Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/496

482 opinion of her good sense, that he believed, had it left marks, she would have been easily consoled. "They are often," added he, "proofs of divine mercy."

The great Condé, her brother, then due d'Enguien, was strictly attached to her: but some interruption to their friendship happened in consequence of her thinking it her duty to inform her father of an attachment he had conceived for a friend of hers, on which the young lady retired into a convent. The brother and sister were, however, soon reconciled, as appeared from the eagerness with which he undertook her defence against Madame de Montbazon. This lady, jealous of the princess, pretended that the count Maurice de Coligny, who was her relation, frequently visited as her lover. She fabricated letters to prove it, and dispersed them; but the queen obliged her to go to the Hotel de Conde, and pronounce a formal retractation of what she had said and written. Yet, as the duke of Guise, who was the lover of Madame de Montbazon, still continued to spread the calumny, the count de Coligny called him out in a duel, which was fatal to the injured person. As to the duke de Longueville, he took no interest in the matter; indeed, he had once loved Madame de Montbazon, and perhaps still loved her.

In 1644, he went envoy to Munster, and left his wife at Paris; but two years afterwards, her brother engaged him to send for her, to take her out of the way of the prince de Marsillac, afterwards the famous Rochefoucault, whose passion for her was well known. This affair made a second breach between Condé and his sister; but Madame de Longueville was in some measure consoled by the great honours paid her in a foreign country,