And indeed, on pretext offered by a feminine quarrel between the young Duchess of Longueville, daughter of the Prince of Conde, and the Duchess of Montbazon, the Duke of Beaufort and some of his friends resolved to assassinate the cardinal.  The attempt was a failure, but the Duke of Beaufort, who was arrested on the 2d of September, was taken to the castle of Vincennes.  Madame de Chevreuse, recently returned to court, where she would fain have exacted from the queen the reward for her services and her past sufferings, was sent into exile, as well as the Duke of Vendome.  Madame d’Hautefort, but lately summoned by Anne of Austria to be near her, was soon involved in the same disgrace.  Proud and compassionate, without any liking for Mazarin, she was daring enough, during a trip to Vincennes, to ask pardon for the Duke of Beaufort.  “The queen made no answer, and, the collation being served, Madame d’Hautefort, whose heart was full, ate nothing; when she was asked why, she declared that she could not enjoy anything in such close proximity to that poor boy.”  The queen could not put up with reproaches; and she behaved with extreme coldness to Madame d’Hautefort.  One day, at bedtime, her ill temper showed itself so plainly, that the old favorite could no longer be in doubt about the queen’s sentiments.  As she softly closed the curtains, “I do assure you, Madame,” she said, “that if I had served God with as much attachment and devotion as I have your Majesty all my life, I should be a great saint.”  And, raising her eyes to the crucifix, she added, “Thou knowest, Lord, what I have done for her.”  The queen let her go to the convent where Mademoiselle de la Fayette had taken refuge ten years before.  Madame d’Hautefort left it ere long to become the wife of Marshal Schomberg; but the party of the Importants was dead, and the power of Cardinal Mazarin seemed to be firmly established.  “It was not the thing just then for any decent man to be on bad terms with the court,” says Cardinal de Retz.

Negotiations for a general peace, the preliminaries whereof had been signed by King Louis XIII. in 1641, had been going on since 1644 at Munster and at Osnabriick, without having produced any result; the Duke of Enghien, who became Prince of Conde in 1646, was keeping up the war in Flanders and Germany, with the co-operation of Viscount Turenne, younger brother of the Duke of Bouillon, and, since Rocroi, a marshal of France.  The capture of Thionville and of Dunkerque, the victories of Friburg and Nordlingen, the skilful opening effected in Germany as far as Augsburg by the French and the Swedes, had raised so high the reputation of the two generals, that the Prince of Conde, who was haughty and ambitious, began to cause great umbrage to Mazarin.  Fear of having him unoccupied deterred the cardinal from peace, and made all the harder the conditions he presumed to impose upon the Spaniards.  Meanwhile the United Provinces, weary of a war which fettered