Victor Cousin

“ Chalais mounted the first scaffold erected by Richelieu, despite the tears of his aged mother. Monsieur extricated himself from the affair by espousing Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the queen fell more deeply than ever into disgrace, and Madame de Chevreuse, perfidiously denounced by the Duke of Orleans, and also by Chalais himself, who, with his dying breath, vainly denied his first confessions, was condemned to depart from France. What part had she had in this conspiracy? That which both love and friendship had forced upon her. Chalais was her lover, and she was devoted to Anne of Austria. ”

“ Madame de Chevreuse in truth [2] possessed almost all the qualities of a great politician, a single one was wanting, and it was the one precisely without which all the others ran to waste—she did not know how to propose to herself a just aim, or rather she never chose one for herself; it was another that chose for her. Madame de Chevreuse was a woman in the fullest sense—in this was her strength, and also her weakness. Her first impulse was love, or rather gallantry, and the interests of the one whom she loved became her chief aim. ”

“ One can easily imagine the mortal ennui which overwhelmed the beautiful duchess, thus buried at thirty-three in the heart of a province, far from the noise and the splendor of Paris, far from all the emotions which were so dear to her, far from all intrigues both of politics and of love. It was but a dull amusement to her to turn the head of the old Archbishop of Tours, [34] and to sustain herself she had great need of the visits of the young and amiable La Rochefoucauld, [35] who lived in her neighborhood, and of the letters of Queen Anne. ”

“ Such is the state of the cardinal's mind. Send me word what you think of all this, but feign to know nothing of it. I shall see the cardinal here, and will inform you of all that passes. Believe that whatever may happen to your master, he will do nothing that is unworthy of himself, or which shall cause you to blush for belonging to him. I am a little better in health, and more than ever resolved to esteem M. de Châteauneuf till death, as I have promised you. ”

“ But a good master never fears to err in obliging his servant, when he has proved himself full of fidelity and affection. The cardinal wishes to persuade Madame de Chevreuse that his heart is filled with both for her who will not believe his words. I would give my life to talk with you, but I know not how to manage this, for the cardinal must not know it. Consult with the bearer respecting the means for it, and believe that nothing but death can take away the sentiments that I feel for you. ”

“ The tyranny of the cardinal increases every moment. He storms and rages because Madame de Chevreuse does not go to see him. I have written to him twice with compliments of which he is unworthy, and which I should never have offered to him, had it not been for the persecution of M. de Chevreuse, who said that these would purchase my repose. I believe that the favors of the king have carried his presumption to its highest point. He fancies that he can terrify Madame de Chevreuse by his anger, and persuades himself, in my opinion, that she will leave nothing untried to appease it ”

“ If our readers are not wearied with our portraits of the women of the seventeenth century, we should be glad to present to them two new figures equally, though differently remarkable—two persons whom the caprice of Fate cast in the same age, the same party, amidst the same events, but who far from resembling each other, expressed, as we may say, the two opposite sides of the character, and the destiny of woman—both endowed with resplendent beauty, marvellous talent, and indomitable courage ”

“ The young queen, Anne of Austria, and her youthful superintendent, who were nearly of the same age, only occupied themselves at first with frivolous pastimes. Anne, neglected by her husband, consoled herself with the society and the lively and happy humor of Madame de Chevreuse. They passed their time together, making of every thing "food for their wit and pleasantry: a giovine cuor tutto è giuoco." ”

“ Richelieu says, and we believe him, that "she did more harm than any one else." [18] She dearly learned the cost of loving a queen too well. Anne of Austria escaped with a slight humiliation, but her courageous confidant saw the man whom she loved perish by the hand of the executioner, and herself torn from all the refinements of life, from the fêtes of the Louvre and from her beautiful château of Dampierre, and forced to seek an asylum in a foreign land. ”

“ The queen and her friends believed themselves acting under an impenetrable disguise; but the police of the suspicious cardinal were on the alert. A note of Anne to Madame de Chevreuse, which had been confided by La Porte to a man of whom he believed himself sure, but who betrayed him, was intercepted; and La Porte was arrested, thrown into a dungeon of the Bastille, and examined in turn by the most skilful agents of the cardinal, Laffemas and La Poterie, by the chancellor, Pierre Séguier, and by Richelieu himself. ”

“ There is a production of Richelieu, now very rare, entitled, Harangue prononcée en la salle du Petit Bourbon, le 23 fevrier, 1615, a la clôture des états tenus a Pàris, par révèrend père en Dieu, messire Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, évesque de Luçon. In this, Richelieu congratulates the king, who was of age, on having "restored the reins of this great empire to the hands of the queen, his mother, so that she might have for some time the guidance of his estates." Spain and France "being united, have nothing to fear; while separated, they can only receive injury from each other." ”

“ I counsel you, being as yet unable to command and wishing no longer to advise you, to wear the diamond which I send you, so that on seeing the stone which has two peculiarities, one, of being firm, the other, so brilliant that it shows the slightest defects from afar, you may remember that you must be unshaken in your promises in order to please me, and must be guilty of no faults that I may not remark any. ”

“ But as beautiful and as fascinating in the black costume of a cavalier as in the brilliant attire of a court lady, her gallant mien won the admiration of all the women, and during this adventurous journey, she made, despite herself, as many conquests as when in the halls of the Louvre, and, according to La Rochefoucauld, "she showed more modesty and more cruelty than men like her usually possess." ”

“ Love your master always; he is ill, and has only gone out when obliged for the last two days, but in whatever state he may be, and whatever may happen to him, he will die rather than fail in any thing he has promised you.
"At six o'clock last evening, the Cardinal de La Valette came to see Madame de Chevreuse on the part of the Cardinal de Richelieu. ”

“ She had a fine mind, a potent beauty which she knew how to use to advantage, was never disheartened by any misfortune, and always retained her evenness of temper;" [21] a less brilliant, but far more just and faithful portrait than that of Retz, and which may have been drawn by Richelieu's own hand, as it is probable that the cardinal, according to his custom, has here recapitulated the propositions of Montagu in his own style, instead of copying them verbatim. ”

“ Let us ask in passing, Is it not unworthy of history to attribute the elevation of Luynes to the caprice of a king, who takes one of his pages, a petty gentleman, for his prime minister, solely because he finds him skilful in the art of training falcons? ”

“ Madame de Chevreuse complains to M. de Châteauneuf of her servant, who has so little faith in the generosity and friendship of his master, [29] and who does very wrong when he asks whether Madame de Chevreuse neglects him to pledge herself to the cardinal. You do wrong to have this thought; the mind of Madame de Chevreuse is too noble for treacherous sentiments ever to enter it. ”

“ Finally, in 1660, when Mazarin, victorious everywhere, adds the treaty of the Pyrenees to that of Peace of Westphalia, and when Luis Méndez de Haro congratulates him on the repose which he is about to taste after so many storms, the cardinal replies, that one never can promise himself repose in France, and that even the women there are greatly to be feared. "You Spaniards may well speak of your ease," said he; "your women trouble themselves about nothing but love; but it is not so in France ”

“ Never did person care less for perils, and never had woman more contempt for scruples and for duties,—she knew no duty but that of pleasing her lover." Of this sketch, which might have moved Tallemant to envy, retain at least these striking and faithful traits—the prompt and sure penetration of Madame de Chevreuse, her indomitable courage, and her loyalty and devotion in love. Besides, Retz is entirely mistaken as to the order of her adventures, he forgets some, and he invents others ”

“ The important post to which your majesty had appointed him, the hundred thousand crowns which he received each year from your liberality, the government of one of your provinces, all extraordinary marks of favor to a man in his position, were not considerations weighty enough to deter him from becoming the author of his own ruin. ”

“ At the Siege of La Rochelle, two women, after enduring all the rigors of famine with the meanest of the soldiers, and subsisting like them upon horseflesh, chose rather to remain as prisoners in the hands of the enemy than to sign the articles of capitulation. ”

“ Luynes resolutely attacked and promptly subdued the rebellious princes, and by means of the treaty of Angoulême secured the queen-mother in a necessary exile without useless rigor. When Rohan and Soubise dared to draw the sword, the new Duke de Luynes gained the title of constable by opposing the Protestants, and he undertook the siege of Montauban, the precursor of that of La Rochelle. In 1620, Bearn was definitively incorporated with the crown. This is an abstract of the whole of Richelieu's career. ↑ One, Anne Marie de Lorraine, died in 1652, aged eighteen, the Abbess of the Port aux Dames ”

“ Thanks to these documents, which we too have studied, [40] every disguise is removed; we read clearly the conduct of Anne of Austria; we see, with all deference to La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Motteville, and La Porte, that she was certainly guilty, and that Madame de Chevreuse was probably her principal accomplice, since she had continued to be as firmly leagued with her during her exile in Touraine as at the time that she was superintendent of her household. ”

“ He controverts many received opinions and forces the reader to abandon many established hypotheses, but he does it upon the incontestable evidence of cotemporary writers and of documents that, were supposed to be lost or not known to exist. Among these are a hitherto unknown memoir of Richelieu concerning the secret affairs of 1633, which produced the imprisonment of Châteauneuf, keeper of the seals ”