at his court to the Queen, should M. de Chateauneuf
be driven away by the Cardinal."

This interpretation of Conde's conduct does not do him great honour, but
it is a very probable one. In the first place, if La Rochefoucauld knew
how to glide so cleverly over all the ticklish points in which he could
not appear to advantage, he did not, strictly speaking, tell lies; he
retires rather than attacks, unless hurried away by passion, and he was
never in a passion with Conde. And, further, the conduct which he
attributes to Conde springs quite naturally out of the false position in
which Conde had, by degrees, suffered himself to be placed.

Altogether, we are persuaded that Conde was then sincere. His sole
error, and it is that which marked his entire conduct during the Fronde,
was the not having had, either on this occasion or any other, a fixed
and unalterable object. On the 13th of April the Queen took the seals
from Madame de Chevreuse's friend, Chateauneuf, the representative of
the Fronde in the Cabinet, to give them to the gravest person of his
time, the first president, Mathieu Mole, a worthy servant of the State,
very little friendly to the Fronde, and who then was sufficiently
favourable towards the Prince de Conde. That same day she recalled to
the Council as Secretary of State the Count de Chavigny, who had been
formerly minister for Foreign Affairs under Richelieu. Formed in the
school of the great Cardinal, as well as Mazarin, ousted from place,
crafty and resolute, feeling himself capable of bearing the weight of a
ministry, Chavigny had beheld with a sufficiently ominous countenance,
after the death of their common master, the sudden elevation of a
colleague who had even begun by being his dependent. Since 1643, vanity
had turned him aside from the high road of ambition, and he had
entangled himself in the brakes of very complicated intrigues. In 1651,
he passed as the friend of Conde. It was then only, if we can believe La
Rochefoucauld, that Conde declared himself opposed to the marriage of
his youthful brother with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse; and it was time
that he opposed it, for that marriage was on the eve of accomplishment.
Conti gave proof of the most ardent passion for Mademoiselle de
Chevreuse; he paid her a thousand attentions which he hid from his
friends, and particularly from his sister, for whom he ever professed to
entertain an undivided adoration. He held long conferences with the
Marquis d