umphed over her beauty, but she was still graceful, and her keen penetration, her decision, her boldness, and her genius, remained entire.[1] She had found a last friend in the Marquis de Laigues,[2] captain of the guards of the Duke d'Orleans, a man of spirit and of resolution, whom she loved till the end, and with whom after the death of M. de Chevreuse in 1657, she probably united her destiny by one of those mariages de conscience then very much in fashion.[3] We cannot be expected to follow her step by step, and to entangle ourselves in the mazes of the Fronde. It suffices to say that she enacted one of the principal roles in it. Attached to the heart of the party and to its essential interests, she guided it through every danger with incomparable address and energy. After relying so long upon Spain, she knew how to separate from it at the right time. She preserved a powerful influence over the Duke of Lorraine, and it is not difficult to recognize her hand concealed behind the ambiguous and often hostile movements
- ↑ Retz, who ends by detesting Madame de Chevreuse because she refused to follow him in his last extravagant project, pretends that, in 1649, she no longer possessed even a vestige of beauty. However, she still retained it in 1657, as may be seen from the portrait of Ferdinand Elle, engraved by Balechou, in the series of Odieuvre, in which she is represented as a widow, with a fine, expressive, and aristocratic face.
- ↑ The Marquis de Laigues, having gone to Brussels in 1649, to treat with Spain in the name of the Frondeurs, found Madame de Chevreuse there and formed an intimacy with her, as Alexandre de Campion had done in 1641. Retz pretends that when Laigues quitted Paris, Montrésor induced him to endeavor to please Madame de Chevreuse, who could do much with the Spanish Government, and to reach her head through her heart. Laigues was young and pleasing in his person; he succeeded, and both became so strongly attached that they never separated. Note the only fact, very uncertain however, since it rests on a single witness, whence Retz draws his admirable conclusion, which does as much honor to his logic as to his delicacy, "that it was not difficult to persuade Madame de Chevreuse to accept a handsome lover."
- ↑ Memoirs of the younger Brienne, published by M. Barrière, vol ii., chap, xix., p. 178: "The Marquis de Laigues, who was certainly the mari de conscience of the duchess."
