United States or Palau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Carnet, ii. p. 65. The minister's carnets will be searched in vain for any traces of the explanations which Mazarin must have had with the Queen during this grave conjuncture. Such explanations are not of a nature likely to be forgotten, and of which there is any need to take notes. An obscure passage, however, is to be met with, written in Spanish, of which the following words have a meaning clear enough to be understood: "I ought no longer to have any doubt, since the Queen, in an excess of goodness, has told me that nothing could deprive me of the post which she has done me the honour of giving me near her; nevertheless, as fear is the inseparable companion of affection, &c." At this anxious moment, Mazarin was attacked with a slight illness, brought on by incessant labour and wearing anxieties, and an attack of jaundice having supervened, the Cardinal jotted down the following brief but highly suggestive memorandum: "La giallezza cagionata d
In every page of these invaluable carnets he indicates her as being the head and mainspring of the Importants. "It is Madame de Chevreuse," he writes repeatedly, "who stirs them all up.
The person whom Mazarin signalizes in his carnets and letters as the trusted friend of Beaufort and after him the principal accused, the Count de Beaupuis, son of the Count de Maillé, had found means of sheltering himself from the minister's first searches; he had succeeded in escaping from France and sought an asylum at Rome under the avowed protection of Spain.
In the first and the last portion of her life, which are incomparably the best, she referred everything to Condé, and Condé had a confidence in her altogether boundless. The suspicious and penetrating Mazarin had very early formed that opinion of her, and in the carnets, to which he has confided his very inmost feelings, he depicts her with the pen of an enemy, but of an enemy who knew her well.
"The Importants," says Monglat, "seeing that they could not drive the Cardinal out of France, resolved to despatch him with their daggers, and held several councils on this subject at the Hôtel de Vendôme." That opinion is confirmed by new and numerous particulars with which Mazarin's carnets and confidential letters furnish us. Mémoires, Petitot Collection, t. lix. Mémoires, t. i., p. 184.
But as they went downstairs together whom should they meet but the dentist qui a oublie ses carnets. And he was so disappointed at meeting his beautiful but deceitful mistress that he didn't visit her again for three or four days. His anger mattered very little to Mary.
From these curious revelations we further learn what importance Mazarin attached to the arrest of Henri Campion; and that writer's statements are not only substantially confirmed by various entries in the carnets, but read like a translation into French of those pages from the Cardinal's Italian.
There are, however, two scrapings evidently alphabetic, and probably Nabathaan, which are offered to the specialists in epigraphy: six appear in Wellsted's illustration, especially that with a long line above it, near the left and lower corner of the cut. M. Lacaze and I copied the most striking features in our carnets; he taking the right or southern side and leaving the other block to me.
It appears, indeed, as though Mazarin in making his notes had had before his eyes de Campion's Memoirs, or that the latter whilst penning them had Mazarin's carnets before him: he at once so thoroughly takes up the thread and completes them. "Mémoires de Henri de Campion, &c.," 1807. Treuttel and Würtz. Paris.
We are promised these carnets in the course of "a few weeks," so, until then, you can think of me as, to all intents and purposes, really interned. It may interest you to know that on the 9th, just a week ago a Zeppelin nearly got to Meaux. It was about half past eleven in the evening when the drums beat "lights out," along the hillside.
Word Of The Day