Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/111

Rh after the death of the Count de Soissons, had entered the service of the Vendômes, together with his brother Henri, an officer of tried courage. She invited Alexandre de Campion to come to meet her at Peronne, and he seems to have given her the same counsel as La Rochefoucauld, if we may judge from the note which he wrote to her at the end of May, before quitting Paris to rejoin her: "I do not know," says he, "what M. Montagu may negotiate with you, but I am certain that he will offer you money on the part of Cardinal Mazarin to pay your debts, and also that he has held out hopes to him of forming a firm friendship between you and him. I do not believe that he will find you strongly disposed to make this alliance, both because your best friends in France are not on very good terms with him, and because he seems leagued with the friends of the late cardinal. For my part, the counsel which I take the liberty of giving you on this subject is, that you do not take any decided resolution until you shall have seen the queen, by whose sentiments you will no doubt gladly shape your course, both on account of the zeal which you have for her and the friendship which she entertains for you. I am sure from my knowledge of your character that I shall have more trouble in holding you back than in urging you on, seeing the friendship which you have done me the honor to confess to me for a certain person, (evidently Châteauneuf;) but apart from this consideration and that of many other honorable men embarked in the same cause, I do not see the necessity of perpetuating a hatred so far as even to carry it beyond the death of our enemies. I have no love for the cardinal, but I wish no harm to any of his race. After all, Madame, all that I can write is not the twentieth part of what I have to say to you; and I dare assure you that at Peronne you will be as well informed of the prevailing feeling as if you were in Paris." Madame de Chevreuse listened to the counsels of her