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    _By ARVEDE BARINE_

    =The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle
    1627-1652=

    Authorized English Version. Octavo. Fully
    Illustrated. (By mail, $3.25.) Net, $3.00


    =Louis XIV. and La Grande Mademoiselle
    1652-1693=

    Authorized English Version. Octavo. Fully
    Illustrated. (By mail, $3.25.) Net, $3.00

    =_G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS_=

    =_New York_=              =_London_=

[Illustration: Cliche Braun, Clement & Cie. =MADEMOISELLE DE
MONTPENSIER= She is holding the portrait of her father, Gaston D'Orleans
From the painting by Pierre Bourgnignon in the Musee de Versailles. By
permission of Messrs. Hachette & Co.]




    Louis XIV
    and
    La Grande Mademoiselle

    1652-1693

    By

    Arvede Barine

    Author of "The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle"

    _Authorised English Version_

    G. P. Putnam's Sons

    New York and London
    The Knickerbocker Press
    1905




    COPYRIGHT, 1905

    BY

    G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

    The Knickerbocker Press, New York




PREFACE


In the volume entitled _The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle_ I have
tried to present the conditions of France during the period in which the
ancient liberties of the people and the turbulent society which had
abused its privileges suffered, in the one case death, in the other
extinction.

As is always the case, a lack of proper discipline had prepared the way
for absolute rule, and the young King who was about to assume full power
was an enigma to his subjects. The nearest relatives of Louis had always
found him impenetrable. The Grande Mademoiselle had been brought up side
by side with her cousin, but she was entirely ignorant of his real
character, knowing only that he was silent and appeared timid. In her
failure to understand the King, Mademoiselle showed herself again a true
child of her century.

At the moment in which the Prince assumed full power, his true
disposition, thoughts, and beliefs were entirely hidden from the public,
and Saint-Simon has contributed to this ignorance by prolonging it to
posterity. Louis XIV. was over fifty when this terrible writer appeared
at Court. The _Memoires_ of Saint-Simon present the portrait of a man
almost old; this portrait however is so powerful, so living that it
obliterates every other. The public sees only the Louis of Saint-Simon;
for it, the youthful King as he lived during the troubled and passionate
period of his career, the period that was most interesting, because most
vital, has never existed.

The official history of the times aids in giving a false impression of
Louis XIV., figuring him in a sort of hieratic attitude between an idol
and a manikin. The portraits of Versailles again mask the Louis of the
young Court, the man for whose favour Moliere and the Libertines fought
with varying chances of success.

In the present volume I have tried to raise a corner of this mask.

The _Memoires_ of Louis XIV., completely edited for the first time
according to any methodical plan in 1860, have greatly aided me in this
task. They abound in confessions, sometimes aside, sometimes direct, of
the matters that occupied the thoughts of the youthful author. The
Grande Mademoiselle, capable of neither reserve nor dissimulation, has
proved the next most valuable guide in the attempt to penetrate into the
intimate life of Louis. As related by her, the perpetual difficulties
with the Prince throw a vivid light upon the kind of incompatibility of
temper which existed at the beginning of the reign between absolute
power and the survivors of the Fronde.

How the young King succeeded in directing his generation toward new
ideas and sentiments and how the Grande Mademoiselle, too late carried
away by the torrent, became in the end a victim to its force, will be
seen in the course of the present volume, provided, that is, that I have
not overestimated my powers in touching upon a subject very obscure,
very delicate, with facts drawn from a period the most frequently
referred to and yet in some respects the least comprehended of the
entire history of France.

                                                                A. B.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

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