ongueville were then
disputing for Conde's heart: the one drew him towards the Court, fully
hoping that the Court would not be ungrateful to her; the other urged
him more and more upon the path of war. We have related how Madame de
Longueville, well knowing the strength of Conde's friendship for the
Duke de Nemours, who was in the chains of the Duchess, very
inopportunely mingled politics and coquetry in Berri, and tried the
power of her charms upon Nemours, in order to carry him off from Madame
de Chatillon and from the party of peace. No one ever knew how far
Madame de Longueville committed herself on that occasion; but, as we
have remarked, the slightest appearance was enough for La Rochefoucauld.
As he had only sought his own advantage in the Fronde, not finding it
therein, he began to grow tired, and asked for nothing better than to
put an end to the wandering and adventurous life he had been for some
years leading by a favourable reconciliation. Madame de Longueville's
conduct in cutting him to the quick in what remained of his tender
feelings for her, and especially in the most sensitive portion of his
heart--its vanity and self-love--gave him an opportunity or a pretext,
which he seized upon with eagerness, to break off a _liaison_ become
contrary to his interests. Thus, in April, 1652, when he returned to
Paris with Conde, and there found Madame de Chatillon, he entered at
once into all her prejudices and all her designs, as he afterwards owned
to Madame de Motteville:[2] he placed at her service all that was in him
of skill and ability, and descended to the indulgence of a revenge
against Madame de Longueville wholly unworthy of an honourable man, and
which after the lapse of two centuries is as revolting to every
right-minded person as it was to his contemporaries.

[2] Mad. de Motteville, tom. v. p. 132. "M. de la Rochefoucauld m'a
dit que la jalousie et la vengeance le firent agir soigneusement, et
qu'il fit tout ce que Mad. de Chatillon voulut."

Madame de Chatillon was not contented with carrying off the giddy and
inconstant Duke de Nemours from his new love, then absent; she exacted
at his hands the public and outrageous sacrifice of her rival. The
reprisals of feminine vanity did not stop there: the ambitious and
intriguing Duchess went further, she undertook to ruin Madame de
Longueville in her brother's estimation. With that object she set
herself, with the assistance of La Rochefoucauld,