easy and necessary to make a separate treaty of
peace." On several occasions he made indignant protestation against such
arrangement, pointing out the danger with which it was fraught, and that
it would render ineffectual those sacrifices which France had for so
many years made. "Madame de Chevreuse," he exclaimed, "would ruin
France!" He knew well that, intimately associated with Gaston, her old
accomplice in all the plots framed against Richelieu, she had won him
over to the idea of a separate peace by holding out the hope of a
marriage between his daughter Mademoiselle de Montpensier and the
Arch-duke, which would have brought him the government of the Low
Countries. He knew that she had preserved all her influence with the
Duke de Lorraine; he knew, in fine, that she boasted of having the power
of promptly negotiating a peace through the mediation of the Queen of
Spain, who was at her disposal. Thus informed, he entreated his royal
mistress to reject all Madame de Chevreuse's propositions, and to tell
her plainly that she would not listen to anything relating to a separate
treaty, that she was decided upon not separating herself from her
allies, that she desired a general peace, that with such view she had
sent her ministers to Munster, who were then negotiating that important
matter, and that it was superfluous to speak to her any more upon the
subject.

Though baffled on these different points, Madame de Chevreuse did not
consider herself vanquished. She rallied and emboldened her adherents by
her lofty spirit and firm resolution. The party feud went on--intrigues
were multiplied--but up to the close of August, 1643, no change had
taken place, though the acrimony of party feeling had become largely
increased. Finding that she had fruitlessly employed insinuation,
flattery, artifice, and every species of Court manoeuvre, her daring
mind did not shrink from the idea of having recourse to other means of
success. She kept up a brisk agitation amongst the bishops and devotees,
she continued to weave her political plots with the chiefs of the
_Importants_, and at the same time she formed a closer intimacy with
that small cabal which formed in some sort the advance-guard of that
party, composed of men reared amongst the old conspiracies, accustomed
to and always ready for _coups de main_, who had of old embarked in more
than one desperate enterprise against Richelieu, and who, in an
extremity, might be likewise launched