most profound, and to anxieties concerning the future
readily conceivable.

Madame de Chalais was then in the plenitude of that attractive beauty so
closely observed and described in all its most delicate shades by the
graphic pen of the Duke de Saint-Simon when at a more advanced period of
her life, but on which beauty, by a miracle of art and nature, the
wasting hand of time had as yet scarcely brought a blemish.

The first years of her widowhood, passed in a convent, were marked by
the liveliest sorrow. By degrees, however, love of society resumed its
sway over her, and she reappeared therein with all her wonted
attractiveness, markedly patronised in the highest circles of Roman
society by Cardinal d'Estrees, the French ambassador--assuredly not
without design, since at the same time that high functionary so
distinguished her, he directed the attention of Louis XIV. to the wit
and capacity of the charming widow. It was, therefore, in great measure
with a political purpose, and by the diplomatic tact of the two brothers
d'Estrees, that the second marriage of the Princess de Chalais with
Flavio Orsini, Duke di Bracciano, himself a widower, was arranged
(1675). Thenceforward the Palazzo Orsini became the focus of French
influence, which was further increased by a marriage promoted between
her sister Louise Angelique de la Tremouille and her brother-in-law, the
Duke de Lanti.

She thus, therefore, became definitively an inhabitant of Rome and
_quasi_ Roman. What did she do there? How did she consort with an
Italian husband? With what ambition was she soon inspired in the more
elevated position in which her second marriage placed her at Rome? What
talents, what political aptitude were manifested by her, and developed
at a court which at that time bore the highest repute for skill in
politics and diplomacy? How did Italian finesse and cunning blend and
harmonize with the quick penetration and delicate tact of the
Frenchwoman? What advantage did the French government, which, after the
death of the Prince de Chalais, could no longer treat her as a
proscribed subject, seek to draw immediately from her position and
disposition? What were her relations with the first personages at the
court of France, with the Roman cardinals, with the French ambassadors
at Rome, with the representatives or the principal personages of other
nations, and what splendour did her palace display, whether through the
influence of natural taste or