Having passed for "Mme. de Guise" sixty months, the Lady Anne appeared at Court under her own name "as if nothing had happened," reported Mademoiselle. Whatever may have here "happened," Anne de Gonzague reappeared at Court as alluring as in the flower of her first youth; and, as the Chronicle expressed it: "had the talent to marry herself—between two affairs of womanly gallantry—to the Prince Palatine,[112] one of the most rabidly jealous of gentlemen," because, as the pious and truthful Bossuet justly remarked, "everything gave way before the secret charm of her conversation." When nearly thirty years of age she obeyed the instincts of her genius and engaged in politics, with other politically inclined ladies, including Mme. de Longueville, whose only talent lay in her blonde hair and charming eyes.
Despite the poverty of her mental resources, Mme. de Longueville was a natural director of men, and she was but one of a very brilliant coterie. The prominent and fiery amazons of the politics of that epoch are too historically known to require detailed mention. They were: the haughty, dazzlingly superb, but too vicious and too practical in vice, Montbazon; the Duchesse de Chatillon (the imperious beauty who had her hand painted upon a painted lion whose face was the face of the great Condé), and many others who to the measure of their ability played with the honour and the lives of men, with Universal Suffrage, and with the stability of France, and who, like La Grande Mademoiselle, were called from their revelries by the dangers which threatened them.
The daughter of Gaston d'Orléans had grown up firmly convinced that the younger branch of the House of Paris (her own branch) could do anything. That had been the lesson taught for more than a century of history. From Charles VIII. to Louis XIII. the throne had been transmitted from father to son but three times; in all other cases it had passed to brothers or to cousins. The collaterals of the royal family had become accustomed to think of themselves as very near the throne, and at times that habit of thought had been detrimental to the country. Before the birth of Louis XIV. Gaston d'Orléans had touched the crown with the tips of his fingers, and he had made use of his title as heir-presumptive to work out some very unsavoury ends. After the birth of his nephews he had lived in a dream of possible results; he had waited to see what "his star" would bring him, and his hopes had blazed among their ashes at the first hint of the possibility of a change. When Louis XIV. was nine years old he was very sick and his doctors expected him to die; he had the smallpox. Monsieur was jubilant: he exhibited his joy publicly, and the courtiers drank to the health of "Gaston I." Olivier d'Ormesson stated that the courtiers distributed all the offices in the King's gift and planned to dispose of the King's brother. Anne of Austria, agonising in prayer for the life of the King, was horrified to learn that a plot was on foot to abduct little Monsieur. She was warned that the child was to be stolen some time in the night between Saturday and Sunday. Maréchal de Schomberg passed that night on his horse, accompanied by armed men who watched all the windows and doors of the palace. When the King recovered Monsieur apologised for his conduct, and the sponge of the royal forgiveness was passed over that episode as it had been over many others. Under the Regency of Anne of Austria the Court was called upon to resist the second junior branch, whose inferiority of pretensions was more than balanced by its intelligence and audacity.
The pretensions of the Condés had been the cause of one of Mazarin's first anxieties. They were vast pretensions, they were unquestionably just, and they were ably sustained by the father of the great Condé, "Monsieur le Prince," a superior personage whose appearance belied his character. People of his own age remembered him as a handsome man; but debauchery, avarice, and self-neglect had changed the distinguished courtier and made him a repulsive old man, "dirty and ugly."[113] He was stoop-shouldered and wrinkled, with great, red eyes, and long, greasy hair, which he wore passed around his ears in "love-locks." His aspect was formidable. Richelieu was obliged to warn him that he must make a serious attempt to cleanse his person, and that he must change his shoes before paying his visits to the King.[114] His spirit was as sordid as his body. "Monsieur le Prince" was of very doubtful humour; he was dogged, snappish, peevish, coarse, contrary, and thoroughly rapacious. He had begun life with ten thousand livres of income, and he had acquired a million, not counting his appointments or his revenues from the government.[115] His friends clutched their pockets when they saw him coming; but their precautions were futile; he had a way of getting all that he desired. Everything went into his purse and nothing came out of it; but where his purse was not concerned Monsieur le Prince was a different man; there he "loved justice and followed that which was good."[116] He was a rigorous statesman; he defended the national Treasury against the world. His keen sense of equity made him a precious counsellor and he was an eminent and upright judge. His knowledge of the institutions of the kingdom made him valuable as State's reference; he knew the origins, the systems, and the supposititious issues of the secret aims of all the parties.
The laws of France were as chaotic as the situation of the parties, and no one but a finished statesman could find his way among them; but to Monsieur le Prince they were familiar ground. Considerable as were his attainments, his children were his equals. Mme. de Longueville, though shallow, was as keen a diplomat as her father, and by far more dangerous; the Duc d'Enghien was an astute and accomplished politician. The world considered the Condés as important as the d'Orléans', and fully able to meet the d'Orléans' on the super-sacred footing of etiquette. We shall see to what the equality of the two families conducted them. Struggles between them were always imminent; their quarrels arose from the exigencies of symbolical details: the manner of the laying of a carpet, the bearing of the train of a State robe, et cetera. Such details seem insignificant to us, but that they do so is because we have lost the habit of monarchical traditions. When things are done according to hierarchical custom, details are very important. At every session of the King's Council "peckotings" passed between Gaston d'Orléans and Monsieur le Prince and an attentive gallery looked on and listened. But something of sterner stuff than "peckotings" was the order of the day when the Court met for a ceremonious function; material battles marked the meetings between Mlle. de Montpensier and Mme. la Princesse de Condé; Mme. de Longueville was brave, and La Grande Mademoiselle was not only brave, but fully determined to justify her title and defend her honour as the Granddaughter of France. The two princely ladies entered the lists with the same ardour, and they were as heroic as they were burlesque. The 5th December the Court was scheduled to attend a solemn Mass at Notre Dame, and by the law of precedence Mademoiselle was to be followed by Mme. la Princesse de Condé. The latter summoned her physician who bled her in order to enable her to be physically incapable of taking her place behind Mademoiselle. Gossips told Anne-Marie-Louise of her cousin's stratagem, and Mademoiselle resorted to an equally efficient, though entirely different, means of medical art calculated to make bodily motion temporarily undesirable, if not impossible. Mademoiselle was determined that she would not humiliate her quality by appearing at Mass without her attendant satellite (Saint Simon would have applauded the sufferings of both of the heroic ladies, for like them he had been gifted by nature with a subtle appreciation of the duties and the privileges of rank), but the incident was not closed. By a strange fatality, at that instant Church came in conflict with State. Cardinal Mazarin, representing the Church, inspired Queen Anne to resent her niece's indisposition. The Queen became very angry at Mademoiselle, and impelled by her anger, Monsieur commanded his daughter to set out immediately for Notre Dame; he told her rudely that if she was too sick to walk, she had plenty of people to carry her. "You will either go or be carried!" he cried violently, and Mademoiselle, much the worse for her stratagem, was forced to yield. She deplored her fate, and wept because she had lost her father's sympathy.
The reciprocal acidity of the junior branches was constantly manifested by fatalities like the event just noted, and by episodes like the affair of "the fallen letters" (August, 1643). Although all the writers of that day believed that the reaction of that puerile matter was felt in the Fronde, the quarrel, like all the other quarrels, was of so senseless a character that it awakened the shame of the nation. The story is soon told: Mme. de Montbazon picked up—no one knew where—some love letters in which, as she said, she recognised the writing of Mme. de Longueville. Her story was false, and Anne of Austria, who frowned upon the gossip and the jealousies of the Court, condemned Mme. Montbazon to go to the Hôtel de Condé and make apologies for the wrong that she had done the Princess. All the friends of the House of Condé were expected to be present to hear and to witness the vindication of Mme. la Princesse.
Monsieur was there [wrote Mademoiselle], and for my part I could not stay away. I had no friendship for Mme. la Princesse, or for any of her friends, but on that occasion I could not have taken a part contrary to hers with decorum; to be present there was one of the duties of relationship which one cannot neglect.
On that occasion the relatives of the family were all in the Hôtel de Condé, but their hearts were not in their protestations, and the Condés were not deceived. The petty scandal of the letters fed the flame of enmity, which Mazarin watched and nourished because he knew that it was to his interest and to the interest of the State to foment the quarrel between the rival cousins. An anonymous collection of "memoirs" says:
Seeing that he was pressed from all sides, the Cardinal thought that the safety of his position required him to keep the House of Orleans separate from the House of Bourbon, so that by balancing one by the other he could remain firmly poised between the two and make himself equally necessary to both. It was as if Heaven itself had dropped the affair of the fallen letters into his hands, and he turned his celestial windfall to such account that the Luxembourg and the Hôtel de Bourbon found it difficult to maintain a decent composure; at heart they were at daggers' points. The Duc d'Orléans and the Duc d'Enghien were regarded as the chiefs of the two hostile parties, and the courtiers rallied to the side of either as their interests or their inclinations led them![117]