La Grande Mademoiselle, 1627-1652

La Grande Mademoiselle was one of the most original persons of her epoch, though it cannot be said that she was ever of the first order. Hers was but a small genius; there was nothing extraordinary in her character; and she had too little influence over events to have made it worth while to devote a whole volume to her history--much less to prepare for her a second chronicle--had she not been an adventurous and picturesque princess, a proud, erect figure standing in the front rank of the important personages whom Emerson called "representative."

Mademoiselle's agitated existence was a marvellous commentary on the profound transformation accomplished in the mind of France toward the close of the seventeenth century,--a transformation whose natural reaction changed the being of France.

I have tried to depict this change, whose traces are often hidden by the rapid progress of historical events, because it was neither the most salient feature of the closing century nor the result of a revolution.

Essential, of the spirit, it passed in the depths of the eager souls of the people of those tormented days. Such changes are analogous to the changes in the light of the earthly seasons. From day to day, marking dates which vary with the advancing years, the intense light of summer gives place to the wan light of autumn. So the landscape is perpetually renewed by the recurring influences of natural revolution; in like manner, the moral atmosphere of France was changed and recharged with the principles of life in the new birth; and when the long civil labour of the Fronde was ended, the nation's mind had received a new and opposite impulsion, the casual daily event wore a new aspect, the sons viewed things in a light unknown to their fathers, and even to the fathers the appearance of things had changed. Their thoughts, their feelings, their whole moral being had changed.

It is the gradual progress of this transformation that I have attempted to show the reader. I know that my enterprise is ambitious; it would have been beyond my strength had I had nothing to refer to but the Archives and the various collections of personal memoirs. But two great poets have been my guides, Corneille and Racine, both faithful interpreters of the thoughts and the feelings of their contemporaries; and they have made clear the contrast between the two distinct social epochs--between the old and the new bodies, so different, yet so closely connected.

When the Christian pessimism of Racine had--in the words of Jules Lemaître--succeeded the stoical optimism of Corneille, all the conditions evolving their diverse lines of thought had changed.

The nature of La Grande Mademoiselle was exemplified in the moral revolution which gave us Phédre thirty-four years (the space of a generation) after the apparition of Pauline.

In the first part of her life,--the part depicted in this volume,--Mademoiselle was as true a type of the heroines of Corneille as any of her contemporaries. Not one of the great ladies of her world had a more ungovernable thirst for grandeur; not one of them cherished more superb scorn for the baser passions, among which Mademoiselle classed the tender sentiment of love. But, like all the others, she was forced to renounce her ideals; and not in her callow youth, when such a thing would have been natural, but when she was growing old, was she carried away by the torrent of the new thought, whose echoes we have caught through Racine.