Her deeds rang through Europe. When
she sailed from Bordeaux for Paris at last, thirty thousand people
assembled to bid her farewell. She was loved and admired by all the world,
except that husband for whom she dared so much,--and the Archbishop of
Taen. The respectable Archbishop complained, that "this lady did not prove
that she had been authorized by her husband, an essential provision,
without which no woman can act in law." And Conde himself, whose heart,
physically twice as large as other men's, was spiritually imperceptible,
repaid this stainless nobleness by years of persecution, and bequeathed
her, as a life-long prisoner, to his dastard son.
Then, on the royal side, there was Anne of Austria, sufficient unto
herself, Queen Regent, and every inch a queen, (before all but Mazarin,)--
from the moment when the mob of Paris filed through the chamber of the
boy-king, in his pretended sleep, and the motionless and stately mother
held back the crimson draperies, with the same lovely arm which had waved
perilous farewells to Buckingham,--to the day when the news of the fatal
battle of Gien came to her in her dressing-room, and "she remained
undisturbed before the mirror, not neglecting the arrangement of a single
curl."
In short, every woman who took part in the Ladies' War became heroic,--
from Marguerite of Lorraine, who snatched the pen from her weak husband's
hand and gave De Retz the order for the first insurrection, down to the
wife of the commandant of the Porte St.
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