Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/177

Rh was still sustained by youth and by the consciousness of that irresistible beauty which won her servants everywhere, even on thrones. She had confidence too in the friendship of the queen, and she trusted that this friendship would one day reward her for all her devotion. Now age was beginning to make itself felt, and her declining beauty promised her but rare conquests. She knew that, in losing the heart of the queen, she had lost the greatest part of her prestige in France and in Europe. The flight of the Duke de Vendôme, soon followed by that of the Duke de Bouillon, had left the Importants without any considerable chief. She had learned to her cost that Mazarin was quite as adroit and quite as formidable as Richelieu. Victory seemed everywhere in league with him. Turenne, Bouillon's own brother, solicited the honor of serving him, and the Duke d'Enghien gained him battle after battle. She knew that the cardinal held proofs within his hands which could condemn and imprison her during her whole life. But when all abandoned her, this extraordinary woman did not abandon herself As soon as the officer Riquetti had signified to her the order of which he was the bearer, she took her resolution with her accustomed promptness, and accompanied by her daughter Charlotte, who had come to join her, and who would not quit her, she gained the thickets of the Vendée and the solitudes of Brittany by cross-roads, and asked an asylum of the Marquis de Coetquen, a few leagues from Saint-Malo. The noble and generous Breton accorded the hospitality which he owed to a woman and an unfortunate. She did not abuse it, and after having deposited her jewels in his hands, as formerly in those of La Rochefoucauld, she embarked with her