Madame de Chevreuse

“ But first a word of the beauty of Madame de Chevreuse, for this beauty had a great share in her destiny. All her cotemporaries unite in celebrating it. A portrait nearly of life-size, which is in the possession of the Duke de Luynes, and which he has courteously shown to us, [5] gives her an enchanting figure, a charming face, large blue eyes, fine and luxuriant chestnut-hair, a beautiful bust, and a piquant mingling of refinement and vivacity, grace and passion in her whole person. This indeed was the character of the beauty of Madame de Chevreuse ”

“ Mademoiselle de Hautefort sits on a low stool at her feet. She is weeping bitterly.
“Ah! Madame,” she sobs, “this is Richelieu’s revenge. It is all his doing. How could your Majesty listen to the advice of that wild Duchess, and affront him so cruelly at Saint-Germain? Alas! he will persecute you as long as he lives.”
“I cannot recall the past,” answers Anne sadly.
“Had you reposed confidence in me, Madame, this would never have happened. Madame de Chevreuse has sacrificed you to her love of intrigue.”
“My poor Chevreuse, she is no more to blame than I am. Where is the Duchess, mademoiselle?” ”

“ On the 1st of January, 1650, Madame de Chevreuse, having a mind to visit the Queen, with whom she had carried on in all her disgrace an unaccountable correspondence, went to the King's Palace. The Cardinal, taking her aside in the Queen's little cabinet, said to her:
"You love the Queen. Is it not possible for you to make your friends love her?"
"How can that be?" said she; "the Queen is no more a Queen, but a humble servant to M. le Prince."
"Good God!" replied the Cardinal; "we might do great things if we could get some men into our interest. ”

“ Now, when Madame de Chevreuse loved, as Retz himself affirms, she loved faithfully and exclusively. At the age of twenty-four, one does not trifle with a first attachment to the extent of giving one's own lover to another, and the rôle which the poor woman already plays in this affair is not so honorable as to make us delight to vilify her still more. Madame de Chevreuse fell ill, it is true, on hearing the news of the assassination of Buckingham. Nothing was more natural; she lost in him a tried friend, the confidant of her first love, and the chief and the hope of the enemies of Richelieu. ”

“ In a word, madame, if you are innocent, your safety depends upon yourself, and if the frailty of human nature, to say nothing of that of your sex, has made you remiss in any thing of which his majesty may have reason to complain, you will find in his goodness all that you can expect from it." Madame de Chevreuse readily comprehended the artifice of the cardinal; but that she might leave no room for any equivocation, she addressed him a memorial in which she gave an account of all her actions, and of the reasons which had determined her to quit France. ”

“ She hoped to find Queen Anne such as she had left her, disliking business and very willing to let herself be guided by those for whom she had a particular affection; and as Madame de Chevreuse believed herself the first affection of the queen, she thought to exercise over her the two-fold ascendency of friendship and of talent. ”

“ Madame de Chevreuse alone, with her most intimate friends, remained faithful to her hatred and the Queen, dreading far less Mazarin than Condé, 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 Condé. ”

“ I should not be the friend to you that I am, if I failed to tell you that if you love Madame de Chevreuse, you will prevent her ruin, which is inevitable in France, where they only wish her for her destruction. This is not merely an opinion; there is no other remedy than that of following this advice whereby to save Madame de Chevreuse, of whose connections with Spain and M. de Lorraine, the cardinal has already spoken too ill to permit him to be silent in the future. ”

“ He made the Queen believe that Madame de Chevreuse sought to rule her with a rod of iron; that she had changed her mask, but not her character; that she was ever the same impulsive and restless person, who, with all her talent and devotedness, had never worked aught but mischief around her, and was only instrumental in ruining others as well as herself. By degrees, underhand and hidden as it might be, war between the Duchess and the Cardinal declared itself unmistakably. The commencement and progress of this curious struggle for supremacy has been admirably depicted by La Rochefoucauld ”

“ At the same time that she strove to extricate from disgrace the man upon whom rested all her political hopes, Madame de Chevreuse, not daring to attack Mazarin overtly, insensibly undermined the ground beneath his feet, and step by step prepared his ruin. Her experienced eye enabled her promptly to perceive the most favourable point of attack whence to assail the Queen, and the watchword she passed was to fan and keep alive to the utmost the general feeling of reprobation which all the proscribed, on returning to France, had aroused and disseminated against the memory of Richelieu. ”

“ But the affairs of this world cannot always remain in the same state, and this change natural to mankind caused Madame de Chevreuse, who was distrusted and vilified by those aspiring to the ministry, to find the queen changed in her absence, while this same change also caused the queen to find the duchess wanting in the charms which had formerly fascinated her. The sovereign had become more thoughtful and religious, while the favorite still retained her former tastes for gallantry and frivolity, which were bad accompaniments of a riper age. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Every one believed her to be innocent. She was so, in truth, as far as the king was concerned; but she was guilty if it were a crime to have written to her brother and to Madame de Chevreuse. La Porte, the servant of the queen, has himself related to me the particulars of this story. He recounted it to me at a time when he was in disgrace, and therefore dissatisfied with this princess, and what he told me is worthy of credence. He was arrested on the charge of being the bearer of letters of the queen, both to Spain and to Madame de Chevreuse. ”

“ I assured her Majesty that she should be satisfied on this point."—"I have never seen a truer or more sincere satisfaction than that which the queen felt on hearing what I said to her from Monseigneur. She protests that she not only does not wish Madame de Chevreuse to approach her, but that she is resolved, for her own safety, to suffer no person to advise her to the neglect of the most trifling part of her duty." ”

“ The violence of the Importants increased daily; the Queen defended her minister, but she also showed consideration for his enemies. She hesitated to take the decided attitude which Mazarin required at her hands, not only in his individual interest, but in that of his government. Suddenly an incident, very insignificant apparently, but which by assuming larger proportions brought about the inevitable crisis—forced the Queen to declare herself, and Madame de Chevreuse to plunge deeper into a baleful enterprise, the idea of which had already forced itself upon her imagination. ”

“ Oh, from some heartbroken waiting woman, some desponding GRISETTE; from Madame de Chevreuse's chambermaid, perhaps, who was obliged to return to Tours with her mistress, and who, in order to appear smart and attractive, stole some perfumed paper, and sealed her letter with a duchess's coronet. ”

“ Everywhere he regards her as the real chief of the party of the Importants. "It is Madame de Chevreuse," says he, unceasingly, "who animates them all."—"She studies to strengthen the Vendômes, she endeavors to gain all the house of Lorraine, she has already gained the Duke de Guise, and through him, she is attempting to win from me the Duke d'Elbeuf."—"She has a clear perception of everything; she readily divines that it is I who am acting in secret on the queen to hinder her from restoring the government of Brittany to the Duke de Vendôme. ”

“ Madame de Carignan was telling her one day that I was very homely, to which the Queen replied, "He has a very fine set of teeth, and a man cannot be called homely who has this ornament." Madame de Chevreuse remembered that she had often heard the Queen say that the beauty of a man consisted chiefly in his teeth, because it was the only beauty which was of any use. ”

“ Madame de Chevreuse hoped to be more fortunate in securing the governorship of Havre for a very different sort of person—for a man of tried devotedness and of a [54] rare and subtle intellect—La Rochefoucauld. She would thereby recompense the services rendered to the Queen and herself, strengthen and aggrandize one of the chiefs of the Importants, and weaken Mazarin by depriving of an important government a person upon whom he had entire reliance—Richelieu’s niece, the Duchess d’Aiguillon. The Cardinal succeeded in rendering this manœuvre abortive, without appearing to have any hand in it. ”

“ Madame de Chevreuse, in a popular French romance, is made to say to, and at, Anne of Austria, that kings are so far removed from other people, from the “vulgar herd,” that they forget that others ever stand in need of the bare necessaries of life. She likens them to the dweller on African mountains, who, gazing from the verdant table-land, refreshed by the rills of melted snow, cannot comprehend that the dwellers in the plains below him are perishing from hunger and thirst in the midst of their lands, burnt up by the heat of the sun. When, in the same romance—by courtesy historical ”

“ 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 ”

“ And further, Louis did not believe that he could ensure quiet to the State after his death without confirming and perpetuating, so far as in him lay, the perpetual exile of Madame de Chevreuse.
As the pupil and confidential friend of Richelieu, Mazarin had imbibed both that statesman’s and the late king’s opinions and sentiments touching the influence of that [33] eminently dangerous woman. Though he had never seen her hitherto, he was not the less well acquainted with her by repute: dreading her mortally, and cherishing a like antipathy to her friend Châteauneuf. ”

“ But these were too inconsiderable victims to atone for such an affront, and were therefore rejected with indignation. The blood of Bourbon only could make amends for the injury done to that of Lorraine. These were the very words of Madame de Chevreuse. They resolved at last upon this expedition,—to go again next morning to the House, but so well accompanied as to be in a condition of making themselves respected, and of giving the Prince de Conti to understand that it was to his interest to keep his party for the future from committing the like insolence. ”

“ Alexandre de Campion there shows himself full of pretensions to wit and gallantry; he carefully collects all the little verses which he addressed in his youth to the belles of the time, and gives, without ceremony, the letters which he had formerly written under the most delicate circumstances, to the Count de Soissons, the Duke de Vendôme, the Duke de Beaufort, the Count de Beaupuis, De Thou, the Duke de Bouillon, the Duke de Guise, Madame de Montbazon, and Madame de Chevreuse. ”

“ She still held in her grasp the scarcely-severed threads of the plot; and at her right hand there was a man too wary to allow himself to be again compromised by such dark doings, but quite ready to profit by them, and whom Madame de Chevreuse had sedulously exhibited not only to Anne of Austria, but to France and all Europe, as a man singularly capable of conducting State affairs. Mazarin, therefore, did not hesitate; but on the day following Beaufort’s arrest, Châteauneuf, Montrésor, and St. ”

“ You see, there are half a dozen parties at court already. There are Mazarin's friends, who, by the way, are not numerous; there are the Duke of Beaufort's clique; there is Conde's party.
“Madame Chevreuse's party consists largely of herself. She is a power, but at present no one can say with whom she will ally herself. Hitherto she has been simply anti-Richelieu, and was his most troublesome and bitter enemy; and I should say that not improbably she will at once begin to conspire against Mazarin as she did against him. She has been the queen's greatest ally ”

“ Chevreuse, Marie de Rohan, Duchess de. She ultimately becomes resigned to Mazarin, 19; warmly welcomes the return of the cardinal, 20; summary of her political career, 49; her elevated position side by side with Richelieu and Mazarin, 49; her “marriage of conscience” with the Marquis de Laigues, 50; marries her grandson, the Duke de Chevreuse, to Colbert’s daughter, 52; survives all whom she had either loved or hated, 52; dies in obscurity at Gagny, 53. Choisy, Count de, enamoured of Madame de Châtillon, is bent on fighting a duel about her with the Marquis de la Boulay, 5. ”