Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ... with each other. Chateauneuf, who had plotted his fall in order to secure his place, had been dismissed from the ministry; and his successor Chavigny, who spent his time in going between Paris and St. Maur, was little in favour with the Queen. She complained that she was surrounded by traitors and poltroons; and her impatience at the indecision of parties was carried almost to vertigo by the habitual irresolution of Orl6ans, whose great misfortune it was to have been born a prince at a time when princes must make up their minds. Led now by the Coadjutor as before by La Riviere, balancing between his dislike of Mazarin and his fear of Conde, and rated alternately by the Queen and by his wife, he made a pitiable figure enough. He raged feebly, in the intervals of sorting his medals, at everything and everybody, complaining of "the inconstancy of affairs"; and, in a fever of diplomacy, engaged himself to both parties at once, in case either should go over to the other. So, while the Queen consulted the Coadjutor, and Monsieur fidgetted, Conde continued to hold assembled at St. Maur his "Estates of the League"--a melancholy prelude, as Mole declared, of civil war.1 It was certainly a melancholy ending to the hopes of five months before. The confusion and incongruity of these scenes, the multitude of agitations and intrigues puzzles and astonishes the historian, as they astonished De Retz when, in writing his memoirs, he came to recall them-- for in the agitations themselves, he declares, one hardly felt these things. The memoirs, if their sprightliness deceives us, give the grounds of inference; and we can see below their colouring.* For the result of all this movement and energy, in spite of its gaiety and its 1 De Retz, Mem. t. iii. pp....
