aass_X^_ I 9. Book. _y_^_. COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. By ARVEDE BARINE Authorized English Versions. Each Octavo Fully illustrated. (By mail, $3.25.) Net, $3.00 The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle 1627-1652 Louis XIV. and La Grande Mademoiselle 1652-1693 Princesses and Court Ladies G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Nmw York London. MARIE MANCINI From the painting ^by Mignard Princesses and Court Ladies By Arvede Barine Author of "The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle,'* " Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle," etc. Authorized English Version Marie Mancini — Christina of Sweden An Arab Princess — The Duchess of Maine The Margravine of Bayreuth G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London XLbe IRnicfterbocftcr ffircas 1906 ^1°"^ :^^^i ILIBRARYofCOH3RESS 0n6<>yy Hoeemi DEC ? 1906 GL.^SS A XXc, Ho, Copyright, 1906 BV G. P PUTNAM'S SONS Contents ILLUSTRATIONS Marie Mancini Frontispiece From the painting by Mignard. PAGE Cardinal Mazarin 18/ From the portrait by R. GayTvood. Anne of Austria ^o ^ After the portrait by S. Harding. Marie Theresa 46 '^ From an old copper engraving. ' Prince Charles of Lorraine 50 From an old copper print. HoRTENSE Mancini 60 From an old copper print. TiiE Connetable Colonna 68 '/ After the portrait by Giacomo Bichi. Louis XIV 72 After a print by Manteinl. Queen Christina of Sweden 74 From an old copper print. Queen Eleonora of Sweden 78 v/ From an old copper print. Gustavus Adolphus 84*' From an old copper print. Count Axel Oxenstiern 92 From an old copper print. Abbe Bourdelot 104 After the painting by N. de Largillier. vi Illustrations PAGE DucHEssE Du Maine 212 / After the portrait by Staal. Due DU Maine 218 From an old copper print. Nicholas de Malezieu 228 ^ From an old copper print. Madame de Maintenon 246 . From the engraving by P. Giffart. Louis XV 256 ,] After the painting by Hyacinthe Rigaud. Philippe Due d'Orleans 262 From an old copper print. Rene DsseARXEs 274 From an engraving by J. Chapman. Marchioness du Chatelet 276 From an old copper print. Voltaire 280 From an engraving by James Mollison of the pic- ture by Largillier in the Institute of France. Frederike Sophie Wilhelmina 290 Frederick William I, King of Prussia 300 From an engraving by G. F. Schmidt. Sophia Dorothea, Queen of Prussia 304 From an old copper print. Frederick, Duke of Gloucester 308 From the painting by I. Simon. Augustus the Strong, King of Poland 312 From an old print Frederick the Great '". 320 From an old copper print. PRINCESSES AND COURT LADIES MARIE MANCINI THERE was once upon a time a great king who governed the most beautiful country in the world. His court, like himself, was full of youth, joy, and magnificence ; everything in his enchanted palace spoke of pleasure, gallantry, splendour, and especially of love. A hundred beauties sought to attract the young sovereign's attention, for besides being king, he was the handsomest man in the dominion. At the court, there was a little, black-eyed, ill- favoured, gipsy-like maid, whom her uncle, the prime minister, had brought up from childhood. She was wild, passionate, but full of wit, and her mad pranks amused the king. He took such pleasure in her company that soon he could not do without it and vowed that he would marry her. The queen, his mother, opposed his passion and separated the two lovers, whereat there was much sorrow, and many tears were shed. But the queen was not to be gainsaid. The gipsy-like maid after this went through many adventures. 2 Princesses and Court Ladies committed innumerable follies, in the course of which she blossomed into beauty. One fine day she disappeared and no one knew what had become of her. This fairy tale is a true story, the events of which took place at the court of France during the seventeenth century. The handsome prince was Louis XIV. The wild gipsy was Marie Mancini, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin. We shall endeavour to relate this royal romance.^ On September the eleventh, 1647, j^st before the Fronde, the Court of France received from Italy three little girls and a little boy, before whom the courtiers bowed with indecorous ser- vility. A lady, belonging to the Noailles family, went for them in great pomp as far as Rome ; one of the Rochefoucaulds, who had been governess to the king, was appointed to care for their instruc- tion ; the queen mother brought them up with her own children, and they were treated like princes and princesses of the blood. These little foreign- ers bore obscure Italian names: three were Man- cinis and one was a Martinozzi. Their mothers were the sisters of Cardinal Mazarin. ' In 1880 M. Chantelauze published an excellent book on Louis XIV and Marie Mancini. Earlier still Am6d6e Ren^e told the story of Mazarin's nieces. We have made great use of these two works. Marie Mancini 3 In 1653, after the Fronde, there was a fresh arrival of nieces and nephews belonging to the all- powerful cardinal: three other Mancinis and one Martinozzi. A last little Mancini, with her brother, reached Paris in 1655. In all, there were seven nieces and three nephews, whom it was necessary to provide with dowries, husbands, wives, and sinecures. Some far-seeing persons were struck, not so much with the grace and charm of these children, as with the thought of what they were likely to cost the nation; foreseeing, not without sorrow, the important part to be played by this handsome, strange, and dangerous family, superstitious, with- out religion, full of wit and of eccentricity, in all things passionate and unrestrained, living in the midst of pictures and artistic baubles, of singular pets, astrologers, and poets. There was much beauty among these young people, and they were wild over poetry, music, and love-making. Their faces and their ideas were equally original. The art of seduction was natural to them. Their tastes remained Italian, elegant, refined, and mysteriously alarming. No Frenchwoman at Court knew how to dress, ornament her home, or organise festivities as did the Mazarines. Not one had read so much, could discuss the topics of the day with so much spirit, or entertain with so much intelligence, grace, or, if need be, haughti- ness. Not one, either, was so accustomed to notions which, outside of Italy, seemed very 4 Princesses and Court Ladies startling. Marie Mancini, after she had become a Colonna, said and wrote, as though it were the simplest thing in the world, that she had left her honest husband, lest he should take it into his head to punish her "Itahan vagaries" by poison- ing her. It is never quite wholesome to look upon such expedients as natural. Little by little the Mazarines were regarded with distrust, and at the first opportunity that distrust grew into an evil rumour. Bold and fearless, their passion for romantic adventures savoured of exoticism as did their persons. Unlike the great ladies of the Fronde, they were adventuresses rather than heroines; so long as the excitement of their frolics amused their fancy, they had no fear of compromising them- selves. Pride helped them through many a criti- cal pass, and, when even that failed, they in no way lost their spirits. An adventure that turned against them, in a way that would have covered any other women with shame, seemed to them a venture that had miscarried and must be recom- menced — nothing more. They did not believe in half measures. Two among them, Laure Mancini, Duchess of Mercoeur, and Anne-Marie Martinozzi, Princess of Conti, were of a gentler mould. They turned to piety and attained saintliness. With the exception of these two, and perhaps also of Laure Martinozzi, Duchess of Modena, it is hard to decide which carried off the palm of profligacy. These Maza- Marie Mancini 5 rines looked on life as a game at which only the fools do not cheat, a game with pleasure for the stake, especially, forbidden pleasure, so much more savoury than any other. Almost the whole family was lacking in any sense of morality. This is a distinctive trait of the race. Mazarin never had any. His nieces did not even know the meaning of the word. Like their uncle they seemed utterly without conscience. The cardinal was inordinately grasping.^ One is amazed at the enormous fortune he acquired in less than twenty years, at a time when foreign and civil wars were ruining the country. On every occasion, his great thought, his principal preoccupation, was to scrape money together. In the days of his obscure youth, he lived, and lived far too well, by gaming. His enemies often reproached him with his surprisingly persistent good luck at cards. As prime minister, he robbed France by all and every means. Like Panurge, he had sixty-three ways of turning money into his coffers, the most honest of which was hardty to be distinguished from stealing. Mazarin 's most avowable means of getting rich was by plunging his hands into the king's treasury. This was better than selling offices, better than becoming "purveyor and bread vendor to the army," as * The rehabilitation of Mazarin has been attempted more than once in our day. (See the interesting works of M. Cheruel.) In this study, we have left aside the political man, to show only the private individual, as he appeared in the eyes of his contemporaries. ; 6 Princesses and Court Ladies Madame de Motteville accuses him of having been during the siege of Dunkerque (1658): "It is said that he caused wine, meat, bread, and water to be sold, and that he made a profit on all these com- modities.