'
'Give Froissart some of the credit of your picture,' said Anne.
'Froissart is in some places like Sir Walter himself,' said
Elizabeth; 'but now I will tell you of a person who lived in no days
of romance, and has not had the advantage of a poetical historian to
light him up in our imagination. I mean the great Prince of Conde.
Now, though he is very unlike Shakespeare's Coriolanus, yet there is
resemblance enough between them to make the comparison very amusing.
There was much of Coriolanus' indomitable pride and horror of mob
popularity when he offended Beaufort and his kingdom in the halles,
when, though as 'Louis de Bourbon' he refused to do anything to shake
the power of the throne, he would not submit to be patronized by the
mean fawning Mazarin. Not that the hard-hearted Conde would have
listened to his wife and mother, even if he had loved them as
Coriolanus did, or that his arrogance did not degenerate into
wonderful meanness at last, such as Coriolanus would have scorned;
but the parallel was very amusing, and gave me a great interest in
Conde.
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