THE DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE DRAWN INTO THE VORTEX OF POLITICS AND CIVIL WAR BY HER LOVE FOR LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

We have glanced rapidly over the fairest period of Madame de Longueville’s youth, over those years wherein the splendour of her success in the ranks of fashion was not obtained at the expense of her virtue. The time approaches in which she is about to yield to the manners of her age, and to the long-combatted wants of her heart. The love which she inspired in others, she is, in turn, about to feel herself, and it is to engage her, at the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, in a fatal connection, which will make her unmindful of all her conjugal duties, and turn her most brilliant qualities against herself, against her family, and against France.

Let us now relate briefly what we know of Madame de Longueville from the moment of our last mention of her up to the commencement of 1648. There is nothing recorded which can authorise the supposition that before the close of 1647 Madame de Longueville had ever passed the limits of that noble and graceful gallantry which she saw everywhere held in honour, the praises of which she heard celebrated at the HÔtel de Rambouillet as well as at the HÔtel de CondÉ, in the great verse of Corneille and in the turgid effusions of Voiture. At the time of the duel between Guise and Coligny, in 1644, she had seen her twenty-fifth summer. Each succeeding year seemed only to enhance the power of her charms, and that power she delighted in exhibiting. A thousand adorers pressed around her. Coligny was, perhaps, nearest to her heart, but had not, however, touched it. But one cannot, with impunity, trifle with love. That tragic adventure of the eldest of the ChÂtillons perishing, in the flower of his youth, by the hand of the eldest of the Guises was quickly echoed by song and romance through every salon, and cast a gloom upon the destiny of Madame de Longueville, and gave her, at an early period, a fame at once aristocratic and popular, which prepared her wonderfully to play a great part in that other tragi-comedy, heroic and gallant, called the Fronde. The glory of her brother was reflected upon her, and she responded to it somewhat by her own success at Court and in the salons. She acquired more and more the manners of the times. Coquetry and witty talk formed her sole occupation. Her delicate condition not permitting her to accompany M. de Longueville to MÜnster, in June, 1645, she remained in Paris. It was the place above all others in which she delighted, and whether her heart had received some slight wound, or whether it was still entirely whole, it is clear that she was not very glad nor greatly charmed to find herself, after her accouchement in the spring of 1646, under the cold, grey sky of Westphalia, again beside a husband who was not, as Retz says, the most agreeable man to her in the world. It is not difficult to divine the feelings with which that petted beauty of the HÔtel de Rambouillet must have left Corneille, Voiture, and all the elegancies and refinements of life, to take up her abode at Munster amongst a set of foreign diplomatists only speaking German or Latin. To her it was doubly an exile, for her native soil was not merely France—but Paris, the Court, the HÔtel de CondÉ, Chantilly, the Place Royale, the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre.[44] However, there was nothing for it but to obey the marital summons, and to set off with her step-daughter, Mademoiselle de Longueville, who was already more than twenty years of age. The Duchess quitted Paris on the 20th of June, 1646, with a numerous escort under the command of Montigny, lieutenant of M. de Longueville’s guards. The entire journey from Paris to Munster was a continual ovation. The Duke went as far as Wesel to meet her. Turenne, who then commanded on the Rhine, treated her to the spectacle of an army drawn up in order of battle, and which he manoeuvred for her amusement. Was it on that occasion that the great captain, well known to have been always impressionable to female beauty, received the ardent impulse which was renewed at Stenay in 1650, and which, graciously but prudently acknowledged by Madame de Longueville, always remained a close and tender tie between them? On the 22nd of July she made her triumphal entry into Munster. During the entire autumn of 1646 and the winter of 1647 she was really the Queen of the Congress. Her beauty and grace of manner won homage equally from the grave diplomatists as from the great commanders who were there assembled.

Although the Duchess dissembled her ennui with that politeness and gentleness peculiar to herself, after the lapse of a few months she had had enough of her brilliant exile. In the winter of 1647 there were two reasons for her return to France. Her father, the Prince de CondÉ, had died towards the close of December, 1646, to the great loss of his family and France, the consequences of which were somewhat later vividly felt. Moreover, Madame de Longueville had become enceinte, at MÜnster for the third time, and it being her mother’s wish that her accouchement should take place near her, M. de Longueville was compelled to consent to his wife’s departure for Paris.

Her return to France, at first to Chantilly, and next to Paris, in the month of May, 1647, was quite another sort of triumph to that of her journey to the Rhine and Holland, and her sojourn at MÜnster. She found the crowd of her adorers more numerous and attentive than ever, and in the foremost rank her younger brother, the Prince de Conti, just fresh from college, was taking his first lessons of life in the wider range of the great world.

Shortly after her accouchement, the Duchess, who during her sojourn amongst the plenipotentiaries charged with negotiating the treaty of Westphalia, had acquired a taste, there seems little doubt, for political discussions and speculations, first began to manifest an inclination to mix herself up with state affairs. There was little difficulty in her doing so. The mission which the Duke de Longueville continued to fulfil in Germany, the continued favour enjoyed by the Princess de CondÉ, the ever-increasing influence which the Duke d’Enghien—recently through his father’s death become Prince de CondÉ—had acquired by his repeated victories, all these advantages, joined to the prestige of the personal charms of Madame de Longueville, placed this latter in a position to take the foremost part in the civil war about to break out.

The Court and Paris were then occupied with festivals and diversions, which all were eager to share with Madame de Longueville. To please the Queen, Mazarin multiplied balls and operas. At a great expense he sent to Italy for artists, singers, male and female, who represented the opera of Orpheus, the machinery and decorations of which are said to have cost more than 400,000 livres. The Queen delighted in these spectacles. France also, as though inspired by its increasing grandeur, took pleasure in the magnificence of its government, and seconded it by redoubling its own luxury and magnificence. The pleasures of wit occupied the first rank. The HÔtel de Rambouillet, near its decline, was shedding its last rays. Madame de Longueville reigned there as well as in all the best circles of Paris; and it must be confessed, with her good qualities she had also some of the defects of the best prÉcieuses. The following is the picture which Madame de Motteville has traced of her person, of the turn of her mind, of her occupation, of her reputation, and of that of the whole house of CondÉ, at this period, which may be considered as the most felicitous of her life: “This princess, who during her absence reigned in her family, and whose approbation was sought as though she were a real sovereign, did not fail, on her return to Paris, to appear in greater splendour than when she left it. The friendship entertained for her by the Prince, her brother, authorizing her actions and her manners, the greatness of her beauty and of her mind increased so much the cabal of her family, that she was not long at Court without almost entirely engrossing it. She became the object of all desires: her clique was the centre of all intrigues, and those whom she loved became also the favourites of fortune.... Her intelligence, her wit, and the high opinion entertained for her discernment, won for her the admiration of all good people, who were persuaded that her esteem alone was enough to give them reputation. If, in this way, she governed people’s minds, she was not less successful by means of her beauty; for although she had suffered from the small-pox since the Regency, and although she had lost somewhat of the perfection of her complexion, the splendour of her charms excited a powerful influence upon those who saw her; and she possessed especially, in the highest degree, what in the Spanish language is expressed by those words, donayre, brio, y bizarrie (gallant air). She had an admirable form, and her person possessed a charm whose power extended over our own sex. It was impossible to see her without loving her, and without desiring to please her.” Some shadows, however, slightly tone down this otherwise brilliant portraiture. “She was then too much engrossed with her own sentiments, which passed for infallible rules while they were not always so, and there was too much affectation in her manner of speaking and acting, whose greatest beauty was attributable to delicacy of thought and correctness of reasoning. She appeared constrained, and the keen raillery exercised by herself and her courtiers often fell upon those who, while rendering her their homage, felt, to their mortification, that honest sincerity, which ought to be observed in polite society, was apparently banished from hers. The virtues and qualities of the most excellent creatures are mingled with things opposed to them: all men partake of this clay from which they derive their origin, and God alone is perfect.... In short it may be said that at this time all greatness, all glory, and all gallantry were concentrated in the family of Bourbon, of which the Prince de CondÉ was the illustrious head, and that fortune was not considered a desirable thing if it did not emanate from their hands.”

But, unhappily, frivolous pastimes, of a nature both innocent and dangerous, now wholly engrossed Madame de Longueville. She was surrounded by all the prosperities and all the felicities of this life. Everything conspired in her favour, or rather against her—the triumphs of mind as well as those of beauty, the continually increasing glory of her paternal house, the intoxication of her vanity, the secret promptings of her heart. The trial was too much for her, and she succumbed to it. In the enchanted circle in which she moved, more than one adorer attracted her attention; and one of them succeeded in winning her affections, according to all appearances, at the close of 1647, or at the commencement of 1648. She was then about twenty-nine.

FranÇois, Prince de Marsillac, without being very handsome, was well formed and very agreeable. As De Retz says, he was not a warrior, although he was a very good soldier. What distinguished him especially was his wit. Of this he possessed an infinite fund, of the finest and most delicate. His conversation was gentle, easy, insinuating; and his manners were at once the most natural and most polished. He had a lofty air. In him vanity supplied the place of ambition. At an early age he showed a fondness for distinction and for intrigues. Profoundly selfish, and having succeeded in acquiring a knowledge of himself, and in reducing to theory his nature, his character, and his tastes, he set out with very contrary appearances, and those chivalrous manners affected by the Importants. One of his first connections, as we have seen, was with Madame de Chevreuse, who secured him to Queen Anne. When the death of Louis XIII. had placed the supreme authority in her hands, he imagined that his fortune was made. He sought successively various important offices which the Queen could not grant, whatever liking she might have entertained for him. Having tried several schemes and failed in all, the Queen applied herself to soothing his disappointments, by behaviour so tender as to retain him, as would now be said, in a moderate opposition, and keep him from taking part in the violence of Beaufort. He was not then covered with the disgrace of the Importants, though he shared it to a certain extent; and he did not cease to be, or seem to be, very much attached, not to the government, but to the person of the Queen. He looked continually for some great favour at her hands. These favours not arriving, he determined to procure through intimidation what his self-seeking fidelity had not been able to secure for him.

It was during this state of his feelings that he met Madame de Longueville, on her return from Munster, surrounded by the most earnest admirers. The Count de Miossens, afterwards Marshal d’Albret—handsome, brave, full of wit and talent, as enterprising in love as in war—was paying her a very zealous court. La Rochefoucauld persuaded Miossens, who was one of his friends, that, after all, if he should overcome the resistance of Madame de Longueville, it would only be a victory flattering to his vanity, whilst that he, La Rochefoucauld, would be able to turn it to a very good account. This was certainly a very convincing and heroic reason for falling in love! We, however, do no more than transfer, with the utmost exactness, a statement made by Rochefoucauld himself, which we will now quote word for word: “So much unprofitable labour and so much weariness, finally gave me other thoughts, and led me to attempt dangerous ways in order to testify my hostility to the Queen and Cardinal Mazarin. The beauty of Madame de Longueville, her wit, and the charms of her person, attached to her all who could hope for her favour. Many men and women of quality strove to please her; and besides all this, Madame de Longueville was then upon such good terms with all her house, and so tenderly beloved by the Duke d’Enghien, her brother, that the esteem and friendship of this prince might be counted upon by any one who enjoyed the favour of his sister. Many persons vainly attempted this game, mingling other sentiments with those of ambition. Miossens, who afterwards became Marshal of France, persisted in it longest, but with similar success. I was one of his intimate friends, and he told me his designs. They soon fell to the ground of themselves. He saw this, and told me several times that he was about to renounce them; but vanity, which was the strongest of his passions, prevented him from telling me the truth, and he professed to entertain hopes which he had not, and which I knew that he could not have. Some time passed in this way; and, finally, I had reason to believe that I could make a more considerable use than Miossens of the friendship and confidence of Madame de Longueville. I made him believe it himself. He knew my position at Court; I told him my views, declaring that my consideration for him would always restrain me, and that I would not attempt to form a connection with Madame de Longueville without his permission. I will even confess that I irritated him against her in order to obtain it, without, however, saying anything untrue. He delivered her over entirely to me, but he repented when he saw the result of that connection.”[45]

When, subdued at length by the passion shown for her by La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville had determined to respond to it, she gave herself up to him wholly—devoting herself in everything to the man whom she dared to love. She made it a point of honour, as doubtless it was a secret happiness, to share his destiny and to follow him without casting one backward glance—sacrificing to him all her private interests, the evident interest of her family, and the strongest sentiment of her soul, her tenderness for her brother CondÉ.

The truthful Madame de Motteville, after noting the principal motive which urged La Rochefoucauld in his pursuit of Madame de Longueville, adds: “In all that she has since done, it is clearly seen that ambition was not the only thing that occupied her soul, and that the interests of the Prince de Marsillac there held a prominent place. For him she became ambitious, for him she ceased to love repose; and in order to show herself alive to this affection, she became too insensible to her own fame.... The declarations of the Prince de Marsillac, as I have already said, had not been displeasing to her; and this nobleman, who was perhaps more selfish than tender, wishing through her to promote his own interests, believed that he should inspire her with a desire of ruling the princes her brothers.”[46]

Such being the sordid motives of her wooer, the oft-repeated lines, therefore, which he wrote with his own hand behind a portrait of the Duchess must be construed with a considerable abatement of their poetic ardour:—

“Pour meriter son coeur, pour plaire À ses beaux yeux,
J’ai fait la guerre aux rois, Je l’aurais faite aux dieux.”[47]

Such a dissembler then was the coldly ambitious, egotistical, clever Duke de la Rochefoucauld—a man capable of sacrificing everybody to his own interests. Madame de Longueville, such as we have depicted her, could not help being the instrument of a man of like character. M. Cousin seems to have arrived at that conclusion, since, in designating that princess as the soul of the Fronde, he acknowledges “that she troubled the state and her own family by an extravagant passion for one of the chiefs of the Importants, become one of the chiefs of the Fronde.” But M. Cousin is very nearly silent touching the Prince de Conti, of whom the Duchess was the sole motive-power on all occasions, and he merely says that this young prince submitted to be led by his sister in order to stand upon an equal footing with his elder brother whilst waiting for a cardinal’s hat.

Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, born in 1629, was eighteen years of age in 1647. He had good intellect and a not unpleasant countenance; but a slight deformity and a certain feebleness of constitution rendering him unfit for the army, he was early destined for the church. He had studied among the Jesuits at the college of Clermont with MoliÈre, and his father had obtained for him the richest benefices, and demanded a cardinal’s hat. While waiting for this hat dignity, Armand de Bourbon was living at the HÔtel de CondÉ, partly an ecclesiastic, partly a man of the world, passing his days with wits and men of fashion, and greedy of every species of success. The glory of his brother filled him with emulation, and he dreamed himself of warlike exploits. When his sister returned from Germany, he went to meet her, and, dazzled by her beauty, her grace, and her fame, he began to love her rather as a gallant than as a brother. He followed her blindly in all her adventures, in which he exhibited as much courage as volatility. When he had made his peace with the Court—thanks to his marriage with a niece of Mazarin, the beautiful and virtuous Anne-Marie Martinozzi—he obtained the command-in-chiefship of the army of Catalonia, in which capacity he acquitted himself with great honour. He was much less successful in Italy. On the whole, he was far from injuring his name, and he gave to France, in the person of his young son, a true warrior, one of the best pupils of CondÉ, one of the last eminent generals of the seventeenth century. Constrained, through ill-health, to betake himself again to religion, the Prince de Conti finished, where he had begun, with theology. He composed several meritorious and learned works on various religious subjects.

In 1647, he was entirely devoted to vanity and pleasure. He adored his sister, and she exercised over him a somewhat ridiculous empire, which continued during several years.