Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/23

Rh in convents, the third was the beautiful and celebrated Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, who was weak enough to listen to Retz, if we may believe his assertions, for which he repaid her by caricaturing her for the diversion of the one for whom he wrote.

The new Duchess de Chevreuse had been appointed superintendent of the queen's household during the life-time of her first husband, and had soon become the favorite of Anne of Austria as the constable was the favorite of Louis XIII. The court at that time was very brilliant, and gallantry the order of the day. Marie de Rohan was naturally gay and spirited. She yielded to the allurements of youth and pleasure. She had lovers, and these lovers forced her into politics. Retz himself admits this in the following passage, too famous to be omitted here, though we must first remark that even if it have a groundwork of truth, the coloring is greatly exaggerated: "I never saw any one else," he says, "in whom intuition could supply the place of judgment. She often suggested expedients so brilliant that they seemed like flashes of lightning, and so wise that they would not have been disowned by the greatest men of any age. Yet these were only called forth by the occasion. If she had lived in an age in which there were no politics, she never would have invented any. If the prior of the Carthusians had pleased her, she would have become a recluse in good faith. M. de Lorraine first forced her into public affairs,