, in her, wedded to genius, resulted in that incomparable epistolary style which left Balzac and Voiture far away behind her, and which Voltaire himself even has not surpassed.

We must now speak of him who was destined to bias, sway, and finally determine the future course of Madame de Longueville's life through the conquest of her heart and mind—La Rochefoucauld—the man who induced her to embark with him on the stormy sea of politics, whose irresistible tide swept her past the landmarks of loyalty and reputability to make shipwreck, amongst the rocks and shoals of civil war, of fame, fortune, and domestic happiness.

Up to the moment of her appearance on the scene of party strife in connection with La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville had not achieved much political notoriety. Neither had her fair fame been compromised by the very insignificant gallantry of a long train of court danglers, nor through her involuntary participation in the affair of the letters with Madame de Montbazon. She could scarcely fail to be touched by the devotion of Coligny, who had shed his blood to avenge her of the outrage of that vindictive woman. For a moment, it is true, she had listened carelessly and harmlessly to the attention of the brave and intellectual Miossens. Still later she compromised herself somewhat with the Duke de Nemours; but the only man she truly loved with heart and soul was La Rochefoucauld. To him she devoted herself wholly; for him she sacrificed everything—duty, interest, repose, reputation. For him she staked her fortune and her life. Through him she exhibited the most equivocal and most contradictory conduct. It was La Rochefoucauld who caused her to take part in the Fronde; who, as he willed, made her advance or recede; who united her to, or separated her from, her family; who governed her absolutely. In a word, she consented to be in his hand merely an heroic instrument. Pride and passion had doubtless something to do with this life of adventure and that contempt of peril. But of what stamp must have been that soul which could find consolation in all this? And, as often happens, the man to whom she thus devoted herself was not wholly worthy of her. He had infinite spirit; but he was coldly calculating, profoundly selfish, meanly ambitious. He measured others by himself. He was naturally as subtle in evil, as she was disposed spontaneously to virtue. Full of finesse in his self-love and in the pursuit of his own interest, he was, in reality, the least chivalrous of his sex, although he affected all the appearance of the loftiest chivalry. In his liaison with Madame de Longueville he made love the slave of ambition.

It will be necessary to touch only slightly upon his career antecedent to this period. Francis, the sixth seigneur and second Duke de la Rochefoucauld, was born 15th December 1613. Little is recorded of his early years, he himself having given no details about them. We only know that he was very imperfectly educated, his father being desirous that he should early adopt the profession of arms. Himself enjoying royal favour in the highest degree, his eldest son, the young Prince de Marsillac, profitably felt its influence; for, as early as 1626, he commanded as mestre-de-camp the Auvergne regiment of cavalry at the siege of Casal. He took an active part in the Day of Dupes, the period at which his memoirs commence. Two years previously, in 1628, he had married at Mirebeau a rich and beautiful heiress of Burgundy, Andree de Vivonne, only daughter of Andre de Vivonne, Baron of Berandiere and Chasteigneraye, Grand Falconer of France, Captain in the Guards of the Queen-Mother, Marie de' Medici, Councillor of State, and one of the most trusty followers of Henry IV. The Prince de Marsillac was at first in great favour at Court, notwithstanding his father's misconduct, but he suddenly compromised himself in a very imprudent way. Closely intimate with that virtuous maid-of-honour, Marie de Hautefort, whom the saturnine Louis XIII. loved as passionately as his peculiar temperament permitted, and also with Mademoiselle de Chemerault, as lovely as she was witty, he was by them hurried into a blind devotion to the cause of their unhappy mistress and queen, Anne of Austria, "the only party," says he, with unusual candour, "that I ever honestly followed." And very soon his confidential relations with the persecuted princess became so marked as necessarily to excite Richelieu's suspicions, the more so that he ventured to speak of the Cardinal's administration in the boldest terms. His friends advised him to retire from Court, at least temporarily; but, as he wished to employ his time usefully, he joined as a volunteer the army of Marshal de Chastillon, who, with Marshal de la Meilleraye, beat Prince Thomas of Savoy at Avein. After behaving with distinction there, he returned, when the campaign was over, to Court, exhibiting a conduct still more independent, and which resulted in forcing him to rejoin his father at Blois.

It was through the proximity of his father's chateau of Verteuil to Poitiers, where the Duchess de Chevreuse was then living in banishment from Court, that the Prince de Marsillac first came to ally himself with the illustrious political adventuress. At the time when La Rochefoucauld obtained political notoriety, a crisis occurred in France in national manners, sentiments, and feelings. The nobles, long kept under by the strong hand of Richelieu, were again rising into faction, and a spirit of intrigue had seized upon everyone.

Although still young, Rochefoucauld had renounced enterprises in which the heart is alone concerned. No longer engrossed with love, he was wholly given up to ambition; and in order to avenge himself of the Queen and Mazarin, who had not in his opinion evinced sufficient generosity towards him to satisfy this later passion, he did not hesitate to fling himself headlong into partisan intrigue and strife which ended in civil war. To render himself the more formidable, he was above all desirous of securing to his party the master-mind of Conde; and as Madame de Longueville enjoyed the entire confidence of her favourite brother, and had great influence with him, the natural result was that in due course La Rochefoucauld made persistent love to the lovely Duchess. Seduced by the chivalrous manners and romantic antecedents of his youth, and yielding partly to the occasion, partly to the obstinate persistence of the suit, and some little perhaps to the maternal blood in her veins, Madame de Longueville at length surrendered her heart to the daring aspirant. She could no longer plead early youth as an excuse, for she had already numbered twenty-nine summers, and was only distant by a very small span from that formidable epoch in woman's life which a discriminating writer of the present day has happily termed the crisis. That turning point in the Duchess's career was destined to prove fatal to her, and the crisis was exactly such as that of which, in the case of another celebrated woman, M. Feillet has given a lucid analysis—the crisis brought about by an irresistible passion. Let us beware of hastily applying to Madame de Longueville that maxim of her cynical lover: "Women often think they still love him whom they no longer really love. The opportunity of an intrigue, the mental emotion to which gallantry gives birth, natural inclination to the pleasure of being beloved, and the pain of refusing the lover, together persuade them that they cherish a genuine passion when it is nothing more than mere coquetry." Better had it been both for herself and for us to believe that she had only so loved.

The beauty and intelligence of the Duchess de Longueville formed certainly, at the commencement, a large share in the calculating lover's determination to seek a liaison with the Duke d'Enghien's sister. The crowd of admirers was great around her, and that spectacle of itself served to inflame the ambition of M. de Marsillac: subsequent reflection, doubtless, must have redoubled his ardour to achieve the twofold conquest, in love and party. The Count de Miossens was then paying the most assiduous court to Madame de Longueville; he was very intimately connected with Marsillac, to whom indeed he was nearly related, and whom he kept well acquainted with the course of his amours. His suit to the lovely Duchess proving, as has been said, entirely unsuccessful, Miossens eventually left the field clear to Marsillac, the brave and simple soldier giving place to the self-seeking man of the world.



CHAPTER II.

THE DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE DRAWN INTO THE VORTEX OF POLITICS AND CIVIL WAR BY HER LOVE FOR LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

WE have glanced rapidly over the fairest period of Madame de Longueville's youth, over those years wherein the splendour of her success in the ranks of fashion was not obtained at the expense of her virtue. The time approaches in which she is about to yield to the manners of her age, and to the long-combatted wants of her heart. The love which she inspired in others, she is, in turn, about to feel herself, and it is to engage her, at the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, in a fatal connection, which will make her unmindful of all her conjugal duties, and turn her most brilliant qualities against herself, against her family, and against France.

Let us now relate briefly what we know of Madame de Longueville from the moment of our last mention of her up to the commencement of 1648. There is nothing recorded which can authorise the supposition that before the close of 1647 Madame de Longueville had ever passed the limits of that noble and graceful gallantry which she saw everywhere held in honour, the praises of which she heard celebrated at the Hotel de Rambouillet as well as at the Hotel de Conde, in the great verse of Corneille and in the turgid effusions of Voiture. At the time of the duel between Guise and Coligny, in 1644, she had seen her twenty-fifth summer. Each succeeding year seemed only to enhance the power of her charms, and that power she delighted in exhibiting. A thousand adorers pressed around her. Coligny was, perhaps, nearest to her heart, but had not, however, touched it. But one cannot, with impunity, trifle with love. That tragic adventure of the eldest of the Chatillons perishing, in the flower of his youth, by the hand of the eldest of the Guises was quickly echoed by song and romance through every salon, and cast a gloom upon the destiny of Madame de Longueville, and gave her, at an early period, a fame at once aristocratic and popular, which prepared her wonderfully to play a great part in that other tragi-comedy, heroic and gallant, called the Fronde. The glory of her brother was reflected upon her, and she responded to it somewhat by her own success at Court and in the salons. She acquired more and more the manners of the times. Coquetry and witty talk formed her sole occupation. Her delicate condition not permitting her to accompany M. de Longueville to Muenster, in June, 1645, she remained in Paris. It was the place above all others in which she delighted, and whether her heart had received some slight wound, or whether it was still entirely whole, it is clear that she was not very glad nor greatly charmed to find herself, after her accouchement in the spring of 1646, under the cold, grey sky of Westphalia, again beside a husband who was not, as Retz says, the most agreeable man to her in the world. It is not difficult to divine the feelings with which that petted beauty of the Hotel de Rambouillet must have left Corneille, Voiture, and all the elegancies and refinements of life, to take up her abode at Munster amongst a set of foreign diplomatists only speaking German or Latin. To her it was doubly an exile, for her native soil was not merely France—but Paris, the Court, the Hotel de Conde, Chantilly, the Place Royale, the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre.[1] However, there was nothing for it but to obey the marital summons, and to set off with her step-daughter, Mademoiselle de Longueville, who was already more than twenty years of age. The Duchess quitted Paris on the 20th of June, 1646, with a numerous escort under the command of Montigny, lieutenant of M. de Longueville's guards. The entire journey from Paris to Munster was a continual ovation. The Duke went as far as Wesel to meet her. Turenne, who then commanded on the Rhine, treated her to the spectacle of an army drawn up in order of battle, and which he manoeuvred for her amusement. Was it on that occasion that the great captain, well known to have been always impressionable to female beauty, received the ardent impulse which was renewed at Stenay in 1650, and which, graciously but prudently acknowledged by Madame de Longueville, always remained a close and tender tie between them? On the 22nd of July she made her triumphal entry into Munster. During the entire autumn of 1646 and the winter of 1647 she was really the Queen of the Congress. Her beauty and grace of manner won homage equally from the grave diplomatists as from the great commanders who were there assembled.

[1] In which the Hotel de Rambouillet was situate.

Although the Duchess dissembled her ennui with that politeness and gentleness peculiar to herself, after the lapse of a few months she had had enough of her brilliant exile. In the winter of 1647 there were two reasons for her return to France. Her father, the Prince de Conde, had died towards the close of December, 1646, to the great loss of his family and France, the consequences of which were somewhat later vividly felt. Moreover, Madame de Longueville had become enceinte, at Muenster for the third time, and it being her mother's wish that her accouchement should take place near her, M. de Longueville was compelled to consent to his wife's departure for Paris.

Her return to France, at first to Chantilly, and next to Paris, in the month of May, 1647, was quite another sort of triumph to that of her journey to the Rhine and Holland, and her sojourn at Muenster. She found the crowd of her adorers more numerous and attentive than ever, and in the foremost rank her younger brother, the Prince de Conti, just fresh from college, was taking his first lessons of life in the wider range of the great world.

Shortly after her accouchement, the Duchess, who during her sojourn amongst the plenipotentiaries charged with negotiating the treaty of Westphalia, had acquired a taste, there seems little doubt, for political discussions and speculations, first began to manifest an inclination to mix herself up with state affairs. There was little difficulty in her doing so. The mission which the Duke de Longueville continued to fulfil in Germany, the continued favour enjoyed by the Princess de Conde, the ever-increasing influence which the Duke d'Enghien—recently through his father's death become Prince de Conde—had acquired by his repeated victories, all these advantages, joined to the prestige of the personal charms of Madame de Longueville, placed this latter in a position to take the foremost part in the civil war about to break out.

The Court and Paris were then occupied with festivals and diversions, which all were eager to share with Madame de Longueville. To please the Queen, Mazarin multiplied balls and operas. At a great expense he sent to Italy for artists, singers, male and female, who represented the opera of Orpheus, the machinery and decorations of which are said to have cost more than 400,000 livres. The Queen delighted in these spectacles. France also, as though inspired by its increasing grandeur, took pleasure in the magnificence of its government, and seconded it by redoubling its own luxury and magnificence. The pleasures of wit occupied the first rank. The Hotel de Rambouillet, near its decline, was shedding its last rays. Madame de Longueville reigned there as well as in all the best circles of Paris; and it must be confessed, with her good qualities she had also some of the defects of the best precieuses. The following is the picture which Madame de Motteville has traced of her person, of the turn of her mind, of her occupation, of her reputation, and of that of the whole house of Conde, at this period, which may be considered as the most felicitous of her life: "This princess, who during her absence reigned in her family, and whose approbation was sought as though she were a real sovereign, did not fail, on her return to Paris, to appear in greater splendour than when she left it. The friendship entertained for her by the Prince, her brother, authorizing her actions and her manners, the greatness of her beauty and of her mind increased so much the cabal of her family, that she was not long at Court without almost entirely engrossing it. She became the object of all desires: her clique was the centre of all intrigues, and those whom she loved became also the favourites of fortune.... Her intelligence, her wit, and the high opinion entertained for her discernment, won for her the admiration of all good people, who were persuaded that her esteem alone was enough to give them reputation. If, in this way, she governed people's minds, she was not less successful by means of her beauty; for although she had suffered from the small-pox since the Regency, and although she had lost somewhat of the perfection of her complexion, the splendour of her charms excited a powerful influence upon those who saw her; and she possessed especially, in the highest degree, what in the Spanish language is expressed by those words, donayre, brio, y bizarrie (gallant air). She had an admirable form, and her person possessed a charm whose power extended over our own sex. It was impossible to see her without loving her, and without desiring to please her." Some shadows, however, slightly tone down this otherwise brilliant portraiture. "She was then too much engrossed with her own sentiments, which passed for infallible rules while they were not always so, and there was too much affectation in her manner of speaking and acting, whose greatest beauty was attributable to delicacy of thought and correctness of reasoning. She appeared constrained, and the keen raillery exercised by herself and her courtiers often fell upon those who, while rendering her their homage, felt, to their mortification, that honest sincerity, which ought to be observed in polite society, was apparently banished from hers. The virtues and qualities of the most excellent creatures are mingled with things opposed to them: all men partake of this clay from which they derive their origin, and God alone is perfect.... In short it may be said that at this time all greatness, all glory, and all gallantry were concentrated in the family of Bourbon, of which the Prince de Conde was the illustrious head, and that fortune was not considered a desirable thing if it did not emanate from their hands."

But, unhappily, frivolous pastimes, of a nature both innocent and dangerous, now wholly engrossed Madame de Longueville. She was surrounded by all the prosperities and all the felicities of this life. Everything conspired in her favour, or rather against her—the triumphs of mind as well as those of beauty, the continually increasing glory of her paternal house, the intoxication of her vanity, the secret promptings of her heart. The trial was too much for her, and she succumbed to it. In the enchanted circle in which she moved, more than one adorer attracted her attention; and one of them succeeded in winning her affections, according to all appearances, at the close of 1647, or at the commencement of 1648. She was then about twenty-nine.

Francois, Prince de Marsillac, without being very handsome, was well formed and very agreeable. As De Retz says, he was not a warrior, although he was a very good soldier. What distinguished him especially was his wit. Of this he possessed an infinite fund, of the finest and most delicate. His conversation was gentle, easy, insinuating; and his manners were at once the most natural and most polished. He had a lofty air. In him vanity supplied the place of ambition. At an early age he showed a fondness for distinction and for intrigues. Profoundly selfish, and having succeeded in acquiring a knowledge of himself, and in reducing to theory his nature, his character, and his tastes, he set out with very contrary appearances, and those chivalrous manners affected by the Importants. One of his first connections, as we have seen, was with Madame de Chevreuse, who secured him to Queen Anne. When the death of Louis XIII. had placed the supreme authority in her hands, he imagined that his fortune was made. He sought successively various important offices which the Queen could not grant, whatever liking she might have entertained for him. Having tried several schemes and failed in all, the Queen applied herself to soothing his disappointments, by behaviour so tender as to retain him, as would now be said, in a moderate opposition, and keep him from taking part in the violence of Beaufort. He was not then covered with the disgrace of the Importants, though he shared it to a certain extent; and he did not cease to be, or seem to be, very much attached, not to the government, but to the person of the Queen. He looked continually for some great favour at her hands. These favours not arriving, he determined to procure through intimidation what his self-seeking fidelity had not been able to secure for him.

It was during this state of his feelings that he met Madame de Longueville, on her return from Munster, surrounded by the most earnest admirers. The Count de Miossens, afterwards Marshal d'Albret—handsome, brave, full of wit and talent, as enterprising in love as in war—was paying her a very zealous court. La Rochefoucauld persuaded Miossens, who was one of his friends, that, after all, if he should overcome the resistance of Madame de Longueville, it would only be a victory flattering to his vanity, whilst that he, La Rochefoucauld, would be able to turn it to a very good account. This was certainly a very convincing and heroic reason for falling in love! We, however, do no more than transfer, with the utmost exactness, a statement made by Rochefoucauld himself, which we will now quote word for word: "So much unprofitable labour and so much weariness, finally gave me other thoughts, and led me to attempt dangerous ways in order to testify my hostility to the Queen and Cardinal Mazarin. The beauty of Madame de Longueville, her wit, and the charms of her person, attached to her all who could hope for her favour. Many men and women of quality strove to please her; and besides all this, Madame de Longueville was then upon such good terms with all her house, and so tenderly beloved by the Duke d'Enghien, her brother, that the esteem and friendship of this prince might be counted upon by any one who enjoyed the favour of his sister. Many persons vainly attempted this game, mingling other sentiments with those of ambition. Miossens, who afterwards became Marshal of France, persisted in it longest, but with similar success. I was one of his intimate friends, and he told me his designs. They soon fell to the ground of themselves. He saw this, and told me several times that he was about to renounce them; but vanity, which was the strongest of his passions, prevented him from telling me the truth, and he professed to entertain hopes which he had not, and which I knew that he could not have. Some time passed in this way; and, finally, I had reason to believe that I could make a more considerable use than Miossens of the friendship and confidence of Madame de Longueville. I made him believe it himself. He knew my position at Court; I told him my views, declaring that my consideration for him would always restrain me, and that I would not attempt to form a connection with Madame de Longueville without his permission. I will even confess that I irritated him against her in order to obtain it, without, however, saying anything untrue. He delivered her over entirely to me, but he repented when he saw the result of that connection."[2]

[2] Petitot Collection, vol. li. p. 393.

When, subdued at length by the passion shown for her by La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville had determined to respond to it, she gave herself up to him wholly—devoting herself in everything to the man whom she dared to love. She made it a point of honour, as doubtless it was a secret happiness, to share his destiny and to follow him without casting one backward glance—sacrificing to him all her private interests, the evident interest of her family, and the strongest sentiment of her soul, her tenderness for her brother Conde.

The truthful Madame de Motteville, after noting the principal motive which urged La Rochefoucauld in his pursuit of Madame de Longueville, adds: "In all that she has since done, it is clearly seen that ambition was not the only thing that occupied her soul, and that the interests of the Prince de Marsillac there held a prominent place. For him she became ambitious, for him she ceased to love repose; and in order to show herself alive to this affection, she became too insensible to her own fame.... The declarations of the Prince de Marsillac, as I have already said, had not been displeasing to her; and this nobleman, who was perhaps more selfish than tender, wishing through her to promote his own interests, believed that he should inspire her with a desire of ruling the princes her brothers."[3]

[3] Mad. de Motteville, vol. ii. p. 17.

Such being the sordid motives of her wooer, the oft-repeated lines, therefore, which he wrote with his own hand behind a portrait of the Duchess must be construed with a considerable abatement of their poetic ardour:—

"Pour meriter son coeur, pour plaire a ses beaux yeux, J'ai fait la guerre aux rois, Je l'aurais faite aux dieux."[4]

[4] At a later period, after he had lost his sight from a pistol-shot received at the combat of the Porte St. Antoine during the Fronde, and had quarrelled with the Duchess, he parodied his own distich,—

"Pour ce coeur inconstant, qu'enfin Je connais mieux, J'ai fait la guerre au roi; J'en ai perdu les yeux."

Such a dissembler then was the coldly ambitious, egotistical, clever Duke de la Rochefoucauld—a man capable of sacrificing everybody to his own interests. Madame de Longueville, such as we have depicted her, could not help being the instrument of a man of like character. M. Cousin seems to have arrived at that conclusion, since, in designating that princess as the soul of the Fronde, he acknowledges "that she troubled the state and her own family by an extravagant passion for one of the chiefs of the Importants, become one of the chiefs of the Fronde." But M. Cousin is very nearly silent touching the Prince de Conti, of whom the Duchess was the sole motive-power on all occasions, and he merely says that this young prince submitted to be led by his sister in order to stand upon an equal footing with his elder brother whilst waiting for a cardinal's hat.

Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, born in 1629, was eighteen years of age in 1647. He had good intellect and a not unpleasant countenance; but a slight deformity and a certain feebleness of constitution rendering him unfit for the army, he was early destined for the church. He had studied among the Jesuits at the college of Clermont with Moliere, and his father had obtained for him the richest benefices, and demanded a cardinal's hat. While waiting for this hat dignity, Armand de Bourbon was living at the Hotel de Conde, partly an ecclesiastic, partly a man of the world, passing his days with wits and men of fashion, and greedy of every species of success. The glory of his brother filled him with emulation, and he dreamed himself of warlike exploits. When his sister returned from Germany, he went to meet her, and, dazzled by her beauty, her grace, and her fame, he began to love her rather as a gallant than as a brother. He followed her blindly in all her adventures, in which he exhibited as much courage as volatility. When he had made his peace with the Court—thanks to his marriage with a niece of Mazarin, the beautiful and virtuous Anne-Marie Martinozzi—he obtained the command-in-chiefship of the army of Catalonia, in which capacity he acquitted himself with great honour. He was much less successful in Italy. On the whole, he was far from injuring his name, and he gave to France, in the person of his young son, a true warrior, one of the best pupils of Conde, one of the last eminent generals of the seventeenth century. Constrained, through ill-health, to betake himself again to religion, the Prince de Conti finished, where he had begun, with theology. He composed several meritorious and learned works on various religious subjects.

In 1647, he was entirely devoted to vanity and pleasure. He adored his sister, and she exercised over him a somewhat ridiculous empire, which continued during several years.



CHAPTER III.

THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE DRIVEN INTO EXILE FOR THE THIRD TIME.

WHEN in the summer of 1644, the Queen of England, the fugitive consort of Charles I., sought an asylum in France from the fury of the English parliamentarians, and went to drink the Bourbon waters, Madame de Chevreuse eagerly desired to see once more that illustrious princess, who had so warmly welcomed her when herself an exile, at the Court of St. James's. Queen Henrietta, too, who like her mother, Marie de' Medici, as well as the Duchess, was of the Spanish and Catholic party, would have been delighted to have mingled her tears with those of so old and faithful a friend. But the royal exile did not deem it right to give way to her inclination without Queen Anne's permission, who at that moment was according her such noble hospitality. Anne of Austria politely replied that the Queen, her sister, was perfectly free to act as she chose; but it was intimated to her, through the Chevalier de Jars, that it was inexpedient to receive the visit of a person who, through misguided conduct, had forfeited Her Majesty's favour. This fresh disgrace, added to so many others, increased the Duchess's irritation to the highest pitch. She redoubled her efforts to break the yoke that oppressed her. Mazarin watched and was made acquainted with all her manoeuvres. He had the comptroller of her household arrested in Paris, and shortly afterwards even her physician, whilst accompanying Madame de Chevreuse's daughter in her carriage for an airing. The Duchess complained bitterly of this latter proceeding in a letter which she contrived to have handed to the Queen. She asserted that Mademoiselle de Chevreuse was forced to quit the vehicle, two archers levelling their pistols at her breast, and shouting all the while—"Fire! fire!" and they threatened, after the same fashion, the female attendants who were with her. At the same time that she protested her own innocence, she did not fail to challenge Anne's sense of justice, with a view to neutralize the enmity of Mazarin. But the physician whom he had had arrested, on being flung into the Bastile, made avowals which opened up traces of very grave matters; and an exempt of the King's guards was despatched to Madame de Chevreuse with an order commanding her to retire to Angouleme, and the officer was even charged to convey her thither. At Angouleme was that strong fortress used as a state prison, in which her friend Chateauneuf had been confined on her account for ten long years. This reminiscence, ever present to the Duchess's imagination, terrified her sorely. She dreaded lest it should be the same sort of retreat which they now intended for her; and the active-minded woman, preferring every kind of extremity to being imprisoned, decided upon renewing the career of a wanderer and an adventurer, as in 1637, and to tread for the third time the wearisome paths of exile.

But how greatly were circumstances then changed around her, and how changed was she also herself! Her first exile from France in 1626, had proved one continuous triumph. Young, lovely, and adored by every one, she had quitted Nancy, leaving the Duke de Lorraine a slave henceforward to the sway of her charms, only to return to Paris and trouble the mind of the stony, impassive Richelieu. In 1637 her flight into Spain had, on the contrary, proved a most severe trial to her. She had been forced to traverse the whole of France disguised in male attire, brave more than one danger, endure much suffering and privation, only to struggle in the sequel with five consecutive years of fruitless agitation. But, at any rate, she then had youth to back her, and the consciousness of the power of that irresistible fascination which procured her adorers and suitors wherever she wandered, even among the occupants of thrones. She had faith likewise in the Queen's friendship, and a firm reliance that the time would come when that friendship would repay her for all her devotedness. But now age she felt was creeping upon her; her beauty, verging towards its decline, promised her henceforward conquests only few and far between. She perceived that in losing her power over Anne of Austria's heart, she had lost the greater portion of her prestige both in France and Europe. The flight of the Duke de Vendome, shortly about to be followed by that of the Duke de Bouillon, left the Importants without any chief of note. The Duchess had found Mazarin to be quite as skilful and formidable an enemy as Richelieu. Victory seemed to have entered into a compact with him. De Bouillon's own brother, Turenne, solicited the honour of serving him, and the young Duke d'Enghien won battle after battle for him. She knew also that the Cardinal had that in his hands wherewith he could condemn and sentence her to incarceration for the rest of her days. When, however, almost every one forsook her, this extraordinary woman did not give way to self-abandonment. As soon as the exempt Riquetti had signified to her the order of which he was the bearer, she adopted measures with her accustomed promptitude, and, accompanied by her daughter Charlotte, who had hastened to her mother and refused to quit her, she succeeded in reaching by cross-roads the thickets of La Vendee and the solitudes of Brittany; until, approaching within a few leagues of St.-Malo, she solicited an asylum at the hands of the Marquis de Coetquen. That noble and generous Breton gave her the hospitality which was due to such a woman struggling against such adversity. Marie de Rohan did not abuse it; and after placing her jewels in his hands for safety, as she had formerly done in those of La Rochefoucauld,[1] she embarked with her daughter in the depth of winter at St.-Malo, on board a small vessel bound for Dartmouth, whence she purposed crossing over to Dunkirk and entering Flanders. But the English parliamentarian men-of-war were cruising in the Channel. They fell in with and captured the wretched little bark, and carried her into the Isle of Wight. There Madame de Chevreuse was recognised; and as she was known to be a friend of the Queen of England, the Roundheads were not loth to subject her to sufficiently rough treatment; and afterwards hand her over to Mazarin. Fortunately, in the Governor of the Isle of Wight, she met with the Earl of Pembroke, whom she had formerly known. The Duchess appealed to his courtesy,[2] and thanks to his good offices, she obtained—but with no little difficulty—passports which permitted her to gain Dunkirk, and thence the Spanish Low Countries.

[1] Subsequently, she requested the Marquis de Coetquen to hand over her jewels to Montresor, who transferred them to a messenger of the Duchess. But Mazarin was informed of everything from first to last. He was aware of every tittle of the Duchess's correspondence, and tried to seize with the strong hand the famous gems which had formerly belonged to Marie de' Medicis' favourite foster-sister, Leonora Galligai, created Marchioness d'Ancre. On the murder of the Marshal d'Ancre, these diamonds and parures, valued at two hundred thousand crowns, with a vast amount of other property confiscated by an edict of Louis XIII., were bestowed by the king on his lucky favourite, De Luynes, the first husband of Marie de Rohan. Failing in his attempt to possess himself of these costly gems, Mazarin arrested Montresor, and kept him upwards of a year in prison. See "Memoirs of Montresor."

[2] See her letter to the Earl of Pembroke, dated Isle of Wight, 29th April, 1645, in "Archives des Affaires Etrangeres, France," t. cvi. p. 162.

The adventurous exile took up her abode for a short time at Liege, and applied herself to maintain and consolidate to the utmost degree possible between Spain, Austria, and the Duke de Lorraine, an alliance, which was the final resource of the Importants, and the last basis of her own political reputation and high standing. Mazarin, however, having got the upper hand, resumed all Richelieu's designs, and, like him, made strenuous efforts to detach Lorraine from his two allies. The gay Duke was then madly enamoured of the fair Beatrice de Cusance, Princess of Cantecroix. Mazarin laboured to gain over the lady, and he proposed to the ambitious and enterprising Charles IV. to break with Spain and march into Franche-Comte with the aid of France, promising to leave him in possession of all he might conquer. The Cardinal succeeded in winning over to his interest Duke Charles's own sister (the former mistress of Puylaurens), the Princess de Phalzbourg, then greatly fallen from her former "high estate," and who gave him secret and faithful account of all that passed in her brother's immediate circle. Mazarin required of her especially to keep him apprised of Madame de Chevreuse's slightest movement. He knew that she was in correspondence with the Duke de Bouillon, that she disposed of the Imperial general Piccolomini by means of her friend Madame de' Strozzi, and even that she had preserved intact her sway over the Duke de Lorraine, in spite of the charms of the fair Beatrice. By the help of the Princess de Phalzbourg he watched every step, and disputed with her, foot to foot, possession of the fickle Charles IV., sometimes the victor, but very often the vanquished in this mysterious struggle.

The advantage remained with Madame de Chevreuse. Her ascendancy over Charles IV.—the offspring of love, surviving that passion, but more potent than all the later loves of that inconstant Prince—retained him in alliance with Spain, and frustrated Mazarin's projects. By degrees she became once more the soul of every intrigue planned against the French Government. She did not always attack it from without, but fostered internal difficulties, which, like the heads of the hydra, were unceasingly springing forth. Surrounded by a knot of ardent and obstinate emigrants, among others by the Count de Saint-Ybar, one of the most resolute men of the party, she kept up the spirits of the remnant of the Importants left in France, and everywhere added fuel to the fire of sedition. Actuated by strong passion, yet mistress of herself, she preserved a calm brow amidst the wrack of the tempest, at the same time that she displayed an indefatigable activity in surprising the enemy on his weak side. Making use alike of the Catholic and the Protestant party, at times she meditated a revolt in Languedoc, or a descent upon Brittany; at others, on the slightest symptom of discontent betrayed by some person of importance, she laboured to drive out Mazarin.



CHAPTER IV.

FATAL INFLUENCE OF MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE'S PASSION FOR LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.—THE FRONDE.

WE do not propose to enter into the labyrinth of intrigues which preceded the outbreak of the Fronde, but confine ourselves to an endeavour to trace the motives which led Madame de Longueville to throw herself into the centre of the malcontents and to figure as the chief heroine in the varied scenes of that tragi-comedy of civil war.

The first Fronde was formed out of the debris of the Importants. It was composed of all the malcontents who made common cause with those members of the parliament who were irritated by the frequent bursal edicts, notably that which, in 1648, created twelve new appointments of maitres de requetes.

And now what gave birth to the Fronde, or what sustained it? What roused up the old party of the Importants, stifled for some years, it would seem, under the laurels of Rocroy? What separated the princes of the blood from the Crown? What turned against the throne that illustrious house of Conde, which, until then, had been its sword and shield? There were doubtless many general causes for all this; but it is impossible for us to conceal one—private, it is true, but which exercised a powerful and deplorable influence—the unexpected love of Madame de Longueville for one of the chiefs of the Importants, who had become one of the chiefs of the Fronde. Yes—sad to say—it was Madame de Longueville, who, joining the party of the malcontents, attracted thereto, at first, a part of her family, then her entire family, and thus precipitated it from the pinnacle of honour and glory to which so many services had elevated it.

Scarcely had the treaty of Muenster suspended the scourge of foreign war for France, than internal dissensions began to trouble the realm. The hatred which the Parliament bore to Mazarin, through his repression of its functions, primarily gave birth to civil war. The Duchess de Longueville became in the faction of the Fronde what the Duchess de Montpensier had been in that of the League. The former, however, did not at first attach so great an importance to the cause she espoused. Characteristically careless, she was by nature little inclined to agitation and intrigue. We have already shown that before her liaison with La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville had been a stranger to politics. Occupied solely with innocent gallantry and the homage of the most refined society of the day, she allowed herself in all else to be led by her father and her elder brother. But no sooner was La Rochefoucauld master of her heart, than she gave herself wholly up to him, and became a mere instrument in his hands. Having been by him inspired with ambition, she made it a point of honour, and doubtless a secret happiness, to share his destiny.

It seems not improbable that the Duchess might have caught a liking for politics and negotiation during the conference of Munster. Certain it is that once plunged into the eddying tide of the Fronde, she loftily announced the project of remedying the general disorder of affairs. But she especially desired to employ therein the means which confer celebrity, and it is difficult to deny that ambition, although without determinate aim, and the desire of establishing a high opinion of her intellect, may have had some share in the reasons which induced her to embrace the party opposed to Mazarin. With herself she drew her husband into it, as well as the Prince de Conti, her younger brother. As for the elder, the victorious Conde, he at first declared for the King and the Queen-Regent, which greatly incensed his sister against him, and caused her to enter into close compact, amongst others, with the Coadjutor, afterwards Cardinal de Retz—that mischievous man who figured so conspicuously as the evil genius of the Fronde.

The Gondis, who were the chief advisers of the St. Bartholomew, owed to that terrible exploit the result of being very nearly the hereditary possessors of the Archbishopric of Paris. But this last Gondi—John Francis Paul—owed something more: to be at the same time governor of Paris, and to unite both powers. With such purpose, he artfully worked upon the city through the curates who, distributing bread, soup, and every other kind of alms, carried along with them the famished masses. This young ecclesiastic of the de Retz family had risen into great favour with the serious and religious sections of the Parisian community. He was nephew of the Archbishop of Paris, and was himself Archbishop of Corinth; but as his flock in that metropolitan city were schismatic (except those who had turned Turks), he had leisure to assist his uncle in his high office, and was appointed his Coadjutor and successor. He preached at all the churches, held visitations at the convents, catechised the young, and consulted with the senior clergy on the management of the diocese. When he rode through the streets he was saluted with cheers and blessings, and the orators of the Fronde held him up as the pattern of all the Christian virtues. At night he put off his episcopal robes, disguised himself as a trooper or tradesman, and attended the meetings of the discontented. In a short time he had distributed seven or eight thousand pounds in stirring up the passions of the people, and was daily in expectation of being summoned by his patroness the Queen to exert his influence in quelling them. The populace, with an Archbishop-governor of Paris at their head, imagined that they were going to rule there as in the time of the League. This made them both blind and deaf to the morals and manners of the little prelate. A braggart, a duellist, and more than a gallant—though having swarthy, ugly features, turned-up nose, and short, bandy legs—yet his expressive eyes carried off every fault, sparkling as they were with intelligence, audacity, and libertinage. Few withstood this subtle knave, for he was wont to waive all ceremonial and spare everybody prefatory speeches. The ladies of gallantry—especially those whose lover he was—were his most indefatigable political agents. The Queen, at length, suspecting that the worthy Archbishop was not quite the simple and self-denying individual he appeared, had him watched and followed. Whilst he flattered himself with the anticipation that his assistance would be solicited at the Palais Royal, the Queen was making a jest of him, and Mazarin determined to strike the blow.

On the 27th of August, 1648, a vast assemblage crowded the spacious precincts of Notre Dame, to celebrate a Te Deum for the great victory of Lens, of which the youthful Conde had just sent home the news. When the multitude were dispersing, a dash was made upon two or three of the obnoxious councillors who had inflamed the discussions of the Fronde—for that civil war was fairly on foot ere Anne of Austria and Mazarin knew of its existence. Two of the intended prisoners escaped, but a surly, burly demagogue, named Broussel, was tracked to his house in the mechanics' quarter of Paris, and arrested by an armed force. Thereupon the populace rose and armed against the Court. They made an extraordinary stand in the streets, having raised twelve hundred barricades in the course of twelve hours. They had no further need of De Retz. It was, however, one of his mistresses, the sister of a president and wife of a city captain, who having in her house the drum belonging to the citizen guard of that quarter, gave the first impulse by causing it to be beaten. The train was thus fired and the flame of civil war kindled. This was called the Day of the Barricades.

Thus, the royal power which, as wielded by Richelieu, had come to be considered as absolute, was attacked by three parties simultaneously—the great nobles, the parliamentarians, and the bourgeoisie; but, notwithstanding the dread of the common enemy, which united them, those parties were of different origin and conditions of existence, and consequently had different interests also. The great nobles wished to exercise power by placing themselves above the law; the parliament to increase its own through the law; the citizens to establish theirs at the expense of the law: for in their eyes the law was full of abuses and the royal power cruelly oppressive. All three parties, in order to arrive at their several ends, had, therefore, recourse to violence, or derived aid from it.

On the return of Madame de Longueville from Muenster, there was already a ferment in the minds of the Parisians, of which the Regent took little heed. The Fronde cabal was then brooding in the dark. When the rebellion, formed by Gondi, broke out at last under the circumstances just narrated, Madame de Longueville, alone of all the princesses of the blood, did not accompany Anne of Austria in her flight to Rueil. The Duchess strove her utmost to strengthen, by the concurrence of her entire family, the faction whose fortunes she had embraced through devotion to Marsillac. She did not, however, then succeed in detaching Conde from the Regent's party. The battle of the barricades followed close upon that of Lens, Conde's last victory. On his return, that victorious young soldier found royalty humiliated, the Parliament triumphing and dictating laws to the Crown; the Duke de Beaufort, with whom he once thought of measuring swords in defence of the honour of his sister, freed from his prison in Vincennes, and master of Paris by aid of the populace who idolized him; the vain and fickle Abbe de Retz transformed into a tribune of the people; the Prince de Conti into a generalissimo; M. de Longueville under the guidance of his wife and La Rochefoucauld; and the feeble Duke d'Orleans fancying himself almost a King, because he saw the Queen humiliated, and because the Frondeurs, cunningly flattering his self-love, were treating him like a sovereign. Conde, at a glance, saw the situation of affairs and his duty also; and without any hesitation he offered his sword to the Queen.

Brother and sister were, therefore, about to be arrayed against each other in the strife of civil war, and a stormy explanation took place between them. It is asserted that for some time back their reciprocal tenderness had suffered more than one interruption; that, in 1645, Madame de Longueville had crossed the loves of her brother and Mademoiselle du Vigean; that, in 1646, Conde, seeing her too intimate with La Rochefoucauld, had caused her to be summoned to Muenster by her husband. But for this we have only the authority of the Duchess de Nemours, her step-daughter and unsparing censor, and nothing is less probable. The passion of Conde for Mademoiselle de Vigean extinguished itself, as all contemporaries affirm. The attentions of La Rochefoucauld to Madame de Longueville may have preceded the embassy of Muenster, but they were not observed until 1647, and it is at the close of this year that Madame de Motteville places them, while attributing them especially to the desire of La Rochefoucauld to share the confidence of the sister with the brother. But it is very certain that as soon as the latter remarked this connection, he disapproved of it entirely; and not succeeding in his effort to rouse his sister from the intoxication of a first passion, he passed from the most ardent affection to a bitter discontent. In the autumn of 1648, on his return from Lens, this connection had acquired its greatest strength, and become almost notorious. Madame de Longueville, directed by La Rochefoucauld, did then everything possible to gain over her brother. She brought all her allurements to bear upon him, all her fondlings. She put into play everything which she thought might influence his fickle and passionate disposition—but failed. Neither did he succeed in gaining over her his accustomed ascendency. They quarrelled and separated openly. Madame de Longueville plunged more deeply into the Fronde, and Conde applied himself to giving the new Importants a harsh lesson.

The Queen had retired to Saint-Germain with the young King and all the government. Paris was under the absolute control of the Fronde. It stirred up the Parliament by the aid of a few ambitious councillors and by seditious and mischievous inquests. It disposed of a great part of the Parisian clergy through the Coadjutor of the Archbishop De Retz, who possessed and exercised all the authority of his uncle. It had continually at its head the two great houses of Vendome and Lorraine, with two princes of the blood, the Prince de Conti and the Duke de Longueville, followed by a very great number of illustrious families, including the Dukes d'Elbeuf, de Bouillon, and de Beaufort, and other powerful nobles. It gave law in the salons, thanks to a brilliant bevy of pretty women, who drew after them the flower of the young nobility. In short, the army itself was divided. Turenne, with his troops, who were stationed near the Rhine until the perfect conclusion of the treaty of Westphalia, obedient to the suggestions of his elder brother, the Duke de Bouillon, who wished to recover his principality of Sedan, had just raised the standard of revolt, and was threatening to place the Court between his own army and that of Paris. The parliament of the capital had sent deputies to all the parliaments of the kingdom, and was thus forming a sort of formidable parliamentary league in the face of monarchy. Conde took command of all the troops that remained faithful, and everywhere opposed the insurrection. He wrote himself to the army of the Rhine, which well knew him, and which after the rout sustained by Turenne at Mariendal, had been led back by him to victory: these letters, supported by the proceedings of the government, succeeded in arresting the revolt; and Turenne, abandoned by his own soldiers, was obliged to fly to Holland.[1] At ease on this head, Conde marched upon Paris, and placed it under siege. Instead of disputing the ground, as he might have done, foot by foot, with the sedition, he allowed it the freest course, in the certainty that the spectacle of licentiousness which could not fail to appear would, little by little, restore to royalty those who had for a moment gone astray. He began by summoning, in the Queen's name and through his mother, all his family to Saint-Germain. The Prince de Conti and M. de Longueville did not dare disobey; but La Rochefoucauld, seeing that the Fronde was in the greatest peril, hastened after these two princes. Having brought them back to Paris, he made the Prince de Conti generalissimo—placing under him the Dukes d'Elbeuf and de Bouillon—and who shared authority with the Marshal de la Mothe Houdancourt, governor of Paris. Madame de Longueville excused herself to the Queen and to her mother on the grounds of her delicate condition, which would not permit her to undertake the least fatigue. In fact, Madame de Longueville, it may be noted, was enceinte for the last time in 1648, when, it must be confessed, her connection with La Rochefoucauld was well known. It was in this condition that, willing to share the perils of her friends, proud also of playing a part and of filling all the trumpets of fame, she enacted Pallas as well as she was able. It is at least certain that she shared all the fatigues of the siege, that she was present at the reviews of the troops, at the parades of the citizen soldiery, and that all the civil and military plans were discussed before her. In this disorder and confusion, amidst the tumult of arms and vociferations of the insurrection, she appeared as if in her natural element. She encouraged, counselled, acted, and the most energetic resolutions emanated from her. The memoirs of the times are full, in regard to this, of the most curious details. The Hotel de Longueville was continually filled with officers and generals; nothing was seen there but plumes, helmets, and swords.

[1] "History of Turenne," by Ramsay, vol. ii.

Notwithstanding all this, the democratic spirit which had originated the Fronde was not satisfied. It beheld with displeasure all the forces of Paris in the hands of the brother, of the brother-in-law, and of the sister of him who commanded the siege. Believing very little, and with reason, in the patriotism of the princes, the citizens demanded some sureties from the chiefs who might at any time betray them, and make peace, at their expense, with Saint-Germain. No one seemed to know how to appease this clamorous multitude, without which nothing further could be done. It was then that Madame de Longueville showed that, if she had forgotten her true duties, she had retained the energy of her race and the intrepidity of the Condes. Under the advice of De Retz, she induced her husband to present himself to the Parliament and inform them that he had come to offer his services, as well as the towns of Rouen, Caen, Dieppe, and the whole of Normandy, of which he was governor; and he begged the Parliament to consent that his wife and two children should be lodged at the Hotel de Ville as a guarantee for the execution of his word. His speech was received with acclamations; and while the deliberations were still going on, De Retz proceeded to seek the Duchess de Longueville and the Duchess de Bouillon, both prepared to act a part in the scene he proposed to display. He had already caused the proposal of the Duke de Longueville to be spread amongst the populace; and hurrying the two princesses into a carriage, dressed with studied and artful negligence, but surrounded by a splendid suite, and followed by an immense crowd to the principal quarter of the insurrection—the Hotel de Ville—those lovely and interesting women were placed in the hands of the people as hostages with all that was most dear to them. "Imagine," says De Retz, "these two beautiful persons upon the balcony of the Hotel de Ville; more beautiful because they appeared neglected, although they were not. Each held in her arms one of her children, who were as beautiful as their mothers." La Greve was full of people, even to the house tops; the men all raised cries of joy, and the women wept with emotion. De Retz, meanwhile, threw handfuls of money from the windows of the Hotel de Ville amongst the populace, and then, leaving the princesses under the protection of the city, he returned to the Palais de Justice, followed by an immense multitude, whose acclamations rent the skies.

On the night of the 28th of January, 1649, Madame de Longueville gave birth to her last child, a son, who was baptized by De Retz, having for its godfather the Provost, for its godmother the Duchess de Bouillon, and who received the name of Charles de Paris; the child of the Fronde, handsome, talented, and brave; who during his life was the troublesome hope, the melancholy joy of his mother, and the cause of her greatest grief in 1672, when he perished, at the passage of the Rhine, by the side of his uncle, Conde.

The Prince de Conti being declared generalissimo of the army of the King, under the parliament, and the Dukes de Bouillon and Elbeuf, with the Marshal de la Mothe, generals under him, De Retz saw the full fruition of his intrigues. A civil war was now inevitable. The great and the little, the wise and the foolish, the rash and the prudent, the cowardly and the brave, were all engaged and jumbled up pell-mell on both sides; and the mixture was so strange, so heterogeneous, and so incomprehensible, that a sentiment of the ridiculous was irresistibly paramount, and the war began amongst fits of laughter on all sides. That same day Conde's cavaliers came galloping into the faubourgs to fire their pistols at the Parisians, whilst the Marquis de Noirmoutier went forth with the cavalry of the Fronde to skirmish with them, and returning to the Hotel de Ville, entered the circle of the Duchess de Longueville, followed by his officers, each wearing his cuirass, as he came from the field. The hall was filled with ladies preparing to dance, the troops were drawn up in the square, and this mixture of blue scarves and ladies, cuirasses and violins and trumpets, formed, says De Retz, a spectacle much more common in romances than anywhere else.

The serio-grotesque drama of the Fronde was thus initiated.



CHAPTER V.

MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE WINS HER BROTHER CONDE OVER TO THE FRONDE.

THIS first raising of bucklers by the Frondeurs was not of long duration. At the conclusion of a peace between Mazarin and the Parliament, a perfect understanding prevailed amongst all the members of the Conde family. The civil dissensions, however, were sufficiently prolonged to exhibit the errors of all parties—even those who had entered therein with virtuous inclinations and intentions, ashamed of the stains which had tarnished them in the struggle, almost invariably ended by confining themselves to the narrow circle of individual interests, and completed their degradation by no longer recognizing any other motive for their conduct than that of sordid selfishness. All care for the public weal became extinct; men's hearts were insensible to all generous sympathy; their minds dead to every elevating impulse—like to those aromatics which, after diffusing both glow and perfume from their ardent brazier, lose by combustion all power of further rekindling, and present nothing else than vile ashes, without heat, light, or odour.

The peace concluded between the Minister and the Fronde was destined to be of short duration. It was, properly speaking, nothing but a suspension of arms, and in no degree a suspension of intrigues and cabals. That suspension of arms, however, had been accompanied by an amnesty, including all persons except the Coadjutor. The other chief personages who had played a part in the insurrection of Paris, and who now proceeded to visit the Court, were by no means warmly received by the Queen, though Mazarin himself displayed nothing but mildness and humility. The Duke d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde visited the city; and the first was received with much enthusiasm by the populace, who attributed to his counsels the truce of which all parties had stood so much in need. The Prince de Conde, whose warlike spirit had not only aided in stirring up the strife at first, but would have protracted it still further had his advice been listened to, was not looked upon with the same favour by the Parisians; but the Parliament sent deputations to them both on their arrival in the city, to compliment them on their efforts for the restoration of peace.