[4] La Misere dans la Fronde.

What could be more _diverting_? The Duke de Lorraine--that restless knight-errant who preferred amusing himself with civil war to the quiet enjoyment of his throne--amused the n.o.ble ladies of his acquaintance with a recital of these pleasant incidents; his gallant army, he said, was quite a providence for the old women....

After further pursuing his appalling statistics of the misery and horrors inflicted by the Fronde at a later date, M. Feillet remarks:--"And yet, notwithstanding all this suffering, which we have only cursorily sketched, at Court nothing else was thought of but fetes and diversions; for the young and brilliant bevy of Mazarin's nieces had come to increase the circle of beauties whom the youthful King and his gay courtiers vied with each other in paying homage to, and entertaining. The warm attachment of Louis for more than one of his Minister's nieces, and especially Marie de Mancini, is well known. In imitation of their Sovereign, the youthful n.o.bility and a large portion of the city gallants plunged into unrestrained dissipation--intervals of licentiousness ever succeeding like periods of turbulence and anarchy.

Such heartless indifference to the sufferings of the people on the part of the King and his Court evoked the following couplet, which was put into the mouth of Louis by a contemporary pamphleteer:--

"Si la France est en deuil, qu'elle pleure et soupire; Pour moi, je veux cha.s.ser, galantiser et rire."

But we are somewhat antic.i.p.ating events, and therefore return to them in the order of time.

BOOK V.

CHAPTER I.

CONDe'S ADVENTUROUS EXPEDITION.

CONDe pa.s.sed several months in Guienne, occupied with strengthening and extending the insurrection at the head of which he had placed himself, and in repulsing as far as possible in the south the royal army, commanded by the skilful and experienced Count d'Harcourt. Amidst very varied successes, he learned from different quarters the bad turn which the Fronde's affairs was taking in the heart of the kingdom, the intrigues of De Retz who held the key of Paris, and the deplorable state of the army on the banks of the Loire.

On receiving these tidings at Bordeaux in the month of March, 1652, Conde saw clearly the double danger which menaced him, and immediately faced it in his wonted manner. Instead of awaiting events which were on the eve of taking place at a distance, he determined on antic.i.p.ating them, and formed an extraordinary resolution, of a character very much resembling his great military manoeuvres, which at first sight appears extravagant, but which the gravest reason justifies, and the temerity of which even is only another form of high prudence. He formed the design of slipping out of Bordeaux, traversing the lines of Count d'Harcourt, to get over in the best way he might the hundred and fifty leagues which separated him from the Loire and Paris, to appear there suddenly, and to place himself at the head of his affairs.

He left behind him in Guienne a force sufficiently imposing to allow of it there awaiting in security the successful results he was about to seek. In possessing himself of Agen, Bergerac, Perigueux, Cognac, and even for a moment of Saintes, and by pushing his conquests into Haute Guienne, on the side of Mont-de-Marsan, Dax, and Pau, he had made Bordeaux the capital of a small but rich and populous kingdom, surrounded on all sides by a belt of strongholds, communicating with the sea by the Gironde, and admirably placed for attack or defence. This kingdom, backed as it was by Spain, was capable of receiving continuous succour from Santander and St. Sebastian, and a Spanish fleet could approach by the Tour de Corduan, bringing subsidies and troops, whilst Count de Dognon's fleet, sailing from the islands of Re and Oleron to join it, might easily surround and even beat the royal fleet, then forming at Brouage under the Duke de Vendome. In 1650, during the imprisonment of the princes, Bordeaux had defended itself for more than six months against a considerable army with the young king at its head, and which was directed by Mazarin in person. Conde, and all his family were adored there, by reason of the hatred felt for his predecessor, the imperious Duke d'Epernon. The Bordeaux parliament was also equally involved in the Fronde as was that of Paris, with which it had allied itself by a solemn declaration. Under the parliament was a brave and ardent people, which furnished a numerous militia.

Conde had named the Prince de Conti his lieutenant-general--a prince of the blood giving l.u.s.tre to authority, dominating all rivalries, an appointment calculated to render obedience more easy. He was aware of Conti's levity, but he knew also that he was wanting neither in intelligence nor courage. He believed in the ascendency which Madame de Longueville had always exercised over her brother, and he hoped she would guide him still. He had confidence in that high-souled sister whom formerly he had so warmly loved; and although intrigues and a sinister influence, to which we shall shortly further allude, had diminished the high admiration he had had for her, and to which he later returned, he reckoned upon her intelligence, upon her pride, upon that lofty courage of which she had given so many proofs at Stenay. At his sister's side he left his wife Claire Clemence de Maille-Breze, who had behaved so admirably in the first Guienne war. He left her _enceinte_ with their second child, and with her he gave to Bordeaux and placed as it were in pledge in its hands, to hold the place of himself, the Duke d'Enghien, the hope and stay of his house, the peculiar object of his tenderness.

So that there, he left behind him a government, he thought, which would look well alike in the eyes of France and of Europe.

In reality, to what did Conde aspire? To const.i.tute himself the head of the n.o.bility against the Court? The n.o.bles thought it harsh to be so treated. To commence another Fronde? To do that, it was necessary to have the parliaments under his thumb; and he had already been compelled to threaten the deputies of that of Aix with the bastinado. Did he look forward to an independent princ.i.p.ality, as he later on desired to obtain from the Spaniards? Or rather did he think of s.n.a.t.c.hing from the Duke d'Orleans the lieutenant-generalship? It is difficult to divine what may have pa.s.sed through his capricious brain. He was constant in nothing. It was seen later still that he would very willingly have changed his religion, offering himself on the one side to Cromwell, and to become a protestant in order to have an English army; on the other to the Pope, if he would help to get him elected King of Poland.

The income of the Condes in 1609 amounted to ten thousand livres, and in 1649, besides the Montmorency estates, they held an enormous portion of France. First, by the Great Conde, they had Burgundy, Berri, the marshes of Lorraine, a dominant fortress in the Bourbonnais that held in check four provinces. Secondly, by Conti, Champagne. Thirdly, by Longueville, their sister's husband, Normandy. Fourthly, the Admiralty, and Saumur, the chief fortress of Anjou, were in the hands of the brother of Conde's wife; they fell in through his death, and were sold again by them as though they were a family birthright. Later still, they negotiated for the possession of Guienne and Provence.

Amidst the cares of administration and of war, Conde carried on an a.s.siduous correspondence with Chavigny, then fallen into disgrace, who kept him well informed of the state of affairs at Court and in Paris.

They had a.s.sumed quite a new face during the last few months. Mazarin in his exile had not learned without inquietude the ever-increasing success of Chateauneuf. He saw him active and determined, accepted as a chief by all colleagues, skilfully seconded by the keeper of the seals, Mole, and by Marshal de Villeroi, the king's governor, an ambiguous personage, very ambitious at bottom, and jealous of the Cardinal's favour with the Queen. Chateauneuf, it is true, had only entered the Cabinet under the agreement of shortly recalling Mazarin; but he incessantly asked for fresh delay; he tried to make the Queen comprehend the danger of a precipitate return,--the Fronde ready to arouse itself anew, the Duke d'Orleans and the Coadjutor resuming their ancient opposition, and royalty finding itself once more without any solid support. Anne of Austria gradually acquiescing in these wise counsels, Mazarin, who at first had with difficulty restrained the impatient disposition of the Queen, finding her grown less eager, became alarmed: he saw that he was lost should he allow such a rival to establish himself.[1] Therefore, pa.s.sing suddenly from an apparent resignation to an extraordinary audacity, he had, towards the end of November 1651, broken his ban, quitted his retreat at Dinan, and had resolutely entered France with a small force collected together by his two faithful friends, the Marquis de Navailles and the Count de Broglie, and led by Marshal Hocquincourt.

He had by main strength surmounted every obstacle, braved the decrees and the deputies of the parliament, reached Poitiers where the Queen and young Louis the Fourteenth had eagerly welcomed him; and there, in January 1652, after speedily ridding himself of Chateauneuf, too proud and too able to be resigned to hold the second rank, he had again taken in hand the reins of government.

[1] Mad. de Motteville, tom. v. p. 96.

This bold conduct, which probably saved Mazarin, came also to the succour of Conde. The second and irreparable disgrace of the minister of the old Fronde had exasperated him as well as had the umbrage given him by the Duke d'Orleans. He thought himself tricked by the Queen, and had loudly complained of it. Conde's friends had not failed to seize that occasion to reconcile him with the Duke, and to negotiate a fresh alliance between them; and as previously the Fronde and the Queen had been united against Conde, so also at the end of January 1652, that Prince and the Fronde in almost its entirety were united against Mazarin.

Madame de Chevreuse alone, with her most intimate friends, remained faithful to her hatred and the Queen, dreading far less Mazarin than Conde, and choosing between them both for once and for all with her well-known firmness and resolution. De Retz trimmed, followed the Duke d'Orleans, using tact with the Queen, so that he might not lose the hat, and without engaging himself personally with Conde.

If Burnet is to be believed, it was at this conjunction that Conde made an offer to Cromwell to turn Huguenot, and embrace the faith of his ancestors, in order to secure the aid of the English Puritans.

However that might be, it was not illusory to think that with such a government and the continual a.s.sistance of Spain, Bordeaux might hold out for at least a year, and give Conde time to strike some decisive blows. The resolution that he took was therefore as rational as it was great. It would have been a sovereign imprudence to remain in Guienne merely to engage Harcourt in a series of trifling skirmishes, and after much time and trouble take a few little paltry towns, when in the heart of the kingdom a treason or a defeat might irreparably involve the loss of everything, and condemn Bordeaux to share the common fate, after a more or less prolonged existence. Taking one thing with another, Guienne was doubtless a considerable accessory; but the grand struggle was not to be made there; it was at Paris and upon the banks of the Loire that the destiny of the Fronde and that of Conde too must be decided; it was thither, therefore, that he must hasten. Every day brought him tidings that jealousies, divisions, quarrels were increasing in the army, and he trembled to receive, some morning, news that Turenne and Hocquincourt had beaten Nemours and Beaufort, and were marching on Paris. Desirous of preventing at any price a disaster so irreparable, he resolved to rush to the point where the danger was supreme, where his unexpected presence would strike terror into the souls of his enemies, revive the courage of his partisans and turn fortune to his side. When Caesar, on arriving in Greece, learned that the fleet which was following him with his army on board, had been dispersed and destroyed by that of Pompey, he flung himself alone into a fisherman's bark under cover of night to cross the sea into Asia to seek for the legions of Antony, and return with them to gain the battle of Pharsalia. When Napoleon learned in Egypt the state of France, from the shameful doings of the Directory, the agitation of parties, and that already more than one general was meditating another 18th of Brumaire, he did not hesitate, and however rash it might appear to attempt to pa.s.s through the English fleet in a small craft, at the risk of being taken, or sent to the bottom, he dared every peril, and by dint of address and audacity succeeded in gaining the sh.o.r.es of France.

Conde did the same, and at the end of March 1652, he undertook to make his way from the banks of the Gironde to the banks of the Loire, without other escort than that of a small number of intrepid friends, and sustained solely by the vivid consciousness of the necessity of that bold step, his familiarity with and secret liking for danger, his incomparable presence of mind and his customary gaiety.

On Palm Sunday, 1652, Conde set forth upon his adventurous expedition.

He was accompanied by six persons, La Rochefoucauld and his youthful son, the Prince de Marcillac, the Count de Guitaut, the Count de Chavagnac, a valet named Rochefort, and the indefatigable Gourville, under whose directions all the arrangements of the journey seem to have been contrived. The whole party were disguised as common troopers, and each took a false name, even amongst themselves. For some time they followed the Bordeaux road, and using many precautions proceeded until they reached Cahusac, where they encountered some troops belonging to La Rochefoucauld; but being anxious almost as much to avoid their own partizans as the enemy, Conde and his companions hid themselves in a barn, while Gourville went out to forage. He succeeded in procuring some scanty fare; and they rode on till some hours had pa.s.sed after nightfall, when they reached a little wayside inn, where Conde volunteered to cook an omelet for the whole party. The hand, however, which could wield a truncheon with such effect, proved somewhat too violent for the frying-pan, and in the attempt to turn the omelet, he threw the whole hissing ma.s.s into the fire.

The little band having reached a certain spot, quitted the main road, and began to traverse the enemy's lines. For eight days they encountered many perilous incidents and underwent incredible fatigue, riding throughout the same horses, never stopping more than two hours to eat or sleep, avoiding towns and crossing rivers as they best could; threading at first the gorges of the Auvergne mountains, then descending by the Bec d'Allier, and making their way to the Loire. The memoirs of La Rochefoucauld and Gourville must be consulted for the details of that extraordinary journey, and all the dangers it presented. No less than ten times did they escape being taken and slain. Their wearied horses at last could carry them no longer. La Rochefoucauld was tormented by the gout, and his son was so worn out with fatigue that he fell asleep as he went. Conde, whose iron frame resisted to the last, was alone indefatigable, sleeping and working at will, and always cheerful and good humoured.

Upon approaching Gien, at which place the Court then was, Conde had twice very nearly fallen into the hands of parties sent out to take him alive or dead. Having escaped almost by a miracle, on the last occasion, soon after reaching Chatillon, he gained information that the army of Beaufort and Nemours lay at about eight leagues from that place, and hastened with all speed to join it. At length, to his great joy, he saw the advanced guard before him, and several of the troopers came galloping up with a loud "_Qui vive!_" Some of them, however, almost instantly recognised Conde, and shouts of joy and surprise soon made known through the whole army what had occurred.

He found the forces of the Fronde as divided as were its chiefs. He took the command of it immediately; thus doing away with the princ.i.p.al cause of the jealousy existing between Nemours and Beaufort. He reviewed and reunited it, gave it one day's rest, seized, without striking a blow, on Montargis and Chateau-Renard, and threw himself with the utmost rapidity on the royal army. It was scattered in quarters distant from each other for the convenience of foraging, and on account of the little dread with which Beaufort and Nemours had inspired it. Marshal d'Hocquincourt was encamped at Bleneau, and Turenne a little farther off, at Briare; the two Marshals were to unite their forces on the morrow. Conde did not give them time for that: that same evening, and during the nights of the 6th and 7th of April, 1652, he fell upon the head-quarters of Hocquincourt, overwhelmed them, and succeeded in routing the rest, thanks to one of those charges in flank which he in person ever led so energetically. Hocquincourt, after fighting like a gallant soldier, was forced to fall back for some leagues in the direction of Auxerre, having lost all his baggage and three thousand horse. No sooner did Turenne hear of the fact, than he sprang into the saddle, and marched with some infantry both to the a.s.sistance of his brother officer and to the defence of the King, who, resting secure at Gien, might have fallen into the hands of the rebels. As he advanced through the darkness of the night, the Marshal saw the quarters of Hocquincourt in one blaze of fire, and exclaiming, with the appreciation which genius has of genius, "The Prince de Conde is arrived!" he hurried on with the utmost speed.

Having neither cavalry nor artillery, and having sent word to Hocquincourt to rally to him as soon as possible, he marched on in good order throughout that long and dark night to join the bulk of his troops which Navailles and Palluan were bringing up. For an instant he halted in a plain where there stood a rather dense wood on his left, with a marsh on his right. Those around Conde thought it an advantageous post; Conde judged very differently. "If M. de Turenne makes a stand there,"

said he, "I shall soon cut him to pieces; but he will take good care not to do so."[2] He had not left off speaking when he saw that Turenne was already retiring, too skilful to await Conde in the plain and expose himself to the Prince's formidable manoeuvres. A little further off, he found a position much more favourable; there he firmly posted his force, determined to give battle. In vain did his officers urge him not to hazard an action, not to risk the last army which remained to the monarchy, and to confine himself to covering Gien whilst awaiting the coming of Hocquincourt. "_No_," replied he, "_we must conquer or perish here._"

[2] It is Tavannes who has preserved the details of this interesting incident.

Turenne, it is true, was very inferior in cavalry to Conde, but he had a powerful and well-served artillery. Having encouraged his troops to do their duty, he posted himself upon an eminence which he covered with infantry and artillery, drew up his cavalry below in a plain too narrow to permit of Conde deploying his own, and which could only be reached by traversing a thick wood and a causeway intersected by ditches and boggy ground. From such strong position, Conde could, in his turn, recognise his ill.u.s.trious disciple. No great manoeuvres were then practicable, and as time did not permit of an attempt to turn Turenne, it was necessary to crush him out of hand, if that were possible, before he could effect a junction with Hocquincourt. The defile was the key of the position; and both sides fought therein with equal fierceness. Turenne defended himself sword in hand, and upon the six squadrons which Conde hurled against him he opened a battery, as they pa.s.sed, with terrible execution, showing a courage equal to that of his heroic adversary.

Conde, judging from what he now saw, believed the position in the hands of Turenne to be impregnable; and it being too late to execute any other manoeuvres with success during that day, he continued to cannonade the royalist army till the evening, without any other attempt to bring it to a battle.

Napoleon has not spared Conde in this affair any more than other critics. He sums all their opinions up in one piquant phrase, which it appears he was unable to resist, and which made him smile in uttering it. "Conde," said he, "for that once, was wanting in boldness." The dictum is both brief and incisive, but there was no foundation for it, in a military point of view. There was, in truth, no want of boldness on Conde's part throughout that campaign: far from it, his whole line of conduct was a succession of audacious actions and combinations. What could be bolder than that forced journey of nearly ten days for more than one hundred and fifty miles with half-a-dozen followers to go and take the command of an army? What bolder than the resolution taken out of hand to throw himself between Turenne and Hocquincourt, to cut in two the royal army and to disperse one half of it before attacking the other? Did Conde lose a moment in marching against Turenne and pursuing him sword in hand? Was it his fault that he had to cope with a great captain, who knew how to select an excellent position, and to maintain himself in it with immovable firmness? In the attack of that position, did Napoleon mean to reproach Conde with want of boldness? Turenne, it is true, covered himself with glory, for he successfully resisted Conde; but Conde, in not having been victorious, was not in the slightest degree beaten. The strategy, therefore, on that occasion was irreproachable. As will be seen, it was in his policy only that he failed. Conde quitted the army at a very ill-timed moment, in our opinion, but that step was taken through considerations which had nothing to do with the science of war.

To revert for a moment to this much-criticised action of Bleneau.

Towards night, Hocquincourt appeared upon the field, having rallied a considerable part of his cavalry. Conde then retired, finding that his attempt was frustrated, and took the way to Montargis; while Turenne rejoined the Court, and was received by the Queen with all the grat.i.tude which such great services merited. Her first words went to thank him for _having placed the crown a second time upon her son's head_.

The terror and confusion which had reigned in Gien during the whole of the preceding night and that day may very well be conceived when it is remembered that the safety of the King himself, as well as the Queen, was at stake, and that the life of the favourite Minister might at any moment be placed at the mercy of his bitterest enemy, justified in putting him to death immediately by the highest legal authority in the realm. Neither were the ill-disciplined and irregular forces of Conde at all desirable neighbours to the troop of ladies who had followed the Court; and, as soon as it was known that Conde had fallen upon Hocquincourt, the whole of the little town was one scene of dismay and confusion.

The royal army and that of Conde now both marched towards Paris, nearly upon two parallel lines. But the great distress which the Court suffered from want of money caused almost as much insubordination to be apparent amongst the troops of the King as amongst those of the rebels. Little respect was shown to Mazarin himself; and the young King was often treated with but scanty ceremony, and provided for but barely.

After quitting the neighbourhood of Gien, Conde, urged by the desire of directing in person the negotiations and intrigues which were going on in Paris, left his army under the command of the celebrated Tavannes, and hastened to the capital. The Count de Tavannes, whom he had selected to fill his own place, was without doubt an excellent officer, one of the valiant _Pet.i.ts-maitres_[3] who, upon the field of battle, served as wings to the great soldier's thoughts, carried his orders everywhere, executed the most dangerous manoeuvres, sometimes charging with an irresistible impetuosity, at others sustaining the most terrible onsets with a firmness and solidity beyond all proof. But though the intrepid Tavannes was quite capable of leading the division of a great army, he was not able enough to be its commander-in-chief, and he had not authority over the foreign troops which the Duke de Nemours had brought from Flanders, and which he made over, on accompanying Conde to Paris, to the command of the Count de Clinchamp. The army, thus divided, was capable of nothing great. Conde alone could finish what he had begun.

Once engaged in the formidable enterprise that he had undertaken against the Queen and Mazarin, there was no safety for him but in carrying it out even to the end. He ought, therefore, to have waged war to the knife, if the expression be allowable, against Turenne, conquered or perished, and to have constrained Mazarin to flee for good and all to Germany or Italy, and the Queen to place in his hands the young King. To do that, Conde should have had a definite ambition, an object clearly determined; he ought to have plainly proposed to himself to a.s.sume the Regency, or at least the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom in the place of Gaston, by will or by force, in order to concentrate all power in his own hands; that he might become, in short, a Cromwell or a William III.: and Conde was neither the one or the other. His mind had been perturbed by sinister dreams; but, as has been remarked, he had at heart an invincible fund of loyalty. Ambition was rather hovering round him than within himself. But whatsoever it was he desired, and in every hypothesis--for his secret has remained between Heaven and himself--he did wrong in abandoning the Loire and leaving Turenne in force there.

That was the true error he committed, and not in wanting audacity, as Napoleon supposed. It was not a military but a political error--immense and irreparable. He might have crushed Turenne, and ought to have attempted it, but he let him slip from his grasp. The opportunity once lost did not return. Turenne until then was only second in rank; by a glorious resistance he acquired from that moment, and it was forced upon him to maintain, the importance of a rival of Conde. Mazarin grew from day to day more emboldened; royalty, which had been on the very brink of ruin, again rose erect, and the Court drew towards Paris; whilst, prompted by his evil genius, quitting the field of battle wherein lay his veritable strength, Conde went away to waste his precious time in a labyrinth of intrigues for which he was not fitted, and in which he lost himself and the Fronde.

[3] Upon the _Pet.i.ts Maitres_, see Mad. de Sable, chap. i. p. 44.

CHAPTER II.

POLITICAL AND GALLANT INTRIGUES--THE d.u.c.h.eSS DE CHaTILLON'S SWAY OVER CONDe--SHAMEFUL CONSPIRACY AGAINST MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE.

CONDe arrived in Paris on the 11th of April, and found everything in the utmost confusion. It would be impossible to follow all the petty intrigues, or even make allusion to all the events which affected the relative situations of the parties in the capital; but it may be observed that the tendency of both parties was to hold themselves in the neighbourhood of Paris. The chiefs of the Fronde hurried into the city, to receive the congratulations due to their exploits from the fair politicians who had won them to their cause. The Queen also established her head-quarters near the capital, to be ready for any turn of popular sentiment in her favour, and to hear the reports of her spies on the proceedings of her enemies. She knew what dances were to be given, and who were to attend the a.s.semblies of the d.u.c.h.esses of the Fronde. On one occasion when Turenne knew that half the officers of Conde's army were engaged to a brilliant fete at the d.u.c.h.ess de Montbazon's, he made an attack on the enemy's camp, and was only repulsed by the steadiness of some old soldiers, who gave time for reinforcements to arrive. But the crisis was at hand; for each party began to be suspicious of the other gaining over its supporters--Mazarin lavishing promises of place and money, and the d.u.c.h.ess de Chatillon, invested with full powers by Conde, appearing in the opposite camp as the most irresistible amba.s.sadress that ever was seen.

Thus matters stood in the early summer of 1652, and "all that was most subtle and serious in politics," La Rochefoucauld tells us, "was brought under the attention of Conde to induce him to take one of two courses--to make peace or to continue the war; when Madame de Chatillon imbued him with a design for peace by means the most agreeable. She thought that so great a boon might be the work of her beauty, and mingling ambition with the design of making a new conquest, she desired at the same time to triumph over the Prince de Conde's heart and to derive pecuniary advantages from her political negotiations."

We have already cursorily mentioned the d.u.c.h.ess de Chatillon: it is now indispensable, in order to thoroughly understand what is about to follow, to know something more of that celebrated personage.

Isabella Angelique de Montmorency was one of the two daughters of that brave and unfortunate Count de Montmorency Bouteville, who, the victim of a false point of honour and of an outrageous pa.s.sion for duelling, was decapitated on the Place de Greve, on the 21st of June, 1627. She was sister of Francois de Montmorency, Count de Bouteville, better known as the ill.u.s.trious Marshal de Luxembourg. Born in 1626, she had been married in 1645 to the last of the Colignys, the Duke de Chatillon, one of the heroes of Lens, killed in the action of Charenton in 1649. Left a widow at twenty-three, her rare loveliness won for her a thousand adorers. She was one of the queens of politics and gallantry during the Fronde; and even, after manifold amours, at thirty-eight could boast of captivating the Duke de Mecklenbourg, who espoused her in 1664. To beauty, Madame de Chatillon added great intelligence, but an intelligence wholly devoted to intrigue. She was vain and ambitious, and at the same time profoundly selfish, moderately scrupulous, and somewhat of the school of Madame de Montbazon. While both were young, she had smitten Conde; but he had thought no more of her after becoming absorbed with his love for Mademoiselle de Vigean. After that elevated pa.s.sion, so sorrowfully terminated,[1] and after the fugitive emotion with which the lovely and virtuous Mademoiselle de Toussy could still inspire him, Conde stifled his chevalaresque instincts and bade adieu to the _haute galanterie_ of his youth and of the Hotel de Rambouillet. A few insignificant and commonplace attachments, of which no record has survived, alone excepted, Madame de Chatillon only is known to have captivated his heart for the last time; and that _liaison_ exercised upon Conde and his affairs, at the epoch at which we have arrived, an influence sufficiently great for history to occupy itself therewith, if it would not be content with retracing consequences and as it were the outline of events which pa.s.s across the stage of the world without being understood, without penetrating to the true causes which are to be discovered in the characters and pa.s.sions of mankind. And, of all pa.s.sions, there is none at once more energetic and wide-grasping than love. It occupies an immense place in human life, and in the loftiest as well as the lowliest conditions. In our own times, we have seen it make and mar kings. In an earlier epoch, by detaining Antony too long in Cleopatra's arms at Alexandria, the formidable tempest gathered above his head which nearly overwhelmed him at Munda. It played a great part in the war which Henry IV. was about to undertake, when a sudden death arrested him. One can scarcely resist a smile on seeing historians for the most part taking no account of it, as a thing too frivolous, and consigning it altogether to private life, as though that which agitates the soul so powerfully were not the principle of that which blazes forth exteriorly! No, the empire of beauty knows no limitation, and in no instance did it show itself more potent than over those great hearts of which Alexander the Great, Caesar, Charlemagne, and Henry IV. of France were the owners. We may well place Conde amongst such ill.u.s.trious company.

[1] Mademoiselle de Vigean took the veil on the prince being forced to marry the niece of Cardinal Richelieu.