Without attempting to extenuate the errors of Madame de Longueville, moral or political, it has been the author's endeavour to reconcile the apparent contradictions in her character, imputed in the passage above cited, by assigning the different incidents, which have doubtless caused an intelligent woman to falter in her judgment, to their proper place in the order of time. For as, during the Olympian contests, swift-footed Spartan boys, to typify the transmission of Truth, ran with a lighted torch, and, as each fell breathless, another took up the flambeau and bore it on, bright and rapid, to the goal, so should the light of History be passed steadily and carefully from hand to hand, and its sacred flame--the Truth--be kept ever burning clearly onward in the course of time. CHAPTER II. THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE. SIDE by side with the two great statesmen, Richelieu and Mazarin, the clever, daring, vivacious, charming Marie de Rohan occupied a more elevated position, and certainly played a more extended part, than any other of the political women who were her contemporaries during the stirring times of the first half of the seventeenth century. Seductive, with irresistible fascination of manner, singular grace and animation; of pregnant wit, though quite uneducated; devoted to gallantry, and too high-spirited to heed propriety; obeying no control save that of honour; despising, for those she loved, danger, fortune, and opinion; rather restless than ambitious; risking willingly her own life as well as that of others; and after having passed the best part of her existence in intrigue of every kind--thwarted more than one plot--left more than one victim on her path--traversed nearly the whole of Europe, by turns an exile and a conqueress who not unfrequently dazzled even crowned heads; after having seen Chalais lay his head on the block, Chateauneuf turned out of the ministry and imprisoned, the Duke de Lorraine well-nigh despoiled of his territories, Buckingham assassinated, the King of Spain embroiled in a war of ever-recurring disasters, Anne of Austria humiliated and overcome, and Richelieu triumphant; sustaining the struggle, nevertheless, even to its bitter end; ever ready, in that desperate game of politics--become to her a craving and a passion--to descend to the darkest cabals or adopt the rashest resolves; with an incomparable faculty of discerning the actual state of affairs or the predominant evil of the moment, and of strength of mind and boldness of heart enough to grapple with and destroy it at any cost; a devoted friend and an implacable enemy; and, finally, the most formidable foe that Richelieu and Mazarin, in their turn, encountered:--such was the celebrated Duchess de Chevreuse whom we have seen alternately courted and dreaded by the two great political master-spirits of her time, the founders of monarchical unity in France.