The Duchesse de Chevreuse once traversed France on horseback, disguised as a man, and she used to say that nothing had ever amused her as well as that journey. She must have been a judge of amusements, as she had tried them all. When she ran away disguised as a man, her husband and Richelieu both ran after her, to implore her to remain in France, and, in her efforts to escape her pursuers, she was forced to hide in many strange places, and to resort to stratagems of all kinds. In one place where she passed the night, her hostess, considering her a handsome boy, made her a declaration of love. Her guides, deceived by her appearance gave her a fair idea of the manners worn by a certain class of men when they think that they are among men and free from the constraint of woman's presence. On her journeys through Europe, she slept one night or more in a barn, on a pile of straw, the next night in a field, under a hedge, or in one of the vast beds in which our fathers bedded a dozen persons at once without regard to their circumstances. Alone, or in close quarters, the Duchesse de Chevreuse maintained her identity. Hers was a resolute spirit; she kept her own counsel, and she feared neither man nor devil. Thus, in boys' clothes, in company with cavaliers who lisped the language of the _Précieuses_, or with troopers from whose mouths rushed the fat oaths of the Cossacks, sleeping now on straw and now with a dozen strangers, drunk and sober, she crossed the Pyrenees and reached Madrid, where she turned the head of the King of Spain and passed on to London, where she was fêted as a powerful ally, and where, incidentally, she became the chief official agent of the enemies of Richelieu. When Louis XIII. was dying he rallied long enough to enjoin the Duchesse de Chevreuse from entering France.[110] Standing upon the brink of Eternity, he remembered the traitress whom he had not seen in ten years. The Duchesse de Chevreuse was informed of his commands, and, knowing him to be in the agonies of death, she placed her political schemes in the hands of agents and hurried back to France to condole with the widow and to assume the control of the French nation as the deputy of Anne of Austria. She entered the Louvre June 14, 1643, thinking that the ten years which had passed since she had last seen her old confidante had made as little change in the Queen as in her own bright eyes. She found two children at play together,--young Louis XIV. and little Monsieur, a tall proud girl with ash-blonde hair: La Grande Mademoiselle, and a mature and matronly Regent who blushed when she saluted her. One month to a day had passed since Louis XIII. had yielded up the ghost. The Duchesse de Chevreuse installed herself in Paris in her old quarters and bent her energies to the task of dethroning Mazarin. * * * * *