After this episode, the princess refused to be in the same place with Mme. de Montbazon. On one occasion, Mme. de Chevreuse had invited the queen to a collation at a place where the queen enjoyed walking; she requested the princess to join her, giving her word of honor that Mme. de Montbazon would not be there; she was present, however, and the princess was about to leave when the queen ordered Mme. de Montbazon to feign illness and retire; this she refused to do and remained, whereupon the queen and the princess left, and shortly afterward Mme. de Montbazon received orders to leave Paris.
This excited the Importants to fever heat and a plot was formed, with Mme. de Chevreuse as the leader, to assassinate the cardinal. Shortly after this, Coligny, as champion of the cause of Mme. de Longueville, challenged the Duc de Guise to a duel. The whole court was made up of two parties: the Importants with Mme. de Montbazon and Mme. de Chevreuse; and Condé and Mme. de Longueville with their friends; the result was the death of Coligny. Mme. de Longueville was a true _précieuse_ and hardly loved Coligny, but allowed him and any other to serve and adore her in a respectable way--a principle followed by the better women of the age, such as Mme. de Rambouillet and Mme. de Sablé.
Some time after these occurrences, Mme. de Longueville was stricken with smallpox which, fortunately, did not impair her beauty; it was said, on the contrary, that in taking away its first flower it left all the brilliancy which, joined to her culture and charming languor, made her one of the most attractive persons in France. La Rochefoucauld has left the following picture of her: "This princess had all the advantages of _esprit_ and beauty to as great a degree as if nature had taken pleasure in completing, in her person, a perfect work; but these qualities shone less brilliantly on account of one characteristic which led her to imbibe so thoroughly the sentiments of those who adored her that she no longer recognized her own."
After her twenty-fifth year, Mme. de Longueville became more and more imbued with the general spirit of the seventeenth century: coquetry and _bel esprit_ became her chief occupation. The glory of her brother, the Duc d'Enghien, who was rapidly becoming a power, and the probability of the house of Condé becoming dangerous, made Mazarin realize that Mme. de Longueville was to be reckoned with, inasmuch as she had full control over D'Enghien and was constantly instilling new ideas into his mind and requesting from him the distribution of all sorts of favors. Mazarin, in 1646, succeeded in causing her withdrawal to Münster for one year; there she ruled as queen of the Congress. On the death of her father, the Prince of Condé, and at the request of her mother to come home for her lying-in, the husband of Mme. de Longueville consented to her return to Paris.