“Madam,” replied he, “I will oblige the Prince de Condé to quit Paris ere eight days are over, and will carry off the Duke d’Orleans from him before to-morrow night.”
The Queen, transported with joy, extended her hand to him saying—“Give me your hand on that, and the day after to-morrow you are a cardinal, and moreover the second amongst my friends.”
A few days afterwards, De Retz and Madame de Chevreuse had raised the entire Fronde against the Prince de Condé. The worthy archbishop had announced his approach to the enemy he was about to attack by a cloud of the same kind of libels, satires, and epigrams, which he had always found so efficacious in prejudicing the people of Paris against any one whom he thought fit to hold forth to popular odium. At the same time a multitude of criers and hawkers were sent through the town, spreading, at the very lowest price, all the sarcasms which had been composed at the archbishopric in the morning, to render the conduct of Condé ridiculous, contemptible, and hateful in the eyes of the multitude.
At length, when the Coadjutor believed that everything had been sufficiently prepared, he made the Palatine write to inform the Queen that he was about to go to the parliament. Mademoiselle de Chevreuse was with the Regent at the time she received this intimation; and the delight which it occasioned was so great that the virtuous and pious Anne of Austria caught the archbishop’s mistress in her arms, and kissed her more than once, exclaiming, with no very great regard for decorum, “You rogue! you are now doing me as much good as you have hitherto done me harm.”
De Retz kept his word, and went to the parliament, but the progress against Condé was so slow that Mazarin, the Queen, and De Retz, began to revolve more summary measures, and, towards the latter part of June, their deliberations ended in a sinister project of again arresting or of assassinating Condé.
This obscure affair, as yet only partially unveiled, and which probably will never be so entirely, is not so dark and impenetrable, however, as to prevent us from seeing, within the shadow thereof, fearful and criminal purposes, to which even the more open vices of the age are comparatively light. We are told by De Retz that the Marshal de Hocquincourt, with more frankness than the rest, proposed in direct terms to assassinate Condé. The Coadjutor himself, however, Madame de Chevreuse, and other leaders of the Fronde, but above all Senneterre, who had about this time obtained a great share of the Queen’s confidence, opposed not only the bold crime proposed at first by Hocquincourt, but also all the schemes which he and others afterwards suggested, and which, though apparently more mild, were all likely to end in the same event.
Rumours of what was meditated soon reached the Prince’s ears, who then saw clearly the nature of his position. He perceived that he had quarrelled thoroughly and for ever with the Frondeurs and with the Queen, and that henceforth he was placed between imprisonment and assassination. He felt certain that this time, should he fall into the hands of his enemies, he would be treated far more harshly than in 1650, and that probably he might never see the light again. He despised death, but the idea of perpetual incarceration was insupportable to him, and that idea fastening itself by degrees on his mind caused projects to enter into it which until then had only momentarily crossed it.
Too high-minded to quit Paris as though he were terrified, Condé exhibited no change in his conduct; merely confining himself to no longer visiting the Palais-Royal or the Palais d’Orléans, and never going abroad without a numerous escort of officers and retainers. Already for some time past foreseeing the storm that was gathering against him, he had taken serious measures to confront it: he had strengthened all the fortresses that were in his hands. He had despatched to Flanders the Marquis de Sillery, La Rochefoucauld’s brother-in-law, under pretext of finally disengaging Madame de Longueville and Turenne from the treaties they had made with the Spaniards in 1650, with secret instructions to renew them, and to ascertain how far he might reckon on the assistance of Spain if he were compelled to draw the sword. The Count de Fuensaldagne did not fail, agreeable to the policy of his court, to promise much more than was asked of him, and he omitted nothing calculated to stir up Condé to have recourse to arms.
Chance had a share in urging Condé to take a further and almost decisive step in the dangerous path that was opening before him. One evening, just as he had lain down on his bed and was chatting with Vineuil, one of his trusty friends, the latter received a note which directed him to warn the Prince that two companies of guards were advancing on the side of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was thought that those troops were about to invest the hôtel. Condé jumped out of bed, dressed himself, mounted his horse instantly, and, accompanied by a few attendants, took his way through the faubourg Saint-Michel. On gaining the high road, he heard the clatter of a somewhat strong body of horsemen approaching, and thinking that it was the squadron in search of him, he fell back at first in the direction of Meudon; then, instead of re-entering Paris, when day broke he sought an asylum in his château of Saint-Maur. He reached it on the morning of the 6th of July; and it may readily be guessed what the effect, in Paris and throughout the kingdom, of such a retreat was, and for such motives. The Princess de Condé, the Prince de Conti, Madame de Longueville, La Rochefoucauld, the Duke de Nemours, the Duke de Richelieu, the Prince’s most intimate friends, and more than one illustrious personage, such as the Duke de Bouillon and Turenne, repaired immediately to Saint-Maur. In a day or two, Condé saw himself surrounded by a court as brilliant and as numerous as that of the King, and there he kept up a right royal festivity. After a while he sent a considerable number of officers disguised into Paris, who bestirred themselves in every quarter in his favour; and when he considered himself in a position to hold his own against both the Queen and the Frondeurs together, he quitted Saint-Maur and returned to his hôtel near the Palais d’Orléans, desiring to put a good complexion on the aspect of his affairs and to impose upon his enemies by that bold and high-minded conduct.[70] He appeared again also in the parliament, now once more become the battle-field of parties. De Retz, full of his own individual hatred, augmented by that of Madame de Chevreuse, seconded at once by the friends of the Duke d’Orleans and by those of the Queen, burning to tear from the Court and win, by serving it, the cardinal’s hat, the object of his ardent desires, the necessary stepping-stone to his ambition, brought all his courage and vanity towards enacting the part of the Prince’s enemy. And there, during the months of July and August, in that pretended sanctuary of law and justice, passed all those deplorable scenes which De Retz and La Rochefoucauld have related, and in which Mazarin, from his retreat on the banks of the Rhine, rejoiced to see his two enemies waste their strength, and work unwittingly but surely their common ruin and his approaching triumph.
A crisis was clearly inevitable. Condé could no longer perceive any sign of a pacific issue from the position in which he had been placed, or rather in which he had placed himself, and at his right hand stood Madame de Longueville and the Prince de Conti, who held no opinions contrary to those of his sister, urging him to cut the knot which he knew not how to untie. La Rochefoucauld stopped him for a moment on the threshold of war, entreating Condé to allow him to undertake fresh negotiations. The Prince consented willingly thereto. Madame de Longueville was opposed to it. La Rochefoucauld, speaking to her with that authority which his long devotion gave him, represented to her the terrible responsibility which she took upon herself both towards Condé and the State, and he obtained from her a promise that she would withdraw for a time from the arena of strife, and accompany her sister-in-law, the Princess de Condé, to Berri, and allow him to remain in Paris by the side of Condé in order to make a last essay towards conjuring the tempest.