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. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ...Notre Dame. Anne of Austria now intimated to Conde that he might name his own terms, if he would repudiate his engagements with the Fronde. With a facility, as shameful as it was blind, Conde accepted the proposal. The Under Secretaries of State were instructed to draw up a treaty of alliance, which handed over half the kingdom to the Prince and his immediate following; and the Prince, on his side, undertook to give a public pledge of his change of policy, by the rupture of his brother's engagement with Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. There was little difficulty in finding a specious pretext for this breach of faith. Mademoiselle de Chevreuse was in the bloom of youth. Her manners possessed an exquisite charm, which rendered the soft spell of her voluptuous beauty irresistible. But she was depraved even beyond the depravity of that dissolute period. Her amour with the Coadjutor was a public scandal. Conti, though passionately attached to her, consented, on being furnished with plain proofs of her misconduct, to renounce the alliance. Good feeling, as well as policy, would have clothed the intimation of this purpose in forms and language of respectful courtesy calculated to deprive the quarrel of unnecessary bitterness. The lady's kindred, the Duchess of Orleans, the Princess Palatine, the Princes of Lorraine-Guise, had not only laid the House of Conde under the deepest obligations, but boasted a lineage as lofty as its own. But the Prince caused his will to be signified in a manner so arrogant and insulting, as justly to provoke the mortal enmity of Madame de Chevreuse, and her powerful family connexions. That spirited lady and De Retz meditated revenge. Orleans renounced the friendship of his faithless cousin. But the person most ungenerously...
