This excited the Importants to fever heat and a plot was formed, with Mme. de Chevreuse as the leader, to assassinate the cardinal. Shortly after this, Coligny, as champion of the cause of Mme. de Longueville, challenged the Duc de Guise to a duel. The whole court was made up of two parties: the Importants with Mme. de Montbazon and Mme. de Chevreuse; and Condé and Mme. de Longueville with their friends; the result was the death of Coligny. Mme. de Longueville was a true précieuse and hardly loved Coligny, but allowed him and any other to serve and adore her in a respectable way--a principle followed by the better women of the age, such as Mme. de Rambouillet and Mme. de Sablé.
Some time after these occurrences, Mme. de Longueville was stricken with smallpox which, fortunately, did not impair her beauty; it was said, on the contrary, that in taking away its first flower it left all the brilliancy which, joined to her culture and charming languor, made her one of the most attractive persons in France. La Rochefoucauld has left the following picture of her: "This princess had all the advantages of esprit and beauty to as great a degree as if nature had taken pleasure in completing, in her person, a perfect work; but these qualities shone less brilliantly on account of one characteristic which led her to imbibe so thoroughly the sentiments of those who adored her that she no longer recognized her own."
After her twenty-fifth year, Mme. de Longueville became more and more imbued with the general spirit of the seventeenth century: coquetry and bel esprit became her chief occupation. The glory of her brother, the Duc d'Enghien, who was rapidly becoming a power, and the probability of the house of Condé becoming dangerous, made Mazarin realize that Mme. de Longueville was to be reckoned with, inasmuch as she had full control over D'Enghien and was constantly instilling new ideas into his mind and requesting from him the distribution of all sorts of favors. Mazarin, in 1646, succeeded in causing her withdrawal to Münster for one year; there she ruled as queen of the Congress. On the death of her father, the Prince of Condé, and at the request of her mother to come home for her lying-in, the husband of Mme. de Longueville consented to her return to Paris.
In the meantime, everything was being done by the Importants to win over the house of Condé and cause a breach between it and Mazarin. The court at this time was in full glory; to amuse the queen-regent, Mazarin was lavishing money on artists from Italy, and the nobility outdid itself in its attempts to rival royalty in elegance and luxury. Upon her return, everyone paid homage to Mme. de Longueville; it was at this period that La Rochefoucauld, who was anxious about his position at court, as he was accused of being in league with the Importants and was therefore refused the favors he desired, met Mme. de Longueville who was in the height of her glory and in full control of the most prominent house of the time--that of the Duc d'Enghien and the Prince de Conti, her brothers.
In order to conquer for himself what the cardinal would not grant him, La Rochefoucauld put forth every effort to win Mme. de Longueville; captivated by his fine appearance, his chivalry and, above all, by his powerful intellect, she gave herself up entirely, willing to share his destiny, to sacrifice all her interests, even those of her family, and the deepest sentiment of her life--the tenderness for her brother.
France at this time, 1648, was in a position to gain for herself a peace with the world at her own terms, and her future seemed to be without a cloud. It was the Fronde that checked her growth and glory, and the cause of this was the estrangement of the house of Condé through the action of Mme. de Longueville in passing with her husband over to the party of the Importants, she being the first of her family to forsake the government. Under the leadership of La Rochefoucauld, she cast her lot with the opposing party, allowing herself to be identified with the interests of those who had endeavored to tarnish her early reputation. Becoming a leader with Mme. de Chevreuse and Mme. de Montbazon (her rival), she easily won over her young brother, the Prince de Conti. After the imprisonment of her husband and her two brothers, she began her real career as a woman of tactics, politics, and generalship.
With the connivance of Mme. de Chevreuse and the Princess Palatine, a general plan had been formed to create a new government by the union of the aristocracy. The marriage, already spoken of, between the Duke of Enghien and one of the daughters of the Duke of Orléans and that arranged between the Prince of Conti and the daughter of Mme. de Chevreuse were to have united the Fronde with the house of Condé. The alliances, however, were declared off, and Mme. de Chevreuse went over to the cardinal and the queen; Condé's fall and Mazarin's success followed, being the result, mainly, of the determination of Mme. de Chevreuse to avenge herself upon Condé for having consented to the breaking of the marriage contracts.
Mme. de Longueville did all in her power to continue the conflict that Condé had undertaken, but, exhausted by continual excitement and ill success, she was compelled to retire. After this, her life, spent in Normandy, at the Carmelites' convent and at Port Royal, became a long penance, which increased in austerity until she died in 1679. Thus, her career was at first one of unblemished brilliancy, then a period of elegant and intellectual debauch, and finally one of expiation.
"Her politics," says Sainte-Beuve, "considered in the ensemble, are nothing more than a desire to please, to shine--a capricious love. Her character lacked consistency and self-will, her mind was keen, ready, subtle, ingenious, but not reasonable."
In her convent life, her crowning virtue was humility. Her enemies did not cease to attack her, but she received all their affronts with the noblest resignation. The following testimonies are taken from a Jansenist manuscript of 1685: