Like a river which loses itself, by infinite subdivision, in the sands, so the wars of the Fronde disappeared in petty intrigues at last. As the fighting ended and manoeuvring became the game, of course Mazarin came uppermost,--Mazarin, that super-Italian, finessing and fascinating, so deadly sweet, _l'homme plus agréable du monde_, as Madame de Motteville and Bussy-Rabutin call him,--flattering that he might win, avaricious that he might be magnificent, winning kings by jewelry and princesses by lapdogs,--too cowardly for any avoidable collision,--too cool and economical in his hatred to waste an antagonist by killing him, but always luring and cajoling him into an unwilling tool,--too serenely careless of popular emotion even to hate the mob of Paris, any more than a surgeon hates his own lancet when it cuts him; he only changes his grasp and holds it more cautiously. Mazarin ruled. And the King was soon joking over the fight at the Porte St. Antoine, with Condé and Mademoiselle; the Queen at the same time affectionately assuring our heroine, that, if she could have got at her on that day, she would certainly have strangled her, but that, since it was past, she would love her as ever,--as ever; while Mademoiselle, not to be outdone, lies like a Frenchwoman, and assures the Queen that really she did not mean to be so naughty, but "she was with those who induced her to act against her sense of duty!" The day of civil war was over. The daring heroines and voluptuous blonde beauties of the Frondeur party must seek excitement elsewhere. Some looked for it in literature; for the female education of France in that age was far higher than England could show. The intellectual glory of the reign of the Grand Monarque began in its women. Marie de Médicis had imported the Italian grace and wit,--Anne of Austria the Spanish courtesy and romance; the Hôtel de Rambouillet had united the two, and introduced the _genre précieux_, or stately style, which was superb in its origin, and dwindled to absurdity in the hands of Mlle. de Scudéry and her valets, before Molière smiled it away forever. And now that the wars were done, literary society came up again. Madame de Sablé exhausted the wit and the cookery of the age in her fascinating entertainments,--_pâtés_ and Pascal, Rochefoucauld and _ragoûts_,--Mme. de Brégy's Epictetus, Mme. de Choisy's salads,--confectionery, marmalade, elixirs, Des Cartes, Arnould, Calvinism, and the barometer. Mme. de Sablé had a sentimental theory that no woman should eat at the same table with a lover, but she liked to see her lovers eat, and Mademoiselle, in her obsolete novel of the "Princesse de Paphlagonie," gently satirizes this passion of her friend. And Mademoiselle herself finally eclipsed the Sablé by her own entertainments at her palace of the Luxembourg, where she offered no dish but one of gossip, serving up herself and friends in a course of "Portraits" so