In the stirring careers of certain among these remarkable personages, it will be seen that the mainspring of their political zeal was either the fierce excitement of an overmastering passion, an irresistible proclivity to gallantry, or an absorbing ambition, rather than any patriotic motive. This may go far to explain the singular sagacity, finesse, and energy displayed in their devotion to what otherwise appears alike mischievous and chimerical by those three high-born and splendidly-gifted women who figured so conspicuously in the civil war of the Fronde; and, though so much self-abnegation, courage, constancy, and heroism, well or ill displayed, may obtain some share of pardon for errors it would be wrong to palliate or condone, their example, it is to be hoped, will prove deterrent rather than contagious. La Rochefoucauld--a moralist, though by no means a moral man--who well knew the sex, had seen at work these political women of the time of the Fronde. That opportunity does not appear to have inspired him with an unbounded admiration for them from that point of view. Of the peril and mischief that fair trio inflicted upon Anne of Austria's great Prime Minister and the State he governed we have an interesting personal record. When, in 1660, Mazarin's policy, triumphant on every side, had added the treaty of the Pyrenees to that of Westphalia, the honour of the conclusion of the protracted conference held at the _Isle of Pheasants_ was reserved for the chief Ministers of the two Crowns--the Cardinal and Don Louis de Haro. The latter congratulated his brother premier on the well-earned repose he was about to enjoy, after such a long and arduous struggle. The Cardinal replied that he could not promise himself any repose in France, for there, he said, the _female_ politicians were more to be dreaded than the _male_; and he complained bitterly of the torments he had undergone at the hands of certain political women of the Fronde--notably the Duchess de Longueville, the Duchess de Chevreuse, and the Princess Palatine, each of whom, he asserted, was capable of upsetting three kingdoms.