CHAPTER XI.

First Interview between Condé and Louis XIV.-Absolute power of Mazarin. His death at Vincennes.-Retreat of Condé to Chantilly.-His Son's marriage.—Death of Anne of Austria.—Mysterious event at the Hôtel de Condé.-Accusation against the Princess.—Its validity examined.—She is sent a prisoner to Châteauroux.-Rabutin and Duval.

As soon as Condé had received tidings of the conclusion of the treaty, he prepared to return to France. He left Brussels accompanied by the Marquis de Caracena, who insisted on escorting him a league out of the town, and regretted by all the inhabitants of the Low Countries, who always continued to feel the greatest veneration for him. He would not go by Paris, as he did not wish to appear in public before he had paid his respects to the King; having therefore taken the road by Soissons, he went to see the Duke and Duchess de Longueville at the Château of Coulomiers, where he reposed for some days. The young Duke, his son, travelled in the same coach with him; the Princess, his wife, arrived two days after him at Coulomiers. From thence Condé proceeded with Longueville to Provence, where the Court was then residing; but hurried as he was, he could not refrain going out of his way to see the Duchess de Châtillon. He would not receive on his route any compliments or harangues in any of the towns through which he passed. At Valence he found the Prince of Conti, whom he welcomed with tenderness, as he also had the Duchess de Longueville; at last he arrived at Aix, on the 28th of January, 1660. Cardinal Mazarin had come two leagues to meet him: the Prince was compelled to dissemble his resentment, embrace his former enemy, and enter the same coach with him, giving him for the first time the right side as the post of honor while driving into the town. They alighted together at the residence of the King, who was awaiting them alone in his own chamber with the Queen his mother. Condé immediately threw

1660.]

HIS RETURN TO FRANCE.

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himself on one knee before the King, and asked forgiveness for the part he had taken against his Majesty's service. The King, holding himself very upright, replied very coldly, "My Cousin, after the great services you have rendered to my Crown, I shall never remember the error which has been hurtful only to yourself."

We find in the Memoirs of those times "that on the following day the Cardinal entertained him at dinner; and that after having stayed some days with the Court, where he cut rather a bad figure, he left it to go to Paris, where he had not been for eight years. On his return he consented to receive the compliments of the towns, because he had seen the King; and thenceforward he determined to live privately without taking part in anything, and to have a complete and entire complaisance and docility for the Court and its favorites."* This resolution of the Prince was really sincere, and always persevered in; he refused constantly to mix himself in any intrigue against the minister of the day, and during the rest of his life Louis XIV. had no subject more faithful, no courtier more devoted, than this former chief of the Fronde.

It was with these feelings that Condé, having first paid a short visit to his government of Burgundy, came to meet the King as his Majesty was returning from the south of France, and presented to him his son. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who was then at Court, gives some details of this second interview, and of the person of the Duke d'Enghien:-"We were at the Château de Chambord. The Prince brought there Monsieur le Duc, his son, of whose talents much had been said while he was yet a child in Flanders. His appearance was not conformable to the expectations which had been raised by the flatterers of the Prince; he seemed to us to be a little boy neither ill nor well made-not handsome, and nothing in his air which would lead one to recognize in him a Prince of the Blood. Everybody wished to please the Prince, his father, and so they pretended to admire him. His father brought him to my apartment, and during the time that I was engaged in discussing my affairs with Monsieur le Prince, he

* Memoirs of Montglat, vol. iv., p. 235.

fell asleep, which I thought extraordinary."* This will appear perhaps less extraordinary to those who read the very long and tiresome details on her affairs with which Mademoiselle indulges us in her Memoirs.

The submission of the Prince, the sincerity of his intentions, and the recollection of his former services, were not long in procuring him a good reception at Court. But he had not a shadow of influence; he saw the authority of the state passed more entirely than ever into the hands of Mazarin. That skilful Minister had become in reality more a King than the King himself. Here is the testimony upon this point of a general officer, who was also "Grand Master of the Robes," the Marquis de Montglat: "The Cardinal never came to the King, but the King went several times a-day to the Cardinal, to whom he paid court like a common courtier. He received the King without any constraint; hardly rose when his Majesty entered or retired, and never conducted him out of his apartment. When the King granted any favor without speaking to him upon it, he reprimanded him like a schoolboy, and told him that he did not understand those things. When he was ill, the Queen went to see him every day as he lay in his bed, and remained a long time. He treated her as if she had been a chamber-maid, and whenever they told him she was coming up stairs to see him, he would knit his brows, and say in his jargon, 'Ah! that woman will kill me, she is so troublesome ; will she never give me any repose?" "+

Death only could terminate the ministry, or rather the reign of Mazarin. He was only fifty-eight years of age; but his constitution was already undermined by the excesses of his youth, and by the toils of his riper years. During the whole of the winter of 1660 his health was seen to be decaying; in the month of February following he wished to try a change of air, and caused himself to be removed to the Château of Vincennes. But however great his weakness, he continued to labor and to govern till his last breath. Like Richelieu, he contemplated his approaching end with a firm and intrepid eye; he himself disposed of the

* Memoirs of Montpensier, vol. v., p. 159, ed. 1776.

† Memoirs of Montglat, vol. iv., p. 253.

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1661.]

CARDINAL MAZARIN DIES.

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employments which would become vacant by his death, and regulated the affairs of the state by will, as he might have done his own. Like Tiberius, his dissimulation survived his strength, and endured as long as his life.* Three days before his death he saw the Prince of Condé, and conversed with him a long time, and very affectionately; but the Prince discovered afterwards that he had not told him one word of truth! At length he expired on the 9th of March, 1661.

This event is connected with one of the most singular enigmas presented to us by history-the Iron Mask. It was Voltaire who first made known to the public how, several months after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, an unknown prisoner was sent in great secresy to the fortress of Pignerol-a prisoner young, and above the middle height, but wearing constantly on his face a mask of black velvet with steel springs-how, having been transferred first to the island of St. Margaret, and afterwards to the Bastille, he died a prisoner, and unknown, in 1703. Since that time many writers have exhausted themselves in conjectures to clear up this mystery. The best dissertation upon the subject appears to me to be that of the late Mr. Crawford, in his 'Mélanges d'Histoire et de Littérature,' which was printed at Paris in 1817, but never published. Having first passed in review all the other conjectures, and rejected them by strong arguments one after the other, he concludes that the prisoner must have been a son of Anne of Austria. May I be allowed to add that after having read with care all the documents, and weighed all the circumstances, I have no doubt upon that point? I believe (however little my judgment may be worth) that the prisoner was the son of the Queen and Mazarin, and born after the death of Louis XIII.; that he was secretly brought up until the death of the Cardinal; that Louis XIV., on assuming the reins of government, was informed of the mystery; and that then it was judged necessary to remove from all eyes the unfortunate young man, whose personal

Jam Tiberium corpus, jam vires, nondum dissimulatio deserebat. (Tacit. Annal., lib. vi., c. 50.)

I derive this curious fact from some historical fragments among the works of Racine.

Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV. and Philosophical Dictionary.

resemblance either to the Queen or to Louis XIV. himself might be dangerously striking.

After the death of the Cardinal, it was thought that some other statesman would take his place, and Condé might with reason aspire to the post. Then it was that Louis XIV. astonished France by his resolution to govern it himself, and that when his courtiers asked him, "To whom shall we address ourselves ?" he answered, "To me !" This resolution was maintained, although the King often entrusted all the mere details to the Ministers whom the Cardinal in dying had bequeathed to him-to Fouquet, Le Tellier, and Lyonne. Thus Condé, not being able to hold a place in affairs, and not wishing to hold any in faction, resigned himself to a tranquil and indolent life, and retired to Chantilly. He was much attached to this residence, and amused himself by improving it. His possession of it was, however, uncertain. Louis XIV. already had hinted his wish to acquire this fine domain, and alleged the right over it which the Peace of the Pyrenees had reserved to him. "Sire," said Condé, "you are the master-but I have a favor to ask of your Majesty; it is to leave me at Chantilly as your bailiff!" The King understood the meaning of this answer, and had the generosity to sacrifice his own taste to that of Condé.

Condé's retreat furnishes but few materials to his history. He had a tender affection for his only son, and occupied himself first with his education, and afterwards with his marriage. Notwithstanding the great disproportion of their ages, he meditated marrying him to that rich cousin who had formerly been destined for himself. Here is what is said by the cousin herself-namely, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, in her Memoirs :-"The ardent wish which the Duke d'Enghien felt for this marriage was expressed to me; I excused myself on the ground of the great disparity of age between myself and the Duke. The Duke was very assiduous in his attentions to me, but I saw so little merit in him, and his demeanor was so strange towards those with whom he lived, that I took hardly any notice of him. His character was very variable, both as regarded his pleasures and his more serious affairs; and though he has been said to possess knowledge