It was to all seeming a strange whim that caused Cardinal Mazarin, one day in the year 1653, to summon his nieces, daughters of his sister, Hieronyme Mancini, from their obscurity in Italy to bask in the sunshine of his splendours in Paris.

At the time of this odd caprice, Richelieu’s crafty successor had reached the zenith of his power. His was the most potent and splendid figure in all Europe that did not wear a crown. He was the avowed favourite and lover of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, to whose vanity he had paid such skilful court indeed it was common rumour that she had actually given him her hand in secret marriage. The boy-King, Louis XIV., was a puppet in his strong hands. He was, in fact, the dictator of France, whose smiles the greatest courtiers tried to win, and before whose frowns they trembled.

In contrast to such magnificence, his sister, Madame Mancini, was the wife of a petty Italian baron, who was struggling to bring up her five daughters on a pathetically scanty purse as far removed from her magnificent brother as a moth from a star. There was, on the face of things, every reason why the great and all-powerful Cardinal should leave his nieces to their genteel poverty; and we can imagine both the astonishment and delight with which Madame Mancini received the summons to Paris which meant such a revolution in life for her and her daughters.

If the Mancini girls had no heritage of money, they had at least the dower of beauty. Each of the five gave promise of a rare loveliness with the solitary exception of Marie, Madame’s third daughter, who at fourteen was singularly unattractive even for that awkward age. Tall, thin, and angular, without a vestige of grace either of figure or movement, she had a sallow face out of which two great black eyes looked gloomily, and a mouth wide and thin-lipped. She was, in addition, shy and slow-witted to the verge of stupidity. Marie, in fact, was quite hopeless, the “ugly duckling” of a good-looking family, and for this reason an object of dislike and resentment to her mother.

Certainly, said Madame, Marie must be left behind. Her other daughters would be a source of pride to their uncle; he could secure great matches for them, but Marie pah! she would bring discredit on the whole family. And so it was decided in conclave that the “ugly duckling” should be left in a nunnery the only fit place for her. But Marie happily had a spirit of her own. She would not be left behind, she declared; and if she must go to a nunnery, why there were nunneries in plenty in France to which they could send her. And Marie had her way.

She was not, however, to escape the cloister after all, for to a Paris nunnery she was consigned when her Cardinal uncle had set eyes on her. “Let her have a year or two there,” was his verdict, “and, who knows, she may blossom into a beauty yet. At any rate she can put on flesh and not be the scarecrow she is.” And thus, while her more favoured sisters were revelling in the gaieties of Court life, Marie was sent to tell her beads and to spend Spartan days among the nuns.

Nearly two years passed before Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure, graceful and self-possessed; a face piquant and full of animation, illuminated by a pair of glorious dark eyes, and with a dazzling smile which revealed the prettiest teeth in France. Above all, and what delighted the Cardinal most, she had now a sprightly wit, and a quite brilliant gift of conversation. It was thus a smiling and gratified Cardinal who gave greeting to his niece, now as fair as her sisters and more fascinating than any of them. There was no doubt that he could find a high-placed husband for her, and thus for this was, in fact, his motive for rescuing his pretty nieces from their obscurity make his position secure by powerful family alliances.

It was not long before Mazarin fixed on a suitor in the person of Armande de la Porte, son of the Marquis de la Meilleraye, one of the most powerful nobles in France. But alas for his scheming! Armande’s heart had already been caught while Marie was reciting her matins and vespers: He had lost it utterly to her beautiful sister, Hortense; he vowed that he would marry no other, and that if Hortense could not be his wife he would prefer to die. Thus Marie was rescued from a union which brought her sister so much misery in later years, and for a time she was condemned to spend unhappy months with her mother at the Louvre.

To this period of her life Marie Mancini could never look back without a shudder. “My mother,” she says, “who, I think, had always hated me, was more unbearable than ever. She treated me, although I was no longer ugly, with the utmost aversion and cruelty. My sisters went to Court and were fussed and feted. I was kept always at home, in our miserable lodgings, an unhappy Cinderella.”

But Fortune did not long hide his face from Cinderella. Her “Prince Charming” was coming in the guise of the handsome young King, Louis XIV. himself. It was one day while visiting Madame Mancini in her lodgings at the Louvre that Louis first saw the girl who was to play such havoc with his heart; and at the first sight of those melting dark eyes and that intoxicating smile he was undone. He came again and again always under the pretext of visiting Madame, and happy beyond expression if he could exchange a few words with her daughter, Marie; until he soon counted a day worse than lost that did not bring him the stolen sweetness of a meeting.

When, a few weeks later, Madame Mancini died, and Marie was recalled to Court by her uncle, her life was completely changed for her. Louis had now abundant opportunities of seeking her side; and excellent use he made of them. The two young people were inseparable, much to the alarm of the Cardinal and Madame Mere, the Queen. The young King was never happy out of her sight; he danced with her (and none could dance more divinely than Marie); he listened as she sang to him with a voice whose sweetness thrilled him; they read the same books together in blissful solitude; she taught him her native Italian, and entranced him by the brilliance of her wit; and when, after a slight illness, he heard of her anxious inquiries and her tears of sympathy, his conquest was complete. He vowed that she and no other should be his wife and Queen of France.

But these halcyon days were not to last long. It was no part of Mazarin’s scheming that a niece of his should sit on the throne. The prospect was dazzling, it is true, but it would inevitably mean his own downfall, so strongly would such an alliance be resented by friends as well as enemies; and Anne of Austria was as little in the mood to be deposed by such an obscure person as the “Mancini girl.” Thus it was that Queen and Cardinal joined hands to nip the young romance in the bud.

A Royal bride must be found for Louis, and that quickly; and negotiations were soon on foot to secure as his wife Margaret, Princess of Savoy. In vain did the boy-King storm and protest; equally futile were Marie’s tearful pleadings to her uncle. The fiat had gone forth. Louis must have a Royal bride; and she was already about to leave Italy on her bridal progress to France.

It was, we may be sure, with a heavy heart that Marie joined the cavalcade which, with its gorgeous procession of équipages, its gaily mounted courtiers, and its brave escort of soldiery, swept out of Paris on its stately progress to Lyons, to meet the Queen-to-be. But there was no escape from the humiliation, for she must accompany Anne of Austria, as one of her retinue of maids-of-honour. Arrived too soon at Lyons, Louis rides on to give first greeting to his bride, who is now within a day’s journey; and returns with a smiling face to announce to his mother that he finds the Princess pleasing to his eye, and to describe, with boyish enthusiasm, her grace and graciousness, her magnificent eyes, her beautiful hair, and the delicate olive of her complexion, while Marie’s heart sinks at the recital. Could this be the lover who, but a few days ago, had been at her feet, vowing that she was the only bride in all the world for him?

When he seeks her side and shamefacedly makes excuses for his seeming recreancy, she bids him marry his “ugly bride” in accents of scorn, and then bursts into tears, which she only consents to wipe away when he declares that his heart will always be hers and that he will never marry the Italian Princess.

But Margaret of Savoy was not after all to be Queen of France. She was, as it proved, merely a pawn in the Cardinal’s deep game. It was a Spanish alliance that he sought for his young King; and when, at the eleventh hour, an ambassador came hurriedly to Lyons to offer the Infanta’s hand, the Savoy Duke and his sister, the Princess, had perforce to return to Italy “empty-handed.”

There was at least a time of respite now for Louis and Marie, and as they rode back to Paris, side by side, chatting gaily and exchanging sweet confidences, the sun once more shone on the happiest young people in all France. Then followed a period of blissful days, of dances and fêtes, in brilliant succession, in which the lovers were inseparable; above all, of long rambles together, when, “the world forgetting,” they could live in the happy present, whatever the future might have in store for them.

Meanwhile the negotiations for the Spanish marriage were ripening fast. Louis and Marie again appeal, first to the Cardinal, then to the Queen, to sanction their union, but to no purpose; both are inflexible. Their foolish romance must come to an end. As a last resource Marie flies to the King, with tender pleadings and tears, begging him not to desert her; to which he answers that no power on earth shall make him wed the Infanta. “You alone,” he swears, “shall wear the crown of Queen”; and in token of his love he buys for her the pearls that were the most treasured belongings of the exiled Stuart Queen, Henrietta Maria. The lovers part in tears, and the following day Marie receives orders to leave Paris and to retire to La Rochelle.

At every stage of her journey she was overtaken by messengers bearing letters from Louis, full of love and protestations of unflinching loyalty; and when Louis moved with his Court to Bayonne, the lovers met once more to mingle their tears. But Louis, ever fickle, was already wavering again. “If I must marry the Infanta,” he said, “I suppose I must. But I shall never love any but you.”

Marie now realised that this was to be the end. In face of a lover so weak, and a fate so inflexible, what could she do but submit? And it was with a proud but breaking heart that she wrote a few days later to tell Louis that she wished him not to write to her again and that she would not answer his letters. One June day news came to her that her lover was married and that “he was very much in love with the Infanta”; and even her pride, crushed as it was, could not restrain her from writing to her sister, Hortense, “Say everything you can that is horrid about him. Point out all his faults to me, that I may find relief for my aching heart.” When, a few months later, Marie saw the King again, he received her almost as a stranger, and had the bad taste to sing the praises of his Queen.

But Marie Mancini was the last girl in all France to wed herself long to grief or an outraged vanity. There were other lovers by the score among whom she could pick and choose. She was more lovely now than when the recreant Louis first succumbed to her charms with a ripened witchery of black eyes, red lips, the flash of pearly teeth revealed by every dazzling smile, with glorious black hair, the grace of a fawn, and a “voluptuous fascination” which no man could resist.

Prince Charles of Lorraine was her veriest slave, but Mazarin would have none of him. Prince Colonna, Grand Constable of Naples, was more fortunate when he in turn came a-wooing. He bore the proudest name in Italy, and he had wealth, good-looks, and high connections to lend a glamour to his birth. The Cardinal smiled on his suit, and Marie, since she had no heart to give, willingly gave her hand.

Louis himself graced the wedding with his presence; and we are told, as the white-faced bride “said the ‘yes’ which was to bind her to a stranger, her eyes, with an indescribable expression, sought those of the King, who turned pale as he met them.”

Over the rest of Marie Mancini’s chequered life we must hasten. After a few years of wedded life with her Italian Prince, “Colonna’s early passion for his beautiful wife was succeeded by a distaste amounting to hatred. He disgusted her with his amours; and when she ventured to protest against his infidelity, he tried to poison her.” This crowning outrage determined Marie to fly, and, in company with her sister, Hortense, who had fled to her from the brutality of her own husband, she made her escape one dark night to Civita Vecchia, where a boat was awaiting the runaways.

Hotly pursued on land and sea, narrowly escaping shipwreck, braving hardships, hunger, and hourly danger of capture, the fugitives at last reached Marseilles where Marie (Hortense now seeking a refuge in Savoy) began those years of wandering and adventure, the story of which outstrips fiction.

Now we find her seeking asylum at convents from Aix to Madrid; now queening it at the Court of Savoy, with Duke Charles Emmanuel for lover; now she is dazzling Madrid with the Almirante of Castille and many another high-placed worshipper dancing attendance on her; and now she is in Rome, turning the heads of grave cardinals with her witcheries. Sometimes penniless and friendless, at others lapped in luxury; but carrying everywhere in her bosom the English pearls, the last gift of her false and frail Louis.

Thus, through the long, troubled years, until old-age crept on her, the Cardinal’s niece wandered, a fugitive, over the face of Europe, alternately caressed and buffeted by fortune, until “at long last” the end came and brought peace with it. As she lay dying in the house of a good Samaritan at Pisa, with no other hand to minister to her, she called for pen and paper, and with failing hand wrote her own epitaph, surely the most tragic ever penned “Marie Mancini Colonna Dust and Ashes.”