Was it from the singularity of her existence, from the essentially French tone of her character, from the grandeur of an epoch during which no one passed unnoticed, that the species of popularity half-indulgent, half-sportive, which attached to her name must be attributed? To all these doubtless, but likewise to another cause more decisive still. Mademoiselle does not take her place only in the sufficiently extensive catalogue of princely eccentricities; she holds a creditable position upon the list of French writers. Nor should it be forgotten that the gates of the Luxembourg were by her thrown open to all the beaux esprits of her time, “qui y trouvaient leur place comme chez Mécænas;” and that she fostered both by encouragement and example La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, and that it is no slight claim to remembrance that she led France to appreciate the Maxims of the one and the Characters of the other. May such considerations serve as extenuating circumstances when we bring her up for judgment for the flagrant crime of—M. de Lauzun.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The daughter of Gaston d’Orléans and the charming Marie de Bourbon, she was born in 1627, the same year as Bossuet and Mad. de Sévigné. Her mother died five days after her birth.
[7] Her father, writing to her companions in arms the Countesses of Fiesque and Frontenac shortly after their entrance into Orleans, complimented them upon their courage, and addressed his letter to the Countesses Adjutant-Generals in the Army of my Daughter against Mazarin.
CHAPTER VI.
THE WIFE OF THE GREAT CONDÉ.
Among so many heroines of beauty, glory, and gallantry, who achieved celebrity at this stirring epoch of French history, there is one whose name ought not to be effaced from, nor placed lowest on the list, although a humble—we were going to say, a humiliated, disdained, and sacrificed wife; a martyr to conjugal faith, but who, perhaps, can scarcely be called a “political” woman.
Mademoiselle de Brézé, as already intimated, had entered into the Condé family through the detestable influence of authority and politics. The Duke d’Enghien, therefore, unhappily held his wife in aversion; her mother-in-law, Charlotte de Montmorency, despised her; Madame de Longueville, her sister-in-law, did not esteem her; Mademoiselle de Montpensier declares that “she felt pity for her,” and that was the gentlest phrase she could find to apply to a person who had so signally crossed her views and inclination.