, grand-daughter of Henry IV,
Mademoiselle d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier,
Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Mademoiselle, cousin of the king, Mademoiselle,
destined to the throne, Mademoiselle, the only parti in France worthy of
Monsieur. VOILA a fine subject for conversation. If you cry out, if you
are beside yourself, if you say that we have deceived you, that it is
false, that one trifles with you, that it is a fine bit of raillery,
that it is very stupid to imagine, if, in fine, you abuse us, we shall
find that you are right; we have done as much ourselves.

In spite of the prudent warnings of her friends, the happy princess
could not forego the eclat of a grand wedding, and before the hasty
arrangements were concluded, the permission was withdrawn. Her tears,
her entreaties, her cries, her rage, and her despair, were of no avail.
Louis XIV took her in his arms, and mingled his tears with hers,
even reproaching her for the two or three days of delay; but he was
inexorable. Ten years of loyal devotion to her lover, shortly afterward
imprisoned at Pignerol, and of untiring efforts for his release which
was at last secured at the cost of half her vast estates, ended in a
brief reunion. A secret marriage, a swift discovery that her idol was
of very common clay, abuse so violent that she was obliged to forbid
him forever her presence, and the disenchantment was complete. The sad
remnant of her existence was devoted to literature and to conversation;
the latter she regarded as "the greatest pleasure in life, and almost
the only one." When she died, the Count de Lauzun wore the deepest
mourning, had portraits of her everywhere, and adopted permanently the
subdued colors that would fitly express the inconsolable nature of his
grief.

Without tact or fine discrimination, the Grande Mademoiselle was a woman
of generous though undisciplined impulses, loyal disposition, and pure
character; but her egotism was colossal. Under different conditions,
one might readily imagine her a second Joan of Arc, or a heroine of the
Revolution. She says of herself: "I know not what it is to be a heroine;
I am of a birth to do nothing that is not grand or elevated. One may
call that what one likes. As for myself, I call it to follow my own
inclination and to go my own way. I am not born to take that of others."
She lacked the measure, the form, the delicacy of the typical precieuse;
but her quick, restless intellect and arden