tpensier, at Cologne
according to other writers; where, as elsewhere, she caused herself to
be called "Madame de Guise"--writing and speaking of her husband, and
defying the assurances which were constantly advanced of the illegality
of a marriage secretly performed by a canon of Rheims in the private
chapel of the Hotel de Nevers. But what are promises, marriage vows, or
even bonds written in blood?

Henri not long after became unfaithful to the confiding Anne by eloping
with a fair widow, the Countess de Bossut, whom he carried off to
Brussels and ultimately married. Implicated in the conspiracy of the
Count de Soissons, the turbulent churchman was present at the battle of
Marfee, and consequently declared guilty of high treason. He therefore
took up his abode in the Low Countries, where he quietly awaited the
death of Louis XIII. and his minister, then both moribund, to resume his
career at the Court of France.

Thus abandoned by her volatile lover, and extremely compromised,
Mademoiselle de Gonzagua returned to Paris, where she reassumed the
appellation of the Princess Anne. Her grief for awhile at her
abandonment was great, but happily for Anne de Gonzagua, she was
possessed of youth, and, as Madame de Motteville tells us, "of beauty
and great mental attractions." She had moreover sufficient address to
obtain a great amount of esteem, in spite of her errors. In a few years'
time, during which she took care to avoid fresh scandal, whatever she
might have done "under the rose," she made a tolerably good marriage.
Her husband, her senior by two years only, was Prince Edward, Count
Palatine of the Rhine, son of a king without a kingdom,--the elector
Frederick,[2] chosen King of Bohemia in 1619, but who lost his crown in
1620, at the battle of Prague. Prince Edward, therefore, having no
sovereignty, lived at the French Court. In 1645, then, Anne de Gonzagua
found herself definitively settled at Paris, and it must be owned did
not give Henri de Guise much cause to regret his faithlessness. The
irregularities of the Princess Palatine became notorious, and assuredly
Bossuet, in the funeral oration which he pronounced many years later, in
the presence of one of her daughters and other relatives, whilst
displaying a prodigal eloquence, and a mastery over all oratorical
resource, made use of every artifice of speech, and all the elasticity
of vague terms, in speaking of that period of her life without a
violation of proprie