Prominent Parisians who knew everything and every one had formed no opinion of Mazarin's character or of his personal appearance. He had been Nuncio; that was all that they knew of him. Olivier d'Ormesson, who went everywhere, knew every one of any importance in Paris, yet when Mazarin had been Prime Minister six months, d'Ormesson spoke of him as if he had seen him but once. In d'Ormesson's Journal we read:

Saturday morning, 4 November (1643). M. le Cardinal, Mazarin, came to the Council to-day. He was late. The Chancellor had been waiting for him half an hour. Cardinal Mazarin took his place as Chief of Council and was the first to sign the resolutions; he wrote: Cardinal Massarini. At first, as he knew neither the order of the Court nor the names of the members, he was somewhat confused. Judging by appearances he knows nothing of financial affairs. He is tall, he carries himself well, he is handsome. His eyes are clear and spiritual, the colour of his hair is chestnut brown; the expression of his face is very gentle and sweet. Monsieur the Chancellor instructed him in the Parliamentary procedure and then every one addressed him directly and before they addressed any one else....

The new Chief of Council was as modest as the unobtrusive Cardinal who assumed the duties of the great de Richelieu. Mazarin found better employment for his talents than the exhibition of his pomp. His design was to render his position impregnable, and we know what means he selected for its achievement. In his pocket diary (which the National Library preserves) he employed three languages, French, Spanish, and Italian. Whenever the Queen is mentioned the language is Spanish. The ingenuous frankness with which the writer of the strange notes recorded his intentions enables us to follow him step by step through all the labyrinths of his relations with royalty. His reflections make it clear that his aim was the Queen's heart: in the record dated August, 1634, we read: "If I could believe what they tell me—that her Majesty is making use of me because she needs my services, and that she has no inclination for me,—I would not stay here three days."

Apropos of his enemies he wrote: "Well, they are laying their heads together and planning a thousand intrigues to lessen my chances with her Majesty."

(The Queen's friends had warned her that her Minister would compromise her.)

"The Abbess of the Carmelites has been talking to her Majesty. When she talked the Queen wept. She told the Abbess that in case the subject should be mentioned again she would not visit the convent."

Mazarin's diary conveys the impression that the man who edited it so carefully feared that he might forget something that he wished to say to the Queen. He made a note of everything that he meant to advise her to do, and of all the appeals and all the observations that he intended to make.

Following is a very simple reminder of words to be used when next he should see the Queen alone.

They tell me that her Majesty is forced to make excuses for her manifestations of regard for me.... This is such a delicate subject that her Majesty ought to pity me ... ought to take compassion on me, even if I speak of it often ... I have no right to doubt, since, in the excess of her kindness, her Majesty has assured me that nothing can ever lower me from the place in her favour which she has deigned to give me ... but in spite of everything because Fear is the inseparable attendant of Love ... etc.

The "memorandum" which follows this last note gave proof of the speed of his wooing, and of his progress: "The jaundice caused by an excessive love...."

That Mazarin felt that he was strong was shown by the fact that he made suggestions to the Queen and offered her advice of a peculiarly intimate character. The note which follows covers the ground of one of the lines of argument used by him for the subjection of his royal lady and mistress:

"Her Majesty ought to apply herself to the winning over of all hearts to my cause; she should do so by making me the agent from whose hand they receive all the favours that she grants them."

After Anne of Austria qualified the Cardinal by the exequatur of her love, Mazarin dictated the language of the State. In his diary we find, verbatim, the diplomatic addresses and suggestions which were to be delivered by the Queen.

While the Queen's lover was engaged in maintaining his position against determined efforts to displace him, France enjoyed a few delightful moments. The long-continued anxiety had passed, the tension of the nation's nerves had yielded to the beneficent treatment of the conscientious counsellors, and the peaceful quiet of a temporary calm gave hope to the light-minded and strength and courage to the far-sighted, who foresaw the coming storm. To the majority of the people the resplendent victory of Rocroy (19th May, 1643), which immediately followed the death of Louis XIII., seemed a proof that God had laid His protecting hand upon the infant King and upon his mother.

This belief was daily strengthened. War had been carried to a foreign country, and the testimony of French supremacy had come back from many a battle-field. In the eyes of the world we occupied a brilliant position. Success had followed success in our triumphant march from Rocroy to the Westphalian treaties. Our diplomacy had equalled our military strategy and the strength of our arms; and a part of our glory had been the result of the efforts of the Prime Minister who ruled our armies and the nation. In the opinion of our foreign enemies Mazarin had fully justified Richelieu's confidence and the choice of Anne of Austria.

His selection of agents had shown that he was in possession of all his senses; he had divined the value of the Duc d'Enghien and appointed him General-in-chief, though the boy was but twenty-two years old; he had sounded the character of Turenne; he had judiciously listed the names of the men to be appointed for the diplomatic missions, and he had proved that he knew the strength of France by ordering the ministers to hold their ground, to "stand firm," and not to concern themselves either with the objections or the resistance of other nations. The majority of the French people failed to recognise Cardinal Mazarin's services until the proper time for their recognition had passed, but Retz distinctly stated that Mazarin was popular in Paris during the first months of his ministry:

France saw a gentle and benignant Being sitting on the steps of the throne where the harsh and redoubtable Richelieu had blasted, rather than governed men. The harassed country rejoiced in its new leader,[88] who had no personal wishes and whose only regret was that the dignity of his episcopal office forbade him to humiliate himself before the world as he would have been glad to do. He passed through the streets with little lackeys perched behind his carriage; his audiences were unceremonious, access to his presence was absolutely free, and people dined with him as if he had been a private person.

The arrest of the Duc de Beaufort and the dispersion of the Importants astonished the people, but did not affright them. Hope was the anchor of the National Soul. They who had formed the party of Marie de MÉdicis and the party of Anne of Austria hoped to bring about the success of their former projects, and to enforce peace everywhere; they hoped to substitute a Spanish alliance for the Protestant alliance. The great families hoped to regain their authority at the expense of the authority of the King. Parliament hoped to play a great political part. The people hoped for peace; they had been told that the Queen had taken a Minister solely for the purpose of making peace. The entire Court from the first Prince of the Blood to the last of the lackeys lived in hope of some grace or some favour, and as to that they were rarely disappointed, for the Administration "refused nothing." Honours, dignities, positions, and money were freely dispensed, not only to those who needed them, but to those who were already provided with them. La Feuillade said that there were but four words in the French language: "The Queen is good!"

So many cases of private and individual happiness gave the impression of public and general happiness. Paris expressed its satisfaction by entering heart and soul into its amusements. It played by day and it played by night, exhibiting the extraordinary appetite for pleasure which has always distinguished it.

"All, both the little and the great, are happy," said Saint Evremond; "the very air they breathe is charged with amusement and with love." Mademoiselle preserved a grateful memory of that period of joyous intoxication. "The first months of the Regency," she said in her memoirs, "were the most beautiful that one could have wished. It was nothing but perpetual rejoicing everywhere. Hardly a day passed that there were not serenades at the Tuileries or in the place Royale."

The mourning for the late King hindered no one, not even the King's widow, who passed her evenings in Renard's garden,[89] where she frequently supped with her friends. Though the return of winter drove the people from the public walks, the universal amusements went on. "They danced everywhere," said Mademoiselle, "and especially at my house, although it was not at all according to decorum to hear violins in a room draped with mourning." We note here that at the time Mademoiselle wrote thus she was regarded as a victim. It was rumoured in Paris that her liberty and her pleasures were restricted, and the indignation of the people seethed at thought of it. Mademoiselle had lost her indulgent friend and governess, Mme. de Saint Georges. Her new governess, Mme. de FiÉsque, a woman of firm will who looked with disfavour upon her pupil's untrammelled ways, made attempts to discipline her. When Mme. de FiÉsque exerted her authority the canaille formed groups and threatened the palace of the Tuileries. Mademoiselle was sixteen years old and the whole world knew it. The people thought, as she thought, that she was too old to be imprisoned like a child. She was quick to avenge her outraged dignity; the governess was headstrong. Slap answered slap and, after the combat, Mademoiselle was under lock and key six days.

But all that was forgotten.

Mademoiselle had in mind something more important than her childish punishment. The death of Louis XIII. had enabled Gaston to send for his wife. The Regency made but one condition,—the married pair were to be remarried in France. The Princess Gaston was on the way, travelling openly, entering France with the reputation of a heroine of romance. Mademoiselle revelled in the thought of a step-mother as young and as beautiful as an houri. They would dance together; they would run about like sisters!

Twelve years previous to the death of Louis XIII., when Marguerite de Lorraine committed the so-called "crime" which Richelieu's jurisconsults qualified by a name for which we shall substitute the less discouraging term "abduction," events separated the wedded pair at the church door. The sacrament of marriage had just been administered.

Madame fled before the minions of the law reached Nancy and found her way cut off by the French army. She donned the wig and garments of a man, besmirched her face with suet, crossed the French line in a cardinal's coach, covered twenty leagues on horseback, and joined Monsieur in Flanders. The world called her courageous, and when she exercised her impeccancy during a nine years' separation from her husband, conjugal fidelity rare enough at any time, and especially rare at that time, definitely ranged her among spectacular examples of virtue.

Handsome, brave, free from restraint, and virtuous! Paris was curious to see her.

At Meudon (27th May, 1643) the people made haste to reach the spot before she alighted from her carriage. They were eager to witness her meeting with the light-minded husband with whom France was at last to permit her to cast her lot and from whom she had been separated so long. Mademoiselle wrote:

I ran on ahead of them all so that I might be at Gonesse when she arrived. From Gonesse she proceeded to Meudon without passing through Paris. She did not wish to stop in Paris because she was not in a condition to salute their Majesties. In fact, she could not salute them, because she was not dressed in mourning. We arrived at Meudon late, where Monsieur—having gone there to be on the spot when she arrived—found her waiting in the courtyard. Their first meeting took place in the presence of all who had accompanied them. Every one was astonished to see the coldness with which they met. It seemed strange! Monsieur had endured so much persecution from the King, and from Richelieu, solely on account of his marriage; and all his suffering had only seemed to confirm his constancy to Madame, therefore coldness seemed unexpected.

Both Monsieur and Madame were much embarrassed; it was a trying thing to meet after a separation of nine years.

Monsieur had not materially changed, although he had acquired a habit of the gout which hindered him when he attempted to pirouette. Madame appeared faded and ill-attired, but that was but a natural consequence of the separation; it was to be expected.

When their marriage had been duly regulated and recorded in the Parish Register, the couple established themselves in Gaston's palace, and the Court found that it had acquired an hypochondriac. The romantic type of constancy habitually hung upon the gate of Death. Mme. de Motteville said:

She rarely left her home; she affirmed that the least excitement brought on a swoon. Several times I saw Monsieur mock her; he told the Queen that Madame would receive the sacrament in bed rather than to go into her chapel, although the chapel was close by,—and all that "though she had no ailment of any importance."

When Madame visited the Queen, as she did once in twenty-four months, she was carried in a sedan chair, as other ladies of her quality were carried, but her movements were attended by such distress and by so much bustle that her arrival conveyed the impression of a miracle. Frequently, when she had started upon a journey, or to pay a visit to the Queen, before she had gone three yards she declared that she had been suddenly seized by faintness, or by some other ill; then her bearers were forced to make haste to return her to the house. She lived in Gaston's palace in the Luxembourg. Mademoiselle's palace was in the Tuileries, and the royal family lived either in the palace of the Louvre, in the Palais Royal, or in the ChÂteau of Saint Germain.

Madame declared that her life had been one continuous agony. She announced her evils not singly but in clusters, and although none of them were evident to the disinterested observer, her diagnoses displayed so thorough a knowledge of their essential character that to harbour a doubt of their reality would be to confess a consciousness of uncertainty akin to the skepticism of the ignorant.

At the advent of Madame the spiritual atmosphere of the Luxembourg changed. The Princess was a moralist, and either because of her nervous anxiety for his welfare, or for some other reason, she harangued her husband day and night. The irresponsible Gaston was a signal example of marital patience; he carried his burden bravely, listened attentively to his wife's rebukes, sang and laughed, whistled and cut capers, pulled his elf-locks in mock despair, and, clumsily whirling upon his gouty heels, "made faces" behind Madame's drooping shoulders; but he bore her plaintive polemics without a murmur, and although he freely ridiculed her, he never left her side. "Madame loved Monsieur ardently," and Monsieur returned Madame's love in the disorderly manner in which he did everything. "One may say that he loved her, but that he did not love her often," wrote Mme. de Motteville. The public soon lost its interest in the spectacular household; Madame was less heroic than her reputation. Mademoiselle despaired when Madame urged Monsieur to be prudent; to her mind her father's prudence had invariably exceeded the proportions of virtue. Generally speaking, Madame's first relations with her step-daughter were cordial, but they were limited to a purely conventional exchange of civilities. Speaking of that epoch, Mademoiselle said: "I did all that I possibly could to preserve her good graces, which I should not have lost had she not given me reason to neglect them." Mademoiselle could not have loved her step-mother, nor could she have been loved by her; Madame and Mademoiselle were of different and distinct orders.

II

The routine requirements of Mademoiselle's periods of mourning diverted her mind from her marriage projects, but she soon resumed her efforts. She had no adviser, and no one cared for her establishment; Gaston was too well employed in spending her money to concern himself with her future, and, as the duties of daily life fatigued Madame, Mademoiselle could not hope for assistance from her step-mother; the Queen was her only hope, and the Queen's executor was jealously guarding her fine principalities and keeping close watch over her person. In 1644 the King of Spain, Philippe IV., the brother of Anne of Austria, became a widower. He was the enemy of France, and it would have been folly to give him a right to any portion of French territory; but Mademoiselle did not consider that fact; her political intuitions were not keen. All that she could see was that the King had a crown, and that it was such a crown as would adorn the title of her own nobility. For some occult reason which, as no one has ever located it, will probably remain enigmatical, Mademoiselle imagined that Philippe IV. desired to espouse her; and she passed her time forming plans and waiting for the Spanish envoy who was to come to France to ask her father for her hand. As it is difficult to believe that she ever could have dreamed the story that she tells in her memoirs, we must suppose that there was some foundation for her hopes. Possibly the expectations upon which she artlessly dilated sprang from the intriguing designs of her subalterns.[90]

The Queen bore witness to me that she passionately wished for the marriage, and Cardinal Mazarin spoke of it in the same way; more than that, he told me that he had received news from Spain which had shown him that the affair was desired in that country. Both the Queen and the Cardinal spoke of it repeatedly, not only to me but to Monsieur. By feigned earnestness they impressed us with the idea that they wished for the marriage. They lured us with that honour, though they had no intention of obliging us; and our good faith was such that we did not perceive their lack of sincerity. As we had full belief in them, it was easy for them to elude the obligations incurred by them when they aroused our expectations, and, in fact, that was just what they did; having talked freely of it to us during a certain period, they suddenly ceased to speak of it, and everything thereafter was as it would have been had there been no question of the marriage.

Mademoiselle's anxieties and hopes were fed alternately. To add to her distress, a Spaniard was caught on French soil and cast into the Bastille. Mademoiselle grieved bitterly over his fate; she supposed that the prisoner had been sent by the Spanish King to negotiate the marriage; it was her belief that Mazarin's spies had warned him (Mazarin) of the arrival of the envoy, and that the Cardinal had ordered the arrest to prevent the envoy from delivering his despatches; the interpretation was chimerical. Our knowledge is confined to the fact that nothing more was said of Mademoiselle's marriage, and that when the King was ready to marry he married an Austrian.

The troubles of England provided Mademoiselle with a more serious suitor. Queen Henriette, the daughter of Henry of Navarre, had fled to France, and France, in the person of the Regent, had installed her in the Louvre. Before that time Anne of Austria had moved from the Louvre to the Palais Royal, which was a more commodious residence, well fitted to the prevailing taste. Queen Henriette was ambitious, and she began to form projects for an alliance with France before she recovered from the fatigue of her journey.

Mademoiselle was a spirited Princess, very handsome, witty, and an ardent partisan. Such a wife would be a credit to any king, and the Montpensier estates were needed by the throne of England. Queen Henriette was sanguine; she ignored the fact that her son's future was dark and threatening. She made proposals to Mademoiselle and Mademoiselle received them coldly. Her ideas of propriety were shocked by the thought of such an alliance. The Queen of England was a refugee, dependent upon the bounty of France. There could be no honour or profit in marriage to her son!

Queen Henriette was the first of a series of exiled monarchs to whom France gave hospitality, and it must be said that her manner of opening a series was not a happy one. The sovereigns of former times were not familiar with revolutions, and their ignorance made them fearless; they despised precautions; they were improvident, they saved nothing for a rainy day; they scorned foreign stocks; they avoided business, and looked with contempt upon foreign bankers. If they lost their thrones they fled to foreign countries and sought refuge in the kingdoms of their friends, and there their comfort and their respectability were matters of chance; their friends might be in easy circumstances, and they might be on the verge of bankruptcy; a king's crown was not always accompanied by a full purse.

When Queen Henriette arrived in Paris she was received with honours and with promises. The courtiers donned their festive robes "broidered with gold and with silver,"[91] and went to Montrouge to meet her and escort her into Paris. Anne of Austria received her affectionately and seated her at her right hand at banquets. Mazarin announced that she was to draw a salary of twelve hundred francs per diem; in short, everything was done to flatter the English guest. The credulous Henriette accepted the flattery and the promises literally and she was dazed, when, awaking to the truth, she found that she was a beggar. Recording the history of that epoch, Mademoiselle said:

"The Queen of England had appeared everywhere in Paris attended like a Queen, and with a Queen's equipage. With her we had always seen her many ladies of quality, chariots, guards, and footmen. Little by little all that disappeared and the time came when nothing was more lacking to her dignity than her retinue and all the pomps to which she had been accustomed."

Queen Henriette was obliged to sell her jewels and her silver dishes; debts followed debts, and the penniless sovereign had no way to meet them. The little court of the Louvre owed the baker and could not pay its domestic servants. Mme. de Motteville visited the Louvre and found Queen Henriette practically alone. She was sitting, dejectedly meditating, in one of the great empty salles; her unpaid servitors had abandoned her and her suite had gone where they could find nourishment.

In her account of her visit Mme. de Motteville said:

She showed us a little golden cup, from which she habitually drank, and she swore to us that that was all the gold of any kind that had been left in her possession. She said that, more than that, all her servants had demanded their wages and said that they would leave her service if she refused to satisfy their demands; and she said she had not been able to pay them.

The spectacle of royal poverty and the tragical turn taken by English affairs gave Mademoiselle cause for serious thought. She saw that whatever the Prince might be in the future, he was not a desirable suitor at the epoch existent; and she spoke freely:

Were I to marry that boy I should have to sell everything that I might possess and go to war! I should not be able to help it. I could not rest until I had staked my all on the chance of reconquering his kingdom! But as I had always lived in luxury, and as I had been free from care, the thought of such an uncertain condition troubled me.

Had the Prince of Wales been a hero of the type of the Cid, Mademoiselle would have thrown prudence to the winds. Personal attraction, the magnetism of love, the arguments used by Lauzun would have called her from her dreams of the pomp becoming her rank, and she would have confronted poverty gaily; her whole career proved that she was not of a calculating mind. The Prince of Wales was by three years her junior; he was awkward and bashful, and so ignorant that he had no conception of his own affairs. He lounged distractedly through the vast, empty Louvre, absorbed in purposeless thought, and, goaded by his mother, he frequented the Tuileries and besieged the heart of his cousin, whom he amazed by the sluggish obstinacy of his attentions. He paid his court with the inconsequent air of a trained parrot; the details of his love-making were ordered by his mother, and when, tormented by personal anxieties, the Queen of England forgot to dictate his discourse, he sat before Mademoiselle with lips closed. He talked so little that it was said he "opened his teeth only to devour fat meat." At one of the banquets of the Queen of France he refused to touch the ortolans, and falling upon an enormous piece of beef and upon a shoulder of mutton he "ate as if there had been nothing else in the world, and as if he had never eaten before."

"His taste," mused Mademoiselle, "appeared to me to be somewhat indelicate; I was ashamed because he was not as good in other respects as he bore witness that he was in his feeling for me."

After the banquet at which the Prince refused the ortolans, the cousins were left alone, and, commenting upon the fact later, Anne-Marie-Louise said: "It pleases me to believe that on that occasion his silence resulted from an excess of respect for me rather than from lack of tenderness; but I will avow the truth; I would have been better pleased had he shown less stolidity and less deficiency in the transports of the love-passion." It is but fair to say in behalf of the timid suitor that, according to his feeble light, he acquitted himself conscientiously; he gazed steadfastly in his cousin's pretty face, he held the candle when her hair-dresser coiffed her hair; but as he was only a great boy, just at the age of dumb stupidity, he had few thoughts which were not personal, and few words to express even those. He was neither ChÉrubin, Fortunio, nor Rodrigue. "He had not an iota of sweetness," declared Mademoiselle. Worse than that, he had none of the exalted sentiments by means of which the heroes of Corneille manifested their identity, and to Mademoiselle that was a serious matter. As the awkward suitor became more insistent Mademoiselle was seized by a determination to be rid of him. Her records fix the date of her adverse inspiration. "In 1647 toward the end of winter[92] a play followed by a ball was given at the Palais Royal [the trago-comedy, Orpheus, in music and Italian verse]." Anne of Austria, who had no confidence in her niece's taste, insisted that the young lady should be coiffed and dressed under her own eye. Mademoiselle said:

They were engaged three whole days arranging my coiffure; my robe was all trimmed with diamonds and with white and black carnation tufts. I had upon me all the stones of the Crown, and all the jewels owned by the Queen of England [at that time she still possessed a few]. No one could have been more magnificently bedight than I was for that occasion, and I did not fail to find many people to tell me of my splendour and to talk about my pretty figure, my graceful and agreeable bearing, my whiteness, and the sheen of my blonde hair, which they said adorned me more than all the riches which glittered upon my person.

After the play a ball was given on a great, well-lighted stage. At the end of the stage was a throne raised three steps high and covered by a dais; according to Mademoiselle's account:

Neither the King nor the Prince of Wales would sit upon the throne, and as I, alone, remained upon it, I saw the two Princes and all the Princesses of the Court at my feet. I did not feel awkward or ill at ease, and no one of all those who saw me failed to tell me that I had never seemed less constrained than then, that I was of a race to occupy the throne, and that I should occupy my own throne still more freely and more naturally when the time came for me to remain upon it.

Seen from the height of the throne, the Prince of Wales seemed less of a man than he had ever seemed before, and from that day Mademoiselle spoke of him as "that poor fellow." She said: "I pitied him. My heart as well as my eyes looked down upon him, and the thought entered my mind that I should marry an emperor." The thought of an emperor entered her mind the previous year when Ferdinand III. became a widower. Monsieur's favourite, the AbbÉ RiviÈre,—with a view to his own interests, and possibly with some hope of adding to his income,—announced the welcome tidings of the Empress's death as soon as he received them; and Mademoiselle said:

"M. de la RiviÈre told me that I must marry either the Emperor or his brother. I told him that I should prefer the Emperor."

Paris heard of the project that same evening. Mademoiselle did not receive proposals from the Emperor at that time or at any other time, but the idea that she was to be an Empress haunted her mind, and as she was very frank, she told her hopes freely. La RiviÈre and others like him, taking advantage of her public position and of her accessibility, told her flattering tales and suggested alliances; she was informed that the Court of Vienna, the Court of Germany, and in fact all the Courts, desired alliance with her, and she believed all that was said. The evening of the ball, Anne of Austria declared, by Mademoiselle's own account, that she "wished passionately that the marriage with the Emperor might be arranged, and that she should do all that lay in her power to bring it about." Mademoiselle did not believe in the Regent's promises, but she listened to them and shaped her course by them. Gaston told her (in one of the rare moments when he remembered that she was his daughter) that the Emperor was "too old," and that she would not be happy in his country. Mademoiselle answered that she cared more for her establishment than for the person of her suitor. Gaston reflected upon the statement and promised to do everything possible for the furtherance of her schemes. Mademoiselle recorded his promise with the comment: "So after that I thought of the marriage continually and my dream of the Empire so filled my mind that I considered the Prince of Wales only as an object of pity." This folly, while it gave free play to other and similar follies, clung to her mind with strange tenacity, and long after the Emperor married the Austrian Mademoiselle said archly: "The Empress is enceinte; she will die when she is delivered, and then—." The Empress did die, either at the moment of her deliverance or at some other moment, and Mademoiselle took the field, determined to march on to victory. One of her gentlemen (of the name of Saujon) whom she fancied "because he was half crazy," secretly placed in her hand a regularly organised correspondence treating of her marriage. Mademoiselle received all the letters, read them, approved of them, and appointed Saujon chargÉ of her affairs. By her order Saujon travelled to Germany to bring about the marriage. No one had ever heard of a royal or a quasi-royal alliance negotiated by a private individual, but Saujon boldly entered upon his mission. Incidentally he revised Mademoiselle's despatches; adding and eliminating sentences according to his own idea of the exigencies of the case. One of his letters was intercepted and he was arrested and cast into prison. It was rumoured that he had made an attempt to abduct the Princess so that she might marry the Archduke Leopold.

At first Mademoiselle laughed at the rumours. She declared that people knew her too well to think that she could do anything so ridiculous.

Mazarin cross-questioned Saujon,—and no one knew better than he how to conduct an inquest,—but turn his victim as he might the Cardinal could not wring from Saujon anything but the truth. Saujon insisted that Mademoiselle had not known anything concerning the intercepted letter.

Anne of Austria, seconded by Monsieur, feigned to take the affair seriously, and a violent scene ensued.

One evening (May 6, 1648, according to d'Ormesson) the AbbÉ de la RiviÈre met Mademoiselle in the corridor of the Palais Royal, and casually informed her that the Queen and Monsieur were angry. Almost at the same instant Monsieur issued from the room adjoining the corridor and ordered his daughter to enter the Queen's room.

Then [said Mademoiselle] I went into the Queen's gallery. Mlle. de Guise, who was with me, would have followed me, but Monsieur furiously shut the door in her face. Had not my mind been free from all remorse I should have been frightened, but I knew that I was innocent, and I advanced toward the Queen, who greeted me angrily. She said to the Cardinal: "We must wait until her father comes; he must hear it!" I went to the window, which was higher than the rest of the gallery, and I listened with all the pride possible to one who feels that her cause is just. When Monsieur arrived the Queen said to me sharply: "Your father and I know all about your dealings with Saujon. We know all your plans!" I answered that I did not know to what plans she had reference, and that I was somewhat curious to know what her Majesty meant.

Anne of Austria was angry, and her shrill falsetto conveyed an impression of vulgarity. Mademoiselle, calmly contemptuous, on foot and very erect, stood in the embrasure of the long window; Monsieur, who dreaded his daughter's anger, had drawn close to the Queen; directly behind Monsieur was Mazarin, visibly amused.

Mademoiselle listened to her accusers, and answered with a sneer that she had nothing to do with it, that she was not interested in it, that such a scheme was worthy of low people.

"This concerns my honour," she said coldly; "it is not a question of the head of Cinq-Mars, nor of Chalais, whom Monsieur delivered to death. No; nor is it an affair to be classed with the examinations to which Richelieu subjected your Majesty!"

"It is a fine thing," screamed Anne of Austria, "to recompense a man for his attachment to your service by putting his head upon the block!"

"It would not be the first head that had visited the block, but it would be the first one that I had put there," retorted Mademoiselle.

"Will you answer what you are asked?" demanded the Queen. I obeyed [said Mademoiselle]. I told her that as I had never been questioned, I should be embarrassed to answer. Cardinal Mazarin listened to all that I said, and he laughed.... The discussion seemed long to me. Repetitions which are not agreeable always produce that effect. The conversation had lasted an hour and a half. It bored me, and as I saw that it would never end if I did not go away, I said to the Queen: "I believe that your Majesty has nothing more to say to me." She replied that she had not. I curtsied and went out from the combat, victorious, but very angry. As I abandoned the field, the AbbÉ de la RiviÈre tried to address me. I halted, and discharged my anger at him; then I went to my room, where I was seized by fever.

Before she "abandoned the field" Mademoiselle rated Monsieur, who had imprudently attempted to interpose a word in favour of the Queen. Mme. de Motteville, to whom Anne of Austria told the story, reported that Mademoiselle reproached her father bitterly because he had not married her to the Emperor, when he "might easily have done so." She told him that it was shameful for a man not to defend his daughter "when her glory appeared to be attacked." The courtiers assembled in the adjoining room, though unable to distinguish the words of the discussion, had listened with curiosity. Mme. de Motteville said:

We could not hear what they were saying, but we heard the noise of the accusations and we heard Mademoiselle's calm defence. The Queen's Minister avoided showing that he was interested in it in any way. Although there were but three voices there was so great a clamour that we were anxious to know the result and the meaning of the quarrel. Mademoiselle came out of the gallery looking more haughty than ashamed, and her eyes shone with anger rather than with repentance. That evening the Queen did me the honour to tell me that had she been possessed of a daughter who had treated her as Mademoiselle had treated Monsieur, she would have banished her and never permitted her to return,—and that she should have shut her up in a convent.

The day after the discussion guards were mounted at the door of Mademoiselle's apartments. The AbbÉ de la RiviÈre visited Mademoiselle to tell her that her father forbade her to receive any one—no matter whom—until she was ready to confess what she knew of the intercepted letter. Mademoiselle remained firm in her denial of any knowledge of it.

Though sick from grief, she held her ground ten days. Murmurs were heard among the canaille, and little groups approached the palace, looked threateningly into the courtyard, and gazed at Mademoiselle's closed windows. It was known that Mademoiselle was in prison and the people resented it. How long could she hold out? How would it end? "It was known," wrote Olivier d'Ormesson, "that the Queen had called her 'an insolent girl' in the presence of her own father, and it was known that she had indignantly repudiated all knowledge of the intercepted letter; it was known that she had defended herself bravely." As the hours passed the people's murmurs increased, the aspect of the canaille became so menacing that the terrified Gaston sought counsel of Mazarin. Mazarin favoured clemency; he believed that Mademoiselle had been disciplined enough. By the advice of the angry Queen, Monsieur waited one day longer; then word was sent to Mademoiselle that she was free and that she might receive visits, and in an hour all the people of the under-world of Paris were hurrying to the palace, laughing, shouting, crying to each other in broken voices. They surged past the sentinel and entered the courtyard; men wept, women, holding their children above their heads, pointed to the open window where Mademoiselle, emaciated by her ten days' trial, but still haughty and determined, looking down into the upturned faces, smiled a welcome. Public sympathy and the sympathy of both the Court and the city endorsed Mademoiselle's conduct and condemned the conduct of Monsieur. According to contemporary judgment Monsieur had betrayed his own flesh and blood: he had been given an opportunity to prove himself a man and he had refused it. Innocent or culpable, the custom of the day commanded the father to defend his child.

I said to the Queen [said the worthy Motteville] that Mademoiselle was justified in refusing to avow it. I said that, whether it were true or untrue, Monsieur had not the right to forsake her. A girl is not to blame for thinking of her establishment, but it is not right to let it be known that she is thinking of it, nor is it proper to confess that she is working to accomplish it.

All Monsieur's motives were known and they increased the contempt of the people. When Mademoiselle attained her majority she expressed a wish to take possession of her inheritance. She asked her father for an accounting and her father accused her of indelicacy and undutiful conduct. He continued to administer her fortune and to give her such sums as he considered suitable for the maintenance of her home. In justification of his conduct he alleged that he had no money of his own, and that it was impossible to turn her property into funds. "Several times," said Mme. de Motteville, "I have heard him say that he had not a sou that his daughter did not give him. 'My daughter possesses great wealth,' he used to ejaculate; 'were it not for that I should not know where to go for bread.'" People remembered that he had received a million of revenue when he married[93] and they judged his conduct severely, but they were not astonished. "No one can hope much from the conduct of Monsieur," wrote Olivier d'Ormesson.

After the quarrel the first meeting between father and daughter took place in the gallery of the Luxembourg. Monsieur hung his head.

He changed colour [wrote Mademoiselle]; he appeared abashed; he tried to reprimand me; he began as people begin such things, but he knew that he ought to apologise to me rather than to blame me; and in truth that was what he did; he apologised,—though he did not seem to know that he was doing it.

As they talked Monsieur's eyes filled with tears and Mademoiselle wept freely. To all appearances they were on the best of terms when they parted.

Having appeased her father, Mademoiselle went to the Palais Royal hoping to pacify the Queen. Anne of Austria greeted her with icy reserve and Mademoiselle never could forget it. She had looked upon Anne of Austria as children look upon an elder sister. Thenceforth, feeling that she had no hope of support from her own family, she bent every effort to the difficult task of finding a suitable husband and of establishing her life on a firm and independent basis. Mazarin's unswerving determination to prevent Mademoiselle's marriage was classed among the most important of the causes which contributed to the Fronde. The dangers attendant upon his conduct were real and serious; practically he was Mademoiselle's only guardian, and Mademoiselle was not only the favorite of the people but the Princess of the reigning house. As the director of a powerful nation Mazarin had duties which no State's minister is justified in ignoring. There were times when many of his other errors were so represented as to appear pardonable, but there never was a time when he was not blamed for the humiliation of the haughty Princess who, by no fault of her own, had been left upon the shores of life, isolated, hopeless of establishment, an object of ridicule to the unobservant who failed to see the pathetic loneliness of her position. The Parisians, high and low, thought that the Queen's Minister had done Mademoiselle an irreparable wrong, and it was thought that she knew that he had done her a wrong. It was believed that she would be a dangerous adversary in the day when the French people called him to account.

Mademoiselle knew her power and talked openly of what she could do. "I am," she said, "a very bad enemy; hot-tempered, strong in anger; and that, added to my birth, may well make my enemies tremble." She could say it without boasting: she was a Free Lance and the great French People was her clan.

III

Two years[94] previous to the serio-comic scene in the Palais Royal, Emperor Ferdinand III. had barely escaped causing a catastrophe. Had the catastrophe been effected the victim would have been the Princess of a reigning house. This is a very roundabout way of saying that Mademoiselle's anxiety to marry the Emperor led her to prepare for the alliance by practising religion; and that once engaged in the practice, she was seized by the desire to become a nun.

The turbulent Princess who so ardently aspired to the throne of Ferdinand III. was as free in spirit as she was independent in action, and being hampered by no religion but the religion of culture, she followed her fancies and adopted a line of conduct in singular opposition to her natural behaviour and inclinations. Lured by ambitious policy to affect the attitude of religious devotion, she fell into her own net and was so deceived by her feelings that she supposed that she wished to take the veil. The fact that at heart her wishes tended in a diametrically opposite direction furnished the most striking proof of the power of hypnotic auto-suggestion. I am speaking now of a time previous to Saujon's mission to Germany. In her own words:

The desire to be an empress followed me wherever I journeyed, and the effects of my wishes seemed to be so close at hand that I was led to believe that it would be well for me to form habits best suited to the habits and to the humour of the Emperor. I had heard it said that he was very devout, and by following his example I became so worshipful that after I had feigned the appearance of devotion a while I longed to be a nun. I never breathed a word of it to any one; but during the whole of eight days I was inspired by a desire to become a Carmelite. I was so engrossed by this feeling that I could neither eat nor sleep. And I was so beset by that anxiety added to my natural anxiety, that they feared lest I should fall ill. Every time that the Queen went into the convents—which happened often—I remained in the church alone; and thinking of all the persons who loved me and who would regret my retreat from the world, I wept. So that which appeared to be a struggle with my religious desire to break away from my worldly self was in reality a struggle progressing in my heart between my wish to enter the convent and my horror of leaving all whom I loved, and breaking away from all my tenderness for them. I can say only this: during these eight days the Empire was nothing to me. But I must avow that I felt a certain amount of vanity because I was to leave the world under such important circumstances.

Mademoiselle had hung out the sign-board of religion—if I may use such a term—and she multiplied all the symptoms of religious conversion. To quote her own words:

I did not appear at Court. I did not wear my patches, I did not powder my hair,—in fact, I neglected my hair until it was so long and so dusty that it completely disguised me. I used to wear three kerchiefs around my neck,—one over the other,—and they muffled me so that in warm weather I nearly smothered. As I wished to look like a woman forty years old, I never wore any coloured riband. As for pleasure, I took pleasure in nothing but in reading and re-reading the life of Saint Theresa.

No one was astonished by religious demonstrations of that kind. Custom did not oppose the admission of the public to the spectacle of intimate mental or spiritual crises which it is now considered proper to conceal. The only thing astonishing was that Mademoiselle had harboured the idea of forsaking the world. Her friends ridiculed her, and, stung by their raillery, she recanted. Speaking of it later, she said: "I wondered at my ideas; I scoffed at my infatuation. I made excuses because I had ever dreamed of such a project."

Monsieur was more surprised than his neighbours, and his surprise assumed a more virulent form; when his daughter begged to be permitted to enter a convent, when she declared that she would "better love to serve God than to wear the royal crowns of all the world," he gave way to a violent outburst of fury. Mademoiselle did not repeat her petition; she begged him to let the subject drop; and thus ended the comedy.

In any other quarter curiosity regarding details would have been the only sentiment aroused by such a project. The daughters of many noble families and the daughters of families beyond the pale of the nobility entered convents. In the spiritual slough in which France floundered toward the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, the nun's veil and the monk's habit were the only suitable coverings for mental distress, and in many cases the convent and the monastery were the sole places of refuge in a world so lamentable that BÉrulle[95] and Vincent de Paul contemplated it with anguish. The convent was the only safe shelter for souls in which the germs of religious life had resisted the inroads of spiritual disease. In certain parts of the country, the annihilation of the Christian principle had resulted in the degradation of the Sacred Office and in the increase of the number of skeptics in the higher classes.

Saving a few exceptions, who were types of the Temple of the Holy Ghost, the Church set the example of every form and every degree of contempt for its corporate body, for its individual members, and for its consecrated accessories. I have already spoken of the elegant cavaliers, who, in their leisure moments, played the part of priests. In their eyes a bishopric was a sinecure like another sinecure. The office of the priesthood entailed no special conduct, nor any special duty. In general, priests were shepherds who passed their lives at a distance from their flocks, revelling in luxury and in pleasure. "Turning abruptly," said an ecclesiastical writer, "from the pleasures of the Court to the austere duties of the priesthood, without any preparation save the royal ordinance,—an ordinance, peradventure, due to secret and unavowable solicitations,—men assumed the office and became bishops before they had received Holy Orders. Naturally, such haphazard bishops brought to the Episcopate minds far from ecclesiastical." In that day cardinals and bishops were seen distributing the benefits of their dioceses among their lower domestic tributaries. Thus valets, cooks, barbers, and lackeys were covered with the sacred vestments, and called to serve the altar.[96] Being abandoned to their own devices, the lesser clergy—heirs to all the failings and all the weaknesses of the lower classes of the people—grovelled in ignorance and in disorder. The continually augmenting evil was aggravated by the way in which the Church recruited the rank and file of her legions. As a rule, the cure, or living of the curÉ, was in the gift of the abbot. No one but the abbot had a right to appoint a curÉ. The abbot's power descended to his successor. That would have been well enough, had the abbot's virtues and good judgment—if such there had been—descended to the man immediately following him in office, but the abbot thus empowered to appoint the curÉ was seldom capable of making a good choice or even a decent choice.

The Court bestowed the abbeys on infants in the cradle, and the titulars were generally the illegitimate children of the princes, younger sons of great seigniors, notably gallant soldiers, and notoriously "gallant" women. The abbots were laical protÉgÉs of every origin, of every profession, and of every character. Henry IV. bestowed abbeys indiscriminately. Among other notables who received the office of abbot at his hands were a certain number of Protestants and an equally certain number of women. Sully possessed four abbeys: "the fair Corisande" possessed an abbey (the Abbey of Chatillon-sur-Seine, where Saint Bernard had been raised). The fantastic abbots did not exert themselves to find suitable curÉs, and even had they been disposed to do so, where could they have gone to look for them? There were no clerical nursery-gardens in which to sow choice seed and to root cuttings for the parterres of the Church, and this was the chief cause of the prevailing evil. As there were no seminaries, and as the presbyterial schools were in decay, there were no places where men could make serious preparation for the Episcopate. As soon as the youth destined for Orders had learned so much Latin that he could explain the gospels used in the service of the Mass, and translate his breviary well enough to say his Office, he was considered fit for the priesthood. It is not difficult to imagine what became of the sacraments of the Church when they fell into such hands. There were priests who eliminated all pretence of unction from Baptism. Others, though they had received no sacerdotal authority, joined men and women in marriage, and sent them away rejoicing at their escape from a more binding formality. Some of the priests were ignorant of the formula of Absolution, and in their ignorance they changed, abridged, and transposed to suit their own taste the august words of the most redoubtable of mysteries. Dumb as cattle, the ignoble priests deserted the pulpit, so there were no more sermons; there was no catechism, and the people, deprived of all instruction, were more benighted than their pastors. In some parishes there were men and women who were ignorant of the existence of God.[97]

The people had no teachers, and their manners were as neglected as their spiritual education. With rare exceptions, the provincial priest went to the wine-shops with his parishioners; if he saw fit, he went without taking off his surplice,—nor was that the worst; in every respect, and everywhere, and always, he set lamentable examples for his people. "One may say with truth and with horror," cried the austere Bourdoise, the friend of PÈre BÉrulle, "that of all the evil done in the world, the part done by the ecclesiastics is the worst." PÈre Amelotte expressed his opinion with still more energy: "The name of priest," he cried, "has become the synonym of ignorance and debauchery!"

After the religious wars there were neither churches nor presbyteries, and therefore there were thousands of villages where there were no priests, but it is to be doubted whether such villages were more pitiable than those in which by their daily conduct the priests constantly provoked the people to despise the earthly representative of God. The abandoned villages were not plunged in thicker moral and religious darkness, or in grosser or more abominable superstition, than that into which the ignoble pastors led their flocks. In one half of the total number of the provinces of France, the work that the first missionaries to the Gauls had accomplished had all to be begun again.

In the world of the aristocracy the condition of Catholicism was little better. When Vincent de Paul—by a mischance which was not to be the only one in his career—was appointed Almoner to Queen Marguerite, first wife of Henry IV., he was overwhelmed by what he saw and heard. The Court was two thirds pagan.[98] A loose and reckless line of thought, a moral libertinage, was considered a mark of elegance, and that opinion obtained until the seventeenth century. The jeunesse dorÉe, the "gilded youths" of the day, imitated the atheists and gloried in manifesting their contempt for the "superstitions of religion." They repeated after Vanini that "man ought to obey the natural law," that "vice and virtue should be classed as products of climate, of temperament, and of alimentation," that "children born with feeble intellects are best fitted to develop into good Christians." Among the higher classes, piety was not entirely extinct; that was proven in the days of the triumphant Renaissance, when the Catholicism of Bossuet and of Bourdaloue flamed with all the strength of a newly kindled fire from the dying embers of the old religion. But the belief in God and in the things of God was not to be avowed among people of intellect. In a certain elegant, frivolous, and corrupt world, impiety and wit marched hand in hand. A man was not absolutely perfect in tone and manners unless he seasoned his conversation with a grain of atheism.[99] Under Louis XIII. in the immediate neighbourhood of royalty the tone changed, because the King's bigotry kept close watch over the appearance of religion. Men knew that they could not air their smart affectation of skepticism with impunity when their chief not only openly professed and practised religion, but frowned upon those who did not. All felt that the only way to be popular at Court was to follow the example of the King, and all slipped their atheism up their sleeves and bowed the knee with grace and dexterity, pulling on long faces and praying as visibly as Louis himself. But many years passed before the practice of religion expressed the feelings of the heart. Richelieu[100] had several intimate friends who were openly confessed infidels, and proud of their infidelity. While they were intellectual and witty and devoted to the Cardinal's interests, they were permitted to think as they pleased.

Long after the day of Richelieu,—in the reign of Louis XIV.,—the great CondÉ and Princess Anne de Gonzague made vows to the "marvellous victories of grace,"[101] but while they were "waiting for the miracle," the more miscreant of the Court amused themselves by throwing a piece of the wood of the true cross into the fire "to see whether it would burn."

The current of moral libertinage, though it appeared sluggish after the Fronde, had not run dry, and it was seen in the last third of the seventeenth century and in the following century shallow, but flowing freely.[102]

Whatever the general condition, the city was always better fortified against spiritual libertinage than the Court, because it contained stronger elements, and because it lacked the frivolity of the social bodies devoted to pleasure. In the city mingled with the higher bourgeoisie and the middle bourgeoisie were nobles of excellent stock who did not visit the Louvre or the Palais Royal because, as they had no title or position at Court, they could not claim the rank to which their quality gave them right; to cite an instance: Mme. de SÉvignÉ was not of the Court; she was always of the city.

Taken altogether, the Parliamentary world, which had one foot at Court and the other foot in the city, had preserved a great deal of religion and morality. Olivier d'Ormesson's journal shows us the homes of the serious and intellectual people of the great metropolitan centres to whom piety and gravity had descended from their fathers.

The Parliamentary world of the provinces was notable for its moral attitude and for its love of religion. Taken all in all the French bourgeoisie had not felt the inroads of free thought, although there had been a few cases of visible infiltration. In the country districts the people practised religion more or less fervently.

Despite the few exceptions serving as luminous points in the universal darkness, in the reign of Louis XIII. the situation was well fitted to inspire creatures of ardent faith and exalted mysticism with horror. There were many such people in Paris then, as there have been always. Discouraged, hopeless of finding anything better in a world abandoned to blasphemy and vice, the naturally pious fled to the cloisters and too often they found within the walls of their refuges the same scandals that had driven them from their homes. The larger number of the monasteries were given over to depravity[103] and the monks were like the people of the world. As we have seen, a few prelates of rare faith and devotion furnished the exceptions to the rule, but set, as they were, wide distances apart in the swarming mass of vociferous immorality, they excited a pity which swallowed up all appreciation of their importance.

Divers questions which were not connected either with belief as a whole or with the principle of belief combined to make the Protestant minority by far more moral than the Catholic majority. Perhaps the social disadvantage attached to Protestantism was the strongest reason for its superiority. When a practically powerless minority is surrounded and kept under surveillance by a powerful majority, unless pride and vanity have blinded its prudence the minority keeps careful watch of its actions. By a natural process minorities of agitators cast cowardly and selfish members out of their ranks; in other words, they weed out the useless, the feeble, the derogatory elements, and the elements which, being dependent upon the favour of the public, or susceptible to public criticism, flinch if subjected to unfavourable judgment. The Protestant minority eliminated all who, fearing the ridicule or the animosity of the Court, shrank from standing shoulder to shoulder with the men in the fighting ranks of Protestantism. Impelled by personal interest, the converts to the reform movement went back to the Catholic majority. There were so many advantages attendant upon the profession of Catholicism that with few exceptions the great lords declared their faith in the religion powerful to endow them with military commands and with governmental and other lucrative positions. The Protestant ranks were thinned, but the few who stood their ground were the picked men of the reform movement. The ranks of the Catholics were swelled by the hypocrites and the turncoats who had deserted from the army of the Protestants. The Protestants gained morally by the defection of their converts, and the Catholics lost; the few who sustained Protestantism were sincere; the fact of their profession proved it.

The Protestant pastor had no selfish reason for his profession; he had nothing to hope for; he was lured by no promise of an abbey, nor could he expect to be rewarded for his open revolt against the King's church. Looking at it in its most illusive light, his was a bad business; there was nothing in it to tempt the favourites of the great; not even a lackey could find advantage in appointment to the Protestant ministry, and no man entered upon the painful life of the Protestant pastor unless forced by an all-mastering vocation. The cause of the Reformation was safe because it was in the hands of men who boasted of "a judge that no king could corrupt," and who believed that they had armed themselves with "the panoply of God." The pastors laboured with unfailing zeal, first to kindle the spark of a faith separated from all earthly interests; next to nourish sincere belief in God as the vital principle of religious life. Under their influence the Protestants of the upper middle classes and the Protestants of the lower classes—there were still fewer of the latter than of the former—not only practised, but lived their religion, giving an example of good conduct and of intelligent appreciation of the name and the meaning of their profession. Their adversaries were forced to render them the homage due to their efforts and their sincerity. They, the Protestants, were charitable in the true sense of the term; they loved the brethren; they cared for the bodies as well as for the souls of the poor; they proved their love for their fellows by guarding the public welfare; they kept the laws and, whenever it was possible, enforced them. The pastors knew that they must practise what they preached, and, profiting by the examples of the ignoble priests, they set a guard upon their words and movements, lest their disciples should question their sincerity. They were austere, energetic, and devoted to their people and to their cause. They were convinced that they were warders of the inheritance of the saints, and they patrolled their circuit, and went about in the name of Christ proclaiming the mercy of God and warning men of Eternity and of The Judgment.

Let us be loyal to our convictions and give to those early pastors the credit due to their candour and to their efforts; they surpassed us in many ways. They were learned; they were versed in science, kind to strangers, strict in morality, brotherly to the poor.

FranÇois de Sales said of them: "The Protestants were Christians; Catholicism was not Christian."[104]

So matters stood—the churches ruined and abandoned, Religion mocked and the priests despised[105]—when a little phalanx of devoted men arose to rescue the wrecked body of the French Clergy. They organised systematically, but their plan of action was independent. FranÇois de Sales was among the first who broke ground for the difficult work. He was a calm, cool man, indifferent to abuse, firm in the conviction that his power was from God. There were many representatives of the Church, but few like him. One of his chroniclers dwelt upon his "exalted indifference to insult" another, speaking of his "supernatural patience," said:

"A Du Perron could not have stopped short in an argument with a heretic, but, on the other hand, a Du Perron would not have converted the heretic by the ardour of his forbearing kindness." Strowski said of de Sales that he "saw as the wise see, and lived among men not as a nominal Christian but as a man of God, gifted with omniscience." By living in the world de Sales had learned that a germ of religion was still alive in many of the abandoned souls; he knew that there were a few who were truly Catholic; he knew that those few were cherishing their faith, but he saw that they lived isolated lives, away from the world, and he believed that the limitations of their spiritual hermitage hindered their usefulness. De Sales believed in a community of religion and Christian love. The few who cherished their religion were a class by themselves. They knew and respected each other, they theorised abstractly upon the prevailing evils, but they had no thought of bettering man's condition. Their sorrows had turned their thoughts to woeful contemplation of their helplessness, and all their hopes were straining forward toward the peaceful cloister and the silent intimacy of monachism. For them the uses of life were as a tale that is told. They had no thought of public service, they were timid, they abhorred sin and shrank from sinners, their isolation had developed their tendency to mysticism, and the best efforts of their minds were concentrated upon hypotheses.

PÈre FranÇois believed that they and all who loved God could do good work in the world. He did not believe in controversy, he did not believe in silencing skeptics with overwhelming arguments. He used his own means in his own way; but his task was hard and his progress slow, and months passed before he was able to form a working plan. His idea was to revive religious feeling and spiritual zeal, to increase the piety of life in community, to exemplify the love which teaches man to live at peace with his brother, to fulfil his mission as the son of man made in the likeness of God, and to act his part as an intelligent member of an orderly solidarity. De Sales's first work was difficult, but not long after his mission-house was established he saw that his success was sure, and he then appointed deputies and began his individual labour for the revival of religious thought. He knew that the people loved to reason, and he had resolved to develop their intelligence and to open their minds to Truth: the strong principle of all reform. His doubt of the utility of controversy had been confirmed by the spectacle of the recluses of the Church. Study had convinced him that theologians had taken the wrong road and exaggerated the spiritual influence of the "power of piety." He believed in the practical piety of Charity, and he accepted as his appointed task the awakening of Christian love. His impelling force was not the bigotry which

nor was it the contemplative faith which, by living in convents, deprives the world of the example of its fervour; it was that practical manifestation of the grace of God "which fits the citizen for civil life and forms him for the world."

In the end PÈre FranÇois's religion became purely practical and he had but one aim: the awakening of the soul.

His critics talked of his "dreams," his "visions," and his "religio-sentimental revival." His piety was expressed in the saying: "Religious life is not an attitude, nor can the practice of religion save a man; the true life of the Christian springs from a change of heart, from the intimate and profound transformation of his personality." We know with what ardour PÈre FranÇois went forward to his goal, manifesting his ideals by his acts. By his words and by his writings he worked a revolution in men's souls. His success equalled the success of HonorÉ d'UrfÉ; few books have reached the number of the editions of the Introduction À la vie dÉvote.[106]

In Paris de Sales had often visited a young priest named Pierre de BÉrulle, who also was deeply grieved by the condition of Catholicism, and who was ambitious to work a change in the clergy and in the Church. PÈre BÉrulle had discussed the subject with Vincent de Paul, de Sales, Bourdoise, and other pious friends, and after serious reflection, he had determined to undertake the stupendous work of reforming the clergy. In 1611 he founded a mission-house called the Oratoire. "The chief object of the mission was to put an end to the uselessness of so many ecclesiastics." The missionaries began their work cautiously and humbly, but their progress was rapid. Less than fifteen months after the first Mass was offered upon the altar of the new house, the Oratoire was represented by fifty branch missions. The brothers of the company were seen among all classes; their aim, like the individual aim of PÈre FranÇois, was to make the love of God familiar to men by habituating man to the love of his brother. They turned aside from their path to help wherever they saw need; they nursed the sick, they worked among the common people, they lent their strength to the worn-out labourer.

They were as true, as simple, and as earnest as the men who walked with the Son of Mary by the Lake of Galilee. Bound by no tie but Christian Charity, free to act their will, they manifested their faith by their piety, and it was impossible to deny the beneficence of their example. From the mother-house they set out for all parts of France, exhorting, imploring the dissolute to forsake their sin, and proclaiming the love of Christ. Protestants were making a strong point of the wrath of God; the Oratorians talked of God's mercy. They passed from province to province, they searched the streets and the lanes of the cities, they laboured with the labourers, they feasted with the bourgeois. Dispensing brotherly sympathy, they entered the homes of the poor as familiar friends, confessing the adults, catechising the children, and restoring religion to those who had lost it or forgotten it. They demanded hospitality in the provincial presbyteries, aroused the slothful priests to repentant action, and, raising the standard of the Faith before all eyes, they pointed men to Eternal Life and lifted the fallen brethren from the mire.

Shoulder to shoulder with the three chevaliers of the Faith, de Sales, de BÉrulle, and PÈre Vincent, was the stern Saint Cyran (Jean Duvergier de Hauranne) who lent to the assistance of the Oratorians the powerful influence of his magnetic fervour. The impassioned eloquence of the author of Lettres ChrÉtiennes et Spirituelles was awe-inspiring. The members of the famous convent (Port Royal des Champs) were equally devoted; their fervour was gentler, but always grave and salutary. Saint Cyran's characteristics were well defined in Joubert's PensÉe.

The Jansenists carried into their religious life more depth of thought and more reflection; they were more firmly bound by religion's sacred liens; there was an austerity in their ideas and in their minds, and that austerity incessantly circumscribed their will by the limitations of duty.

They were pervaded, even to their mental habit, by their uncompromising conception of divine justice; their inclinations were antipathetic to the lusts of the flesh. The companions of the community of Port Royal were as pure in heart as the Oratorians, but they were childlike in their simplicity; they delighted in the beauties of nature and in the society of their friends; they indulged their humanity whenever such indulgence accorded with their vocation; they permitted "the fÊtes of Christian love," to which we of the present look back in fancy as to visions of the first days of the early Church. Jules LemaÎtre said in his address at Port Royal:[107]

Port Royal is one of the most august of all the awe-inspiring refuges of the spiritual life of France. It is holy ground; for in this vale was nourished the most ardent inner life of the nation's Church. Here prayed and meditated the most profound of thinkers, the souls most self-contained, most self-dependent, most absorbed by the mystery of man's eternal destiny. None caught in the whirlpool of earthly life ever seemed more convinced of the powerlessness of human liberty to arrest the evolution of the inexorable Plan, and yet none ever manifested firmer will to battle and to endure than those first heralds of the resurrection of Catholicism.

FranÇois de Sales loved the convent of Port Royal; he called it his "place of dear delight"! In its shaded cloisters de BÉrulle, PÈre Vincent, and Saint Cyran laboured together to purify the Church, until the time came when the closest friends were separated by dogmatic differences; and even then the tempest that wrecked Port Royal could not sweep away the memory of the peaceful days when the four friends lent their united efforts to the work which gave the decisive impulsion to the Catholic Renaissance.

Whenever the Church established religious communities, men were called to direct them from all the branches of de BÉrulle's Oratoire, because it was generally known that the Oratorians inspired the labourers of the Faith with religious ardour, and in time the theological knowledge gained in the Oratoire and in its branches was considered essential to the true spiritual establishment of the priest. Men about to enter the service of the Church went to the Oratoire to learn how to dispense the sacramental lessons with proper understanding of their meaning; new faces were continually appearing, then vanishing aglow with celestial fire. Once when an Oratorian complained that too many of their body were leaving Paris, de BÉrulle answered: "I thank God for it! This congregation was established for nothing else; its mission is to furnish worthy ministers and workmen fitted for the service of the Church."

De BÉrulle knew that, were he to give all the members of his community, their number would be too feeble to regenerate the vast and vitiated body of the French clergy. He could not hope to reap the harvest, but he counted it as glory to be permitted to sow the seed.

Vincent de Paul was the third collaborator of the company. It was said of him that he was "created to fill men's minds with love of spiritual things and with love for the Creator." PÈre Vincent was a simple countryman. In appearance he resembled the disciples of Christ, as represented in ancient pictures. His rugged features rose above a faded and patched soutane, but his face expressed such kindness and such sympathy that, like his heavenly Ensample, he drew men after him. Bernard of Cluny deplored the evil days; but the time of Louis XIII. was worse than the time of Bernard. The mercy proclaimed by the Gospel had been effaced from the minds of men, and the Charity of God had been dishonoured even by the guides sent to make it manifest. Mercy and Charity incarnate entered France with PÈre Vincent, and childlike fondness and gentle patience crept back into human relations—not rapidly—the influences against them were too strong—but steadily and surely. PÈre Vincent was amusing; it was said of him that he was "like no one else"; the courtiers first watched and ridiculed, then imitated him. When they saw him lift the fallen and attach importance to the sufferings of the common people, and when they heard him insist that criminals were men and that they had a right to demand the treatment due to men, they shrugged their shoulders, but they knew that through the influence of the simple peasant-priest something unknown and very sweet had entered France.

Vincent de Paul was a worker. He founded the Order of the Sisters of Charity, the Convicts' Mission-Refuge, a refuge for the unfortunate, the Foundling Hospital, and a great general hospital and asylum where twenty thousand men and women were lodged and nourished. To the people of France PÈre Vincent was a man apart from all others, the impersonation of human love and the manifestation of God's mercy. By the force of his example pity penetrated and pervaded a society in which pity had been unknown, or if known, despised. The people whose past life had prepared them for anything but good works sprang with ardour upon the road opened by the gentle saint who had taught France the way of mercy. Even the great essayed to be like PÈre Vincent; every one, high and low, each in his own way and to the extent of his power, followed the unique example. Saint Vincent became the national standard; the nobles pressed forward in his footsteps, concerning themselves with the sick and the poor and trying to do the work of priests. They laboured earnestly lavishing their money and their time, and, fired by the strength of their purpose, they came to love their duty better than they had loved their pleasure. They imitated the Oratorians as closely as they had imitated the shepherds of AstrÉe, and "the monsters of the will," Indifference, Infidelity, and Licence, hid their heads for a time, and Charity became the fashion of the day.

PÈre Vincent's religious zeal equalled his brotherly tenderness; he was de BÉrulle's best ally. A special community, under his direction, assisted in the labours of the Oratoire. The chief purpose of the mother-house and its branches was the purification of the priesthood and the increase of religion. When a young priest was ready to be ordained he was sent to PÈre Vincent's mission, where, by means of systematic retreats, he received the deep impression of the spiritual devotion and the charity peculiar to the Oratorians.

Bossuet remembered with profound gratitude the retreats that he made in PÈre Vincent's Oratoire. But there was one at Court to whom the piety of PÈre Vincent was a thorn in the flesh. We have seen that de BÉrulle's work was the purification of the clergy, and that PÈre Vincent was de BÉrulle's chief ally. Mazarin was the Queen's guardian, and the Queen held the list of ecclesiastical appointments. A Council called the Conseil de Conscience had been instituted to guide the Regent in her "Collation of Benefices." The nominees were subject to the approbation of the Council. When their names were read the points in their favour and against them were discussed. In this Conseil de Conscience PÈre Vincent confronted Mazarin ten years. Before PÈre Vincent appeared men were appointed abbots regardless of their characters. Chantelauze says in Saint Vincent de Paul et les Gondis that "Mazarin raised Simony to honour." The Cardinal gave the benefices to people whom he was sure of: people who were willing to devote themselves, body and soul, to his purposes. PÈre Vincent had awakened the minds of many influential prelates, and a few men and women prominent at Court had been aroused to a sense of the condition of the Church. These few priests and laymen were called the "Saints' Party."

They sat in the Council convened for the avowed purpose of purifying the Church. When Mazarin made an ignoble appointment, PÈre Vincent objected, and the influential prelates and the others of their party echoed his objections. Through the energy of the "Saints," as they were flippantly called by the courtiers, many scandalous appointments were prevented, and gradually the church positions were filled by sincere and devoted men. The determined and earnest objections of so many undeniably disinterested, well-known, and unimpeachable people aroused the superstitious scruples of the Queen, and when her scruples were aroused, she was obstinate. Mazarin knew this. He knew that Anne of Austria was a peculiar woman, he knew that she had been a Queen before he had had any hold upon her, and he knew that he had not been her first favourite. He was quick, keen-sighted, flexible. He was cautious. He had no intention of changing the sustained coo of his turtle-dove for the shrill "Tais-toi!" of the Regent of France. But he was not comfortable. His little diaries contain many allusions to the distress caused by his inability to digest the interference of the "Saints." He looked forward to the time when he should be so strong that it would be safe for him to take steps to free himself from the obsessions of the Conseil de Conscience. He was amiable and indulgent in his intercourse with all the cabals and with all the conflicting agitations; he studied motives and forestalled results; he brought down his own larks with the mirrors of his enemies. He had a thousand different ways of working out the same aims. He did nothing to actively offend, but there was a persistence in his gentle tenacity which exasperated men like CondÉ and disheartened the frank soldiers of the Faith of the mission of Port Royal and the Oratoire. He foresaw a time when he could dispose of benefices and of all else. A few years later the Conseil de Conscience was abolished, and PÈre Vincent was ignominiously vanquished. PÈre Vincent lacked the requisites of the courtier; he was artless, and straightforward, and intriguers found it easy to make him appear ridiculous in the eyes of the Queen.[108] Mazarin watched his moment, and when he was sure that Anne of Austria could not refuse him anything, he drew the table of benefices from her hand. From that time "pick and choose" was the order of the day. "Monsieur le Cardinal" visited the appointments secretly, and secured the lion's share for himself. When he had made his choice, the men who offered him the highest bids received what he had rejected. In later years Mazarin was, by his own appointment, Archbishop of Metz and the possessor of thirty fat benefices. His revenues were considerable.

Nowhere did the Oratorians meet as determined opposition as at Court. The courtiers had gone to Mass because they lost the King's favour if they did not go to Mass, but to be inclined to skepticism was generally regarded as a token of elegance. Men thought that they were evincing superior culture when they braved God, the Devil, and the King, at one and the same time, by committing a thousand blasphemies. Despite the pressure of the new ideas, the "Saints' Party" had been difficult to organise. It was a short-lived party because Mazarin was not a man to tolerate rivals who were liable to develop power enough to counteract his influence over Anne of Austria concerning subjects even more vital than the distribution of the benefices. The petty annoyances to which the Prime Minister subjected the "Saints' Party" convinced people that when a man was of the Court, if he felt the indubitable touch of the finger of Grace, the only way open to him was the road to the cloister. It was known that wasps sting, and that they are not meet adversaries for the sons of God, and the wasps were there in swarms. FranÇois de Sales called the constantly recurring annoyances, "that mass of wasps." As there was no hope of relief in sight, it was generally supposed that the most prudent and the wisest course for labourers in the vineyard of the Lord was to enter the hive and take their places in the cells, among the manufacturers of honey. So when La Grande Mademoiselle looked upon the convent as her natural destination, she was carrying out the prevalent idea that retreat from the world was the natural result of conversion to true religion. It was well for her and for the convent which she had decided to honour with her presence that just at the moment when she laid her plans her father had one of his rare attacks of common sense—yes, well for her and well for the convent!

IV

Mademoiselle's crisis covered a period of six months; when she reappeared patches adorned her face and powder glistened in her hair. She said of her awakening: "I recovered my taste for diversions, and I attended the play and other amusements with pleasure, but my worldly life did not obliterate the memory of my longings; the excessive austerity to which I had reduced myself was modified, but I could not forget the aspirations which I had supposed would lead me to the Carmelites!" Not long after she emerged from her religious retreat politics called her from her frivolity. Political life was the arena at that hour, and it is not probable that the most radical of the feministic codes of the future will restore the power which women then possessed by force of their determined gallantry, their courage, their vivacity, their beauty, and their coquetry. The women of the future will lack such power because their rights will be conferred by laws; legal rights are of small importance compared to rights conferred and confirmed by custom. The women of Mademoiselle's day ordered the march of war, led armies, dictated the terms of peace, curbed the will of statesmen, and signed treaties with kings, not because they had a right to do so, but because they possessed invincible force. Richelieu, who had a species of force of his own, and at times wielded it to their temporary detriment, planned his moves with deference to their tactics, and openly deplored their importance. Mazarin, who dreaded women, wrote to Don Luis del Haro: "We have three such amazons right here in France, and they are fully competent to rule three great kingdoms; they are the Duchesse de Longueville, the Princesse Palatine, and the Duchesse de Chevreuse." The Duchesse de Chevreuse, having been born in the early century, was the veteran of the trio. "She had a strong mind," said Richelieu,[109] "and powerful beauty, which, as she knew well how to use it, she never lowered by any disgraceful concessions. Her mind was always well balanced."

Retz completed the portrait: "She loved without any choice of objects for the simple reason that it was necessary for her to love some one; and when once the plan was laid it was not difficult to give her a lover. But from the moment when she began to love her lover, she loved him faithfully,—and she loved no one else." She was witty, spirited, and of a very vigorous mind. Some of her ideas were so brilliant that they were like flashes of lightning; and some of them were so wise and so profound that the wisest men known to history might have been proud to claim them. Rare genius and keen wits which she had trained to intrigue from early youth had made her one of the most dangerous politicians in France. She had been an intimate friend of Anne of Austria, and the chief architect of the Chalais conspiracy. After the exposure of the conspiracy, Richelieu sentenced her to banishment for a term of twenty-five years, and no old political war-horse could have taken revenge sterner than hers. She did not rest on her wrongs; her entrance upon foreign territory was marked by the awakening of all the foreign animosities. Alone and single-handed, the unique Duchess formed a league against France, and when events reached a crisis she had attained such importance in the minds of the allies that England, though vanquished and suing for peace, made it a condition of her surrender that the Duchesse de Chevreuse, "a woman for whom the King of England entertained a particular esteem," should be recalled to France. Richelieu yielded the point instantly; he was too wise to invest it with the importance of a parley; he recalled the woman who had convened a foreign league against her own people, and eliminated the banishment of powerful women from his list of penalties. He had learned an important political lesson; thereafter the presence of the Duchesse de Chevreuse was considered in high diplomatic circles the one thing needful for the even balance of the State of France. After the Spanish intrigue, which ended in Val de GrÂce, the Cardinal, fearing another "league," made efforts to keep the versatile Duchess under his hand, but she slipped through his fingers and was seen all over France actively pursuing her own peculiar business. (1637.)

The Duchesse de Chevreuse once traversed France on horseback, disguised as a man, and she used to say that nothing had ever amused her as well as that journey. She must have been a judge of amusements, as she had tried them all. When she ran away disguised as a man, her husband and Richelieu both ran after her, to implore her to remain in France, and, in her efforts to escape her pursuers, she was forced to hide in many strange places, and to resort to stratagems of all kinds. In one place where she passed the night, her hostess, considering her a handsome boy, made her a declaration of love. Her guides, deceived by her appearance gave her a fair idea of the manners worn by a certain class of men when they think that they are among men and free from the constraint of woman's presence. On her journeys through Europe, she slept one night or more in a barn, on a pile of straw, the next night in a field, under a hedge, or in one of the vast beds in which our fathers bedded a dozen persons at once without regard to their circumstances. Alone, or in close quarters, the Duchesse de Chevreuse maintained her identity. Hers was a resolute spirit; she kept her own counsel, and she feared neither man nor devil. Thus, in boys' clothes, in company with cavaliers who lisped the language of the PrÉcieuses, or with troopers from whose mouths rushed the fat oaths of the Cossacks, sleeping now on straw and now with a dozen strangers, drunk and sober, she crossed the Pyrenees and reached Madrid, where she turned the head of the King of Spain and passed on to London, where she was fÊted as a powerful ally, and where, incidentally, she became the chief official agent of the enemies of Richelieu.

When Louis XIII. was dying he rallied long enough to enjoin the Duchesse de Chevreuse from entering France.[110] Standing upon the brink of Eternity, he remembered the traitress whom he had not seen in ten years. The Duchesse de Chevreuse was informed of his commands, and, knowing him to be in the agonies of death, she placed her political schemes in the hands of agents and hurried back to France to condole with the widow and to assume the control of the French nation as the deputy of Anne of Austria. She entered the Louvre June 14, 1643, thinking that the ten years which had passed since she had last seen her old confidante had made as little change in the Queen as in her own bright eyes. She found two children at play together,—young Louis XIV. and little Monsieur, a tall proud girl with ash-blonde hair: La Grande Mademoiselle, and a mature and matronly Regent who blushed when she saluted her. One month to a day had passed since Louis XIII. had yielded up the ghost.

The Duchesse de Chevreuse installed herself in Paris in her old quarters and bent her energies to the task of dethroning Mazarin.

---

The Palatine Princess, Anne de Gonzague, was a ravishingly beautiful woman endowed with great executive ability. "I do not think," said Retz, "that Elizabeth of England had more capacity for conducting a State." Anne de Gonzague did not begin her career by politics. When, as a young girl, she appeared in the world of the Court, she astonished France by the number and by the piquancy of her adventures. She was another of the exalted dames who ran upon the highways disguised as cavaliers or as monks. No one was surprised no matter when or where he saw Anne de Gonzague, though she was often met far beyond the limits of polite society. Fancy alone—and their own sweet will—ruled the fair ladies of those heroic days. During five whole years Anne de Gonzague[111] gave the world to understand that she was "Mme. de Guise, wife of Henri de Guise, Archbishop of Rheims" (the same Henri de Guise who afterward married Mme. de Bossut).

Having passed for "Mme. de Guise" sixty months, the Lady Anne appeared at Court under her own name "as if nothing had happened," reported Mademoiselle. Whatever may have here "happened," Anne de Gonzague reappeared at Court as alluring as in the flower of her first youth; and, as the Chronicle expressed it: "had the talent to marry herself—between two affairs of womanly gallantry—to the Prince Palatine,[112] one of the most rabidly jealous of gentlemen," because, as the pious and truthful Bossuet justly remarked, "everything gave way before the secret charm of her conversation." When nearly thirty years of age she obeyed the instincts of her genius and engaged in politics, with other politically inclined ladies, including Mme. de Longueville, whose only talent lay in her blonde hair and charming eyes.

Despite the poverty of her mental resources, Mme. de Longueville was a natural director of men, and she was but one of a very brilliant coterie. The prominent and fiery amazons of the politics of that epoch are too historically known to require detailed mention. They were: the haughty, dazzlingly superb, but too vicious and too practical in vice, Montbazon; the Duchesse de Chatillon (the imperious beauty who had her hand painted upon a painted lion whose face was the face of the great CondÉ), and many others who to the measure of their ability played with the honour and the lives of men, with Universal Suffrage, and with the stability of France, and who, like La Grande Mademoiselle, were called from their revelries by the dangers which threatened them.

The daughter of Gaston d'OrlÉans had grown up firmly convinced that the younger branch of the House of Paris (her own branch) could do anything. That had been the lesson taught for more than a century of history. From Charles VIII. to Louis XIII. the throne had been transmitted from father to son but three times; in all other cases it had passed to brothers or to cousins. The collaterals of the royal family had become accustomed to think of themselves as very near the throne, and at times that habit of thought had been detrimental to the country. Before the birth of Louis XIV. Gaston d'OrlÉans had touched the crown with the tips of his fingers, and he had made use of his title as heir-presumptive to work out some very unsavoury ends. After the birth of his nephews he had lived in a dream of possible results; he had waited to see what "his star" would bring him, and his hopes had blazed among their ashes at the first hint of the possibility of a change. When Louis XIV. was nine years old he was very sick and his doctors expected him to die; he had the smallpox. Monsieur was jubilant: he exhibited his joy publicly, and the courtiers drank to the health of "Gaston I." Olivier d'Ormesson stated that the courtiers distributed all the offices in the King's gift and planned to dispose of the King's brother. Anne of Austria, agonising in prayer for the life of the King, was horrified to learn that a plot was on foot to abduct little Monsieur. She was warned that the child was to be stolen some time in the night between Saturday and Sunday. MarÉchal de Schomberg passed that night on his horse, accompanied by armed men who watched all the windows and doors of the palace. When the King recovered Monsieur apologised for his conduct, and the sponge of the royal forgiveness was passed over that episode as it had been over many others. Under the Regency of Anne of Austria the Court was called upon to resist the second junior branch, whose inferiority of pretensions was more than balanced by its intelligence and audacity.

The pretensions of the CondÉs had been the cause of one of Mazarin's first anxieties. They were vast pretensions, they were unquestionably just, and they were ably sustained by the father of the great CondÉ, "Monsieur le Prince," a superior personage whose appearance belied his character. People of his own age remembered him as a handsome man; but debauchery, avarice, and self-neglect had changed the distinguished courtier and made him a repulsive old man, "dirty and ugly."[113] He was stoop-shouldered and wrinkled, with great, red eyes, and long, greasy hair, which he wore passed around his ears in "love-locks." His aspect was formidable. Richelieu was obliged to warn him that he must make a serious attempt to cleanse his person, and that he must change his shoes before paying his visits to the King.[114] His spirit was as sordid as his body. "Monsieur le Prince" was of very doubtful humour; he was dogged, snappish, peevish, coarse, contrary, and thoroughly rapacious. He had begun life with ten thousand livres of income, and he had acquired a million, not counting his appointments or his revenues from the government.[115] His friends clutched their pockets when they saw him coming; but their precautions were futile; he had a way of getting all that he desired. Everything went into his purse and nothing came out of it; but where his purse was not concerned Monsieur le Prince was a different man; there he "loved justice and followed that which was good."[116] He was a rigorous statesman; he defended the national Treasury against the world. His keen sense of equity made him a precious counsellor and he was an eminent and upright judge. His knowledge of the institutions of the kingdom made him valuable as State's reference; he knew the origins, the systems, and the supposititious issues of the secret aims of all the parties.

The laws of France were as chaotic as the situation of the parties, and no one but a finished statesman could find his way among them; but to Monsieur le Prince they were familiar ground. Considerable as were his attainments, his children were his equals. Mme. de Longueville, though shallow, was as keen a diplomat as her father, and by far more dangerous; the Duc d'Enghien was an astute and accomplished politician. The world considered the CondÉs as important as the d'OrlÉans', and fully able to meet the d'OrlÉans' on the super-sacred footing of etiquette. We shall see to what the equality of the two families conducted them. Struggles between them were always imminent; their quarrels arose from the exigencies of symbolical details: the manner of the laying of a carpet, the bearing of the train of a State robe, et cetera. Such details seem insignificant to us, but that they do so is because we have lost the habit of monarchical traditions. When things are done according to hierarchical custom, details are very important. At every session of the King's Council "peckotings" passed between Gaston d'OrlÉans and Monsieur le Prince and an attentive gallery looked on and listened. But something of sterner stuff than "peckotings" was the order of the day when the Court met for a ceremonious function; material battles marked the meetings between Mlle. de Montpensier and Mme. la Princesse de CondÉ; Mme. de Longueville was brave, and La Grande Mademoiselle was not only brave, but fully determined to justify her title and defend her honour as the Granddaughter of France. The two princely ladies entered the lists with the same ardour, and they were as heroic as they were burlesque. The 5th December the Court was scheduled to attend a solemn Mass at Notre Dame, and by the law of precedence Mademoiselle was to be followed by Mme. la Princesse de CondÉ. The latter summoned her physician who bled her in order to enable her to be physically incapable of taking her place behind Mademoiselle. Gossips told Anne-Marie-Louise of her cousin's stratagem, and Mademoiselle resorted to an equally efficient, though entirely different, means of medical art calculated to make bodily motion temporarily undesirable, if not impossible. Mademoiselle was determined that she would not humiliate her quality by appearing at Mass without her attendant satellite (Saint Simon would have applauded the sufferings of both of the heroic ladies, for like them he had been gifted by nature with a subtle appreciation of the duties and the privileges of rank), but the incident was not closed. By a strange fatality, at that instant Church came in conflict with State. Cardinal Mazarin, representing the Church, inspired Queen Anne to resent her niece's indisposition. The Queen became very angry at Mademoiselle, and impelled by her anger, Monsieur commanded his daughter to set out immediately for Notre Dame; he told her rudely that if she was too sick to walk, she had plenty of people to carry her. "You will either go or be carried!" he cried violently, and Mademoiselle, much the worse for her stratagem, was forced to yield. She deplored her fate, and wept because she had lost her father's sympathy.

The reciprocal acidity of the junior branches was constantly manifested by fatalities like the event just noted, and by episodes like the affair of "the fallen letters" (August, 1643). Although all the writers of that day believed that the reaction of that puerile matter was felt in the Fronde, the quarrel, like all the other quarrels, was of so senseless a character that it awakened the shame of the nation. The story is soon told: Mme. de Montbazon picked up—no one knew where—some love letters in which, as she said, she recognised the writing of Mme. de Longueville. Her story was false, and Anne of Austria, who frowned upon the gossip and the jealousies of the Court, condemned Mme. Montbazon to go to the HÔtel de CondÉ and make apologies for the wrong that she had done the Princess. All the friends of the House of CondÉ were expected to be present to hear and to witness the vindication of Mme. la Princesse.

Monsieur was there [wrote Mademoiselle], and for my part I could not stay away. I had no friendship for Mme. la Princesse, or for any of her friends, but on that occasion I could not have taken a part contrary to hers with decorum; to be present there was one of the duties of relationship which one cannot neglect.

On that occasion the relatives of the family were all in the HÔtel de CondÉ, but their hearts were not in their protestations, and the CondÉs were not deceived. The petty scandal of the letters fed the flame of enmity, which Mazarin watched and nourished because he knew that it was to his interest and to the interest of the State to foment the quarrel between the rival cousins. An anonymous collection of "memoirs" says:

Seeing that he was pressed from all sides, the Cardinal thought that the safety of his position required him to keep the House of Orleans separate from the House of Bourbon, so that by balancing one by the other he could remain firmly poised between the two and make himself equally necessary to both. It was as if Heaven itself had dropped the affair of the fallen letters into his hands, and he turned his celestial windfall to such account that the Luxembourg and the HÔtel de Bourbon found it difficult to maintain a decent composure; at heart they were at daggers' points. The Duc d'OrlÉans and the Duc d'Enghien were regarded as the chiefs of the two hostile parties, and the courtiers rallied to the side of either as their interests or their inclinations led them![117]

Apparently Mazarin's position was impregnable. The world would have been blind had it failed to see that the arguments used by the Prime Minister when he conferred with his sovereign were of a character essentially differing from the arguments generally used by politicians, but it was believed that the Cardinal's method was well fitted to his purpose, and that to any woman—and particularly to a woman who had passed maturity—it would be, by force of nature, more acceptable and more weighty than the abstract method of a purely political economist, and more convincing than the reasons given by statesmen,—or, in fact, any reason.

Anne of Austria had not been a widow four months when Olivier d'Ormesson noted, in his journal, that the Cardinal "was recognised as the All-Powerful." For his sake the Queen committed the imprudences of a love-sick schoolgirl. She began by receiving his visits in the evening. The doors were left open, and the Queen said that the Cardinal visited her for the purpose of giving her instructions regarding the business of the State. As time went on the Cardinal's visits lengthened; after a certain time the doors were closed, and, to the scandal of the Court, they remained closed. At Rueil the Queen tried to make Mazarin sit with her in her little garden carriage. Mazarin "had the wisdom to resist her wish, but he had the folly to accompany her with his hat upon his head." As no one ever approached the Queen with head covered, the spectacle of the behatted minister astonished the public. (September, 1644.) A few weeks later every one in Paris knew that an apartment or suite of rooms in the Palais Royal, was being repaired, and that it was to be connected with the Queen's apartments by a secret passage. The public learned gradually, detail by detail, that Mazarin was to occupy the repaired apartment, and that the secret passage had been prepared so that the Prime Minister might "proceed commodiously" to the royal apartments to hold political conferences with the Queen. When everything was ready, the Gazette (19th November) published the following announcement:

The Queen in full Council made it plain that, considering the indisposition of Cardinal Mazarin, and considering that he is forced, with great difficulty, to cross the whole length of the great garden of the Palais Royal,[118] and considering that some new business is constantly presenting itself to him, and demanding to be communicated to the Queen, the Queen deems it appropriate to give the Cardinal an apartment in the Palais Royal, so that she may confer with him more conveniently concerning her business. Her Majesty's intention has been approved by Messieurs, her ministers, and with applause, so that next Monday (21st November), his Eminence will take possession of his new residence.

The Queen's indiscretion won the heart of the favourite, and he longed for her presence. Twice, once at Rueil and once at Fontainebleau, he displaced La Grande Mademoiselle and installed himself in her room at the Queen's house. The first time that Mazarin supplanted Mademoiselle, the haughty Princess swallowed the affront and found a lodging in the village, but the second time she lost her patience. "It is rumoured in Paris," wrote d'Ormesson, "that Mademoiselle spoke to the Queen boldly, because the Cardinal wished to take her room in order to be near her Majesty." (September, 1645.)

Some historians have inferred that the Queen had been secretly married to her Minister. We have no proof of any such thing, unless we accept as proof the very ambiguous letter which the Cardinal wrote to the Queen when he was in exile. In that letter he spoke of people who tried to injure him in the Queen's mind. "They will gain nothing by it," wrote Mazarin; "the heart of the Queen and the heart of Mazarin are joined[119] by liens which cannot be broken either by time or by any effort,—as you yourself have agreed with me more than once." In the same letter he implores the Queen to pity him: "for I deserve pity! it is so strange for this child to be married, then, at the same time, separated from ... and always pursued by them to whom I am indebted for the obstacles to my marriage." (27th October, 1651.) These words are of obscure meaning, and they may as easily be interpreted figuratively as literally. They who believed that the Queen had married Mazarin secretly must have drawn their conclusions from the intimate fondness of her manner. Anne of Austria was infatuated, and her infatuation made it impossible for her to guard her conduct; her behaviour betrayed the irregularity of the situation, and it is probable that her friends were loth to believe that anything less than marriage could induce such familiarity. However that may have been, Mazarin's letters give no proof of marriage, nor has it ever been proved that he claimed that he had married the Queen.

When judgment is rendered according to evidence deduced from personal manners, changes in time and in the differences of localities should be considered. Our consideration of the Queen's romance dates from the period of the legitimate, or illegitimate, honeymoon. (August, 1643, or within six weeks of that time.)

The public watched the royal romance with irritation. Having greeted the Mazarin ministry with a good grace, they (the people) were unanimously seized by a feeling of shame and hatred for the handsome Italian who made use of woman's favour to attain success. The friends of the Queen redoubled their warnings, and retired from the royal presence in disgrace. One of her oldest servitors, who had given unquestionable proof of his devotion,[120] dared to tell her to her face that "all the world was talking about her and about his Eminence, and in a way which ought to make her reflect upon her position." ... "She asked me," said La Porte, 'Who said that?' I answered, 'Everybody! it is so common that no one talks of anything else.' She reddened and became angry."[121] Mme. de Brienne, wife of the Secretary of State, who had spoken to the Queen on the same subject, told her friends that "More than once the Queen had blushed to the whites of her eyes."[122] Every one wrote to the Queen; she found anonymous letters even in her bed. When she went through the streets she heard people humming songs whose meaning she knew only too well. Her piety and her maternity had endeared her to the common people, and they, the people, had looked indulgently upon her passing weaknesses; but now things had come to a crisis. One day, when the Regent was attending a service in Notre Dame, she was surprised by a band of women of the people, who surrounded her and fell at her feet crying that she was dissipating the fortune of her ward. "Queen," they cried, "you have a man in your house who is taking everything!"[123]

The fact that the young King was being despoiled was a greater grief to the people than the abasement of the Queen. It must be avowed that Mazarin was the most shameless thief who ever devoured a kingdom in the name of official duty and under the eyes and by the favour of a sovereign. His cry was the cry of the daughters of the horseleech. It was understood that Mazarin would not grant a service, or a demand of any kind, until his price had been put down, and in some cases the commission was demanded and paid twice. Bussy-Rabutin received a letter commanding him to "pay over and without delay" the sum of seven hundred livres. The letter is still in existence. CondÉ wrote it and despatched it, but it bears his personal endorsement to the effect that he had been "ordered" to write it. Montglat states that Anne of Austria asked for a fat office for one of her creatures, that the office was immediately granted, and that the appointee was taxed one hundred thousand Écus. Anne of Austria was piqued: she had supposed that her position exempted her from the requirements of the ministerial tariff; she expostulated, but the Cardinal-Minister was firm; he made it clear, even to the dim perceptions of his royal lady, that the duties of the director of the French nation ranked the tender impulses of the lover. Patriotic duty nerved his hand, and the Queen, recognising the futility of resistance, trembling with excitement, and watering her fevered persuasions with her tears, opened her purse and paid Mazarin his commission. By a closely calculated policy the State's coffers were subjected to systematic drainage, the national expenses were cut, and millions, diverted from their regular channels, found their way into the strong box of the favourite. The soldiers of France were dying of starvation on the frontiers, the State's creditors were clamouring for their money, the Court was in need of the comforts of life[124]; the country had been ravaged by passing armies, pillaged by thieving politicians, harrowed by abuses of all kinds. The taxes were wrung from the beggared people by armed men; yet "poor Monsieur, the Cardinal," as the Queen always called him, gave insolently luxurious fÊtes and expended millions upon his extravagant fancies. No one cared for his foreign policy. Would political triumphs bring back the dead, feed the starving, rehabilitate the dishonoured wives and daughters of the peasants, restore verdure to the ruined farms?

The Queen's anxiety to create an affection strong enough to blind the eyes of her courtiers to her intimacy with Mazarin had inspired her with a desire to lavish gifts. "The Queen gives everything" had become a proverb; the courtiers knew the value of their complaisancy, and they flocked to the Palais Royal with petitions; offices, benefices, privileges, monopolies either to exploit, to concede, or to sell were freely bestowed upon all who demanded them. Each courtier had some new and unheard-of fancy to gratify, either for his own pleasure or for the pleasure of his friends; anything that could be made visible, anything that could be so represented as to appear visible to the imagination, was scheduled in the minds of the courtiers as dutiable and some one drew revenues from it. One of the ladies of the Court obtained from the Queen the right to tax all the Masses said in Paris.[125] "The 13th January, 1644, the Council of the King employed part of its session in refusing 'a quantity of gifts' which the Queen had accorded, and which were all of a character to excite laughter." The royal horn had ceased to pour; the Queen's strong-box was empty. The courtiers knew that there was nothing more to gain; one and all they raised their voices, and the threatening growl of the people of Paris echoed them. The day of reckoning was at hand; had Anne of Austria possessed all that she had given to buy the indulgence of her world, and had she willed to give it all again, she could not have stilled the tumult; to quote Mme. de Motteville's record: "The people's love for the Queen had diminished; the absolute power which the Queen had placed in the hand of Mazarin had destroyed her own influence, and from too fondly desiring that the Parisians should love her lover she had made them hate him." In the beginning of the Regency Mazarin had been popular; after a time the people had lost confidence in him, and the hatred which followed their distrust was mingled with contempt.

Mazarin had emptied the treasury of France. No better statement of his conduct was ever given than FÉnelon gave his pupil, the Duc de Bourgogne, in his Dialogues des Morts. Mazarin and Richelieu are the persons speaking. Each makes known the value of his own work; each criticises the work of the other. Mazarin reproaches Richelieu for his cruelty and thirst for blood; Richelieu answers:

"You did worse to the French than to spill their blood. You corrupted the deep sources of their manners and their life. You made probity a mask. I laid my hand upon the great to repress their insolence; you beat them down and trampled upon their courage. You degraded nobility. You confounded conditions. You rendered all graces venal. You were afraid of the influence of merit. You permitted no man to approach you unless he could give you proof of a low, supple nature,—a nature complaisant to the solicitations of mischievous intrigue. You never received a true impression. You never had any real knowledge of men. You never believed anything but evil. You saw the worst in a man and drew your profit from it. To your base mind honour and virtue were fables. You needed knaves who could deceive the dupes whom you entrapped in business; you needed traffickers to consummate your schemes. So your name shall be reviled and odious."

CARDINAL MAZARIN