y say that, during those eight days, the
empire was nothing to me," she writes. But she confesses to a certain
feeling of vanity at her own spirit of self-sacrifice, and the
sensibility which made her weep at the thought of leaving those she
loved. This access of piety was of short duration, however, as her
father quickly put to flight all her exalted visions of a cloister. Her
dreams of an emperor for whom she lost a prospective king were alike
futile.

"She had beauty, talent, wealth, virtue, and a royal birth," says Mme.
de Motteville. "Her face was not without defects, and her intellect was
not one which always pleases. Her vivacity deprived all her actions of
the gravity necessary to people of her rank, and her mind was too much
carried away by her feelings. As she was fair, had fine eyes, a pleasing
mouth, was of good height, and blonde, she had quite the air of a great
beauty." But it was beauty of a commanding sort, without delicacy, and
dependent largely upon the freshness of youth. The same veracious
writer says that "she spoiled all she went about by the eagerness and
impatience of her temper. She was always too hasty and pushed things too
far." What she may have lacked in grace and charm, she made up by the
splendors of rank and position.

A princess by birth, closely related to three kings, and glowing with
all the fiery instincts of her race, the Grand Mademoiselle curiously
blended the courage of an Amazon with the weakness of a passionate and
capricious woman. As she was born in 1627, the most brilliant days of
her youth were passed amid the excitements of the Fronde. She casts a
romantic light upon these trivial wars, which were ended at last by her
prompt decision and masculine force. We see her at twenty-five, riding
victoriously into the city of Orleans at the head of her troops and,
later, ordering the cannon at the Bastile turned against the royal
forces, and opening the gates of Paris to the exhausted army of Conde.
This adventure gives us the key-note to her haughty and imperious
character. She would have posed well for the heroine of a great drama;
indeed, she posed all her life in real dramas.

At this time she had hopes of marrying the Prince de Conde, whom she
regarded as a hero worthy of her. His wife, an amiable woman who was
sent to a convent after her marriage to learn to read and write, was
dangerously ill, and her illustrious husband did not scruple to make
tacit arrangements to supp