But, passing rapidly over the errors of her youth, it is the close of Madame de Montbazon's political career with which we are now concerned. The influence which the gay and gallant Duchess long exercised over the Duke de Beaufort had sometimes proved useful to the interests of the Court, and during the early troubles of the Fronde the Queen and Mazarin took care to keep her favourably disposed towards them. But the importance which Beaufort's infatuated passion gave or seemed to give her, speedily made the Duchess one of the heroines of the Fronde--though, it must be owned, one of the secondary heroines. Her allies were careful not to allow her to take upon herself a part she was unable to sustain. Violent, unreflecting, accessible to the most contradictory suggestions, ready for any turn, and the sport of every caprice, she was wanting in all the better qualities of a political woman. Her indiscretion became formidable on all occasions when secresy was necessary, and more than once the Duke de Beaufort was obliged to be excluded from the assemblages at which the chiefs of the Fronde took counsel together. It was well known that he dare not keep anything from his mistress, and it might chance that a royalist might turn to account the confidence which she wormed out of her lover, for conformity in political sentiments was not one of the conditions which she imposed upon the adorers whose homage she welcomed. Her correspondence with Marshal d'Albret exposed her moreover to be subject to, without being aware of it, the influences of the Court, and her intimacy with Vineuil tended to make her an ally, in spite of herself, of the Prince de Conde. Hence it is easy to explain the mistrust with which she inspired the Coadjutor of Paris, the future Cardinal de Retz. She herself did not fail to perceive the surveillance which he exercised around her; and she was irritated to see with what facility he modified in his own fashion the line of conduct which she had just previously dictated to the Duke de Beaufort. She was forced to confess that his authority prevailed over her own. One evening, disheartened by the incapacity of the grandson of the great Henry, and terrified by the dangers to which their imprudence exposed the Frondeurs, and esteeming the political talent of Gondi to be more truly worthy of her own, she opened her heart to him, and proposed that they should enter into a treaty of alliance. The gallant Coadjutor would only consent to accept one portion of the treaty, and, happily for the Duke de Beaufort, who was busily occupied with a game at chess during that strange conversation, he stipulated to eliminate from the proposed association everything that related to politics. But the Duchess would not consent to those terms.