tiring wife could
obtain her husband's release; and when he was discharged at last, he came
out a changed, soured, selfish, ungrateful man. "Just Heaven," she had
exclaimed in her youth, "would not bestow such a woman as myself upon a
man who was unworthy of her." But perhaps Heaven was juster than she
thought. They soon parted again forever, and he went to England, there to
atone for these inglorious earlier days by one deed of heroic loyalty
which it is not ours to tell.

And then unrolled the gorgeous tapestry of the maturer reign of the Grand
Monarque,--that sovereign whom his priests in their liturgy styled "the
chief work of the Divine hands," and of whom Mazarin said, more honestly,
that there was material enough in him for four kings and one honest man.
The "Moi-meme" of his boyish resolution became the "L'etat, c'est moi" of
his maturer egotism; Spain yielded to France the mastery of the land, as
she had already yielded to Holland and England the sea; Turenne fell at
Sassbach, Conde sheathed his sword at Chantilly; Bossuet and Bourdaloue,
preaching the funeral sermons of these heroes, praised their glories, and
forgot, as preachers will, their sins; Vatel committed suicide because his
Majesty had not fish enough for breakfast; the Princess Palatine died in a
convent, and the Princess Conde in a prison; the fair Sevigne chose the
better part, and the fairer Montespan the worse; the lovely La Valliere
walked through sin to saintliness, and poor Marie de Mancini through
saintliness to sin; Voiture and Benserade and Corneille passed away, and
Racine and Moliere reigned in their stead; and Mademoiselle, who had won
the first campaigns of her life and lost all the rest, died a weary old
woman at sixty-seven.

Thus wrecked and wasted, her opportunity past, her career a
disappointment, she leaves us only the passing glimpse of what she was,
and the hazy possibility of what she might have been. Perhaps the defect
was, after all, in herself; perhaps the soil was not deep enough to
produce anything but a few stray heroisms, bright and transitory;--perhaps
otherwise. What fascinates us in her is simply her daring, that inborn
fire of the blood to which danger is its own exceeding great reward; a
quality which always kindles enthusiasm, and justly,--but which is a thing
of temperament, not necessarily joined with any other great qualities, and
worthless when it stands alone--But she had other resources,--weapons, at
least,