life not having yet been developed through the impulse of her
affections. Let us here add that, notwithstanding the almost unanimous
assertion of contemporaries at this period that even women could not
behold Madame de Longueville without admiration, the heart of this
preeminently gifted creature seems amidst the universal homage to have
been proof against all and every repeated assault. Anne of Austria
loved her but little, partly through a jealous feeling created by her
singular beauty, partly from her great reputation for wit, and also from
her perpetual wranglings for precedence with other princesses of the
blood. In fact, in order to lose no tittle of the prerogatives derived
from her birth, Madame de Longueville had obtained a royal brevet from
the king which maintained her in the rank which she would have otherwise
lost by her marriage. A pride so exacting does not appear to agree with
the peculiar nonchalance that was one of her striking characteristics;
but, later in life, when she had become devout and penitent, she took
care to explain that seeming contradiction. "I have been defined," said
she, "as having, as it were, two individualities of opposite nature in
me, and that I could interchange them at any moment; but that arose from
the different situations in which I was placed, for I was dead, like
unto the dead, to aught which slightly affected me, and keenly alive to
the smallest things which interested me." Reading and study were never
among the things which stirred her into animation. Entirely occupied
with her fascinations and individual sentiments, at no period of her
life did she ever think of repairing the early neglect of her education.
In this respect she was inferior, on the authority even of her
apologists, to many ladies of the Court and city. Intoxicated as she had
been by the fumes of the incense which flattery had wafted around her in
the circle of the Hotel de Rambouillet, she probably had no perception
of her failings on that essential point. The spontaneity of her wit, her
natural aptitude to comprehend and decide upon all sorts of questions,
made up for her deficiency in that kind of information which is acquired
from books and other modes of study, and often stood her in good stead,
both on the part of her detractors and of her partisans, of the lofty
characteristics of "great genius." M. Cousin, who is by no means severe
as regards the errors or demerits of the Duchess, says that "she did