Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/185

Rh desired both for herself and her family; she attained the height of credit and of consideration, and, like her two illustrious competitors, Madame de Longueville and the Princess Palatine, she ended in profound tranquillity one of the most restless careers of the seventeenth century.

It is said that, towards the close of her days, she too felt the influence of grace, and turned her eyes, wearied with the mobility of earthly things, towards Heaven. She had seen all those whom she loved or hated fall successively around her—Richelieu and Mazarin, Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, the Queen of England and her daughter, the amiable Henriette, Châteauneuf and the Duke of Lorraine. Her much loved daughter had expired in her arms in the midst of the Fronde. He who had first turned her aside from the path of duty, the handsome and frivolous Holland, had mounted the scaffold of Charles I., and her last lover, the Marquis de Laigues, though much younger than she, had preceded her to the tomb. She perceived that she had given her soul to vanity; and wishing to mortify the feeling that had proved her ruin, the haughty duchess became the humblest of women. She renounced all grandeur; she quitted her magnificent hotel in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, built by Muet, and retired to the country, not