Mademoiselle had desired with earnest sincerity to become the Comtesse de Soissons; it is difficult to imagine why,--unless, perhaps, because at her age girls build air-castles with all sorts of materials.
M. le Comte had been wept over and buried and sentiment had nothing more to do with Mademoiselle's dreams of establishment. Her fancy hovered over Europe and swooped down upon the princes who were bachelors or widowers, and upon the married nobles who were in a fair way to become widowers; more than once she was seen closely following the current reports when some princess was taken by sickness; and she abandoned or developed her projects, according to the turn taken by the diseases of the unfortunate ladies. The greater number of the hypothetical postulants upon whom she successively fixed her mind were strangers whom she had never seen, and among them were several who had never thought of her, and who never did think of her at any time; but she pursued her way with unflagging zeal, permitting indiscreet advances when she did not encourage them; she considered herself more or less the Queen or the Empress of France, of Spain, or of Hungary, as the prospect of the speedy bereavement of the incumbents of the different thrones brightened. La Grande Mademoiselle had not entered the world as the daughter of a degenerate with impunity; there were subjects upon which she was incapable of reasoning; in the ardour of her faith in the mystical virtues of the Blood she surpassed Corneille. She believed that the designs of princes ranked with the designs of God, and that they should be regarded as the devout regard the mysteries of religion. To quote her own words: "The intuitions of the great are like the mysteries of the Faith; it is not for men to fathom them! they ought to revere them; they ought to know that the thoughts of the great are given to their possessors for the well-being and for the salvation of the country."
Mademoiselle surpassed the Corneille of Tragedy in her disdainful rejection of love; Corneille was content to station love in the rear rank, and he placed it far below the manly passions in his classification of "the humanities." It will be remembered that by his listings the "manly passions" were Ambition, Vengeance, Pride of Blood, and "Glory." Mademoiselle believed that love could not exist between married people of rank; she considered it one of the passions of the inferior classes.