Secret history of the French court under Richelieu and Mazarin; or, Life and times of Madame de Chevreuse

Front matter

TO

THIS VOLUME

IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED

Annotated

TO

THIS VOLUME

IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED

BY HER FRIEND.

THE TRANSLATOR.

SECRET HISTORY

OF THE

UNDER

RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN;

OR,

BY

AUTHOR OF "THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD," "COURSE OF PHILOSOPHY," "YOUTH OF MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE," ETC., ETC.

TRANSLATED BY

.

NEW YORK: JAMES MILLER, PUBLISHER, 647 BROADWAY, 1871.

PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR.

Among the most admired of Victor Cousin's works are his "Studies of the Illustrious Women and the Society of the Seventeenth Century;" and of these none has excited so much attention as his "Life of Madame de Chevreuse." In this charming biography, which certainly reads very much like a romance, the author claims the merit of a scrupulous and exact adherence to the truth of history. He controverts many received opinions and forces the reader to abandon many established hypotheses, but he does it upon the incontestable evidence of cotemporary writers and of documents that, were supposed to be lost or not known to exist. Among these are a hitherto unknown memoir of Richelieu concerning the secret affairs of 1633, which produced the imprisonment of Châteauneuf, keeper of the seals; the unpublished examinations of La Porte and the Abbess of Val-de-Grâce in 1637; the autograph Carnets of Mazarin, explained and developed by the evidence of his secret police, and several inedited letters of Queen Anne to the cardinal which solve the question of their relations.

Madame Chevreuse coped with Richelieu in the adroit political intrigues which marked the close of the reign of Louis XIII. and excited the admiration of all Europe; and in Cardinal Mazarin's memorable struggle at the beginning of his ministry and of the regency against the "Importants" (those predecessors of the "Frondeurs"), he encountered no more powerful adversary or none who gave him more anxiety than she. The author in his romantic memoir only rapidly sketches the early and the later life of his subject, dwelling most upon her career as an actress in the great drama of 1643; and his work was intended to be not so much the story of one of the most brilliant female politicians that France has ever produced, as a revelation of the secret history of the French Court under Richelieu and Mazarin.

FIRST PART.

MADAME DE CHEVREUSE AND RICHELIEU.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

SECOND PART.

MADAME DE CHEVREUSE AND MAZARIN.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

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Chapter I

MADAME DE CHEVREUSE;

OR,

SECRET HISTORY OF THE FRENCH COURT UNDER

RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN.

1600–1637.

Character and personal appearance of Madame de Chevreuse—Her birth and her first and second marriages—Intimate friendship with Anne of Austria—Count Holland—Prince de Chalais—First Exile—Charles IV. Duke of Lorraine—Return to France—Richelieu and Châteauneuf—Madame de Chevreuse banished again to Touraine—Affairs of 1637—Second Exile; flight to Spain.

If our readers are not wearied with our portraits of the women of the seventeenth century, we should be glad to present to them two new figures equally, though differently remarkable—two persons whom the caprice of Fate cast in the same age, the same party, amidst the same events, but who far from resembling each other, expressed, as we may say, the two opposite sides of the character, and the destiny of woman—both endowed with resplendent beauty, marvellous talent, and indomitable courage; yet the one as pure as beautiful, uniting in herself grace and dignity, everywhere inspiring love and commanding respect, at one time the idol and the favorite of a king without even the shadow of an injurious suspicion daring to raise itself against her, proud, even to haughtiness, towards the prosperous and powerful, gentle and compassionate to the oppressed and miserable, loving greatness, placing naught but virtue above position, mingling together the sparkling wit of a precieuse, the fastidiousness of a fashionable beauty, the intrepidity of a heroine, the dignity of a high-born lady, above all a Christian without bigotry, yet devout, and even austere, leaving behind her an odor of sanctity; the other, perhaps more fascinating, of an irresistible grace and vivacity, full of talent, yet very ignorant, sharing in all the perils of the Catholic party, but scarcely thinking of religion, too proud to condescend to prudence, and curbed only by honor, devoted to gallantry, and counting all else as nothing, despising for the one whom she loved, danger, opinion and fortune, more restless than ambitious, and willingly staking her own life, as well as that of others; and after having passed her youth in intrigues of every sort, thwarting more than one plot, leaving on her path more than one victim, travelling over Europe as an exile, yet a conqueror, turning the heads of kings,—after having seen Chalais mount the scaffold, Châteauneuf expelled from the ministry, the Duke of Lorraine almost despoiled of his estates, Buckingham assassinated, the King of Spain engaged in an unsuccessful war, Queen Anne humiliated and vanquished, and Richelieu triumphant; sustaining the struggle to the end, always ready in this game of politics which had become her necessity and her passion, to descend to the darkest intrigues, and to make the rashest resolves; of an incomparable eye for recognizing the true position of affairs, and the enemy of the moment, and of a mind strong enough, and a heart bold enough to undertake to destroy him at any cost; a devoted friend, an implacable enemy almost without knowing hatred, in short, the most redoubtable enemy encountered in turn by Richelieu and by Mazarin. The reader will easily divine that we speak of Madame de Hautefort and of Madame de Chevreuse.

Need we add that we do not intend to trace here fancy portraits, and that if we sometimes seem to recount romantic adventures, it is in conformity with all the rigor of the laws of history. These sketches, though fanciful in appearance, are worthy of the fullest confidence, and will soon be acknowledged as resting upon the testimony of approved cotemporary witnesses, or upon authentic documents as reliable as new, which will bear the scrutiny of the most exacting critic.

We commence with Madame de Chevreuse. She dates further back in the seventeenth century than does Madame de Hautefort—she at least precedes if she does not excel her. It must also be said that she filled a more lofty station, and played a more conspicuous part, and that her name belongs as much to the history of the politics as of the society of her age.

Madame de Chevreuse in truth possessed almost all the qualities of a great politician, a single one was wanting, and it was the one precisely without which all the others ran to waste—she did not know how to propose to herself a just aim, or rather she never chose one for herself; it was another that chose for her. Madame de Chevreuse was a woman in the fullest sense—in this was her strength, and also her weakness. Her first impulse was love, or rather gallantry, and the interests of the one whom she loved became her chief aim. Here lies the solution of the prodigies of sagacity, adroitness and energy which she displayed in vain in the pursuit of a chimera, which constantly receded from her grasp, while it seemed to lure her on by the very prestige of difficulty and danger. Rochefoucauld accuses her of having brought misfortune on all whom she loved; it is also just to say that all who loved her precipitated her in turn into their own mad enterprises. It was not she, apparently, who made of Buckingham a sort of Paladin without genius, of Charles IV. a brilliant adventurer, of Chalais a madman insane enough to pledge himself against Richelieu on the faith of the Duke of Orleans, and of Châteauneuf a restless second-rate aspirant, without being capable of attaining to be first. One must not believe that he knows Madame de Chevreuse when he has read the celebrated portrait which Retz has drawn of her, for this is exaggerated and overdrawn like all those of Retz, and was designed solely to gratify the malignant curiosity of Madame de Caumartin—without being really false, it is severe almost to injustice. Did it belong, indeed, to the restless and intemperate accomplice to become the pitiless censor of a woman in whose errors he had shared? Was he not also as much deceived as she, and for a much longer time? Did he show in the combat more address and courage, and in the defeat, more intrepidity and constancy? But Madame de Chevreuse has written us no memoirs in the easy and piquant style in which she retrieved her fortunes at the expense of the world. For our own part, we recognize two judges of her whose testimony cannot be regarded with suspicion—Richelieu and Mazarin. Richelieu did his best to gain her, and failing to succeed, treated her as an enemy worthy of himself; he exiled her repeatedly, and even after his death, when the gates of France were opened to all the outlaws, his implacable resentment—surviving him in the mind of the dying Louis XIII., closed them still upon her. Read the carnets (note-books) and the confidential letters of Mazarin attentively, and you will detect there the deep and continual anxiety which she caused him in 1643. Later, during the Fronde, he is found to be reconciled to her, and following her counsels, as judicious as they are bold. Finally, in 1660, when Mazarin, victorious everywhere, adds the treaty of the Pyrenees to that of Westphalia, and when Don Luis de Haro congratulates him on the repose which he is about to taste after so many storms, the cardinal replies, that one never can promise himself repose in France, and that even the women there are greatly to be feared. "You Spaniards may well speak of your ease," said he; "your women trouble themselves about nothing but love; but it is not so in France; we have three there now who would be quite capable of governing or of overthrowing three great kingdoms—the Duchess de Longueville, the Princess Palatine and Madame de Chevreuse."

But first a word of the beauty of Madame de Chevreuse, for this beauty had a great share in her destiny. All her cotemporaries unite in celebrating it. A portrait nearly of life-size, which is in the possession of the Duke de Luynes, and which he has courteously shown to us, gives her an enchanting figure, a charming face, large blue eyes, fine and luxuriant chestnut-hair, a beautiful bust, and a piquant mingling of refinement and vivacity, grace and passion in her whole person. This indeed was the character of the beauty of Madame de Chevreuse; we find it again in the excellent engraving of Daret, which Harding has republished in England, and also in the picture of Ferdinand Elle, which represents her as a widow and aged. We feel in this last portrait that her dazzling beauty has passed away, but that acuteness, dignity, vivacity and grace are still surviving.

Marie de Rohan belonged to that ancient and illustrious family, the issue of the first sovereigns of Brittany, which, with its different branches, without counting its alliances, spread itself over, and long possessed, a considerable part of Brittany, dividing itself almost equally between the Catholic and the Protestant party in the sixteenth, and the commencement of the seventeenth centuries, zealously obeying royalty, and holding it in check by turns, and whose hereditary traits, strongly marked in both sexes, were loftiness of soul, bravery, and constancy. At the siege of Rochelle, two women, after enduring all the rigors of famine with the meanest of the soldiers, and subsisting like them upon horseflesh, chose rather to remain as prisoners in the hands of the enemy than to sign the articles of capitulation. These were the mother and the sister of the celebrated Duke de Rohan, one of our greatest warriors before Condé, and unquestionably our greatest military writer before Napoleon. The wife of this same Henri de Rohan defended Castres against the Marshal de Thémines. During the lapse of centuries, this noble house has not ceased to produce heroines of a resolute spirit, as well as beauties more brilliant than severe. In this respect, she whose history we are about to trace, showed no degeneracy from her race, she was truly of the blood of the Rohans.

She was daughter of Hercules de Rohan, Duke de Mont

, a zealous servant of Henri IV., Peer and Master of the Hounds, and Governor of Paris and of the Isle of France, and of his first wife, Madeleine de Lenoncourt, sister of Urbain de Laval, Marshal de Bois-Dauphin. Born almost with the seventeenth century, in December, 1600, she lost her mother at a very early age, and in 1617 espoused that audacious favorite of Louis XIII., who, on the faith of the fickle friendship of a king, dared attempt to overthrow the authority of the queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, destroyed the Marshal d'Ancre, combated the Princes and the Protestants at the same time, and attempted against Richelieu himself the system of Richelieu. Let us ask in passing, Is it not unworthy of history to attribute the elevation of Luynes to the caprice of a king, who takes one of his pages, a petty gentleman, for his prime minister, solely because he finds him skilful in the art of training falcons? Such, perhaps, was the beginning of the fortunes of Luynes,—such was not the cause of it. This petty gentleman, son of Captain de Luynes, as he was called, one of the bravest and most intelligent of the officers of Henri IV., was himself a man of talent and courage, who, under the direct inspiration of Louis XIII., honorably restored and sustained while he lived the work of the great king which Richelieu had at first opposed in his character of the favorite of Marie de Medicis, and which he afterwards undertook with great zeal, gradually turning against his old friends and his first protectress, so far as to exile her precisely as De Luynes had done. The young and ambitious constable was well fitted to please the bold heart of the beautiful Marie, and she loved him faithfully. She had one daughter, a devotee, who died unmarried, and a son who played a rôle in the seventeenth century by his liaisons at Port Royal, translated into French the Meditations of Descartes, wrote estimable works of piety, under the name of M. de Laval, and continued the illustrious house.

The Duchess and Constabless de Luynes, left a widow in 1621, in 1622 espoused in a second marriage Claude de Lorraine, Duke de Chevreuse, one of the sons of Henri de Guise, Grand Chamberlain of France. His greatest merit lay in his name, and the good looks and valor which could never be wanting in a prince of the house of Lorraine; but he was disorderly in his business, and disagreeable in his manners, which may explain and extenuate the faults of his wife. Three daughters were born of this new marriage, two of whom died

in convents, the third was the beautiful and celebrated Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, who was weak enough to listen to Retz, if we may believe his assertions, for which he repaid her by caricaturing her for the diversion of the one for whom he wrote.

The new Duchess de Chevreuse had been appointed superintendent of the queen's household during the life-time of her first husband, and had soon become the favorite of Anne of Austria as the constable was the favorite of Louis XIII. The court at that time was very brilliant, and gallantry the order of the day. Marie de Rohan was naturally gay and spirited. She yielded to the allurements of youth and pleasure. She had lovers, and these lovers forced her into politics. Retz himself admits this in the following passage, too famous to be omitted here, though we must first remark that even if it have a groundwork of truth, the coloring is greatly exaggerated: "I never saw any one else," he says, "in whom intuition could supply the place of judgment. She often suggested expedients so brilliant that they seemed like flashes of lightning, and so wise that they would not have been disowned by the greatest men of any age. Yet these were only called forth by the occasion. If she had lived in an age in which there were no politics, she never would have invented any. If the prior of the Carthusians had pleased her, she would have become a recluse in good faith. M. de Lorraine first forced her into public affairs, the Duke of Buckingham and Count Holland sustained her in them, Châteauneuf interested her in them. She abandoned herself to them as she would unhesitatingly have abandoned herself to any thing that pleased the one whom she loved, without choice, and simply because it was necessary to her nature that she should love some one. She was easily persuaded to accept of any lover, but when she had once taken him, she loved him truly and faithfully, and she has confessed to Madame de Rhodes and myself that, by a strange caprice, those whom she had most esteemed she had never loved, with the exception of the unhappy Buckingham. Her devotion to a passion which may be called eternal, however often she may have changed its object, did not prevent a patch upon her face from abstracting her attention, but she always returned to her subject with a fascinating grace that made this little break absolutely enchanting. Never did person care less for perils, and never had woman more contempt for scruples and for duties,—she knew no duty but that of pleasing her lover." Of this sketch, which might have moved Tallemant to envy, retain at least these striking and faithful traits—the prompt and sure penetration of Madame de Chevreuse, her indomitable courage, and her loyalty and devotion in love. Besides, Retz is entirely mistaken as to the order of her adventures, he forgets some, and he invents others; he seems to regard the events in which the passions of Madame de Chevreuse caused her to take part as trifles, while in fact there were none greater or more tragical. Let us throw aside this trifling and frivolous style, and seek in its stead to establish the truth.

The young queen, Anne of Austria, and her youthful super , who were nearly of the same age, only occupied themselves at first with frivolous pastimes. Anne, neglected by her husband, consoled herself with the society and the lively and happy humor of Madame de Chevreuse. They passed their time together, making of every thing "food for their wit and pleasantry: a giovine cuor tutto è giuoco." Lord Rich, afterwards the celebrated Count Holland, of the house of Warwick, came to the French court at the close of 1624, or the commencement of 1625, to demand the hand of the beautiful Henriette, sister of Louis XIII., for the Prince of Wales, who soon after became Charles I. During this negotiation, the Count became enamored with Madame de Chevreuse. He was young and singularly handsome; he pleased her, and won her over to the interests of England. This was, I believe, the true debut of Madame de Chevreuse, both in love and in politics. Holland, who was volatile, and a lover of pleasure and intrigue, persuaded her to entangle her royal friend in some love affair like their own. Anne of Austria was vain and coquettish, she loved to please, and with her country's taste for gallantry, aided by the freedom in which she was left by Louis XIII., she did not interdict herself from accepting homage; but here the game was not without danger, and the handsome and elegant Buckingham succeeded in seriously troubling the heart of the queen. It was not the fault of Madame de Chevreuse if Anne of Austria did not wholly yield. Buckingham was rash and the superintendent complaisant; and the queen only escaped at a perilous risk.

Whatever Retz may say of it, we doubt very much whether Buckingham was ever any thing more to Madame de Chevreuse than the intimate friend of her lover, and the chief of the party into which Holland had drawn her. She saw him for the first time in May, 1625, when he came to France to espouse Madame in behalf of Charles I., and, at that time, Buckingham was in the height of his infatuation for Queen Anne, while Madame de Chevreuse was in love with Count Holland, whom she soon rejoined in England, having had the art to cause herself to be appointed to escort the new Princess of Wales to her husband. Now, when Madame de Chevreuse loved, as Retz himself affirms, she loved faithfully and exclusively. At the age of twenty-four, one does not trifle with a first attachment to the extent of giving one's own lover to another, and the rôle which the poor woman already plays in this affair is not so honorable as to make us delight to vilify her still more. Madame de Chevreuse fell ill, it is true, on hearing the news of the assassination of Buckingham. Nothing was more natural; she lost in him a tried friend, the confidant of her first love, and the chief and the hope of the enemies of Richelieu. To the obscure insinuations of Retz, should be opposed the clear and connected account of La Rochefoucauld, and above all, the silence of Tallemant, who would not have failed to add this item to his scandalous chronicles, had he ever heard the story. Thus, without pretending to scan such things clearly, especially after the lapse of two centuries, but following our rule of admitting nothing except from sure testimony, we incline to the belief that the Duke of Buckingham should be struck from the list, still very numerous, of the lovers of Madame de Chevreuse, and that the handsome Chalais was the immediate successor of the elegant Count Holland in the heart of the beautiful duchess.

Without making of the conspiracy of Chalais, as Richelieu would have it, "the most frightful conspiracy of which history has ever made mention," we cannot refuse to admit that it was not so trifling an affair as Chalais asserted, trembling for his head. The court of Monsieur was already a focus of intrigues against Richelieu. Monsieur did not like his proposed marriage with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and Anne of Austria, on her side, who had as yet no children, feared a marriage which might some day take the crown from her head, and transfer it to the house of Orleans. Henri de Talleyrand, Prince de Chalais, of the house of Perigord, came to the aid of Monsieur and the queen; he planned some dark intrigue which Richelieu, perhaps, exaggerated, but which he succeeded in so firmly establishing in the mind of the king, that Louis XIII. not only abandoned Chalais as afterwards he abandoned Cinq-Mars, but remained persuaded during his whole life that the queen had been implicated in the affair, and that, he being dead or dethroned, she and Monsieur had entertained the thought of a union. Chalais mounted the first scaffold erected by Richelieu, despite the tears of his aged mother. Monsieur extricated himself from the affair by espousing Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the queen fell more deeply than ever into disgrace, and Madame de Chevreuse, perfidiously denounced by the Duke of Orleans, and also by Chalais himself, who, with his dying breath, vainly denied his first confessions, was condemned to depart from France. What part had she had in this conspiracy? That which both love and friendship had forced upon her. Chalais was her lover, and she was devoted to Anne of Austria. She was no more the originator of this plot than of any of the others which the Duke of Orleans so often commenced but never finished; but, on entering it, she brought into it all her ardor and her energy. Richelieu says, and we believe him, that "she did more harm than any one else." She dearly learned the cost of loving a queen too well. Anne of Austria escaped with a slight humiliation, but her courageous confidant saw the man whom she loved perish by the hand of the executioner, and herself torn from all the refinements of life, from the fêtes of the Louvre and from her beautiful château of Dampierre, and forced to seek an asylum in a foreign land. "Then," says Richelieu, "she was transported with rage." She even went so far as to say that they did not know her; that they thought that she only had mind enough for coquetry, but she would show them in time that she was capable of something else; that there was nothing that she would not do to avenge herself; and that she would abandon herself to a soldier of the guards rather than not obtain satisfaction from her enemies. She wished to go to England, where she was sure of the support of Holland, of Buckingham, and of Charles I. himself. This favor was not accorded her; her imprisonment was even talked of, and it was with difficulty that her husband obtained permission for her to retire into Lorraine.

It is well known that, instead of a refuge, she found there a most brilliant triumph. She dazzled, seduced and urged on the impetuous and adventurous Charles IV. She was not, as La Rochefoucauld has said, and as others have so often repeated, the primary cause of the misfortunes of this prince;—no, the true cause of the misfortunes of Charles IV. lay in his own character—in his presumptuous ambition, open to every wild fancy, which had to encounter such a politician as Richelieu. Let us not forget that these two personages were embroiled long before Madame de Chevreuse set foot in Nancy. Richelieu claimed several portions of the estates of the duke, who, being placed between Austria and France, began the warfare by declaring in favor of the former against the latter. He was the man the best fitted of all others to share the sentiments of Madame de Chevreuse, as she was admirably suited to second his designs. She found Charles IV. already pledged to Austria, she attached him to England, then ruled by Buckingham; she also established intelligence with Savoy, and thus formed a European league by which she secured to the interior the support of the Protestant party, controlled by her relatives, Rohan and Soubise. The plan was well laid; an English fleet, commanded by Buckingham himself, would disembark at the Isle of Ré and join the Protestants of La Rochelle; the Duke of Savoy would make a descent at the same time upon Dauphiny and Provence; and the Duke de Rohan, at the head of the Reformers, would stir up Languedoc, while the Duke of Lorraine should march towards Paris by the way of Champagne. The principal agent of this plan, charged with bearing mes to all the interested parties, was Lord Montagu, an intimate friend of Holland and of Buckingham, who, it is said, also suffered himself to be captivated by the charms of Madame de Chevreuse.

Richelieu, forewarned by his own sagacity, and by his police, watched all the movements of Montagu, dared to cause his arrest on the Lorraine territory, seized his papers, discovered the whole conspiracy, and faced it with his accustomed vigor. The principal attack upon the Isle of Ré was foiled, and Buckingham forced to an ignominious retreat. La Rochelle soon after yielded to the perseverance and skill of the cardinal, the vanquished coalition was dissolved, and England sued for peace, placing, among its most urgent conditions, the return of the beautiful exile, now become a political power for whom peace or war was made. "She was a princess who was much loved in England, and one for whom the king entertained an especial regard, and he would assuredly have insisted on including her in the treaty of peace if he had not been ashamed of making mention of a woman in it; but he would be greatly obliged if his majesty would not displease him in this. She had a fine mind, a potent beauty which she knew how to use to advantage, was never disheartened by any misfortune, and always retained her evenness of temper;" a less brilliant, but far more just and faithful portrait than that of Retz, and which may have been drawn by Richelieu's own hand, as it is probable that the cardinal, according to his custom, has here recapitulated the propositions of Montagu in his own style, instead of copying them verbatim. Be this as it may, Richelieu, who ardently desired to disengage himself from the Rohans, the Protestants, and England, in order to direct all his forces against Spain, accepted the desired condition, and Madame de Chevreuse returned to Dampierre.

A few years of tranquillity followed this turbulent life. Marie de Rohan reappeared at court in all her beauty. She was not yet thirty years of age, and one could scarcely look at her with impunity. Richelieu himself was not insensible to her charms; he endeavored to please her, but his homage was not accepted. To the all-powerful cardinal, Madame de Chevreuse preferred one of his ministers; and the one upon whom he had the best reason to count; she conquered him with a glance, and won him over to the party of the queen and the malcontents.

Charles de l'Aubépine, Marquis de Châteauneuf, of an ancient family of counsellors and secretaries of state, had succeeded Michael Marillac in the office of Keeper of the Seals in 1630; this he owed to the favor of Richelieu, and to the attachment which he had shown him. He had carried this devotion very far, for he had presided at Toulouse over the commission which had sentenced the imprudent and unfortunate Montmorenci, and had thus drawn upon himself the eternal enmity of the Montmorencis and the Condés. Châteauneuf had therefore given bloody pledges of fidelity to Richelieu, and they seemed inseparable. The cardinal had loaded him with favors, as was his custom towards his friends. Châteauneuf had been appointed chancellor of the royal orders, and Governor of Touraine. He was a consummate man of business, laborious and active, and endowed with that quality which best pleased the cardinal, resolution; but he had an inordinate ambition which he retained through life, and which when joined with love, rendered him blind to all but his purpose. We cannot but smile when we recall the assertion of Retz, that Châteauneuf amused Madame Chevreuse with public affairs. This amusement must have been of a very peculiar nature indeed, since she staked in it her fortune, and sometimes her head, and the intrigue in which they both were engaged was so rash, that here, at least, it must be admitted that it was not Châteauneuf who forced Madame de Chevreuse into it, but rather she who urged on the keeper of the seals.