eer ended in a catastrophe, popular
opinion, which readily follows success, considers as merely abortive
that long career during which her hand sustained upon the brow of a
French prince the tottering crown against which the arms of Europe, the
distrust of Spain, and the discouragement of France vied in conspiring.

Yet in her girlhood, during the last days of the Fronde, Marie Anne de
la Tremouille must early have observed how greatly beauty can aid
ambition, and how, by tact, endowments the most frivolous may be brought
to the service of interests the most serious and complicated. Married in
1650 to the Prince de Chalais, of the house of Talleyrand, she conceived
for her young husband the sole passion to be noted throughout a life in
which, especially during its later period, love figured only in the
dullest of hues. This marriage took place during the wars of the second
Fronde, and at an epoch when a rage for duelling, the anarchical and
ruthless effect of Frenchmen's ideas touching the "point of honour," had
infused a new element into the spirit of party, and had become a
veritable mania. It chanced on the occasion of one of those duels in
1663--that of the two brothers Frette--wherein four fought on either
side, and in which the Duke de Beauvilliers was slain, that the Prince
de Chalais figured as one of the champions. The law against duelling,
enforced by Henri Quatre, and revived with so much rigour by Richelieu
against the father of the famous Marshal de Luxembourg, and from which
practice the blood of Bouteville had not completely delivered France,
was still in full vigour. The consequences being so terrible, that the
Prince de Chalais, to place himself beyond reach of them, was compelled
to seek safety in flight. He succeeded in escaping to Spain, whither his
wife followed him.

During this brief period of her union with the Prince de Chalais, whom
she adored, Marie Anne de la Tremouille had shone as conspicuously by
her wit as by her beauty in the famous circle of the Hotel d'Albret,
where she first met Madame Scarron, whose destiny it was later on in
life--as Madame de Maintenon--to be so closely allied with the Princess.
Thus united by ties of the tenderest affection, scarcely had the young
couple quitted Madrid, after a three years' sojourn, to establish
themselves at Rome, when the death of M. de Chalais left her a childless
widow, without protection, and almost destitute--a prey to grief
apparently the