to her remembrance
the brilliant days of her past existence--but to a modest dwelling at
Gagny, near Chelles. There she awaited her last hour, far from the
world's observation, and ere long expired in tranquillity at the age of
seventy-nine, the same year as Cardinal de Retz and Madame de
Longueville. She desired to have neither solemn obsequies nor funeral
oration, and forbade that any of those lofty titles which she had borne
through life and had learned to despise should accompany her to the
grave. It was her wish to be buried obscurely in the small and ancient
church of Gagny; and there, in the southern aisle, near the chapel of
the Virgin, some faithful but unknown hand has placed upon a slab of
black marble the following epitaph:--

"Here lies Marie de Rohan, Duchess de Chevreuse, daughter of
Hercule de Rohan, Duke de Montbazon. She espoused, first, Charles
d'Albert, Duke de Luynes, peer and constable of France, and
secondly, Claude de Lorraine, Duke de Chevreuse."

CHAPTER III.

THE PRINCESS PALATINE.

THE political importance of the Princess Palatine dates from 1650, when
the arrest of Conde, Conti, and the Duke de Longueville urged her, as we
have seen, to take part in the struggles of the Fronde. The Duchesses de
Chevreuse, De Montbazon, De Guemene, and other famous feminine
factionists of that time, became, in the hands of Anne de Gonzagua, as
so many wires with which she moved at her will the men whom these women
governed; for the Princess exercised alike over all those men and women
that superiority which disinterestedness, good faith, and firmness of
decision confer. De Retz, when he discovered her characteristics, was
immediately struck with the above-named qualities, especially the two
latter. "To have stability of purpose," said he, when speaking of his
first interview with Anne, "is a rare quality, which indicates an
enlightened mind far above the ordinary class." And further on, "I do
not think," he remarks, "that Queen Elizabeth had more capacity to
govern a state." Mazarin, too, somewhat later, in alluding to the dread
in which he held the famous trio of political women for their capacity
to work mischief, remarked to Don Louis de Haro:--"The most turbulent of
the male politicians do not give us half so much trouble to keep them
within bounds as the intrigues of a Duchess de Chevreuse or a Princess
Palatine."

Anne de Gonzagua, the Princess Palatine, lived long af