Political Women Volume I Part 6

CHAPTER I.

THE d.u.c.h.eSS 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-pa.s.sion, 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 Munster, the young d.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.sertion 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 a.s.sault. 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 t.i.ttle 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 apt.i.tude 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 pa.s.sages 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 impa.s.sive 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 surpa.s.sed.

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 partic.i.p.ation 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.e.x, 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 pa.s.sionately 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 d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse was then living in banishment from Court, that the Prince de Marsillac first came to ally himself with the ill.u.s.trious political adventuress. At the time when La Rochefoucauld obtained political notoriety, a crisis occurred in France in national manners, sentiments, and feelings. The n.o.bles, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 d.u.c.h.ess. 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 d.u.c.h.ess'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 a.n.a.lysis--the crisis brought about by an irresistible pa.s.sion. 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 pa.s.sion 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.siduous 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.eSS 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 pa.s.sed the limits of that n.o.ble 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 Munster, 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 a.s.sembled.

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

Although the d.u.c.h.ess 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 Munster 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 Munster. 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 s.e.x. 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 succ.u.mbed 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 pa.s.sions, 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 pa.s.sed 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] Pet.i.tot Collection, vol. li. p. 393.

When, subdued at length by the pa.s.sion 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 princ.i.p.al 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 n.o.bleman, 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 pa.s.sion 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 const.i.tution 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, pa.s.sing 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 d.u.c.h.eSS 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 n.o.ble 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 d.u.c.h.ess'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 d.u.c.h.ess complained bitterly of this latter proceeding in a letter which she contrived to have handed to the Queen. She a.s.serted 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 d.u.c.h.ess'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 circ.u.mstances 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, impa.s.sive 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 prompt.i.tude, 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 n.o.ble 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 d.u.c.h.ess appealed to his courtesy,[2] and thanks to his good offices, she obtained--but with no little difficulty--pa.s.sports 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 d.u.c.h.ess. But Mazarin was informed of everything from first to last.

He was aware of every t.i.ttle of the d.u.c.h.ess'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 Galliga, 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."