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."[1]
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,[2] 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,[3] which Harding has republished in England,
- ↑ 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 Chevreuse, which is very rare, in the collection of Leblond, in folio.
