er step-daughter, who, older
and more experienced in the political world than she was, often used her
as an instrument. The young Duchess was a more dangerous rival to Madame
de Guemene, her other step-daughter, from whom she carried off, not her
husband, but the Count de Soissons. And it was not enough that she
obtained an easy conquest over her, for she instigated the Count to add
outrage to desertion, and he docilely compromised his forsaken mistress
by a gross and shameful perfidy.

But, passing rapidly over the errors of her youth, it is the close of
Madame de Montbazon's political career with which we are now concerned.
The influence which the gay and gallant Duchess long exercised over the
Duke de Beaufort had sometimes proved useful to the interests of the
Court, and during the early troubles of the Fronde the Queen and Mazarin
took care to keep her favourably disposed towards them. But the
importance which Beaufort's infatuated passion gave or seemed to give
her, speedily made the Duchess one of the heroines of the
Fronde--though, it must be owned, one of the secondary heroines. Her
allies were careful not to allow her to take upon herself a part she was
unable to sustain. Violent, unreflecting, accessible to the most
contradictory suggestions, ready for any turn, and the sport of every
caprice, she was wanting in all the better qualities of a political
woman. Her indiscretion became formidable on all occasions when secresy
was necessary, and more than once the Duke de Beaufort was obliged to be
excluded from the assemblages at which the chiefs of the Fronde took
counsel together. It was well known that he dare not keep anything from
his mistress, and it might chance that a royalist might turn to account
the confidence which she wormed out of her lover, for conformity in
political sentiments was not one of the conditions which she imposed
upon the adorers whose homage she welcomed. Her correspondence with
Marshal d'Albret exposed her moreover to be subject to, without being
aware of it, the influences of the Court, and her intimacy with Vineuil
tended to make her an ally, in spite of herself, of the Prince de Conde.
Hence it is easy to explain the mistrust with which she inspired the
Coadjutor of Paris, the future Cardinal de Retz. She herself did not
fail to perceive the surveillance which he exercised around her; and she
was irritated to see with what facility he modified in his own fashion
the line of conduc