salons of the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre were probably the most fitting school for such a mind as hers, in which grandeur and finesse were almost equally blended—a grandeur allied to the romantic, and associated with a finesse frequently merging into subtilty, as indeed may be discerned in Corneille himself, the most perfect mental representative of that period.

To follow step by step the course of Anne de Bourbon’s life at this period of it through all its earliest rivalries, would involve the task of recording the manifold caprices of a tender, yet ambitious nature, in which the mind and heart were unceasingly dupes of each other. It would be like an attempt to follow the devious path of the light foam and laughing sparkle of the billow—

“In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.”

Our purpose lies mainly with her political life, but ere entering upon it we will give a short but comprehensive view of her character in the words of one who, more than anybody else, had the means of judging her correctly—La Rochefoucauld. “This Princess,” writes the Duke, “possessed all the charms of mind, united to personal beauty, to so high a degree, that it seemed as though nature had taken pleasure in forming in her person a perfectly finished work. But those fine qualities were rendered less brilliant through a blemish rarely seen in one so highly endowed, which was that, far from giving the law to those who had a particular admiration for her, she transfused herself so thoroughly into their sentiments that she no longer recognised her own.”

Now La Rochefoucauld should have been the last person to complain of that defect, since he was the first to foster it in the Duchess. In her bosom love awoke ambition, but the awakening was so sudden, in fact, that any difference in the two passions was never perceptible.

Singular contradiction! The more we contemplate the political bias of Madame de Longueville the more it becomes mingled with her amorous caprice; but when we analyse her love more narrowly (and later on in life she herself made the avowal), it appears nothing else than ambition travestied—a desire to shine only the more magnificently brilliant.

Her character, then, was entirely wanting in consistency, in self-will; and her mind, be it observed, however brilliant and acute, had nothing that was calculated to counterbalance that defect of character. One may possess the faculty of right perception without strength of mind to do that which is right. One may be rational in mind and the contrary in conduct—character being at fault between the two. But here the case was different. Madame de Longueville’s mind was not, above all else, rational; it was acute, prompt, subtle, witty by turns, and readily responsive to the varying humour of the moment. It shone voluntarily in contradiction and subterfuge, ere exhausting itself finally in scruples. There was much of the Hôtel de Rambouillet in such a mind as hers.

“The mind in the majority of women serves rather to confirm their folly than their reason.” So says the author of the “Maxims;” and Madame de Longueville, with all her metamorphoses, was undoubtedly present before him when he penned the sentence. For she, the most feminine of her sex, would offer to him the completest epitome of all the rest. In short, evidently as he has made his observations upon her, she also seems to have drawn her conclusions from him. So the agreement is perfect.