d never woman had
more contempt for scruples and duties: she never recognised other than
that of pleasing her lover."

[1] This nobleman died at Rome in December, 1867, at the age of
sixty-five, having gone thither to aid the Pope against the
Garibaldians.

This epigrammatic sketch is almost worthy of the exaggerated author of
the _Historiettes_,[2] and the reader is advised to accept only its more
salient and truthful traits--the keen and accurate glance of Mdme. de
Chevreuse in scanning the prevailing aspect of the political horizon,
her dauntless courage, the fidelity and devotion of her love. Retz,
moreover, mistakes entirely the order of her adventures; he forgets and
then invents. In striving after epigrammatic point, he sacrifices truth
to smartness of style, and writes as though he looked upon events in
which the passions of the Duchess made her take part as mere trifles,
whereas among them there were some than which none were ever of graver
or even more tragic moment.

[2] Tallement des Reaux.

Mdme. de Chevreuse, in fact, possessed almost all the qualities
befitting a great politician. One alone was wanting, and precisely that
without which all the others tended to her ruin. She failed to select
for pursuit a legitimate object, or rather she did not choose one for
herself, but left it to another to choose for her. Mdme. de Chevreuse
was womanly in the highest possible degree; that quality was alike her
strength and her weakness. Her secret mainspring was love, or rather
gallantry,[3] and the interest of him whom she loved became her
paramount object. It is this which explains the wonderful sagacity,
finesse, and energy she displayed in the vain pursuit of a chimerical
aim, which ever receded before her, and seemed to draw her on by the
very prestige of difficulty and danger. La Rochefoucauld accuses her of
having brought misfortune upon all those whom she loved;[4] it is
equally the truth to add that all those whom she loved hurried her in
the sequel into insensate enterprises. It was not she evidently who
made of Buckingham a species of paladin without genius; a brilliant
adventurer of Charles IV. of Lorraine; of Chalais a hair-brained
blunderer, rash enough to commit himself in a conspiracy against
Richelieu, on the faith of the faithless Duke d'Orleans; of Chateauneuf,
an ambitious statesman, impatient of holding second rank in the
Government, without being capable of taking the first.