User:Linda.floren/sandbox/Secret history of the French court/Chapter I
OR,
SECRET HISTORY OF THE FRENCH COURT UNDER
RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN.
Madame de Chevreuse and Richelieu
CHAPTER I.
Character and personal appearance of Madame de Chevreuse-Her birth and her first and second marriages-Intimate friendship with Anne of Austria-Count Holland-Prince de Chalais-First Exile-Charles IV. Duke of Lorraine-Return to France-Richelieu and Châteauneuf-Madame de Chevreuse banished again to Touraine-Affairs of 1637-Second Exile; flight to Spain.
IF our readers are not wearied with our portraits of the women of the seventeenth century, we should be glad to present to them two new figures equally, though differently remarkable - two persons whom the caprice of Fate cast in the same age, the same party, amidst the same events, but who far from resembling each other, expressed, as we may say, the two opposite sides of the character, and the destiny of woman — both endowed with resplendent beauty, marvellous talent, and indomitable courage; yet the one as pure as beautiful, uniting in herself grace and dignity, everywhere inspiring love and commanding respect, at one time the idol and the favorite of a king without even the shadow of an injurious suspicion daring to raise itself against her, proud, even to haughtiness, towards the prosperous and powerful, gentle and
compassionate to the oppressed and miserable, loving greatness, placing naught but virtue above position, mingling together the sparkling wit of a precieuse, the fastidiousness of a fashionable beauty, the intrepidity of a heroine, the dignity of a high-born lady, above all a Christian without bigotry, yet devout, and even austere, leaving behind her an odor of sanctity;[1] the other, perhaps more fascinating, of an irresistible grace and vivacity, full of talent, yet very ignorant, sharing in all the perils of the Catholic party, but scarcely thinking of religion, too proud to condescend to prudence, and curbed only by honor, devoted to gallantry, and counting all else as nothing, despising for the one whom she loved, danger, opinion and fortune, more restless than ambitious, and willingly staking her own life, as well as that of others; and after having passed her youth in intrigues of every sort, thwarting more than one plot, leaving on her path more than one victim, travelling over Europe as an exile, yet a conqueror, turning the heads of kings,-after having seen Chalais mount the scaffold, Chateauneuf expelled from the ministry, the Duke of Lorraine almost despoiled of his estates, Buckingham assassinated, the King of Spain engaged in an unsuccessful war, Queen Anne humiliated and vanquished, and Richelieu triumphant; sustaining the struggle to the end, always ready in this game of politics which had become her necessity and her passion, to descend to the darkest intrigues, and to make the rashest resolves; of an incomparable eye for recognizing the true position of affairs, and the enemy of the moment, and of a mind strong enough, and a heart bold enough to undertake to destroy him at any cost; a devoted friend, an implacable enemy almost without knowing hatred, in short, the most redoubtable
enemy encountered in turn by Richelieu and by Mazarin. The reader will easily divine that we speak of Madame de Hautefort and of Madame de Chevreuse.
Need we add that we do not intend to trace here fancy portraits, and that if we sometimes seem to recount romantic adventures, it is in conformity with all the rigor of the laws of history. These sketches, though fanciful in appearance, are worthy of the fullest confidence, and will soon be acknowledged as resting upon the testimony of approved cotemporary witnesses, or upon authentic documents as reliable as new, which will bear the scrutiny of the most exacting critic.
We commence with Madame de Chevreuse. She dates further back in the seventeenth century than does Madame de Hautefort--she at least precedes if she does not excel her. It must also be said that she filled a more lofty station, and played a more conspicuous part, and that her name belongs as much to the history of the politics as of the society of her age.
Madame de Chevreuse in truth[2] possessed almost all the qualities of a great politician, a single one was wanting, and it was the one precisely without which all the others ran to waste -- she did not know how to propose to herself a just aim, or rather she never chose one for herself; it was another that chose for her. Madame de Chevreuse was a woman in the fullest sense -- in this was her strength, and also her weakness. Her first impulse was love, or rather gallantry, and the interests of the one whom she loved became her chief aim. Here lies the solution of the prodigies of sagacity, adroitness and energy which she displayed in vain in the pursuit of a chimera, which
constantly receded from her grasp, while it seemed to lure her on by the very prestige of difficulty and danger. Rochefoucauld accuses her of having brought misfortune on all whom she loved;[3] it is also just to say that all who loved her precipitated her in turn into their own mad enterprises. It was not she, apparently, who made of Buckingham a sort of Paladin without genius, of Charles IV. a brilliant adventurer, of Chalais a madman insane enough to pledge himself against Richelieu on the faith of the Duke of Orleans, and of Châteauneuf a restless second-rate aspirant, without being capable of attaining to be first. One must not believe that he knows Madame de Chevreuse when he has read the celebrated portrait which Retz has drawn of her, for this is exaggerated and overdrawn like all those of Retz, and was designed solely to gratify the malignant curiosity of Madame de Caumartin -- without being really false, it is severe almost to injustice. Did it belong, indeed, to the restless and intemperate accomplice to become the pitiless censor of a woman in whose errors he had shared? Was he not also as much deceived as she, and for a much longer time? Did he show in the combat more address and courage, and in the defeat, more intrepidity and constancy? But Madame de Chevreuse has written us no memoirs in the easy and piquant style in which she retrieved her fortunes at the expense of the world. For our own part, we recognize two judges of her whose testimony cannot be regarded with suspicion -- Richelieu and Mazarin. Richelieu did his best to gain her, and failing to succeed, treated her as an enemy worthy of himself; he exiled her repeatedly, and even after his death, when the gates of France were opened to all the outlaws, his implacable resentment -- surviving him in the mind of the dying Louis XIII., closed them still upon her Read the carnets (note-books) and the confidential letters of
Mazarin attentively, and you will detect there the deep and continual anxiety which she caused him in 1643. Later, during the Fronde, he is found to be reconciled to her, and following her counsels, as judicious as they are bold. Finally, in 1660, when Mazarin, victorious everywhere, adds the treaty of the Pyrenees to that of Westphalia, and when Don Luis de Haro congratulates him on the repose which he is about to taste after so many storms, the cardinal replies, that one never can promise himself repose in France, and that even the women there are greatly to be feared. "You Spaniards may well speak of your ease, " said he; " your women trouble themselves about nothing but love; but it is not so in France; we have three there now who would be quite capable of governing or of overthrowing three great kingdoms -- the Duchess de Longueville, the Princess Palatine and Madame de Chevreuse."[4]
But first a word of the beauty of Madame de Chevreuse, for this beauty had a great share in her destiny. All her cotemporaries unite in celebrating it. A portrait nearly of life-size, which is in the possession of the Duke de Luynes, and which he has courteously shown to us,[5] gives her an enchanting figure, a charming face, large blue eyes, fine and luxuriant chestnut-hair, a beautiful bust, and a piquant mingling of refinement and vivacity, grace and passion in her whole person. This indeed was the character of the beauty of Madame de Chevreuse; we find it again in the excellent engraving of Daret,[6] which Harding has republished in England,
- ↑ The author alludes here to his life of Madame de Hautefort, which followed that of Madame de Chevreuse. Each biography, however, is complete in itself; this being the only allusion in the present volume to the subsequent memoir of Madame de Hautefort.-Translator's Note.
- ↑ Madame de Motteville, vol. i., Amsterdam edition of 1750, page 198:--" I heard her say to herself one day when I was complimenting her on having taken part in all the great events of Europe, that ambition had never touched her heart, but that affection had guided it, that is, that she had interested herself in the affairs of the world solely through sympathy with those whom she had loved." The passages of Retz, which we shall quote presently, may be reduced to the same interpretation.
- ↑ Memoirs of Madame de Motteville, Coll. Petitot, second series, vol. ii., p. 339.
- ↑ Vie de Madame de Longueville, by Villefore, edition of 1739, second part, p. 33. Madame de Motteville, vol. i., Ibid: -- "I have heard him say to those who were well acquainted with him, that no one had ever understood the interests of princes so well, or talked so well about them, and I have even heard him praise her capacity."
- ↑ This portrait is not an original, but a very ancient copy.
- ↑ See the collection in quarto of Daret, dedicated to Madame de Chevreuse herself. There is another engraved portrait of Madame de Chevrense, which is very rare, in the collection of Leblond, in folio.