LA GRANDE MADEMOISELLE
FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING
LA GRANDE
MADEMOISELLE
1627-1652
BY
ARVÈDE BARINE
AUTHORISED ENGLISH VERSION BY
HELEN E. MEYER
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1902
Copyright, 1902
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Published, November, 1902
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
La Grande Mademoiselle was one of the mostoriginal persons of her epoch, though it cannotbe said that she was ever of the first order. Herswas but a small genius; there was nothing extraordinaryin her character; and she had too littleinfluence over events to have made it worth whileto devote a whole volume to her history—muchless to prepare for her a second chronicle—hadshe not been an adventurous and picturesque princess,a proud, erect figure standing in the frontrank of the important personages whom Emersoncalled "representative."
Mademoiselle's agitated existence was a marvellouscommentary on the profound transformationaccomplished in the mind of France toward theclose of the seventeenth century,—a transformationwhose natural reaction changed the being ofFrance.
I have tried to depict this change, whose tracesare often hidden by the rapid progress of historicalevents, because it was neither the most salientfeature of the closing century nor the result of arevolution.
Essential, of the spirit, it passed in the depthsof the eager souls of the people of those tormented[iv]days. Such changes are analogous to the changesin the light of the earthly seasons. From day today, marking dates which vary with the advancingyears, the intense light of summer gives place tothe wan light of autumn. So the landscape is perpetuallyrenewed by the recurring influences ofnatural revolution; in like manner, the moral atmosphereof France was changed and rechargedwith the principles of life in the new birth; andwhen the long civil labour of the Fronde was ended,the nation's mind had received a new and oppositeimpulsion, the casual daily event wore a newaspect, the sons viewed things in a light unknownto their fathers, and even to the fathers the appearanceof things had changed. Their thoughts,their feelings, their whole moral being hadchanged.
It is the gradual progress of this transformationthat I have attempted to show the reader. I knowthat my enterprise is ambitious; it would have beenbeyond my strength had I had nothing to refer tobut the Archives and the various collections of personalmemoirs. But two great poets have beenmy guides, Corneille and Racine, both faithful interpretersof the thoughts and the feelings of theircontemporaries; an