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THE

WAR OF WOMEN.

BY

ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

1903.




THE WAR OF WOMEN.




THE VICOMTESSE DE CAMBES.



I.


Two days later they came in sight of Bordeaux, and it became necessary
to decide at once how they should enter the city. The dukes, with their
army, were no more than ten leagues away, so that they were at liberty
to choose between a peaceable and a forcible entry. The important
question to be decided was whether it was better to have immediate
possession of Bordeaux at all hazards, or to comply with the wishes
of the Parliament. Madame la Princesse summoned her council of war,
which consisted of Madame de Tourville, Claire, Lenet, and her maids of
honor. Madame de Tourville knew her arch antagonist so well that she
had persistently opposed his admission to the council, upon the ground
that the war was a war of women, in which men were to be used only to
do the fighting. But Madame la Princesse declared that as Lenet was
saddled upon her by her husband, she could not exclude him from the
deliberative chamber, where, after all, his presence would amount to
nothing, as it was agreed beforehand that he might talk all he chose,
but that they would not listen to him.

Madame de Tourville's precautions were by no means uncalled-for; she
had employed the two days that had just passed in bringing Madame la
Princesse around to the bellicose ideas which she was only too anxious
to adopt, and she feared that Lenet would destroy the whole structure
that she had erected with such infinite pains.

When the council was assembled, Madame de Tourville set forth her plan.
She proposed that the dukes should come up secretly with their army,
that they should procure, by force or by persuasion, a goodly number of
boats, and go down the river into Bordeaux, shouting: "Vive Condé! Down
with Mazarin!"

In this way Madame la Princesse's entry would assume the proportions
