Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/18

4 constantly receded from her grasp, while it seemed to lure her on by the very prestige of difficulty and danger. Rochefoucauld accuses her of having brought misfortune on all whom she loved; it is also just to say that all who loved her precipitated her in turn into their own mad enterprises. It was not she, apparently, who made of Buckingham a sort of Paladin without genius, of Charles IV. a brilliant adventurer, of Chalais a madman insane enough to pledge himself against Richelieu on the faith of the Duke of Orleans, and of Châteauneuf a restless second-rate aspirant, without being capable of attaining to be first. One must not believe that he knows Madame de Chevreuse when he has read the celebrated portrait which Retz has drawn of her, for this is exaggerated and overdrawn like all those of Retz, and was designed solely to gratify the malignant curiosity of Madame de Caumartin—without being really false, it is severe almost to injustice. Did it belong, indeed, to the restless and intemperate accomplice to become the pitiless censor of a woman in whose errors he had shared? Was he not also as much deceived as she, and for a much longer time? Did he show in the combat more address and courage, and in the defeat, more intrepidity and constancy? But Madame de Chevreuse has written us no memoirs in the easy and piquant style in which she retrieved her fortunes at the expense of the world. For our own part, we recognize two judges of her whose testimony cannot be regarded with suspicion—Richelieu and Mazarin. Richelieu did his best to gain her, and failing to succeed, treated her as an enemy worthy of himself; he exiled her repeatedly, and even after his death, when the gates of France were opened to all the outlaws, his implacable resentment—surviving him in the mind of the dying Louis XIII., closed them still upon her. Read the carnets (note-books) and the confidential letters of