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My position in France is already a sufficiently difficult one. Already we are threatened with a second Fronde. It needs but such events as these to bring my family into prominence and make it the butt for the ridicule that malcontents but wait an opportunity to slur it with.
On her part, Mademoiselle, somewhat fantastic but loyal and courageous, had joined her mother-in-law, and declared for the Fronde, partly through her liking for éclat and the notoriety of parading at the head of the troops, with her two ladies of honour, the Countesses of Fiesque and Frontenac, transformed into aides-de-camp; partly by the secret hope that by Mazarin's defeat and her father's triumph she might succeed in espousing the young King, and so exchange the helmet of the Fronde for the crown of France.
The gilded wooden idols of the Restoration, for they were neither more nor less, had neither the antecedents of the petits maitres of the time of the Fronde, nor the rough sterling worth of Napoleon's heroes, not the wit and fine manners of their grandsires; but something of all three they meant to be without any trouble to themselves.
Among her portraits of well-known women are those of Jane Hading, Elsie de Wolfe, Bessie Abbott of the Opera, Rachel Boyer of the Theatre Français, Marguerite Durand, Editeur de la Fronde, Mlle. Richepin, and many others. Mme. Marlef has the power of keen observation, so necessary to a painter of portraits.
The court party was now called "The Mazarins," and those of the Parliament "The Fronde." The literal meaning of the word fronde is sling. It is a boy's plaything, and when skillfully used, an important weapon of war. It was with the sling that David slew Goliath. During the Middle Ages this was the usual weapon of the foot soldiers.
The cardinal had gained the victory. Parliament bowed the head; its attempts at independence during the Fronde were but a flash, and the yoke of Louis XIV. became the more heavy for it.
Hardly was he in his grave, when the nobles perverted the effort of the Paris Parliament for advance in liberty, and took the lead in the fearful revolts and massacres of the Fronde. Then came Richelieu's pupil, Mazarin, who tricked the nobles into order, and Mazarin's pupil, Louis XIV., who bribed them into order.
She was "one of those personages, however, who made the most noise" at the courts of Louis the Thirteenth and Anne of Austria, as we are told by Madame de Motteville, and as we have already seen by the prominent political part she played in the factions of the Importants and the Fronde.
Therefore, on the 3rd of February, 1653, the High-Admiral Cæsar de Vendôme, engaged in pursuing the Spanish fleet in the sea of Gascony, entered the Gironde, and threatened the relics of the Fronde at Bordeaux.
It is clear from the Memoirs of the Duchesse de Montpensier that Frontenac visited his wife at Saint-Fargeau, the country seat to which the duchess had been exiled for her part in the wars of the Fronde. Such evidence as there is seems to show that Madame de Frontenac considered herself deeply wronged by her husband and was unwilling to accept his overtures.
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