ed to personal beauty, to so high
a degree, that it seemed as though nature had taken pleasure in forming
in her person a perfectly finished work. But those fine qualities were
rendered less brilliant through a blemish rarely seen in one so highly
endowed, which was that, far from giving the law to those who had a
particular admiration for her, she transfused herself so thoroughly into
their sentiments that she no longer recognised her own."

Now La Rochefoucauld should have been the last person to complain of
that defect, since he was the first to foster it in the Duchess. In her
bosom love awoke ambition, but the awakening was so sudden, in fact,
that any difference in the two passions was never perceptible.

Singular contradiction! The more we contemplate the political bias of
Madame de Longueville the more it becomes mingled with her amorous
caprice; but when we analyse her love more narrowly (and later on in
life she herself made the avowal), it appears nothing else than ambition
travestied--a desire to shine only the more magnificently brilliant.

Her character, then, was entirely wanting in consistency, in self-will;
and her mind, be it observed, however brilliant and acute, had nothing
that was calculated to counterbalance that defect of character. One may
possess the faculty of right perception without strength of mind to do
that which is right. One may be rational in mind and the contrary in
conduct--character being at fault between the two. But here the case was
different. Madame de Longueville's mind was not, above all else,
rational; it was acute, prompt, subtle, witty by turns, and readily
responsive to the varying humour of the moment. It shone voluntarily in
contradiction and subterfuge, ere exhausting itself finally in scruples.
There was much of the Hotel de Rambouillet in such a mind as hers.

"The mind in the majority of women serves rather to confirm their folly
than their reason." So says the author of the "Maxims;" and Madame de
Longueville, with all her metamorphoses, was undoubtedly present before
him when he penned the sentence. For she, the most feminine of her sex,
would offer to him the completest epitome of all the rest. In short,
evidently as he has made his observations upon her, she also seems to
have drawn her conclusions from him. So the agreement is perfect.

CHAPTER II.

MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE.

A YOUNG Princess of the Blood so lovely, fascinating, and witty as Anne
d