time in May, 1625, when he came to France to espouse Madame in behalf of Charles I., and, at that time, Buckingham was in the height of his infatuation for Queen Anne, while Madame de Chevreuse was in love with Count Holland, whom she soon rejoined in England, having had the art to cause herself to be appointed to escort the new Princess of Wales to her husband. Now, when Madame de Chevreuse loved, as Retz himself affirms, she loved faithfully and exclusively. At the age of twenty-four, one does not trifle with a first attachment to the extent of giving one's own lover to another, and the rôle which the poor woman already plays in this affair is not so honorable as to make us delight to vilify her still more. Madame de Chevreuse fell ill, it is true, on hearing the news of the assassination of Buckingham. Nothing was more natural; she lost in him a tried friend, the confidant of her first love, and the chief and the hope of the enemies of Richelieu. To the obscure insinuations of Retz, should be opposed the clear and connected account of La Rochefoucauld, and above all, the silence of Tallemant,[1] who would not have failed to add this item to his scandalous chronicles, had he ever heard the story. Thus, without pretending to scan such things clearly, especially after the lapse of two centuries, but following our rule of admitting nothing except from sure testimony, we incline to the belief that the Duke of Buckingham should be struck from the list, still very numerous, of the lovers of Madame de Chevreuse, and that the handsome Chalais was the immediate successor of the elegant Count Holland in the heart of the beautiful duchess.
Without making of the conspiracy of Chalais, as Richelieu would have it, "the most frightful conspiracy of which history has ever made mention,"[2] we cannot refuse to admit that it was not so trifling an affair as Chalais asserted, trembling for his
