CHAPTER IV.

MADAME DE MONTBAZON.

AMONGST the celebrated women of the first half of the seventeenth century, many were, says Bussy Rabutin, "pitiable," whilst some were "brazen." We must assert unhesitatingly that Madame de Montbazon belonged to the latter class. She was "one of those personages, however, who made the most noise" at the courts of Louis the Thirteenth and Anne of Austria, as we are told by Madame de Motteville, and as we have already seen by the prominent political part she played in the factions of the Importants and the Fronde. In summing up her character, we shall be silent upon the subject of many of her faults, though it is not our wish to excuse one of them.

"She was not wanting in wit," remarks Tallemant; "for she had been acquainted with so many witty people!" There is a spice of flattery in this, for we must agree with Madame de Motteville and M. Cousin that the wit of the dazzling rival of Madame de Longueville was far from being as delicate and attractive as was her handsome person, though we cannot at the same time look upon Tallemant's phrase as a calumny. Both space and courage would alike fail us, should we attempt to produce a list of all the lovers, titled and untitled, who had peculiar opportunities of sharpening the wit of Madame de Montbazon.

Among the first of her adorers, beside the name of Gaston d'Orleans, must be cited that of the Duke de Chevreuse, her husband's kinsman. Their liaison furnished matter for a ballad, and was very nearly the cause of a duel at the door of the king's apartments, between the Duke de Montmorency and the Duke de Chevreuse; but that did not hinder Madame de Montbazon from becoming the friend of her step-daughter, who, older and more experienced in the political world than she was, often used her as an instrument. The young Duchess was a more dangerous rival to Madame de Guemene, her other step-daughter, from whom she carried off, not her husband, but the Count de Soissons. And it was not enough that she obtained an easy conquest over her, for she instigated the Count to add outrage to desertion, and he docilely compromised his forsaken mistress by a gross and shameful perfidy.

But, passing rapidly over the errors of her youth, it is the close of Madame de Montbazon's political career with which we are now concerned. The influence which the gay and gallant Duchess long exercised over the Duke de Beaufort had sometimes proved useful to the interests of the Court, and during the early troubles of the Fronde the Queen and Mazarin took care to keep her favourably disposed towards them. But the importance which Beaufort's infatuated passion gave or seemed to give her, speedily made the Duchess one of the heroines of the Fronde—though, it must be owned, one of the secondary heroines. Her allies were careful not to allow her to take upon herself a part she was unable to sustain. Violent, unreflecting, accessible to the most contradictory suggestions, ready for any turn, and the sport of every caprice, she was wanting in all the better qualities of a political woman. Her indiscretion became formidable on all occasions when secresy was necessary, and more than once the Duke de Beaufort was obliged to be excluded from the assemblages at which the chiefs of the Fronde took counsel together. It was well known that he dare not keep anything from his mistress, and it might chance that a royalist might turn to account the confidence which she wormed out of her lover, for conformity in political sentiments was not one of the conditions which she imposed upon the adorers whose homage she welcomed. Her correspondence with Marshal d'Albret exposed her moreover to be subject to, without being aware of it, the influences of the Court, and her intimacy with Vineuil tended to make her an ally, in spite of herself, of the Prince de Conde. Hence it is easy to explain the mistrust with which she inspired the Coadjutor of Paris, the future Cardinal de Retz. She herself did not fail to perceive the surveillance which he exercised around her; and she was irritated to see with what facility he modified in his own fashion the line of conduct which she had just previously dictated to the Duke de Beaufort. She was forced to confess that his authority prevailed over her own. One evening, disheartened by the incapacity of the grandson of the great Henry, and terrified by the dangers to which their imprudence exposed the Frondeurs, and esteeming the political talent of Gondi to be more truly worthy of her own, she opened her heart to him, and proposed that they should enter into a treaty of alliance. The gallant Coadjutor would only consent to accept one portion of the treaty, and, happily for the Duke de Beaufort, who was busily occupied with a game at chess during that strange conversation, he stipulated to eliminate from the proposed association everything that related to politics. But the Duchess would not consent to those terms.

In love, Madame de Montbazon was very mercenary; we say it once for all, and beg to be excused from citing proof of the assertion. In politics, she also surrendered herself very willingly to any representation the eloquence of which was aided by crowns or pistoles. It was thus that in the month of August, 1649, she promised that the Duke de Beaufort should not oppose the return of the Court, at the same moment that she opened her hand to receive a considerable sum. It was thus that, the same year, she accepted two thousand pistoles from the Spanish envoys, who, desirous of rendering her favourable, promised besides that the sum of twenty thousand crowns and a pension of six thousand livres if she would secure to them the concurrence of the Duke de Beaufort. But she did not always meet with debtors so honest as Mazarin and the Spanish ambassadors. In 1650, whilst the treaty was preparing which sought to unite the Frondeurs with the Princes, then prisoners at Havre, a negotiation was entered into with Madame de Montbazon in which the Prince de Conti was offered to her as a husband for her daughter. The proposition was not accepted. The proposers were not discouraged, and a sum of a hundred thousand crowns was offered to her. This time the Duchess could not resist, and the treaty was signed in all due form. Unfortunately, when the Princes were liberated, she was imprudent enough to confide her voucher to the Princess Palatine, who, with perfidious haste, had promised to take care of her interests. She never saw the precious contract again, and the Prince de Conde only answered her demands by cruel and cutting jeers. In that adventure, it was not Madame de Montbazon who played the shabbiest part.

The aid which the Duchess had often lent the Court amidst intrigues the most contradictory, did not preserve her from exile when the King made his entry into Paris, on its definite pacification in October, 1652. She did not return thither till 1657. "She was still beautiful, and as much carried away by vanity as though she had been only in her twenty-fifth year," says Madame de Motteville, when noting her reappearance. "She relied all the same upon her charms," she adds with a somewhat malicious finesse, "for she returned with the same desire of pleasing; and those who saw her assured me that the mourning garb which she wore as a widow, and to which she added everything in the shape of ornament that self-love could suggest, rendered her so charming, that in her case it might be said that the course of nature was changed, since so many years and so much beauty could meet together."[5] Thus, by dint of care and art, did Madame de Montbazon succeed in preserving her beauty much longer than she could have hoped for, since, in the pride of her eighteen summers, she declared that old age commenced at thirty, and requested it as a favour that she might be flung into the river and drowned so soon as she reached the dreaded period. Who would have dared to remind her of that imprudent proposal in 1640? And who could have refused her a respite even in the latter moments of her existence?

[5] The same sentiments were thus versified by Loret, when announcing that the Duchess had obtained permission to return to Court:

"Montbazon, la belle douairiere, Dont les appas et la lumiere Sous de lugubres vetements Paraissent encore plus charmants...."

Permission had scarcely been given her to appear at Court, when she was attacked by an illness which seemed nothing more than a common cold, but which turned out to be the measles. In the course of a few days the malady proved fatal. Three hours only were accorded to this earthly-minded woman to prepare for death. She made confession and received the sacrament with every indication of the most lively piety and the most sincere repentance, saying to her daughter, the Abbess of Caen, "that she regretted not having always lived in a cloister as she had, and that she looked with horror upon her past life." Up to those last three hours, she had refused to believe that there were degrees in the morality of women, and to admit that they were not all equally virtuous.

"She was little regretted by the Queen," Madame de Motteville tells us, "as she had frequently forsaken her interests to follow her own caprices. The minister heard of her death with the feeling one entertains for one's deceased enemy. Her former lovers looked upon her with contempt; and those who admired her still, were but little touched at her loss, because each, jealous of his rival, left tears and grief as the share of the Duke de Beaufort, who was at that moment the most beloved."

On that point Madame de Motteville was in error. Which of the two—M. de Beaufort or M. de Rance—was most beloved it would be difficult to determine. But this is so far certain, that M. de Rance, the future founder of La Trappe, was the lover who regretted her the most sincerely. He had hastened to her sick couch so soon as he heard of her illness; and he had arrived, not too late, and only to find himself the spectator of a most horrible sight, as has frequently been related with much romantic and dramatic detail, but soon enough to pass within her chamber the last hours left to her of life. "Already balancing and wrestling between heaven and this world," says Saint Simon, who was in his confidence, "the sight of that so sudden death achieved in him the determination of withdrawing from the world which he had for some time meditated."

Among the different versions of this catastrophe, Laroque asserts that, after an absence on a long journey, on De Rance's return, he called at the Hotel Montbazon, and then learned, for the first time, the death of the Duchess; that he was shown into her room, where, to his horror, the headless body lay in its coffin. The head had been cut off, either because the lead coffin was not made long enough or for the purpose of an anatomical study. Some assert that De Rance took the head, and that the skull of the woman he loved so well was found in his cell at La Trappe. History, however, will not accept this romantic incident.

Touching the fate of De Rance's rival—when Louis XIV. returned to Paris in 1652, the Duke de Beaufort submitted to the royal authority, and took no further part in the civil war, which the Prince de Conde carried on for several years longer. Later, the Duke obtained the command of the royal fleet. In 1664 and 1665, he was at the head of several expeditions against the African corsairs. In 1666 he commanded the French men-of-war ordered to join those of Holland against England. Finally, in 1669, he went to the aid of the Venetians, attacked by the Turks in the island of Candia. The galleys and vessels, newly constructed in the port of Toulon, disembarked seven thousand men under Beaufort—a contingent too weak for such a dangerous undertaking. That aid only served to retard the taking of Candia for a few days, and was the means of useless bloodshed. In a sortie, the rash and impetuous grandson of Henry the Great was cut to pieces in the most merciless way; and as his body could not be found after the fight, his death gave rise to fables sought to be rendered probable by the remembrance of the eccentric part he had previously played.



CHAPTER V.

MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER.

ANNE MARIE LOUISE D'ORLEANS, Duchess de Montpensier, whom history distinguishes by the epithet of La Grande Mademoiselle, after telling us in her memoirs, at least twenty times, in order to make herself better known, that she was fond of glory, adds—"The Bourbons are folks very much addicted to trifles, with very little solidity about them; perhaps I myself as well as the rest may inherit the same qualities from father and mother."[6] With this hint, whoever scans her portrait may readily read the character her features reveal:—a mind false to the service of a noble and generous heart; an honest but frivolous mind, too often swayed, by a bombastic heroism; a precieuse of the Hotel Rambouillet, whom Nicolas Poilly very happily painted as Pallas, with her helmet proudly perched upon the summit of her fair tresses; an amazon, who bordered upon the adventuress, and, notwithstanding, remained the princess; in short, a personage at whom one cannot help laughing heartily, nor at the same time help admiring.

[6] The daughter of Gaston d'Orleans and the charming Marie de Bourbon, she was born in 1627, the same year as Bossuet and Mad. de Sevigne. Her mother died five days after her birth.

Passing by the subject of her numerous matrimonial projects, we hasten on to the commencement of her political—and perhaps we may add her military[7]—career, when, in January, 1652, a treaty had been concluded between Monsieur her father, Conde, and the Duke de Lorraine, the Duchess d'Orleans had signed in her brother's name, and the Count de Fiesque in the name of Conde. On her part, Mademoiselle, somewhat fantastic but loyal and courageous, had joined her mother-in-law, and declared for the Fronde, partly through her liking for eclat and the notoriety of parading at the head of the troops, with her two ladies of honour, the Countesses of Fiesque and Frontenac, transformed into aides-de-camp; partly by the secret hope that by Mazarin's defeat and her father's triumph she might succeed in espousing the young King, and so exchange the helmet of the Fronde for the crown of France.

[7] Her father, writing to her companions in arms the Countesses of Fiesque and Frontenac shortly after their entrance into Orleans, complimented them upon their courage, and addressed his letter to the Countesses Adjutant-Generals in the Army of my Daughter against Mazarin.

It would be a great mistake to attribute to this fair Frondeuse a liberalism of ideas to which she was most assuredly a stranger. "It must be," she somewhere remarks, "that the intentions of the great are like the mysteries of the Faith: it does not belong to mankind to penetrate within them; men ought to revere them, and to believe that they are never otherwise than for the welfare and salvation of their country." But, however that may be, it did not prevent the civil war from being a very amusing thing for Mademoiselle. To hear the drums beating to arms one fine morning, to see men running through the streets to defend the barricades as well as their untrained hands could wield musket and sabre, to lie upon the floor in a large chamber at Saint-Germain, and to find on awaking that chamber filled with soldiers in great buff jerkins,—those were pleasures not to be always found at will, and were to be made the most of when met with. Such pleasures, moreover, savouring of the unforeseen, the adventurous, and the grotesque, solely determined Mademoiselle's conduct in the outset. But on the second Fronde breaking out, when the struggle of the Parliament with royalty had become a quarrel between princes and ministers, Mademoiselle felt that the honour of her house was at stake. Gaston, after having pledged himself to the Prince de Conde, so far as a man who does not know his own mind can give a pledge, contented himself with whistling, as he was wont to do, or to dissertating cleverly without acting. But his daughter wrested from him an authority to go herself and defend Orleans against the troops of Louis XIV.; his daughter, on seeing the unfortunate adherents of Conde engaged with her in rebellion overpowered at the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, secured their retreat by ordering the guns of the Bastille to cannonade the royal forces, although that cannonade should slay the husband of whom she still dreamed; that daughter, too, when she heard of the disgraceful scenes of the 4th of July, 1652, boldly did what no one else dare do,—she flew to the assistance of the victims of the Hotel de Ville, without bestowing a thought of the imminent danger she thereby ran.

But it is in the Princess's own Memoirs that the curious epopee must be read; and to which a dry abridgment does injustice. Whether she hold council of war with her fair Marechales de Camp, without allowing the men folks to give her their ready cut-and-dried advice,—whether she be thrust into Orleans through the gap of an old gateway, and, covered with mud, be seen carried along its streets in an old arm-chair, laughing heartily,—or when hastening to arrest the massacre at the Hotel de Ville, she stops to look at Madame Riche, the ribbon-vendor, talking in her chemise to her gossip, the beadle of St. Jacques, who has nothing on but his drawers,—the reader is always reminded that he sees and hears the granddaughter of Henry IV.—a Parisian with a touch of the princess in all she says and does, and he cannot help asking himself momentarily whether it be all incorrigible frivolity, or some quaint species of natural heroism which speaks and acts thus strangely.

Heroic or frivolous, Mademoiselle expiated her pranks by an exile of four years in her manor of Saint-Fargeau. The rupture with her father, who drove her out of doors, and denied her permission to take refuge under any other roof he owned, her consequent wanderings, at times not a little affecting, and at others comical, when directing her steps towards her place of banishment, her arrival at the ruinous chateau which has neither doors nor windows, and which is haunted by ghosts, and the attempts to embellish the tumble-down place, and people it with gaiety, animation, and life, are so many scenes to which the piquant style of Mademoiselle gives singular attractiveness. Whilst avenues were being planted and a theatre built, matrimonial negotiations went on as briskly as ever, and pretenders to her hand abounded—the Elector of Bavaria, the Duke of Savoy, the nephew of the Duke of Lorraine, the Duke de Neuborg. The reception of M. de Neuborg's envoy, an honest Jesuit, who draws out of his pocket victoriously two portraits of his good lord, ogles Mademoiselle as long as he could, and talks "goguette" to her for a whole hour, is one of the most amusing farces anywhere to be met with. Unluckily, the farce was not worth the candle in the opinion of certain judges, and all the diversions of Saint-Fargeau did not prevent our princess from regretting with all her heart that pompous Court of Versailles in which the young Louis was giving such graceful ballets, brilliant carousals, and piquant masquerades. The masquerades of 1657 carried the day over the political aims of 1652, and the fair exile experienced a vivid longing to be once more received into favour at the court of her royal cousin.

To take up sword or pen and fall foul of the government was almost always an easy thing to do in France; the difficulty lay in proposing peace after the war, to hit upon profitable reconciliations or lucrative treaties. Mademoiselle did her best; and at length, in that same year of 1657, she made her appearance in the royal camp near Sedan, having at her carriage-door the silly and complaisant Mazarin, who believed all she wished him to believe, and who presented the princess with a little Boulogne bitch, in token of good friendship; she made her excuses to the King for having been naughty, and promised to be wise in future. Louis behaved more graciously towards the fair rebel than did his mother, and said that everything should be buried in oblivion; but he did not forget the cannonade of the Bastille. After five years' seclusion, she again looked forward to resume her position at Court, to keep one of her own, to enthrone herself at the Luxembourg, and doubtless contract some sovereign alliance. Vain illusions! Conflicts of the heart were about to succeed to those political storms from whose effects she had just recovered. The most vainglorious of the daughters of France was destined to extinguish with the wet blanket of vile prose the brilliancy of a long and romantic career.

History, justly severe upon the Fronde, ought not, we think, to treat too harshly the Frondeuse of the blood-royal. Upon one delicate point of her private life the biographer cannot, unfortunately, show the same indulgence. The supreme criterion for the appreciation of certain women, and the irresistible argument, is the man whom they have loved. Assuredly we may pardon many things recorded of the Grande Mademoiselle, even her shrewish relations with her step-mother, even her haughty contempt for her half-sisters, but we cannot pardon her M. de Lauzun. We are all well acquainted with that individual, with his cunning and supercilious cast of countenance, servile or arrogant, according to circumstances and interests, adroit in concealing a merciless egotism, a revolting brutality, under the guise of a theatrical liberality; brave so far as was necessary to be insolent with impunity, intelligent no further than to the extent at which selfishness blinds the judgment, and delighting in mischief when there was nothing to dread from it. To all this may be added an incisive tone of voice, and language keenly sarcastic or servilely obsequious, an insatiable and inordinate sensuality, innumerable conquests among the fair sex, and extraordinary adventures. At first sight, at a Court masquerade, in 1659, the bully made an impression upon the precieuse, and she noticed him for his exquisite elegance during the marriage fetes of Louis XIV. When she met him in the Queen's apartments, she remarked that he had more wit than anyone else, and found a particular pleasure in talking with him. The charm operated so effectually that the princess of forty-three was at length fain to own that she passionately loved the Gascon cadet, who was then in his thirty-eighth year. Determined as she was naturally, that discovery overwhelmed her. "I resolved," she says, "never to speak to M. Lauzun again save in hearing of a third person, and I was anxious to avoid opportunities of seeing him in order to drive him out of my head. I entered upon such a line of conduct; I only exchanged a few trivial words with him. I found that I did not know what I was saying, that I could not put three words of good sense together; and the more I sought to shun him, the more desirous I was of seeing him." At her wits' end, the poor Princess cast herself at the foot of the altar, on one occasion when she took the sacrament, and ardently besought Heaven to enlighten her as to the course she ought to pursue. The inspiration is by no means difficult to anticipate. "Heaven's grace determined me not to struggle longer to drive out of my mind that which was so strongly established in it, but to marry M. de Lauzun."

Two things, however, were necessary to accomplish this: firstly, that M. de Lauzun should thoroughly understand that he was beloved, and that he would deign to espouse Mademoiselle's twenty-two millions; and next that King Louis should consent to a marriage, the strangest certainly ever resolved upon. Strange, indeed, that she, the grand-daughter of Henry the Great, Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle the King's first cousin, the Mademoiselle destined to the throne, should ask the King's permission to marry a Gascon cadet. Louis, as the sequel to an overture made to him by several nobles collectively, friends of Lauzun, with M. de Montausier at their head, granted his permission. But when the question arose, thanks to the blind vanity of Lauzun, of their union being celebrated at the Louvre and in the face of all France, like an alliance "of crown to crown;" when a feeling which was shared by every member of the royal house was on the point of communicating itself to all the sovereign families of Europe, Louis, with great reason, began to take account of the political interests which this whim of the Princess brought into play, and retracted, as King, the authority which he had given as head of a family. Contemporary writers seem never tired of dwelling upon the manifestations of Mademoiselle's grief, at times as laughable as at others it was touching; receiving the condolence of all the Court as though she had been a lone widow, Madame de Sevigne tells us, and exclaiming excitedly in her despair to every fresh visitor, as she pointed to the vacant place in her bed, "He should be there! he should be there!"

This took place on the 18th of December, 1670. On the 25th of November, 1671, M. de Lauzun was arrested, thrown into the Bastille, and taken thence to Pignerol, where he was subjected to a captivity of ten years. What passed in that interval has proved a great subject of controversy amongst ingenious writers. The most probable explanation seems to be that, notwithstanding the King's refusal, the marriage between Lauzun and Mademoiselle had been accomplished. The evidence of twenty different persons might be cited in support of the fact, but one may suffice. An historian of the last century, M. Anquetil, relates that at the Chateau d'Eu, in 1774, an apartment was still pointed out which had been occupied by Lauzun, situated above that of the princess, and communicating by a secret staircase with her alcove. At the same period, Anquetil saw at Treport a tall person resembling Mademoiselle not only in her figure, but strikingly like her portraits. She seemed to be about seventy or seventy-five. She was called, throughout that part of the country, the Princess's daughter. She seemed to believe so herself, and was in receipt of a pension of fifteen hundred francs paid punctually, without knowing from what quarter they came. She occupied a handsome house for which she paid no rent, although for it she held no proprietary deed. All this, coupled with the age of the lady, who stated that she was born in 1671, would seem decisive as to the clandestine marriage which probably occasioned the arrest of Lauzun.

Ten years of anguish and poignant regrets passed over poor Mademoiselle's head—ten years employed in imploring and bargaining for the restoration of her dearly beloved captive. "Consider what you have it in your power to do to please the King, in order that he may grant you that which you have so much at heart," was the artful suggestion daily repeated in her ear by Madame de Montespan. And to render the discovery more easy, she took care to bring with her, and to send to her very frequently, that charming little Duke du Maine to whom the county of Eu, the duchy of Aumale, and the principality of Dombes would have been a fitting appanage. To despoil herself for the deliverance of the man she loved with such an infatuated affection, the Princess would not have hesitated a moment. The difficulty was to despoil the man himself, already in possession of a portion of what was required, and very keen-witted indeed to keep what he had acquired. The negotiation, for a long while brought to a dead-lock by the resistance of Lauzun, was at length concluded. M. de Lauzun, emerged from Pignerol, but restricted at first to a residence in Touraine or Anjou, received at length permission to revisit Paris and behold once more the benefactress who could still secure to him the enjoyment of an income of forty thousand livres. "I did not know him," exclaimed the woebegone Princess, shortly after his release, "and my sole consolation is that the King, who is more clear-sighted than I am, did not know him either." Tardy clear-sightedness! M. de Lauzun had then made himself known unmistakably—by beating her. But, if the truth must be told, she had first scratched his face.

Thus ended, in vulgar squabbles, more and more stormy, a connection so romantically begun. Lauzun, disappointed in his hope of a magnificent alliance, considered himself despoiled by the Princess's donation, and, finding himself after ten years' captivity the husband of a woman of fifty-four, showed her neither tenderness nor respect. It was, therefore, a relief to her when he took his departure for England in 1685. The ill-assorted couple never met again. Lauzun more than once endeavoured to obtain an interview with the Princess, but she would not forgive him, and died without consenting to his urgent appeals. It was in her latter years only, and under the perceptibly increasing sway of religious influences, that her miserably tormented mind recovered peace and repose. Mademoiselle, who had only given up dancing in 1674, withdrew gradually from Court when she found that she had become an object of pity, if not of mockery, therein. The Grande Mademoiselle expired on the 5th of April, 1693, in her palace of the Luxembourg, aged sixty-six. That singularity, which had so remarkably characterised her life, pursued her even beyond it. At her obsequies, celebrated with much magnificence, her entrails, imperfectly embalmed, fermented, and the urn which contained them burst with a loud explosion during the ceremonies. All present fled in the extremity of terror.

Was it from the singularity of her existence, from the essentially French tone of her character, from the grandeur of an epoch during which no one passed unnoticed, that the species of popularity half-indulgent, half-sportive, which attached to her name must be attributed? To all these doubtless, but likewise to another cause more decisive still. Mademoiselle does not take her place only in the sufficiently extensive catalogue of princely eccentricities; she holds a creditable position upon the list of French writers. Nor should it be forgotten that the gates of the Luxembourg were by her thrown open to all the beaux esprits of her time, "qui y trouvaient leur place comme chez Mecaenas;" and that she fostered both by encouragement and example La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere, and that it is no slight claim to remembrance that she led France to appreciate the Maxims of the one and the Characters of the other. May such considerations serve as extenuating circumstances when we bring her up for judgment for the flagrant crime of—M. de Lauzun.



CHAPTER VI.

THE WIFE OF THE GREAT CONDE.

AMONG so many heroines of beauty, glory, and gallantry, who achieved celebrity at this stirring epoch of French history, there is one whose name ought not to be effaced from, nor placed lowest on the list, although a humble—we were going to say, a humiliated, disdained, and sacrificed wife; a martyr to conjugal faith, but who, perhaps, can scarcely be called a "political" woman.

Mademoiselle de Breze, as already intimated, had entered into the Conde family through the detestable influence of authority and politics. The Duke d'Enghien, therefore, unhappily held his wife in aversion; her mother-in-law, Charlotte de Montmorency, despised her; Madame de Longueville, her sister-in-law, did not esteem her; Mademoiselle de Montpensier declares that "she felt pity for her," and that was the gentlest phrase she could find to apply to a person who had so signally crossed her views and inclination.

Married at thirteen to the future hero of Rocroy and Lens, both before marriage and again more strongly after, the young Duke had protested by a formal act that he yielded only to compulsion and his respect for paternal authority in giving her his hand. Henry (II.), Prince de Conde, who thus exacted his son's compliance, merely followed his usual instincts as a greedy and ambitious courtier in seeking an alliance with Cardinal Richelieu, whose niece Mademoiselle de Breze was, through her mother, Nicole du Plessis. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who thought that she had more reason than any one else to be indignant at the match, tells us plainly that the Prince threw himself at the feet of his eminence to solicit from him both Mademoiselle de Breze for the Duke d'Enghien, and M. de Breze, her brother, for Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and that he only escaped from the disgrace of a double mesalliance through the Cardinal's clemency, who, in reply, told him that "he was quite willing to give untitled young ladies to princes, but not princesses to untitled young gentlemen."

Did the young Duchess personally merit that aversion and contempt? Mademoiselle has told us, indeed, that she was awkward, and that, "on the score of wit and beauty, she had nothing above the common run." But Madame de Motteville, less passionate and more disinterested in her judgments, recognises certain advantages possessed by her. "She was not plain," she tells us, "but had fine eyes, a good complexion, and a pretty figure. She spoke well when she was in the humour to talk." The discerning court lady adds that, "if Madame de Conde did not always display a talent for pleasing in the ball-room or in conversation, the fidelity with which she clung to her husband during adversity, and the zeal she showed for his interests and for those of her son during the Guienne campaign, ought to compensate for the misfortune of not having been able to merit, by more eminent virtues, a more brilliant and widely celebrated reputation."

Here, then, it seems incumbent upon us to divine, from the facon de parler of that day, what were the eminent virtues which the Princess de Conde needed to deserve the esteem of her husband; or to ask whether tried fidelity, courage, devotedness, were not then ranked among the eminent virtues. They were so, no doubt; and it is probable that what Madame de Motteville understands by those words, was the eminence of qualities peculiar to the women, who more than ever in her day derived from them a species of celebrity which closely resembled glory—the eclat of beauty, wit, grace, intrepidity, and power of charming; in a word, that which was possessed in so high a degree by a Madame de Longueville, a Madame de Chevreuse, a Marie de Hautefort, and a Mademoiselle du Vigean.

Whatever might have been the personal merit of the wife of the great Conde, did the little she had justify the wretchedness of her destiny? No: some beauty, wit, virtue, courage, a timid disposition perhaps, an unpretending virtue, a courage even mediocre, easily overthrown, and which needed the pressure of circumstances and danger for its development,—in all this there was nothing to invoke the ire of the implacable sisters.

In contemplating her truly deplorable existence, afflicted from its beginning to its end by every kind of grief and humiliation, one can scarcely resist the idea of the ascendency of an invincible fatality, making her a victim of the irresistible force of events and destiny. The woes of Claire de Breze commenced in her earliest childhood. At the time of her marriage to the Duke d'Enghien she had lost her mother some six years, that parent having died in 1635. What befell her infancy, abandoned to the neglect of a fantastic and libertine father, ruled even before his widowhood by a mistress, the wife of one of his lacqueys, whom he killed one day during a hunting match in order to get him out of the way; of a father who, Tallemant tells us, carelessly remarked, when his daughter's marriage was agreed upon—as though she belonged to some one else—"They are going to make a princess of that little girl!"

She was destined, nevertheless, to have her hour of fame and distinction, and that hour dawned amidst disasters of every sort, and upon the captivity of her husband. At the moment of the arrest of the Prince, whilst the Princess-dowager was conferring with her adherents upon the best measures to be adopted for the deliverance of the Princes and for the safety of her little grandson, the young Princess, overcoming her timidity, interrupted Lenet, who was proposing a plan for their flight, and another for a campaign, and, after the humblest tokens of respect and deference for her mother-in-law, entreated her not to separate her from her son, protesting that she would follow him everywhere joyfully, whatsoever might be the peril, and that she would expose herself to any risk to aid her husband.[8]

[8] Lenet.

From that moment, we trace, almost from day to day as it were, in the Memoires of Lenet proofs of the zeal and constancy of the Princess de Conde. She escapes from Chantilly on foot, with her son and a small band of faithful followers, traverses Paris, whence she reaches, in three days and by devious roads, Montrond, the place pointed out by Lenet as the safest retreat and the most advantageous to defend. Her letters to the Queen and ministers, to the magistrates, to her relatives, are stamped with nobility and firmness. Threatened in Montrond by La Meilleraye, who was advancing in force, she again made her escape under cover of a hunting party, after having provided for the safety of the place and others which depended on it, and went in search of, amid a host of difficulties, sometimes on horseback, at others in a litter or by boat, the Dukes de Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld, who escorted her to Bordeaux. One must turn to Lenet for all the details of that toilsome journey and of the insurrection at Bordeaux, which he has related with all the minutiae and animation of an eye-witness and an actor who more than once figured in the front rank. No longer timid, no longer awkward, in presence of danger the daughter of Marshal de Breze became the amazon and almost the heroine. She held reviews, councils of war, negotiated, and issued orders. Scarcely had she reached Bordeaux, her entry into which was quite an ovation, than she besieged the Parliament chamber to procure the registration of her requests and protestations against the unjust detention of her husband. "She solicited the judges on their way out of court, representing to them with tears in her eyes the unhappy condition of all her oppressed house.... The young Duke, whom a gentleman (Vialas) carried in his arms, caught the counsellors round the neck as they passed, and weepingly besought at their hands the liberation of his father, in so tender a manner that those gentlemen wept also as bitterly as he and his mother, and gave them both good hopes." She harangued the magistrates, supplicated them, urged them; she even protected them, on one occasion that the populace of Bordeaux, finding them not so bold as they could have wished, endeavoured by clamour to obtain a decree contrary to the views of the party of the Princes. She repaired to the palace, and from the top of the steps conjured the furious rabble and made them lay down their arms. "And it must be owned," says Lenet, "that she had a particular talent for speaking in public, and that nothing could be better, more appropriate, nor more conformable to her position than what she said." On that day, the Princess de Conde, upon the steps of the Hotel de Ville of Bordeaux, appeared no longer unworthy of being ranked with Madame de Longueville at the town-hall at Paris, or with Mademoiselle d'Orleans at the Porte St. Antoine. Brienne adds that she worked, with her own hands, with the ladies of the city, at the fortifications, and that she was anxious herself to embroider, upon the banners of her army, the emblem and device of the revolt—a grenade exploding, with the word coacta!

We have already seen the result of that three months' resistance—the peace concluded at Bordeaux, the amnesty accorded to all those who had taken up arms in Guienne, in a word, all the conditions proposed by the Princess and the Dukes conceded, with the exception of one only—the principal, that which had been the prime cause of all that insurrection—the deliverance of the Prince de Conde, whom Mazarin persisted in retaining prisoner, whilst at the same time promising to do everything towards abridging his captivity.

The Princess was sent back to Montrond with her son, vexed no doubt at not having conquered, but proud of having dared so much, and satisfied at having deserved for that once to share his imprisonment. That day came, however,—the day of gratitude and justice. On one occasion already, whilst yet at Vincennes, the Prince, as he watered the tulips celebrated by Mademoiselle de Scudery in song, remarked to some one, "Who would have thought that I should be watering tulips whilst Madame la Princesse was making war in the south!"

But later, when the campaign at Bordeaux had ended, the Prince still a prisoner at Havre, forwarding a communication in cypher to Lenet, added thereto a short note for the Princess, couched in terms so tender that Lenet, fearing lest in the exuberance of her delight the Princess might betray the secret of that correspondence, hesitated for some moments to communicate it to her. That note, the first and sole recompense of her devotion, courage, and constancy, we must here transcribe, as the tardy and begrudging compensation for such long-continued ingratitude, such long-continued disdain, for so many cruel and unmerited outrages.

"Il me tard, Madame, que je sois en etat de vous embrasser mil fois pour toute l'amitie que vous m'avez temoigne, qui m'est d'autant plus sensible que ma conduite envers vous l'avoit peu meritee; mais je scauray si bien vivre avec vous a l'advenir, que vous ne vous repentires pas de tout ce que vous aves faict to me pour moy, qui fera que je seray toute ma vie tout a vous et de tout mon coeur."

Poor Clemence de Maille! how, at that first testimony of an affection which she had despaired of ever gaining, did her heart, so long pent up, burst forth with ecstatic delight! And how must Lenet, on witnessing that touching effusion of irrepressible rapture, have congratulated himself at not having persevered in his diplomatic prudence! She took the letter, shed tears over it, kissed it, read it over and over again, and tried to get it by heart—for she might lose it. Then she selected from her toilette her finest ribbon (a bright flame-coloured one), and sewed that precious missive to it, in order to carry it always upon her person, beneath her dress—upon her chemise, Lenet bluntly tells us, and who adds that that gush of delirious delight lasted until the morrow.

Alas! that warm ray was the only one that Conde, in his glory, let fall upon her, and it was but evanescent. The danger over, the prison opened, Conde restored to his honours and his power, she became once more the despised, alienated, humiliated wife. Mademoiselle, on meeting her again, asked whether it were true that she had taken part in that which was done in her name? On her return from Montrond (after the letter), she found her, it is true, plus habile; but she was shocked at the delight manifested by the Princess on seeing all the great world flock to visit her, so wholly forsaken as she had previously been, and she concluded that, being carried out of her normal condition, she thought too much of herself.

Then came humiliations the most cutting, and the deepest grief. Twice was she attacked by dangerous illness, from which it was asserted she could not recover. And each time that report was welcomed at Court as the joyous announcement of a marriage or a succession. Everybody busied themselves with finding another wife for the Prince; and some thought once more of Mademoiselle: "that rumour reached my ears," says she, "and I mused upon it." Unfortunately for her, the poor Princess recovered, and Mademoiselle had to wait for Lauzun. In another place she remarks somewhat spitefully, "Madame la Princesse arrived in better health than could have been anticipated; no one could have imagined that she would so soon recover."

At length a tragic event, the consequences of which exhibit in a sinister light the perseverance of ill-feeling that had always been shown towards her in the family of which she had become a member, came to add itself to that almost unbroken chain of tribulations, outrages, and troubles amid which no sort of calamity seemed wanting. Two officers of her household took it into their heads to quarrel and draw swords upon each other. The Princess (she was then in her forty-third year—1671) placed herself between the angry combatants with the intention of separating them, and by so doing received a stab in her side. The individual who inflicted the wound was brought to trial. As for her,

"When she was cured, the Prince had her conducted to Chateauroux, one of his country-houses. She has been there kept for a long time imprisoned, and at present permission is only given her to walk in the court-yard, always strictly watched by the people whom the Prince always keeps about her. The Duke is accused of having suggested to the Prince the treatment to which his mother is subjected: he was very glad, it is said, to find a pretext for putting her in a place where she would spend less than in society."[9]

[9] Memoires of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, 4th part.

Was it the hereditary avarice of the house of Conde which thus revealed itself in the odious sentiment of that unworthy son? Poor woman! Her only crime was that of being too liberal. She had, it is true, foolishly placed her diamonds in pledge at Bordeaux to support the cost of the war. But had she not, as a set-off to her prodigality, brought to the Duke d'Enghien and his father her share of Richelieu's wealth? That prudent advice of the excellent son was followed: the Princess was still a prisoner at Chateauroux, when the Prince her husband died, in 1686; and by way of a precaution—which cannot be thought of without a shudder, giving as it does the measure of an implacable hatred—he recommended that she should be so kept after his decease. This once, Mademoiselle did find a word of pity for the persecuted wife and mother. "I could have wished," says she, when speaking of the last moments of the Prince, "that he had not prayed the King to let his wife always be kept at Chateauroux, and I was very sorry for it...."

And it was there, doubtless, that she died in 1694, at the age of sixty-six. The collections of funeral orations and sermons of celebrated preachers of that day will be searched in vain for any funeral tribute to her memory. And a feeling of disappointment arises that Bossuet, in his panegyric of the hero, could not find a word of praise, of consolation, or even of pity for the ill-fated shadow he left sorrowful and abandoned by all, to bear his name in pitiless obscurity to the grave.

Mysterious destiny! strange fatality! which neither personal demerits, wrongs, nor faults justified, which neither love, devotedness, nor unfailing virtue, approved and respected even by the calumnious, could avert.



PART II.



THE DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH.

VERY little is known for certain concerning the antecedents of Louise Querouaille before she figured at the Court of France as one of the maids of honour to the unfortunate Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, sister of Charles the Second of England. The contemporaries of the merry monarch, witnesses and censors of his political errors, in tracing them to their source, have attributed them primarily to the foreign favourite, who was, more than any other of the many mistresses of that Prince, odious in the eyes of the English people.

At the commencement of 1670, the splendour and corruption of the French Court had reached their acme. The seraglio of the great King recalled to mind that of Solomon, whilst his brother, enslaved by effeminacy and debauchery, had only to hold up his finger and the most important personages of the state were suitably provided with mistresses to such an extent that at length it became necessary to transfer occasionally to foreign courts those attractive creatures who, by antiphrasis doubtless, were always called "maids of honour." It was in the household of his sister-in-law, Henrietta of England, that Louis had first met the two mistresses of his predilection; and when he wished to assure himself by a new tie of his royal vassal on the other side of the channel, it was still the domestic circle of the Duchess of Orleans which supplied him with the diplomatist in petticoats he wanted.

When Mademoiselle Querouaille's mission to the Court of St. James's became thoroughly understood, and her position as Duchess of Portsmouth assured in it, her previous history was hunted up, the details of which no one knew—not even the royal family of France, who had used her as an instrument without caring to trouble itself about her origin. Madame de Sevigne, in her letters to her daughter, speaks of the Duchess of Portsmouth in a very disrespectful fashion, so much so as to reveal, if not the certainty, at least the belief that the antecedents of the maid of honour, as she says, were not the most honourable. In 1690, five years after Charles's death, a pamphlet was published in London in which the Duchess figures under the fictitious name of Francelie; Louis XIV. designated as Tirannides, and our English king as Prince des Iles. In the preface to the French translation of this pamphlet, which bears the title of Histoire secrete de la Duchesse de Portsmouth, it is stated that the author desired to give, by these changes of name, some additional piquancy to the revelations contained in his book. According to such chronicle, the father of Louise Querouaille was a wool merchant of Paris. After having realised a moderate fortune in trade, he retired into Brittany, his native country, with his two daughters; the youngest, Louise, being amiable and pretty; the eldest, plain and ungraceful. The dissimilarity of the two sisters, the one universally pleasing, the other displeasing everybody, created such misunderstanding between them that their father was obliged to separate them. He kept the plain daughter at home, and placed the younger and pretty one as a boarder in a neighbouring town to that in which he lived. Louise thereby acquired accomplishments which enhanced her natural charms. She was sharp, cunning, insinuating, and having gained the confidence and goodwill of the lady to whose care her father had entrusted her, the former introduced her amongst her relations and general society. In that circle Mademoiselle Querouaille ere long inspired passions, rumours of which reached the ears of the old wool-merchant. Fearing lest his daughter might but too thoughtlessly respond to the attentions of which she was the object, he withdrew her from the boarding-house, and took her to Paris, where he left her under the care of his sister-in-law, then a widow. Her husband had been a dependent of the Duke de Beaufort, and she herself lived, for the most part, upon the bounty of that nobleman, who, on reconciling himself with the Court after the Fronde, had obtained the post of high-admiral of France. Shortly after the arrival of Louise in Paris, in 1669, the Duke seeing her walking in the Tuileries gardens with her relative, and being struck with the young girl's beauty, and moreover it is said with the effect which she produced upon the public, became suddenly enamoured of her. The author of the Histoire secrete relates the manoeuvres resorted to by Beaufort and Louise to deceive the vigilance, more affected than real, as it would seem, of her old aunt. In short, the Duke's passion made rapid progress; and the young girl, yielding to the wishes of a lover who adored her and heaped magnificent presents upon her, allowed herself to be carried off by him at the moment that he was about to enter upon his naval command. That expedition had for its object the succour of the Venetians, who for some twenty-four years had been blockaded by the Turks in Candia. Mademoiselle Querouaille, disguised as a page, embarked with the Duke, who, shortly after landing, was cut to pieces in action. An officer of the French force, whom the before-cited chronicle merely designates as a marquis, and to whom Beaufort had confided the secret of his love, offered to conduct Louise back to France. It appears that Mademoiselle Querouaille would have preferred to have been accompanied on her return by a certain smart page who had been in the Duke's service, but the marquis did not give her the option of such a choice. Yet, though Louise could not withdraw herself from the protection of the latter, there is no reason to believe that he forced his love upon her. The anonymous chronicler concedes that much; but, in his opinion, the Marquis might have hoped that Louise would have acknowledged his care and respect by the same favours which she had accorded to "Beaufort, and," he adds, "one may presume that a girl who previously, urged by love, had allowed the Duke to carry her off to Candia, could do no less for a man who showed her so much attention on the voyage back to France." More or less just as these inductions may be, it appears quite certain that this same prank of Mademoiselle Querouaille was the foundation of her fortunes. In giving his friends an account of the expedition in which he had taken part, the Marquis did not omit the episode of the Duke de Beaufort's pretended page. Henrietta of England, to whom this romantic tale was carried, became desirous of seeing the heroine of it, and Louise Querouaille was therefore duly introduced to the Duchess. The fictitious Cherubino was cunning enough to represent herself as being the victim of a forcible abduction. Henrietta listened to her story with the liveliest interest, took her into her household, and soon afterwards admitting her amongst the number of her maids of honour. Louise, at the age of nineteen, was thus at once introduced to all the pleasures and temptations of a magnificent and dissipated court. Her introduction took place at a critical moment (1669), and, in deciding her future, fate has made her destiny and character matter of history.

The conquest or the ruin of Holland had long been one of the favourite projects of Louis the Fourteenth. The Dutch, however, resisted his overgrown power, as their ancestors had formerly defied that of Philip the Second of Spain. In order to carry his plans into execution, Louis found it necessary to detach England from the interests of Holland. This was matter of some difficulty, for an alliance with France against Holland was so odious to all parties in England, so contrary to the national prejudices and interests, that though Louis did not despair of cajoling or bribing Charles into such a treaty, the utmost caution and secresy were necessary in conducting it.

The only person who was at first trusted with this negotiation was the Duchess of Orleans. She was at this time about five-and-twenty, "a singular mixture of discretion, or rather dissimulation, with rashness and petulance; of exceeding haughtiness, with a winning sweetness of manner and disposition which gained all hearts." She was not, however, exactly pretty or well made, but had the dazzlingly fair complexion of an Englishwoman, "un teint de rose et de jasmin," a profusion of light hair, with eyes blue and bright as those of Pallas. She had inherited some of the nobler qualities of her grandfather, Henri Quatre, and all the graces and intriguing spirit of her mother, Henrietta Maria. Early banished from England by the misfortunes of her family, she regarded the country of her birth with indifference, if not abhorrence, and was a Frenchwoman in education, manners, mind, and heart. She possessed unbounded power over the mind of Charles the Second, whose affection for her was said to exceed that of a brother for a sister; he had never been known to refuse her anything she had asked for herself or others, and Louis trusted that her fascinations would gain from the king of England what reason and principle and patriotism would have denied.

The shrewdness of mind and inclination for intrigue which characterised his sister-in-law's maid-of-honour did not escape the observation of Louis. In her he found an apt as well as willing instrument in the secret negotiation of which he had constituted her mistress the plenipotentiary. For such compliance the manners of the time may, to a certain extent, furnish La Querouaille with an excuse. At Versailles, ideas of honour and morality had lost their ordinary signification: the men envied generally the lot of Amphitryon, and the women lost every instinct of modesty when it became a question about satisfying a caprice of Jupiter. Breathing such a vitiated atmosphere, and having so many lamentable examples before her eyes, Mademoiselle Querouaille saw only the dazzling side of the proposition made to her—the hope of reigning despotically over the heart of a great prince, and of becoming the equal of that La Valliere whose elevation was the object of so much envy and feminine ambition.

It was arranged, therefore, that the piquant Bas-Bretonne should be brought under the notice of the amorous Charles II. during a visit to him, arranged to take place at Dover. In order to give the interview between the royal brother and sister the appearance of an accidental or family meeting, the pretext of a progress to his recently acquired Flemish territories was resorted to by Louis, who set out with his queen, his two mistresses De Montespan and La Valliere, the Duchess of Orleans and Mademoiselle de Montpensier, with their respective retinues, and attended by the most beautiful women of the Court. The splendour exhibited on this occasion exceeded all that had been witnessed, even during the reign of this pomp-loving monarch. Thirty thousand men marched in the van and rear of the royal party; some of them destined to reinforce the garrisons of the conquered country, others to work upon the fortifications, and others again to level the roads. It was a continued series of fetes, banquets, and triumphs, the ostensible honours being chiefly for Madame de Montespan; the real object of this famous journey, well-nigh unparalleled for its lavish and luxurious ostentation, was known only to Henrietta of England, who enjoyed in secret her own importance, and this gave a new zest to the pleasures with which she was surrounded.

On reaching Dunkirk, the Duchess of Orleans embarked for England with her maid-of-honour and a small but chosen retinue, and met Charles at Dover, where this secret negotiation was initiated. The result anticipated came to pass, and proved that Louis had not miscalculated the power of his sister-in-law over her easy-going and unscrupulous brother. Charles fell into the snare laid for him, and Henrietta carried most of the points of that disgraceful treaty, which rendered the King of England the pensioned tool of France, and his reign the most abject in the annals of her native country.

Aiming rather to stimulate than gratify the languid desires of her brother for fresh feminine novelty, the Duchess of Orleans, with finished finesse, appeared not to perceive the attention which the piquant charms and almost childish grace of her young maid-of-honour won from the captivated King. Nor did she, at her departure, leave Louise in England, as some historians have erroneously supposed. In order to render the impression which her fair attendant had made upon Charles more deep and lasting, it was sought by her absence to incite the desire felt by her royal brother to retain her in his Court. The secret negotiation with which Louis had entrusted his sister-in-law had not been, in fact, yet completed. To conduct it to a prosperous termination, to preserve perfect harmony between France and England, it was still needful to make use of another kind of female influence. It was necessary, moreover, that such influence should become permanent—a thing hitherto very difficult at courts wherein the fair sex disputed strenuously and shamelessly for the royal favour. But thus much seemed certain—that the key to the will of the sovereign of Great Britain had been found in Mademoiselle Louise Querouaille.

Charles had indeed written in reply to his sister, on the 8th July of the preceding year (1668), that "in every negotiation she shall have a share, which will prove how much I love her." In August he told the French ambassador—"The Duchess of Orleans passionately desires an alliance between me and France; and as I love her tenderly, I shall be happy to let her see what power her entreaties have over me." Henrietta, probably, did not consider that by thus bringing her brother into alliance with France she was betraying her native country. She no doubt thought rather of augmenting the greatness of Charles than of benefiting England. The sea should be given up to England; the territory of Continental Europe to France. Louis XIV. expressly declared, in opposition to the views of Colbert, "that he would leave commerce to the English—three-fourths of it at least—that all he cared for was conquest." But that would have involved, as a first step, the conquest of England herself, and have cost torrents of blood. The fascinating Henrietta, doubtless, did not perceive this when she trod so far in the fatal footsteps of her ancestress, Mary Stuart. She had none of her rash violence, but not a little of her spirit of romantic intrigue, and that feminine delight of having in hand a tangled skein, of which she held securely the end of the thread.

The secret negotiation of the treaty, however, went on between the two kings. Louis had submitted to exorbitant conditions on the score of money, and to another, moreover, sufficiently weighty. It was that Charles, converted to the Romish faith, should share with him in the conquest of Holland, should send a considerable military force thither, and should keep for himself the Dutch islands opposite to England—an advantage so enormous to the latter power that it would have rendered national the odious alliance, and glorified the treason.

Two points still remained unsettled: first, to persuade Charles to commence the war before his conversion—a step considered easy to obtain; but that conversion terrified him when the moment came for carrying it out. Secondly—and which proved the most difficult—was to induce him to despatch very few troops—too few to take and afterwards hold the territory promised him. Louis XIV. stipulated to send 120,000 men there; Charles II. engaged to furnish 6000, which number his sister prevailed upon him to reduce to 4000.

Such was the sad, disgraceful, deplorable negotiation imposed by the great King upon his sister-in-law. She had always obeyed him (as she herself said), and she obeyed him in this matter, rendering her brother doubly a traitor by his abandonment of the latter condition, which lessened his treason.

Everybody had envied the Duchess her visit to England, none knew the bitterness it entailed. The King confided in her, and yet distrusted her. Otherwise he would not have had her accompanied by the pretty doll, with her baby face, whose office it was to ensnare the licentious Charles. Henrietta was compelled to take her over to England, and, in fact, to chaperone her. For such self-abasement the King had handsomely rewarded the compliant maid-of-honour, promising to give her an estate, and so much per head for each bastard she might have by Charles of England.

Henrietta endured all this shameful bargaining, hoping that her royal brother would obtain from the Pope the dissolution of her marriage with the worthless, stupid, profligate Duke of Orleans, on whom her wit and charms were equally thrown away. She might then remain at his court and be the virtual Queen of England, by governing him through female influence. Her brilliant hopes, however, were destined to be speedily dissipated, and her career cut short by a painful and treacherous death.

On her return from England, two surprises awaited her: not only did she find the Duke, her husband, exasperated against her, but what she had least of all expected, the King very cold in his demeanour towards her. Louis had got from her all he desired. His changed attitude emboldened a cabal in her own household to effect her destruction. Those who formed it were creatures of her husband's detestable favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine, whom they believed had been banished by the King through her entreaties. The poor Duchess wept bitterly on finding that she had now no support from any one about her. The Duke, in the exercise of his marital authority, took her from Court, not permitting her any longer to visit Versailles. The King might have insisted upon her attendance there but did not. In tears, she suffered herself to be carried off to St. Cloud. There she felt herself alone, with every hand against her.

The weather was excessively hot. On her arrival at St. Cloud, she took a bath, which made her ill, but she soon recovered from it, and during two days was tolerably well—eating and sleeping. On the 28th of June she asked for a cup of chicory, drank it, and at the same moment became red, then pale, and shrieked aloud. The poor Duchess, commonly so patient under pain, gave way under the excess of her anguish, her eyes filled with tears, and she exclaimed that she was dying.

Inquiries were made about the water the Duchess had drunk, and her waiting-woman said that she had not prepared it herself, but had ordered it to be made, and then asked that some of it might be given her, drank of it; but there is no evidence to show that the water had not been changed in the interval.

Was it an attack of cholera, as was said? The symptoms in no wise indicated that species of disorder. The Duchess's health was very much shattered, and she was doubtless liable to be rapidly carried off. But the event had very plainly been hastened (as in the case of Don Carlos); nature had been assisted. The Duke's valets—who were, as to fidelity, much more the servants of his banished favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine—comprehended that, in the approaching alliance of the two kings, and the need they would have of each other's confidence, the Duchess might in some moment of tenderness recover her absolute power over the King, who would in such event sweep his brother's household clear of them all. They well knew the Court, and surmised that, if she were to die, the alliance would nevertheless be maintained, and the matter hushed up; that she would be lamented, but not avenged; that facts accomplished would be respected.

Good care was taken not to confide the secret to the wretched Duke, her husband; it was even thought that it might be possible to get him out of the way—to keep him in Paris, where by chance, indeed, he was detained. Philip of Orleans was really astonished when he beheld his agonised wife, and ordered an antidote to be given her; but time was lost in administering the poudre de vipere. The Duchess asked only for an emetic, and the doctors obstinately refused her one. Strange, too, the King, who, on his arrival, remonstrated with them, was equally unsuccessful in obtaining for the sufferer that which she craved. The medicos held steadily to their opinion: they had pronounced it to be cholera, and they would not swallow their own words.

Were they in the plot? That did not follow. For, besides the professional pride which forbade them to belie themselves, they might fear to discover more than they wished—to act in a very uncourtier-like manner by discovering traces but too evident of poisoning. In such case the alliance, perhaps, might have been broken off, and the projects of both King and clergy for the Dutch and English crusade have come to nothing. Such blundering fellows would never have been forgiven. So the physicians were prudent and politic. It was altogether a grievous spectacle. Here was a woman universally beloved, yet who inspired no one with any strong feeling. Everybody was interested—went and came; but no one would assume any responsibility, no one obeyed her last and constant prayer. She wanted to eject the poison by the aid of an emetic. No one dared to give it her. "Look," she exclaimed, "my nose is gone—shrunk to nothing." It was observed, in fact, that it was already like that of an eight days' corpse. For all that, they stuck to the doctors' opinion: "It is nothing." With only one exception, nobody seemed uneasy about her; some even laughed. Mademoiselle de Montpensier alone showed indignation at all this heartless indifference, and had the courage to remark that "At any rate they should endeavour to save her soul," and went in search of a confessor.

The people belonging to the household, one and all, recommended that the cure of St. Cloud should be sent for, certain that, as he was unknown to the Duchess, their mistress would confess nothing of moment to him. Mademoiselle, however, would not hear of him as confessor. "Fetch Bossuet," she said, "and meanwhile call in the Canon Feuillet."

Feuillet was a very wary ecclesiastic, and quite as prudent as the physicians. He persuaded Madame to offer herself up as a sacrifice to Heaven without accusing anyone. The Duchess said, in fact, to Marshal de Grammont, "They have poisoned me—but by mistake." She exhibited throughout an admirable discretion and perfect gentleness. She embraced the Duke, her husband, whispering to him—in allusion to the outrageous arrest of the Chevalier de Lorraine—that she had "never been unfaithful to him."

The English Ambassador having arrived, she spoke to him in English, telling him to conceal from her brother that she had been poisoned. The Abbe Feuillet, who had not quitted her, overhearing the word "poison," stopped her, saying, "Madame, think only of God now!" Bossuet, who next came in, continues Feuillet, confirmed her in those thoughts of self-abnegation and discretion. For a long time back, she had looked to Bossuet to console her in that supreme moment. She desired that after her decease an emerald ring should be given to him which she had reserved for that purpose.

By degrees, however, the unfortunate Duchess found herself left almost alone. The King had taken his departure, after manifesting great emotion, and the Duke also in tears. All the Court had disappeared. Mademoiselle de Montpensier was too much affected to bid her farewell. She was sinking fast, felt an inclination to sleep, woke up suddenly, inquired for Bossuet, who placed a crucifix in her hand, and, whilst in the act of embracing it, she expired. The clock at that moment struck three, and the first faint light of dawn was visible (June 29th, 1670).

The English Ambassador expressed a desire to be present at the post-mortem examination, and the doctors did not fail to pronounce the cause of her death to be an attack of cholera morbus (so Mademoiselle de Montpensier states), and that mortification had for some time past set in. He was not the dupe of such opinion; neither was Charles II., who, at first, indignantly refused to receive the letter addressed to him by the Duke of Orleans. But to persevere in such a line of conduct would have been to bring about a rupture of the pending negotiation and the loss of the French subsidy. He calmed down, therefore, and pretended to believe the explanations that were offered him. It was, however, remembered that the Chevalier de Lorraine, the Duke's unworthy favourite, had openly accused Madame as the instigator of his banishment; and Saint-Simon asserts that the King, before consenting to his brother marrying again, was resolved to know whether he had really had the Duchess poisoned, and with that view summoned Furnon, Henrietta's master of the household. From him he learned that the poison had been sent from Italy by the Chevalier de Lorraine to Beauveau, equerry to the Duchess, and to D'Effiat, her captain of the guard, but without the knowledge of the Duke. "It was that maitre-d'hotel who himself related it," says Saint-Simon, "to M. Joly de Fleury, from whom I had it."

A story but too probable. But that which appears incredible, and which nevertheless is quite certain, was that the poisoners were perfectly successful, that shortly after the crime the King permitted the Chevalier de Lorraine to serve in the army, appointed him marshal-de-camp, and allowed him to return to Court. What explanation, what palliation, can there be for such an enormous outrage to our common humanity? It has truly been said that "the intrigues which led to the murder of the unfortunate Henrietta of England present such a scene of accumulated horrors and iniquity, that, for the honour of human nature, one could wish that the curtain had never been raised which hid them from our knowledge."

The last political act of the Duchess of Orleans was one of decisive import, and calculated to secure for a long time the subjection of the English nation. Although seriously afflicted by the death of his sister, the thoughtless Charles seemed especially occupied with the design of bringing over to England the attractive maid-of-honour who had made such a lively impression upon him, as had been intended, during the short visit to Dover already mentioned. On the melancholy tidings of Henrietta's death reaching England, the profligate Duke of Buckingham was despatched to Paris as envoy extraordinary, ostensibly to inquire into the particulars of that catastrophe but in reality, as Burnet says, to conclude the treaty. This he accomplished; France agreeing to give two millions of livres (L150,000) for Charles's conversion to popery, and three millions a year for the Dutch war. Large sums of money were also distributed to Buckingham, Arlington, and Clifford.

Buckingham, that complaisant companion of "the merry monarch," who, "everything by turns and nothing long," having been the first to observe the impression the mignonne maid-of-honour had made on the King's susceptible fancy, had little hesitation in attaching to his diplomatic office the very undignified one of Sir Pandarus, and therefore with a brave defiance of decorum bent all his efforts to overcome the scruples, if any there might be, lingering in the mind of Louise with regard to transferring herself to the service of the Queen of England, poor Catherine of Braganza. As she was then placed through the death of the Duchess of Orleans, a convent was the only retreat Mademoiselle Querouaille could look forward to in France; and as religious seclusion was not at all congenial to the lively nymph, she was not found impracticable to Buckingham's overtures. Nor were the latter's efforts entirely disinterested in the matter. He had lately had a fierce quarrel with "old Rowley's" imperious mistress, the Duchess of Cleveland, and having sworn hatred and revenge against that profligate beauty, sought to turn the French maid-of-honour to his own advantage by raising up a rival in the King's affections, who should be wholly governed by himself. He therefore represented seriously to Louis that the only way to secure Charles to French interests was to give him a French mistress; and he told Charles jestingly that he ought to take charge of his sister's favourite attendant, if only out of "decent tenderness for her memory."

The delicate affair, in short, was soon arranged; an invitation, so formally worded as to wear the semblance of propriety, was sent from the English Court, and Louise immediately departed for Dieppe, escorted by part of the Duke of Buckingham's suite, and his grace's promise to join her with all convenient speed. But, as usual with the man whose "ambition was frequently nothing more than a frolic, and whose best designs were for the foolishest ends," who "could keep no secret nor execute any design without spoiling it," he totally forgot both the lady and his promise, and, leaving the forsaken demoiselle at Dieppe to cross the Straits as she best might, sailed to England by way of Calais. Lord Montagu, then our Ambassador at Paris, hearing of the Duke's escapade, immediately sent over for a yacht, and ordered some of his own attendants to convey her, with all honour, to Whitehall, where she was received by Lord Arlington with all respect, and forthwith appointed maid-of-honour to the Queen.

The intoxication of Charles was complete, and the man who had supported patiently the furious outbreaks of Barbara Palmer[10] and the saucy petulence of Nell Gwynne, was the more able to appreciate "les graces decentes" of the foreign maid-of-honour, who, in the profaned walls of Whitehall, diffused the delicate odour of Versailles.

[10] Duchess of Cleveland.

The purpose of her receiving an appointment at the Court of St. James's was apparently foretold, for Madame de Sevigne thus writes to her daughter:—"Ne trouvez-vous pas bon de savoir que Querouaille dont l'etoile avait ete devinee avant qu'elle partit, l'a suivie tres-fidelement? Le roi d'Angleterre l'a aimee, elle s'est trouvee avec une legere disposition a ne le pas hair."[11]

[11] Letter 190.

It is doubtful, however, whether Charles did immediately enjoy his conquest. If it be noted that the Duke of Richmond only came into the world in 1672, we may be led to suppose that Mademoiselle Querouaille did not yield without hesitation to the desires of her royal lover; and that supposition becomes almost a certitude, when one reads this passage of a letter which Saint-Evremond addressed to his fair countrywoman:—

"Suffer yourself rather to follow the bent of your temptation, instead of listening to your pride. Your pride would soon cause you to be sent back to France, and France would fling you, as has been the lot of many others, into some convent. But allowing that you should choose of your own free will that dismal kind of retreat, still it would be necessary beforehand to render yourself worthy of entering therein. What a figure you would cut there, if you had not the character of a penitent! True penitence is that which afflicts and mortifies us at the recollection of our faults. Of what has a good girl to be penitent who has done nothing wrong? You would appear ridiculous in the eyes of the other nuns, who, repenting from just motives, should discover that your repentance was only grimace."

Louise committed the error of not only approving the advice of that equivocal monitor, but the greater error of following it. Experience came very soon to open her eyes.

In 1672, as has been said, the Querouaille having presented the King with a son, her favour increased considerably. In 1673 she was created Duchess of Portsmouth, and at the close of the same year Louis XIV., alike to flatter the King of England, and to confirm him in his alliance with himself against Holland, as to reward the good offices of Louise Querouaille, conferred upon the latter the domain of D'Aubigny, in Berry. This domain given, in 1422, by Charles VII. to John Stuart, "as a token of the great services which he had rendered in war to that King," had reverted to the crown of France. In the letter of donation which Louis sent to Charles, it stated that "after the death of the Duchess of Portsmouth, the demesne of Aubigny shall pass to such of the natural children of the King of Great Britain as he shall nominate." Charles II. nominated Charles Lennox (his son by Querouaille), and created him Duke of Richmond on the 19th of August, 1675.

Although maitresse-en-titre, and favourite mistress as she became, she could not, however, prevent the unworthy and frequent resort of the debauched prince to rivals of a lower grade, and Madame de Sevigne penned some amusing lines on the subject of those duplicate amours:—"Querouaille has been in no way deceived; she had a mind to be the King's mistress, she has her wish. He passes almost every evening in her company, in presence of the whole Court. She has a child which has just been acknowledged, and on whom two duchies have been bestowed. She amasses wealth, and makes herself feared and respected wherever she can; but she could not foresee finding a young actress in her path by whom the King is bewitched.... He shares his attentions, his time, and his health between them both. The actress is quite as proud as the Duchess of Portsmouth: she spites her, makes wry faces at her, assails her, and often carries the King off from her. She boasts of those points in which she is preferable—that she is young, silly, bold, debauched, and agreeable; that she can sing, dance, and play the part de bonne foi. She has a son by the King, and is determined that he shall be acknowledged. Here are her reasons:—'This Duchess,' she says, 'acts the person of quality; she pretends that she is related to everybody in France. No sooner does any grandee die, than she puts on mourning. Ah well! if she is such a great lady, why did she condescend to become a catin? She ought to expire with shame: for myself, it is my profession; I don't pique myself on anything else. The King keeps me; I am at present his solely. I have brought him a son, whom I intend he shall acknowledge, and I am assured that he will, for he loves me quite as well as he does his Portsmouth.' This creature takes the top of the walk, and embarrasses and puts the Duchess out of countenance in a most extraordinary manner."

In Mrs. Nelly, with all her good qualities, Charles had not found exactly a rose without thorns to stick in his button-hole. In her too wild fun, or spirit of mockery, she was apt, as most others, to give demonstration of all the variety of her woman's nature and her woman's wit, and to make her baffled and humbled sovereign wish in his inmost heart that he had never had anything to do with her.

Such were the annoyances—doubtless unforeseen by Mademoiselle Querouaille on quitting France, and to which La Valliere and Montespan were not exposed in the Court of the Grand Monarque, where vice itself put on airs of grandeur and majesty. It must be owned, however, that Madame de Sevigne exaggerates when she pretends to establish a sort of equilibrium between the position of the actress and that of the Duchess. The triumphs of Nell Gwynne were triumphs of the alcove; whilst her Grace of Portsmouth reigned without a rival over the realm of diplomacy. Charles II. was in the habit of passing a great portion of his time in her apartments, where often, in the midst of a joyous circle, he met Barillon, the French Ambassador, who, from his agreeable manners, was freely admitted to all the amusements of the indolent monarch. It was by means of these frequent conversations that, seizing the favourable moment, the Duchess and the Ambassador succeeded in obtaining an order which suddenly changed the face of Europe, by bringing about the signature of the Treaty of Nimeguen, and more than once it fell to her lot to obtain a success of the same kind, to which neither her arrogant Grace of Cleveland nor the piquant Nelly could ever pretend. In political affairs the Querouaille held her own triumphantly over all her rivals, and obtained a dominion that ended only with the life of Charles. Too sensible to exact a strict fidelity from the King, the Duchess of Portsmouth was content to sigh in silence so long as her womanly feelings alone were sported with; but when it seemed likely that the influence which she strove to utilise to the profit of France might be trenched upon, her resentment broke forth in sudden and sweeping ebullitions which even the dread of a public scandal was impotent to repress. The correspondence of Bussy-Rabutin furnishes us with a scene of that description:—

"It is rumoured that Querouaille has been sermonising the King, crucifix in hand, as well both to wean him from other women as to bring him back to Christianity: in fact, it appears that she herself has been very near the point of death. However, three or four days afterwards, finding herself better, she rose from her bed, and dragged herself into the box where the King was seeing a play in company with Madame de Mazarin, and there she overwhelmed him with endless reproaches for his infidelity. Love and jealousy are strong passions."

Hortensia Mancini, Duchess de Mazarin, who was commonly thought to be the finest woman in Europe, and more than that—a very great lady, aunt of the Duchess of York, might have easily supplanted the "baby-faced" Querouaille in the inconstant heart of Charles Stuart, but that the haughty Italian paid small attention to the predilections of that prince, whom she cut to the quick by receiving before his face the advances of the Prince de Monaco, and so Charles returned "a ses premieres amours." That phrase, somewhat vague in so far as it applies to the sensual instincts of a man who did not even believe in friendship, describes at least accurately that passionate feeling with which the Duchess of Portsmouth had inspired him. Under certain circumstances—very rare, it is true—she went so far as to sacrifice to him entirely her political role, and when the question of the famous "bill of exclusion" arose, she was seen to throw herself at the King's feet, and implore her royal lover not to rush headlong to destruction;[12] entreating him to abandon, if it must be so, the interests of his brother and those of Catholicism, rather than compromise his crown and life. Such proceeding appears still more generous, if we reflect that, in spite of the irregular position which she had accepted, the Duchess had remained deeply attached to her religion and her native country, and that at that juncture no one was ignorant that an era of persecution was about to commence for the reformed Churches of France. Two years later, on the eve of the Nimeguen treaty, the decline of the great reign was already foreshadowed; the influence of incapable though right-thinking men became daily more marked, and the star of the austere Frances d'Aubigny (Maintenon) arose slowly above the horizon. Conversions at any price were clamoured for, and no extent of sacrifice deterred the proselytisers from bringing back within the fold souls of quality, save leaving one day to Louvois' dragoons the charge of enlightening the Protestant vulgar. The Duchess of Portsmouth was, together with the Duchess of York, at the head of the English propagandists, and, curious enough, a regular exchange of edifying letters took place between the future foundress of Saint-Cyr and the joyous sinner of the Court of St. James's. Louis XIV., desirous of duly recompensing the services of the royal favourite, conferred upon her by letters-patent dated January, 1684, the French title of Duchess d'Aubigny.

[12] Macaulay.

Thus had Louise Querouaille reached the summit of her rapid prosperity; but a great turn of chance was at hand, and in a moment she was about to be hurled from that dizzy height.

Lord Macaulay has graphically sketched the memorable scene in which she figured so creditably when Charles was struck with his fatal seizure. On the 2nd of February, 1685, "scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when his attendants perceived that his utterance was indistinct, and that his thoughts seemed to be wandering. Several men of rank had, as usual, assembled to see their sovereign shaved and dressed. He made an effort to converse with them in his usual gay style; but his ghastly look surprised and alarmed them. Soon his face grew black; his eyes turned in his head; he uttered a cry, staggered, and fell into the arms of one of his lords. A physician, who had charge of the royal retorts and crucibles, happened to be present. He had no lancet; but he opened a vein with a penknife. The blood flowed freely; but the King was still insensible.

"He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess of Portsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But the alarm had been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were hastening to the room. The favourite concubine was forced to retire to her own apartments. Those apartments had been thrice pulled down and thrice rebuilt by her lover to gratify her caprice. The very furniture of the chimney was massive silver. Several fine paintings, which properly belonged to the Queen, had been transferred to the dwelling of the mistress. The sideboards were piled with richly wrought plate. In the niches stood cabinets, masterpieces of Japanese art. On the hangings, fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints which no English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage, landscapes, hunting matches, the lordly terrace of Saint-Germain's, the statues and fountains of Versailles.[13] In the midst of this splendour, purchased by guilt and shame, the unhappy woman gave herself up to an agony of grief, which, to do her justice, was not wholly selfish."

[13] Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2. Oct. 4, 1683.

On the morning on which the King was taken ill, the Duchess of York had, at the request of the Queen, suggested the propriety of procuring spiritual assistance. "For such assistance," continues Macaulay, "Charles was at last indebted to an agency very different from that of his pious wife and sister-in-law." A life of frivolity and vice had not extinguished in the Duchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of religion, or all that kindness which is the glory of her sex. The French Ambassador, Barillon, who had come to the palace to inquire after the King, paid her a visit. He found her in an agony of sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and poured out her whole heart to him. "I have," she said, "a thing of great moment to tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King is really and truly a Catholic; but he will die without being reconciled to the Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant clergymen. I cannot enter it without giving scandal. The Duke is thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remind him that there is a soul at stake. He is master now. He can clear the room. Go this instant, or it will be too late."