The youth of Madame de Longueville, or new revelations of court and convent in the seventeenth century

We have passed over the most truly beautiful period of the youth of Madame de Longueville, that wherein the splendor of her success was not 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 combated wants of her heart. The love which she inspired in others, she is, in turn, about to feel herself, and to engage her, at the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine years, in a fatal connection, which will make her forget all her duties, and turn her most brilliant qualities against herself, against her family, and against France.

In order to measure the fault of Madame de Longueville, it is necessary to know to what grandeur the house of Condé had reached by its faithful service of king and country.

In the history of France, there are no more glorious years than the first six of the Regency of Anne of Austria and of the government of Mazarin,—tranquil at home after the defeat of the party of the Importants, triumphant upon every battle-field, from 1643 to 1649, from the victory of Rocroy to that of Lens, connected by so many other victories, and crowned by the treaty of Westphalia. It is the house of Condé which occupies nearly the whole of this memorable epoch, or therein, at least, plays the most conspicuous part. In the council, M. the Prince seconds Mazarin, as he had done Richelieu, and shares with him the government. The intrepid Brézé, opening the list of the great admirals of the seventeenth century, holds in check or disperses, in the Mediterranean, the fleets of Spain. M. de Longueville, charged with the greatest embassy of the times, places in the diplomatic balance the weight of his name, of his moderation, and of his magnificence. As to the young Condé,—who has not read, at least in Bossuet, his campaigns in Flanders and upon the Rhine? We have shown how valuable to France was the victory of Rocroy, in 1643; those which followed were not less necessary.

We have for some time been permitted to speak of Condé as of a young hero, who owed all his success to the ascendency of an irresistible courage. Let us beware of making him a paladin of the middle age, or a brilliant grenadier like such or such a marshal of the empire, or a captain of the family of Alexander, of Cæsar, and of Napoleon. Like them, Condé had doubtless a genius for war, and, as well as Alexander, he excelled especially in execution, and fearlessly exposed his person; but it seems that the splendor of his bravery had concealed the grandeur and originality of his conceptions, as his extreme youth, at Rocroy, had caused a forgetfulness of the fact that for many years he had studied war with passion, and had already made three campaigns under the most renowned masters. If this were the proper place, and if I dared to encounter ridicule by setting myself up as a military man, I would like to compare the campaigns of Condé, in Flanders and upon the Rhine, with those of General Bonaparte in Italy. They have many things in common: the youth of the two generals,⁠[272] that of their principal lieutenants, the political grandeur of the results, the novelty of the manœuvres, the same strategy, the same calculations served by the same audacity, by the same activity, by the same obstinacy. It is degrading the art of war to measure military success by the number of combatants, for we should thus make Tamerlane and Gengis-Khan the two greatest captains of the world.

The general of the army of Italy, like Condé, had little more than twenty or twenty-five thousand men drawn up in his greatest battles.⁠[273] I can say to the honor of Condé, that he always had before him the best troops and the best generals of his times, among others, Mercy, the first captain of Germany during the seventeenth century.⁠[274] At one time he had under his command only an army composed of different nations, whose jealousies, and even defections, betrayed his greatest designs. At another time he was at the head of fatigued and discouraged troops, whose whole strength was in himself alone. And then—which is, in my eyes, the most certain evidence of a great man—he founded an immense school: he left to France many great generals formed by his lessons, prepared by his hands, and who, at a great distance from him and after him, gained victories. To him are we, in a great measure, indebted for Turenne, who, by seeing his actions at Fribourg and at Nortlingen, added more and more activity and audacity to his other qualities. We are indebted to him for Luxembourg and Conti. We are also indebted to him for many others, who might perhaps have equalled those already mentioned, but whose bright hopes were too suddenly extinguished, Gèvres, Laval, La Moussaye, Châtillon. To all this add that magnanimity of a high-born man, who, instead of attributing the honor of success to himself alone, shared it with all those who served him well, and took pleasure in praising Gassion and Sirot after the victory of Rocroy, Turenne after Fribourg and Nortlingen, and Châtillon after Lens.⁠[275]

Condé conquered at Rocroy by the very simple manœuvre which we have pointed out.⁠[276] The problem was, to arrive in the shortest time and with the greatest force upon the point which was to decide the day. It was evident that, the left wing of the enemy being dispersed, but his right wing victorious and threatening to crush all in its way, it was necessary, at every hazard, to arrest and destroy it. To reach this in the speediest manner possible, from the height of the battle-field where Condé was, the most direct road was to make a passage through the Spanish army, by forcing his last line, and falling afterwards like a thunderbolt upon the rear of his triumphing wing. If the infantry, whose overthrow was sought, had been that of the Count de Fontaine, it would have remained firm, checked Condé, and achieved his destruction; but he knew that this infantry was a mixture of Italians, Walloons, and Germans: he hoped, therefore, to succeed by dint of energy. For this reason he led the charge himself, and performed prodigies of valor with the most severe calculation. Afterwards, when he was complimented on his courage, he replied that he had never shown any except when it was necessary. It is true that heroes alone have audacity at will. He conducted himself almost in the same manner during the following year, 1644, in his great combats with Mercy, near Fribourg. Finding it impossible to separate any of the divisions of the imperial army, which were protected by formidable intrenchments, he attacked them himself with that French fury to which every thing yields;⁠[277] at the same time he sent Turenne, during the night, to a great distance, through frightful gorges, as did Bonaparte in the marshes of Arcola,⁠[278] to take in flank and rear the hostile army, which would have been destroyed, if Mercy, warned in season and confounded by such a manœuvre, had not hastily escaped. In the second battle of Fribourg, Condé renewed this same manœuvre, sending Turenne to a still greater distance than before, in order to cut off all retreat for Mercy, whilst he attacked him in front, and to crush him in his camp or force him to capitulate. The vigilant Mercy escaped a second time; but his retreat, admirable as it was, resembled no less a defeat, for he lost not only the honor of his arms and of the field of battle, but all of his artillery and a part of his troops.

In 1645, Mercy and Condé met again. Mercy had just fought with Turenne at Mariendal. This victory had inflated the courage of the Imperialists, and the emperor and the King of Bavaria were unwilling to make peace. Condé, in again taking command of a defeated army, found it, as in the preceding year, composed of 5000 Weimarians, survivors of the battle of Mariendal, 4000 Swedes, 6000 Hessians, and 8000 Frenchmen, which he had with him. With these 23,000 he conceived the plan of the campaign which was afterwards partly executed by Moreau and completed by Napoleon. He resolved to risk a great battle with Mercy, and after having routed him, to march upon Munich and Vienna, and to dictate peace to the emperor in his capital. This plan failed because Condé was at the head of a combined army; because the Swedes and the Hessians refused to follow the French general to such a distance, and because the Swedes even withdrew. Condé could not expect any aid from France, which was exhausted in order to send five armies into Spain, into Italy, into Lorraine, into Flanders, and upon the Rhine. He abandoned therefore his greatest military conception with sorrow and rage, as did Hannibal when he was compelled to quit Italy: it was his wish to exterminate the army of Mercy. The latter, who knew the man with whom he had to deal, had taken a position quite as strong as that of Fribourg—a position which protected him against the favorite manœuvres of Condé—to cut off the enemy or surprise him at a distance in flank or rear. Turenne declared that to attack an enemy thus intrenched was ruinous; and Napoleon, whom no one will accuse of timidity, was of the same opinion.⁠[279] Condé replied as a politician rather than as a military man, that it was in vain to undertake by any manœuvre to drive Mercy from a position wisely chosen; that it was necessary, therefore, either to attack him or to retreat, and that to retreat would shake the confidence of all our allies, after the defeat of Mariendal and the defection of the Swedes. France was in need of a victory. Condé gained that of Nortlingen, but he gained it, thanks to two accidents upon which he had no right to count—thanks also to the inspiration of a great character. It must be confessed that in execution Condé was never greater. He saw at once that every thing depended upon Mercy’s centre. He made it his own business to attack it. He had one horse slain under him, two wounded, and twenty cuts upon his arms and clothes. Marsin, who under him commanded the French centre, was dangerously wounded, and the intrepid La Moussaye was disabled. The French and the Imperialists, by turns conquerors and conquered, performed prodigies of valor. It was a frightful butchery. Mercy perished in it. In the mean time, Jean de Wert, who commanded the left wing, descended from the height which he occupied, crushed the right wing of the French, and dispersed our reserve, notwithstanding the efforts of his two chiefs, Chabot and Arnauld.⁠[280] It would have been fatal to the whole army, if, instead of amusing himself with pursuing the flying and pillaging the baggage, Jean de Wert had thrown himself upon the rear of our half-destroyed centre, and pressed our left wing between his victorious squadrons and the still entire division of General Gleen. This error, and the death of Mercy, saved Condé, because he knew how to profit by them with incomparable promptitude. He saw that, after having lost his right wing, his reserve, and a great part of his centre, to try to retreat with his left wing was an operation apparently prudent, but really rash, before an enemy which had still great masses of infantry, much artillery, and a redoubtable cavalry; he saw that it was better to maintain the combat, and that by exposing himself to peril, he might possibly conquer. This rapid glance of a strong mind, which seizes and embraces the only means of safety, however perilous it may be, is the characteristic of the genius of Condé. All wounded as he was, harassed with fatigue, but drawing new vigor from the grandeur of his resolution, he places himself at the head of the left wing of Turenne, dashes, as if in the very beginning of the battle, upon the right wing of the enemy, plunges into its midst, and makes prisoner of its commander; then, turning to the right, he throws himself upon the centre of the Imperialists, rescues his own, rallies it, leads it anew to the combat, and, master of the battle-field, prepares himself to meet Jean de Wert, who, returning from his useless pursuit, learning the death of Mercy⁠[281] and the capture of Gleen, amazed at the disaster produced by his absence, dares neither to attack nor to await Condé, but gathers together his shattered army, and flies to Donauwerth. Condé had, in this second combat, another horse killed under him; he also received a pistol-shot, and indeed barely survived his victory. It was at this time that he suffered from that severe sickness, on recovery from which he found that he had lost with his blood and his strength all his passion for Mademoiselle Du Vigean.⁠[282]

Condé is one of the small number of captains who have no less excelled in the art of besieging than in that of combating.⁠[283] After Rocroy, in 1643, he took Thionville, one of the first fortified places of the times. In 1644, he took Philipsbourg, which commanded the upper Rhine. In 1646, having had the wisdom to consent to serve under the Duke d’Orleans, in order to quiet the distrust and please the vanity of this prince; and although placed in command of the army only at the close of the campaign, he terminated it by a memorable siege, in which he covered himself with glory: he took Dunkirk on the 11th of October,⁠[284] 1646.

Accustomed to repair the errors of others, Condé went, in 1647, to take the place of Count d’Harcourt, who had just made a failure before Lerida. Mazarin had wished, several times, to send Condé to Catalonia; his father, M. the Prince, had always opposed it, and all his friends dissuaded him from accepting this command. He certainly showed great deference for Mazarin, by quitting the ordinary theatre of his exploits for a country where it was necessary to engage in a petty war, with an army incapable of giving battle, and, at most, fit only to sustain itself before the enemy. When every one was making sport of the Count d’Harcourt, who had been unable to take Lerida, Condé had the good sense and generosity to defend this excellent general: he thus in advance defended himself. In fact, having arrived in his turn before Lerida, and receiving from France neither the troops which had been promised to him, nor the munitions and artillery, of which he was in absolute need, and not having sufficient force to meet the Spanish army, and not being able to think of assaulting Lerida with a handful of half-dead soldiers, he had the courage to raise the siege and to make a good retreat, preferring the safety of the army to his own reputation. This conduct, sustained by his accustomed hauteur, did him the greatest honor, and proved that he was master of himself and knew how to employ by turns prudence or audacity according as circumstances demanded.

Thus, at Lens in 1648, finding the Archduke Léopold in a position as formidable as that of Mercy at Nortlingen, he saw that it would be highly imprudent to tempt fortune a second time; and, knowing that he had not now to deal with Mercy, he undertook to draw the Archduke Léopold and General Beck upon more favorable ground, in a plain where the principal force of the French army, the gendarmery, commanded by Châtillon, might have a great advantage. Numbers, abundance, and discipline were on the side of the Spaniards; misery and audacity on that of the French. Behind the centre of the archduke were towns and hamlets, forming natural intrenchments. His right, composed of all that remained of the old national bands, rested upon the city of Lens. His left wing was posted upon an eminence, which could not be reached except through the most narrow paths. It was necessary to manœuvre with infinite art to induce an enemy to abandon such an impregnable position. Condé commanded a false retreat, which explained perfectly the weakness of the French army. Beck, deceived, detached the Lorraine cavalry to disturb, and, if possible, to cut in pieces our rear guard, which was promptly enough broken and thrown into confusion. Châtillon marched to their aid with his gendarmery; he drove back the Lorraine troops, and threatened them with slaughter. They could not be abandoned. The archduke sent all his cavalry to their assistance. The combat began; the whole of the hostile army moved and descended into the plain. This was precisely what Condé desired. The very same manœuvre that had failed at Nortlingen, succeeded at Lens. The imperial army had still the immense disadvantage of being obliged to form as it advanced, while the French army had been since morning arranged in good order at the extremity of the plain, upon well-chosen ground. Condé relied especially upon the gendarmery of Châtillon; he had recalled it soon after the first engagement, and had placed it in the second line to give it time to refresh; afterwards, when the two contending bodies had become closely engaged, he let it loose again with its intrepid general, and, after being so useful at the beginning of the fight, it finally decided it by over-throwing every thing in its way. The Spanish infantry remained; it did not show the same obstinacy as at Rocroy, but it cried for life. Old General Beck conducted himself like Fontaine and Mercy: he fought like a lion, was wounded and taken, and he died of despair. The Archduke Léopold, after conducting himself well, escaped into the Pays-Bas with the Count de Fuensaldaigne.

The victory of Lens was as important and as useful as that of Rocroy: to it is due the recommencement of the negotiations of Munster and the conclusion of the treaty of Westphalia. This treaty was the result of the five great campaigns of Condé in Flanders and on the Rhine. Condé was there an armed negotiator, as we might say; M. de Longueville was, at Munster, a pacific negotiator.

Father Bougeant, in his estimable history of the treaty of Westphalia,⁠[285] supposes that Mazarin sent the Duke de Longueville to Munster, “in order to remove from the court a prince capable of exciting troubles in it.” But, in 1645, Mazarin had no more troubles to fear, and the Duke de Longueville was not a man to create them: he suffered himself to be guided at that time, as well as the rest of his family, by the policy of its chief, M. the Prince. It is much easier to believe that it was the latter who gave the embassy of Munster to his son-in-law. Mazarin had not chosen him for his capacity, although he was not deficient in it, but to aid d’Avaux and Servien, who stood in need of him, and to give éclat to the French legation. He remained master of the negotiations, and the Condés must have been flattered to be at the head of the most important diplomatic affair, having already command of the fleet in the Mediterranean, and of the army upon the Rhine.

M. de Longueville had to pursue the great object at which the French cabinet had aimed from the time of Henry IV.,—the enfeebling of the empire to the advantage of France. With this view it was that the very Christian king, the Cardinal Richelieu, and the Cardinal Mazarin united with the Protestant Gustavus Adolphus, drew him into the heart of Germany, him and after him his lieutenants, and sustained Protestant Holland against Catholic Spain. This struggle, which, for thirty years, was carried on with so much éclat, continued for more than twelve years at Osnabrück and at Munster. On the one side were Austria, Spain, and Bavaria, with the ecclesiastical electors of Mayence and of Cologne; on the other, the Protestant powers, Brandenburg, Saxony, Hesse, with their allies, Holland, Sweden, and France. The Protestant party wished to obtain the greatest concessions, and the Catholic party to make the fewest possible. They advanced and receded according to the vicissitudes of war. Richelieu had designated the man, who had all his confidence, Mazarin and the Count d’Avaux, of the powerful family of Messne, to represent France at Munster. When Mazarin succeeded Richelieu in the ministry, he named in his own place Count Abel Servien, uncle of the skilful and judicious Lyonne, who was to him what he had himself been to Richelieu. He retained d’Avaux, who had wit and penetration, uprightness and nobleness, with a degree of piety which made him acceptable to the Catholic powers, but which carried him a little too far to make him accommodating with them, and at the same time more anxious for the advantage of the Church than policy demanded. Servien alone was the depository of the thoughts of Mazarin, and Mazarin, like his predecessor, knew but one interest, that of the greatness of France. He was desirous of obtaining from the empire the whole of Alsace, with some strongholds upon the Rhine, in order to complete the legitimate development of France in that quarter. He had still another ambition, which Richelieu had bequeathed to him, and which he bequeathed to Lyonne: it was that of tearing from Spain the trade of Catalonia, where Richelieu and himself had cunningly carried the war against the Low Countries, without which France has really no northern frontier, and is exposed, after an unfortunate battle, to the passage of a hostile army even to the very walls of Paris. Such were the thoughts which occupied the mind of Mazarin, and which he pursued at once, by means of negotiations and by arms, with the mildness and constancy which characterized this great statesman.

M. de Longueville arrived at Munster on the 30th of June, 1645, at nearly the same time that his brother-in-law, the Duke d’Enghien, was going to take command of the army of the Rhine, in the place of Turenne, who had just suffered a very grave defeat at Mariendal. The victory of Nortlingen, of the 5th of August, 1645, gave the greatest strength to M. de Longueville; and the Duke of Bavaria, the second Catholic power of Germany, who had broken off negotiations after the battle of Mariendal, recommenced them eagerly after that of Nortlingen. The cession of Alsace was then almost gained; but victorious Mazarin could with difficulty renounce the hope which he had long entertained of acquiring the Low Countries from Spain in exchange for Catalonia. Therein resided all the difficulty of the negotiations, the knot which no skill could loosen, and which the sword alone could cut. It was reserved for Louis XIV., at the close of the seventeenth century, after having lost the three statesmen who, for a long time, formed his strength and his glory, Mazarin, Lyonne, and Colbert; it was reserved for him to abandon the schemes of his predecessors, and, when it was proposed that he should receive the Low Countries in return for his rights over Spain, to reject this favor of fortune, which Mazarin and Richelieu would have embraced with transports of joy; this he did for the sake of family interest, staking his own crown for the sake of placing one upon the head of his grandson, and jeopardizing the safety of France without giving to it, even for a quarter of a century, the alliance of Spain. We may remark in passing, that this incredible resolution, poorly covered with an appearance of grandeur, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, are the two great personal inspirations of Louis XIV.: they determine his policy, internal and external, compared with that of Mazarin, of Richelieu, and of Henri IV. It is impossible to recount all the efforts made by Mazarin, in 1648, to induce Spain to yield to him the Low Countries. He offered, with all Catalonia, the young Louis XIV. for the infanta Maria-Thérissa. At the same time he sent d’Estrades, with whom we have before become acquainted,⁠[286] into Holland, in order to promote the arrangement which he so ardently desired: he went even so far as to propose Antwerp to the commerce of Holland. It was a powerful temptation; but Holland resisted it; she was weary of a war which must thus be prolonged; and besides, she was beginning to be less afraid of Spain, and was hoping a great advantage by acquiring a conquering neighbor instead of a feeble one. Spain, on her side, saw our horizon darkened with new troubles, and, full of hope, she broke off negotiations, made a separate treaty with Holland, and persuaded the emperor to unite with her in a last and powerful effort. One man alone was able to save France, menaced as it was in 1643. This man was the conqueror of Rocroy. It was then that Condé, who was well acquainted with the position of affairs, engaged, upon the plains of Lens, on the 20th of August, 1648, in the memorable battle which we have described, in which he was as prudent as ever Turenne had been, and as bold as his own genius and circumstances permitted. From this moment negotiations were conducted with promptness. On the 24th of October, 1648, was signed, at Munster, the Treaty of Westphalia, which gave peace to Germany for a century, which there strengthened religious liberty, and which acknowledged all the conquests of France over the empire.⁠[287]

Thanks to this treaty, Mazarin had now Spain alone in view, and he hoped soon to bring it to that point which could give to France a frontier on the north similar to that which it had just acquired on the south of Germany. He dreamed of obtaining, at the close of a few more fortunate campaigns, a treaty still more favorable than that of the Pyrenees, in 1660. He had in his hands the conqueror of Lens, whom he hoped to launch upon the Low Countries; it was in his power to send into Spain and into Italy, generals still superior to d’Harcourt and to Schomberg; he hoped to maintain or re-enkindle the insurrection of Naples: a magnificent future was before France. Who deprived her of this future? Who divided and exhausted her strength? Who made her, with a suicidal hand, shed her own best blood? Who sowed discord among the most illustrious of her captains? Who arrested Condé in his course, at the age of twenty-seven years, when he might yet have added so many victories to all those of his youth, when he might have planted the standard of France in Brussels or in Madrid?

The Fronde it was that committed the inexpiable crime of having stopped the rise of Condé and of French grandeur. And, in return, did it increase and develop our old national franchises? Far from that: by an inevitable reaction, it disgusted France, for a long time, with an anarchical liberty, incompatible with public order, with the force of the government and of the nation; it took away from royalty every species of counterpoise; it produced the despotism, at first intelligent and useful, afterwards improvident and grievous, of Louis XIV.

And now, what gave birth to the Fronde, or what sustained it? What raised up the old party of the Importants, stifled, it would seem, under the laurels of Rocroy? What separated the princes of the blood from the crown? What turned against the throne that illustrious house of Condé, which, until then, had been its buckler and its sword? There were doubtless many general causes for all this; but it is impossible for us to conceal one, private, it is true, but which exercised a powerful and deplorable influence—the unexpected love of Madame de Longueville for one of the chiefs of the Importants, who had become one of the chiefs of the Fronde. Yes—I say it with regret—it was Madame de Longueville, who, joining the party of the malcontents, attracted thereto, at first, a part of her family, then her whole family, and thus precipitated it from the pinnacle of honor and glory to which so many services had elevated it.

Let us narrate, as rapidly as possible, what we know of Madame de Longueville, from the moment that we left her until the commencement of the year 1648.

No authentic documents, printed or in manuscript, authorize us to suppose that before the close of the year 1647, Madame de Longueville had ever passed the limits of fashionable gallantry. On the 4th of February, 1644, soon after the adventure of the letters, and of the tragic quarrel which followed it, she gave birth to a daughter, who received the name of her mother and of her brother, Charlotte Louise, Mademoiselle de Dunois, and who died on the 30th of April,⁠[288] 1645. A year after, the 12th of January, 1646, she had a son, Charles d’Orleans, Count de Dunois, who was expected to succeed to the titles of his father, but who, ill-favored by nature, attempted, without success, various careers, and finally buried himself in the Church, at the close of the century, under the name of the Abbé d’Orleans. In 1647, she gave birth to a second daughter, Marie Gabrielle, who died in 1650. We shall presently speak of the last son, who was born during the Fronde.

Madame de Longueville was twenty-five years of age at the time of the duel between Coligny and Guise, in 1644. Each year only added to her charms. The glory of her brother fell 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 wit formed all her occupation. Her delicate situation not permitting her to accompany M. de Longueville to Munster, in June, 1645, she remained in Paris; she enjoyed it very much, and, whether her heart had already been touched, or whether it was still entirely free, it is clear that she was not very glad, after her confinement, in 1646, to join, under the sky of Westphalia, a husband who was not, as Retz says, the most agreeable man to her in the world.⁠[289] Imagine, in fact, this spoiled child of the hôtel de Rambouillet leaving Corneille and Voiture, all the elegances and refinements of life, to go to Munster, to listen to the German or Latin conversations of foreign diplomatists. It was to her a double exile, for her country was not only France, it was Paris, it was the court, it was the hôtel de Condé, Chantilly, the Place-Royale, the Rue Saint-Thomas du Louvre. It was, however, necessary to obey, and to set off with her step-daughter, Mademoiselle de Longueville, who was already more than twenty years of age. In order to have something of Paris, she took with her several men of letters, and among others, Claude Joly, uncle of Guy Joly, author of the Mémoires, canon of Nôtre-Dame, who remained all his life attached to the Condés, and who made himself known by different works full of learning and of merit;⁠[290] also the academician and oratorian Esprit, one of the frequenters of the hôtel de Rambouillet,⁠[291] who had just been embroiled with the Chancellor Séguier, for having favored the marriage of his daughter, the Marchioness de Coislin, with the son of Madame de Sablé, the handsome and brave Marquis de Laval, who was killed some time after, by the side of Condé, at the siege of Dunkirk. A little before her departure for Munster, Esprit had introduced to Madame de Longueville one of the old favorite poets of Richelieu, Bois-Robert, who had continued to be dazzled with the new éclat of her whom he had formerly admired amid the fêtes of Ruel. It was in the following terms that Bois-Robert relates to Esprit his visit, and describes to him Madame de Longueville. The verses are mediocre, but we must be satisfied, for they hold the place of an infinite number of other verses, which we might with propriety quote, in regard to the same person and the same epoch, and which are still worse:⁠[292]

Madame de Longueville left Paris on the 20th of June, 1646, accompanied by her step-daughter, and with a numerous escort under the command of Montigny, lieutenant of the guards of M. de Longueville. The whole journey from Paris to Munster was a continual ovation. Her course may be followed day by day, and from city to city, thanks to the detailed narrative of Claude Joly. Belgians, Hollanders, Spaniards, Imperialists, and every one strove to show their gallantry to the beautiful ambassadress. Governors went out to meet her at the heads of their garrisons. The keys of the cities through which she passed were offered to her. She had continual escorts of cavalry. The Duke de Longueville went as far as Wesel to meet her. Turenne, who then commanded upon the Rhine, exhibited to her his army drawn up in order of battle. Was it then that the great captain, well known to be sensible to beauty, received the impression which was renewed at Sténay in 1650, and which, prudently preserved by Madame de Longueville, always formed between them a tender and intimate connection?⁠[293]

On the 22d of July she made a triumphal entry into Munster. Holland was too near to her not to tempt her curiosity. She took a walk thither, if we may thus speak.⁠[294] During all the autumn of 1646 and the winter of 1647, she was truly the queen of the congress of Munster. Her graces made their impression upon diplomatists as well as upon warriors. She connected herself particularly, in the French embassy, with Claude de Mesmes, Count d’Avaux, of whom we have already spoken, and who was the friend and correspondent of Voiture, of Madame de Sablé, and of Madame de Rambouillet. We have before us some manuscript letters of d’Avaux to Voiture: they are very agreeable, but not very natural; and, amid Latin quotations, then very fashionable among people who prided themselves upon their erudition, they show us what an impression was made by Madame de Longueville upon the dean of our diplomatic corps. She did not appear very melancholy to d’Avaux; but the rival of Servien was perhaps better fitted to discover cabinet intrigues than to read the heart of a woman.

“It is to⁠[295] Madame de Montausier and to Madame the Marchioness de Sablé that I am indebted for the favors which I have received from Madame de Longueville.... You say that commerce is dangerous with a person so well made, as if the great disproportion and the great distance between those persons and such as myself did not shelter me. You know that the eloquence of Balzac makes no impression upon the mind of a peasant. No, no, I am not afraid. It would be strange enough if in a peaceful assembly I had not sufficient public faith for my preservation, and if, with the passports of the emperor and of the king of Spain, Munster should not be a safe place for me.... I look however, I do not pluck out my eyes. I see beauty greater than I have ever seen before; I see all of what is graceful and charming that can be united, and a something which, it seems to me, can nowhere else be found, with so much majesty:

I admire with you that goodness, that generosity, and those amiable qualities which we shall always vie in praising, but which we can never praise enough. The correctness of that mind, its strength and its extent, astonish me also, and sometimes displease me with myself; for there is in it so much that is extraordinary and above the age and the sex. Suppose that I was made of stuff as combustible as you,⁠[296] who still complain of the trials of youth, how small a spark would set me in a blaze! A précieuse, who has travelled two hundred leagues to join an old husband, who has quitted the court for Westphalia, who is here in continual gayety, who was lately delighted to see a comedy among the Jesuits (truly, however, in good Latin), who gives constrained audiences, who converses pleasantly with M. Salvius, M. Vulteius, and M. Lampadius,⁠[297] who is not frightened if a big Hollander kisses her twice during his regular daily visits, who receives agreeably the civility of another ambassador counselling him to learn German for his recreation, who with all this preserves her embonpoint and pleasant countenance....”

“... I must indeed revenge myself a little now. Some complaints are made here of your taciturnity; but they are uttered by persons of no very great consequence: by no one in fact but Madame de Longueville, and she is hardly worth speaking of. She has paid you some very great compliments; her friends have received orders to solicit your remembrance; she has requested them several times to let her lose nothing in the friendship which you promised her; in short, she has sent you word that she was not proof against such continued indifference, and yet she receives no satisfaction. This is perhaps, as you say, because commerce is dangerous with her, and you yourself take the advice which you give me; but the poor princess cannot be consoled.... Although you were a perfect philosopher, and although you had lost sentiment and life, you should at least speak when Madame de Longueville looks at you, even as did the statue of Memnon when it was illumined by the rays of the sun. If you continue, I doubt not that you will be set down as a mute. Give your orders, if you please. All that I could do for you was to answer your letter to M. the Duke d’Enghien.⁠[298] Madame, his sister, read it with great pleasure; and, M. Esprit entering the room a quarter of an hour afterwards, she was very glad to have another pretext for seeing it again, and left her seat to hear it read once more. This is not all: she requested me to send it to her the next day, with the promise that she would take but a single copy to place among her papers. I will not tell you how much she thinks of it; but will content myself with simply confessing, that it is one of the most delightful things in the world, to see this mouth filled with your praises, and that your name is nowhere more magnificently entertained....”

Voiture is not in arrears with his ingenious correspondent on the account of Madame de Longueville:

“... I am very impatient to witness the return of Madame de Longueville after the conclusion of a good peace. What you say to me of this princess is as beautiful as she is herself, and I shall keep it for her to look at some day.... Tell the truth, my lord: do you think it is possible to find, I do not mean in a single person, but in every thing that is beautiful and lovely throughout the world—do you think it is possible to find so much wit, grace, and charm as there is in this princess? Be on your guard. She writes to us wonderful things concerning you, and of the friendship that exists between you. Commerce is dangerous with her. I assure you besides, that she is as good as she is beautiful, and that there is no soul in the world more lofty or better than hers....”

A little while after, January 9, 1647, he says:

“... Respect has hitherto prevented me from writing to Madame de Longueville; but you make me much more afraid of her by representing her to me as being so serious and so occupied with politics. We take great pleasure in imagining her entertaining M. Lampadius (he is said to be dressed ordinarily in violet satin), M. Vulteius, and M. Salvius, and especially that big Hollander.

“His advice to her to study German for her amusement, has been a subject of great mirth for Madame de Sablé and Madame de Montausier....”⁠[299]

Among the monuments of the abode of Madame de Longueville at Munster, we must place the portrait which was made of her by Anselme Van Hull, and which was engraved with those of M. de Longueville, of d’Avaux, and of Servien, in the collection of portraits of all the princes and diplomatists assembled at Munster.⁠[300] It is a bust. Even in the engraving, mediocre as it is, we perceive the charming softness of the eyes. A mass of blonde hair surrounds her face.⁠[301] Her bosom, partly exposed, appears in its modest beauty. A small collar of pearls adorns a fresh and delicate neck. The following lines, written perhaps by d’Avaux or Voiture, are placed beneath the portrait: