POLITICAL AND GALLANT INTRIGUES—THE DUCHESS DE CHÂTILLON’S SWAY OVER CONDÉ—SHAMEFUL CONSPIRACY AGAINST MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE.

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

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

We have already cursorily mentioned the Duchess de ChÂtillon: it is now indispensable, in order to thoroughly understand what is about to follow, to know something more of that celebrated personage.

Isabella Angelique de Montmorency was one of the two daughters of that brave and unfortunate Count de Montmorency Bouteville, who, the victim of a false point of honour and of an outrageous passion for duelling, was decapitated on the Place de GrÈve, on the 21st of June, 1627. She was sister of FranÇois de Montmorency, Count de Bouteville, better known as the illustrious Marshal de Luxembourg. Born in 1626, she had been married in 1645 to the last of the Colignys, the Duke de ChÂtillon, one of the heroes of Lens, killed in the action of Charenton in 1649. Left a widow at twenty-three, her rare loveliness won for her a thousand adorers. She was one of the queens of politics and gallantry during the Fronde; and even, after manifold amours, at thirty-eight could boast of captivating the Duke de Mecklenbourg, who espoused her in 1664. To beauty, Madame de ChÂtillon added great intelligence, but an intelligence wholly devoted to intrigue. She was vain and ambitious, and at the same time profoundly selfish, moderately scrupulous, and somewhat of the school of Madame de Montbazon. While both were young, she had smitten CondÉ; but he had thought no more of her after becoming absorbed with his love for Mademoiselle de Vigean. After that elevated passion, so sorrowfully terminated,[84] and after the fugitive emotion with which the lovely and virtuous Mademoiselle de Toussy could still inspire him, CondÉ stifled his chevalaresque instincts and bade adieu to the haute galanterie of his youth and of the HÔtel de Rambouillet. A few insignificant and commonplace attachments, of which no record has survived, alone excepted, Madame de ChÂtillon only is known to have captivated his heart for the last time; and that liaison exercised upon CondÉ and his affairs, at the epoch at which we have arrived, an influence sufficiently great for history to occupy itself therewith, if it would not be content with retracing consequences and as it were the outline of events which pass across the stage of the world without being understood, without penetrating to the true causes which are to be discovered in the characters and passions of mankind. And, of all passions, there is none at once more energetic and wide-grasping than love. It occupies an immense place in human life, and in the loftiest as well as the lowliest conditions. In our own times, we have seen it make and mar kings. In an earlier epoch, by detaining Antony too long in Cleopatra’s arms at Alexandria, the formidable tempest gathered above his head which nearly overwhelmed him at Munda. It played a great part in the war which Henry IV. was about to undertake, when a sudden death arrested him. One can scarcely resist a smile on seeing historians for the most part taking no account of it, as a thing too frivolous, and consigning it altogether to private life, as though that which agitates the soul so powerfully were not the principle of that which blazes forth exteriorly! No, the empire of beauty knows no limitation, and in no instance did it show itself more potent than over those great hearts of which Alexander the Great, CÆsar, Charlemagne, and Henry IV. of France were the owners. We may well place CondÉ amongst such illustrious company.

One graceful memento of Madame de ChÂtillon’s power over CondÉ has descended to our own day. At ChÂtillon-sur-Loing, in what remains of the ancient chÂteau of the Colignys, which Isabelle de Montmorency derived from her husband and left to her brother, in that salon of the noble heir of the Luxembourgs, as precious for history as for art, wherein may be seen collected together, by the side of the sword of the Constable Anne, the likeness of Luxembourg on horseback, with his proud and piercing glance, as well as the full-length portrait of Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, Princess de CondÉ, in widow’s weeds, there is also a large and magnificent picture, representing a young woman of ravishing beauty, with perfectly regular features, with the loveliest bright chestnut hair, grey eyes of the softest expression, a swan-like neck, of a slight and graceful figure, painted with a natural grandeur, and embellished with all the attractions of youth, enhanced by an exquisite air of coquetry. She is seated in an easy attitude. One of her hands, carelessly extended, holds a bouquet of flowers; the other rests upon the mane of a lion, whose head is drawn full-face, and whose flaming eyes are unmistakably the terrible eyes of CondÉ when seen with his sword drawn. Here we behold the beautiful Duchess de ChÂtillon at twenty-five or twenty-six, and very nearly such as she has taken care to describe herself in the Divers Portraits of Mademoiselle de Montpensier. The head stands out wonderfully. It would be impossible to instance a more charming countenance, but it is somewhat deficient in character and grandeur, and quite different from that of Madame de Longueville. The latter’s face was not so regularly symmetrical, but it wore a far loftier expression, and an air of supreme distinction characterised her entire person.

Madame de ChÂtillon and Madame de Longueville had been brought up together, and very much attached during the whole of their early youth. By degrees there sprung up a rivalry of beauty between them, and they quarrelled thoroughly when Madame de Longueville perceived after the death of ChÂtillon, that the young and beautiful widow, at the same time that she was welcoming very decidedly the homage of the Duke de Nemours, had also evident designs upon CondÉ. Madame de Longueville had her own reasons for not being then very severe upon others, but she knew the self-seeking heart of the fair Duchess, and she was alarmed for her brother’s sake. She feared lest Madame de ChÂtillon, having great need of Court favour, might retain CondÉ in the engagements which he had with Mazarin, while she herself was forced to drag him into the Fronde. The quarrel was renewed in 1651, as we have seen, and it was in full force in 1652. Madame de ChÂtillon and Madame de Longueville were then disputing for CondÉ’s heart: the one drew him towards the Court, fully hoping that the Court would not be ungrateful to her; the other urged him more and more upon the path of war. We have related how Madame de Longueville, well knowing the strength of CondÉ’s friendship for the Duke de Nemours, who was in the chains of the Duchess, very inopportunely mingled politics and coquetry in Berri, and tried the power of her charms upon Nemours, in order to carry him off from Madame de ChÂtillon and from the party of peace. No one ever knew how far Madame de Longueville committed herself on that occasion; but, as we have remarked, the slightest appearance was enough for La Rochefoucauld. As he had only sought his own advantage in the Fronde, not finding it therein, he began to grow tired, and asked for nothing better than to put an end to the wandering and adventurous life he had been for some years leading by a favourable reconciliation. Madame de Longueville’s conduct in cutting him to the quick in what remained of his tender feelings for her, and especially in the most sensitive portion of his heart—its vanity and self-love—gave him an opportunity or a pretext, which he seized upon with eagerness, to break off a liaison become contrary to his interests. Thus, in April, 1652, when he returned to Paris with CondÉ, and there found Madame de ChÂtillon, he entered at once into all her prejudices and all her designs, as he afterwards owned to Madame de Motteville:[85] he placed at her service all that was in him of skill and ability, and descended to the indulgence of a revenge against Madame de Longueville wholly unworthy of an honourable man, and which after the lapse of two centuries is as revolting to every right-minded person as it was to his contemporaries.

Madame de ChÂtillon was not contented with carrying off the giddy and inconstant Duke de Nemours from his new love, then absent; she exacted at his hands the public and outrageous sacrifice of her rival. The reprisals of feminine vanity did not stop there: the ambitious and intriguing Duchess went further, she undertook to ruin Madame de Longueville in her brother’s estimation. With that object she set herself, with the assistance of La Rochefoucauld, to decry her in every way to him, and sought even to persuade him that his sister was not attached to him as she made it appear, and that she had promised the Duke de Nemours to serve him at his expense; whilst Madame de Longueville had never dreamed in any way of separating Nemours from CondÉ, but only from her, Madame de ChÂtillon, purposely to engage him more deeply in CondÉ’s interests, in the light that she understood them.

Madame de Longueville’s policy was very simple, and it was the true one, the Fronde once admitted. Assuredly, it would have been better alike for Madame de Longueville, for CondÉ, and for France not to have entered upon that fatal path by which the national greatness was for ten years arrested, and through which the house of CondÉ very nearly perished; but, after having embraced that sinister step, no other alternative remained to a firm and logical mind than to resolutely pursue its triumph. And that triumph, in Madame de Longueville’s eyes, was the overthrow of Mazarin, a necessary condition of the domination of CondÉ. Such was the end pointed out to her by La Rochefoucauld when engaging her in the Fronde at the beginning of 1648, and she had never lost sight of it. It was to attain it that she had flung herself into the Civil War, and that she had ended by dragging therein her brother; that, worsted at Paris in 1649, she had striven in 1650 to raise Normandy; that she had risked her life, braved exile, made alliance with a foreign enemy, and unfurled at Stenay the banner of the Princes. In 1651, she had advised the resumption of arms, and now she maintained the impossibility of laying them down, and that, instead of losing himself in useless negotiations with the subtle and skilful Cardinal, it was upon his sword alone that CondÉ should rely. She thought him incapable of extricating himself advantageously from the intrigues by which he was surrounded, and therefore urged him towards the field of battle. She had always exercised a great sway over him, because he knew that her heart was of like temper to his own; and if passion had not blinded him, he would have rejected with disdain the odious accusations they had dared to raise against her, as he had done in 1643, in the affair of the letters attributed to her by Madame de Montbazon: he would have easily recognised that Madame de ChÂtillon, Nemours, and La Rochefoucauld would not have joined to blacken her in his eyes, as a vulgar creature ever ready to betray him for the latest lover, save in the manifest design of embroiling them both, of securing him, and of making him subserve their particular views. Nemours alone knew what had taken place during that journey from Montrond to Bordeaux, and the man who is base enough to constitute himself the denouncer of a woman to whom he has paid the warmest homage, is not very worthy of being believed on his word. Besides Nemours has not himself spoken, but Madame de ChÂtillon and Rochefoucauld, who have attributed to him certain sentiments, and we know with what motive.

It would be difficult to imagine a conspiracy more disgraceful than that formed at this juncture against Madame de Longueville; and that feature in it the more shameful perhaps was that La Rochefoucauld himself boasts of having invented and worked this machinery, as he terms it. The three conspirators were dumb, but through different but equally despicable reasons. Madame de ChÂtillon desired singly to govern CondÉ, and alone to represent him at Court, in order to reap the profits of the negotiation. Nemours was desirous of pleasing Madame de ChÂtillon, and looked forward also to have his share in the great advantages promised him; and, lastly, La Rochefoucauld was actuated by a pitiless spirit of revenge, and in the hope of a reconciliation necessary to his own immediate fortunes.

But here arose a delicate point, if we may speak of delicacy in such a matter: in the whole cabal, the least odious was, after all, the Duke de Nemours, more frivolous than perfidious, and who was deeply smitten with Madame de ChÂtillon. He loved her, and was beloved. The return of the Prince de CondÉ, with his well-declared pretensions, caused him cruel suffering, and his rage threatened to upset the well-concerted scheme. The lovely lady herself could not sometimes help being embarrassed between an imperious prince and a jealous lover. Happily the future author of the Maxims was at hand. La Rochefoucauld took upon himself to arrange everything in the best way possible. It was not very difficult for him to direct Madame de ChÂtillon how to manage CondÉ and Nemours both at once, and to contrive in such a way that she might secure them both. He made the moody Nemours comprehend that, in truth, he had no reason to complain of an inevitable liaison, “qui ne lui devoit pas Être suspecte, puisqu’on voulait lui en rendre compte, et ne s’en servir que pour lui donner la principale part aux affaires.” At the same time, “he urged M. le Prince to occupy himself with Madame de ChÂtillon, and to give her in freehold the estate of Merlon.” In such a fashion, thanks to the honest intervention of La Rochefoucauld, a good understanding was kept up, and the conspiracy went quietly forwards. CondÉ had no mistrust whatever. A veil had been cast over his eyes; his martial disposition lulled asleep in the lap of pleasure and in a labyrinth of negotiations, and cradled in the hope of an approaching peace.