Retz alone, who, if he had been serious, might have been master of Paris, had nothing—except, of course, his Cardinal’s hat, which he would have had anyhow. The Court came back, Mazarin was forced out of France for a couple of years. But the Queen had him in again; and then it was his turn. Retz was persuaded into the Louvre, immediately arrested and carried off to Vincennes. It was a shock to his vanity that the populace took it calmly. There were no barricades for him. From Vincennes he was presently removed to Nantes, whence, with the assistance of his friends—and I cannot but suspect the connivance of the governor—he escaped to the coast, landed at San Sebastian, was allowed to cross Spain and re-embark for Italy. He fetched up in Rome, where he remained for a year or two, taking part in conclaves and thoroughly enjoying himself. He spent large sums of money, which he did not possess, but never failed to receive from his friends. The French Ambassador and all the French clergy steadily cut him—but he did not take any notice. The Pope did, though, and Retz was given to understand that he had better remove himself. He went to Germany, to Switzerland, Holland, England in turn. Mazarin was dead, and Charles II restored by the time he came here. I don’t think that he did anything to the purpose with our Court, though no doubt Charles was glad of him. Neither Evelyn nor Pepys have anything to say about him; and I fancy that he was only a passing guest. As soon as he could he crept back to Court, to which he had already surrendered his coadjutorship. Louis employed him once or twice; but his day was over. He lived mostly at Commercy, where he tried economy, and made periodical retreats, as La Rochefoucauld unkindly says, “withdrawing himself from the Court which was withdrawing itself from him.” He was four million livres in debt, but managed to pay them off, and even to contemplate a snug residuary estate which he intended for Mme. de Grignan, Mme. de Sévigné’s high-stomached daughter. But Mme. de Grignan snubbed him consistently and severely, and nothing came of it. He died in 1679, drained of his fiery juices, making a “good end.” The stormy Coadjutor had become “notre cher Cardinal.”
His Memoirs, taken on end, are wearisome, because endless intrigue, diamond-cut-diamond and chicanery are wearisome, as well as intricate, unless some discernible principle can be made out of them. It seems that Retz did nothing except talk—but, as Michelet points out, that was what France at large did when the Gascons were let into Paris with Henri IV. Read desultorily, they are delightful, witty, worldly-wise, untirably vivacious, thrilling and glittering like broken ice. His Machiavellisms are worth hunting out:
“The great inconvenience of civil war is that you must be more careful of what you ought not to tell your friends than of what you ought to do to your enemies.
“The most common source of disaster among men is that they are too much afraid of the present and not enough of the future.
“In dealing with princes it is as dangerous, if not as criminal, to be able to do good as to wish to do harm.
“One of Cardinal Mazarin’s greatest faults was that he was never able to believe that anyone spoke to him with honest intention.”
When the Queen-Regent was working her hardest for Mazarin’s return, she tried to win Retz over to help her. He told her bluntly that such a move would mean the ruin of the State. How so, she asked him, if Monsieur and M. le Prince should agree to it? “Because, Madam,” said Retz, “Monsieur would never agree to it until the State was already in danger, and M. le Prince never, except to put it in danger.” Excellent, and quite true.
After Retz’s death, the Président Hénault, writing about his Memoirs, asked how one was to believe that a man would have the courage, or the folly, to say worse things about himself than his greatest enemy could have said. The answer, of course, is that Retz had no suspicion that he was saying bad things about himself. He said a great deal that was not true. Other chronicles of the Fronde give detailed accounts of such days as that of the Barricades, with not a word of the Coadjutor in them. But even if it had all been true, it would have seemed a perfectly simple matter to him. If you have no moral sense, the words “good” and “bad” have only a relative meaning. It is much harder to understand why he did the things which he relates, or why, if he did not do them, he said that he did. What was he trying to get done? Did he hate Mazarin? There is no evidence that he did anything more than despise him. La Rochefoucauld, whom he accuses, by the way, of having tried to assassinate him, explains him and his Memoirs alike by vanity. “Far from declaring himself Mazarin’s enemy in order to supplant him, his only aim was to seem formidable, and to indulge the foolish vanity of opposing him.” If Retz knew of that “portrait”—and he did, because Mme. de Sévigné sent it him—his own more benevolent one of its author must be reckoned in his favour. He had written it in his Memoirs, but allowed it to stand there unaltered except for one little word. He had originally said that La Rochefoucauld was the most accomplished courtier and most honest man of his age. He scratched out the honesty.
Personally, I picture a happy rencontre in the Elysian Fields in or about 1679, when the Cardinal de Retz should have arrived and greeted his brother in the purple. A lifting of red hats, a pressing of hands—“Caro Signore, sta sempre bene?” and so on. There had been bitter war on earth; each was a keen blade, each an Italian. Each had had his triumphs. Retz had twice driven Mazarin out of Paris and once out of France. But Mazarin had proved the better stayer. He had returned, put Retz to flight, and died worth forty millions. Retz came back, made a good end, and only just cleared his debts. And what had it all been about? Some say, Anne of Austria, an elderly, ill-tempered, fat woman; some say vanity, some ambition. I say, Il Talento and the joy of battle: the brain taut, the eye alert, the sword-hand flickering like lightning on a summer night. Greek was meeting Greek. Inevitably that must have been. There was not room for two Italians of that stamp in France.
But let us always remember that he was mourned by Mme. de Sévigné, who said that he had been her friend for thirty years. There is the best thing to be known about him.