foucauld shortly afterwards by the death of his father,) wrote the often-quoted lines:

"Pour mériter son cœur, pour plaire à ses beaux yeux,

J'ai fait la guerre aux rois, je l'aurais fait aux cieux."

Which may be Englished

"To touch that heart of hers, to find favor in her eyes,

never been the mistress of his heart. Mazarin thought that she might safely be left at liberty. Her son, the Duc d'Enghien, was only seven years old, and could not well be separated from his mother. The two princesses, therefore, and the child were ordered to live in strict retirement at the prince's château of Chantilly.

Under these circumstances, Lenet made

braved the skies."

And it was to his faits et gestes on this occasion that he was alluding. The Court, it would seem, had come to the resolution to arrest her and Rochefoucauld at the same time that the princes, her brothers, and her husband were arrested. But they both found hiding-places; and that same night Rochefoucauld contrived to get her out of Paris, and ride with her into Normandy. He and she, no less sanguine than Lenet, imagined that all Normandy would rise in favor of the princes at the sight of her. But, instead of that, she ran the greatest risk of being herself arrested. And it was with great difficulty, and after many dangers, that Rochefoucauld got her safe off to Stenay, and then rode into his own government of Poitou, and did his utmost to induce the noblesse of that and the neighboring districts of Angoumois and Saintonge to rise in revolt against the cardinal and the court. And this was all for no other motive than that boasted of in his well-known couplet; for he had no share whatever in the quarrel, except as the well-known lover of Condé's sister.

The duchess remained at Stenay during the whole time of the imprisonment of her brothers and husband, and has, therefore, no share in the ulterior development of busy lawyer Lenet's further plots and plans. There were memories of old times which made Anne of Austria unwilling to order the arrest of the dowager Princess of Condé; and, besides, Mazarin knew her to be timid, unenterprising, and loving her ease, and little likely to become dangerous. As to the young princess, Conde's wife, Mazarin could hardly bring himself to order the arrest of Richelieu's niece. She was, moreover, young, inexperienced, without resources either in money or friends, and, besides, by no means very perfectly contented with her husband's treatment of her. He had married her only in obedience to the strong wishes of the late king, and she had

Chantilly; but determined to take Châtillon sur Loing on his way, in order to see the Duchess of Châtillon, who had, as he knew, great influence over the dowager Princess Condé. On reaching Châtillon, he found that the duchess had already left it, traveling Paris-ward; but hastening after her, he overtook her between Nemours and Fontainebleau. The duchess made him get into her carriage, and they continued their journey together-as strangely assorted a couple as ever made a tête-à-tête journey together!

mours

One would like to have a sketch of the scene, when this overtaking between Neand Fontainebleau took place. Lawyer Lenet in his grave, black professional suit bowing at the door of the duchess's huge painted and gilded coach, while an extremely pretty face, all anxiety and eagerness for news, leans forward from the depths of the back seat, and the four great cart-horses enjoy the pause in their labor of dragging the machine through the quagmires of the execrable road. As for the conversation between the fellow-travelers, when Lenet had accepted the seat in the duchess's carriage, when his own post-horse, with the accompanying postillion on another horse, has been sent back to the last post-house, and the four Châtillon cart-horse-like carriage-horses have got into motion again, dragging the heavy vehicle at a foot's-pace, groaning, creaking, and lurching in the deep ruts, we have a full account of it from the gentleman. But in order to understand rightly why M. Lenet had thought it expedient to call on the duchess on his way to Chantilly, it will be necessary to tell the reader, in as few words as may be, a fragment or two of the lady's history.

She had been a Mademoiselle de Bouteville, of the great house of Montmorency, and one of the most celebrated beauties of that day. Condé and Coligny (who at the death of the maréchal his father became Duc de Châtillon) both fell desper

ately in love with her. The latter one day opened his heart to his friend Condé, and declared that nothing had prevented him from asking for the hand of La Bouteville save the knowledge that he (the Prince) was fond of her. Thereupon Condé "reçut tendrement cette déclaration, lui promit de se départir de son amour, et de n'avoir plus que de l'amitié pour elle, telle qu'il l'avoit pour lui." Such promises, remarks Lenet, are rarely kept. Nevertheless, Condé kept his to Châtillon. Whether he were enabled to do so, adds he, by the empire over himself which virtue gave him, or whether it was due to his falling in love with Mademoiselle de Vigean, or with Mademoiselle de Poncy, he (Lenet) can not say. But he thinks it was owing to the last-named lady, because the Prince once told him that he "se fut embarqué à l'aimer," only because Laval had boasted of the favors he had received from her.

It is but fair, too, to admit―as does not seem to have occurred to Lenet-that the sequel showed that, strange as it might seem, such virtue as was shown in being true to his promise really had some influence upon his conduct. For when the Duc de Châtillon died, which was not long afterward, Condé renewed his suit to the widowed Duchess; while she on her partBut Lenet's speculations on her motives are so very characteristic of the time, that they must be given in his own words. "Whether it were," he says, "that she reciprocated his feelings, or whether she was moved by the glory of being loved by so famous a hero, or whether by consideration of the profit that might accrue to her from the influence that she might acquire over his mind, she was well disposed to furnish all the matter necessary to the keeping up of his flame."

The third of the above causes is curiously in accordance with all that we know of the ways and habits of that day.

The matter was complicated, however, by the violent passion of the young and remarkably handsome Duc de Nemours for the widowed Duchess. And it was generally supposed that he did not sigh in vain. "And it was this," says Lenet, "that caused the Duchess to waver between her inclination and her interest." He speaks, it will be observed, on this occasion, as on all others when he mentions her, without the slightest notion of

casting a shadow of blame on her in the matter. It is noticeable, too, that he seems to assume as quite a matter of course that her "inclination" was not for the Prince de Condé. "She found the means," continues Lenet, "to keep them both in hand up to the time of the Prince's imprisonment, and as long as it lasted she did so yet more effectually, and, after it had ceased, up to the death of the Duc de Nemours." After that event, at any rate, came the Prince's turn. He had waited for two reversions; and when at last the second vacancy occurred, the Duchess became his recognized mistress.

Such was the lady who was now inviting Lawyer Lenet to travel tête-à-tête with her to Paris, and thence to Chantilly. Of course each had much to tell the other. Each knew that the other was entirely to be trusted as regarded the interests of the Princes. The Duchess, when she had heard what Lenet had to tell her of his doings and disappointments in Burgundy, and of his communications with the Princesses at Chantilly, "gave me an exact plan of the present state of affairs; and, among other things, told me that although there had been a coldness between Nemours and Condé, the former with that perfect generosity which was peculiar to him, had determined to serve the Prince in his misfortune by every possible means, and that she (the Duchess) would take care to keep him up to his good resolutions. They had talked of all the personages whom they could hope to influence by every sort of means that could be brought to bear on them. Such a one could be made to believe that the Court had no intention of gratifying his ambition and cupidity in this or that matter. Another could be worked on by such and such a noted beauty, who could in turn be influenced by her inclination for somebody else. The embers of disaffection, half slumbering among the members of such and such a provincial parliament, might be fanned into flame by such and such unscrupulous representations. A lady all powerful with the governor of another province might be won by flattering her hopes of making such and such a great marriage for her daughter." Such a mixture of what may be called male politics, with matters generally supposed to belong to the sphere of female politics, was never known before or after!

The next day but one, having succeeded, by dint of great care, in passing through Paris without attracting any attention, they arrived at Chantilly, and were received with open arms by the somewhat triste and forlorn household there. The château was filled with women of high condition, without a man of any rank or authority among them. And it is curious to see how they throw themselves upon Lenet, how they look to him for guidance, and submit to be led by him. The Dowager burst into tears on seeing him, and was voluble as to her perfect innocence, and the baseness and ingratitude of the Court and of Mazarin. She complained bitterly of their present position, and declared that they could not be sure even of the fidelity of the domestics in the château. And she specially cautioned Lenet that they did not speak of affairs to the young Princess except in general terms.

As soon as ever she-the younger Princess, Condé's wife-could get an opportunity of speaking to Lenet tête-à-tête, she complained bitterly of this. Lenet found her to be a very different woman from her mother-in-law-totally free from the older lady's timidity and selfish wish for her own personal ease and quiet, and indeed in every way far fitter to share the cares and dangers and plots and plans incidental to such a state of things than her husband's mother, who wished to treat her as a baby in all concerning them. She told Lenet that what she dreaded above all else was that they would take her boy, the young Duc d'Enghien, from her, as had been threatened. She begged him piteously to contrive some means of averting such a misfortune, and declared herself ready to take any steps that might be considered for the advantage of her husband, to go with her son anywhere, even to place herself at the head of an army, if it were thought desirable, with her son beside her but not to be separated from him. The fact was, says Lenet, with very business-like coolness, that she was anxious to do something, or sacrifice herself in some way, in the hope of gaining the approbation of her husband, who had never Îooked on her very kindly.

There is something pathetic in the position of the poor young wife, in the midst of that household of women conspirators in her husband's favor by plots, from participation in which she was excluded, while

the Duchesse de Châtillon, whose relation towards the Prince was well known, was there as if she were naturally one of the family, and was a leader in all their councils.

Lenet encouraged her in these "reasonable sentiments," as he says, and promised all that was asked of him in reference to her son, because, although he knew the "calibre of her genius" was not equal to the conduct of such great affairs as they might be called upon to handle, he felt that "they might have need of this Princess and her young son," Besides, there was in the château a Comtesse de Tourville, of the Rochefoucauld family, whom Condé had assigned to his wife as her companion, and whom Lenet knew to be a woman that might be depended on for any amount of conduct and resolution in any circumstances. From this lady Lenet learned, he says, many things very necessary for his guidance in dealing with both the Princesses. There was also the Marquise de Gonville, "pretty, young, and full of talent," who was the daughter of the Comtesse de Tourville, and who was also a member of the family circle at Chantilly. Then there was the Dame de Bourgneuf, who had the care of the Longueville children, and who was in constant correspondence with the hare-brained and beautiful Duchess, and from whom Lawyer Lenet "learned many things that it was important to me to know."

Besides the six ladies who have been named, "all the rest of the Court of the Princesses was composed of their ladies and maids of honor, all pretty and agreeable," says Lenet, "but too young all of them to be trusted with the secret of affairs."

Among all this bevy of ladies there was not any single man of their own rank. There was a young priest, the Abbé Roquette, whose piety and demure manners, and his quality of nephew to a certain nun who enjoyed a high reputation for sanctity, had strongly recommended him to the Princess Dowager. He ran about the house like a tame cat and was quite edifying by the unction of his devotional practices, until, one unlucky day, he was caught confessing one of the maids of honor in her own chamber, under circumstances which the matrons in the château deemed to indicate a too great devotion on the part of the young lady. There was also Dulmas,

who had formerly been squire to the Princess Dowager, and was now captain of the handful of troops who garrisoned the château. But all he thought of was the secure keeping of his present snug berth and easy position; and with that view never failed to say any word he could, tending to confirm his mistress in her disposition to think that doing nothing and keeping quite quiet was the best possible policy. There was Girard, the Prince's secretary, who, says Lenet, had not been thought worth imprisoning with his master. But little passed between him and the ladies, for the Dowager particularly disliked him. There was also Bourdelot, the Prince's physician, a person of much talent and high consideration, who, according to Lenet, was more of a man than any of those who passed for such at Chantilly. He was the only one, indeed, in whom Lenet found any capacity or disposition to second him in his designs. He had been at Rome, where he had become intimately acquainted with the Cardinal Barberini. And he now wrote pressing letters to that prelate, urging him to use his credit with the Pope, Julius the Third, to induce his holiness, who was no friend to Cardinal Mazarin, to interfere in Condé's favor.

It does not need any very strong effort of imagination to picture to oneself the life in the château of Chantilly, so charmingly situated among its woods and waters. And probably we should not be wrong in imagining upon the whole that the strangelyconstituted party was not a very miserable one. The old Princess wept and wrung her hands from time to time no doubt, though there are evidences that even she was not altogether absorbed by the miseries of the present time-evidences curious

enough, with which we may perhaps amuse our readers upon some future occasion. As for the younger members of the circle, there seems to have been no lack of gayety among them. There were sons, husbands, brothers, and lovers in prison, and the threatened ruin of a great and princely house. There was wherewithal to break the monotony of fashionable court lives, and add a spice of excitement to the passing hours. Then catastrophes of the sort were not uncommon in those days. The path of life was like the roads on which they traveled-full of ups and downs, and sudden shocks, and struggling to pull through difficult passes. And that singular Fronde time had a specialty of its own in this respect: that there was over all their fighting and making friends, their love affairs and their politics, their hopes and fears, a sort of air of being at play all the time. Nothing seems to have been seriIt was all done pour rire. The men seemed rather to like the fighting, and the women unquestionably enjoyed immensely the plotting and intriguing. There can be no doubt that Lenet was quite in earnest in his multifarious endeavors to procure his patron's release. But it can not be denied that he seemed to have enjoyed his position of arch-plotter in the midst of the crowd of pretty women, all hanging as with an interest of life and death on each new scheme hatched from his busy brain.

ous.

For the present we must leave the dapper black figure in the midst of the rainbow-tinted crowd around him; not, however without the hope of picking another chapter from the life of the arch-conspirator.

[From St. Paul's Magazine.

In addition to being a novelist, Delphine Gay was a poetess, an author of plays, and a writer of lively sparkling letters that skimmed the cream of fashionable follies, and kept frivolity from being wearisome by the most delicate touches of social satire. In a similar manner, her own light-hearted gayety was preserved from being childish in a Frenchman's eyes by a pungent wit and a pathetic sentimentality.

Blonde-haired and drooping-eyelashed, she was the pet of French literary society; and the position she gained by her charms of form she kept by her sweetness of character, her unaffected simplicity, her piquant conversation and fine faculty of repartee. There is no danger now in telling the date of this lady's birth, for she is no longer alive to dispute it. The giving of a lady's age is in England considered

rather a breach of etiquette; but to publish the age of a French lady appears to be an unpardonable offence. The individual who, under the name of Eugène de Mirecourt, writes so many hundreds of little contemporary biographies, asserts that Mdlle. Dejazet never pardoned him for having told her age in print; that Madame Georges Sand, against whom he committed the same offence, found his fault so inexcusable that she even added on a year to her age, solely for the purpose of making him stand committed to an untruth. Nor, he tells us, is the other sex any the less susceptible. When Paul de Kock sees his certificate of birth, he emits fire and flames. Théophile Gautier, too, protests against the years allotted him, and so calculates them as to make him have written" Mademoiselle de Maupin" on the knees of his nurse. This is not bad, for 'tis a book ridiculously unlikely to have been composed in so innocent a place.

Madame de Girardin, or Delphine Gay, for the latter name seems to suit her better, was born on the 26th of January, 1804, or, as styled in the new phraseology of the time, "le 6 pluviôse an XII." At the time when, most probably, Mirecourt wrote his sketch of her, she would have been near fifty-an age when too much knowledge on the part of her acquaintance might well be resented. But he gallantly refrains from communicating this; in fact, he manifests quite a killing kindness to ward her. "Be off," says he, " with your dusty registers. The age of a woman is on her face, in her eyes, in her smile; and the smile, the eyes, the face of Madame de Girardin are five-and-twenty years old. And, if facts and dates seem to contradict this, pay them no heed." We English have this creed too. Says a well-known writer,

"A man is as old as he's feeling; A woman as old as she looks. Delphine Gay was the daughter of Mdlle. Lavallette, who married a M. Gay, a French official in one of the departments. This Madame Gay was herself the author of a number of works, both in poetry and prose; so her daughter, after, as it is said, having been baptized at Aix-la-Chapelle on the tomb of Charlemagne, was, in the words of some poetaster,

"Cradled by rhythm, and taught,

While quite a child, to twang the lyre.” An anecdote is told of this Madame Sophie Gay, which will be interesting to us who have so recently witnessed the sudden shiftings of feeling and unaccountable moods in the minds of the Parisians. Sophie Gay was one of those who applauded the downfall of the first Napoleon, and might have been seen with her friends at the head of those Parisian ladies who advanced in front of the Duke of Wellington and offered him bunches of violets. "Ladies," said he to them with dignity, "if the French were entering London, all the English ladies would be in mourning." But Madame Sophie had a private grievance against the government. A witty sally of hers against a prefect of the department had deprived her husband of an official position which he enjoyed under the victim of his wife's satire; and so her pique seems to have affected her politics.

Delphine Gay was brought up in the society of the large literary circle in which her mother moved. Chateaubriand was a constant visitor; Horace Vernet and Talma would accept the invitations of the queen of the salon, and Béranger might be seen there occasionally. There was plenty of chatting, plenty of laughter, plenty of dancing. Then would come a game of cards, and after that they would read verses. Such an atmosphere would be a very stimulating one for a precocious child. And Delphine Gay, being at fourteen radieuse de beautê, doubtless attracted much attention.

We notice we have called her plain "Delphine;" had we lived a little earlier, we might have been called over the coals for this breach of ceremonial. The writer who was found fault with for so doing, answered that if his critics ever wrote the history of poetesses, he should expect to see Mdlle. Corinne, or Miss Sappho. We will take shelter under his target.

In the portraits of Delphine Gay we see large soft eyes, and what appears meant for a fine complexion; but she must have been beautiful exceedingly if we are to believe what is told us. At the time of the appearance of Victor Hugo's romantic drama of "Hernani," when the theatre would be filled with the enthusiastic crowd of young romantiques, and the advocates of the old classicism were try