POLITICAL WOMEN.
CHAPTER I.
ANNE DE BOURBON,
SISTER OF THE GREAT CONDÉ, AFTERWARDS DUCHESS DE LONGUEVILLE.
The brilliant heroine of the Fronde, of whose grace, beauty, and influence Anne of Austria was so jealous—not to speak of the mortal rivalry of the gay Duchesses de Montbazon and de Châtillon—although the youngest of that famous trio whom Mazarin found so formidable in the arena of politics, obviously claims alike from her exalted rank and the memorable part she played in the tragi-comedy of the Fronde, priority of notice among the bevy of the Cardinal’s fair political opponents.
Some time in the month of August, 1619, Anne Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé first saw the light in the donjon of Vincennes, where her parents had been kept State prisoners for three years previously. She was the eldest of the three children of Henry (II.) de Bourbon-Condé, first prince of the blood, and of that Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, “the beauty, perfect grace and majesty of her time.”[2] The lovely Montmorency on coming to Court in her fifteenth year had sorely troubled the heart of the amorous soldier-king, Henry of Navarre, who had married her in 1609 to his nephew of Condé with the covert hope of finding him an accommodating husband; but the latter, alike defiant and uxorious, made the jovial Bearnois plainly understand that he had wedded the blooming Charlotte exclusively for himself. The gaillard monarch, however, at length grew so deeply enamoured that the prince, perceiving there was too much cause to fear the result of the constant assiduities of his royal uncle, fled precipitately with his young wife from France, only to return thither after tidings reached him of the great Henry’s assassination. To the fair Montmorency’s very decided proclivity to gallantry was to be attributed—if we may believe the scandal-loving Tallemant des Reaux—her long confinement, by the Regent Marie de’ Medici’s consent, within the gloomy fortress of Vincennes, rather than any reason of State for her sharing her husband’s imprisonment. In fact, it was believed that the jealous prince procured her incarceration simply to keep her out of harm’s way.
Deriving from her mother the threefold gifts of grace, beauty, and majesty, the fair Bourbon inherited also, it must be owned, a share of that princess’s inclination to l’honnête galanterie. The restriction to a share should be noted; for at no period of her heydey, not even during the licence of the Fronde, could Anne Geneviève be accused of having—as Madame de Motteville tells us the Princess de Condé had,—adorers “in every rank and condition of life, from popes, kings, princes, cardinals, dukes, and marshals of France, down to simple gentlemen.”
The mind and heart, however, of Anne de Bourbon, although predestined, alas! eventually to culpable passion, seemed at first but little inclined to the gay world—with all its blandishments and seductions, or even to its innocent pleasures. When quite a child she was in the habit of accompanying her mother in her visits to the convent of the Carmelites at Paris. For though still possessing great personal attractions, Madame de Condé had become serious and of a somewhat demonstrative piety. Those visits, which were frequent, strengthened Anne’s gentle and susceptible mind in its tendency to devotion. The impression, too, which somewhat later the tragic fate of her uncle, the unfortunate Duke de Montmorency,[3] left on her memory, inspired her with the resolution to quit the outer world at the earliest possible moment, and, renouncing all its pomps and grandeurs, hide beneath the veil her budding attractions. Although her mother opposed an inflexible resistance to her embracing that holy vocation, and strove to combat by forcible arguments the cold and disdainful demeanour exhibited by her daughter when mixing in gay society, the fair girl persevered from the age of thirteen to seventeen in her longing to embrace the life of the cloister. Futile for a time were the parental arguments, unfruitful every effort! Anne Geneviève would not consort with worldlings, persisted in her distaste for mundane pleasures, and continued to cherish persistently her desire for conventual seclusion. At length the princess, in 1636, having resolved upon the adoption of more energetic measures, suddenly ordered her daughter to make preparations for appearing at a Court ball, and that, too, in three days. With what despair did the young princess hear the cruel sentence! What affliction, too, befell the Carmelite nuns when they heard of the fatal mandate. What a flood of sighs and tears and prayers! The good sisters gathered themselves together to take counsel one with another, and decided that, since Mdlle. de Bourbon could not avoid the wretched fate that awaited her, before going through the trying ordeal she should indue her lovely form with an undergarment of hair-cloth (commonly called a cilice), and, protected by such armour of proof, she might then fearlessly submit herself to all the temptations lurking beneath the ensnaring vanities of her Court attire. The cilice, however, did not, it seems, prove invulnerable as the ægis of Minerva, for the subtle shafts winged by homage and admiration pierced through that slight breast-plate to a heart which in truth was by nature framed to inspire and welcome both. The Princess de Condé rejoiced greatly at her daughter’s conversion to more reasonable views of mundane existence. The commencement of her noviciate was no longer thought of, and her visits to the Carmelites became sufficiently rare. But it was only a deferment of that calm vocation, it being Anne de Bourbon’s destiny to embrace it at the close of her feverish political career.
This era of her entrance into the great world was probably the happiest, the most joyous of the fair Bourbon’s life. Lofty distinction of birth, great personal beauty, and rare mental fascination, contributed to place her in the very foremost rank of the Court circle—in the “height of company”—conspicuous amongst lovely dames and distinguished men of the time. Her peerless loveliness at once meeting with universal recognition, “la belle Condé” was toasted with acclamation by courtiers, young and old—at Chantilly, at Liancourt, at the Louvre, and at the Hôtel de Rambouillet. Contemporaries of either sex have rendered unanimous testimony to the varied and exceptional character of her attractions, and we will let a woman’s pen add to Petitot’s pencilling some of those delicate traits which neither the burin nor even the vivid tints of the enamel have the power to convey.