C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Madame de Chevreuse
By Victor Cousin (17921867)
M
Richelieu and Mazarin left no stone unturned to attach Madame de Chevreuse to their interests. Richelieu considered her an enemy worthy of his steel; he exiled her several times, and when after his death the doors of France were opened to the men he had proscribed, the Cardinal’s implacable resentment survived in the soul of the dying Louis XIII., who closed them to her.
If you turn to Mazarin’s confidential letters you will see what intense anxiety this beautiful conspirator caused him in 1643. During the Fronde, he had reason to congratulate himself on having effected a reconciliation with her and followed her wise advice. In 1660, when the victorious Mazarin signed the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees, and Don Luis de Haro congratulated him on the peace which was about to succeed to years of storms, the Cardinal answered that peace was not possible in a country where even women were to be feared. “You Spaniards can speak lightly of such matters, since your women are interested in love alone; but things are different in France, where there are three women quite capable of upsetting the greatest kingdom in the world; namely, the Duchess of Longueville, the Princess Palatine, and the Duchess of Chevreuse.”