was that, fascinated and misled by La Rochefoucauld, she
thought that Conde, by serving the Court and Mazarin, was false to his
own fame. In 1649, she had only too far contributed to make him enter by
degrees upon that fatal path into which La Rochefoucauld had lured
herself. Here, pride nourished the hope of one day seeing the Condes
replace the D'Orleans. When, in 1850, a son was born to Gaston, the
little Duke de Valois, who did not live, she fretted at an event which
threatened to strengthen and perpetuate a house for which she had no
affection, and in a letter which has remained inedited up to the present
day, she allows the thoughts that had insinuated themselves into her
heart to appear. "I think," she writes to Lenet on the 22nd August,
1650, "that the news of the birth of M. d'Orleans' son will no more
rejoice my sister-in-law than it has delighted me. It is to my nephew
that we must offer our condolence." In 1651, that ambition was carried
to its highest pitch. Madame de Longueville experienced the natural
intoxication that the power and prosperity of her house was calculated
to give her; and when we think of what perils she had just surmounted,
by what homage she was surrounded on all sides, that she was then
thirty-two, that she was in all the splendour of her beauty, and also
under all the strength of her passions, we might well be disposed to
pardon her that fugitive intoxication, if it had not likewise drawn down
disastrous consequences upon herself, upon Conde, and upon her country.

And here again occurs the question we have just raised. Was it Madame de
Longueville who caused the rupture of the projected marriage between the
Prince de Conti and Mademoiselle de Chevreuse? If hers was the chief
fault, we look upon it with regret, that in the eye of posterity she
should bear the blame of such a fault. If she only yielded to the advice
of La Rochefoucauld, we have the more excuse for her, and assert that
the fault comes home to him. As we have seen, that affair is still
involved in much obscurity, and since De Retz himself hesitates, we
ought to feel well justified to hesitate in our turn. But it must be
confessed, the suspicions of the Frondeurs and the accusations of the
Queen's friends have such great weight that it is scarcely possible to
avoid attributing to Madame de Longueville a sufficiently large share in
the deplorable rupture whence so many evils sprang. Her complaisant
biographer, Villefore, is