Not long before the beginning of the Fronde, the fine world of Paris, stirred to action by the spectacle of the royal infatuation and by the subjection of the national welfare to the suppositive exigencies of "the foreigner," embraced the theory of Opposition, and to be of the Opposition was the fashion of the hour. All who aspired to elegance wore their rebellion as a badge, unless they had private reasons for appearing as the friends of Mazarin. The women who were entering politics found it to their interest to join the opposing body.
Politics had become the favourite pastime of the highways and the little streets. Men and women, not only in Paris, but in the châteaux and homes of the provinces, and children—boys and girls—began to express political opinions in early youth.
"Come, then, Grandmamma," said little Montausier to Mme. de Rambouillet, "now that I am five years old, let us talk about affairs of State." Her grandmother could not have reproved with a good grace, because her own "Blue Room" had been one of the chief agents responsible for the new diversion just before the Fronde. A mocking but virile force arose in the Opposition to check the ultra-refinements of the high art, the high intellectual ability, and the other superfine characteristics of the school of Arthénice. The mockery of the Opposition was as keen and its irony was as effective as the mental sword-play of the literary extremists. Wit was its chief weapon and its barbed words, and merry yet sarcastic thrusts had power to overthrow a ministry. The country knew it and gloried in it. The people of France would have entered upon revolution before they would have renounced their "spirituality." In the polemics of the new party the turn of a sentence meant a dozen things at once; a syllable stung like a dagger. Frenchmen are the natural artists of conversation, and they never found field more favourable to their art than the broad plains of the Opposition. Avowed animosity to the pretensions of the pedants and light mockery of the preciosity of the Précieuses offered a varied choice of subjects and an equally varied choice of accessories for their work. The daring cavaliers of the Opposition passed like wild huntsmen over the exhausted ground, with eyes bent upon the trail, and found delicate and amusing shades of meaning in phrases scorned and stigmatised as "common" by the hyper-spiritual enthusiasts of the Salons.
MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER
FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING
In the exercise of free wit, the women of the new political school found an influence which before their day had been monopolised by the polemists of the State's Councils. They—the women of the Opposition—swept forward and seized positions previously held by men, and since then, either from deep purpose or from pure conviction, they have held their ground and exercised their right to share, or to attempt to share, in the creation and in the destruction of governments. Mademoiselle followed the fashion of the day when she frequented the society of people who were in disgrace at Court. She ridiculed the King's Minister, and as she was influential and popular, outspoken and eager to declare her principles, she was called an agitator, though in the words of Mme. de Motteville, "she was not quite sure what she was trying to do." Mazarin, whom Mademoiselle considered "stupid," had entangled the wires of the cabals and confused the minds of the pretenders with such consummate art that the keenest intriguers gazed in bewilderment upon their own interests, and doubted their truest friends. For instance, Monsieur, who had mind and wit "to burn," could not explain, even to himself, why he repudiated Mademoiselle when she quarrelled with the second junior branch. He knew that he was jealous of his rights and of all that belonged to him; he knew that the power of the Condés was a menace, that his daughter was a powerful ally for any party, that her championship was, and always had been, his strongest arm against an unappreciative world, and after one of the senseless exhibitions of anger against Mademoiselle to which Anne of Austria, impelled by Mazarin, frequently incited him, he asked himself why he maltreated his daughter when she resisted the usurpations of his hated cousins, the Condés.
"Why," he queried piteously, "should I plunge the knife into my own breast?"
Why he did so, and why many another as astute as he moved heaven and earth to effect his own downfall was the secret of Mazarin.
Mademoiselle wept bitter tears for the loss of her father's friendship; then she arose in her pride, resolved to tread the path of life alone, according to her independent will. She was twenty years old and in the fulness of her beauty. She described her appearance with complaisancy[126]: