Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/140

126 plotted against Riclielieu; in 1643, she fomented, as we have seen, their enthusiasm and devotion; and it is not without reason, we think, that Mazarin attributes to her the first idea of the project which was to have been accomplished by Beaufort.

As a matter of course, the Importants, and their successors, the Frondeurs, disavow this project, and give it out as an invention of the cardinal. This point is of the most vital importance, and merits a careful investigation. As it was this conspiracy, whether real or feigned, that decided the struggle between Madame de Chevreuse and Mazarin, history, under penalty of stopping at the surface of events and consenting to ignore their true causes, is bound to inquire whether Mazarin really owed the success of his whole career and the brilliant future which opened thenceforth before him to an ingenious and boldly maintained falsehood; or whether it was due to Madame de Chevreuse and the Importants, who, after having vainly essayed all other means against him, in an attempt to destroy him by the hand of the assassin, destroyed themselves and became unwittingly the instruments of his triumph. For ourselves, we are convinced, and we believe ourselves able to prove, that the conspiracy attributed to the Importants, far from being a chimera, was the almost inevitable denouement of the critical position which we have described.

La Rochefoucauld, without having shared in the insane hopes of his friends or lent his aid to their rash enterprise, makes it a point of honor to defend them after their overthrow, and to cover their retreat. He affects to doubt whether the conspiracy that caused so much noise was real or imaginary. In his eyes, the Duke de Beaufort, by an injudicious stroke of policy, attempted to make the cardinal take the alarm, believing that it would only be necessary to terrify him to induce him to quit France; and that it was with this view