Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/33

Rh Retz, that Châteauneuf amused Madame Chevreuse with public affairs. This amusement must have been of a very peculiar nature indeed, since she staked in it her fortune, and sometimes her head, and the intrigue in which they both were engaged was so rash, that here, at least, it must be admitted that it was not Châteauneuf who forced Madame de Chevreuse into it, but rather she who urged on the keeper of the seals.

Châteauneuf was then fifty years of age, and the sentiment that he had conceived for Madame de Chevreuse must have been one of those fatal passions which precede and mark the final departure of youth. As to Madame de Chevreuse, she shared to the fullest extent in the dangers and misfortunes of Châteauneuf, and never afterwards consented to separate his fortunes from her own. In all her aberrations, she at least preserved this remnant of honor, that when she loved, she loved with unbounded fidelity, and after the passion had passed away, she still maintained for its object an inviolable friendship. For some time, Richelieu had perceived that his keeper of the seals was no longer the same. His suspicious nature, seconded by his penetration and his incomparable police, had put him on the track of the most secret manoeuvres of Châteauneuf, and he afterwards amused himself by collecting all the proofs of the treason of his former friend in papers which have hitherto remained unpublished, and which seem to us to be a stray chapter of his Memoires. It is said that, during an illness which threatened the life of the cardinal, Anne of Austria gave a ball, at which Châteauneuf appeared