caped with difficulty under cover of the night and took refuge in Holland. His nephew, the Marquis de Leuville, was arrested and confined for a long time in prison, and he himself was conducted to the citadel of Angoulême, where he remained ten years, while Madame de Chevreuse, treated more gently by the cardinal, who had still a remnant of hope, received for her sole punishment an order to retire to Dampierre. But the queen could not dispense with her society, and the two friends often wished to meet to console each other by talking about their troubles, and probably, also, to devise the means of ending them. Often, under cover of the evening twilight, Madame de Chevreuse came in disguise to Paris, was secretly introduced into the Louvre or the Val-de-Grâce, saw the queen, and returned at midnight to Dampierre. But these clandestine visits were soon discovered, or at least suspected, and the faithful and daring confidant of Anne of Austria was banished to Touraine to an estate of her first husband.
One can easily imagine the mortal ennui which overwhelmed the beautiful duchess, thus buried at thirty-three in the heart of a province, far from the noise and the splendor of Paris, far from all the emotions which were so dear to her, far from all intrigues both of politics and of love. It was but a dull amusement to her to turn the head of the old Archbishop of Tours,[1] and to sustain herself she had great need of the visits of the young and amiable La Rochefoucauld,[2] who lived
- ↑ La Rochefoucauld, Memoires, p. 355. He was called Bertrand de Chaux, or D'Eschaux. He must have been then more than eighty years old, for we read in the Gazette of the year 1641, No. 619, p. 315, "Sieur D'Eschaux, Archbishop of Tours, Commander of the Order of Saint Esprit, and first Almoner to the King, died on the 1st of May at his Archiepiscopal palace of Tours, aged eighty-six."
- ↑ La Rochefoucauld, ibid., p. 355: "Madame de Chevreuse was at that time an exile in Tours. The queen had spoken well of me to her; she wished to see me, and we soon formed a strong league of friendship. I was often charged by both with dangerous commissions when going or returning."
