Page:Secret History of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.djvu/45

Rh with difficulty under cover of the night and took refuge in Holland. His nephew, the Marquis de Leuville, was arrested and confined for a long time in prison, and he himself was conducted to the citadel of Angoulême, where he remained ten years, while Madame de Chevreuse, treated more gently by the cardinal, who had still a remnant of hope, received for her sole punishment an order to retire to Dampierre. But the queen could not dispense with her society, and the two friends often wished to meet to console each other by talking about their troubles, and probably, also, to devise the means of ending them. Often, under cover of the evening twilight, Madame de Chevreuse came in disguise to Paris, was secretly introduced into the Louvre or the Val-de-Grâce, saw the queen, and returned at midnight to Dampierre. But these clandestine visits were soon discovered, or at least suspected, and the faithful and daring confidant of Anne of Austria was banished to Touraine to an estate of her first husband.

One can easily imagine the mortal ennui which overwhelmed the beautiful duchess, thus buried at thirty-three in the heart of a province, far from the noise and the splendor of Paris, far from all the emotions which were so dear to her, far from all intrigues both of politics and of love. It was but a dull amusement to her to turn the head of the old Archbishop of Tours, and to sustain herself she had great need of the visits of the young and amiable La Rochefoucauld, who lived