Mdme. de Chevreuse, in fact, possessed almost all the qualities befitting a great politician. One alone was wanting, and precisely that without which all the others tended to her ruin. She failed to select for pursuit a legitimate object, or rather she did not choose one for herself, but left it to another to choose for her. Mdme. de Chevreuse was womanly in the highest possible degree; that quality was alike her strength and her weakness. Her secret mainspring was love, or rather gallantry,[3] and the interest of him whom she loved became her paramount object. It is this which explains the wonderful sagacity, finesse, and energy she displayed in the vain pursuit of a chimerical aim, which ever receded before her, and seemed to draw her on by the very prestige of difficulty and danger. La Rochefoucauld accuses her of having brought misfortune upon all those whom she loved;[4] it is equally the truth to add that all those whom she loved hurried her in the sequel into insensate enterprises. It was not she evidently who made of Buckingham a species of paladin without genius; a brilliant adventurer of Charles IV. of Lorraine; of Chalais a hair-brained blunderer, rash enough to commit himself in a conspiracy against Richelieu, on the faith of the faithless Duke d'Orleans; of Chateauneuf, an ambitious statesman, impatient of holding second rank in the Government, without being capable of taking the first. Let no one imagine that he is acquainted with Mdme. de Chevreuse from having merely studied the foregoing portrait traced by De Retz, for that sketch is an exaggeration and over-charged like all those from the same pen, and was destined to amuse the malignant curiosity of Mdme. de Caumartin--for without being altogether false, it is of a severity pushed to the verge of injustice. Was it becoming, one might ask, of the restless and licentious Coadjutor to constitute himself the remorseless censor of a woman whose errors he shared? Did he not deceive himself as much and for a far longer period than she? Did he show more address in political strategy or courage in the dangerous strife, more intrepidity and constancy in defeat? But Mdme. de Chevreuse has not written memoirs in that free-and-easy and piquant style the constant aim of which is self-elevation, obtained at the expense of everybody else. There are two judges of her character the testimony of whose acts must be held to be above suspicion--Richelieu and Mazarin. Richelieu did all in his power to win her over, and not being able to succeed, he treated her as an enemy worthy of himself. [3] Mdme. de Motteville. [4] Memoires, Petitot's Collection, 2nd series, vol. li. p. 339.