At first La Rochefoucauld seems to have meant to support the cause of the court, expecting to be rewarded for what he had done, or been prepared to do for the Queen. He says in his "Memoires" that after the death of Louis XIII. the Queen-Mother "gave me many marks of friendship and confidence; she assured me several times that her honour was involved in my being pleased with her, and that nothing in the kingdom was large enough to reward me for what I had done in her service." That sounds very well, but what it really illustrates is the extraordinary violence of aristocratic frivolity, the fierce levity and insatiable frenzied vanity of the noble families. The aims of La Rochefoucauld, in support of which he was ready to sacrifice his country, were of a class that must seem to us now petty in the extreme. He wanted the _tabouret_, the footstool, for his duchess, in other words the right to be seated in presence of the members of the royal family. He wanted the privilege of driving into the courtyard of the Louvre without having to descend from his coach outside and walk in. He demanded these honours because they were already possessed by the families of Rohan and of Bouillon. It is extraordinary to consider what powerful effects such trumpery causes could have, but it is a fact that the desolating and cruel wars of the Fronde largely depended upon jealousies of the _carrosse_ and the _tabouret_. La Rochefoucauld's support of the rebellion frankly and openly was based upon it. La Rochefoucauld brings the first part of his "Memoires" down to 1649. In the second part he begins again with 1642, being very anxious to show, to his own advantage of course, what the conditions were at court after the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and in particular to define the position of Mme de Chevreuse, the great intriguer and seductress of the French politics of the age. The charm of this lady, who was no longer young, faded before that of the Duchess of Longueville, one of the most ambitious and most unscrupulous women who ever lived. She was the sister of the Prince de Conti, and from the time when her celebrated relations with La Rochefoucauld began, her influence engaged him in all the unplumbed chaos which led to civil war. When this finally broke out, however, in 1648, the Duke is found once more on the side of the young king and his government, that is to say, of Cardinal Mazarin.