his opinion evinced sufficient generosity
towards him to satisfy this later passion, he did not hesitate to fling
himself headlong into partisan intrigue and strife which ended in civil
war. To render himself the more formidable, he was above all desirous of
securing to his party the master-mind of Conde; and as Madame de
Longueville enjoyed the entire confidence of her favourite brother, and
had great influence with him, the natural result was that in due course
La Rochefoucauld made persistent love to the lovely Duchess. Seduced by
the chivalrous manners and romantic antecedents of his youth, and
yielding partly to the occasion, partly to the obstinate persistence of
the suit, and some little perhaps to the maternal blood in her veins,
Madame de Longueville at length surrendered her heart to the daring
aspirant. She could no longer plead early youth as an excuse, for she
had already numbered twenty-nine summers, and was only distant by a very
small span from that formidable epoch in woman's life which a
discriminating writer of the present day has happily termed the
_crisis_. That turning point in the Duchess's career was destined to
prove fatal to her, and the crisis was exactly such as that of which, in
the case of another celebrated woman, M. Feillet has given a lucid
analysis--the crisis brought about by an irresistible passion. Let us
beware of hastily applying to Madame de Longueville that maxim of her
cynical lover: "Women often think they still love him whom they no
longer really love. The opportunity of an intrigue, the mental emotion
to which gallantry gives birth, natural inclination to the pleasure of
being beloved, and the pain of refusing the lover, together persuade
them that they cherish a genuine passion when it is nothing more than
mere coquetry." Better had it been both for herself and for us to
believe that she had only so loved.

The beauty and intelligence of the Duchess de Longueville formed
certainly, at the commencement, a large share in the calculating lover's
determination to seek a _liaison_ with the Duke d'Enghien's sister. The
crowd of admirers was great around her, and that spectacle of itself
served to inflame the ambition of M. de Marsillac: subsequent
reflection, doubtless, must have redoubled his ardour to achieve the
twofold conquest, in love and party. The Count de Miossens was then
paying the most assiduous court to Madame de Longueville; he was very
intimately connected with Mar