In the exercise of free wit, the women of the new political school found an influence which before their day had been monopolised by the polemists of the State's Councils. They--the women of the Opposition--swept forward and seized positions previously held by men, and since then, either from deep purpose or from pure conviction, they have held their ground and exercised their right to share, or to attempt to share, in the creation and in the destruction of governments. Mademoiselle followed the fashion of the day when she frequented the society of people who were in disgrace at Court. She ridiculed the King's Minister, and as she was influential and popular, outspoken and eager to declare her principles, she was called an agitator, though in the words of Mme. de Motteville, "she was not quite sure what she was trying to do." Mazarin, whom Mademoiselle considered "stupid," had entangled the wires of the cabals and confused the minds of the pretenders with such consummate art that the keenest intriguers gazed in bewilderment upon their own interests, and doubted their truest friends. For instance, Monsieur, who had mind and wit "to burn," could not explain, even to himself, why he repudiated Mademoiselle when she quarrelled with the second junior branch. He knew that he was jealous of his rights and of all that belonged to him; he knew that the power of the Condés was a menace, that his daughter was a powerful ally for any party, that her championship was, and always had been, his strongest arm against an unappreciative world, and after one of the senseless exhibitions of anger against Mademoiselle to which Anne of Austria, impelled by Mazarin, frequently incited him, he asked himself why he maltreated his daughter when she resisted the usurpations of his hated cousins, the Condés. [Illustration: MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING] "Why," he queried piteously, "should I plunge the knife into my own breast?" Why he did so, and why many another as astute as he moved heaven and earth to effect his own downfall was the secret of Mazarin. Mademoiselle wept bitter tears for the loss of her father's friendship; then she arose in her pride, resolved to tread the path of life alone, according to her independent will. She was twenty years old and in the fulness of her beauty. She described her appearance with complaisancy[126]: