lf after ten years' captivity the husband of a woman of
fifty-four, showed her neither tenderness nor respect. It was,
therefore, a relief to her when he took his departure for England in
1685. The ill-assorted couple never met again. Lauzun more than once
endeavoured to obtain an interview with the Princess, but she would not
forgive him, and died without consenting to his urgent appeals. It was
in her latter years only, and under the perceptibly increasing sway of
religious influences, that her miserably tormented mind recovered peace
and repose. Mademoiselle, who had only given up dancing in 1674,
withdrew gradually from Court when she found that she had become an
object of pity, if not of mockery, therein. The _Grande Mademoiselle_
expired on the 5th of April, 1693, in her palace of the Luxembourg, aged
sixty-six. That singularity, which had so remarkably characterised her
life, pursued her even beyond it. At her obsequies, celebrated with much
magnificence, her entrails, imperfectly embalmed, fermented, and the urn
which contained them burst with a loud explosion during the ceremonies.
All present fled in the extremity of terror.

Was it from the singularity of her existence, from the essentially
French tone of her character, from the grandeur of an epoch during which
no one passed unnoticed, that the species of popularity half-indulgent,
half-sportive, which attached to her name must be attributed? To all
these doubtless, but likewise to another cause more decisive still.
Mademoiselle does not take her place only in the sufficiently extensive
catalogue of princely eccentricities; she holds a creditable position
upon the list of French writers. Nor should it be forgotten that the
gates of the Luxembourg were by her thrown open to all the _beaux
esprits_ of her time, "qui y trouvaient leur place comme chez Mecaenas;"
and that she fostered both by encouragement and example La Rochefoucauld
and La Bruyere, and that it is no slight claim to remembrance that she
led France to appreciate the _Maxims_ of the one and the _Characters_ of
the other. May such considerations serve as extenuating circumstances
when we bring her up for judgment for the flagrant crime of--M. de
Lauzun.

CHAPTER VI.

THE WIFE OF THE GREAT CONDE.

AMONG so many heroines of beauty, glory, and gallantry, who achieved
celebrity at this stirring epoch of French history, there is one whose
name ought not to be effaced from, nor placed lowe