direct that party and struggle
successfully against Mazarin; but they were seconded by three men who,
although obscure, displayed in these circumstances extraordinary talent.
Lenet,[1] who never quitted the Princess de Conde throughout these
troubles, but served her faithfully with his pen and advice. Montreuil,
who, although he had never published anything, was a member of the
French Academy and secretary to the Prince de Conde. He managed, with
infinite address, and incessantly devising new means, to correspond with
the Princes, and bring the vigilance of their keepers in default. And it
was Gourville especially, who, after having worn the livery of the Duke
de la Rochefoucauld as his valet, had become his man of business, his
confidant, and friend. It was Gourville who, under a heavy expression of
countenance, concealed a most subtle, most acute, and fertile
intelligence. Persuasive, energetic, prompt, reflective; knowing how to
gain an end by the direct road; or, under the eyes of those opposing,
attaining it unperceived, by covert and tortuous ways. A man who never
found himself in any situation, however desperate it might be, without
having the confidence that he could extricate himself from it. Did the
cleverest consider a position as lost? Gourville intervened, infused
hope, promised to lend a hand to it, and success was immediately certain
and defeat impossible.

[1] His memoirs give reliable details of all that relates to the
Condes at this period.

Still Gourville was not, even on the score of ability, the foremost
spirit of his party. The person who deserved that title was a woman--the
celebrated Anne de Gonzagua, widow of Edward Prince Palatine. Through
her proneness to gallantry, she did not escape the weakness of her sex;
but through her imperturbable calmness in the midst of the most violent
commotions, her elevated views, the depth of her designs, the accuracy
and rapidity of her resolutions, and her skill in making everything
conduce to a given end, she combined in its entire vigour the peculiar
character of the statesman with the soul of a conspirator. She had been
through life the intimate friend of the mother of Conde, and she now
laboured with skill, wisdom, and perseverance for the liberation of the
Princes. And such is the ascendency obtained by talent backed by an
energetic will, that it was to her advice all the partisans of the
Princes deferred; her hand that held the threads of their