CHAPTER XXVII
A MISTRESS OF INTRIGUE
"On 11th September," Madame de Motteville says, "we saw arrive from Italy three nieces of Cardinal Mazarin and a nephew. Two Mancini sisters and the nephew were the children of the youngest sister of his Eminence; and of the sisters Laure, the elder, was a pleasing brunette with a handsome face, about twelve or thirteen years of age; the second (Olympe), also a brunette, had a long face and pointed chin. Her eyes were small, but lively; and it might be expected that, when fifteen years of age, she would have some charm. According to the rules of beauty, it was impossible to grant her any, save that of having dimples in her cheeks."
Such, at the age of nine or ten, was Olympe Mancini, who, in spite of her childish lack of beauty, was destined to enslave the handsomest King in Europe; and, after a life of discreditable intrigues, in which she incurred the stigma of witchcraft and murder, to end her career in obscurity, shunned by all who had known her in her day of splendour.
It was a singular freak of fortune which translated the Mancini girls from their modest home in Italy to the magnificence of the French Court, as the adopted children of their uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, the virtual ruler of France, and the avowed lover (if not, as some say, the husband) of Anne of Austria, the Queen-mother. "See those little girls," said the wife of Maréchal de Villeroi to Gaston d'Orléans, pointing to the Mancini children, the centre of an admiring crowd of courtiers. "They are not rich now; but some day they will have fine châteaux, large incomes, splendid jewels, beautiful silver, and perhaps great dignities."
And how true this prophecy proved, we know; for, of the Cardinal's five Mancini nieces (for three others came, later, as their uncle's protégées), Laure found a husband in the Duc de Mercoeur, grandson of Henri IV.; two others lived to wear the coronet of Duchess; Olympe, as we shall see, became Comtesse de Soissons; and Marie, after narrowly missing the Queendom of France, became the wife of the Constable Colonna, one of the greatest nobles of Italy.
Nor is there anything in such high alliances to cause surprise; for their future was in the hands of the most powerful, ambitious, and wealthy man in France. From their first appearance as his guests they were received with open arms by Louis' Court. They were speedily transferred to the Palais Royal, to be brought up with the boy-King, Louis XIV., and his brother, the Prince of Anjou; while the Queen herself not only paid them the most flattering attentions and treated them as her own children, but herself undertook part of their education.
It was under such enviable conditions that the young daughters of a poor Roman baron grew up to girlhood—the pets of the Queen and the Court, the playfellows of the King, and the acknowledged heiresses of their uncle's millions; and of them all, not one had a keener eye to the future than Olympe of the long face, pointed chin, and dimples. It was she who entered with the greatest zest into the romps and games of her playmate, Louis XIV., who surrounded him with the most delicate flatteries and attentions, and practised all her childish arts and coquetries to win his favour. And she succeeded to such an extent that it was always the company of Olympe, and not of her more beautiful sisters, Hortense, Laure, or Marie, that Louis most sought.
Not that Olympe was always to remain the plain, unattractive child Madame de Motteville describes in 1647. Each year, as it passed, added some touch of beauty, developed some latent charm, until at eighteen she was very fair to look upon. "Her eyes now" says Madame de Motteville, "were full of fire, her complexion had become beautiful, her face less thin, her cheeks took dimples which gave her a fresh charm, and she had fine arms and beautiful hands. She certainly seemed charming in the eyes of the King, and sufficiently pretty to indifferent spectators."
That she had wooers in plenty, even before she was so far advanced in the teens, was inevitable; but her personal preferences counted for little in face of the Cardinal's determination to find for her, as for all his nieces, a splendid alliance which should shed lustre on himself. And thus it was that, without any consultation of her heart, Olympe's hand was formally given to Prince Eugene de Savoie, Comte de Soissons, a man in whose veins flowed the Royal strains of Savoy and France.