e French nobility were soon about to
contend for the hands of the others; and the man whom the Fronde had so
persecuted was about to place his family upon the steps of the throne.
The solemn reception which the King and Queen gave Mazarin at the Louvre
on the 3rd February, 1653, was not therefore an idle pageant or empty
ceremony. That same day, Mazarin could understand that a new era had
arisen for him, more brilliant and more secure than that of 1643, after
the defeat of the _Importants_, and that that sterile and sanguinary
halt upon the road of reform and the civilising march of monarchy known
in history under the name of the Fronde was at last and for ever
terminated.

BOOK VI.

CLOSING SCENES.

CHAPTER I.

THE DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE.

HAVING rapidly summarised the fate and fortunes of the leading male
actors who figured in the Fronde, we will now glance briefly at the
closing scenes in the careers of the fair politicians whom we have seen
playing such brilliant and prominent parts in that curious tragi-comedy.

To high-born French women--princesses and duchesses--the revolt of the
Fronde especially belonged. They were at once its main-springs, its
chief instruments, its most interested agents; and among them Madame de
Longueville, who enacted the most conspicuous part, was by its events
the most ill-treated of all.

We have seen her the heroine--or, perhaps the adventuress--of the civil
war, rushing into dangers and mixing herself up in intrigues of every
kind, in order to serve the interests of another. She was not a
consummate politician like the Palatine, for she had no real business
tact. Her true character and the unity of her life should be sought
where they were really shown--in her devotion to him whom she loved. It
is there--in that devotion wholly and always the same, at once
consistent, yet absurd, and very touching even in its downright follies.

All her eccentric movements were attributable to the restless and fickle
spirit of La Rochefoucauld. Solely occupied with his own interests, it
was he who drew her into the vortex of party politics and civil war,
with a view to his own self-aggrandisement. It was for love of him that
she sacrificed domestic peace, repose, and reputation.

At Bordeaux Madame de Longueville had at first enjoyed the same
popularity as that which she had acquired in Paris at the commencement
of the first Fronde. Upon that section of the second Fronde whi