Quite as chequered was the career of Marie. The harassed Cardinal, who had no intention of incurring a second time the displeasure of the Queen Mother, no sooner discovered the attachment of the young King for his lovely niece than with all possible haste he sent her back to Rome, where she eventually married the Constable Colonna. Her parting with Louis is celebrated; it has inspired poems, novels, essays, and plays. For the sake of the story it is a pity that he should have treated her so shabbily years after when she appealed to him in her troubles. As these were mixed up with those of her sister, Hortense, with much _éclat_ at a later period, we will defer their description and hasten to introduce our heroine, the most beautiful and best known of the famous nieces of Mazarin.
Hortense's intelligence and sweet disposition had from the first made her the Cardinal's favourite, and after his nephew had offended him he decided that she should be his heir. The report that she was to inherit the Mazarin millions naturally induced many splendid offers for her hand, which her own dazzling charms quickly coloured with a passion for herself. "The destiny," she declared in the memoirs she dictated, "that has rendered me the most unhappy of my sex began by dangling a crown before my eyes." It is a notorious fact that Charles II., _roi sans couronne_, twice proposed for her hand, and was twice refused by the Cardinal, who was at the time the ally of Cromwell and not shrewd enough to foresee the future. In like vain manner the splendid prize was sought by the Prince, afterwards King, of Portugal; the Duke of Savoy; and the great Turenne. Her uncle finally gave her to Armand de la Porte de la Meilleraye, son of a brilliant Maréchal of that name, for no other reason, apparently, than because he was a relation of Richelieu--an evidence of Mazarin's sense of gratitude that throws a curious light on the cunning Italian's character.
It was not a bad match for Hortense Mancini, whose father was but a petty Roman knight. De la Meilleraye was rich and boasted a great name, although Saint-Simon in his caustic way makes him descend from an apothecary, adding that one of his ancestors was a porter, whence the name de la Porte--a slur to which de la Meilleraye might have replied like the witty Marquise de Créquy when some one suggested that La Rochefoucauld was descended from a butcher: "Ah," she said, "that must have been when the kings were shepherds." Be it as it may, the bridegroom got with his bride the title of Duc de Mazarin and some thirty million francs. His wedding gift to his wife was a cabinet containing ten thousand pistoles in gold, which the Duchesse, not without craft, at once proceeded to share with her brother and sisters to propitiate their jealousy of her huge fortune. But she carried this generosity to a degree that augured ill for the preservation of Mazarin's millions. For she had so little regard for money that she left the key in the cabinet that any who cared might help himself, and at last literally flung out of the windows what remained for the amusement of watching the passers-by scramble for the coins. This prodigality so alarmed the Cardinal that it was thought to have hastened his end; eight days later he died. The news of this event was received by the Duchesse de Mazarin's brother and sisters, who, though well provided for, not unnaturally resented their uncle's favouritism, by exclamations of, "God be thanked, the Cardinal's gone!"