r the time.
Meanwhile he was writing the Memoirs which, like the Maxims of his rival
and half-enemy, La Rochefoucauld, unexpectedly gained for him a higher
reputation in literature than he could have hoped for in politics. When
a mere boy he had shown in the _Conjuration de Fiesque_ no small
literary talent, and his sermons deepened the impression. His Memoirs,
however, are different in style from both. They are addressed to a lady
friend, and contain a most extraordinary mixture of anecdote,
description, personal satire, moral reflection, and political
portraiture. In the three points of anecdote, portrait-drawing, and
maxim-making, Retz has no rival except in the acknowledged masters of
each art respectively.

The Memoirs of Guy Joly, a lawyer and the friend and confidant of Retz,
in a manner supplement this latter's work. Joly was faithful to his
master even in exile, but at last they quarrelled, and the Memoirs do
not always throw a very favourable light on the proceedings of the
turbulent cardinal. They are very well written. Claude Joly, the uncle
of Guy, an ecclesiastic, has also left anti-Mazarin writings of less
literary worth.

[Sidenote: Mademoiselle.]

Of very great importance historically, and by no means unimportant as
literature, are the Memoirs of Pierre Lenet, a man of business long
attached to the house of Conde. These memoirs are, in fact, memoirs of
the great Conde himself, until the peace of the Pyrenees. Personal and
literary interest both appear in a very high degree in the Memoirs of
Anne Marie Louise de Montpensier, commonly called La Grande
Mademoiselle. The only daughter of Gaston of Orleans and of the Duchess
de Montpensier, she inherited enormous wealth, and a position which made
it difficult for her to marry any one but a crowned head. In her youth
she was self-willed, and by no means inclined to marriage, and prince
after prince was proposed to her in vain. During the Fronde she took an
extraordinary part--heading armies, mounting the walls of Orleans by a
scaling ladder, and saving the routed troops of Conde, after the battle
of the Faubourg Saint Antoine, by opening the gates of Paris to them,
and causing the cannon of the Bastille to cover their flight. Mazarin
never forgave her this, nor perhaps did Louis XIV. When she was past
middle age, Mademoiselle conceived an unfortunate affection for Lauzun,
then merely a gentleman of the South named Puyguilhem. By dint of great
entreaties s