men nurtured in the old intrigues, and accustomed to and always ready for surprises, who in former times had been engaged in more than one desperate enterprise against Richelieu, and who, in an extreme case, could be incited against Mazarin also. The memoirs of the time, particularly those of Retz and of La Rochefoucauld, describe them well. There were the Count de Montrésor, the Count de Fontrailles, the Count de Brion, the Count de Fiesque, the Count d'Aubijoux, the Count de Beaupuis, the Count de Saint-Ybar, Barrière, Varicarville, and many others beside,—impracticable spirits, intrepid hearts, of an unbounded fidelity to their cause and to their friends, professing the most ultra maxims, with a sort of worship for the unfortunate De Thou, continually invoking ancient Rome and Brutus, mingling amorous intrigues with all these, and urging themselves on in all their chimeras by the desire of pleasing the ladies. They gained the name of the Importants by their consequential airs, their affectation of ability and profundity, and their mysterious language.[1] Their chief favorite was the Duke de Beaufort, whom we already know, a personage of nearly the same stamp with themselves, made up at once of extravagance and of artifice, but professing great loyalty and devotion, and giving himself out as a man of action, and who, moreover, was wholly ruled by Madame de Montbazon, the youthful mother-in-law of Madame de Chevreuse. The former mistress of Chalais had no difficulty in gaining this little faction. She flattered it adroitly, while, with the art of a practised conspirator, she fomented
- ↑ To the well-known portraits of the Importants left us by Retz and La Rochefoucauld, may be added the following lines of Alexandre de Campion:—Recueil. "I have some friends who have not all the prudence that might be desired; they affect a passion for honor, and give to virtue so strange a garb, that it seems to me disguised; so that, though they may possess all its essential qualities, they use them so badly that the applause which they gain thereby, leads, perhaps, only to their destruction."
