Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/765

Rh that it is not the object of this paper to solve. If we are to believe a certain passage in De Retz's "Memoirs," suppressed in the first editions, her guilt with Buckingham is beyond dispute. But if she were guilty, few could ever plead more excuses. Young, beautiful, reared in the most gallant and romantic court of Europe; married to a man whom, if half the scandals of the time be true, she could not but loathe as well as despise, and who from the first treated her with profound indifference; licentiousness all around her; tyrannized over by an imperious mother-in-law; her every action spied upon by the malignant eyes of Richelieu or his creatures, and subjected at times to indignities that would have debased the meanest scullion of her palace — strong, indeed, must have been the rectitude or pride of her nature did it pass immaculate through such circumstances and temptations. But these things belong to a period anterior to the events with which this article is concerned — it is simply the question of her relations with Mazarin that I propose to examine, and I will begin with an extract from De Brienne's "Memoirs," in reading which it must be borne in mind that he was a believer in the queen's innocence. His mother, in a private interview, has informed her of the scandalous rumours which are rife in Paris: —


 * When she had finished, the queen, her eyes suffused with tears, replied to her: "Why, my dear, hast thou not told me this sooner. I confess to thee I love him, and, I may say, tenderly. But the affection I bear him does not go so far as love, or if it does it is without my knowing it, my senses have no part in it; my mind alone is charmed by the beauty of his. Would that be criminal? If there is even, in this love the shadow of a sin, I renounce it now before God and before the saints whose relics are in that oratory. I will speak to him

henceforth, I assure thee, only of affairs of State, and I will break off the conversation when he speaks to me of anything else." My mother, who was on her knees, took her hand and kissed it, and placed it near a reliquary which she had just taken from the altar. "Swear to me, madame," said she, "I beseech you, swear to me upon these holy relics, to keep forever that which you have just promised God." "I swear it," said the queen, placing her hand upon the reliquary, "and I pray God to punish me if I am conscious of the least evil."

"This is very strong," says Victor Cousin, in commenting upon this passage, "and would altogether persuade us if we did not remember that in 1637, leaving the communion-table, Anne swore upon the holy Eucharist, which she had just received, and upon the salvation of her soul, that she had not once written to Spain, while later she made confessions quite contrary to her first oaths." Here, at all events, we have a distinct confession of her love, and an admission that Mazarin did not always confine the conversation to State affairs. It was impossible for so acute an intellect as his to be ignorant of her disposition towards him, and it is almost equally impossible that so unscrupulous an adventurer, and one notorious for gallantry, should not have availed himself of her weakness to enhance his influence. Those who believe in the possibility of a platonic affection under such circumstances are beyond the reach of argument.

The deaths of Richelieu and Louis the Thirteenth had opened the prisons and frontiers of France to all the great cardinal's enemies and to all the queen's old adherents, who now swarmed upon the court like locusts, greedy to devour all favour. Chief among these was the Duc de Beaufort, son of the Duc de Vendôme, and grandson of Henry the Fourth, le roi des halles, as he was called, from his popularity among the market-women, whose manners and language it was his pleasure to imitate; the Duchesse de Chevreuse, the re-married widow of Albert de Luynes, the most intriguing and licentious woman of her age; Madame de Hauteville, whom Richelieu had banished because his royal master had looked upon her with eyes of favour; these, and many others, who called themselves the queen's party, formed a cabal, which was nicknamed the Importants. Upon their arrival at court they had believed that hatred of her old enemy the cardinal and the memory of old friendships would give them the first place in the regent's confidence and counsels. At first there seemed every probability that their expectations would be realized; they were received with open arms, and Mazarin, who, unlike his predecessor, always temporized with an enemy, while secretly undermining their influence, openly courted their friendship. To Madame de Chevreuse he was most profuse in his offers of service; but she, over-confident in her power, treated his advances with mockery and contempt, and resolved upon his destruction. One of the means adopted for this end was to repeat to the queen the sayings of every scandalous tongue in Paris, hoping thereby to force her pride to his dismissal. This course produced the very opposite effect to what they had 