Poetry and gallantry—State of affairs in 1643—Battle of Rocroy—Mazarin and the _Importants_—Madame de Montbazon—Letter attributed to Madame de Longueville—Duel between Coligny and De Guise—An unpublished novel of the seventeenth century 241 CHAPTER IV. 1644 to 1649. Campaigns of Condé in Flanders and on the Rhine—Congress and peace of Munster—Madame de Longueville at Munster—Her portrait by Van Hull—Her return to France—Her brother, the Prince de Conti—Sonnets of Voiture and of Benserade—La Rochefoucauld—Commencement of his connection with Madame de Longueville—The first Fronde—Noble conduct of Condé—Madame de Longueville at the hôtel de Ville—Birth of Charles de Paris, Count de Saint-Paul—Peace of 1649 309 PREFACE. Villefore has written the life of Madame de Longueville, and it is not our intention to re-write it. We have only wished to penetrate into the intimacy of a lofty spirit, that inspires us with an especial interest, by the aid of the most reliable documents that history can employ—confidential correspondences, in which hearts, opening themselves far from the eye of the public, involuntarily reveal characters, that is to say, the truest causes of human events. In order to procure such documents, we have delved, with the perseverance of passion, in libraries public and private, and have succeeded in laying hands upon a very great number of unpublished letters, which have elucidated for us many obscure points in the life of Mme. de Longueville, of that of Condé, her brother, of their most celebrated contemporaries, male and female. In default, then, of every other merit, this production will at least have that of offering to the reader things hitherto unknown, or scarcely perceived: for example, the interior, for the first time opened, of that great convent of the Carmelites of the _Rue Saint Jacques_, which served as an asylum to so many wounded hearts, where Mlle. de Bourbon was, as it were, brought up, and wished, at fifteen years of age, to bury her beauty and her genius; the graceful pastimes of her youth at the Louvre, at the hôtel de Rambouillet, at Chantilly, at Ruel, at Liancourt; her charming friends, her brilliant and valiant adorers; the skilful and too little appreciated politics of her father; the military education, and also the first loves of Condé; above all, that pure and touching Mlle. Du Vigean, worthy object of the tenderness of a hero, whom we have in some sort found again, whom we dare to put by the side of Mlle. de La Vallière.