s predecessor, and royalty, as well as France,
reckoned upon a succession of halcyon years, thanks to the re-union of
the Princes of the blood with the Crown, to the tactics and personal
conduct of the Prime Minister, and to his political sagacity, seconded
by the military genius of the Duke d'Enghien. The imprudence of Madame
de Montbazon and her lover Beaufort in the affair of the dropped letters
had the effect of increasing Mazarin's power incalculably, and that at
the very moment that a splendid victory gained by the young Duke
d'Enghien had made him and his sister paramount at Court--paramount by a
popularity so universal that it almost made the Queen and her minister
their _proteges_ rather than their patrons.

The Duke d'Enghien had returned to Paris after Rocroy, and at the end of
a campaign in which he had taken a very important stronghold, passed the
Rhine with the French army, and carried the war into Germany. The Queen
had received him as the liberator of France. Mazarin, who looked more to
the reality than the semblance of power, intimated to the young
conqueror that his sole ambition was to be his chaplain and man of
business with the Queen. At a distance, the Duke d'Enghien had praised
everything that had been done, and came from the camp over head and ears
in love with Madlle. du Vigean, and furious that any one should have
dared to insult a member of his house. He adored his sister, and he had
a warm friendship for Coligny.[1] He was aware of and had favoured his
passion for that sister. Engaged himself in a suit as ardent as it was
chaste, he readily comprehended that his beautiful sister might well
have been not insensible to the fervent assiduities of the brave
Maurice, but he revolted at the thought of the amatory effusions of a
Madame de Fouquerolles being attributed to her, and he assumed a tone in
the matter which effectually arrested any further insinuation from even
the most insolent and daring.

[1] Grandson of the famous Admiral de Coligny, who perished in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Amongst the especial friends of Beaufort and Madame de Montbazon,
foremost of all stood the Duke de Guise.[2] They had manoeuvred to
secure him as well as the rest of his family to their party, through
Gaston, Duke d'Orleans, who had espoused as his second wife a princess
of the house of Lorraine--the lovely Marguerite, sister of Charles IV.
and second daughter of Duke Francis. The Duke de Guise h