Note 27 — CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. (continued 2)

The couplet, written by Rochefoucauld at the bottom of a portrait of the duchess de Longueville is well known.

When he quarrelled with her, after his wound in the combat of the fauxbourg de St. Antoine, he parodied it.

It may here be mentioned, that the prince of Conti and the duchess of Longueville held out in Bordeaux and Guienne against the royal authority for several years. Through the interposition of Gourville they acceded to terms in 1658. The conclusion of madame de Longueville's life was singular. Cardinal de Retz and Rochefoucauld both describe her as naturally indolent; but they both so inoculated her with a love of party intrigue, that, when the war of the Fronde ceased, she found it impossible to reconcile herself to a quiet life. She became jansenist. She built herself a dwelling close to the abbey of Port Royal aux Champs. She put herself forward in all the disputes, and was looked up to with reverence by the leaders of the party, and contrived, when every one else had failed, to suspend the disturbances caused by the formula. "A singular woman," the French biographer writes, "who even became renowned while working out her salvation, and saved herself on the same plank from hell and from ennui." Her piety was sincere, for she submitted to great personal privations, and fasted so strictly, that she died, it is said, from inanition. She died about a month after the duke de la Rochefoucauld. The bishop of Autun preached her funeral oration, as madame de Sévigné says, with all the ability, tact, and grace that it was possible to conceive. The children and friends of Rochefoucauld were among his audience, and wept his death anew.