Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/766

756  it only strengthened the ties which united Anne and her minister, and as their insolence increased so did her friendship for them cool. The arrogance of Beaufort exceeded all bounds, he abused and threatened the cardinal and grossly insulted the queen, and to bring affairs to a crisis, the cabal formed a plot for the minister's assassination. The conspiracy was detected, and on the 2nd of September 1643 Beaufort was arrested, and Madame de Chevreuse and the other leaders of the Importants banished from the court and capital.


 * It is in the last days of the month of August [says Cousin] that we must place the certain date of the declared ascendancy, public and without rivals, of Mazarin over Anne of Austria. ... Those attacks to which the minister had just been exposed precipitated the victory of the happy cardinal, and the day after the last nocturnal ambuscade in which he was to have perished, Mazarin was the absolute master of the heart of the queen, and more powerful than Richelieu had been after the Day of Dupes.


 * On the 19th of November she represented in council that in consequence of the indisposition of M. le Cardinal Mazarin, and of his being obliged, with great pain, to pass daily across the garden of the Palais Royal, and seeing that at all hours he had new affairs to communicate to her, she found it necessary to give him accommodation in the Palais Royal in order that she might conveniently converse with him upon affairs.

From that time he was only an occasional visitor to his own magnificent residence.


 * The National Library [to again quote Victor Cousin] contains, enclosed in a chest, called the chest of St.-Esprit, numbered upon the back 117,826, divers papers relative to Mazarin, among which are some letters under this title, "Lettres originales de la propre main de la Reyne Anne, mère du Roy Louis XIV., au Cardinal Mazarin." The authenticity of these letters cannot be for a moment contested; we undoubtedly recognize in them the hand of Anne of Austria, her bad writing and bad orthography. There are eleven letters, all autograph. It seems that formerly there must have been more, from the great space of time over which these letters extend, from 1653 to 1658, and we know that during those five years the queen and, the minister were several times separated, and would have much to write about. The first of these letters is at the end of 1652 or the commencement of 1653, when Mazarin with Louis the Fourteenth was with the army, and Anne of Austria remained in the centre of the government, at Paris, Fontainebleau, or Compiègne. The intimate connection, commenced in the middle of the year 1643, had already existed ten years at the commencement of this correspondence; it had then lost its early vivacity. On the other hand, Mazarin was all but victorious over all his enemies both within and without; his dangers, which had animated and sustained the queen, were dissipated. She was also obliged to express herself with a certain circumspection, her couriers running the risk of being intercepted. In fine, according to the fashion of the age, she employed a jargon only intelligible to Mazarin and herself, and of which the key has not been found, so that all which related to private affairs escapes us entirely, as there are also lines which cannot be read. Notwithstanding, however, the time, which would have deadened them, notwithstanding the circumstances which restrain expression, notwithstanding the mysterious cyphers in which they are veiled, the sentiments of Anne of Austria yet appear impressed with a profound tenderness. She sighs for Mazarin's return, and impatiently endures his absence. There are words which betray the trouble of her mind and almost of her senses. It seems, too, almost impossible to misunderstand the language of an affection very different to simple friendship and an attachment purely political.

I have not space to present extracts from these eleven letters, which the reader may consult himself in the appendix, pp. 471–482, of Victor Cousin's "Madame de Hautefort;" but will give instead a letter that speaks volumes, and which M. Valckenaer has subjoined to his "Mémoires sur Madame de Sévigné," the original of which he asserts to be in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Saintes, June 1660.


 * Your letter has given me great joy. I do not know if I shall be happy enough to make you believe it, and if I could believe that one of my letters would have pleased you as much I would have written it with a good heart, and it is true that to see the transports with which they were received and read brought strongly to mind another time of which I am almost always thinking. Although you may believe or doubt, I assure you that all my life shall be employed to testify to you that there never was a friendship more true than mine, and if you do not believe it, I hope in justice that you will some day repent of having doubted it; and if I could as easily make you see my heart as what I write upon this paper, I am assured you would be content, or you would be the most ungrateful man in the world, and that I do not believe.

The licentious press of the Fronde period teemed with scandals against the queen and her favourite; several pamphlets more than hint that there had been