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Title: Ninon de l'Enclos and her century
Author: Rowsell, Mary C. (Mary Catherine)
Language: English
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[Illustration: NINON DE L’ENCLOS.
_From an Original Picture given by herself to the Countess of
Sandwich and by the present Earl of Sandwich to M^r Walpole 1757_]
NINON DE L’ENCLOS
AND HER CENTURY
BY
M. C. ROWSELL
AUTHOR OF
“THE FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE,” “TRAITOR OR PATRIOT,” “THORNDYKE
MANOR,” “MONSIEUR DE PARIS,” ETC. ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration: (colophon)]
BRENTANO’S
NEW YORK
HURST & BLACKETT, LIMITED
LONDON
1910
_Printed in Great Britain_
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I 1
Birth—Parentage—“Arms and the Man”—A Vain Hope—Contraband
Novels—A Change of Educational System—Ninon’s Endowments—The
Wrinkle—A Letter to M. de L’Enclos and What Came of it—A
Glorious Time—“Troublesome Huguenots”—The Château at
Loches, and a New Acquaintance—“When Greek meets Greek”—The
Prisoners—“Liberty”—The Shades of Night—Vagabonds? or Two Young
Gentlemen of Consequence?—Tired Out—A Dilemma—Ninon Herself
Again—Consolation.
CHAPTER II 14
Troublesome Huguenots—Madame de L’Enclos—An Escapade and Nurse
Madeleine—Their Majesties—The Hôtel Bourgogne—The End of the
Adventure—St Vincent de Paul and his Charities—Dying Paternal
Counsel—Ninon’s New Home—Duelling—Richelieu and the Times.
CHAPTER III 27
A Life-long Friend—St Evrémond’s Courtly _Mot_—Rabelais _v._
Petronius—Society and the Salons—The Golden Days—The Man in
Black.
CHAPTER IV 36
A “Delicious Person”—Voiture’s Jealousy—A Tardy
Recognition—Coward Conscience—A Protestant Pope—The Hôtel de
Rambouillet—St Evrémond—The Duel—Nurse Madeleine—Cloistral
Seclusion and Jacques Callot—“Merry Companions Every One”—and One
in Particular.
CHAPTER V 51
An Excursion to Gentilly—“_Uraniæ Sacrum_”—César and
Ruggieri—The rue d’Enfer and the Capucins—Perditor—The
Love-philtre—Seeing the Devil—“Now You are Mine!”
CHAPTER VI 61
Nemesis—Ninon’s Theories—Wits and Beaux of the Salons—Found
at Last—“The Smart Set”—A Domestic Ménage—Scarron—The Fatal
Carnival—The Bond of Ninon—Corneille and _The Cid_—The
Cardinal’s Jealousy—Enlarging the Borders—Monsieur l’Abbé and the
Capon Leg—The Grey Cardinal—A Faithful Servant.
CHAPTER VII 81
Mélusine—Cinq-Mars—An Ill-advised Marriage—The Conspiracy—The
Revenge—The Scaffold—A Cry from the Bastille—The Lady’s
Man—“The Cardinal’s Hangman”—Finis—Louis’s Evensong—A Little
Oversight—The King’s Nightcap—Mazarin—Ninon’s Hero.
CHAPTER VIII 91
“Loving like a Madman”—A Great Transformation—The Unjust
Tax—Parted Lovers—A Gay Court and A School for Scandal, and
Mazarin’s Policy—The Regent’s Caprices—The King’s Upholsterer’s
Young Son—The Théâtre Illustre—The Company of Monsieur and
Molière.
CHAPTER IX 103
The Rift in the Lute—In the Vexin—The Miracle of the Gardener’s
Cottage—Italian Opera in Paris—Parted Lovers—“Ninum”—Scarron
and Françoise d’Aubigné—Treachery—A Journey to
Naples—Masaniello—Renewing Acquaintances—Mazarin’s Mandate.
CHAPTER X 115
The Fronde and Mazarin—A Brittany Manor—Borrowed Locks—The
Flight to St Germains—A Gouty Duke—Across the Channel—The Evil
Genius—The Scaffold at Whitehall—Starving in the Louvre—_The
Mazarinade_—Poverty—Condé’s Indignation—The Cannon of the
Bastille—The Young King.
CHAPTER XI 124
Invalids in the rue des Tournelles—On the Battlements—“La Grande
Mademoiselle”—Casting Lots—The Sacrifice—The Bag of Gold—“Get
Thee to a Convent”—The Battle of the Sonnets—A Curl-paper—The
Triumph and Defeat of Bacchus—A Secret Door—Cross Questions and
Crooked Answers—The Youthful Autocrat.
CHAPTER XII 135
The Whirligig of Time, and an Old Friend—Going to the Fair—A
Terrible Experience—The Young Abbé—“The Brigands of La
Trappe”—The New Ordering—An Enduring Memory—The King over the
Water—Unfulfilled Aspirations—“Not Good-looking.”
CHAPTER XIII 144
Christina’s Modes and Robes—Encumbering Favour—A Comedy at the
Petit-Bourbon—The Liberty of the Queen and the Liberty of the
Subject—Tears and Absolutions—The Tragedy in the Galérie des
Cerfs—Disillusions.
CHAPTER XIV 154
_Les Précieuses Ridicules_—Sappho and _Le Grand Cyrus_—The
Poets of the Latin Quarter—The Satire which Kills—A Lost
Child—Periwigs and New Modes—The Royal Marriage and a Grand
Entry.
CHAPTER XV 163
_Réunions_—The Scarrons—The Fête at Vaux—The Little Old Man in
the Dressing-gown—Louise de la Vallière—How the Mice Play when
the Cat’s Away—“Pauvre Scarron”—An Atrocious Crime.
CHAPTER XVI 175
A _Lettre de Cachet_—Mazarin’s Dying Counsel—Madame Scarron
Continues to Receive—Fouquet’s Intentions and What Came of
Them—The Squirrel and the Snake—The Man in the Iron Mask—An
Incommoding Admirer—“Calice cher, ou le parfum n’est plus”—The
Roses’ Sepulchre.
CHAPTER XVII 185
A Fashionable Water-cure Resort—M. de Roquelaure and his
Friends—Louis le Grand—“A Favourite with the Ladies”—The Broken
Sword—A _Billet-doux_—La Vallière and la Montespan—The Rebukes
from the Pulpit—Putting to the Test—_Le Tartufe_—The Triumphs of
Molière—The Story of Clotilde.
CHAPTER XVIII 199
A Disastrous Wooing—Fénelon—“Mademoiselle de L’Enclos”—The Pride
that had a Fall—The Death of the Duchesse d’Orléans—Intrigue—The
Sun-King and the Shadows—The Clermont Scholar’s Crime—Monsieur
de Montespan—Tardy Indignation—The Encounter—The Filles
Répenties—What the Cards Foretold.
CHAPTER XIX 212
“In Durance Vile”—Molière’s _Mot_—_The Malade
Imaginaire_—“Rogues and Vagabonds”—The Passing of Molière—The
Narrowing Circle—Fontenelle—Lulli—Racine—The Little Marquis—A
Tardy Pardon—The Charming Widow Scarron—A Journey to the Vosges,
and the Haunted Chamber.
CHAPTER XX 228
The Crime of Madame Tiquet—A Charming Little Hand—_Aqua
Toffana_—The Casket—A Devout Criminal—The Sinner and
the Saint—Monsieur de Lauzun’s Boots—“Sister Louise”—La
Fontange—“Madame de Maintenant”—The Blanks in the Circle—The
Vatican Fishes and their Good Example—Piety at Versailles—The
Periwigs and the Paniers—Père la Chaise—A Dull Court—Monsieur de
St Evrémond’s Decision.
CHAPTER XXI 241
A Distinguished Salon—The Duke’s Homage—Quietism—The Disastrous
Edict—The Writing on the Window-pane—The Persecution of the
Huguenots—The Pamphleteers—The Story of Jean Larcher and _The
Ghost of M. Scarron_—The Two Policies.
CHAPTER XXII 251
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ _Cercle_—Madeleine de Scudéri—The
Abbé Dubois—“The French Calliope,” and the Romance of her
Life—“_Revenons à nos Moutons_”—A Resurrection?—Racine and his
Detractors—“Esther”—_Athalie_ and St Cyr—Madame Guyon and the
Quietists.
CHAPTER XXIII 263
A Grave Question—The Troublesome Brother-in-Law—“No
Vocation”—The Duke’s Choice—Peace for “La Grande
Mademoiselle”—An Invitation to Versailles—Behind the
Arras—Between the Alternatives—D’Aubigné’s Shadow—A Broken
Friendship.
CHAPTER XXIV 275
The Falling of the Leaves—Gallican Rights—“The Eagle of
Meaux”—Condé’s Funeral Oration—The Abbé Gedouin’s Theory—A
Bag of Bones—Marriage and Sugar-plums—The Valour of Monsieur
du Maine—The King’s Repentance—The next Campaign—La Fontaine
and Madame de Sablière—MM. de Port Royal—The Fate of Madame
Guyon—“Mademoiselle Balbien.”
CHAPTER XXV 288
The Melancholy King—The Portents of the Storm—The Ambition of
Madame Louise Quatorze—The Farrier of Provence—The Ghost in
the Wood—Ninon’s Objection—The King’s Conscience—A Dreary
Court—Racine’s Slip of the Tongue—The Passing of a Great Poet,
and a Busy Pen Laid Down.
CHAPTER XXVI 301
Leaving the Old Home—“Wrinkles”—Young Years and Old Friends—“A
Bad Cook and a Little Bit of Hot Coal”—Voltaire—_Irène_—Making a
Library—“Adieu, Mes Amis”—The Man in Black.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
NINON DE L’ENCLOS _Frontispiece_
CARDINAL RICHELIEU _To face page_ 24
DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD ” 48
MOLIÈRE ” 100
ST EVRÉMOND ” 112
NINON DE L’ENCLOS ” 127
NINON DE L’ENCLOS
AND HER CENTURY
NINON DE L’ENCLOS
AND HER CENTURY
CHAPTER I
Birth—Parentage—“Arms and the Man”—A Vain Hope—Contraband
Novels—A Change of Educational System—Ninon’s Endowments—The
Wrinkle—A Letter to M. de L’Enclos and What Came of it—A
Glorious Time—“Troublesome Huguenots”—The Château at
Loches, and a New Acquaintance—“When Greek meets Greek”—The
Prisoners—“Liberty”—The Shades of Night—Vagabonds? or Two Young
Gentlemen of Consequence?—Tired Out—A Dilemma—Ninon Herself
Again—Consolation.
Anne de L’Enclos was born in Paris in 1615. She was the daughter of
Monsieur de L’Enclos, a gentleman of Touraine, and of his wife, a
member of the family of the Abra de Raconis of the Orléanois.
It would not be easy to find characteristics more diverse than those
distinguishing this pair. Their union was an alliance arranged
for them—a _mariage de convenance_. Diametrically opposite in
temperament, Monsieur was handsome and distinguished-looking; while
the face and figure of Madame were ordinary. She was constitutionally
timid, and intellectually narrow, devoted to asceticism, and reserved
in manner. She passed her time in seclusion, dividing it between
charitable works, the reading of pious books, and attendance at
Mass and the other services of the Church. Monsieur de L’Enclos,
on the other hand, was a votary of every pleasure and delightful
distraction the world could afford him. Among them he counted
duelling; he was a skilled swordsman, and his rapier play was of the
finest. A brave and gallant soldier, he had served the royal cause
during the later years of Henri IV., and so on into the reign of
Louis XIII. He was a _bon vivant_, and arms and intrigue, which were
as the breath of life to him, he sought after wherever the choicest
opportunities of those were likely to be found.
Notwithstanding, the rule of life-long bickering and mutual reproach
attending such ill-assorted unions, would seem to be proved by its
exception in the case of Ninon’s parents; since no record of any such
domestic strife stands against them. Bearing and forbearing, they
agreed to differ, and went their several ways—Madame de L’Enclos
undertaking the training and instruction of Ninon in those earliest
years, in the fond hope that there would be a day when she should
take the veil and become a nun. Before, however, she attained to
the years of as much discretion as she ever possessed, she had
arrived at the standpoint of the way she intended to take of the
life before her, which was to roll into years that did not end until
the dawning of the eighteenth century; and it in no way included any
such intention. So sturdily opposed to it, indeed, was she, that it
irresistibly suggests the possibility of her being the inspiration of
the old song—“Ninon wouldn’t be a nun”—
“I shan’t be a nun, I won’t be a nun,
I am so fond of pleasure that I _won’t_ be a nun!”
For Ninon was her father’s child; almost all her inherited instincts
were from him. The endeavours of Madame de L’Enclos failed
disastrously. The monotony and rigid routine of the young girl’s life
repelled the bright, frank spirit, and drove it to opposite extreme,
resulting in sentiments of disgust for the pious observances of her
church; and taken there under compulsion day in, day out, she usually
contrived to substitute some plump little volume of romance, or other
light literature, at the function, for her Mass-book and breviary, to
while away the tedium.
In no very long time Monsieur de L’Enclos, noting the bent of his
daughter’s nature, himself took over her training. He carried it
on, it is scarcely necessary to say, upon a plane widely apart from
the mother’s. A man of refined intellect, he had studied the books
and philosophy of the renaissance of literature; and before Ninon
was eleven years old, while imbuing her with the love of reading
such books as the essays of Montaigne and the works of Charon, he
accustomed her to think and to reason for herself, an art of which
she very soon became a past-mistress, the result being an ardent
recognition of the law of liberty, and the Franciscan counsel of
perfection: “_Fay ce qu’et voudray._” Ninon possessed an excellent
gift of tongues, cultivating it to the extent of acquiring fluently,
Italian, Spanish, and English, rendered the more easy of mastery
from her knowledge of Latin, which she so frequently quotes in her
correspondence.
Her love of music was great; she sang well, and was a proficient on
the lute, in which her father himself, a fine player, instructed her.
She conversed with facility, and doubtless took care to cultivate
her natural gifts in those days when the arts of conversation and
_causerie_ were indispensable for shining in society, and she loved
to tell a good story; but she drew a distinct line at reciting. One
day when Mignard, the painter, deplored his handsome daughter’s
defective memory, she consoled him—“How fortunate you are,” she
said, “she cannot recite.”
The popular acceptation of Ninon de L’Enclos’ claims to celebrity
would appear to be her beauty, which she retained to almost the
end of her long life—a beauty that was notable; but it lay less
in perfection of the contours of her face, than in the glorious
freshness of her complexion, and the expression of her magnificent
eyes, at once vivacious and sympathetic, gentle and modest-glancing,
yet brilliant with voluptuous languor. Any defects of feature were
probably those which crowned their grace—and when as in the matter
of a slight wrinkle, which in advanced years she said had rudely
planted itself on her forehead, the courtly comment on this of
Monsieur de St Evrémond was to the effect that “Love had placed it
there to nestle in.” Her well-proportioned figure was a little above
middle height, and her dancing was infinitely graceful.
Provincial by descent, Mademoiselle de L’Enclos was a born Parisian,
in that word’s every sense. Her bright eyes first opened in a small
house lying within the shadows of Notre-Dame, the old Cité itself,
the heart of hearts of Paris, still at that time fair with green
spaces and leafy hedgerows, though these were to endure only a few
years longer. Her occasionally uttered wish that she had been born
a man, hardly calls for grave consideration. The desire to don
masculine garments and to ride and fence and shoot, and to indulge
generally in manly pursuits, occurred to her when she was still short
of twelve years old, by which time she was able to write well; and
her earliest epistolary correspondence included a letter addressed to
her father. It ran as follows:—
“MY VERY HONOURED FATHER,—I am eleven years old. I am big and
strong; but I shall certainly fall ill, if I continue to assist at
three masses every day, especially on account of one performed by
a great, gouty, fat canon, who takes at least twelve minutes to
get through the Epistle and the Gospel, and whom the choir boys
are obliged to put back again on his feet after each genuflexion.
I would as soon see one of the towers of Notre Dame on the
altar-steps; they would move quite as quickly, and not keep me so
long from breakfast. This is not at all cheering I can tell you. In
the interest of the health of your only child, it is time to put
an end to this state of things. But in what manner, you will ask,
and how is it to be set about? Nothing more simple. Let us suppose
that instead of me, Heaven had given you a son: I should have been
brought up by you, and not by my mother; already you would have
begun to instruct me in arms, and mounted me on horseback, which
would have much better pleased me than twiddling along the beads of
a rosary to _Aves_, _Paters_, and _Credos_. The present moment is
the one for me to inform you that I decide to be no longer a girl,
and to become a boy.
“Will you therefore arrange to send for me to come to you, in order
to give me an education suitable to my new sex? I am with respect,
my very honoured father,—Your little
NINON.”
This missive, which Ninon contrived to get posted without her
mother’s knowledge, met with her father’s hearty approval. No
more time was lost than it took to make her a handsome suit of
clothes, of the latest mode, the one bearing the palm for grace
and picturesqueness, far and away from all the fashions of men’s
attire, speaking for itself in the canvases of Vandyck; and Ninon
stands forth in the gallant bravery of silken doublet, with large
loose sleeves slashed to the shoulder; her collar a falling band of
richest point lace; the short velvet cloak hanging to the shoulder;
the fringed breeches meeting the wide-topped boots frilled about with
fine lawn; the plumed, broad-brimmed Flemish beaver hat, well-cocked
to one side upon the graceful head, covered with waves of dark hair
falling to the neck; gauntleted gloves of Spanish leather; her rapier
hanging from the richly-embroidered baldric crossing down from the
right shoulder—a picture that thrilled the heart of Monsieur de
L’Enclos with ecstasy; and when, splendidly mounted, she rode forth,
ruffling it gallantly beside him, he was the proud recipient of many
a compliment and encomium on the son of whose existence until now
nobody had been as much as aware.
These delightful days were destined, however, to come quickly to an
end. Fresh disturbances arose with the Huguenots of La Rochelle and
Loudun, and Monsieur de L’Enclos was summoned to join his regiment.
Ninon would doubtless have liked of all things to go with him; but
while this was impossible, she was spared the dreaded alternative of
the fat canon and the three Masses a day, by her father accepting
for her an invitation from his sister, the Baroness Montaigu, who
lived on her estate near Loches, on the borders of the Indre. This
lady, a widow and childless, had long been desirous of making the
acquaintance of her young niece, and on his way north-west, Monsieur
de L’Enclos left Ninon at the château. “And when we have settled
these wretched Huguenots,” said Monsieur de L’Enclos, as he bade her
farewell, and slipped a double louis into her hands, “I will return
for you.”
Madame de Montaigu was a charming lady, of the same spirited, gay
temperament as her brother. She received her niece with the utmost
kindness, and having been initiated into the girl’s whim for playing
the boy, she laughingly fell in with it, and addressed her with
the greatest gravity as “my pretty nephew,” introducing to her,
a—shall it be said?—another young gentleman, by name François
de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac, the son of her intimate
friend, the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld. The lad was a pupil at the
celebrated Jesuits’ College of La Flêche, founded by Henri IV., and
usually spent part of his holidays at the Loches château.
A year or two older than Ninon, Marsillac was a shy and retiring
boy, and at first rather shrank from his robustious new companion,
who, however, soon contrived to draw him out, putting him on his
mettle by pretending to doubt his prowess with sword and rapier, and
his skill generally in the noble art of fencing. She challenged him
to measure weapons with her, and piqued at the idea of one younger
than himself pretending to martial superiority, he cast aside his
shyness, and the two falling on guard, clashed and clattered their
steel in the galleries and chambers of the house, from morning till
night, until the noise grew intolerable, and their weapons were taken
away from them, in the fond hope of securing peace and quietness. It
was, however, only partially realised; since the enforced idleness
of Ninon’s hands suggested the surreptitious annexing of the head
forester’s gun, with which she took aim at the blackbirds in the park
avenues, and the young does in the forest: and then, seeking further
variety, the two manned the pleasure-boat on the lake, and fared into
such perilous places, that the voyages became strictly tabooed, and
the boat was hidden away.
The constant _tintamarre_ of the pair frequently brought its
punishment; and one day, on the occasion of a too outrageous
disturbance, they were locked into the library. Books they had no
particular mind for that glorious sunshiny morning; still less
enjoyable was the prospect of the promised dinner of dry bread and
water, and they sat gloomily gazing upon the softly-waving boughs of
the trees, and up through the open window into the free blue sky.
Being some eighteen feet from the ground, it had not been thought
necessary to bar the casement beyond possibility of their trying
to escape. The feat would assuredly not so much as suggest itself.
Nevertheless, the temptation crept into the soul of Ninon, and she
quickly imparted it to Marsillac.
Looking down, they saw that soft green turf belted the base of the
wall, and taking hurried counsel, they climbed to the window-sill,
and at the risk of their necks, clutching by the carved stonework,
and the stout old ivy trails with which it was mantled, they dropped
to the ground, and then away they hied by the clipped yew alleys,
mercilessly trampling the parterres—away till they found themselves
in the forest. Free now as the sweet breeze playing in their hair,
they ran on, pranking and shouting, now following the little beaten
tracks, now bounding over the brushwood, heedless of the rents and
scratches of the thorny tangles; until after some hours, Marsillac’s
pace began to drag, and very soon he said he was tired.
“That is no matter,” said Ninon, “we will hire a carriage at the
first place we come to”; but the name of that place was not even
to be guessed at; inasmuch as they had not the least notion which
way they had taken. The great thing was to arrive at last at Tours,
where Ninon said they could at once enlist as soldiers. Marsillac
was, however, tired—very tired; his legs ached, and he sat down for
a little rest, observing rather crossly, in the cynical way which
sometimes he had, that talking was all very well; but for one thing
they were not big enough for soldiers, and for another, you could not
have a carriage without paying for it.
“Of course not,” acquiesced Ninon, proudly producing her double
louis. “Can I not pay?” But the hours passed, the sun declined, and
not so much as a solitary cottage had presented itself to their
eyes, into which a shade of anxiety had crept; and ere long they
began to feel certain they saw wolves and lions and bandits lurking
in all directions behind the huge black forest tree-trunks, and
young Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld had now grown so tired that, he
wanted nothing so much as to go to bed. Even supper was a secondary
consideration. Still, desperately hungry as they both were, liberty
is such a glorious thing; and were they not free?—free as the air
that was growing so chilly, and the pale moonlight rays as they broke
through some darkening clouds, seemed to make it almost shuddery.
These, however, suddenly crossed something white, and though
terrifying for the moment, the second glance to which they schooled
themselves brought reassurance. The white patch they saw was a bit
of a cottage wall pierced by a little lattice, through which gleamed
the yellow light of a tallow candle; for the two, creeping close to
the panes, peeped in. But noiselessly as they strove to render their
movements, the attention of a couple of big dogs of the _boule-dogue_
breed was aroused, to the extent of one of them fastening upon
Marsillac’s _haut-de-chausses_, and he was only induced to forbear
and drop off, under the knotty, chastising stick of a man, apparently
the master of the house, who turned upon the trembling truants, and
bade them clear off for the vagabonds they were. Their mud-stained
and torn apparel, rendered more dilapidated in Marsillac’s case, by
the dog’s teeth, justified to a great extent the man’s conclusions;
but on their asseverating that they were not good-for-nothing at all;
but two very well-born young gentlemen who had lost their way, and
would be glad to pay generously for a supper, he called his wife,
and committing them to her care, bade her entertain them with the
best her larder afforded, and to put a bottle of good wine on the
table. Then he went out, while an excellent little piece of a haunch
of roe-deer—cooking apparently for the supper of the worthy couple
themselves—which Dame Jacqueline set before the hungry wanderers,
was heartily appreciated by both. Washed down by a glass or two of
the fairly good wine, Marsillac grew hopelessly drowsy. Tired out,
he wanted to go to bed. “And why not?” said the dame, not without
a gleam of malice in her eyes, which had been keenly measuring the
two—“but I have only one bed to offer you, our own, and you must
make the best of it.” She smiled on.
“Not I,” said Ninon, rising from the settle like a giant
refreshed—“I am going on to Tours. The moon is lovely. It will be
delightful. How much to pay, dame? And a thousand thanks for your
hospitality. Come, Marsillac,” and Ninon strode to the door. But the
glimpses of the pillows within the shadow of the alcove had been
too much for Marsillac, and he had already divested himself of his
_justaucorps_, and jumped into bed.
“And now, my young gentleman, what about you?” inquired Jacqueline
of the embarrassed Ninon, who seated herself disconsolately on a
little three-legged stool. “Come, quick, to bed with you!”
“No!” said Ninon, “I prefer this stool.”
“Oh, ta! ta! that will never do,” said Jacqueline, who was beginning
to heap up a broad old settle with a cushion or two, and some wraps.
“Sooner than that, I would sit on that stool myself all night, and
give you up my place here beside my—Ah! _à la bonne heure!_ There he
is,” she cried, as the heavy footsteps of the master of the house,
crunching up the garden path, amid the barking of the dogs, grew
audible—“and, as I say, give you up my own place—”
“Ah, _mon Dieu_! no,” distractedly cried Ninon, tearing off her
cloak; and bounding into the alcove, to the side of the already fast
asleep Marsillac, she dragged the coverings over her head.
“Well, good-night! Sweet repose, you charming little couple,” laughed
on Dame Jacqueline, as she drew the curtains to. “But I’d not go to
sleep yet awhile, look you. Some friends of yours are coming here to
see you. Ah yes, here they are! This way, ladies.”
And the next moment, Madame de Montaigu and the Duchesse de la
Rochefoucauld stood within the alcove, gazing down with glances
beyond power of words to describe.
Dragged by the two ladies from their refuge, Marsillac was hustled
into his garments, but Ninon was bidden to leave hers alone, and to
don the petticoats and bodice which the baroness had brought for the
purpose. “No more masquerading, if you please,” said her aunt, in
tones terrible with indignation and severity, “while I have you under
my charge. Now, quick, home with you!”
And home they were conducted, disconsolate, crestfallen, arriving
there in an extraordinarily short space of time; for the château
lay not half a league off, and the two runaways, who had imagined
that the best part of Touraine had been covered by them that fine
summer day, discovered that the mazes of the forest paths had
merely led them round and about within hail of Loches, and Dame
Jacqueline and her husband had at once recognised them. The man had
then hastened immediately to the château, and informed the ladies,
to their indescribable relief, about the two good-for-nothings; for
the hue and cry after Mademoiselle Ninon and young Monsieur de la
Rochefoucauld had grown to desperation as the sun westered lower and
lower.
Ninon wept tears of chagrin and humiliation at the penalty she had
to pay of being a girl again; but Marsillac’s spirits revived with
astonishing rapidity. He even seemed to be glad at the idea of his
fellow-scapegrace being merely one of the weaker and gentler sex, and
in her dejection he was for ever seeking to console her. “I love you
ever so much better this way, dear one,” he was constantly saying.
“Ah, Ninon, you are beautiful as an angel!”
But alas! for the approach of Black Monday, and the holidays ended,
Marsillac had to go back to school.
CHAPTER II
Troublesome Huguenots—Madame de L’Enclos—An Escapade, and Nurse
Madeleine—Their Majesties—The Hôtel Bourgogne—The End of the
Adventure—St Vincent de Paul and his Charities—Dying Paternal
Counsel—Ninon’s New Home—Duelling—Richelieu and the Times.
The attack upon La Rochelle, and the incessant Huguenot disturbances
generally, detained Monsieur de L’Enclos almost entirely away from
Ninon, who remained at Loches in the care of her aunt. From time to
time he paid flying visits to Loches—one stay, however, lasting
many months, enforced by a severe wound he had received. This period
he spent in continuing the instruction of his daughter, on the plan
originally mapped out, of fitting her to shine in society. The course
included philosophy, languages, music, with his special objections to
the matrimonial state—engendered, or at least aggravated by his own
failure in the search after happiness along that path. Far better,
undesirable as he held the alternative, to be wedded to cloistered
seclusion than any man’s bride; and well knowing Ninon’s horror of a
nun’s life, he left her to argue out the rest for herself in her own
logical fashion; and there is no doubt that the whole of her future
was influenced by the views he then inculcated. A modest decorum
and sobriety of bearing were indeed indispensable to good breeding;
but _carpe diem_ was the motto of Monsieur de L’Enclos, as he
desired it to be hers; and every pleasure afforded by this one life,
certainly to be called ours, ought to be enjoyed while it lasted; and
unswervingly, to the final page of her long record, Ninon carried out
the comfortable doctrine.
At seventeen years of age, she was perfectly equipped. Beautiful
and highly accomplished, amiable and winning, and though always
well dressed, troubling vastly little over the petty fripperies and
vanities ordinarily engrossing the female mind, she appears to have
gained the commendation and affection of her aunt, who parted from
her with great regret, when the failing health of Madame de L’Enclos
necessitated Ninon’s departure from Loches, to go to Paris, where the
invalid was residing.
Monsieur de L’Enclos fetched Ninon himself from Loches, and in a day
or two she was by her mother’s couch. Madame de L’Enclos received
her with affection, and affectionately Ninon tended her, going
unmurmuringly through the old courses of religious reading and
observance, even to renewing acquaintance with the gouty canon in
Notre-Dame; but the invalid’s chamber was _triste_ and monotonous,
and now and again Ninon effected a few hours’ escape from it,
ostensibly for the purpose of attending Mass or Benediction, or some
service at one or other of the neighbouring churches. One of them,
St Germain l’Auxerrois, was of special interest to Ninon, by reason
of neighbouring the hotel of Madame de la Rochefoucauld; and she one
day interrogated the guardian of the _porte cochère_, in the hope
of learning some news of Marsillac, whom Time’s chances and changes
had entirely removed from her ken; but whose memory endured in her
heart; for she had been very sincerely attached to him. The Suisse
informing her that he very rarely came to Paris, the philosophical
mind of Ninon soon turned for consolation elsewhere. On this plea
of devout attendance at church, Ninon was freely permitted leave of
absence from the sick room, duennaed by her old nurse, Madeleine,
who, however, frequently permitted herself to be dropped by the way,
at a small house of public entertainment, above whose door ran the
following invitation to step inside:—
“If of dyspepsia you’ve a touch,
Ache of tooth, or head, or such,
There’s nothing like a nip, you see,
Of my delicious Eau de Vie.”
On one of these occasions, her charge went off in the company of
a fairly good-looking and agreeable young gentleman who addressed
her, as she halted for an instant at the corner of the Pont Neuf,
in terms of mingled respect and admiration. Under his escort, she
gathered some conception of the manners and mode of existence in the
gay city, and in the course of their first walk together, they ran
against two of her cavalier’s friends, who were to be associated
intimately with her future—Gondi, the future Cardinal de Retz, and
the young Abbé Scarron—Abbé by courtesy, since he never went beyond
the introductory degree of an ecclesiastical career. In the company
of these three merry companions, she visited the Hôtel Bourgogne, a
place which may be described as answering more to the music-halls,
than to the theatres of the present time. Its frequenters could dine
or sup at its tables, take a turn at _tarot_ or thimblerig, and enjoy
a variety entertainment carried out on lines mainly popular. It was a
vast edifice, built in the Renaissance style, by Francis I., on the
site of the gloomy, fortress-like mansion of Jean Sans Peur; and for
a time it had been devoted to the representation of the Passion and
Mystery plays, and the performances of the clerks of the Basoche, but
grown decadent in these days of Louis XIII. Ninon obtained on her way
a passing glimpse of His Majesty as he drove by, describing him “as a
man of twenty-five; but looking much older, on account of his morose
and taciturn expression, responding to the acclamations of the people
only by a cold and ceremonious acknowledgment; while Anne of Austria,
who followed in a coach preceded by other carriages, saluted the
crowd with gracious smiles and wavings of her white hand.”
Having partaken of a light collation at one of the tables, the
party gave attention for a while to the actors on the stage, whose
performances were coarse, and not much to Ninon’s taste. Then Gondi
and Scarron took leave of the two, and the sequel of the adventure
proved a warning to young women endowed with any measure of
self-respect, to refrain from making acquaintance with gallants in
the street. Fortunately she escaped the too ardent attentions of the
man, through the intervention and protection of one of more delicacy
and honour. Though this one was quickly equally enthralled, he went
about his wooing of the beautiful girl in more circumspect fashion, a
wooing nipped in the bud by his death from a wound received a short
time later.
In the sombre calm of the invalid’s room stands out the grand figure
of St Vincent de Paul, bringing to her, as to all the afflicted and
heavy-laden, the message of Divine love and pity, and impressing
Ninon with a lasting memory of reverence for the serene, pure face
and gentle utterances of a heart filled with devotion for the Master
he served. Never weary in well-doing, seeming ever to see God, his
life was one long self-sacrifice and work of charity. Moved to such
compassion for the poor convict of the galleys, who wept for the
thought of his wife and children, that the good priest took the
fetters from the man’s limbs, and bidding him go free and sin no
more, wound them upon his own wrists: a heart so thrilled with love
and sorrow for the lot of the miserable little forsaken children of
the great city, that he did not rest till he had effected the reforms
so sorely-needed for their protection.
Hitherto the small waifs and strays had been under the
superintendence of the Archbishop of Paris. The charge of them was,
however, delegated to venal nurses, who would frequently sell them
for twenty sous each. On fête and red-letter days, it had for long
been a custom to expose the little creatures on huge bedsteads
chained to the pavement of Notre-Dame, in order to excite the pity
of the people, and draw money for their maintenance. St Vincent
de Paul was stirred to the endeavour of putting a stop to these
scandals; and instituted a hospital for the foundlings. It was
situated by the Gate of St Victor, and the work of it was carried on
by charitable ladies. The Hospital of Jesus, for eighty poor old men,
was another of his good works; while he ministered to the lunatics of
the Salpétrière, and to the lepers of St Lazare, within whose church
walls he was laid to rest when at last he rendered up his life to the
Master he had served; until the all-destroying Terror disturbed his
remains: but “his works do follow him.” His compassion alone for the
little ones will keep his memory green for all time.
Kneeling at his feet, at her mother’s bidding, the good priest bade
Ninon rise, saying that to God alone the knee should be bent. Then
he laid his hand on her head, calling down a benediction on her, and
praying that she should be protected from the temptations of a sinful
world. His words thrilled her powerfully for the time being. She felt
moved to pour out all her heart to him, but “Satan,” she says, “held
me fast, and would not let me approach God,” and the spell of the
saintly man’s influence passed with his presence.
A few days later, Madame de L’Enclos died, calmly, and tended by her
husband and her child, leaving at least affectionate respect for her
memory. A year later, Monsieur de L’Enclos died. True to the last to
his rule of life, the dying words he addressed to his daughter were
these—
“My child, you see that all that remains to me in these last moments,
is but the sad memory of pleasures that are past; I have possessed
them but for a little while, and that is the one complaint I have
to make of Nature. But alas! how useless are my regrets! You, my
daughter, who will doubtless survive me for so many years, profit as
quickly as you may of the precious time, and be ever less scrupulous
in the number of your pleasures, than in your choice of them.”
The fortune of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos had been greatly diminished
by the reckless extravagances of her father; and conscious, probably,
of this error in himself, he was careful to protect her best
interests, by purchasing for her an annuity which brought her 8,000
livres annual income. His prodigality was, however, one of the few
of his characteristics she did not inherit. On the contrary, she
displayed through life a conspicuous power of regulating the business
sides of it with a prudence which enabled her to be generous to her
friends in need, while not stinting herself, or the ordering of
her households, and the entertainment of the company she delighted
in; for the _réunions_ and evenings of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos
were a proverb for all that was at once charming and intellectual;
varied as they were with sweet music, to which her own singing
contributed—more notably still, by her performances on the lute,
which were so skilful; though by these hangs the complaint that she
ordinarily needed a great deal of pressing before she would indulge
the company—a curious exception to the ruling of the ways of Ninon,
ordinarily so entirely innocent of affectation.
At this time her beauty and accomplishments, united with her fortune,
drew many suitors for her hand, and of these there would probably
have been many more, but for the certainty she made no secret of,
that marriage was not in the picture of the life she had sketched out
for herself. Her passion for liberty of thought and action in every
aspect, fostered ever by her father, was dominant in her, and not to
be sacrificed for the most brilliant matrimonial yoke.
One of her first proceedings was the establishment of a home for
herself. It consisted of a handsome suite of rooms in the rue des
Tournelles, in the quarter of the Marais, then one of the most
fashionable in Paris, and distinguished for the many intellectual
and gifted men and women congregating in the stately, red-bricked,
lofty-roofed houses surrounding the planted space in whose centre, a
little later, was to stand the equestrian statue of Louis XIII. The
square had been planned by Mansard, and Ninon’s home—Number 23—had
been occupied by the famous architect himself.
A few doors off was the residence of Cardinal Richelieu, and within
the convenient distance of a few houses—Number 6—lived Marion
Delorme. For years this Place Royale, as it is now called—at one
time Place des Vosges—had been, until Mansard transformed it, held
an accursed spot, and let go to ruin; for here it was stood the
palace of the Tournelles, a favourite residence of Henri II., and in
its courtyard took place the fatal encounter between him and the
Englishman Montgomery, whose lance pierced through the king’s eye, to
his brain, and caused his death. Catherine de Médicis, in her grief
and indignation at the tragic ending of that day’s tilt, caused the
palace to be razed to the ground; but the old associations clung
to the place, for it became the favourite spot for the countless
duels which the young bloods and others were constantly engaging in;
until Richelieu put an almost entire stop to them by his revival of
the summary law against the practice, whose penalty was death by
decapitation. The great cardinal’s ruling was not to be evaded, and
several men of rank suffered death upon the scaffold for disobeying
it.
Away beyond the St Antoine Gate at Picpus, Ninon established another
dwelling for herself, in which it was her custom to rusticate during
the autumn.
Beautiful—though in features not faultlessly so—she bore some
resemblance to Anne of Austria, the adored of Buckingham, a likeness
close enough to admit of the success of a freak played years later,
when she contrived to deceive Louis the Great into the notion that
the shade of his mother appeared to him, to chide him for certain
evil ways. Her nose, like the queen’s, was large, and her beautiful
teeth gleamed through lips somewhat full in their curves; her hair
was dark and luxuriant, while her intelligent and sympathetic eyes
expressed an indescribable mingling of reserve and voluptuous
languor, magnetising all, coupled as it was with the charm of her
gentle, courteous manner and conversation that sparkled with the
wit and sentiment of a mind enriched by careful training and study
of the literature of her own time, and of the past. It was her
crowning grace that she made no display of these really sterling
acquirements, and entertained a wholesome detestation of the pedantry
and _précieuse_ taint of the learned ladies mocked at so mercilessly
by that dear friend of hers, Molière. Few could boast a complexion so
delicately fresh as hers. She stands sponsor to this day to toilette
powders and cosmetics. Bloom and _poudre de Ninon_ boxes find place
on countless women’s dressing-tables to this hour; but in her own
case art rendered little assistance, possibly none at all; except
for one recipe she employed daily through her life. The secret of
it, sufficiently transparent, was equally in the possession of the
beautiful Diana of Poitiers, who also retained her beauty for such a
length of years.
For all who list to read, her letter-writing powers stand perpetuated
in her published correspondence, and while the theme is almost
unvarying—the philosophy of love and friendship—her wit and fancy
treat it in a thousand graceful ways. Fickle as she was in love,
she was constant in friendship, and the heat of the first, often
so startlingly transient, frequently settled down into life-long
_camaraderie_ rarely destroyed. While not ungenerous to her rivals
in the tender passion, she could be dangerously jealous; but gifted
with the saving grace of humour, of which women are said to be
destitute, the anger and malice were oftentimes allowed to die
down into forgiveness, and perhaps also, forgetfulness. Rearing
and temperament set Ninon de L’Enclos apart; even among those many
notable women whose intimate she was. Essentially a product of her
century, she lived her own life in its fulness. Following ever her
father’s counsel, she was at once as boundlessly unrestricted in
her observance of that perfect law of liberty to which she yielded
obedience, as she was scrupulous in selection. Says Monsieur de St
Evrémond of her—“Kindly and indulgent Nature has moulded the soul of
Ninon from the voluptuousness of Epicurus and the virtue of Cato.”
And at last, after an interval of six years, Ninon and Marsillac
met again. It was in the salon of the Hôtel de Rambouillet.
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, beautiful, sought after, already the
centre of an admiring circle, the talk of Paris, and Monsieur le
Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld, already for two or three years a
gallant soldier, chivalrous, romantic, handsome with the beauty of
intellect, interesting from his air of gentle, cynical pensiveness,
ardent in the cause of the queen so mercilessly persecuted by
Richelieu, and therefore lacking the advancement his qualities
merited, still, however, finding opportunity to indulge in the
gallantries of the society he so adorned. Someone has said that
few ever less practically recognised the doctrines of Monsieur de
la Rochefoucauld’s maxims, than did Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld
himself, and the aphorisms have been criticised, and exception
has again and again been taken to them, not perhaps altogether
unreasonably; but in any case he justified himself of his dictum
that “love is the smallest part of gallantry”; for when at last—and
it took some time—Marsillac recognised his old scapegrace chum of
the Loches château, homage and admiration he yielded her indeed;
but it was far from undivided, and shared in conspicuously by her
rival, Marion Delorme, a woman of very different mould from Ninon.
Like her, beautiful exceedingly, but more impulsive, softer-natured,
more easily apt to give herself away and to regret later on.
Intellectually greatly Ninon’s inferior, she was yet often a thorn in
the side of the jealous Mademoiselle de L’Enclos.
[Illustration: ARMAND JEAN DU PLESSIS
_Cardinal Duc de Richelieu_
_Né à Paris le 5^e 7^{bre} 1585. Mort le 4 Décembre 1642._
_Paris chez Odieuvre M^d d’Estampes Quai de l’Ecole vis à vis la
Samarit^e à la belle Image; C.P.R._
_To face page 24._]
The times, as a great commentator has defined them, were indeed
peculiar. The air, full of intrigue, was maintained by Richelieu
at fever-heat, and wheel worked fast and furiously within wheel.
There was the king’s party, though the king was little of it, or
in it. The iron hand of the Cardinal Prime-Minister was upon the
helm. Richelieu, who never stayed in resistance to the encroaching
efforts of Spain—in his policy of crushing the feudal strength of
the nobility of the provinces—or in annihilating Huguenot power as
a political element in the State—saw in every man and woman not his
violent partisan, an enemy to France and to the Crown. How far he was
justified, how far he could have demanded “Is there not a cause?”
stands an open question; but the effect was terrible. The relentless
hounding down of the suspected, forms a page of history stained with
the blood of noble and gallant men. Richelieu’s crafty playing with
his marked victims, chills the soul. They were as ninepins in his
hands, lured to their destruction, sprung upon, crushed often when
most they believed themselves secure.
Sending de Thou to the scaffold for his supposed complicity in
the crime Richelieu fixed on Cinq-Mars, the handsome, insouciant,
brilliant young fellow he had himself provided for the king’s
amusement, and when the time was ripe, having done him to death by
the Lyons headsman upon a superficially-based accusation. Richelieu
was dying then. The consciousness of Death’s hand upon his harassed,
worn-out frame was fully with him; but no pity was in his heart for
Cinq-Mars. It might have been the old rankling jealousy that urged
him on, for the stern, inflexible Armand de Richelieu was a poor,
weak tool of a creature where women were concerned. “There is no
such word as fail,” he was wont to say; yet in his relations with
women, and in his gallantries he failed egregiously. No fear of
him held back Marion Delorme from the arms of Cinq-Mars, when she
yielded to his persuasions to fly with him; and self-love must have
been bitterly wounded, when Anne of Austria laughed his advances to
scorn. Richelieu was not a lady’s man. Nature had given him a brain
rarely equalled, a stupendous capacity and penetration, but she
had neglected him personally—meagre, sharp-featured, cadaverous,
scantily furnished as to beard and moustache, and lean as to those
red-stockinged legs. True, or the mere fruit of cruel scandal, that
saraband _pas seul_ he was said to have been duped into performing
for the delectation of the queen, will hang ever by the memory of the
great Lord Cardinal.
CHAPTER III
A Life-long Friend—St Evrémond’s Courtly _Mot_—Rabelais _v._
Petronius—Society and the Salons—The Golden Days—The Man in
Black.
Scarcely was acquaintance renewed with her still quite youthful old
friend, Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld, than Ninon met for the first
time St Evrémond—Charles de St Denys, born 1613, at St Denys le
Guast near Coutances in Normandy—the man with whom her name is so
indissolubly connected, traversing nearly all the decades of the
seventeenth century into the early years of the eighteenth, his
span of life about equalling her own, and though for half of it
absent from her and from his country, maintaining the links of their
intimacy in their world-famed correspondence.
Like Ninon’s, his individuality was exceptional. A born wit, for even
in his childhood, the soubriquet of “_Esprit_” was bestowed upon him,
his three brothers being severally styled—“The Honest Man,” “The
Soldier,” and “The Abbé.” Charles de St Evrémond was distinguished
by a brilliant and singularly amiable intelligence. As a man of
letters he was rarely gifted; though he evaded, more than sought, the
celebrity attaching to the profession of literature, writing only, it
may be truly said of him—
“... in numbers
For the numbers came.”
He never put forward his own works for publication, and it was only
towards the close of his life that his consent was obtained for such
publication. During his lifetime, many of his pieces in prose and in
verse were printed and circulated in Paris and in London, where, at
the Courts of Charles II. and of William III., forty years of his
life were spent; but these were pirated productions, surreptitiously
issued by his “friends,” to whom he occasionally confided his
compositions, and they, for their own gain, sold them to the
booksellers, who eagerly sought them. These pieces were altogether
unfaithful to their originals, being altered to suit the particular
sentiments of readers, and added to, in order to increase the bulk of
the volumes. The style of St Evrémond’s writings has been the subject
of encomium and warm appreciation from numerous learned critics and
litterateurs, notably St Beuve and Dryden.
One contemporary editor, withholding his name, content with styling
himself merely “A Person of Honour,” has, at all events, yielded
due homage to St Evrémond’s character and genius. Commenting on the
essays which have come within his ken, he writes—
“Their fineness of expression, delicacy of thought are united with
the ease of a gentleman, the exactness of a scholar, and the good
sense of a man of business. It is certain,” he adds, “that the
author is thoroughly acquainted with the world, and has conversed
with the best sort of men to be found in it.”
To this may be added the praise of Dryden—
“There is not only a justness in his conceptions, which is the
foundation of good writing, but also a purity of language, and a
beautiful turn of words, so little understood by modern writers.”
Agreeable, witty, an excellent conversationalist, and of real
amiability of character and disposition, St Evrémond’s aim in life
was to enjoy it. Indolently inclined, he accepted the ills and
contrarieties of existence, finding even in them some soul of good.
Always fond of animals, he surrounded himself in later years with
cats and dogs, holding them eminently sympathetic and amusing; and
he was wont to say that in order to divert the uneasinesses of old
age, it was desirable to have before one’s eyes something alive and
animated.
He possessed enough money for comfortable maintenance from several
sources. Both Charles II. and William III. settled “gratifications”
on him. His creed was a formless one, but he was no atheist, for
all the charge of it laid to him. He was, on the contrary, quick to
rebuke the profanity and laxity of mockers. He himself sums up his
religion in these lines—
“Justice and Charity supply the place
Of rigid penance and a formal face.
His piety without inflicted pains
Flows easy, and austerity disdains.
God only is the object of his care,
Whose goodness leaves no room for black despair.
Within the bosom of His providence
He places his repose, his bliss and sure defence.”
His writings were voluminous, flowing from his pen as a labour he
delighted in. Their themes were varied, brought from the rich stores
of his mind, his most enduring and favourite subjects being classical
Latin lore, and the drama of his own day, lustrous with great names
in France, as in the country of his adoption.
Such, and much more, was St Evrémond the man of letters, and besides,
he was a skilful and gallant soldier, distinguished for his brilliant
sword-play, when he entered upon the exercises preparatory for his
military career. In that capacity he won the approval and friendship
of the Duke d’Enghien, fighting by the prince’s side at Rocroi and
Nordlingen; though later a breach occurred in their relations, when
St Evrémond indulged in some raillery at his expense. The great man
vastly enjoyed persiflage of the sort where the shafts were levelled
at others; but he brooked none of them aimed at himself, and St
Evrémond was deprived of his lieutenancy.
Sometimes the wit carried a more flattering note, and once when
disgrace shadowed him at Court for having appeared in the Sun-King’s
presence in a _pourpoint_ of a fashion not quite up to latest date,
he said to His Majesty—“Sire, away from you, one is not merely
unhappy: one also becomes ridiculous.” The conceit wiped away St
Evrémond’s disfavour. He was a friend of several of the other
renowned soldiers of his time, Turenne among them. It was one of
Condé’s great delights to be read to by St Evrémond. The duke took
pleasure in the lighter classics. Petronius had its attractions for
him, as it had for the society generally of the time; but he would
have none of Rabelais, finding the grossness of the Curé of Meudon
intensely distasteful, and refusing to listen to the adventures of
Gargantua and Pantagruel and Grandgousier, and all their tribe,
he insisted on the book being thrown aside. The merry romances of
Petronius, or, at least, attributed to that “_Elegantiæ Arbiter_” of
a pagan court, while ill adapted as milk for babes, as perhaps even
for the more advanced in years, were not soiled with the lowermost
grossness of the Christian man’s pen, and they were not without
appeal to the students of the classic literature opened up by the
Renaissance, even as the milder licence of Boccaccio charmed.
Truly, if the times were peculiar, it cannot be said of them that
they were stagnant; and in movement and activity, the present century
bears them some sort of comparison; though beyond this the parallel
fails, to the winning of the days of Ninon. _Autres temps, autres
mœurs_, and while there may be more veneer of morality in these
present years of grace than then, the question remains whether the
sense of it is deeper and more widely observed. It is one, however,
outside the limits of these pages. Only that the aroma and delicacy
of educated social intercourse do not permeate society as in that
time is undoubted. Of course the impression existing in some minds
of the widespread canker of profligacy and licentiousness then
openly prevailing, is perverting of facts, since punctilio and the
Court etiquette of the most punctilious of monarchs would not, and
could not, have countenanced it. Such licence was indulged in by,
and confined, as it is now, to a certain section of the “smart”
community, and this possibly no such narrow one; but at least it
was veiled then by certain elements of good taste, and some womanly
graces now far to seek. Not then, as now, the motor craze made
existence uglier; then as not now, the bold, inane stares and painted
faces of many of the gentler sex frequenting the highways and byways,
were mostly screened by masks, and an awkward gait was mantled. Some
cultivation of expression, and a little more sense, if not wit,
graced the tongues now devoted to slang and the misuse of words which
hang about the higher education; while the clamour of ill-advised
women without doors was unknown. The comments of a recent French
writer on the charm of life in those past days, are too valuable
to be laid aside unrecorded. “The keen intellects of the time,” he
writes, “caught a glimpse of everything, desired everything, and
grasped eagerly at every new idea. Only those,” he goes on to say,
quoting Talleyrand, “could realise the joy of being alive. The
childish present-day philosophy of optimism and effort fails to lend
life a charm it never knew before. The most insignificant gallant
of the Court of Louis experienced more varied sensations than any
rough-rider or industrial king has ever been able to procure for
himself.” Admittedly, the evils of the time cried aloud for redress
of wrongs which were all to be washed away later by the river of
blood; but these had been more ameliorated than aggravated by the
scholarship of thoughtful writers. Wit, and the sense of beauty
and delicacy of expression, carried, not unfrequently it is true,
to affectations and absurdity, was the order of the day, binding
men and women in links of an intellectual sympathy, whose pure gold
was unalloyed by baser metal. Those _réunions_ in the salons of
the great ladies, must have been delightful, thronged as they were
with distinguished men, and with women, many of them beautiful,
_spirituelle_, or both. But for the sparkle of true wit, the music
of sweet voices, the ripple of verse and epigram, the popularity
of those gatherings would not have been so long maintained. The
atmosphere of them was sweet with the lighter learning of old
Rome and Greece, and the gaiety of graceful modern rhymes, or the
sentiment of the latest sonnet. The passing of centuries had now
left far behind the barbaric clash of warfare, and widened the old
limitations of mediævalism and Scholasticism. From the hour the cruel
knife of Ravaillac stilled the noble heart of the great Henri, the
times had ripened to the harvest of a literature resplendent with
promise of illustrious names.
Ever zealous for the glory of France, Richelieu founded the Académie
Française; and later the college of the Sorbonne, where now he lies
magnificently entombed, was rebuilt by him, and devoted to its old
purpose of a centre of learning; and as of old, and as ever, men
thronged from near and from afar to Paris for the study of art and
learning, and to pay such homage to the modern Muses and enjoy their
smiles, as good fortune might allow.
Amid such environment it was, that Ninon embarked upon the stream
of the life she had elected to follow, hoping to pass, as indeed
she did, through the years serenely and in fair content. If now and
again some minor questions of spirit troubled her—conscience it
could scarcely be called, since by the lights she had chosen to guide
her, conscience could hardly be reproachful—it was but passingly.
Yet the tale goes of the visits of a Man in Black, a most mysterious
personage, who at his first interview, when she was about eighteen
years old, brought her a phial containing a rose-coloured liquid,
of which a little, a mere drop, went a very long way. It was the
recipe for prolonged youthfulness, and certainly must have been very
efficacious. It was, he said, to be mixed with a great deal of pure
water, quite as much as a good-sized bath would contain—and a bath
of pure water is, of course, in itself a very healthful sort of
thing. Many a year went by before the Man in Black—or one so like
him as to be his very double—came again, and Ninon was prone to
shrink at the remembrance of him. When he did come, it was to inform
her that some years of this life still lay before her; and then for
the third time that Man in Black presented himself, and—But the cry
is a far one to seventy years hence, and during that time, as far
as Ninon was concerned, he remained in his own place, wherever that
might be; and if, after all, he had been but a dream, in any case the
shadow of his sable garb does not appear to have been very constantly
cast upon the mirror of her existence. That was bright with love
and friendship, the love and friendship of both sexes, and truly if
in love she was frankly fickle _à merveille_, in friendship she was
constant and unchanging. Ever following the dying parental counsel,
she was fastidious in the choice of the aspirants to her favours. In
her relations with women and men alike, honest and honourable and
full of a kindly charm which made her exceptionally _bonne camarade_.
It was small wonder that the salon of Mademoiselle Ninon de L’Enclos
was a centre of foregathering greatly sought after.
CHAPTER IV
A “Delicious Person”—Voiture’s Jealousy—A Tardy
Recognition—Coward Conscience—A Protestant Pope—The Hôtel de
Rambouillet—St Evrémond—The Duel—Nurse Madeleine—Cloistral
Seclusion and Jacques Callot—“Merry Companions Every One”—and One
in Particular.
Six years had passed since as girl and boy Ninon and Marsillac had
parted at Loches. At sixteen years old he had entered the army, and
was now Monsieur le Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld, returned to Paris
invalided by a serious wound received in the Valtellina warfare.
Handsome, with somewhat pensive, intellectual features, chivalrous
and amiable, he was “a very parfite gentle knight,” devoted to the
service of the queen, which sorely interfered with his military
promotion: devotion to Anne of Austria was ever to meet the hatred of
the cardinal, and to live therefore in peril of life.
The daring young hoyden of Loches was now a graceful, greatly admired
woman of the world, welcomed and courted in the ranks of the society
to which her birth entitled her.
It was quite possible that the change in her appearance was
sufficiently great to warrant de la Rochefoucauld’s failure to
recognise her in the salon of Madame de Rambouillet when he passed
her, seated beside her chaperon, the Duchesse de la Ferté—not,
however, without marking her beauty; and he inquired of the man
with whom he was walking who the “delicious person” was. The
gentleman did not know. It was the first time, he believed, that
the lady had been seen in the brilliant company. The impressionable
young prince lost little time in securing himself an introduction,
further economising it by expressing his sentiments of admiration so
ardently, that they touched on a passionate and tender declaration.
Ninon accepted this with the equanimity distinguishing her; she
was already accustomed to a pronounced homage very thinly veiled.
It was to her as the sunshine is to the birds of the air, almost
indispensable; but she found the avowals of his sentiments slightly
disturbing in the reflection that Marsillac had altogether forgotten
his Ninon. That, in fact, he had done long since. The fidelity of de
la Rochefoucauld in those days, was scarcely to be reckoned on even
by hours. Already he was in the toils of Ninon’s beautiful rival,
Marion Delorme, a woman Ninon herself describes as “adorably lovely.”
Beauty apart, the very antithesis of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, weaker
of will, more pliably moulded, warm-hearted, impulsive, romantically
natured, apt to be drawn into scrapes and mistakes which Ninon was
astute enough rarely to encounter. The two women lived within a
stone’s throw of each other, and it needed hardly the gossip of the
place for Ninon to observe that Marsillac was but one more of the
vast company of arch-deceivers. It was Voiture, the poet and renowned
reformer of the French tongue, who hinted the fact to Ninon with,
no doubt, all his wonted grace of expression, further inspired by
jealousy of the handsome young captain, that at the very moment he
was speaking, de la Rochefoucauld was spending the afternoon in
Marion’s company, _en tête-à-tête_.
Thereupon, linking her arm in Voiture’s, Ninon begged him to conduct
her to Number 6, rue des Tournelles. The poet, vastly enjoying the
excitement his words had evoked, readily complied, and arrived at
Marion’s apartments where the Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld was duly
discovered. Then broke the storm, ending in Marsillac’s amazement
when Ninon demanded how it was that he had not discovered in her
his old friend Ninon de L’Enclos. Then, in the joy and delight of
recognition, Marsillac, forgetting the very presence of her rival,
sprang to her side, and offering her his arm, sallied forth back to
Ninon’s abode, spending the rest of the day in recalling old times
at Loches, and in transports of happiness. Only late into the night,
long after Marsillac had left her presence and she was lost in
dreamful sleep, it brought the faces of her mother and of St Vincent
de Paul vividly before her, gazing with sad reproachful eyes; and
with her facile pen she recorded the memory of that day, fraught with
its conflict of spirit and desire.
“O sweet emotions of love! blessed fusion of souls! ineffable joys
that descend upon us from Heaven! Why is it that you are united to
the troubles of the senses, and that at the bottom of the cup of
such delight remorse is found?”
Whether through the silence of the small hours any echoes touched
her vivid imagination of the Man in Black’s mocking laughter, no
record tells; but in any case, with the fading of the visions, the
disturbing reflections were quickly lost in the joy of Marsillac’s
society, as also in that of St Evrémond—the very soul of gaiety and
wit and every delightful characteristic.
“How happy could I be with either,
Were t’other dear charmer away,”
says Captain MacHeath, and there were days together that Marsillac
did absent himself. The grand passion of his life was not with either
of the two women, or with any of the fair dames then immediately
around. They were merely the toys of his gallant and amiable nature,
and at that time he was deeply absorbed in the duties of his
profession, and his ardent devotion to the queen’s cause. It was,
indeed, one most difficult and dangerous, ever facing, as it did, the
opposition of Richelieu, who saw in every friend and partisan of Anne
of Austria Spanish aggression and a foe to France.
Some cause there surely was. Political and religious strife raged
fast and hotly. From the outset—that is, at least, as far back
as the time when the Calvinists banded together to resist the
Catholics—it was not a question alone of reform or of change in
religious conviction. It could not have remained at that: the whole
framework of government would have been shaken to its foundation
had the Reformed party ultimately triumphed; but the passing of
a century had wrought startling changes. There were many of the
Catholic nobility whose policy was as much to side with the Huguenot
party, as it had been the wisdom of the Protestant Henri IV. to adopt
the Catholic creed. Richelieu, in conquering Rochelle, showed the
vanquished Huguenots so much leniency, that public clamour nicknamed
him “the Cardinal of Rochelle,” and “the Protestant Pope,” and he
laughed, and said that there was more such scandal ahead; since he
intended to achieve a marriage between the king’s sister, Henrietta
Maria, and the non-Roman Catholic king, Charles I. of England.
To hedge his country from the encroachment of Spain was the life-long
aim and endeavour of Richelieu, and he was ruthless in the means.
The eastern and northern frontiers of France were constantly menaced
and invaded by Austria and Spain and their allies, and to and fro to
Paris came the great captains and soldiers engaged in the constant
warfare against the enemy—men of long lineage, brave, skilful in
arms, dauntless in action, and certainly no laggards in love when
opportunity afforded; and they returned loaded with honour, covered
with glory, and often seriously wounded, to be welcomed and made
much of in the salons of noble and titled women, like the Duchesse
de Rambouillet, and other _réunions_ scarcely less celebrated and
brilliant, where the fine art of wit, and the _culte_ of poetry and
belles-lettres, mingled with a vast amount of love-making, and at
least as much exquisite imitation of it, were assiduously conducted.
It was the hall-mark of good society, a virtue indispensable, and
to be assumed if it did not really exist, and too greatly valued
for other virtues to be set great store by. So that the line of
demarcation between women of unimpeachable repute, and those
following a wider primrose path grew to be so very thinly defined as
sometimes to be invisible and disregarded. Notably in the refined and
elegant salon of Ninon de L’Enclos were to be counted many ladies of
distinction and modes of life untouched by the faintest breath of
scandal, who loved her and sought her friendship, as there were men
who were quite content to worship from afar, and to hold themselves
her friends pure and simple to life’s end.
Who of her admirers was the first winner of the smiles of a more
tender intimacy, is not more than surmise, remaining recorded only
in invisible ink in a _lettre de cachet_ whose seal is intact. If
the friend of her early girlhood at Loches is indicated, it may be
intentionally misleading. Count Coligny was an acquaintance at whose
coming Ninon’s bright eyes acquired yet greater lustre, and de la
Rouchefoucauld’s reappearance had not yet taken place—“_ce cher
Marsillac_,” whose devotion, even while it lasted, was tinctured
with divided homage, and was to dissolve altogether, in the way of
love sentiments, in the sunshine of his deep undying attachment
to Madame de Longueville. There was, however, no rupture in this
connection; the burden of the old song was simply reversed, and if
first Marsillac came for love, it was in friendship that he and
Ninon parted, giving place to the adoration of St Evrémond—bonds
which were never broken, and whose warm sentiments the waters of the
English Channel, flowing between for forty years, could not efface.
The effect might have been even the contrary one, and absence made
the heart grow fonder, though the temperaments of Ninon and of St
Evrémond were undoubtedly generously free of any petty malignance and
small jealousies.
Monsieur de L’Enclos had survived his wife only by one year. He died
of a wound received in an encounter arising from a private quarrel.
Had he recovered, it would probably have been to lose his head by the
axe, paying the penalty of the law for some years past rigorously
enforced against duelling. The scene of such encounter being most
frequently the open space of the Place Royale, the locality of the
cardinal’s own house—as it was of Ninon and of Marion Delorme—so
that his stern eyes were constantly reminded of the murderous
conflicts. The law, having been enacted by Henri IV., had fallen
into abeyance, until the specially sanguinary duel between the Comte
de Bussy and the Comte de Bouteville, in 1622, when de Bouteville
mortally wounded de Bussy, and Richelieu inflicted the penalty of
decapitation on de Bouteville and on Rosmadec his second, as he
did on others who disobeyed; so that the evil was scotched almost
to stamping out. It was in this fashion that Richelieu made his
power felt among the nobility and wealthier classes, and let it be
understood that the law was the law for all.
Almost immediately following on the death of Monsieur de L’Enclos,
came that of Ninon’s old nurse, Madeleine—whose kind soul and
devoted attachment were in no wise ill-affected by the small nips
of _eau de vie_ she inclined to—and just about the same time died
Madame de Montaigu, her aunt at Loches; and thus within six months
she had lost the few of her nearest and dearest from childhood,
and she felt so saddened and desolate and heart-broken, that she
formed the resolution of giving up the world and being a nun after
all—yearning for the consolation which religion promises of reunion,
and a fulness of sympathy not to be found in ordinary and everyday
environments! Scarcely as yet with her foot on womanhood’s bank
of the river of life, the warm kindly nature of Ninon was chilled
and dulled by sorrow and regret; and one evening, at the Hôtel de
Rambouillet, in her ardent desire to find some peace and rest of
spirit, she entered into conversation with the Père d’Orléans, a
renowned Jesuit, on the subject of religious belief—but his best
eloquence failed in convincing her of its efficacy.
The right of private judgment, ever one of her strongest
characteristics, asserted itself, and she declared herself
unconvinced. “Then, mademoiselle,” said the ecclesiastic, “until you
find conviction, offer Heaven your incredulity.”
But while words failed, her heart still impelled her to the idea
of the cloistered life, and she went to seek it in Lorraine, at a
convent of Recollettes sisters near Nancy. There were many houses of
this Order in the duchy. The one sought entrance to by Ninon, was
under the patronage of St Francis, and she was received with effusion
by the Reverend Mother, a charming lady, herself still youthful. She
had not, however, been there many days, relegated to a small cell,
whose diminutive casement looked upon some immediately-facing houses,
before she became impressed with the idea that, great as the desire
might be to snatch in her a brand from the consuming of the wicked
world, it was greater still for the little fortune she was known to
possess; and with the passing of time, the gentle assuager of more
poignant grief, she was beginning to feel less attracted towards
the conventual mode of existence, and to wonder whether she really
had the vocation for it. Meantime, the old spirit of adventure was
strongly stirring her to defer the recital of a formidable list of
_Aves_ and penitential psalms, in favour of watching a window facing
her loophole of a lattice, through which she could see a man busily
engaged with burin and etching implements. While this in itself
was not uninteresting, the interest was increased tenfold, when
she contrived to discover that he was the already famous Jacques
Callot, the engraver; and very little time was lost before the two
had established means of communication by the aid of a long pole,
to which they tied their manuscript interchange of messages and
ideas—which culminated in Ninon’s descent by a ladder of ropes from
the lattice, and flight from the convent.
More sober chronicles relate of Jacques Callot, that through all
the curious vicissitudes and adventures of his earlier life, he
remained blameless and of uncorrupted morality. It appears certain
that his real inclination was ever for such paths, and the romantic
love-affair which ended in his union with the woman he adored, was
calculated to keep him in them; in which case the attributed version
of his _liaison_ with Ninon must be accepted with something over
and above its grain of salt, and allowed to lie by. That he was a
fearless, high-minded man, as well as a great artist, stands by his
honoured name in a golden record; for when the imbroglio occurred
between Louis XIII. and the Duke of Lorraine—in which, under the
all-conquering cardinal prime-minister, France was the victor—Callot
was commanded to commemorate the siege with his pencil—he refused.
Callot was a Lorrainer, and the duke was his patron and liege-lord,
and Callot refused to turn traitor, and prostitute his gift by
recording the defeat of the duke, preferring to run the very close
chance of death for high treason sooner than comply. If, as it is
asserted, Ninon obtained for him the pardon of Richelieu, by virtue
of some former favour or service she had done the cardinal, leaving
him as yet in her debt for it, all was well that so well ended;
and it adds one more to the list of Ninon’s generous acts, never
neglected where she had the power to perform them for those she loved.
Whether it is an undoubted fact that the fascination of Ninon—so
absolutely all-potent as she herself claims for it—did tempt Callot
temporarily even from his allegiance to the love of the woman he won
under such romantic circumstances, it is certain that she mercifully
decided to leave him in tranquillity with his wife in Lorraine,
returning to Paris in company with a little contingent of her old
friends and admirers who had been engaged in fighting for their king
along the north-eastern borderlands. Paris was so rich in convents,
that the question irresistibly suggests itself why she should have
travelled that hundred or so of miles to Nancy to take the veil.
Possibly, knowing that Coligny, Scarron, Gondi, de la Rochefoucauld,
St Evrémond, and other _bons camarades_ were all in that direction,
she was prompted to go thither to take final farewells of them before
she stepped over the threshold masculine foot must not desecrate;
but in this instance it was the propositions of man that triumphed
in the face of every spiritual consideration, and all idea of the
contemplative life was flung to the four winds in the delight of the
old companionships and renewal of the _joie de vivre_. The reunion
was celebrated in an impromptu feast, of reason and recherché dishes,
and flow of sparkling wine, and unrestrained merriment and sallies
of wit; for where Scarron and St Evrémond and de la Rochefoucauld
were, wit could but abound. Next day they all started for Paris,
transported thither by matchlessly swift-footed post-horses, Ninon
choosing for her travelling companion _en tête-à-tête_, Coligny;
and when the two arrived at rue des Tournelles, they did not part
company; but arranged to retire to the _rus in urbe_ of her Picpus
dwelling, away by Charenton, where they established _ménage_ in the
small but beautiful old house, once the dwelling of Henri Quatre
and the fair Gabrielle, with one maid-servant, and one man servitor
Ninon called Perrote, who had been the faithful valet of Monsieur
de L’Enclos. Here the two passed an idyllic life, where more
material enjoyments were diversified by intellectual conversation,
sometimes profane, but more often taking a turn so far sacred, as to
include the points of doctrine upon which Catholic and Protestant
differed. Coligny, as a descendant of the great murdered Huguenot
leader, was a Protestant; and while Richelieu treated the Huguenots
socially with indulgence, he would not tolerate them as a political
party, and to be of the Reformed, was utterly to lose chance of
advancement—and Ninon was ambitious for her lover, and hence the
religious discussions and her endeavours to inoculate him with clear
conceptions of Catholic teaching. Coligny, however, was apt to show
signs of boredom on these occasions, and to yawn so portentously,
that she had to desist, leaving him heretical still, when one morning
the Picpus _maisonette_ was invaded by messengers from Richelieu,
accompanied by halberdiers from the Bastille, who demanded the
delivering up of the young man’s sword, and bore him off a prisoner
to the horrible old prison, on the charge of neglect of military
duty. Once again Ninon’s intercessions with Richelieu procured
release and restoration; but Coligny was ungrateful and jealous of
the red-robed priest, and would-be _galant homme_, and passing away
from Ninon’s presence, he never entered it again, and in a very few
weeks was married to the sister of the Duc de Luxembourg, an alliance
possibly already entered upon at an earlier date, and the real ground
of his rupture with Ninon.
She soon found balm for the inflicted wounds of Coligny’s
ingratitude, in the ardent admiration of the son of the Marquise de
Rambouillet, seeing in him only the one absurd defect of desiring
unchanging constancy, and on this point he was so tiresome that she
was driven to promise fidelity for three months—“An eternity,” said
Ninon, ever mocking at love, which she ranked far below friendship.
[Illustration: FRANÇOIS VIDUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Né en M·DC·XIII M en M·DC·LXXX
_Peint en émail par Petitot_
_Gravé en 1770 par PP Choffard. Desel Grav. de L. M. Imp. et du Roi
d’Espagne._
_To face page 48._]
The greatest apologist of the society of the seventeenth century
could hardly describe it as strait-laced; except by comparison with
the first half of the one succeeding; and if some of the _grandes
dames_ of the circle in which she moved held aloof and deprecated
the unconventionalities of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, for the most
part they accepted them, more or less silently, and treated her
with cordiality, delighting in her friendship, and fascinated by
the elegance and dignity with which she conducted the hospitalities
of her crowded salons. The prevailing charm of one graced with the
refinement of no surface education, and accomplishments never unduly
self-asserted, shone through the gentle gaiety of her demeanour. She
was absolutely innocent of any shadow of self-interest; taste alone
guided her inclinations, her competence protected her from greed,
and natural generosity was ever prompting her to kindly actions.
Once, at a later day, when Anne of Austria was beginning to settle
into the calm austerities of maturer years, and urged by some prudes
about her, she sent orders for the temporary retirement of Ninon into
a convent, leaving her to select the one she preferred—the tale goes
that she expressed her gratitude to the exempt of the guards who
delivered the message, for the choice so left her, and that she would
choose the convent of the Grands Cordeliers, an establishment about
to be suppressed for the scandals attaching to it; but it is far more
probable that the jest originated with some acquaintance; for to make
light of orders from the Court was in no wise according with Ninon’s
code.
That command, however, again reached her at a yet later time, and
then was enforced. In Louis XIII.’s days, Ninon was often a guest
at the Louvre, and on the occasion of one of the State balls given
there, she was present with Rambouillet for her cavalier in chief. As
she was entering her carriage to return home, she felt a pull at her
mantle, and turning, she saw beside her “a little man, clad entirely
in black velvet, whose smile was mocking and full of sarcasm, and his
eyes shone like carbuncles. Rambouillet, seeing my terror,” she wrote
later, “demanded of the man what he wanted; but the Man in Black
silenced him with an imperious gesture, and said to me, in a tone of
profound melancholy—‘You are proud of your beauty, mademoiselle,
and you are right, for it is marvellous. But alas! all these charms
will one day fade. The rosy hues of your skin will die out, age will
come, and bring its wrinkles. Ah, believe me! Beware! Endeavour to
hinder this misfortune, for afterwards there will be nothing left to
you.’ So saying, he gravely saluted me, and disappeared among the
arches of the colonnade.”[1]
CHAPTER V
An Excursion to Gentilly—“_Uraniæ Sacrum_”—César and
Ruggieri—The rue d’Enfer and the Capucins—Perditor—The
Love-philtre—Seeing the Devil—“Now You are Mine!”
Ninon’s pledge of eternal fidelity to Rambouillet did not hinder
other friendships; and about this time she one day made an excursion
to Gentilly with the Comte de Lude, intent on visiting the great
magician, Perditor, who conducted there his famous incantations. She
chose de Lude for her companion on this occasion, because he was an
utter disbeliever. The adventure was prompted by the craze, ever
latent in society, and then recently kindled to fever-heat, for magic
and occultism. The theme, as old almost as the ages, is ever new,
and likely to remain so until the mysteries of life and death are
revealed. And some short time previously, the rumour had circulated
that a man named Febroni, intensely hated by Richelieu, was
endeavouring to compass the cardinal’s destruction, by causing a wax
image of him to be made and exposed to a slow fire, and as the image
melted, so the minister’s life would dwindle to the death. This was,
of course, no new device of witchcraft and _diablerie_; but it served
to arouse intense interest and curiosity, and the air was as full
of sorcery and demonology as when the first Ruggieri practised his
arts for Catherine de Médicis, and watched the stars from the old
tower-top of Blois, the observatory of the terrible queen, “_Uraniæ
Sacrum_.”
Some half-dozen years before Ninon was born, a man named César and
another Ruggieri, probably taking the old magician for sponsor, had
been notorious as potent masters of the “Black Art.” That they were
credited with possessing unlimited command over the elements, and to
produce thunder and lightning at will, was but a small part of his
power. He could manufacture love-potions to render the indifferent
one enamoured of the wooer, and insidious poisons to destroy a hated
human obstacle, and perform many services of the like nature for a
price, but the fees were startlingly high.
An indiscretion, only in a measure connected with his profession,
brought César inside the walls of the Bastille. He had, it appeared,
been accustomed to attend the Witches’ Sabbath, and meeting there
a great Court lady, he had, he said, induced her to listen too
graciously to his soft speeches. The boasts, after his release from
the old fortress, brought him condign punishment at the hands, it was
said, of his Satanic chief, furious with jealousy it might be. It was
on a wild March night that he came and went again with hideous din
and clatter, leaving César strangled in his bed; and then making his
way to the abode of Ruggieri, he despatched him in the same manner.
There were some ready to contend that less supernatural agency might
be answerable for these acts. On the other hand it was well known
that the devil was no stranger in Paris, having once resided in a
street on the left bank of the Seine, which was named after him, the
rue d’Enfer. From here he was at last ejected, thanks to a happy
thought on the part of the city authorities, who handed the ground
over to the Capucin brothers, and the foul fiend was heard of no
more in that quarter. César extenuated his offence of magic by the
assertion that he “was pestered to death by young courtiers and other
young Parisians to show him the devil,” and not seeing why he should
have the trouble of doing so for nothing, he set his price at forty
and fifty pistoles, leaving it a matter of choice whether they would
face the terrible ordeal to its ending, or take flight, leaving the
pistoles of course behind them. It was this latter course which had
been mostly adopted.
And now, at Gentilly, dwelt one magician named Perditor, whose power
was reported to be greater than that of any of his predecessors;
since he possessed the secret of concocting a philtre capable of
maintaining a woman’s beauty and freshness to extreme age. It was
the idea of obtaining this inestimable thing, which determined Ninon
to pay a visit to the mighty Perditor. The chronicles of the time
confirm the facts related by Ninon of her adventure, which are best
told in the fashion of her own experiences:
“On entering the village, we inquired for the dwelling of the
celebrated necromancer, and a guide presented himself to conduct
us thither. We soon arrived in front of a yawning cavern which
was surrounded by large deep ditches. Our guide made a signal, and
immediately a man dressed in red appeared on the opposite side of the
ditches, and asked us what we wanted.
“‘I wish for a philtre,’ I replied, ‘which will make my beauty last
the length of my life.’
“‘And I,’ said the count, ‘wish to see the devil.’
“‘You shall both be satisfied,’ replied the red man, as calmly as if
we had asked the most natural thing in the world. Then he lowered a
sort of drawbridge across the ditch, and, this crossed, he admitted
us into the cavern, where we soon found ourselves in complete
darkness. I felt not a little nervous.
“‘Do not be afraid,’ said the count to me; ‘I have my sword with
me, a dagger, and two pistols; with them I think I can defy all the
sorcerers in the world.’
“After proceeding for quite five minutes along underground galleries
and passages, we found ourselves in a sort of large circular chamber
hewn out of the solid rock. Some resin torches cast a fitful and
gloomy glare up into its vaulted roof. At one end of this hall, upon
a platform draped entirely in black, was seated a personage in the
garb of a magician, who appeared to be waiting for us.
“‘That is the Master!’ solemnly said the man in red to us.
“And he left us alone in the presence of the great sorcerer himself.
“‘Approach!’ cried Perditor, addressing us in a terrible voice. ‘What
do you wish?’
“‘I wish,’ murmured I, in a trembling voice, ‘a philtre to preserve
to me my youth and beauty all my life.’
“‘Forty crowns. Pay first.’
“Taking out my purse, I laid down five louis, appalled by the defiant
fierceness of his tones. The count did not wait for the questioning
of the man on the platform.
“‘For my part, Sir Necromancer,’ he said, ‘I feel greatly curious to
see the devil. How much do you want for showing him to me?’
“‘One hundred livres.’
“‘Peste! At that price what fine benefices you must be able to
bestow.’
“The lord of the cavern vouchsafed no reply. He took the money from
the count, which he put into a big purse hanging at his side, along
with my louis. That done, he laid his hand upon a huge bell, which
sounded as loud as the bourdon strokes of Notre-Dame tower-bell. At
this signal, which nearly deafened us, two nymph-like young women,
fairly pretty, dressed in white and crowned with flowers, rose from
the ground near. Perditor pointed me out to them, handed them an
empty crystal phial, and then again struck his fearful bell. The
nymphs disappeared. I gathered that they had gone to mix my philtre.
“‘And now,’ continued the necromancer, turning to us, ‘you are both
decided that you will see the devil?’
“‘Very decided,’ said the count.
“‘Your name?’
“‘But is it necessary to give it to you, sir?’ stammered I.
“‘It is indispensable.’
“‘It is Anne de L’Enclos.’
“‘And I,’ hastened to add my companion, ‘I am called George de
Sandrelles, Comte de Lude.’
“‘You swear never to reveal that which is about to take place before
your eyes?’
“‘We swear it.’
“‘You promise not to be afraid, and not to invoke heaven or the
saints?’
“‘We promise.’
“The magician rose; he took a long wand of ebony, approached us, and
traced a large circle with it in the dust, inscribed with a number of
cabalistic figures. Then he said to us—
“‘You can still go away—are you afraid?’
“I wanted to answer in the affirmative, but the count cried in
resolute tones—
“‘Afraid of the devil? For shame! What do you take us for? Get on
with you.’
“And at the same instant we heard thunderous peals—the voice of
the magician sounding above the tumult. He gesticulated, shouted,
and broke, in some unknown tongue, into a torrent of diabolic
invocations. It made one’s hair stand on end. Terror seized me. I
clung convulsively to the count’s arm, and implored him to leave the
frightful place.
“‘The time is past for it,’ cried the sorcerer; ‘do not cross the
circle, or you are dead.’
“Suddenly, to the noise of the thunder, succeeded a sound like the
rattling of chains that were being dragged along the depths of the
cavern. Then we heard dismal howlings. The necromancer’s contortions
continued, and his cries redoubled. He uttered barbaric words, and
appeared to be in fits of frenzy. In the twinkling of an eye, we were
enveloped in flames.
“‘Look!’ cried Perditor.
“A cry of terror broke from me, as I saw in the midst of this wild
whirlwind of fire a huge black goat, loaded with glowing red chains.
The howlings grew more fearful, the flames burst into frightful
intensity, and a troop of hideous demons, also loaded with chains,
began to dance round the goat, waving their torches, and uttering
furious shouts and yells. The goat reared on to his hind legs, butted
with his horns, and appeared to be the very genius of the infernal
scene.
“‘Ah! pardieu!’ cried de Lude, ‘the comedy is well played, I own; but
I am curious to see the coulisses, and to examine the costumes of the
actors closer.’
“He grasped his pistols, and made as if he was going to step over
the circle; but at a sign from the magician, all the flames were
extinguished, the goat and the demons disappeared. We were plunged
once more into profound darkness. At the same moment strong arms
seized us, we were dragged hurriedly along the passages, and flung
outside the cavern.
“I was only too glad of this unlooked-for ending up, and did not ask
to go back and get my philtre, and I willingly left the magician in
possession of my five louis.
“The count was not at all of the same mind. He insisted on
penetrating to the solving of the enigma. We had been the victims
of a hateful and odious charlatanism. I did not feel so convinced
of that as he was, and the abominable spectacle would not quit my
imagination. For the rest of that day, and the following night, I saw
nothing but devils dancing and howling amid the flames.”
* * * * *
And then it was just before break of dawn, between her sleeping and
waking, came once again the Man in Black. He smilingly asserted
himself to Ninon, to be, beyond all doubt and juggling hocus-pocus,
his Satanic Majesty, the real “Simon Pure.” In calm, grave tones he
offered her the choice of the three great gifts this world has to
bestow—riches, grandeur, beauty—enduring beauty till all-destroying
Death should claim her, and with only a momentary hesitation, Ninon
chose beauty. Then in two crystal phials, like the one the charlatans
had yesterday cheated her out of in the Gentilly cavern, he handed
her the wondrous liquid—limpid, delicately rose-tinted; enough to
last the longest lifetime, since one drop only in a wine-glass of
water, to be taken after her morning bath, was all that was needed.
First, however, he produced his tablets, and writing a few words on
one of the pages, he bade her set her signature beneath. “Very good,”
he said, when she had done this. As he placed the phials in her
hands, “Now you are mine,” and he added, as he laid his hand on her
shoulder, that her health would remain almost unbroken through all
the coming years, troops of friends and love would be ever with her,
and after death the memory of her would be unfading. Once more she
would see him—years hence. “Then beware and tremble; you will not
have three more days to live.”
And so he disappeared.[2]
In the course of their brief conversation, the Man in Black disclosed
to Ninon the manner in which his impudent imitator produced his
Mumbo-Jumbo terrors. Like the Comte de Lude, he did not deny them
effect; but he held them so essentially vulgar, that it seemed
marvellous to him how the fellow succeeded in imposing on refined
and educated clients. Moreover, they had not even the recommendation
of novelty. Perditor had, he explained, contrived merely to get
knowledge and possession of the tricks and traps of the long since
strangled César, who during his incarceration in the Bastille had
entertained his gaolers with an account of the way he played his
tricks, performed apparently at Gentilly also at that time and
therefore rendering the way the easier to his successor, since the
old quarry he had utilised and patterned about with ditches still
remained. Perditor’s ceremonial was identically the same with
César’s. The frightful cries he uttered were the signal for six men
hideously masked and garbed, he kept concealed in the cavern, to
spring forward, flinging out flashes of flame, and waving torches
of burning resin. Amid the flames was to be seen the monstrous
goat, loaded with thick iron chains painted vermilion, to give the
appearance of being red-hot. On each side, in the obscurity of the
cavern, were placed two huge mastiffs, their heads fastened into
wooden cases, wide at one end, and narrow at the other. Two men
goaded and prodded these two poor animals, which caused them to
utter the most dismal howling, filling the cavern with the appalling
noise, while the goat, a most intelligent beast, and thoroughly
understanding his part, played it to admiration, rattling his chains
and butting his huge horns.
The devil having thus shown himself, two of the men now rush upon the
unfortunate individual, and belabour him black and blue with long
bags of cloth filled full of sand, and then fling him, half-dead,
outside the cavern. “Then the parting advice is given him not to wish
to see the devil again, and he never does, concluded César.”
CHAPTER VI
Nemesis—Ninon’s Theories—Wits and Beaux of the Salons—Found
at Last—“The Smart Set”—A Domestic Ménage—Scarron—The Fatal
Carnival—The Bond of Ninon—Corneille and _The Cid_—The
Cardinal’s Jealousy—Enlarging the Borders—Monsieur l’Abbé and the
Capon Leg—The Grey Cardinal—A Faithful Servant.
Ninon’s intrigue with the young Marquis de Rambouillet gave great
offence to Madame de Rambouillet. It sheds a curious light on
the manner of the great world of the time, that the doors of the
marquise’s house remained still open to her, yet so they did remain.
The justly incensed lady contented herself with soliciting an order
from the Court for the young man to rejoin his regiment in Auvergne
without delay; and Ninon was left to console herself elsewhere, and
to avenge as she might her annoyance at the epigrams showered upon
her, not to speak of the severe blame cast upon women of society who
were undeterred by any sense of propriety and the _convenable_—which
she was well aware was mainly levelled at herself. All moral
considerations aside, the breach of good taste is inconceivable
in one who so prided herself, and generally with justice, on the
observation of the general laws governing the people of her class.
The hospitality of the famous mansion in the rue St Thomas du Louvre,
however, was still accorded her, and if it was more chilly than
formerly, Ninon consoled herself by enlisting many who frequented
the brilliant gatherings, on the side of her easy-going philosophy,
and discussing its tenets with amazing frankness.
The women were not many who upheld her arguments; but the men vastly
applauded and seconded her sallies against the theory of Platonic
love. In her opinion, it was an impossible doctrine, and on such
themes she was Madame Oracle, and her beautiful mouth opened to
expound, what dog dare bark? Unless indeed it might be the cardinal.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, one evening when he was present, as he
frequently was, in the Rambouillet salon, and Ninon ventured an
observation not quite to his taste, “I never accept lessons, even
when they issue from such pretty lips as yours.”
The stately mansion of Rambouillet, with its magnificent grand
salon, and blue chamber, the special haunt of the poets, its
daintily furnished smaller chambers, and richly-draped alcoves
and cosy corners, was only one among many houses entertaining the
society of the world which was devoted, or assumed devotion, to art
and literature. There were the Saturdays of Madame de Sablé, and
notably also the receptions of Mademoiselle Scudéri. Mademoiselle de
L’Enclos’ own apartments were thronged on her reception nights with
the company of talented and famous men and women, though that genial
admirer of hers, St Evrémond, once had the temerity to criticise
the beauty, or the lack of it, in the ladies of the _côtérie_. It
might, of course, as he said, arise from mere chance; but otherwise
it was a mistake; since it suggested the idea that Ninon could not
sufficiently prize her own beauty; and on the score of the hidden
compliment the audacity was condoned. After the coolness that
followed upon Ninon’s _liaison_ with the Marquis de Rambouillet, the
society of the salon of the marquise somewhat thinned for awhile;
while the salon of the rue des Tournelles was more thronged than
ever. The _cachet_ that admitted to all these various assemblies
would appear to have been that only of fair breeding and connexions,
and some intellectual pretension, though the supply of that was not
necessarily very great, since the leaven of would-be wits and of
absolute stupidity—the “mostly fools” Carlyle says the world is
peopled with—would seem to have been even curiously large. One and
all, however, were full of ambition to air the rhymes, and often
senseless epigrams and dreary sonnets and conceits, generated in
their miserable brains.
Perhaps the only one of this crowd of triflers who is worth recording
is the Baron de Miranges. In addition to the fact that he was never
known to sit still two consecutive minutes, he was supremely ugly;
marked with the smallpox, he squinted, his chin was awry, his nose
twisted to one side. He was the first to jest at all these defects.
One day he met a man on the Pont Neuf, an entire stranger to him, and
halting before him, Miranges, in a sort of transport of satisfaction,
gave a joyous cry and threw himself upon the individual’s neck,
saying: “Oh, sir! how charmed I am at this meeting, and for what a
number of years I have been looking for you!”
“Indeed?” said the other, in a tone of astonishment. “I do not think
I have the honour of knowing you.”
“No. Unluckily I have met you much too late; but I look at you, I
contemplate you, and I am happy.”
“But why?”
“Yes, yes, indeed,” replied Monsieur de Miranges; “let us embrace
each other again. I have always despaired of ever finding a man
uglier than myself, but now—yes, you are that man.”
Not without justice, Ninon, who about this time had in more ways than
one drawn unfavourable public criticism upon herself, complains that
she was really less culpable, infinitely more decorously behaved
in society, than many of the titled and fashionable dames, whose
behaviour, scandalous as it was, passed unchallenged. They were
constantly promenading in the Place Royale, chattering at the top of
their voices, ogling, smoking, taking snuff, adorning their mantles
and hats with knots of ribbon of various colours, each conveying a
different significance, and generally comporting themselves after
the manner of the lowest of their sex. Ninon de L’Enclos had made a
law unto herself, a law of liberty, and she made no pretence of not
abiding by it; but she rarely sinned in outward decorum, or forgot
the good breeding of her station.
In the matter of de Rambouillet, if she did not acknowledge the
false step, it was probable she was made to feel conscious of it, and
decided soon after to divert public attention to some other topics of
scandal, by absenting herself from Paris for a while and rusticating
at Loches, the estate which her aunt had left her. On reaching le
Mans, she was met by the Marquis de la Châtre—an amiable man for
whom Ninon had sufficient attachment and constancy to allow the good
provincials to imagine they were man and wife, and the two were
widely welcomed and courted.
One evening, at a supper party to which they were invited, she met
Scarron. He arrived in company with some canons from the cathedral,
and to her great surprise she learned from him that he now held a
canonry in le Mans cathedral, bestowed upon him for the assistance
of his pen, than which few were more able than his in Lorraine, in
drawing up a history of the duchy of Lorraine.
To Paul Scarron, the brilliant wit, comic poet, rhymester—so
admired of another erratic genius, Oliver Goldsmith, who translated
his _Roman Comique_—the sunny-natured, in earlier years
scandalously debauched, and always _bon vivant_—brimming with the
overflow of humour that wells from the depths of a sympathetic
temperament—generous, kind-hearted—to:
“Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice,”
are words hardly to be more aptly applied. The sufferings of his
childhood, due to the avarice of his artful stepmother, who contrived
to separate him from his father and get possession of his fortune,
cast him nearly penniless upon the world, when scarcely more than
a child. It was one more instance of the game, ever new, which
relatives intellectually inferior, incited by envy and greed, love
to play upon the unfortunate talented one, and render life one long
misery and struggle at the best, provided sufficient bread is somehow
come upon to retain breath. So much the brave heart and exercise
of his gifts enabled the lad to acquire, and he managed to enter
ecclesiastical ranks; but only to the outermost degree—not, it may
be, aspiring to the priesthood, which hardly could have lost anything
from one whose character and mode of life were so glaringly ill
adapted for the calling. Scarron’s vocation that way was worse than
nil; nevertheless, in that lax time of ecclesiastical law and order,
he obtained the canonry of le Mans cathedral, and thus dignified,
Monsieur l’Abbé Scarron met Ninon again at the supper-table of the
local receiver-general of taxes, and was more ready than ever for
any lengths of wild uproariousness the chance brought him. It came
just then with the Carnival, and Scarron, with one or two companions,
conceived the notion of spreading a big mattress all over with
goose’s feathers and down; then, smearing themselves from head to
foot in honey, they rolled upon the mattress until they were encased
in the feathers so thickly, that the disguise was impenetrable, and
they looked like some hideous monstrosities of the bird-tribe, face
and all covered in the plumage. Passing up the street, followed
by a huge concourse, they made their way to Ninon’s château, and
forced entrance, greatly to the anger of Monsieur de la Châtre, who
quickly discovered who they were, and at once denounced them. The
mob, furious at the thought of a churchman of their own cathedral
indulging in such wild licence, set upon the feathered monsters, and
flinging them down, pommelled and beat the unprotected bodies of the
unfortunate masqueraders, and plucked off every feather, pursuing
them without mercy, until they were compelled to jump into the rushes
of the river for protection. There they were forced to remain for
hours, and two of Scarron’s three companions died from the effects
of the cold immersion, and the violence dealt them. Scarron himself
escaped with breath, but little more. The chill and exposure brought
on an illness from which he never recovered. It crippled him in every
limb, and rendered him, as he himself says, an abridgment of human
suffering—tied to his chair by the contraction of every muscle, in
never-ending pain for all the years to come; yet never losing his
gaiety, and for all the misery he had created for himself, winning
the pity and the money gifts from the Court and from wealthy friends
which enabled him to live in fair affluence.
A short time later the domestic felicity being enjoyed at the Loches
château by Ninon and Monsieur de la Châtre was rudely broken up by a
summons from Monsieur de la Châtre’s family, at Besançon, to repair
to the deathbed of his father. The two parted with real regret, and
so much devotion on the Marquis de la Châtre’s side, that nothing
would content him short of a written and signed promise from Ninon
of eternal fidelity to him. She accordingly wrote on a leaf of his
tablets these words—
“I swear to love you always.—NINON.”
Carefully bestowing this precious bond in black and white in an
innermost pocket of his vest, de la Châtre conducted Ninon back to
Paris. He would have preferred to leave her in Touraine, to pass the
time of his absence in the rural tranquillity of her beautiful little
domain; but if Ninon desired to ruralise, was there not her charming
country residence at Picpus?—and Picpus is much nearer Paris than
Loches; and just then the Maréchal de Sévigné had arrived in Paris,
a man of noble presence, distinguished for his recent successes in
the king’s service, and the young Vicomte de Turenne, already entered
upon the paths of his renown, by his splendid service in Lorraine and
Italy, and both, eagerly seeking introduction to Ninon, came, saw,
and were conquered by her charm.
De Sévigné’s rendered homage was, however, on somewhat unconventional
lines, the honeyed words of his admiration being tempered with
just enough fault-finding as to render it unusually piquant;
but Ninon’s favours, and just now especially, were in no wise
exclusively bestowed on the heroes of the battlefield. She was no
more _précieuse_ than she was _Platonicienne_; but she was genuinely
gifted with a love of letters, which had been fostered by the
excellent education her father had given her, and she entered
ardently into the great intellectual movement of the time, in which
the drama figured so prominently. Richelieu himself was so warm a
devotee, that his ambition to excel as a dramatist equalled, if it
did not surpass, his political ambition; and while jealous to the
mean extent envy can reach, he did not withhold his patronage from
the great genius of him who has been styled the father of the French
dramatists, Pierre Corneille. Even had Richelieu not desired as he
did, to make use of the brilliant talent of Corneille for his own
ends, it would not have been possible for him to hold aloof amid the
enthusiasm of the world of letters, and of society generally, which
hailed in 1636 the production of _The Cid_.
As every time “doth boast itself above better gone,” so must
Corneille’s name yield place in a degree to what has since been seen.
Still, ever remembering his fathering of it—for his predecessors
in dramatic work worthy of any name were dull and lacked artistic
knowledge of their craft, and Godelet, Gamier, and others are but
names now and no more—Corneille’s masterpiece would challenge
criticism in plenty now, placed before the delicate discrimination
of the daily press of this time, or the judgment of the gallery,
alike in his native country or elsewhere. It is but recently that the
tragedy of a great French poet, not yet two generations passed away,
revived at the Comédie Française, though reverently and finely acted,
was derided and mocked at without mercy behind the scenes by those
taking part in it. Exactly what will be the opinions of critics of
future generations on the dramatic productions of the early years of
the twentieth century, fortunately the means will probably be lacking
to know; the fact remains that the fame of Pierre Corneille is a
living force and a memory for all time.
It was the fashion of that day to model plays and novels on Spanish
and Italian patterns; and advised to follow this ruling, Corneille
selected the subject of _The Cid_—Rodriguez—on which to base
a drama, not his first by several; but while the preceding ones
were held in great esteem, _The Cid_ was regarded as attaining
to the highest excellence, and its fame as his crowning work has
ever remained by it. Some of his dramas of a later date were
unsuccessful; one of his comedies, _Le Menteur_—the only one which
had popularity—is best known in this country by Steele’s translation
of it, _The Lying Lover_.
Richelieu, stirred to dramatic ambition—finding probably that it
was an art less easy than it seemed—sought the assistance of five
dramatists to write up and give more effect to his tragedies; at
least any other reason for such collaboration is not easy to be
imagined. One of the five chosen was Corneille, who, naturally
somewhat curt and abrupt in speech, did not spare to find fault with
some of the details of the cardinal’s work, and the concatenation
of _The Cid’s_ success and of Corneille’s frankness over _Euterpe_
and _Mirame_, stirred such offence in the cardinal’s jealous mind,
that he endeavoured to drive a spoke in the wheel of Corneille’s
car of triumph; and one of the earliest achievements of the recently
constituted Académie Française was a critique on _The Cid_ commanded
of its members by its founder. It had no effect at all in lessening
the enthusiasm of the world of letters, or of the general public for
the drama. The poison did not act, in spite of the endeavours of
several of the poetasters to second the pronouncements. One defect,
that it was not original in plot and construction, but based on a
Spanish dramatic model, was to be conceded; if defect that was which
at the time was held to be almost indispensable in a play. There
is nothing new under the sun. Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies
alike—the English historical plays excepted—are one and all based
on old legends and classic stories which he drew from Italian, and
Spanish and French, and other sources that had, in their turn,
sprung from tradition no longer traceable, hidden in origins lost
in the lapse of centuries. Richelieu’s own dramatic effusions were
reproductions of classical themes. It was the grandeur of the verse
of Corneille, its lofty thought, its dignity and moral conception,
its depicting of conflicting passions—this it was that won the
admiration, and struck home to heartfelt sympathies, in its power of
presenting character, under other names, of living men and women, the
contemporaries of Ninon’s time, contending, suffering, striving in
the stormy political atmosphere, darkening in now with the shadows of
the Thirty Years’ War.
In the delight of Corneille’s presence in Paris, Ninon sacrificed
all the ordinary routine of her life. It was in her salon, if the
chronicling of the fact is to be trusted, that Corneille read to the
assembled company his manuscript of _The Cid_, all the principal
members being present of the Hôtel Bourgogne, and the few other
talented “rogues and vagabonds” proscribed of the Church, though ill
to be spared by it, if the cardinal’s plays were to have any sort of
success. The Comédie Française was yet an institution of the future;
and the stage of the Hôtel Bourgogne, with the two or three other
theatres were not much more than glorified fair platforms, while
the theatre in the rue Guénégaud ordinarily confined itself to the
presentment of Chinese shadows. The drawing-room of the Louvre and
of the Palais Cardinal were utilised for masques and such plays as
there were, called in request for the Court and the more exalted
circles of society. Richelieu’s own pieces were thus performed. The
drama was in transition. It was a far cry now from Clement Marot and
the antics of the clerks of the Basoche upon the huge marble table
of the Hall of Lost Footsteps, to the Académie Française and the
Hôtel de Rambouillet; and the language of the country was undergoing
changes, even as the aspect of the city itself was no longer that of
a few years earlier, when Ninon first came to Paris. Then Notre-Dame
was nearly surrounded by green spaces of meadowland and field and
hedgerow, stretching between the streets and the grassy banks of the
Isle de la Cité. Now here, and away to the Palais de Justice; and
northwards of the Louvre, streets were gathering, and houses began to
crowd about the old towers of the Conciérgerie; while on the banks of
the Seine, right and left, the old walls of Philip Augustus were laid
low or broken up to afford room for new buildings. Behind the Louvre,
far extending to the gardens and palace of the Tuileries, Richelieu’s
magnificent residence dominated the rue de Rivoli—the Palais
Cardinal, so soon to pass as a gift to the king and take the name
of the Palais Royal, till the Revolution of 1793 changed it to the
Palais Égalité, and the lordly “pleasure-house” of the great upholder
of kingly power was cut up into gaudy shops and gaming-houses.
After the performance of _The Cid_, which took place before the king
and queen, and Court, and a vast company of illustrious persons,
Corneille returned home to Rouen, to pursue the great career he was
now launched upon. The fulminations of the cardinal through the
Académie Française far from proving destructive to his fame, had
probably cast a brighter lustre on it. “I never undertake anything
without well first considering, but once I have resolved, I go
straight to my aim; I throw all down that is in my path; I mow down
all, and I cover all with my red robes,” he once said, and it was
no empty boast. Yet the ruling found its exception; his rancour and
jealousy did its worst, but it could not crush Corneille. It did not
at all events do so. Even for Richelieu it might have been dangerous
and impolitic. Gaston d’Orléans, the king’s brother, who belonged to
the party of the queen, threw in his influence to support anything
he dared in opposition to the cardinal—and at this time Gaston was
a frequent visitor at Ninon’s house. He invited himself one evening
to dinner with her, attended by several gentlemen, and Ninon, who was
kept in countenance by her friend, Marion Delorme, and another lady,
entertained her royal guest with an elegant repast of fish, flesh and
fowl, although she had ventured to remind “Monseigneur” that, being
the season of Lent, it was a questionable proceeding to have anything
but dishes of the first served up. Gaston, however, had insisted,
especially in the matter of roast capon, and good wine—_cela va
sans dire_. Whether the wine was partly answerable, or it was merely
the manners of the time that prompted one of the guests—Monsieur
de Boisrobert, my lord cardinal’s secretary—who was fingering the
leg-bone of a fowl, to fling it out of window at the head of Monsieur
l’Abbé Dufaure, the venerable dean of St Sulpice, that was what he
did. The abbé was a Jesuit priest, and the scandal of insult to
him was doubled by the sin of eating meat in Lent. Monseigneur and
his companions finished the evening by adjourning to the house of
Monsieur la Navarre, a neighbour of Ninon’s, and breaking up the
furniture. Then the prince himself sent for the magistrate, and the
functionary arriving, demanded to be informed which was the culprit.
The unfortunate neighbour, who did not know who Gaston was, pointed
him out, and forthwith six archers were sent for, who laid hands
on the prince, and he was threatened with handcuffing if he did
not immediately go quietly to prison. Upon this the gentlemen in
attendance, hearing the uproar, entered, and with profoundest respect
proceeded to inquire what had happened, addressing Monseigneur by
name. Terrified out of his senses at what he had done, the magistrate
besought pardon, which the prince gravely granted, not without
commanding him to make _amende honorable_ by holding a lighted wax
taper in his hand, and, on bended knees, confessing his crime before
all and individually of the women of the household, who were summoned
to attend for the purpose.
So much for Monseigneur’s little amusement: it was Ninon who was
the sufferer. The insulted abbé complained to his Superior, who
complained to the magistrate of the district, and from mouth to mouth
the story flew. Not one man in black, but constant contingents of the
black-soutaned fraternity haunted the rue des Tournelles, and invaded
Ninon’s apartments, subjecting her to such severe inquisition about
her affairs generally, that it became unendurable, and she wrote to
the prince in severe reproach for allowing the blame of his folly
to burden and annoy her. Whereupon Gaston sent two of his friends
to mollify the wrath of the magistrate, who tore up the Jesuit
Superior’s letter of complaint. But the scandal only aggravated the
soreness and complications of the opposing parties of the Court, and
it made an additional grievance for Richelieu against Gaston; though,
on the other hand, it was Boisrobert, his own secretary, who was also
his own jester-in-chief, who had been at the bottom of the offence,
so that the affair cut both ways, and the cardinal may have preferred
to see it hushed up.
It was about this time that Richelieu lost by death the man he called
his right hand—Père Joseph, the Capucin friar—in other words, “The
Grey Cardinal,” as he was nicknamed; but in fact and deed the poor
man never even received the bishopric long promised, never bestowed.
Richelieu himself was already in failing health, worn by stress and
anxiety for the care of the vast structure of kingly power he had
built up and sustained, as it were, by his own hand, that was against
so many, and Louis himself was almost as much a nonentity as any of
the _rois fainéants_ of old days. It is almost impossible to realise
that he and his false-hearted, selfish brother should have been the
sons of the dauntless Henry of Navarre.
Louis was not vicious; it was his valetudinarian melancholy
temperament which appears to have rendered him indifferent to
ordinary human interests. He made less than no pretence of affection
for his Spanish wife, for whose bright glances other men would have
staked existence. For her, Buckingham forgot honour and duty to
his own royal master, and did not spare compromising her repute.
That is a page of history that remains sealed. How far it affected
Louis’s feelings towards her through the rest of his life, remains
an open question, or whether from the beginning, love and mutual
inclination were at fault. “The wind bloweth where it listeth,”
and the beauty and attractions of Anne of Austria may never have
struck a responsive chord in the king’s heart. He was not destitute
of sentiment. More than once he strove to fill the dreary void with
the sympathy of other women of repute about the Court, and, in one
instance at all events, not unsuccessfully; but he was not one to
win love and friendship generally; and the consciousness of this
chilled his manner still more, and threw him back upon himself.
Gaston d’Orléans, with all his grave faults, had at least quicker
outward intelligence and sufficient animation to win some extensive
suffrages of the gentler sex, notably of Anne herself, who tolerated
his attentions and coquetted with him up to a certain point; though
how far this was policy, or from real sentiment, Court intrigues
veil too entirely to attempt to determine, and the jealousy of
Richelieu, himself enamoured of the queen, had soon put an end to all
the aspirations of the two dukes. “There is no such word as fail,”
Richelieu was often heard to say, and he did not fail to put his
foot down very decisively when a league was formed, which the queen
herself was said to favour, whose end and aim was to depose Louis the
Just, crown Gaston, and give him Anne of Austria to wife.
“I should not have sufficiently gained by the change,” was, however,
Anne’s reply, when the accusation of her desire for this was made
against her in the course of the rigorous inquiry and treatment to
which she and her friends were subjected. If on account alone of
that time, years back now, when Gaston, to save himself, permitted
one of his noblest adherents, Chalais, to perish on the scaffold at
Richelieu’s command, Monsieur was not likely to be very favourably
regarded by her. Nearly half a score of years had passed since the
brave man had died in the flower of his life, tortured and hacked by
countless bungling strokes of a creature found at last, among the
dregs of the prison, to do the hideous task which the professional
headsman managed to evade by absenting himself and remaining _perdu_.
In the interval, the queen’s mother had been effectually, and for
ever, banished from France. “The Day of Dupes” had come and gone,
leaving Richelieu all-triumphant; but still the contest raged, and
the virulence of the minister against the queen broke furiously on
the pretext he found at last, of discovering that she was keeping up
a private correspondence with the King of Spain, and the cardinal
infant, her two brothers, and also with persons in Madrid and
Brussels, whose friendship she valued—the more, doubtless, for the
isolation and lack of affection and harshness surrounding her. It was
a boast of Richelieu’s, that with only two lines of an innocent man’s
writing he could ruin him. Naturally, therefore, however innocent the
correspondence, Anne was anxious to hold her letters uninspected by
the cardinal, and she kept them in her own private oratory chamber in
the Benedictine convent of the Val de Grâce, in the rue St Jacques,
which she had founded. The letters, on their arrival, were received
by one of the nuns, who placed them away in a closet to await the
queen’s coming, and her replies to them were forwarded from thence.
But Richelieu’s spies were at work; they swarmed of course in Paris;
and before long they scented out the secret correspondence, and
Richelieu informed the king of it, holding up before His Majesty’s
dreary imagination all the terrors of national peril it signified.
The alarmed king hurried the queen out of Paris to the Château of
Chantilly, where she was confined to her own rooms and compelled
to listen to a string of rigid interrogation from the chancellor.
She was in a cruelly forlorn situation; for, in fear of Richelieu’s
anger and the activity of his spies, the courtiers and following of
the royal pair did not venture so much as to lift their eyes to her
window as they passed. For her own servants, they had been at once
disposed of in various prisons; while the chancellor proceeded to
ransack the convent of Val de Grâce for more papers and letters. But
it was labour lost, which possibly was no more than he expected;
since it is believed that the queen had warning from him of his
intended visit, and the documents, for all they might be worth,
were safe in the care of Madame de Sourdis. The alarm and suspicion
intensified, when there was found upon the person of la Porte, the
queen’s confidential servant, a letter from her to the Duchess of
Chevreuse, long exiled. La Porte was thereupon, as a man of strict
honesty and fidelity to his royal mistress, locked away in one of the
towers of the Bastille, and all the efforts to draw from him anything
incriminating the queen, were absolutely abortive; though Richelieu
employed every art to shake him, from promises and emoluments, to
threats of torture, which were rendered more real to his imagination,
by his being taken to the torture-chamber for a sight of its
equipments.
Fortunately for him, a great event was at hand, which marvellously
changed the aspect of political affairs. The queen, after twenty-two
years of childlessness, was in a situation of promise to give an
heir to the throne. Then Richelieu relaxed la Porte’s durance so
far as to permit his retiring to Saumur, where he remained till the
queen recalled him, on the death of the cardinal, now shadowing in,
bringing with it the terrible tragedy which was the last act and deed
of his hand.
CHAPTER VII
Mélusine—Cinq-Mars—An Ill-advised Marriage—The Conspiracy—The
Revenge—The Scaffold—A Cry from the Bastille—The Lady’s
Man—“The Cardinal’s Hangman”—Finis—Louis’s Evensong—A Little
Oversight—The King’s Nightcap—Mazarin—Ninon’s Hero.
Some few miles from Tours, along the banks of the Loire, at one of
its most beautiful parts above Saumur, stands the little town of St
Médard, better known as Cinq-Mars. A ruined castle crowns the heights
above. It was the ancestral home of the d’Effiats, a noble family of
long lineage; and before their coming, tradition told of its being
the dwelling of Mélusine the _fée_, the beautiful snake-woman, who
was the wife of Raymond, Count de Lusignan, placed under the terrible
spell of transformation into a snake, from the waist downwards, every
seventh night, for having immured her father in a rock-bound cavern,
for cruelty to her mother. Disobeying Mélusine’s command, never to
intrude upon her on those fatal Saturday nights, Raymond discovered
the appalling reason for it, and in his rage cast her forth. The
despairing cry that broke from her then, is still to be heard of
stormy nights above the river; and it may be, mingles with the
lamentations of the mourners over the deed of blood which was enacted
in after centuries when Louis the Just was king.
The young lord of the castle then, was the son of the Maréchal
Cinq-Mars. He was scarcely more than a youth; for he was but nineteen
when Richelieu introduced him at Court, loading him with favours,
causing him to be made the royal master of the horse, and otherwise
specially recommending him to the notice of Louis, who conceived
so vast a liking for him, that it was even touched with some real
warmth; and Cinq-Mars, handsome, gallant, distinguished, brave, and
not a little spoiled by the splendour of his existence, but amiable
and generous-hearted, beloved by his friends—of whom a dear one
was de Thou, the son of the great historian—basked in all the full
sunshine of his young life. The pale, stern cardinal, attenuated
by bodily suffering, and more than ever soured by care, was hardly
likely to win much love from a gay butterfly of a creature like the
young marquis, and before long Cinq-Mars came to know from Louis’s
own lips, that he privately hated Richelieu, a hate nourished by his
deadly fear of him.
Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars had cast amorous eyes upon Marion Delorme,
the cardinal’s protégée. Marion, still beautiful, though no
longer young—being in fact double the age of this her latest
admirer—returned his passionate affection, and, dazzled by the
prospect of being his wife—for his infatuation impelled him to seek
her as such—she braved the consequences of her protector’s wrath,
and the two were secretly married. Richelieu, from whom nothing
could long be hidden, was furious; he had planned a brilliant
alliance for the king’s young favourite, who had shortly before
leagued himself with the queen’s party; Gaston d’Orléans, the Duc de
Bouillon—burning to supplant the cardinal-minister—and others—and
they entered into correspondence with Olivarez, the Spanish
prime-minister, which resulted in a treaty of alliance between him
and the conspiring enemies of the cardinal. Louis had for some time
past treated Richelieu with coldness; and Richelieu, suspecting the
cause of it, left Paris, and went to Tarascon, to lie in wait till
his spies were able to place him in full possession of every detail
of the plot, and of a copy of the treaty. Then, disabled by illness
and infirmity, he desired to see the king, who travelled for the
interview from Perpignan, where he was then staying, and all the
thunder of the cardinal’s reproaches and wrath was flung upon him.
Apparently with justice, Louis succeeded in justifying himself,
on the plea of ignorance, and the king departed again, enjoining
everybody to obedience to Richelieu as if he were himself.
After their marriage, Marion and Cinq-Mars went to the castle on the
Loire, where they spent a brief period of delight. Only the servants
of the household were there, and Cinq-Mars was their lord. They
showed willing, even delighted, obedience to all his behests; but
the marquise his mother returned home somewhat unexpectedly, and her
anger at the stolen marriage equalled in its way that of Richelieu
himself. Doubtless this fomented the affair to a yet speedier issue,
and Cinq-Mars was arrested, and along with him, his friend de Thou,
who was entirely innocent of complicity in the plot. The two were
taken into the presence of Richelieu at Tarascon (a place old stories
tell named after one Tarasque, “a fearful dragon who infested the
borders of the Rhone, preying upon human flesh, to the universal
terror and disturbance”), and hence his dying Eminence—for death was
very near—commanded them to be placed, tied and bound, in a boat
fastened behind his own, in which he was returning to Paris by the
waterway of the Rhone, as far as Lyons. There, being disembarked, the
two young victims were led immediately to a hastily-erected scaffold,
and there bravely they met their fate by the headsman’s axe—de Thou
guilty of refusing to betray his friend, and Cinq-Mars’ crime not
proved, suffering mainly from the cowardly depositions laid against
him by the Duke of Orléans. Then Richelieu continued his triumphal
way to Paris, where in his magnificent palace he died; and during his
last agonies, the king was seen to smile at what he called “Death’s
master-stroke of policy.”
There was a letter, written three days before the cardinal’s death,
found among his papers. It was dated from the Bastille, and it
consisted of one bitter reproach of his injustice to the writer, in
keeping him immured in the terrible place for eleven years. It was a
letter of some length, and an eloquently written appeal for release.
“There is a time, my lord,” it began, “when man ceases to be
barbarous and unjust; it is when his approaching dissolution compels
him to descend into the gloom of his conscience, and to deplore the
cares, griefs, pains and misfortunes which he has caused to his
fellow-creatures. Had I,” the unhappy man, whose name was Dessault,
goes on to say, “performed your order, it would have condemned
my soul to eternal torment, and made me pass into eternity with
blood-stained hands.... I implore you, my lord, order my chains to be
broken before your death-hour comes,—permit yourself to be moved by
the most humble prayer of a man who has ever been a loyal subject to
the king.”
This letter bore date of December 1st; on December 4th, the cardinal
died. It is not known whether he ever saw it. After his death, it
came into the hands of those on whom the power now devolved, and
Dessault, far from gaining his release, was kept in the Bastille till
the year of 1692, after being a prisoner for sixty-one years. Such
remnant of life as may have remained to him, is one too forlorn and
dreary to contemplate.
And to this piteous appeal were added the sobs and frenzied
reproaches of Marion Delorme, who found access to the death-chamber,
just as the cardinal was about to receive the Viaticum.
A gentleman named de Saucourt was a slave to Ninon’s charms at this
time, causing a vast amount of envy among her friends. He was a man
of refinement and brilliant wit, so raved about by the ladies, that
Benserade composed this quatrain upon him—
“Contre se fier demon voyez vous aujourd’hui
Femme qui tienne?
Et toutes cependant sont contentes de lui,
Jusqu’ à la sienne.”
Ninon, however, was then suffering great distress of mind at the
terrible fate of Cinq-Mars, reproaching herself not a little for
the light, thoughtless way in which she had half encouraged Marion
Delorme, half warned her off from accepting the young man’s rash
proposition to make her his wife; for Marion had seriously consulted
her in the matter. It came to light after Cinq-Mars’ death that it
was Gaston d’Orléans himself who had in his possession the original
of the treaty with Olivarez, and he had had the baseness to hand
this to Laffemas, the infamous procureur-general and chief tool
of Richelieu, when the cardinal was bent on a man’s destruction.
Laffemas earned the distinction of being called the cardinal’s
hangman-in-chief. No one stretched out a finger to help the Chevalier
de Jars, whom Richelieu kept in the Bastille for two years, on the
charge of being in the secrets of Anne of Austria’s connections
with Spain. It was in vain that de Jars produced absolute proof
of his innocence, and Laffemas added insults and threats to the
interrogatory he subjected him to. Under a strong guard, de Jars one
Sunday obtained leave to attend Mass at St Gervais, where he knew
the wretched creature would be, and as he was about to kneel at the
altar to receive the communion, de Jars, with a bound, sprang at him,
seized him by his _pourpoint_, and dragging him down the nave of the
church, flung him outside the door. “Away with thee!—away from here,
cowardly hypocrite!” he cried. “Do not soil this holy place with thy
foul presence,” and the poisonous reptile crawled away, while de
Jars, turning to the officiating priest, said—“And you, my father,
did you not know to whom you were about to give the Body of our Lord?
To an iniquitous judge—another Judas—an abomination!”
Finally de Jars obtained his release, and spent his later life in
peace and happiness, but not before he had been made to mount the
scaffold itself. As he was about to lay his head upon the block,
calmly defiant, Laffemas, who had got up the scene to terrify de Jars
into a confession, approached and besought him, in consideration
of the pardon he had brought him, to disclose all he knew; but he
received scant satisfaction on the point, since de Jars, according
to some authorities, persisted in his refusal and defiance of the
monster. According to another account, the suffering and tension of
mind he had endured temporarily deprived him of consciousness, and
for some days he lay in a state of exhaustion, from which he only
gradually recovered.
And those were but instances of the cardinal’s tyranny, and there was
so little his red robe had not covered, sufficiently at all events
for him to die in his bed. And the magnificent tomb, joint work of
two great artists, that covers the spot where he was laid in the
church of the Sorbonne, bears the recumbent statue of the cardinal,
sustained by Religion and weeping angels.
Whether Louis, the king, shed any tears, is not specially recorded.
They could hardly, in any case, have been more than of the crocodile
kind; since he was so very visibly seen to smile more than once
during the passing away of his great minister. In the days when
Vitry relieved him of Concini by assassination, Louis thanked him
warmly for the service. “Now I am king, Vitry,” he said. But it had
not been for long, except in name; for he had only been free to
become the slave of Richelieu, and now his own life was ebbing fast
away, not, apparently, to his very great regret. Those last days
were sorely troubled at the thought of his mother, who had died in
exile at Cologne. He put the blame of this on Richelieu, and made
all the reparation now possible, by ordering prayers throughout the
kingdom for the repose of her soul. This seemed to bring him some
tranquillity, of mind. He loved music, and he composed for himself a
_De Profundis_ to be chanted when his last hour should arrive. Seated
one day at the window of the Château of St Germains, he pointed out
the route which was best for the funeral cortège to follow, to reach
St Denis, and reminded of a turn of the road which was awkward to
pass, bidding care be taken to keep the hearse well in hand.
The death of Richelieu in no way softened the strained relations
and conjugal coldness between the king and queen. On the day of the
child’s birth, Louis was about to leave the queen without bestowing
the embrace customary on such occasions, until he was reminded of his
omission, which only a stretch of courtesy might call forgetfulness.
The little Louis, who was in his fifth year at the time of the king’s
death, does not seem greatly to have interested him or afforded him
any satisfaction; while the child rather shrank from him, notably
when he saw him in his night-cap. Then he broke into piercing screams
of terror. This the king laid, with all her other misdeeds, at the
queen’s door. He declared that she prompted the little boy to his
objections.
It was a pitiable ending to a melancholy existence—inexpressibly
lonely, for in those last months, Anne left him entirely to himself.
Less desolate than the king, finding distraction for ennui in the
society of her ladies, and the gentlemen of her own little Court,
among whom Monsignor Giulio Mazarini figured ever more and more
prominently.
Previously to Richelieu’s death, the handsome, fascinating Mazarin
had been a constant frequenter of Ninon’s _réunions_; but from these
he soon withdrew almost entirely, in favour of the dazzling metal to
be found in the Louvre, for there it rang of ambitions, which there
was every chance of finding fully satisfied. His first master-stroke
was to set aside the late king’s will—which constituted a counsel
of regency, himself being chief of the counsel, which he had
himself recommended to Louis—making Anne regent, with himself for
prime-minister. The king was dead, Louis XIV. but a small child, and
for Mazarin it was “Long live the Queen!” while Ninon found ample
consolation in the devotion of her splendid hero, Louis de Bourbon,
the great Condé, Duc d’Enghien.
Hitherto love had been a fragile toy for her, hanging about her by
the lightest of chains made to be broken. For Condé, the sentiment
lay deeper, nourished by the breath of adulation surrounding him
when he returned, victorious over the Spaniards, from the field of
Rocroi; and she was fired to flames of admiration and of delight in
his distinguished presence. Handsome, amiable, gallant, to Ninon and
to France he was as a demigod.
CHAPTER VIII
“Loving like a Madman”—A Great Transformation—The Unjust
Tax—Parted Lovers—A Gay Court, and A School for Scandal and
Mazarin’s Policy—The Regent’s Caprices—The King’s Upholsterer’s
Young Son—The Théâtre Illustre—The Company of Monsieur and
Molière.
“A man of sense may love like a madman, but never like a fool.” It is
the dictum of François de la Rochefoucauld, and must have been framed
from his deep attachment to Condé’s sister, Madame de Longueville,
one of the most charming of the women of the great world at that
time, and bound by ties of close friendship with Ninon.
It was no one-sided love, no case of the one who loves, and the
one who merely consents to it; but mutual, and as passionate, as
certainly for a time the flame was pure, shining with a clear,
unflecked radiance.
Madame de Longueville, who was wedded to an old man, was singularly
fascinating, from her gentle manners and amiability. Her face was
not strictly beautiful, and bore traces of the smallpox, the cruel
scourge then of so many beautiful faces; her eyes were full of a
softened light, and she had the gift of a most sweet voice, while
her smile was gentle and irresistibly winning. The dreamy, romantic,
somewhat melancholy-natured de la Rochefoucauld’s heart was laid
at her feet in whole and undivided adoration. For their conscious
love, each strove against the temptation, she so earnestly, that
she shut herself away from all chance of so much as seeing him
for a little while. But Ninon slipped in with her philosophy. It
was quite true, she argued to Madame de Longueville, that there
were grave considerations to be respected—the indissoluble tie
of marriage, _convenances_ to be observed—all these; but to hide
herself away, to refuse the unhappy prince the alleviation of gazing
at her, of exchanging a few fleeting words—no, it was monstrously
absurd. The very _Platoniciens_ did not go such lengths. No, if
complete happiness could not be theirs, at least a smile, a glance,
was permitted; and Ninon’s counsel wound up with a suggestion to
the disconsolate prince, that he should try what a little note to
the woman he adored would effect, and he wrote—“Show yourself—be
beautiful, and at least let me admire you.”
And Ninon delivered the billet, and its effect was marvellous.
It conquered the young duchess’s natural timidity and retiring
disposition. She took courage; she assumed her rightful place in
the world; she appeared at the Louvre; she kept open house and gave
brilliant receptions; she took her seat on the _tabouret_ of the
duchesses; her toilettes were magnificent; she shone brilliantly in
conversation, and began to take part in Court intrigues; ere long
very actively.
“With two lines of a man’s writing,” had said Mazarin’s great
predecessor, “I could condemn him”; and with two lines of that
magical pen of the Count de la Rochefoucauld, Madame de Longueville
became another woman. As in the matter of her warm attachment to
her lover, she was constant in her politics; while Louis de Condé,
all-conquering at Rocroi, yielded himself captive to the charms of
Ninon de L’Enclos—a veritable lion in love; not so blindly, however,
that he was insensible to the wrongs of the people, upon whom a tax
had been levied of a specially hateful kind. It was called the Toisé,
and was a revival of an old edict long fallen into desuetude. To
the Italian, d’Eméri, to whom Mazarin had entrusted the control of
public finances, was due its discovery and resuscitation. This edict
forbade the enlargement of the borders of Paris, and as recently new
buildings had been, and were being, in course of construction far
and wide, the owners of these were threatened with confiscation of
their materials, unless they consented to pay for their newly-erected
houses and other buildings, a rate regulated by measurement of the
size of them. This pressed cruelly on the people. Loud murmurs were
excited. The Parliament expostulated, and the Toisé was withdrawn.
It was the first stone slung by the Fronde. Condé’s indignation was
great; and one day, in the rue St Antoine, he laid flat with his
sword the body of some wretched collector who had snatched away a
child’s cradle from a poor woman. His act gave great offence to the
queen, who saw in it defiance of Mazarin. Both at home and abroad,
there was plenty stirring to keep existence from stagnating; but for
a few brief delightful weeks the Duc d’Enghien sought retirement
and tranquillity in his château of Petit Chantilly, in company
with Ninon, who left the rue des Tournelles dwelling to take care
of itself. It was the iniquitous Toisé which broke in upon their
content; for the queen sent for the duke, to consult him in the
emergency created by the cardinal favourite.
After the Toisé prologue, however, the opening scenes of the
inglorious turmoil of the Fronde did not see Condé; for Austria once
more took up arms, and he lost not a moment in hastening to the
frontier. If it is indeed a fact that Ninon accompanied him thither
in the guise of a young aide-de-camp, mounted on a fiery charger,
it was but to re-enact her former exploits; and Ninon was nothing
if not daring. That her presence on the field of Nordlingen could
have been really anything but exceedingly encumbering, is more than
imaginable. At all events Condé soon begged her to return to Paris,
in order to go and console his sister, Madame de Longueville, who had
been summoned to attend his father, the Duc de Condé, in an illness
threatening to be fatal. Arrived at Paris, she found the sufferer
very much better, and writing to inform the Duc d’Enghien of this
pleasant intelligence, she begged to be allowed to return to him.
The duke, however, replied that it was hardly worth while; as he
should soon be back. To pass the tedium of his absence, Ninon resumed
her _réunions_, finding pleasant distraction in the society of her
friends, among which were two ladies distinguished for their birth
and undoubted talents, scarcely less than notorious, even in those
days, for their openly lax mode of life. One of these was Madame de
la Sablière, a notable member of the Hôtel de Rambouillet _côtérie_.
A really brilliant mathematician, she was at least equally skilful
in the science of love—so ardent a student, that one day her uncle,
a grave magistrate, scandalised out of all endurance at her ways,
remonstrated severely, reminding her that the beasts of the field
observed more order and seasonable regulation in their love-affairs.
“Ah, dear uncle,” said the gifted lady, “that is because they _are_
beasts.”
Madame de Chevreuse was the other specially chosen spirit of her
own sex Ninon now consorted with. After the death of Richelieu,
who had exiled her at the time of the Val de Grâce affair, she was
allowed to return to France, attended by the Abbé de Retz, Paul de
Gondi, whom Louis XIII., on his deathbed, had appointed coadjutor to
the new archbishopric of Paris. De Retz had himself aspired to the
archbishopric, and swore that he would obtain a cardinalate.
The Court was now brilliantly gay. The gloomy and sombre atmosphere
of Louis XIII. and of Richelieu’s day faded all in a succession of
balls and fêtes and every sort of festivity. Anne of Austria enlarged
the south side of the Louvre, and Grimaldi and Romanelli adorned
the chambers and galleries with their exquisite skill. Poussin,
whose friezes terminated the ends of the great gallery, had had
apartments assigned him in the Louvre, in order to carry on his work
with greater facility; but he had retired in displeasure at the
criticisms of his brother-artists, and went to Rome, where he spent
the rest of his life, leaving in Paris immortal memories of his
genius, among them the altarpiece for the chapel of St Germain en
Laye, and the mournful Arcadian Shepherd, “_Et in Arcadia Ego_.”
So the never-ending round of gaiety was set in motion by Mazarin, and
Anne of Austria was the regent. Anne, still handsome, and by nature
frivolous under her somewhat cold Spanish demeanour—surely a born
coquette, delighting in show and magnificence, none the less that
she had so long lived under repression. The queen, apparently, was
the reigning power; but it was the crafty prime-minister who pulled
the strings, and set the puppets dancing and fiddling, and amorously
intriguing, so that they should leave him to carry on his politics,
and mount to the heights of his ambition and power in his own
unhindered way. Unlike his great predecessor, he was handsome, and
good-natured in manner, and therefore an ornament in those brilliant
assemblies. Wrote St Evrémond—
“J’ai vu le temps de la bonne régence,
Temps où régnait une heureuse abondance,
Temps où la ville aussi bien que la cour
Ne respirait que les jeux et l’amour.
Une politique indulgente
De notre nature innocente
Favorisait tous les désirs
Tout dégoût semblait légitime;
La douce erreur ne s’appélait point crime,
Les vices délicats se nommait des plaisirs.”
Very pleasant and entertaining the world of society was then; and
seasoned as it was with even unusual spice of malice and spite,
scandal was rife. Among others, the stepmother of Madame de
Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, who was married to the old Duc de
Rohan, was a past-mistress in the gentle art of making mischief; and
where the material was insufficient, she manufactured it without
scruple. In this way she nearly succeeded in bringing a rift into the
love-harmonies of Henri de la Rochefoucauld and his adored Madame de
Longueville, by means of sheer, brazen lying, alleging that certain
letters of Madame de Longueville, which had been found, had dropped
from the pocket of Coligny. It was a pitiful fabrication, and Madame
de Montbazon—of whom de Retz, in his Memoirs, says “I never saw
any person showing in her vices less respect for virtue”—did not
come out of it with very flying colours, for all her best efforts
at effrontery, and she received an order from Mazarin to retire to
Tours. The letters, in effect, proved to be not those of Madame de
Longueville at all; and the pocket they dropped out of, was not
Coligny’s. It was altogether an affair of another pair of lovers.
The embellishments of the Louvre were still not completed, before
the queen decided not to reside in it. She began to recall, rather
tardily it would seem, all the lugubrious memories of her past
life connected with the palace; and she established herself in the
magnificent Palais Royal—originally the Palais Cardinal.
In all those festivities, Ninon took prominent part. Ever
philosophical, she thus consoled herself for the prolonged absence of
the Duc d’Enghien, an absence which had, moreover, not intensified
the sentiments of adoration she at first conceived for him. It
was but Ninon’s way. She had begun to see small defects in the
case-armour of the perfection of her Mars. Her acquaintance with the
dead languages supplied her with the Latin proverb, “_vir pilosus,
aut libidinum aut fortis_.” “Now Esau was a hairy man,” and the Duc
d’Enghien was also _vir pilosus_, and Ninon taxed him with being a
greater warrior than an ardent wooer, and the passion cooled rapidly;
but the friendship and mutual liking ever remained.
Ninon employed Poquelin, upholsterer to the king, in the furnishing
of her elegant suite of apartments. His shop was in the rue St
Honoré, and there was born his son, Jean Baptiste, an intelligent,
rather delicate-looking little boy, whom he duly educated and trained
for his own trade. Young Jean Baptiste, however, fairly submissive
and obedient, was also very fond of reading and writing, the only two
acquirements his father thought necessary for assisting the chair
and table-making the boy’s future was destined for. Fortunately he
had a very kind grandfather who loved the drama, and sometimes he
would take little Jean Baptiste with him to see the performances at
The Hôtel Bourgogne. Poquelin père looked with distrust on these
excursions, thinking that he saw in the lad, as undoubtedly he did,
growing aversion to the upholstery vocation, and a fast developing
passion for tragedy and comedy—comedy very markedly—and the boy’s
delight in study and books generally, created a disturbance in the
good upholsterer’s mind, which culminated in distress, when it became
certain beyond all question, that young Jean’s liking was as small
for cabinet-making as it was unconquerable for literature. He was at
that time about fourteen years old, and he carried about with him a
small comedy he had composed called _l’Amour Médecin_, which Ninon
one day, when he came to assist his father at her house, detected,
rolled up under his arm. Won by her kind smiles, young Poquelin was
induced to allow her to look at it, and she, no mean critic, saw such
promise in it, that she showed it to Corneille—who was then staying
with her, pending the representation of _The Cid_. Corneille warmly
seconded her estimate of the boy’s promise of unusual dramatic gifts;
and after great demur, Poquelin yielded to the good grandfather’s
persuasions to send him to college. Several helping hands, Ninon
among them, contributed to the necessary funds for this new career,
and Jean Baptiste became a pupil of the Jesuits at Clermont. There
he studied for five years, in the same class with Armand de Bourbon,
Prince de Conti, the youngest brother of Madame de Longueville, who
promised Ninon the special protection and friendship of Armand, and
of the college preceptors, a promise that was ever faithfully held
by; and the celebrated teacher Gassendi took him under his special
care, with two other gifted lads confided to him.
At the end of the five years, Jean Baptiste was forced to resume his
old occupation, on account of his father’s increasing infirmities.
But it was not for long. Richelieu’s love of letters, and of the
drama especially, brought him knowledge of young Poquelin’s talent,
and made the difficult way of literature easier for him; for the
theatre was beginning to flourish. There was no regular company of
actors in Paris until the coming of Corneille. Only a few of the
“rogue and vagabond” wearers of the sock and buskin came and went,
selling their plays, when they could find buyers, for some ten crowns
apiece. The comedies of Corneille caused the establishment of a
dramatic troupe in the city, and then it was that young Poquelin,
leaving the upholstery to the dogs, established a small company of
young men—“stage-struck” as the mockers were pleased to say, in this
instance guided however by the sterling judgment of Jean Baptiste,
truly dramatically gifted, in the Faubourg St Germain. They called it
the Illustrious Theatre—(l’Illustre Théâtre). So through the years
of the ignoble strife of the Fronde, when times were arid for real
literary talent, Poquelin acted and composed little comedies, mainly
for the provinces. Travelling with his company to Languedoc, where
the Prince de Conti happened to be staying on his estates, Poquelin
produced before him several of his pieces, afterwards finding their
world-wide renown, _l’Étourdi_, _le Dépit Amoureux_, and others.
The Prince de Conti introduced him to Monsieur, the only brother of
Louis XIV.; and in a short time there came a day of days when
the command of their Majesties reached the actor-manager, to give
a representation in the chamber of the Guards in the old Louvre.
After the performance of this long five-act piece, Poquelin—who had
followed the custom of the actors of his time, had taken another
name, and selected Molière—stepped to the front, and begged His
Majesty’s permission to play a short one-act piece. It was _le
Docteur Amoureux_. This is possibly the origin of the custom, still
so frequently observed, of the “Curtain-raiser.”
[Illustration: POQUELIN DE MOLIERE
_Coypel pinc._ _Ficquet Sculp._
_To face page 100._]
Now established at Paris, Molière’s company, which he styled the
_Troupe de Monsieur_, his patron, was accorded the Salle of the
Palais Royal, for the representation of his piece. It had been
originally constructed for the cardinal’s tragedy of _Mirame_, and
“The chamber,” says Voltaire, “for dramatic purposes, is as bad as
the piece for which it was built.”
Molière had a very agreeable personality. He was a little above
medium height, well-built and of noble presence. His gait was
dignified, his nose and mouth were large, and his lips full; his
complexion was dark with black, thick eyebrows, and these he could
control to giving his face all sorts of comic expressions. His manner
was gentle, pleasing and kindly. He loved to speak, and when he read
his plays to his company, he liked them to bring their children, so
that he might study their ways and actions.
Molière, having the good or the ill fortune, as it may be, to become
such a distinguished public favourite, had his fair number of enemies
among his many friends. His chief detractors were, of course, to be
found among the bad authors and the great unacted; also the “unco’
guid” tried to sting him hard, and in a measure succeeded—as when do
they not when their poison is dropped upon sensitive natures? But the
warmth of the Sun-King’s admiration and patronage greatly shielded
him. His Majesty bestowed a canonry on his son.
Molière had a physician, Mauvilain. It was rather an unfortunate
name, and one day when he was dining with the king, Louis asked him
about him. “You have a doctor,” he said; “what does he do for you?”
“Sire,” replied Molière, “we gossip together; he prescribes me
remedies; I do not take them—and I am cured.”
That Ninon was proud of the brilliant man she had so signally helped
to befriend as a lad, may well be conceived, and whenever a new piece
was produced, she was always there to witness it, in one of the most
honoured places reserved for her.
CHAPTER IX
The Rift in the Lute—In the Vexin—The Miracle of the Gardener’s
Cottage—Italian Opera in Paris—Parted Lovers—“Ninum”—Scarron
and Françoise d’Aubigné—Treachery—A Journey to
Naples—Masaniello—Renewing Acquaintances—Mazarin’s Mandate.
Again victorious at Nordlingen, the Duc d’Enghien, now Prince de
Condé, for his father was now dead, returned to Paris—but not to
Ninon. She had given great offence to his family by permitting de
la Rochefoucauld and Madame de Longueville to meet at her house,
and Condé sternly reproached her for the indiscretion; hence the
tie between them was broken—perhaps merely a little sooner than
otherwise; for the distinction of winning the admiration of the
hero of the hour had played for Ninon a very powerful part in the
_liaison_. And after all, she preferred to receive homage more
than to offer it; for though she liked to ruffle it in masculine
attire, she was a very woman; and taking her heart back again, she
permitted it to be captured by the Marquis de Villarceaux, who had
sued for long past. Villarceaux was handsome and agreeable, but he
had a serious defect in Ninon’s eyes: he was fair, and a fat man or
a fair man she ordinarily found detestable. Still he was eloquent,
and she allowed herself to be persuaded to go and rusticate with
him in the Vexin, as the guest of a friend of the Marquis, Monsieur
de Vicariville. This gentleman found great pleasure in discoursing
on philosophical themes with Ninon, while Monsieur Villarceaux went
out to amuse himself in the neighbourhood, flitting from flower to
flower, as ready to converse with the maids as with the mistress.
In the course of a few days, visitors arrived at the château. One
of them was the Chevalier Villars Orondate, afterwards ambassador
to Spain, a man full of originality and humour. During his stay, he
rendered his host a signal service by the exercise of his quaint wit
and ingenuity. Monsieur de Vicariville’s château was reached by a
long, noble avenue, whose perspective would have been incomparable,
but for the intrusion of a miserable tumbledown cottage just about
midway.
Large sums had been offered when the avenue was made, to its owner,
whose name was Jérome, to sell his small holding; but he flatly
refused. His father had built the cottage, he had been born in it,
and desired to die in it when his time came, continuing meanwhile to
follow in it his trade, which was a tailor’s; and the eyesore had to
be left.
Orondate asked his host what he would give him if he got the cottage
removed within a week’s time.
“With Jérome’s consent, of course?” laughed Vicariville.
“That would not be required.”
“I would give you a hundred louis, gladly.”
“Money? For shame! It is for glory’s sake I would go to work—or at
all events for a kiss from Mademoiselle.”
Villarceaux demurred at this; but Ninon cheerfully agreed; and going
in search of the tailor, Orondate told him he wanted a handsome suit
made for Monsieur de Villarceaux, who was going to Court with him.
Was he capable of fulfilling the order? Certainly, Jérome was as able
to do it as the grandest tailor in Paris.
“Very good. I will give you a pistole a day, if you agree to come and
work in the château, never leaving off all day, and entirely under
my supervision. Your food will be all found for you; and you will be
paid on completion of the task.”
The tailor accepted the bargain with delight, and fell to work; while
Orondate caused a scrupulously exact plan of the cottage to be made,
with precise measurements of every thing in its interior, taking note
even of the position of each piece of furniture, and the smallest
object in the place. Then he had the entire cottage taken to pieces,
the walls knocked down, and the whole load of it transported to a
spot a little outside the avenue. There the skilful workmen he had
engaged, put it all together again, and all the smallest things back
in their places, not forgetting the good man’s little soup saucepan,
and the enclosing garden hedge.
The avenue, meanwhile, was carefully swept, and cleared of all traces
of the removal. Nothing remained to be seen of either the cottage or
the garden.
The tailor’s work being now completed, he received his honorarium
from Orondate, with a couple of louis in addition. Then going home,
well satisfied, towards nightfall he passed down the avenue. It
seemed rather long, yet he arrived at the end at last, sooner than he
quite expected. Returning, he came and went, came and went, and could
find his house nowhere. The poor man spent the night in searching for
it. The day broke, and shed light on the avenue, but there was no
cottage. Had the foul fiend been at work? Reaching the outskirts of
the park, he saw, just beyond the wall, a house resembling his own.
Rushing forward, he recognised his own sheltering trees, the garden,
the grass-plot, and the honeysuckle hedge. The door faced him, and
Jérome inserted the key in its lock.
It fell open smoothly. Going in, he found everything in its proper
place—only the table, instead of being bare, bore a smoking hot leg
of mutton, flanked by two bottles of wine.
The tailor crossed himself devoutly, convinced that he was bewitched.
The leg of mutton, however, looked appetising, and Jérome was hungry
after his long nocturnal perambulations; he approached the joint, and
contemplated it with lessening repugnance. Then, fetching his little
holy-water brush, he sprinkled the mutton to see if it disappeared;
but it smoked on. It certainly had not been cooked in the infernal
regions. Jérome took heart therefore, and sat down to dine.
The authors of this curious transformation scene, concealed to watch
what would happen, waited till Jérome had well banqueted; then they
entered, and with bursts of laughter, asked him what he thought of
the sorcerers of the château?
Monsieur Orondate was paid the price he had asked, Monsieur
Vicariville gave Jérome the hundred louis his guest had declined,
and the tailor contented himself with pulling a grimace at the trick
which had been played him.[3]
* * * * *
It was Mazarin France had to thank for establishing in Paris, musical
Italian plays, in other words, Italian operas. From time to time,
since the days of Henri III., Italian dramatic singers had visited
Paris, finding no regular stage or fair opportunity for their
beautiful presentations. Mazarin, however, secured them the rights
for these at the Hôtel Bourgogne, and by one of the exercises of his
wily ingenuity, also contrived to win away from Charles II. Budeaud,
the musical leader of the Court-revels in London, as the conductor of
the Paris company.
Early in the winter, whose approach brought Ninon and everybody back
to Paris, invitations were issued for the performance of an Italian
opera on a magnificent scale, in the Palais Royal, and to Ninon the
invitation was sent by the Duc de Condé—who had repented of his
harsh estimate of her conduct—and finding his way to her fauteuil in
the course of the performance, the two made their peace by mutual
concessions. Meanwhile Condé had diplomatically set several hundred
leagues between the lovers, by pairing off Madame de Longueville with
her husband to Münster, while he caused the Duc de la Rochefoucauld
to be summoned to his duties as governor of Poitou. Independently
of the ardent but brief attachment of Rocroi and Nordlingen days,
the Duc de Condé entertained sterling admiration and esteem for the
qualities of Ninon, and their friendship remained sincere through
life.
For three years Ninon came to Paris only at intervals; she remained
in the Vexin, with the erratic Marquis de Villarceaux for her
companion. Of a furiously jealous nature in regard to the object of
his affectionate consideration, he permitted himself a wide range.
The lawful wife he owned was, not unnaturally, jealous of Ninon, and
made her a constant subject of contention between them. One day she
requested the tutor of her little son to examine him before some
company she was entertaining, upon his recent classical studies.
“_Quem habuit successorum Bellus, rex Assyriorum?_” (“Who succeeded
Belus, King of the Assyrians?”) inquired the tutor, who was no less a
person than the Abbé Scarron.
“_Ninum_,” replied the little boy.
The word, so absolutely resembling Ninon, threw Madame de Villarceaux
into a furious rage. Scarron vainly endeavoured to explain and
justify himself. She would not listen. The answer, she said, was
quite enough for her; and Scarron was dismissed. It was a cruel
accident for him, crippled as he was, so utterly as not to be able
to stir from his wheel-chair. Bodily “a wretched log,” as he called
himself, intellectually more brilliant than ever, and in a human
sense, ever the same kindly, generous epicurean philosopher as of
old, “always” as he said, “unfortunate.” On the top of all his other
troubles he had fallen in love. Alas! for the poor prisoner of that
wheeled-chair, the helpless wreck of the ex-canon! Ninon found refuge
in silence as she stood before him where he had been carried in from
his coach. It was long since they had met, and her heart was full
of pity. The object of his affection, Scarron went on to tell her,
was one Françoise d’Aubigné, a native of Niort. “Ah, d’Aubigné,”
interrupted Ninon at last. “A Protestant then?” A Calvinist by
birth, went on Scarron, and reared in that teaching by an aunt who
had adopted her on the death of her parents; but the aunt died,
and then a lady, Madame de Neuillan, a friend of the Marquise de
Villarceaux, had taken her in hand. It was a misuse of words to call
it befriending. It was in this way Scarron had seen her, a charmingly
pretty girl of about seventeen.
This Countess de Neuillan was a gorgon of virtue and principle,
and, as also a bigot of a Catholic, she had compelled Françoise to
become one. In return for all her tender care, Madame de Neuillan
imposed the most menial duties on the young girl, who was of
angelic disposition as well as beautiful. Her father had been the
son of the friend of Henri IV. More or less worthy as he might be
represented—_de mortuis nil nisi bonum_—he had died in prison,
guilty of no other crimes, perhaps, than being a Protestant; and so
his two children had been left cast in indigence upon the world. The
lot of Françoise in the house of Madame de Neuillan was deplorable,
and Scarron, as well as some other friends, had advised her to leave
her, and get her living by the work of her hands sooner than remain
in such dependence; and for twelve months past she had lodged in
a little street of a neighbouring faubourg, with her brother, a
ne’er-do-well; but still her brother; and her goodness to him was the
only fault Scarron had to find in the adorable Françoise. And Ninon’s
generous heart overflowed with sympathy for the young girl, and she
took her to her own home, and they were warm friends, living in the
closest ties of affection; and ere long the sweet, modest, gentle
girl repaid the kind friend’s goodness by winning her lover, Monsieur
de Villarceaux, away from her, and Ninon, who was sincerely attached
to him, felt the sting acutely. She taxed Françoise with the attempt,
which was quite successful, and refused to listen to any denial or
excuse, merely saying that they would have the field quite free to
themselves, as she was leaving on the following day for Naples.
And thither she went, taking the sea-journey from Marseilles. For
travelling companion, she had the Chevalier de Méri. This gentleman
who had been one of the guests of Monsieur Vicariville had a sister
who was married to a Spanish Grandee, to whom was promised the
viceroyalty of Naples.
Monsieur de Méri was in every way far more desirable as a companion
than the man she had left in the company of Françoise, to whom she
also entrusted the _ménage_ in the rue des Tournelles, only making
the condition that she and Villarceaux should hold their sweet
converse exclusively in the “Yellow Chamber,” which was the most
retired of the rooms. Finding this a little restrictive however, they
betook themselves to Brie-Comte Robert, where they spent a fortnight
at the house of a cousin of the marquis, who possessed the gift of a
still tongue.
Arrived in Naples, Ninon established herself with her faithful
servant Perrote, who had attended her _en courrier_, in a small house
near the park, and yielded herself up to the charm of the place. “See
Naples and die,” but it thrilled Ninon with new life. The sunshine,
the colour, the curious mingling of indolence and the activity of a
seaport, the cloudless azure overhead, the clear blue depths of the
bay, the islands washed by the sparkling waters, Vesuvius, calm and
treacherous, enchanted her. She lost no time in providing herself
with a Neapolitan costume, in which she roved about as the will took
her. Nothing was more likely than that when she chartered a barque to
sail away and dream her dreams, rocked by the gentle waves of that
inland sea, it should have been guided by a young fisherman of some
five-and-twenty years old. His handsome features wore a nobility of
expression and energy—a picture worthy of a painter’s brush, with
his sunburnt skin and flashing dark eyes, and dark locks, surmounted
by his red woollen cap. This young fisherman, who told Ninon, when
she asked him his name, that it was Aniello—Tommaso Aniello—but the
people and his comrades called him “Masaniello.” Forever a favourite
with them, they were in those early July days of that year of 1647
beginning to idolise him as their champion and leader in the revolt
against the oppression and robbery of their Spanish masters.
The viceroyalty of Naples equalled in pomp and extravagance the
Court of Madrid, and what wealth was found more than could be used
for Naples, was shipped off and transported to Spain, leaving the
Neapolitans crushed with poverty, neglected and groaning under the
haughty tyranny of the delegated power. Recently the viceroy of
the Spanish king, Philip IV., the Duke of Arcos, who wanted more
and more funds for carrying on the war with France, had bethought
himself of levying a tax on fruit and vegetables. It was but
Mazarin’s Toisé over again, ever for Jacques Bonhomme and his Italian
equivalent to keep things spinning for the honour and glory of a
spendthrift nobility, while they robbed the country of their young
men, to draft them as soldiers to Spain. In the course of a century,
millions of ducats had been paid from one source alone, into the
Spanish treasury. These wrongs were stirring the indignation of
the Neapolitans to seething heat, and to the people Aniello spoke
aloud and with fiery eloquence of the iniquities. To add fuel to
the flame, his young wife—or, as other chroniclers tell, his deaf
and dumb sister, living at Portici—had been arrested and cast into
prison for having in her possession some contraband flour, and
Aniello had been made to pay to obtain her release. A disturbance in
the market-place over the sale of a basket of figs, upon which the
unfortunate man who had brought them for sale, was finally required
to pay the imposts, ignited the smouldering rage of the oppressed
people, and at the head of a troop of thousands of men, women and
boys, who wrought destruction on every side as they went, Masaniello
forced a way into the viceroy’s palace. There with the help and
counsel of the Archbishop of Naples, a man popular and respected,
the demand for exemption of taxation on all articles of food was
accorded. The triumph of Masaniello was complete; but the excitement
and the adulation not alone of the people for whose rights he had so
successfully striven, but of the viceroy himself, proved too much for
him. His mind gave way, he began to act like a maniac; he complained
of a sensation like boiling lead in his head. Some of the wretched
dregs of the people he had so nobly served, took umbrage at his wild
conduct, and the shot from an arquebuse, in the hands of one of the
mob thus turned on him, pierced him to the heart. There was nothing
left but to regret the heroic man, and he was laid to rest, after his
young life’s fitful fever, with great pomp and ceremony in the church
of S. Maria del Carmine.
[Illustration: S^T. EVREMOND.
Né en 1613. Mort en 1703.
Aug. S^t Aubin
_To face page 112._]
No mere demagogue was Masaniello; but a man of noble patriotic
aspiration, victim of his own passionate ardour for a great cause.
Perhaps as a soldier he would have risen to highest rank and glory;
but Masaniello would be no soldier for Spain, and in this resolution
he had been strengthened, if that were needed, by Salvator Rosa, the
painter, who was one of his friends, and by the Duc de Guise, who
swore to avenge the death of Masaniello, and kept his word.
Not content with her Neapolitan bodice and skirt, Ninon attired
herself in a fisherman’s garb, with the object of mingling in the
fray of the Neapolitan uprising, and she witnessed the sharp, swift
close of Masaniello’s little day of triumph. But she left Naples
almost immediately after, experiencing various adventures of a
sort which she found sufficiently agreeable to detain her still
some five or six months from Paris, meeting on her way old friends
and new, among them her agreeable acquaintance, the Chevalier
Orondate, who was bound for Naples, as legate of Mazarin, who was
anxious for acquaintance with every detail of the revolt. There was
little Ninon could not tell him of this. She had been a close and
intelligent observer. It was more likely that Orondate could get
accurate information from one who had witnessed the whole _émeute_,
than any gathering up of particulars, now comparative tranquillity
had been restored in the city. Therefore the Chevalier did not go
on to Naples, but paired off with Ninon for a while into a studious
seclusion at Lyons, during which she furnished him with a vivid
narrative of the disturbance itself, and of the manner in which the
people had been relieved of their cruel burden. It contained the
elements of a good object-lesson for Mazarin and for the Court party,
now engaged in bitter contention with the Parliament, for the storm
of the Fronde had broken.
CHAPTER X
The Fronde and Mazarin—A Brittany Manor—Borrowed Locks—The
Flight to St Germains—A Gouty Duke—Across the Channel—The Evil
Genius—The Scaffold at Whitehall—Starving in the Louvre—_The
Mazarinade_—Poverty—Condé’s Indignation—The Cannon of the
Bastille—The Young King.
“Vive Mazarin!—Vive la Fronde!” It was to these cries, resounding on
all sides, that Ninon returned to her home, and she found it all very
disconcerting; if only on the score of the havoc the long contention
between the Court and the Parliament was to make in the society of
her world. The battle of belles-lettres and of art has poor chance in
the field with political turmoil that brings back the dark ages when
violence was the only power.
Ninon had but left one discontented country to find another, her own,
equally discontented and suffering under oppressive taxation; while
across the Channel, in England, civil war was raging to the same
watchwords, more fiercely than on the Continent, for all the evil
might be less aggressive.
It had been well enough for a while for the crafty Italian
prime-minister to try and keep the minds of the courtier and the
more educated class of the people otherwise employed; but he had
remained blind, or had chosen to seem so, to the fact that these were
also Frenchmen, and not all, by a great many, mere butterflies and
triflers. Balls and festivities did not bound the range of vision
of many a nobly-born gentleman, nor of the statesmen and chiefs in
Parliament; and while some sided in the dispute with the queen and
Mazarin, there were as many to oppose. “_À-bas Mazarin! À-bas la
Fronde!_” and the cries were not to be silenced—though nothing, it
was conceived at the outset, would be easier. The Fronde—the term
was but a jesting one, arising from the Parliament prohibiting under
all sorts of condign punishment the schoolboy game of stone-slinging
in the ditches under the walls of Paris, and then it was the witty
Barillon improvised his couplet—
“A Frondy wind this morning arose,
I hope it won’t bite poor Mazarin’s nose”;
and from St Antoine to St Denis, from Montmartre to St Germain,
before night that rhyme was on the tip of every tongue.
The rough discords, the coarse ugly voice of faction soon rendered
Paris no place for the Graces. It had become dangerous for women
who were not amazons of politics to walk out alone; and Ninon was
forced to accept the escort of her cavaliers, among whom were
two specially favoured—the young Marquis de Sévigné, son of the
incomparable queen of Letter-writing, and of his father, the Maréchal
who had worshipped, ten years before, at Ninon’s shrine, and the
Marquis de Gersay, captain of the Queen’s Guards. For refusing to
obey the issued order of arrest of the two Parliament counsellors,
Blancménil and Broussel, de Gersay had been deprived of his place,
and disgraced. Paris was therefore neither any place for him, and
Ninon and he found refuge together in his Brittany home, where they
spent ten months together; at about the end of which time Ninon
became the mother of a little son, and the sojourn in Brittany was
one of happiness and tranquillity among the patient hard-working
peasantry of the district surrounding the old manor-house. Only one
cloud darkened Ninon’s content, and her dismay was not unnaturally
considerable; for her lovely hair had begun rapidly to come off, so
entirely, as to force a wig upon her beautiful head, which the Nantes
perruquier bungled so abominably, that the curls and chignon asserted
their falseness glaringly enough to extract the sarcastic comments
of a lady Ninon believed to be jealous of her, as one disappointed
of becoming the wife of de Gersay. “You have very charming hair,
madame,” said the lady; “it must have cost you at least six livres.”
“Just so,” said Ninon; “but you must have paid more for yours,
madame; since even still it is rather thin.”
The news reaching them from Paris remained disturbing. The queen and
Mazarin had been forced to fly to St Germains with the little Louis,
while Condé, returned victorious from Sens, laid siege with his whole
army to Paris in the cause of the queen; but the unpopularity of
Mazarin, amounting to bitter hatred, weakened the influence of the
Court. A large number of the nobility joined the Fronde party, of
whom de Retz was one of the foremost, while the once delicate and
retiring Duchesse de Longueville was the inspiration and ardent
leader of the Frondeurs. Where she was, de la Rochefoucauld could but
follow, though his political views had in themselves no great depth.
His mistress’s will was his; to gain her favour, he said, to please
her beautiful eyes, he “made war upon kings: had need been, he would
have made it on the gods.”
Amidst all the rancour and uproar was mixed a vast amount of
frivolity and of mockery of serious warfare. The generals led
soldiers, scented and lace and ribbon-bedecked, to parade; and the
women looked on, and applauded or jeered at them, as the fancy took
them.
“Brave de Bouillon’s got the gout,
Oh, he is lion-brave no doubt,
But when there’s a troop to put to rout,
And Condé’s men he has to flout,
Then brave de Bouillon’s got the gout.”
This favourite piece of Frondeur doggerel was for ever assailing the
ears of Monseigneur le Duc de Bouillon, when Condé changed sides,
influenced strongly by his sister, as well as by his own convictions.
The anger of the queen at his secession was terrible. She spared no
one who had been ever implicated in the Fronde side of the quarrel,
and de Gersay was one of the first to be avenged upon. But warning
came in time, and the contingent of musketeers despatched to arrest
him, arrived too late at the old Brittany manor-house. Ninon and de
Gersay had already fled to St Mâlo, where they set sail for England,
of whose shores they were already well in sight, when the soldiers
reached the château.
The imbroglio in Paris had now touched seething-point. The queen
and Mazarin decided to blockade the city, and to obtain submission
by reducing the inhabitants to starvation; but the firmness of
President Molé and of the advocate Talon, strong in their principles
of defence of the rights of all the community in the face of royal
despotism, saved the situation. Mazarin sent to the Parliament a
_lettre de cachet_ for the imprisonment of the princes and leaders
of the Fronde: the Parliament retorted by denouncing Mazarin as an
enemy of the king and the State, and a disturber of the public peace,
and ordered him to quit the country within a week’s time. For the
unfortunate thousands, weary of the conflict, asking only for peace
and quietness, it was misery and confusion confounded, and they were
thankful when a truce was patched up. But it was a mockery, for while
the Parliament retained its right to assemble, the queen retained her
prime-minister, detested by most, mistrusted even by more.[4]
And meanwhile the dark clouds of anarchy and bitter contention
brooding over France had blackened and burst over England into the
storm of the tragedy of the 30th of January, which saw the death of
King Charles I. by the headsman’s axe at Whitehall.
Who that headsman was, and what of the real truth and trustworthy
detail of the king’s execution, who shall say? Romance, in which
reality may lie concealed, clings to that last scene, in which only
it is certain that Charles Stuart bore himself for the king he was,
and that while thousands of loyal subjects wept that day for the
victim of Cromwell’s ambition, the regret in France was deep and
far-reaching.
Ninon was in London, a refugee, at the time, and it is possible
as one authority avers, that she was present with de Gersay, and
obtained from His Majesty a lock of his hair as he stood upon the
scaffold, and that at a later time she took this to the queen,
Henrietta Maria. One has to bear in mind that the “Musketeer”
heroes immortalised by Dumas, also stood beneath the scaffold on
that sad occasion. And why not? Royalist sympathy in France with
our Cromwell-ridden country was strong. That Anne of Austria felt
little of it for her unhappy sister-in-law, is self-evident, since
Henrietta, lodged in the Louvre with her children, found shelter
indeed, but cold comfort enough otherwise, being found, at last,
fireless and almost foodless; and it was only when their destitute
condition was represented to Mazarin, that he instantly sent her a
good sum of money and other required assistance.
Buckingham’s adored divinity, possibly, had all her accredited
beauty, her portraits notwithstanding, but it is difficult to
trace much milk of human kindness or warmth of heart in “Dame Anne”
throughout her career. Her Spanish pride and dignity could have
been scantily tempered with the high, generous characteristics of
her compatriots. Had the troubles environing her engrossed her, the
case might have seemed in a measure excusable; but in the face of
the storm of the Frondy wind, or perhaps because of it, the balls
and routs and love-intriguing, and the rest, were carried on in full
rush: for that there was ever ample leisure.
About this time Scarron wrote his _Mazarinade_, and continued to be
in love with his Françoise. She was desperately poor, and gained
scanty subsistence by needlework, supplemented by what Scarron earned
from the proceeds of his writing, which she carried in MS. for him to
and fro the printers. _The Mazarinade_ was an immense success; but
the author gained financially less than nothing from its publication;
as it so offended the queen, that the pension she had granted him was
withdrawn, and the marriage with Françoise his heart was set upon had
to be delayed. She had, however, in the meantime, consented to take
up her abode with him, and they were happy.
After some months’ sulking away in various places, the Court returned
to Paris, having again patched up a sort of reconciliation, and on
that occasion Condé found himself in the same coach with Mazarin.
The drive could scarcely have been an enjoyable one, and the hollow
_entente cordiale_ only gave the Frondeurs offence. It lasted a very
little time, for soon after, when Mazarin was attempting to arrange
a marriage of one of his nieces with a close connexion of de Condé’s,
the proud prince said furiously that at the best “they were only
fit to be the wives of Mazarin’s valets. Go and tell him so,” added
Condé; “and if he is angry, let his captain of the guards bring him
by his beard to the Hôtel de Condé.”
The cardinal swallowed the insult and continued to offer high favours
to Condé, who refused them all, and in a little time the fury of the
dispute broke out again more fiercely than ever. Condé, strong in the
service he had rendered his country, grew insupportably arrogant,
and, not content with insulting Mazarin, was constantly offending the
queen. This ended in the arrest of himself, his brother, the Prince
de Conti, and the Duc de Longueville, and they were imprisoned at
Havre. Madame de Longueville thereupon hastened to Normandy, where
she tried to create an uprising for her party, but failing in this
she allied herself with Turenne, then fighting for Spain. A new
party was now formed, headed by the princes, and called the “Little
Fronde”—and big and little joined force against Mazarin, and the
cardinal, bending at last to the storm, went to Havre and set Condé
and the other princes free. But this did not satisfy the demands of
the Fronde, and he finally quitted France and took up his abode in
Cologne, still contriving to pull the strings of the French Court
party.
The following year he was back again, taking advantage of the quarrel
within quarrel of the leaders of both parties. Memorable among
these fearful frays was that encounter in the Faubourg St Antoine,
when Mademoiselle de Montpensier, “La Grande Mademoiselle,” the
brave daughter of the pusillanimous Gaston of Orléans, mounted to
the towers of the Bastille, and ordered the troops of the king to
fire upon the troops of Condé, now a leader of the Fronde. It was
a splendid victory as far as it went; but it only strengthened the
hatred against the cardinal. Anarchy and terror were at their height,
and to be accused of Mazarinism was to come in fear of death. Yet,
for the third time, and the triumphant last, Mazarin returned, to
be welcomed by the fickle people, to remain at the head of the
government till he died, after having the satisfaction of seeing
his five nieces all brilliantly married, and supremely content with
the result of his training of the young king, which was to prove so
disastrous at a later time. It was a training of utter neglect of
everything but the knowledge of his own importance, and that did not
need impressing upon the proud, dominating nature of Louis XIV. Said
Mazarin one day—“He has stuff in him to make four kings.”
CHAPTER XI
Invalids in the rue des Tournelles—On the Battlements—“La Grande
Mademoiselle”—Casting Lots—The Sacrifice—The Bag of Gold—“Get
Thee to a Convent”—The Battle of the Sonnets—A Curl-paper—The
Triumph and Defeat of Bacchus—A Secret Door—Cross Questions and
Crooked Answers—The Youthful Autocrat.
Several of the severely wounded, under the firing of the Bastille
cannon, were carried by Ninon’s desire into her house in the rue
des Tournelles. Among these were the Comte de Fiesque and the Abbé
d’Effiat. Both of these gentlemen were so cruelly weakened by loss
of blood, that it was long before either of them was able to be
removed. Fiesque had the misfortune to be married to an exceedingly
disagreeable woman, cross and ill-tempered with everybody, herself
included. There was no longer any affection between her and her
husband, and as he made no pretence of being true to her, it was
little less than a matter of course that he should find himself
fascinated by the charms of his kind nurse and hostess, while the
abbé was no less enthralled; and Ninon, weary of the Fronde—as
in fact who was not?—resumed the old society ways of the rue des
Tournelles.
It was Gondi, the bishop’s coadjutor, who laid to his singular
half-devout, half-profligate soul the flattering unction that he was
the author of the restored peace; and on the strength of it, he
obtained the red hat he so ardently coveted, and became the Cardinal
de Retz, so renowned for his romantic and adventurous career; but
he did not escape the vengeance of his mortal foe Mazarin, who
arrested him and confined him in the castle of Vincennes. Thence de
Retz obtained removal to the Château of Nantes, a stronghold safely
walled and moated round about, which appertained to his family. Some
chroniclers credit it with being the scene of the crimes of the
terrible Bluebeard, Gilles de Retz, Marquis de Laval. It is almost as
stern and forbidding-looking as “Black Angers,” and with as long a
record of interest. Its massive walls were first built into the bed
of the deep-flowing Loire in the fourteenth century, and its frowning
towers vividly conjure to the mind’s eye the picture of Sister Anne
watching from their summits for “anybody coming.”
Its bastions and walls, and slate and granite round-towers bear the
cross of Lorraine, carved on them during the wars of the League. Anne
of Brittany, born within its walls, is said to have been married for
the second time in its chapel—now a powder-magazine—and here, too,
Henri IV. signed the Edict of Nantes, which gave to the Huguenots
their religious freedom, to be so shamefully withdrawn at the
instigation of the amiable Françoise d’Aubigné.
One night, while de Retz was languishing in an upper chamber of the
Mercœur tower of this prison of his, a boat lay moored beneath in
the shadow, and de Retz contrived that the guard and sentry of the
castle should all be furnished with ample means for a carouse. It was
tempting, and not one declined the generosity of his good-natured
Eminence. The revellers grew sleepy and dazed; too entirely so to
do more than gaze lacklustrely up at their prisoner’s red cloak and
hat, blowing about in the evening breeze upon the upper walls of the
battlements which he was permitted to pace for exercise. De Retz,
meanwhile, who had slipped out of his vesture, and hung it there, was
dropping rapidly down by a rope moored fast to the stanchions of his
loophole casement in the Tour de Mercœur, into the boat which was
then sped away to the shore by the oars of one of his trusty waiting
friends, of whom he had scores; and in this way gained the spot upon
the banks where a horse was waiting ready saddled. Springing up,
de Retz bounded away on his steed, which in very short time flung
him, and his shoulder was dislocated; but, the pain notwithstanding,
he mounted again, and then reaching the shelter of the Château de
Beaupréau, he made his way through Spain to Rome and perfect safety,
until by resigning his archbishopric, which through the death of his
uncle had become his, he was reconciled to the governing powers of
France and returned to Paris.
Of the two most prominent leaders in the long civil contention, Condé
retired to Spain, and Mademoiselle de Montpensier wandered about
from château to château in Normandy, forbidden to come to Paris
for several years. All idea of her marriage with Louis XIV. was
extinguished on the day she fired upon the royal troops. “Very
good!” exclaimed Mazarin then, “she has killed her husband.”
[Illustration: Ninon de Lenclos.
_Deveria del^t_ _Tavernier sculp^t_
_To face page 127._]
Something less than a year later a little daughter was born to
Ninon. There was so much doubt concerning its paternity, that the
Comte de Fiesque and the Abbé d’Effiat had no choice but to make
a throw of the dice for the rightful claim on it, and de Fiesque
being the winner, subsequently had the child educated and reared at
his own cost, insisting on this in despite of Ninon wishing to keep
it under her own care. But towards herself the attachment of the
count rapidly cooled. To bring him back to her feet, she conceived
the ruse of cutting off her hair, the real locks, for these having
grown again. There was, however, something in this of the virtue of
necessity; as it was again threatening to become scanty—and sending
them by a servant to the count, it exercised its intended effect;
as he regarded it as a touching sacrifice, and Fiesque was again at
her feet, penitent, and tender as ever. But Ninon, thus triumphing,
dismissed him from the old position, and relegated him to the ranks
only of friendship. Once more the hair of Ninon began to grow
luxuriantly, and she devised a fashion of arranging it that was so
charming, as to find the sincere flattery of imitation—“_Se coiffer
à la Ninon_”—became the rage.
The wife of de Fiesque wrote Ninon a terrible letter of reproach for
her intrigue with the count. It would seem to have been prompted
simply by revenge, as the lady made no pretence of affection for
her husband; but the fear of entailing injury to the child, strongly
influenced Ninon to desire to have it in her own care. The count,
however, had left the country for Spain, and she had difficulty
in discovering with whom the poor babe had been placed. She was,
moreover, moving at that time in one of her whirling rounds of
gaiety, and of a thoughtless folly, that at a later day brought its
sincere regrets; and she abandoned the search, and followed on by the
old ways, bestowing her smiles chiefly on the Comte de Miossens, who
had been distinguishing himself greatly under Maurice of Orange.
An old friend, Monsieur de Gourville—who, as a warm partisan of
the Duc de Condé and the Duchesse de Longueville, had remained away
from Paris for a long time—returned one day somewhat unexpectedly,
and Ninon, naturally looking for a visit from him, waited, but in
vain. At last she wrote him a little note to ascertain why he so
long delayed his coming, and so much the more since he had entrusted
to her keeping a large sum of money in gold in a bag, having at the
same time placed as much more with the Grand Penitentiary. This
individual had now, he told de Gourville, given it all to the poor;
as he supposed that had been as de Gourville had intended, but it had
not been the intention. The money had been deposited in trust, said
de Gourville, who added he should have liked to strangle the Grand
Penitentiary.
“And did you have the fancy,” said Ninon, “that I had distributed the
sixty thousand livres also in good works?”
“No, but in gowns and fal-lals. At least, you would own to the truth
of it,” said de Gourville, “and I like that better.”
But Ninon owned to no such thing. She bade de Gourville understand
her rightly. Light, perhaps frivolous, she might be, but she prided
herself on being honest; and going to fetch the bag of gold, she
placed it before him with the fastenings intact.
When de Gourville mentioned this circumstance among his friends,
it was to accord Ninon signal praise; but to that Ninon utterly
disclaimed right. There was, she said, no merit in doing one’s duty.
Her mode of life was the result of the philosophical system she had
adopted. To be honest, what should one be else?
And for her mode of life, it had none of the glaring indifference to
decent outward conduct, which some of the dames of society indulged
in. Many ladies of blameless living came to her _réunions_. Among
them was the Comtesse de Choisy, lady of honour to the queen, and
she promised to befriend Ninon in the matter of the threat Anne ever
held over her of sending her to a convent. The thought of cloistral
seclusion was a terror to Ninon; unless now and again, theoretically
it might be pleasant. Ninon observed certain restraints in her
ways of life; and more than once she excluded from her _réunions_
fashionable high-born women who had scandalised society by their
loose conduct. Moreover, Madame de Longueville was one now of her
intimate friends, and she often brought with her to Ninon’s house
her young brother, who had distinguished himself bravely in the
Fronde, and she would not countenance corruption of the youthful hero
by including women of notorious evil-living among her guests.
Madame de Longueville, lacking the power to carry on any more
political intrigue, took up literature, and set the Hôtel Rambouillet
in a ferment, by her championing of Voitures sonnet on _Uranie_
against Benserade, who had composed one on _Job_. The Uranists
and the Joblins contended fiercely over the merits of the two
productions. The news of the victory of Rocroi did not create greater
excitement than the clamour of rivalry made over the two poets.
Madame de Longueville failed to win back the favour of the queen
after the part she had taken in the Fronde. She grew disgusted with
the world, and retired into the convent of the Visitation at Moulins,
of which her aunt, the widow of the Duc de Montmorency, was the
superior. Some time later, her husband persuaded her to return to the
world; but it was not to Paris, but to Rome she went to live, and so
the ties of friendship between her and Ninon fell away.
The whim once seized Ninon to pretend to one of her admirers that she
wished to marry. The young man ardently expressed his willingness
for this; but Ninon insisted on having a settlement from him, and
no small one, being in fact nearly his whole fortune. He signed it
away to her. Long before the arrival of the proposed wedding-day,
however, the _fiancé’s_ ardour had cooled; and his misery at the loss
of his money would have melted a stone to compassion. Having carried
on her amusement long enough, Ninon one morning told him, as she sat
at her toilet-table, to unroll the curl-paper on her left temple. He
did so, and Ninon bade him keep it, which he joyfully did; for it was
his little bill of eighty thousand or so of livres. Then she released
him from his allegiance, warning him to be more careful in future
of rash promises; since some women were designing and absolutely
unscrupulous.
Monsieur de Navailles, the husband of the lady who had the care of
the queen’s young ladies of honour, was another admirer of Ninon’s.
His devotion was out-rivalled, however, by that he paid to Bacchus.
Piqued at his neglect of her, she contrived to punish him on one
of the several occasions when the vine-leaves were in his hair, by
appearing to him, after his prolonged sleep, in his own _pourpoint_,
and putting his hat on her head, she entered the room where he lay
snoring. Flourishing a sword, and swearing like a trooper, she
threatened to run him through; and then, having succeeded in really
alarming him, she laughingly revealed her identity.
Madame de Navailles was a rigid disciplinarian with her charges—not
without cause, for Louis XIV., arriving at years of discretion,
had evinced great interest in the mode of life led by them in
their private apartments; but Madame de Navailles was adamant. De
Navailles, therefore, who was ambitious of advancement at Court,
devised the notion of becoming once more greatly enamoured of his
wife; and thus gaining access to the general salon of the ladies, he
contrived, without madame’s knowledge, to get a panel knocked out
in the wall skirting a small stairway, by which nothing was easier
than for his youthful Majesty to come and go at pleasure. This means
of communication being however, very soon discovered, the aperture
was blocked up; so greatly to the annoyance of the king, that he
dismissed Madame de Navailles from her post; though he had the
gratitude to present her husband with the marshal’s bâton.
It was at this time, for a good while past, that Ninon lived under
the terror of the queen’s threat of sending her into a convent, the
more likely to be carried out now on account of the part she had
taken in the events of the Fronde. Her numerous friends and partisans
were also anxious on this score, and the matter became one of so much
interest and discussion, that one day a champion presented himself
at her door, seeking an interview. He represented himself as an
ex-captain of the Guards of Christina, Queen of Sweden, who, he said,
entertained a considerable appreciation of such fine, tall, robust
giants as he was. Ninon, however, who accepted his services and
his sword at the wage of a pistole a day, soon found him rather an
incubus, and was glad to hand him over to the service of Monsieur de
Navailles.
The consecration of the young king was now about to take place at
Rheims. Each of the queen’s ladies of honour was authorised to
choose a companion from among her friends for the ceremony, and
Madame de Choisy invited Ninon for this purpose, having the generous
intention of trying to restore her to the regent’s favour. It was
entirely successful. Not only was all fear of the terrible injunction
being carried out removed, but Ninon, on the return to Paris,
was invited to join the friendly _réunions_ at the Palais Royal.
Sometimes these took place in the queen’s small salon, sometimes
in the apartments of Mazarin. The invited ones vastly enjoyed
themselves, with the exciting pastimes of questions and answers,
and broken sentences. Sometimes the violins were sent for, and they
danced the _Quénippe_ or the _Diablesse_, and still oftener there
were games of romps.
The cardinal’s four nieces were nearly always present at these
gatherings. They were all charming and beautiful, Olympe,
Hortense and Laure Mancini, though not absolutely and perfectly
sweet-tempered. It was reserved to Marie, less regularly featured
than her sisters, but far more fascinating and amiable, to bear the
palm, and to win the attentions of the king. These were carried so
far, that it was thought by many—Mazarin indeed hoped, and his hopes
were apt to find fulfilment—that she would be queen. She assumed
great authority over Louis, to the extent of not allowing him to
cast stray glances of admiration on the ladies of the Court or at
her sisters. Louis, however, was apt to rebel on this head. To this
influence, Marie, then a girl of fourteen only, the well-known fact
is ascribed of Louis, then but a youth of sixteen, hurrying from the
chase, back to Paris, and booted and spurred, his whip in his hand,
entering the grand council chamber of the Parliament, where some new
financial edicts were being considered after the holding of a Bed
of Justice, and revised with a view to seeking some modification
of them. In haughty tones, and with a majestic air, Louis bade the
councillors disperse and leave the edicts as they had been drawn up.
“Monsieur le President,” he said, “the evils attending these meetings
of Parliament are but too well known. Henceforward I forbid them, as
I also forbid these edicts just registered, to be tampered with.”
These words echoed through all Europe. They provoked murmurs long and
deep of the Parliament, and it was only with the greatest difficulty
that the prudence of Turenne was able to keep under the widespread
dissatisfaction.
The policy of Mazarin’s “education” of the young king was already
bearing the fruit of the future misery of the country which his
Eminence’s alien authority so disastrously ruled.
The intimacy of Ninon and Marie Mancini grew into friendship, and
Marie’s confidences made it clear to Ninon that it was her uncle’s
intention, if not her own avowed one, that she should be the wife of
Louis XIV. But the constancy of the great young monarch was ever a
fragile thing.
CHAPTER XII
The Whirligig of Time, and an Old Friend—Going to the Fair—A
Terrible Experience—The Young Abbé—“The Brigands of La
Trappe”—The New Ordering—An Enduring Memory—The King over the
Water—Unfulfilled Aspirations—“Not Good-looking.”
_Tempora mutantur._ Ninon, in the course of the years which were now
bringing her to middle life, had seen many changes; but when her
friend St Evrémond came back about this time from the wars, after
seven or eight years’ absence, he told her that she had not changed
with them. Beautiful and youthful-looking as ever he assured her she
was, and to prove his words, he took a little mirror in one hand, and
in the other the portrait Rubens had painted of her years before, and
bade her make the comparison herself.
There is little doubt, at all events, that Time’s finger had scarcely
dulled the delicacy of her complexion, or the brightness of her eyes.
Were thanks due to the Man in Black for this? It was a question she
put to St Evrémond very seriously, but the cheery Epicurean had only
a smile and a witticism for answer. The devil, he assured her, did
not exist, and he proposed to escort her to the fair of St Germain
that fine February afternoon. This was scarcely the best way to
make good his assertion; for if his Satanic Majesty was to be found
in Paris, it was certainly in that quarter; for was not the rue
d’Enfer, whence the Capucins had ejected him from his house, hard by?
This, however, had by no means hindered the brethren of St Germain
des Prés countenancing the proceedings, which had come to be near to
an orgy, of the annual market, or fair of St Germain des Prés—by
the letting their ground for it to be held upon. From the king, to
the most villainous of the populace, everybody went to the fair. The
booths were within hail of the ground known as the _Pré aux Clercs_,
the haunt of the _basochiens_, the lawyers’ clerks of the Palais de
Justice, away upon the Ile de la Cité, between St Sulpice and St
Germain—the church of the three steeples. The roof of the modern
flower-market now covers this ground. Everything conceivable could
be purchased at the stalls, from the richest silks and velvets to a
pancake or a glass eye, or a wooden leg or a wax arm, or essences
and waters for turning old people young again; every game of chance,
thimblerig, lottery, cards, held out its temptation; every kind of
entertainment, dancing, tumbling, jugglery, music of fiddle and
fife, and drum and tabor—a deafening _tintamarre_; all kinds of
beverages—wine, cider, tea, coffee—“to drive away melancholy;”
syrups were concocted for the dust-dried throats of the surging
crowd of fine ladies, students, lackeys, soldiers, dainty-shod,
short-cloaked, blond-bewigged abbés, pages, beggars, gipsies.
Respectable bourgeois families rubbed shoulders with flaunting women,
and the wretched crew of mendicant impostors from the old _cours
de miracles_. Often it was the scene of fracas and fisticuffs and
damaged countenances. On one occasion, a page of the Duc de Bouillon
cut off the ears of a clerk of the _basoche_ and put them in his
pocket. The students of the quarter fell to murderous assault upon
the fellow, while the pages retaliated, and many a dead body of page
and student was found afterwards in the ditches of the Abbaye. At
once an earthly paradise and a pandemonium was the time-honoured
annual market of St Germain des Prés, and in the midst of the madding
riot and confusion a great deal of serious business was transacted
among the merchants and foreign traders who came from afar to exhibit
their wares, as for centuries had been the custom, ever since
mediæval day, when church porches and convent gates were nearly the
only rendezvous for buying and selling.
Not absolutely accepting St Evrémond’s theory, Ninon and her cavalier
left the fair to walk homewards, little thinking that they were to
be confronted by the blood-chilling tale the pale lips of Madame
de Chevreuse poured hurriedly out to them from the window of her
carriage, which she called to a halt as they passed across the Pont
Neuf—a tale upon whose precise details the chronicles of the time
slightly differ, even to casting doubt upon it as a fact, though
the circumstances are no more than consonant with probability. The
beautiful but profligate Madame de Montbazon, it will be remembered,
had been sent by the queen, on account of her glaring attempts at
mischief-making, to reflect upon her misdeeds at Tours. It was held
that she would not find the punishment so tedious and unpleasant
as it might have been if M. l’Abbé de Rancé had not been in the
neighbourhood. He was her lover, and a most ardent one, constantly
by her side, but not to persuade her to penitence; on the contrary,
de Rancé was wild and profligate of life as the woman he adored. He
was brilliantly clever. At school he out-rivalled his class-fellow
Bossuet, and when but thirteen, he published an essay on the dignity
of the soul; and beneath his dissolute ways the gold of a conscience,
of which so many of the Courtly circle in which he moved seemed
absolutely devoid, often shone through. Armand Jean de Rancé was one
of an old and distinguished family, and he was only ten years old
when the Abbey of la Trappe in Normandy was bestowed on him.
The monastery of la Grand Trappe du Perche, said to have been so
named from its hidden position among the dense forests of the stormy
Norman headland, is of very ancient foundation. It was established in
the twelfth century by Robion, Comte du Perche. The brethren followed
the Cistercian rule, and for several centuries it was in high repute
for the sanctity of its community, and for its wealth, which was put
to its legitimate charitable uses. In course of time, like so many
other abbeys, it was given _in commendam_, and its pious repute fell
away to such an extent that the seven monks—all that remained in the
monastery—were called by the surrounding peasantry “the brigands of
la Trappe.” They were notorious for their evil-living, spending the
time in drinking and hunting; and shunned alike by men, women and
children, the Trappist monks were the terror of the district.
It was at this time that the child, Armand de Rancé, was made Abbé,
and affairs at la Trappe continued to fall from bad to worse. As
de Rancé grew up, among many benefices conferred on him, he was
appointed Almoner to the Duke of Orléans, and spent most of his
time in a whirl of dissipation in the Courtly circles in Paris. His
splendid entertainments, his magnificent house, the trappings of his
horses, especially those of the chase, were the talk of Paris, and
his daring intrigues startled even the licence indulged in by the
society he moved in. In this circle de Rancé specially singled out
the stepmother of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, a
woman as notorious for her profligacy and unscrupulous character as
she was physically beautiful.
After a time spent in banishment at Touraine, she had been permitted
to return to her Paris home, and de Rancé, who had been absent for a
short time, returning to Paris, hastened to call upon her. Arrived
at the house, he found it deserted, and passing in by an open door,
he hurried along the silent passages, calling for the servants and
upon her name, but there was no response. At last he reached the
door of her apartments, and rushing across the anteroom, he flung
aside the _portières_ of her bedchamber. An open, trestle-supported
coffin, across which a sheet lay carelessly flung, met his eyes, and
turning from it to the table close by, the decapitated head of Madame
de Montbazon confronted him. Momentarily he failed to recognise
the features of the ghastly object; for the face was blurred with
the ravages of smallpox. The fell disease had attacked Madame de
Montbazon, and she had died of it. The body and head were being
prepared for embalming, and for this end—or as some versions of the
tale tell, because the coffin had not been made long enough—the head
had been cut off, and placed upon the table.
The silent horror of this ghastly experience carried an eloquence
beyond all power of words to the heart of de Rancé. Swayed by a
revulsion of feeling, naturally sensitive and imaginative, he looked
back upon his past life with loathing. The hollowness of worldly
pleasures, and uncertainties of a worldly existence were yet still
more deeply impressed upon his mind, by a serious accident he
suffered in the hunting-field, and by the death of his patron, the
Duc d’Orléans. All seemed vanity.
De Rancé was at this time thirty-four years old. With the exception
of the ancient monastery of la Trappe, lost amid the wild forests
verging on the perilous rock-bound shores of extreme North-Western
Normandy, he divested himself of his property and possessions, and
went to take up his residence in la Trappe, endeavouring to establish
the old discipline in it. But the seven spirits he found there were
unruly, and had no mind for being disturbed. So entirely were they
opposed to the abbé’s reforms, that his life was in danger from them,
for they threatened to throw him into the fish-ponds; and Brigadier
Loureur, stationed at Mortagne, the nearest town of importance,
begged de Rancé to accept a guard of his soldiery; but de Rancé
decided that since the brigands of la Trappe had clearly less than
no vocation for the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they
were best entirely got rid of—and he pensioned them off and sent
them away, not in wrath, but in peace. Their place was filled by
Cistercian brethren of the strict observance.
The position of an abbé, or for that matter, an abbess in the ranks
of the Church, had long become an anomalous one. The relaxation of
the old rigid conventual ruling had wrought great changes. It was
not unusual to find some lady of a noble family appointed to the
nominal charge of a monastery, and some equally nobly-born gentleman
set over a community of nuns; and in either case, as likely as not,
they had no knowledge, or next to none, of the everyday mode of
life or working of such community. At the fair of St Germain the
abbés always swarmed thick as flies, in their short black habits
and delicate little linen bands, as where did they not congregate
in the society of the time? The salons of the Hôtel de Rambouillet
and other brilliant assemblies were dotted all over with them. They
were the makers of _petits vers_ and _bouts rimés_, and, if nothing
more, pretty well indispensable to the following of a fine lady as
_cavaliere serventis_. They were wont to make themselves generally
amusing and agreeable, everything, in short, but useful to the
spiritual needs of the Church in whose ranks they were supposed to
serve. They wore their vows too lightly for the Abbé de Rancé to
dream of exercising real authority in virtue of the title alone;
and he qualified himself for the dignity he intended to assume of
Superior of the monastery of la Trappe in Normandy—by entering as a
novice in the Cistercian Abbey of Persigny. This ended, he took the
vows, in company with a servant who was deeply attached to him, and
was confirmed abbot.
The order of strict Cistercian observance is rigid in the
extreme—almost utter silence, hard labour, total abstinence from
wine, eggs, fish, and any seasoning of the simple fare of bread and
vegetables. The earnestness and eloquence of de Rancé stirred the men
desirous of joining the brotherhood to such a deep enthusiasm, that
many of them wanted to take the full vows at once; but the Abbé of la
Trappe refused them this, lest they should not have truly counted the
cost of their sacrifice. And not only in this case, but in others the
famous reformer of the ancient monastery showed a singular judgment
and reasonableness in the ordering of his community. And “his works
do follow him”; for still as of old, hidden amid those dark forests,
though not far from the haunts of men, stands the Priory of Notre
Dame de Grâce de la Trappe, its brethren, spending their time not
given to devotion, in alms-giving and healing and acts of charity of
every kind.
In England, meanwhile, great if not unanticipated changes had
befallen. Oliver Cromwell was dead. He had passed away in comparative
peace in his bed. Had his days numbered even a few more, they might
have terminated in assassination, for deep-laid schemes for this were
hatching. The dreary Commonwealth was growing daily more displeasing,
and the English people were longing for the king to have his own
again. It was a day of joy indeed to Queen Henrietta Maria which saw
the progress of King Charles II. to London. She had some desire that
he should wed la Grande Mademoiselle, Gaston d’Orléans’ daughter; but
Mademoiselle nursed a hope of becoming the wife of her cousin, Louis
XIV., a hope that was not to be realised. Possibly, as Mazarin had
said, the Bastille cannonading had killed that husband; but after her
long wanderings she was again at Court, and in fair favour.
Louis XIV., without being strictly handsome, had agreeable features
and a fine presence, which his pride and self-consciousness knew very
well how to make the most of. He had grown from the mere youth into
a dignified, courtly young manhood, and the want of knowledge and
defective bringing up were fairly well concealed by “the divinity
which doth hedge a king.” It certainly always enfolded Louis XIV.
“Ah, my dear cousin,” cried Queen Christina of Sweden, when she first
saw him, “some one told me you were not good-looking! _Sacré-bleu!_”
she added, bestowing a sounding kiss on both of Louis’s cheeks, “if I
had the man who told that lie here, I would cut off his ears before
you!” and she still stood gazing admiringly at the king. So there
could be no further doubt about his attractive appearance; for Queen
Christina was accounted an unerring judge in such matters.
CHAPTER XIII
Christina’s Modes and Robes—Encumbering Favour—A Comedy at the
Petit-Bourbon—The Liberty of the Queen and the Liberty of the
Subject—Tears and Absolutions—The Tragedy in the Galérie des
Cerfs—Disillusions.
Christina, ex-Queen of Sweden, was not more nice in style of
dress than she was in the choice of a word to add strength to
her affirmations, and “_sacré-bleu_” was a mild sponsor for the
swear-word she really selected on the occasion. The startling force
of it, combined with the extraordinary costume she wore, excited an
irrepressible burst of laughter from the queen and from Mazarin, and
all present followed suit—all but the king, who looked disconcerted
and rebukeful.
Christina wore a wig, standing up high over her forehead, with tufts
of curls sticking out, all rough and tousled, on each side of her
face, which was, however, far from really ill-looking. She had on a
coat, which was a cross between a man’s _pourpoint_ and a woman’s
cape, put on so carelessly that it left one shoulder half-exposed.
Her skirt was not cut _à la mode_ into a long train; it was merely
a round petticoat, so short as to afford ample display of leg. A
man’s shirt and a man’s boots completed this costume, in which the
great King of Sweden’s daughter presented herself to the Majesties of
France.
She met the risible gaze of the Court with displeasure, and inquired
what they were all staring at. “Am I humpbacked?” she demanded, “or
aren’t my legs well-shaped?” The king, with courtly good-nature,
threw oil on the troubled waters, and Christina was pacified,
observing that Louis spoke like the king and gentleman he was. “And
as for you others,” she added to the rest, “mind yourselves.”
Ninon, who was indisposed, was not present at this scene; but
recovering some days later, she went to the Louvre, where, thanks to
her friend Madame de Choisy, she came and went constantly; and as
she passed along a gallery leading to that lady’s apartments she met
Madame de Choisy and Christina, who was attired in very much the same
manner as already described, but slightly less _outré_.
The queen was fascinated at first sight with Ninon. She placed her
two hands on her shoulders and gazed long and fixedly into her face.
“Now I understand, my dear,” she said at last, “all the follies the
men commit, and will commit for you. Embrace me,” and she bestowed
two such sounding kisses on Ninon’s cheeks, as she had bestowed
on the king’s. Then taking her by the arm, she led her to her own
assigned apartments, at the door of which stood two bearded men,
one of them Count Monaldeschi, her Grand Master of the Horse, the
other the successor of the redoubtable Desmousseaux, the Chevalier
Sentinelli, captain of her guard.
Some time before her visit to Paris, Christina had abdicated,
declaring that the formalities and restrictions of the existence of
a crowned queen were unendurable, the cares of a kingdom rendered
life a slavery, and she desired perfect liberty. The liberty she
sought for herself, however, she in no wise extended to others; for
while she renounced her claims to her inherited kingdom, she reserved
to herself absolute and supreme authority, with the right of life
and death over all who should enter her service or be of her suite.
Then, a Protestant born, she joined the Catholic communion. It was
probably a mere caprice; for she did not spare her coarse witticisms
on the newly-adopted faith, and very soon she contrived so seriously
to offend the College of Cardinals that she was forced to leave Rome,
which she had entered on horseback, dressed almost like a man. After
a while she had come to France, and probably somewhat impressed
with the elegancies of the Court, she made some modification of the
hideous attire she had first appeared in. When Ninon first met her
in the Louvre gallery, Her Majesty wore a grey petticoat skirt of
decent length, trimmed with gold and silver lace, a scarlet camlet
coat, her wig was of the unvarying pale yellow hue, and she carried
a handkerchief of costly lace, and a broad-brimmed hat, plumed with
black ostrich feathers. With her white skin, her aquiline nose and
fine teeth, she would have made a very presentable boy.
She was very voluble, and her immeasurable admiration of Ninon to her
face, was almost disconcerting, even to one so very well accustomed
to compliments. At last, the subject being exhausted, the ex-queen
fell to asking all sorts of questions about the king, the queen,
the cardinal, the new palace at Versailles, the Italian Opera. Then
she had much to say about her own country and her abdication; about
Descartes, who had died at her Court a victim to the climate; about
Count Monaldeschi, with whom, she confided to Ninon, she was on terms
of very close intimacy, and about a hundred other things.
During Christina’s stay in Paris, Ninon had the delight of seeing
again that most dear friend and protégé of hers, Molière, after his
long absence in the provinces. Christina was with Ninon when he
arrived, and as he and his company were to play that same night the
_Cocu Imaginaire_, at the Petit-Bourbon, it was arranged that the two
ladies should be present.
Christina had the appetite of an ogress, and before they started for
the theatre, she did ample justice to the handsome repast Perrote
served up. Then Her ex-Majesty summoned her captain of the Guards,
and Grand Master of the Horse—who had been regaled in another room
on turkey and other dainties, and they repaired to the Petit-Bourbon.
The evening proved anything but enjoyable to Ninon. A market-woman
would have comported herself more decently than this eccentric,
semi-barbarous royal person. She greeted the sallies of the
actors with loud shouts of laughter, and used language that was
rankly blasphemous; while she wriggled and lolled in her chair,
and stretched her feet out among the footstools and cushions, in
appalling fashion. It was in vain Ninon respectfully intimated that
the eyes of everybody were upon them; Christina’s only reply was to
beg her to let her laugh as much as ever she wanted.
The queen’s liking for Ninon grew embarrassing. Six months of
her constant society were almost more than the most good-natured
tolerance could endure, and for that length of time the favour of the
queen’s presence was bestowed on Paris. Then Cardinal Mazarin, also
more than tired of her, entertaining moreover, suspicions that she
was brewing political mischief, contrived to tempt her to seek change
of air and scene at Fontainebleau.
Christina caught the wily cardinal’s bait. Very well—yes, it was a
good idea. She had a great desire to see the renowned palace that
Francis I. had loved so well, and to Fontainebleau, to the relief of
Ninon and of divers other people, the ex-queen went: not to remain
long, however. One morning, at a very early hour, the Chevalier
Sentinelli arrived at the rue des Tournelles and informed Ninon that
she was wanted at the Palais Royal, by his royal mistress, who had
returned to Paris.
It was useless to devise some excuse for not obeying the
summons—invitation, or what it might be—for that was only to bring
the queen herself to the rue des Tournelles; and so to the Palais
Royal Ninon went, to find Christina stretched upon a miserable
pallet-bed, with an evil-smelling, just-extinguished candle on the
table beside her. A serviette did duty for a night-cap, tied round
her head, which was denuded of every hair; for she had had it
shaved close on the previous night. Christina presented a strangely
grotesque and wretchedly miserable picture. Seizing Ninon by both
hands, she told her that she was suffering the deepest agony of
mind—a grief that was horrible—and begged her to stay by her. At
this moment, Sentinelli entered, and a whispered conversation ensued.
“Oh, they will prevent me?” she cried then. “They will prevent me,
will they? Let them dare. Am I not a queen? Have I not a right to
high justice? Very well, then,” she went on, when again Sentinelli
had bent to whisper again. “We must dissimulate. I will go back
to Fontainebleau. There at least, I can do as I please,” and she
prevailed on Ninon to accompany her. And there in the Galérie des
Cerfs at Fontainebleau the hideous tragedy was enacted. The farce
of this woman’s daily life fades out in the thought of her ferocity
and revengeful instincts. Monaldeschi had offended her: he had done
worse, he had been treacherous towards her. Pitiless, with eyes
glittering with rage and hatred, she stood in the Galérie, where the
fading daylight was illumined by the flare of the torches held by
her pages, and taxed the wretched culprit—pleading for mercy at her
feet—with his crimes; but it was not accorded; “Ah, let me live!” he
entreated—“let me live!”
And Ninon, who had dreaded something, but was utterly unprepared for
such a frightful scene, joined her entreaties to his and to those of
his confessor, the monk Lebel. “Ah, no! A woman,” she sobbed, “cannot
give an order for this man to die.”
“I am not a woman,” replied Christina; “I am a queen, and I have the
right to punish a traitor.” She gave the signal. There was a fearful
struggle, the flash of Sentinelli’s sword, an agonised cry, a crimson
stream upon the floor—and then the silence of death.
It had been with extreme reluctance that Ninon had accompanied
the queen to Fontainebleau; but for all Christina’s enigmatical
and elaborate preparations before starting, any conception of her
murderous intentions did not occur to Ninon. She had grown accustomed
to the royal lady’s freaks and eccentricities. On this occasion,
Christina had sent for a confessor, and having attired herself from
head to foot in black, she knelt before him when he arrived, and
first desiring Ninon not to leave the apartment, but to seat herself
in a distant corner of it, she muttered out to the perplexed-looking
Bishop of Amiens—whom she had sent for, he staying at that time at
the Tuileries, spending a kind of brief retreat—what she had to say.
It occupied some five minutes, and as she proceeded, an expression
of deep discomfiture and perplexity overspread the bishop’s face. He
gave her a hurried absolution, and departed, while Christina went
to the chapel of the Feuillants and communicated. All these pious
preparations had disarmed Ninon of any extreme of uncomfortable
suspicion she might have entertained. Christina could not possibly be
nursing any evil intentions—while Ninon was a woman, and curiosity
had impelled her to Fontainebleau, to see what was the end of the
affair, and find out the cause of such floods of tears.
In the coach with them were Monaldeschi and Sentinelli. To the first
she did not address a single word throughout the journey. It was
nearing five o’clock, and night was shadowing in, when they arrived;
and when they had had supper, Christina commanded Monaldeschi to
go to the Galérie des Cerfs, where she would presently come to
him. Then she bade Sentinelli follow the count, and motioning
Ninon to accompany her, she proceeded between two rows of Swiss
Guards, armed with halberds tied about with black crape, to the
Galérie. Now thoroughly fearful, Ninon had followed with trembling
limbs. “In Heaven’s name,” she faltered, “what does this mean,
Madame?—something terrible is about to happen.” With an evil smile
Christina threw open the double doors, disclosing Monaldeschi, with
his hands fast bound, kneeling at the feet of Lebel, whose features
were ghastly with consternation at the task imposed on him, of
hearing the doomed man’s confession.
At sight of Christina, Monaldeschi turned, and his agonised cry for
pardon rang through the Galérie; but there was no mercy in that
hideously hate-distorted face; and so, in cold blood, the murder was
perpetrated, and out into the darkness Ninon rushed, calling for a
carriage to bear her from the terrible place, heedless of the queen’s
gibes and endeavours to persuade her at least to remain till morning.
It was nothing—what she had done, she said; “only a traitor had
received his deserts, and the world was well rid of him.”
But the coach drew up, and Ninon fled into its shelter, never
stopping till she reached home. There she took to her bed in a
high state of fever, having ever before her the terrible scene of
blood at Fontainebleau, and for three weeks she remained prostrated
by the memory of it. She never saw Christina again, neither did
Paris. Though the Court took no proceedings against her—insult to
hospitality as her act was, all other considerations apart—she was
avoided, and regarded with loathing, and she planned for herself a
visit to England. But Cromwell had already supped full of murder.
The image of it was sufficiently haunting, and the endeavours of his
conscience to make peace with Heaven before he died were not to be
disturbed by the presence of such a woman. He turned his face from
her instead, and Christina betook herself to Rome, where she fell
deep in debt, and quarrelled fiercely with the pope.
Overweening ambition was the bane of this undoubtedly clever woman.
In the murder at Fontainebleau, it is thought that vanity and the
love of power tempted her to display what she was pleased to regard
as a full length of it. Exactly the nature of Monaldeschi’s offence
remains unexplained. Christina said he had grossly betrayed her, and
some assert that it was politically he had done so; but it seems
more probable that he was a traitor in love. She defended herself by
saying that she had reserved every right of life and death over all
who were in her service. The atrocious deed caused a sensation in
Paris; especially among those of whom the ex-queen had been a guest,
and Anne of Austria sent for Ninon to relate all the details of her
fearful experience at Fontainebleau.
The chief topic of conversation and speculation now was the marriage
of the young king. It was well known that Mazarin hoped to crown his
successful ambitions, by marrying his niece, Marie Mancini, to Louis,
and that Anne of Austria was as strongly opposed to any such alliance
was equally well-known. It was her wish and her will that Louis
should wed the Infanta Maria Théresa. Any thwarting of this project,
the queen vowed, should bring about the setting aside of Louis, and
placing her second son on the throne of France in his stead—“_La
reine le veut_.” Mazarin had to bite the dust. The preliminaries
for the Spanish marriage were set on foot. The French and Spanish
emissaries met on the Isle of Pheasants. Poor Marie Mancini, who had
a sincere affection for her young royal admirer, was sent out of the
way for a month into the convent of the Daughters of Calvary, which
was hard by Ninon’s house. Louis whispered in her ear at parting,
that if the king was separated from her, the man would never cease
to think of her. Then he whistled to his dogs, and with his courtly
train went hunting in the woods of Chambord. So ended the love-story
of Mazarin’s niece, Marie Mancini. So much “for the snows of yester
year”; but there had been warm affection between Ninon and the young
girl, and they parted with many tears.
CHAPTER XIV
_Les Précieuses Ridicules_—Sappho and _Le Grand Cyrus_—The
Poets of the Latin Quarter—The Satire which Kills—A Lost
Child—Periwigs and New Modes—The Royal Marriage and a Grand Entry.
Molière’s comedy, _Le Cocu Imaginaire_—which had created such
unrestrainable delight in the ex-queen of Sweden—had been preceded a
year earlier by the famous _Précieuses Ridicules_. To call this play
the dramatist’s masterpiece, is to do rank injustice to his work of
greater length and importance, notably, if one dare to choose, to _Le
Tartufe_. The _Précieuses_, however, took Paris by storm, and was
accounted a gem. Still a delightful little bit of humour, and not
lacking now in its way of a home-thrust, it carried a double-edged
power in the days of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, when the affectations
of speech and conversation had run to such absurd extravagance,
that Molière’s satire was little or no exaggeration. Mademoiselle
de Scudéri’s “_Inutile! retranchez le superflu de cet ardente_,” is
distinctly precious.
Of the queens of these intellectual _réunions_, Mademoiselle de
Scudéri was the reigning novelist. Her long life, exceeding Ninon’s
in years, was devoted to the production of romances and the lighter
sort of literature, which ran to a lengthy record. _Le Grand
Cyrus_ stands best remembered, but is scarcely more than a memory.
A long day’s journey would be needed to find the most ardent of
fiction-readers who would now care to follow through the windings
of that romance which in its day created such enthusiasm, and made
a lioness of the amiable if some way from beautiful Madeleine
de Scudéri. _Artamène; ou, le Grand Cyrus_, after all, was, to
be sure, scarcely fiction. It was composed of little more than
thinly-veiled facts, presenting under classic names the living men
and women of society; heroes and heroines of antiquity stood sponsors
to the fine, broad-skirted, perruqued gentlemen and fashionable
dames of Versailles and the Louvre and the Palais Royal. Artaban,
Agathyse, Zenocrates—these were, in their modish habit as they
lived, severally the Duc de St Bignon, M. de Rainez, M. Ysern, and
others—while Mademoiselle de Scudéri herself was Sappho. It was in
her salon that was drawn up the famous _Carte du Tendre_—gazetteer
of articles necessary to the pursuit of love. Mademoiselle de Scudéri
wrote with grace and much sense; but her romances were insufferably
prolix. Ninon found them wearisome to a degree, even though the
_Grand Cyrus_ is a record of the great Prince de Condé. George de
Scudéri, Madeleine’s brother, was also a very fertile novelist of his
day, scarcely to be rivalled in speed of production by Dumas himself.
Nor does there appear that the ghosts who worked for this great, more
modern enchanter of the realm of historical romance, rendered any
services to the seventeenth-century novelist. The salons of Madame
de Rambouillet and of Madame de Sablé were the rendezvous of the
most aristocratic of these versifiers and epigram-makers, who really
occasionally uttered something witty or poetical; though for the most
part the wit and poetry did not rise above such greatness as that
of Sir Benjamin Backbite, in Lady Sneerwell’s drawing-room, on the
macaroni ponies whose
“Legs were so slim,
And their tails were so long.”
The refinements and elegance of speech to be heard at those
_réunions_, fostered, and indeed were a powerful influence in, the
reformation effected by the Académie for the French language. But the
passion for these improvements was often torn to tatters, and the
puerilities and affectations excited a reaction among men of the more
Bohemian class of writers and versifiers, such as Scarron, St Amand
and others, and the curious mixture of real poetic expression and
thought, profanity and coarseness, in their productions, carry back
to the days of Rabelais and of Villon, with echoes of Ronsard and of
Charles of Orléans. But the simplicity and beauty of their numbers
only now and again shone through the grossness of their compositions,
and sheer opposition to the “Clélies” and “Uranies” and “Sapphos”
probably inspired the numerous parodies and the odes to cheese and
good feeding produced by these authors, who hailed with delight the
now famous actor-manager Molière’s _Précieuses Ridicules_.
The piece was first produced at the Petit-Bourbon early in the
winter of 1659. The plot, deep-laid if simple, consists of the
successful playing off by two lovers respectively of the two charming
young women they love honestly and deeply, but who meet refusal on
the score of their language being too natural, and their attire not
sufficiently fashionable. The two young men thereupon dress up their
valets, Mascarille and Jodelet, in fine costumes, bestow on them the
titles of marquis and vicomte, and contrive to introduce them to the
_précieuses_. The exquisite humour of the dialogue between Gorgibus,
the father of one of the two girls, and uncle of the other, sets the
ball rolling; his contempt for the new names, Aminte and Policène,
which they have selected in place of those given them, as he says, by
their godfathers and godmothers; his dim grasp of what he calls their
jargon, when they try to instil into him some idea of its elegancies,
is the essence of genuine comicality, as are the compliments of
the two aristocratic visitors who inform the ladies that it is the
reports of their exquisite attractions and beauty, reaching far and
wide, which has brought them to their feet. Then follows the flutter
of delight, veiled under the attempt at calm graciousness, of the
_précieuses_. “But Monsieur,” says Cathos to Mascarille, the marquis,
inviting him to sit down, “I entreat you not to be inexorable to
this armchair, which has been stretching out its arms to you for
this quarter of an hour past; allow it the satisfaction of embracing
you.” The fun grows apace, as the slips of tongue and bearing of
the two pretended gentlemen begin to disconcert the two infatuated
girls. At last a dance is proposed, the fiddlers are sent for, and
behind them enter the two masters of the valets, who tear their fine
coats off their backs, and turn them out. “And you,” says Gorgibus,
chasing the _précieuses_ from the room, to repent at leisure of their
affectations and thirst for _la galantérie_, “out of my sight, and to
the devil with all these verses, romances, sonnets, and the rest of
it—pernicious amusements of do-nothings and idlers!” So the curtain
descended on the _Précieuses Ridicules_, and the story goes that
before very long the play extinguished the glory of the salon of the
Hôtel de Rambouillet.
The Comte de Fiesque, who had gone with Condé to Spain, was killed in
Catalonia by the bursting of a bomb. Ninon, not able personally to
ask the widow where the child was which de Fiesque regarded as his,
commissioned two persons to ascertain for her from Madame de Fiesque
some intelligence concerning its whereabouts, but the countess
asserted that she had no knowledge of this. The remorse and regret of
Ninon were of no avail: she was unable to trace the lost one.
At last, after long negotiations, Maria Théresa of Austria was united
to Louis XIV. This brought Condé back to allegiance to France, by
the Peace of the Pyrenees, effected by Cardinal Mazarin, one of the
few of his achievements which really benefited France. Ninon was
one in the gorgeous cortège which proceeded to Grosbois, beyond
Charenton, to receive the young princess. It was a brilliant show.
The fashions of the early days of the young king had greatly changed
since his father’s time, which was so greatly distinguished, at
least as far as male attire went, for its elegant simplicity. Bright
hues had superseded the black, the beautiful but sombre colouring
of the material of the silk or satin or velvet doublets with large,
loose slashed sleeves; the falling bands of rich point lace; the
long, straight, fringed or pointed breeches meeting down to the
lace-ruffled or lawn wide-topped boots, and the eminently graceful
Flemish plumed beaver hat. In place of the long hair waving to the
neck, full-bottomed periwigs had come into vogue; the doublets were
short and waistcoatless, displaying a bulging shirt-front, tied with
ribbons to the nether garments, which, like the large loose sleeves,
were covered with points and bows; deep lace ruffles drooped from the
knees, and only the falling collar, with a hat higher crowned than of
yore, but still plumed, remained of the old style.
It was to the beauty of Louis XIV.’s hair when he was a little
boy, that the huge, hideous periwigs seem to owe their invention.
Nature’s ruling has its exceptions in the bestowal of naturally
curling head-covering, and desiring to offer the sincerest flattery
of imitation, the French courtiers and the ingenuity of the coiffeurs
combined to invent the huge periwigs, which in some sort of fashion
even contrived to live through the French Revolution and the Terror
itself; for did not Robespierre preside at the great Feast of the
Supreme Being in about the ugliest, primmest bobtail wig ever
fashioned on barber’s block?
As to the women’s dress in France, it varied somewhat according to
their rank. Middle-class bourgeoises wore the scantiest covering
out-of-doors on their necks and shoulders; not even in church was
their attire more modest. To so scandalous a length was this carried,
that it brought on them more than one remonstrance from the pulpit;
and Englishwomen, taking as always, their fashions from Paris,
followed suit. A Nonconformist English divine published a translation
of a French work by “A grave and learned Papist”—possibly the Curé
of St Étienne—who reprehended in no measured terms the “shameful
enormity,” as he phrased it, of this style of dress. The ladies of
the great world ordinarily went with more circumspection in the
streets, and nearly always, also, they wore a mask. It was generally
made of black velvet, lined with white satin. It fixed itself on
the face with a spring, and was fastened with a thin wire, which
was terminated by a glass button that could be dropped between the
lips, and so disguise the voice. The female style of dressing the
hair was to gather it up in a bunch at the crown of the head, leaving
some curls to hang on each side of the face; over this was placed a
sort of little linen hood, the points of which usually reached to
the shoulders. The gowns were wide-sleeved and long-waisted, with
a skirt embroidered or trimmed with lace. A small dog was almost
indispensable to a lady of fashion. The little creatures were very
pretty, generally having pointed muzzles and ears. Women took snuff
and smoked, and the traces of these habits were apt to leave their
ugly reminders about their persons and dress.
A great many new streets and houses were added to the city. The
increase in the number of public vehicles rendered the streets very
noisy, while the filth of the ways was indescribable; but this did
not hinder women from walking in velvet slippers, or pages and
lackeys from wearing bright, gold-laced scarlet livery.
The state of morals, from highest to lowest, was at a low ebb. Vice
permeated every class, from the clergy and nobility to the dregs of
the populace. Murder and barefaced robbery took place constantly
in the streets; the rage for gambling was boundless, and the
cardinal-minister made no attempt to check the shameful licence of
the green tables.
Yet Paris was fair and brilliant to the eye when Maria Théresa made
her entry in the most magnificent carriage of the cortège which
occupied three hours in passing. The princess was not beautiful;
but her expression was amiable, and her complexion very fair for a
Spanish woman. She wore a mantle of violet velvet embroidered with
golden _fleur-de-lis_ over a robe of white brocade covered all down
the front with a splendid _rivière_ of emeralds, and she wore her
crown with infinite grace and dignity.
The fierce light that beats upon the lives of kings and queens was at
its fiercest when cast upon the life of the Sun-King. His marriage
with the Spanish princess was one of policy and convenience, and as
such there have been unions more disastrous. If love played no great
part in it, at least the king was true to the dignity and a certain
gentle courtesy and good-nature underlying the pomp and extravagant
display with which he was pleased to surround himself; and Maria
Théresa’s record of a queen’s life bears no startling evidence of
unhappiness or discontent—something indeed to the contrary.
CHAPTER XV
_Réunions_—The Scarrons—The Fête at Vaux—The Little Old Man in
the Dressing-gown—Louise de la Vallière—How the Mice Play when
the Cat’s Away—“Pauvre Scarron”—An Atrocious Crime.
The return of St Evrémond brought about the restoration of
the old pleasant Monday and Friday _réunions_ of the rue des
Tournelles—whose regularity so many untoward events had greatly and
for so long interfered with.
Ninon could afford to dispense with the less interesting society
of the Louvre, where, except for Madame de Choisy’s friendship, no
very cordial hand had ever been extended to her; while the cultured,
refined Bohemianism of her salon was probably more acceptable to
many of her distinguished friends. They at all events gathered
there numerously. Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld, ever faithful to
the beautiful Duchesse de Longueville; Condé; the brilliant society
doctor of his day and memoir writer, Guy Patin; Monsieur de la
Châtre, also a chronicler of his period; Monsieur de Villarceaux,
Corneille, whose tragedy of _Œdipus_ brought him back in high-heaped
measure the success which had waned since the production of _The
Cid_, so greatly that he had nearly lost heart for dramatic work;
Molière—these two the brightest and best-beloved stars of Ninon’s
firmament. Monsieur Voiture was now no more. His empty niche was
filled by Boileau, who introduced to her his young friend, Racine.
Occasionally, by kind permission only of Madame de la Sablière,
came la Fontaine. Among the ladies of her company were Madame de la
Fayette, the authoress of _Zaïde_ and of the _Princesse de Clèves_;
Madame Deshoulières, called “the French Calliope”; and, as healing
Time’s wings now and again bring, it was Molière himself who effected
pleasant relations once more with Julie de Rambouillet, now Duchesse
de Montausier; Madeleine de Scudéri, the distinguished _précieuse_,
held aloof.
On Wednesdays the Scarrons received their friends, most of those the
same as Ninon’s. Françoise had now long been the wife of Scarron,
and his wit and her beauty attracted a numerous company. The brother
of Françoise had not mended his ways. He was still the ne’er-do-well
result of his miserable bringing up; yet there was something not to
dislike, even something of a soul of good in d’Aubigné’s evil. The
poor crippled poet and his wife were happy in their union. Scarron
had indeed but two faults to find in his Françoise—one of them to
wit, that she devoted herself too closely to him, at the sacrifice of
health and spirits. She had copied all his _Roman Comique_ for him in
her beautiful handwriting, and Scarron, noting that she looked pale
and fatigued, begged Ninon to take her about a little with her into
the gaieties of life.
Scarron’s chronic ailments had not affected his appetite; possibly
amusement being necessarily very restricted for him, his naturally
gourmand proclivities had increased. This was to such an extent,
that his wife went ever in fear of his indigestions, and when he
suggested that she would be so much better for occasional absences
from home, Ninon did not ascribe it to pure and simple anxiety for
Françoise, but also to his seizing a better chance for eating three
times as much as was good for him. Her vigilance in this particular
was the other defect he perceived in her. The desired opportunity,
however, soon presented itself.
Monsieur Fouquet, the powerful superintendent of finance, was a
friend of Ninon—that and nothing more—and one day he confided to
her that he had fallen in love with the daughter of the _maître
d’hôtel_ of the Duc d’Orléans, and desired to ask her hand in
marriage. He hoped, in fact believed, that she was not indifferent to
him; but to make certain, he asked Ninon, such an adept in the tender
passion, as he said, to watch her at the great fête he was about to
give at his magnificent estate at Vaux. It was to be on a superb
scale. All the Court, with all the Upper Ten, were invited guests.
They were to appear in masquerade costume. Ninon, holding that the
good turn Monsieur Fouquet sought of her, merited his ever generous
consideration, asked him to allow her to bring a lady friend with her
to the fête; this favour he accorded with great pleasure, and Ninon
delightedly informed Madame Scarron that she was the chosen friend.
Equally delighted, Madame Scarron selected her fancy costume; it was
that of a Normandy shepherdess, and confectioned with all the good
taste of Françoise. The tunic was of yellow cloth, with Venice point
undersleeves, her collarette was of Flemish lace, and Ninon lent
her some of her diamonds wherewith to adorn her ribbon-tied crook.
Ninon’s costume was composed of pearl-grey satin, trimmed with silver
lace stitched with rose-coloured silk, an apron of black velvet, and
a cap plumed with crimson feathers.
With many instructions to Nanon Balbien, the maid-servant, to take
good care of her master, and to keep a close eye on him at meal-time,
Madame Scarron drove away in the coach with Ninon to Vaux, where they
duly arrived.
Le Nôtre, the royal gardener, had received orders to construct a
splendid ballroom in the middle of the park, and, in the depths of
winter though it was, he achieved a triumph of gorgeous magnificence.
Orange trees were massed within the huge tent, and flowers of every
hue were brought together from every hothouse and possible quarter,
to render the scene a veritable fairyland, glowing in the thousand
lamps depending from the gilded chains winding amid the sheeny
foliage.
But who has not heard of that fête, the ill-omened thing that
brought its lavish giver disaster? Among the guests—named indeed
first on the list of the invited—was she whom Fouquet sought to
honour, perhaps even for whom he organised the entertainment—Louise
de la Vallière; and among the male masquers dancing _vis-à-vis_ to
her, murmuring low as they met, was one habited as an old man in a
dressing-gown, domino sort of cloak, who was, in sooth, but a young
man, the king, Louis XIV. It was not the first dawning of their
love that night at Vaux. Already, at a ball at the Louvre, Louis had
given her a rose, one that was incomparable for sweet perfume and
loveliness. Innocent or politically guilty, it was all one for the
great superintendent of finance. He had dared to love the woman Louis
loved, and the doom of Fouquet was sealed.
And the merry going out of Ninon and her friend also found a mournful
coming in; for when they arrived in Paris next morning and Françoise
alighted from the coach, Nanon hurried to the door to meet her. “Ah,
mademoiselle—madame!” she cried, with a face wild with distress and
terror, “he is dying! he is dying!—my poor master!”
“_Bonte divine!_ how did it come about?” asked the two ladies in a
breath.
Nothing more simple. The master, to begin with, immediately on the
departure of Ninon and his wife for Vaux, had despatched Nanon with
a note to his good-for-nothing brother-in-law. D’Aubigné, having
read the note, said that it was all right, and he would come and
pass the evening with Monsieur Scarron. Nanon, thus feeling herself
free also to enjoy an evening out like the rest, spent it with Jean
Claude, a young man cousin of hers; but when at a fairly decent
hour she returned home, an appalling picture met her eyes. On the
table prepared for supper, lay, or stood as might be, seven empty
bottles, the bones of a capon on the empty plates, with the crumbs
of two Chartres pasties, and an empty Strasburg goose pot, also well
cleared, madame’s brother under the table, and Monsieur Scarron
lying back in his wheel-chair, waxen-white, speechless, but convulsed
with a hiccough, a terrible hiccough that had never ceased all night,
Nanon said.
“Fly for a doctor!” cried Ninon.
And one of grave and profoundly calm aspect appeared, and proceeded
to examine his unconscious patient’s condition; then he shook his
head. “He is a dead man,” he said.
“Ah, quick, Nanon! Quick to the rue de l’Arbre Sec, for Doctor Guy
Patin.”
“What!” cried the doctor, with almost a yell of horror, “the foe to
antimony! I would sooner see the devil himself!” and he fled; for
the battle of antimony was at fierce pitch just then. As a medicinal
agent it was opposed by the medical profession to such an extent,
that the Parliament of Paris forbade its use; although already many
of the profession were as strongly in its favour. Meanwhile Ninon
sprinkled the face and hands of the sick man with cold water. He
opened his eyes and recognised the two.
“Ah!” murmured he, “what a delicious supper. In this world, I fear, I
shall never have another like it.”
“We have sent for Guy Patin. He will cure you.”
“Guy Patin?—yes, he is a grand creature; but, ah!”—and the
hiccough, which had momentarily ceased, recommenced. “Well, people
don’t die of a hiccough, I suppose,” went on Scarron—alas! for the
mistake!—“but that goose, and the pasty, how excellent they were!
Take your pen, dearest Françoise—it is indigestion—yes, but one of
rhymes—till Guy Patin comes. I will see what rhyming will do for
me—some good, surely, for my rhymes shall be of Ninon. Take your
pen, Françoise, and write.”
And as well as she could for her tears, the poor wife wrote Scarron’s
swan’s-song in praise of Ninon. “Well, are they detestable?” he
asked then, between the never-ceasing convulsion of hiccoughs.
“No matter. I have rhymed—on my deathbed—for it is useless to
deceive myself—I—I die.” One last convulsion, that shook his whole
distorted frame, seized him, and he fell back dead.
Then from the depths of the room loomed a dishevelled figure. It was
d’Aubigné. “Dead!” he murmured, leaning over the corpse of his boon
companion. “Well, he ate—all—and I—drank all. _De profundis_”—and
he shuffled out.
Guy Patin entered, but all was of no avail now for “_le pauvre_
Scarron,” as he called himself.
No ordinary character of a man was the first husband of Françoise
d’Aubigné, the woman he so sincerely loved and admired, so
disinterestedly loved, that he would, had she desired, have denied
himself the happiness of living in her society—for he had offered
her the choice of placing her _en pension_ in a convent at the
expense of his own scanty incomings. Driven from his rights as a
child, gifted with great wit and talent, and a generous kindliness,
he was beloved by a large circle of friends. First the victim of
cruel, iniquitous neglect, oftentimes his own enemy, the crosses
of life never blighted the gifts of his intellect, or, it may be
added, of his industry. In straitened conditions touching on absolute
poverty, the _gaieté du cœur_ of Paul Scarron never forsook him,
and if he could have lived a while longer, for his own sake, as he
certainly would for hers for whose future he was ever anxious—he
said with that labouring dying breath, that he could not have
supposed it so easy to make a joke of death.
He had composed his own epitaph long before—
“He who lies sleeping here beneath,
Scant envy but great pity won,
A thousand times he suffered death,
Or ere his life was lost and done.
Oh, Stranger, as you pass, tread light,
Awaken not his slumbers deep,
For this, bethink you’s the first night
That poor Scarron is getting sleep.”
A terrible event—that thrilled society, and indeed everyone, with
horror—occurred in the South of France about this time. To the Court
at Paris it struck especially home; inasmuch as the victim of the
fiendish perpetrators of the crime was the Marquise de Castellana,
at the time of her presentation at Versailles. She was then very
young. She brought her husband, a grandson of the Duc de Villars, an
immense fortune, and her beauty was so remarkable as to distinguish
her amid the many beautiful women of the young kings Court. Louis,
indeed, showed her marked attentions, and she was known as the
beautiful Provençale. Very soon, however, the marquis, who was in
the naval service, perished in a shipwreck; and a crowd of young
and titled men flocked around the lovely young widow as suitors for
her hand. Her choice fell on young Lanède, Marquis de Ganges, and
for the first year or so of their married life they were very happy
in their home at Avignon. Then slight disagreements arose between
them. He began to yield to dissipation, while he accused her of
coquetry. More than that he could not apparently bring against her.
He had two brothers, the Abbé and the Chevalier de Ganges, and both
these men fell deeply in love with their beautiful sister-in-law.
In his capacity of a churchman, the young wife confided many of
her thoughts and her affairs to the abbé. This he used as a tool
to influence his brother, the marquis, as it better suited his own
designs, either to ruffle his anger against her, or to smooth it.
Then one day he pleaded his own passion to her. She repulsed him. The
chevalier made a similar attempt, and was similarly rejected. Furious
at this, they made common cause, and vowed to be revenged on her.
First they attempted to poison her by putting some deadly stuff in
her chocolate, but for some reason the attempt failed. It is thought
that the deadly properties of the poison they used, were nullified
by the milk, and she experienced no more than a passing uneasiness.
Rumours of the attempt began, however, to circulate in Avignon and
the neighbourhood; and the marquis proposed to his wife that they
should go to his castle at Ganges to spend the autumn. She consented;
though with some misgiving. The Castle of Ganges was a gloomy
place surrounded on all sides by sombre avenues and densely-growing
trees. After a short time spent with his wife at Ganges, the marquis
returned to Avignon, leaving her in the care of his two brothers. A
little while previously, a further large inheritance had fallen in
to her, and she had begun to have such suspicions of the integrity
of the family to which she had allied herself, that she made a
will, confiding, in the event of her death, all her property to her
mother, in trust, till her children, of which she had two or three,
should be of age. The abbé and the chevalier, discovering what she
had done, never ceased their endeavours to persuade her to revoke
this will. What successful arguments they could have used to effect
this, it is difficult to conceive—unless they employed threats—and
these possibly they did use; since, after another abortive attempt
to poison her, they one day entered her bedchamber, where she lay
slightly indisposed with some passing ailment. The abbé approached
her with a pistol in one hand and a cup of poison in the other, the
chevalier following with a drawn sword in his hand. “You must die,
madame,” said the abbé, pointing to the three fearful means for
accomplishing the purpose. “The choice of the manner of it is to
you.” The unfortunate woman sprang from her bed, and fell at the feet
of the two men, asking what crime she had committed. “Choose!” was
all the answer.
Resistance was hopeless, and the unhappy lady took the cup of poison
and drank its contents, while the abbé held the pistol at her breast.
Then the two assassins departed from the room, and locking her in,
promised to send her the confessor she begged for.
Directly she was alone she tried to choke back the poison, by
forcing a lock of her hair down her throat; then, clad only in her
nightdress, she clambered to the window and let herself drop to the
ground, lying nearly eight yards below. That the exits and doors were
all watched she had little enough doubt; but by the aid of a servant,
who let her out by a stable door, she gained the fields. The two men
caught sight of her, and pursuing her to a farmhouse where she had
sought refuge, they represented her as a mad-woman, and the chevalier
hunted her from room to room of the house, till he trapped her in
a remote chamber, where he stabbed her with his sword, dealing two
thrusts in the breast, and five in the back, as she turned in the
last endeavour to escape. Part of the sword-blade had remained in her
shoulder, so violent was the blow. The piercing cries of the unhappy
lady now brought a crowd of the people of the neighbourhood round the
place; and among them the abbé, who had remained without to prevent
any effort on her part to escape. Anxious to see whether she was
dead, he presented his pistol at her, but it missed fire. This drew
upon him the attention of the crowd, and they rushed to capture him;
but with a desperate struggle he got away.
The marquise lived for nineteen days after this fearful scene; but
all hope of life was gone. The corroding poison had done its fell
work. Her husband was with her in her last moments, and she strove
in her dying agonies to clear him of complicity in the foul murder;
but the evidence against him was too strong, and the Parliament of
Toulouse condemned him to confiscation of his property, degradation
from his rank of nobility, and perpetual banishment. The chevalier
escaped to Malta, where he soon after died, fighting against the
Turks. The abbé fled to Holland, and assuming another name, his
identity was lost. It is said that this horrible crime was but the
prologue to many subsequent iniquitous adventures in which he was
the prime mover. The sentence of being broken on the wheel which was
passed on these two criminals, and was too good for them, they thus
contrived to evade. Their execrable record lives among the long list
of Causes Celébres of the time.[5]
CHAPTER XVI
A _Lettre de Cachet_—Mazarin’s dying Counsel—Madame Scarron
continues to Receive—Fouquet’s intentions and what came of
them—The Squirrel and the Snake—The Man in the Iron Mask—An
Incommoding Admirer—“Calice cher, ou le parfum n’est plus”—The
Roses’ Sepulchre.
It was in the very presence of the dead Scarron that Ninon was
informed of the danger threatening St Evrémond. A _lettre de
cachet_ had been issued for conveying him to the Bastille, for the
offence he had given in writing some satirical verses on the Peace
of the Pyrenees. St Evrémond was very far from standing alone in
his opinions on this treaty carried through by Mazarin; but he
was unapproachable in the expression of them. Biting invective
and caustic wit at the cardinal’s expense were graven in every
line of his couplets, addressed to the Marquis de Créqui. Nor did
the mockery cease at that point; it ridiculed the royal marriage
itself, and the king was furious. This was the second time that
St Evrémond had incurred the displeasure of Mazarin; on the first
occasion, a reconciliation had been patched up, after a three months’
sojourn for St Evrémond in the Bastille, but this time he was past
forgiveness—possibly, as it has been surmised, that in addition to
the verses, he had given secret offence to the Court—and it was now
but a matter of tracking St Evrémond to his hiding-place; for he
had been warned of the letter of arrest for shutting him up in the
Bastille, probably this time for the rest of his life. He had found
refuge in the convent of the Capucins du Roule; but already his goods
and money were confiscated, and it was Ninon who carried him, from
her own resources, the necessary notes and gold for his getting away
under cover of the night to Havre, where he arrived safely, and took
ship for Dover, never to return to France.
The Majesty of Louis XIV. was as a thing divine; and the faintest
shadow could not be permitted to cross the glory of that sun he
chose for his double-mottoed device. Cardinal Mazarin, now at the
point of death, renewed his counsel to the young king never to let
will thwart his, but ever to bear the sceptre in his hand—in his
own hand alone. So Mazarin, dealing his parting thrust of revenge
on the queen-regent, died in the castle of Vincennes, unregretted
by any, tolerated of later years, but despised by all. Someone made
his epitaph, whose concluding lines were to the effect that having
cheated and deceived through life, he ended with cheating the devil
himself, since, when he came to fetch away his soul, he found he had
not one.
Madame Scarron, after her husband’s death, decided to live in the
same apartments, in preference to the home which Ninon offered her
in her own house. The widow’s friends obtained for her a pension of
two thousand livres, and she continued the old _réunions_, and soon
recovered from the loss she had sustained; for Françoise d’Aubigné
was ever distinguished by her calm, equable temperament.
After the fête at Vaux, Monsieur Fouquet, continuing his attentions
to Mademoiselle de la Baume, finally asked her hand in marriage of
her parents. They were well pleased, especially her father. Madame
de la Baume would have seemed more to favour another destiny for
her daughter. The king was enraged on learning the superintendent’s
proposal, but Fouquet braved the royal displeasure, and intended to
take his bride to Holland. So the man proposed; but the Fates had
otherwise disposed. Within a few hours, a letter was brought him; he
broke the seal hurriedly, recognising the beloved handwriting, and
when he had read the letter—but two lines long—he sank back in his
chair as if a thunder-stroke had smitten him.
“Renounce me. Think of me no more. I am not worthy to be the wife
of an honest man.
LOUISE.”
It needed no more. Fouquet divined the truth, and he broke into a
storm of invective, and abuse of the king. To silence him, to warn
him of the perils surrounding him, of his many bitter and jealous
enemies, of the clouds of witnesses, false and true, ready and
waiting to bring charges of peculation and misappropriation of
finances against him, was of no avail. The fire of disappointed love
consumed him, and he raged against the despoiler of his happiness.
The jealous king, informed by those who had heard Fouquet’s wild
words, had waited not an instant, and thirty soldiers of the Guard
were on the way to the Hôtel of the Superintendence to arrest him;
but warned of their coming, he made his escape from the house. Too
late. Before he could reach the frontier he was taken; and in the
fortress of Pignerol he spent nineteen years a prisoner, after a
protracted trial before a packed tribunal, and nobly defended by
Advocate Pelisson, his devoted friend, a devotion for which Pelisson
suffered long imprisonment in the Bastille.
The jealousy of Louis in regard to Mademoiselle la Vallière,
however, probably only hastened the fall of the man on whose ruin
Colbert, comptroller-general of finances, and his successor, had
long been determined. On the walls of that magnificent Vaux mansion
of Fouquet’s was painted and carved his crest—a squirrel with the
device, “_Quo non ascendam?_” This squirrel was pursued by a snake,
and on the arms of Colbert was also a snake.
The lavish extravagance of Fouquet was almost beyond the bounds of
credibility. He stopped before no expenditure for indulgence of
his own pleasure, and in fairness it must be added, for that of
others. Courteous and kindly, intellectually gifted, his open-handed
generosity to men of letters and of talent generally was boundless.
Like our own “great lord cardinal,” “though he was unsatisfied in
getting, yet in bestowing he was most generous,” and again and again
he aided the State with money from his own private means. It is said
that at the fateful entertainment at Vaux, to which Louis XIV. was
invited, each of the nobles found a purse of gold in his bedchamber,
“and,” adds the same writer, “the nobles did not forget to take it
away.” When his disgrace came, it was the great who deserted him; the
people of talent clung throughout to their friend and benefactor.
Colbert, his deadliest foe, artfully instilled into Louis that it was
the ambition of Fouquet to be prime-minister. There is little doubt
that this was true. Colbert’s ambition for the post was not less.
On his arrest, Fouquet was first sent to the castle of Angers,
thence to Amboise, thence to Moret and Vincennes, then he was lodged
in the Bastille, and finally, on his condemnation, to the fortress
of Pignerol. After a three years’ trial, the advocate-general
demanded that he should be hanged on a gallows purposely erected
in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, but the votes for his
death were far in the minority, greatly to the fury of Louis and of
Colbert. While abuse, however, and charges of maladministration of
the finances were brought against him, peculation could not in any
way be established. In a generation of time-serving and venality,
the staunch devotion and affection of Fouquet’s friends remained
unchangeable. “Never,” wrote Voltaire, “did a placeman have more
personal friends; never was persecuted man better served in his
misfortunes.”
Madame de Sévigné, who had a warm regard for Fouquet, expresses her
fear in more than one of her letters, that he may be secretly done
to death by poison or by some other means of Colbert’s devising.
His friends suffered cruelly, in many cases, for their loyalty to
him. The gentleman, Monsieur de Roquesante, who had spoken in favour
of him—a Provençal—was banished in the depths of winter to the
chills of Lower Brittany, and the members of Fouquet’s family were
scattered, to find shelter where they could.
At Pignerol, Fouquet was treated with great rigour. Some few months
after his arrival there, a peril of another kind came very near to
him. The lightning of a heavy thunderstorm struck the powder-magazine
of the fortress, and it exploded, burying many in its ruins. Fouquet,
who was standing at the moment in the recess of a window, remained
unhurt. Mystery hangs over the last days of his life; for while
it is said that he died in his captivity at Pignerol, his friend
Gourville states that he was set at liberty before his death.
Voltaire also declares that Fouquet’s daughter-in-law, the Comtesse
de Vaux, confirmed the fact of this to him. Another surmise, and one
that found wide acceptance, is that although he was liberated for a
while, he was rearrested, and that it was he who was the mysterious
individual known as the Man in the Iron Mask.
Human Nature loves a mystery, and would resent being deprived of
this most memorable enigma in modern history, by any reasonable and
certain solution of it, could it be beyond all doubt and question
established. Again and again it has been explained and explained
away, but it is, as Galileo declared of the earth and the sun: _e
pur se muove_. The Man in the Iron Mask stands the Man in the Iron
Mask—which was, in fact, not of iron, at all, but of stoutly-lined
velvet, as the _loups_ and masks of the time nearly always were
made. Probably this mask was secured by extra strong springs and
fastenings, as mostly was the case for prisoners of distinction,
when they were being conveyed from one place of captivity to another.
Such kind of explanation was afforded to Ninon by the governor of the
Bastille when she discussed the point with him. There was, he said,
no mystery at all in it. Yet the possibility remains that it did not
suit the governor of the grim old prison-house absolutely to lift the
veil covering its secrets, even to Ninon.
It has been contended that it could not have been Fouquet; since
the Iron Mask’s death is recorded in the register of the Bastille,
where he was confined for the last five years of his life in November
1703, and Fouquet, at that date, would have been in extreme old
age, which this prisoner was still short of. Not being Fouquet, was
it Count Matthioli accused of betraying the French Government, in
the matter of putting a French garrison into Casale to defend it
against Spain? Was it the Duke of Monmouth, after all not beheaded
in England? Was it the child of Buckingham, the bitter fruit of his
intrigue with Anne of Austria? Was it the twin brother she was said
to have borne with Louis XIV., as Dumas tells—he who was taken by
d’Artagnan from the Bastille, and placed on the throne of France,
while the other Louis was shut up in his stead, the substitution
remaining undiscovered, so great was the resemblance between the
two—undetected by the queen, Maria Théresa, herself. The romance is
well founded, but even for the great master of romance it goes far.
Was it—No; the mystery, like Sheridan’s quarrel, is “a very pretty
mystery as it stands. We should only spoil it by trying to explain
it.”
Ninon was troubled at this time with an unsatisfactory, rather casual
admirer, Monsieur le Comte de Choiseul, an individual of whom it was
difficult for her to decide whether his pertinacity or his supreme
self-conceit predominated. Monsieur Précourt, the celebrated dancer,
an intimate acquaintance of hers, whom she one morning invited to
breakfast with her, did her the good service of finally relieving her
of de Choiseul’s incommoding presence. The breakfast was laid for
two, and Choiseul, entering, was about to seat himself, whereupon
Précourt claimed the place at table, and Choiseul, declining to stir,
Précourt invited him to adjourn to the neighbouring boulevard with
him, and settle the matter at the sword’s point. Choiseul replied
that he did not fight with mountebanks. That was as well, Précourt
retorted, since they might make him dance; and the unwelcome one took
his hat, went out from the house, and did not return.
The _liaison_ of Louis with Mademoiselle de la Vallière was now
generally known; and notwithstanding the warning of the disgrace
and banishment of St Evrémond, satirical rhymes began to circulate
at the expense of the royal favourite and her lover _Deodatus_. How
fortunate he was, said Bussy Rabutin, “in pressing his lips on that
wide beak, which stretched from ear to ear”; and forthwith the poet
found himself lodged in the Bastille.
Physically, the beauty of La Vallière was not flawless. Her mouth was
somewhat large; but it has frequently been said, that somehow the
defect of her lameness only added to the grace of her movements,
which were at once so gentle and dignified, while her magnificent,
dark dreamy eyes and her soft winning smile rendered her singularly
charming; and if Louis ever loved any but himself, it was Louise
de la Vallière, who so passionately loved, not Louis the king, but
the ardent wooer and winner of her heart. There is a story of the
rose-tree from which Louis plucked the rose which he offered her on
that ball night in the Louvre. It had been cultivated by le Nôtre,
the famous gardener of Versailles, and was an object of his tenderest
care; so much cherished, that he was far from pleased when he saw
the king pluck its loveliest blossom for la Vallière. She regarded
the rose-tree which had borne it with the tenderness one feels for
some beloved sentient thing, enlisting le Nôtre’s interest in it,
which in its way was as great as her own; and wherever she went to
spend any length of days, the rose-tree was transported in its box
of earth to the gardens of the palace—Versailles or the Louvre, as
it might be—and for two years the beautiful bush flourished under
the joint care of le Nôtre, and of the king’s beloved mistress. And
in her gentle confidences with Mademoiselle Athénais de Mortemar,
the _fiancée_ of Monsieur le Marquis de Montespan, with whom she was
great friends, she told her the romance of her rose, and how it was
her belief, her superstition—call it what you will—that while it
flourished, Louis’s love would be hers.
And then all at once the rose-tree began to fade. Slowly but
surely, despite all the skill of le Nôtre, rapidly it withered,
and he carried a handful of the earth of the new box, into which
he had transplanted the tree, as a last resource, to a chemist for
analysation. Nothing more simple: vitriol had been poured on the
earth, a drop or two at a time, and the root was corroded to dry
threads. And for la Vallière, it was only left to make a little
mausoleum for her rose-tree in the shadow of a retired thicket
round the bosquets of Versailles—a little crystal globe upon a low
marble stand; and within it, in a box exquisitely enriched with
gold filigree, the withered rose-tree, to one of whose branches
was fastened the faded rose, whose petals still hung together; and
thither to the secluded spot every day came la Vallière to kneel at
the tomb of her rose-tree, and kiss the shadowy souvenir of the love
that had faded for ever. Just a few petals left of its countless
leaves, so sweet and glowing once in their crimson beauty.
And Mademoiselle Athénais de Mortemar’s nuptials with Monsieur le
Marquis de Montespan having been solemnised, the wife was left by the
complaisant husband to become the second mistress of Louis XIV., and
this ere the first was discarded, and Maria Théresa still a youthful
wife. The two children of la Vallière the king legitimised by Act
of Parliament; but soon Louise was seen no more at Court. She found
refuge and rest for weariness and regrets of heart and spirit within
convent walls.
And now Anne of Austria succumbed to the fell disease which had
insidiously attacked her, and she died, and was borne to St Dénis
with great pomp, followed by Louis the king, clad in deepest
mourning.
CHAPTER XVII
A Fashionable Water-cure Resort—M. de Roquelaure and his
Friends—Louis le Grand—“A Favourite with the Ladies”—The Broken
Sword—A _Billet-doux_—La Vallière and la Montespan—The Rebukes
from the Pulpit—Putting to the Test—_Le Tartufe_—The Triumphs of
Molière—The Story of Clotilde.
By the advice of Guy Patin, Ninon’s constant friend and medical
adviser, she went to drink the chalybeate waters of Forges les Eaux,
in Picardy. Not that there was the least thing the matter with her;
only, as the wise doctor said, “Prevention was better than cure.”
Besides, well or ailing, everybody of any consequence went there; it
was the thing to do, ever since Anne of Austria had taken a course
of the waters, and a short time after had given birth to the child
Louis, the heir to the throne of France, whose coming had been so
long hoped for.
Time had brought its sorrows to Ninon. It had treated many of the
friends of earlier years with a hand less sparing than its touch on
her. Among those passed away into the sleep of death, was Madame de
Choisy. A great mutual affection had existed between the two women
ever since they had first met, and the severance saddened Ninon. At
Forges, she knew there would be many of her friends and acquaintance,
old and new, and instead of going to spend the spring days at
the Picpus cottage, she yielded to the persuasions of Madame de
Montausier and of Madame de la Fayette, and went to drink the waters,
mingle in its comparatively mild dissipations, and join in the gay
school for scandal for which Forges was as noted as are the run of
hydropathic resorts. It lies some half-way between Paris and the
coast by Dieppe. One of the three springs it contains is named after
the queen, presumably the one which brought Louis the Dieudonné, and
the other two are called respectively _La Royale_ and _Le Cardinal_.
Something neglected now, the place was thronged in Ninon’s day, every
season with a motley crowd of varied nationalities and conditions of
men and woman. “Parisians and provincials, nobles and citizen-folk,
monks and nuns, English, Flemish, Spaniards, Christians—Catholics
and Huguenots—Jews, Mohammedans, every one drinks in company the
waters, whose detestable flavour brings your heart into your mouth.
This debauch takes place at six o’clock a.m.”
Then began a promenade in the avenue of the Capucin garden, thrown
open to the public, and tongues, let loose, fell to work upon the
passing events and topics and reputations and no reputations. At
nine, breakfast drew the hungry ones to table, and Mass the devout.
All the morning was spent in doing nothing, or the business of the
toilette; then came a copious dinner, then visiting and more chatter.
At five began the theatre, supplied from the Rouen companies. At
seven was supper, then more promenading, concluding with litanies
sung in the monks’ chapel.
The Duchesse of Montpensier was among the company—her period of
mourning just ended for her father, who had died at Blois in the
preceding summer. The Grande Mademoiselle had been seized with the
_cacoëthes scribendi_, and treated her circle with readings from
her romances, _La Princesse de Paphlagonie_, _L’Ile Imaginaire_,
and a series of _Portraits_, for which style of composition there
was a rage just then. Ninon considered their excellence fell very
short of Mademoiselle’s martial talents. In a day or two arrived
the Duc de Roquelaure, with his cousin the chevalier, a personage
of terror-striking mien, followed everywhere by a Monsieur de
Romainville, a gouty, objectionable individual, as, indeed, not
much more could be said of his two friends. Instead of the waters,
he drank such a quantity of cider, that it aggravated his malady to
the extent of sending for one of the Capucin confessors; but on his
appearance the chevalier flourished his sword at him. “Be off with
you, my father!” he cried. “He has lived like a heathen: let him die
like one”; and so violently did the invalid laugh at this sally, that
it cured him.
One day the chevalier was hectoring over the number of the victims
of his doughty sword-blade. “And I have,” he added, “fought at least
fifty duels, and never received a single wound.”
“Parbleu! my dear cousin,” calmly said the Duc de Roquelaure, “I have
fought only one duel in all my life, and then I was killed.”
The end of the dog-days closed the season of Forges, and then Ninon
returned to rue des Tournelles.
The death of the dowager-queen, after her long illness and suffering,
brought a temporary lull in the dissipations and rush of frivolity
at the Court. Moreover, the breaking-out of the war with Spain, on
account of Louis XIV.’s claim on Flanders in right of his wife, left
the king no time for the usual Court routine. And then it was that he
showed himself a king indeed, leading his troops to victory. In three
weeks, with Condé—once again completely in favour, all his revolts
no longer remembered—and Turenne, whom Louis told that it was his
wish to learn from him the art of war, Franche Comté was conquered.
It was the dawn of a brilliant series of victories, and of the glory
and power of the France of Louis’s earlier years.
And now came a strange wooing, begun undeniably on the part of the
lady—no less a personage than the Grande Mademoiselle, now arrived
at the discreet age of forty-two—when she fell in love with Monsieur
de Lauzun, colonel of the just created first regiment of dragoons,
one of the many distinctions conferred on him by Louis. Youngest son
of a noble Gascon family—described by Bussy Rabutin as “one of the
least men in mind as well as body that God ever created”—elsewhere
he is pictured to us as one having a sort of talent, which, however,
consisted in turning everything and everybody into ridicule, worming
out their secrets, and playing upon their foibles. He was noble
in his carriage, and lived in splendid style. He loved high play,
and played like a gentleman. His figure was very diminutive, and
it is incomprehensible how he could ever become a favourite with
the ladies; but that he was in a notable degree. The Duchesse de
Montpensier conceived a passionate admiration for this little
gentleman; she who had aspired to be queen of France, or empress of
Germany, and had refused the crown of England, went _folle_ for love
of Antoninus de Caumont, Count de Lauzun.
This, however, was not the beginning of his career at Court, where he
had been introduced by his relation, the Maréchal de Grammont. Small
as Lauzun was, he bore himself splendidly; he had the grand air which
Louis so greatly admired, and it helped to win him almost boundless
consideration from the king. When the mastership of the Ordnance
became vacant, Louis promised it to him; on condition, however,
that for the present Lauzun should keep the matter a secret. This
was seeking too much of his vanity and boastfulness, and the secret
being one no longer, reached the ears of the minister Louvois, who at
once went to the king, and with much good sense and grave reasoning
over the unwisdom of such an appointment, persuaded His Majesty
to withdraw his promise. Lauzun thereupon burst into the king’s
presence, wild with rage, hurled a storm of reproaches on him, and
taking his own sword, he snapped it across his knee, vowing that he
would never again serve a prince who broke his word in such shameful
fashion.
“I should be sorry,” said Louis, crossing with dignified steps to the
open window, and throwing his cane out of it, “to have struck a man
of rank”; but the next morning Lauzun was lodged in the Bastille.
Only for a short time however. Louis, in a sense, had broken his
word; but Lauzun, on his part, had violated conditions, and the young
man was forgiven, and by way of indemnity was offered the captaincy
of the Royal Guards, which he at first insolently refused, and only
accepted under entreaty.
It was after his release from the Bastille that this most Gascon
of Gascon gentlemen became the object of the Grande Mademoiselle’s
ardent admiration. At first it was he who coquetted, affecting not
to understand, observing only the airs of profoundest respect, just
touched with melancholy, and permitting himself a very occasional
sigh. Then one day Mademoiselle murmured to the handsome dragoon
captain—“I do not dare, in your presence, to utter the name of him I
love; but I consent to writing it.”
And the next night, during the performance of a ballet at the Louvre,
she glided near to Lauzun, and slipped a paper into his hand. It bore
only these words—“_It is you_.”
Then it was a very different affair. Who so ardent, and passionately
in love as Lauzun? Carried away by his feelings, he broke into the
bedchamber of Mademoiselle unannounced, and falling at her feet where
she sat before a mirror, in the scantiest of _déshabillé_, eloquently
gave way to expressions of rapture, and the good fortune which
had impelled him to seek her at such a delightful moment, when her
charms lay revealed in all the fulness of their beauty. The Grande
Mademoiselle was thin to scragginess—but _qu’importe_?
She believed his protestations, loved Lauzun ever more and more, and
passed her time in devising the way for obtaining the king’s consent
to their union.
Meanwhile the king’s conduct, in publicly taking about with him his
two mistresses, was beginning to create such gross scandal, that
it called down forcible rebuke from the pulpits. In regard to la
Montespan, while her husband must have been dense indeed not to be
aware of the true state of the case, he was allowed to be credited
with the ignorance of it. Among the preachers most severe in their
rebuke, was the Père Bourdaloue, the eloquent Jesuit. He spared no
word in endeavouring to bring Louis to some sense of decent living,
and it was not without effect—before all, on Louise de la Vallière,
whose weeping was audible from where she sat in a dark corner of the
Jesuit church of St Louis.
Ninon, whose orthodoxy was not rigid, and had found herself only too
often sufficiently well justified in the small faith she placed in
the religious professions coming within her experience, determined
on the bold amusement of testing the sincerity of Bourdaloue. She
pretended to be seriously ill, and sent to him to visit her, in,
of course, his spiritual capacity. Dressed in the most becoming of
invalid _négligés_, she received the priest with all her winning
smiles and words and fascinating glances. They were absolutely
ineffective. Bourdaloue having completed his exhortations and pious
counsels, rose to take his leave, observing, as he departed, that he
perceived the malady afflicting Ninon was not of the body, but of the
spirit, and that he would beseech the great Healer of souls to cure
her.
The tale of this interview got wind, and brought down some satirical
verses on Ninon’s defeat—which she frankly acknowledged, not even
without considerable content; for it taught her that the religious
profession was not one vast fraud, but that the Church might have
many true shepherds of its fold, cumbered as it might be with the
false and venal.
Among these last she had signalised Monseigneur d’Autun, apparently
with reason enough. He was a mild-mannered, smiling prelate, with a
paternal, beneficent air, one who had several times changed sides in
the days of the Fronde. Ninon had first met him at that time at the
house of Madame de Longueville, and thenceforward he was one of the
circle of rue des Tournelles. Frequently he had begged or borrowed,
“for the poor,” considerable sums of money from his open-handed
hostess; but Ninon entertained doubts of the bishop’s saintliness,
and one day they were set at rest beyond all question by the
conclusions he drew from certain arguments he had propounded to her.
Then throwing off the mask of the virtuous living he professed, he
boldly declared his passionate admiration for her. That a man of the
world would have been repulsed by Ninon is not very probable; but
she felt the instinctive aversion for the touch of some insidious,
poisonous reptile, and she shrank from him, and ordered him from her
presence; and departing, Monseigneur d’Autun looked the vengeance his
muttered words threatened.
In discussing with Molière her experiences of more than one
distinguished prelate, Richelieu and Mazarin not forgotten, she asked
him how it was possible to discern the true from the false?
Molière replied that there was nothing more easy, and with Ninon’s
permission to introduce her latest clerical admirer, he would put
the answer to her question before her in less than six weeks. He had
her joyous consent, and the answer within the given time. It was _Le
Tartufe_.
Molière’s recent plays had raised him to the height of his fame.
He suffered from the usual gnat-bites and little stings of
jealousy inseparable from literary success. The critics did their
spitefullest. The critics, said Molière, were like the children who
can whip horses, but cannot drive them.
Molière’s life, apart from its work, was more than incomplete; it was
a cruel one. The wife he had chosen, Madeleine Béjârt, the daughter
of an actress of his company, was a silly, ignorant little coquette,
in no way worthy of him, and constantly giving him cause for jealousy.
On the production of _Tartufe_, the plaudits rang again and again
from floor to ceiling. _Veluti in speculum._ The cap fitted many
heads so admirably, so entirely, that the comedy created the author
a host of enemies among the bigots and the hypocrites whom his satire
so vigorously lashed. Orgon, who has seen at church a young man who
conducts himself with such a devout air that he believes in its
genuineness, and receives him into his own family, which he neglects
in his great admiration for Tartufe. He is on the point even of
proposing to give him his daughter in marriage, when, hidden under
a table, concealed by a deep, trailing tablecloth, he overhears his
protégé’s declaration of passion for Elmire, his own wife. “_Mais,
madame, après tout, je ne suis pas un ange_,” says Tartufe. The
scene is inimitable, with its crowning picture of Orgon’s face of
mingled rage and smiling satisfaction, peering up from the folds
of the tablecloth at the discomfited scoundrel, whom he forthwith
turns out of the house. Tartufe’s endeavour to circumvent Orgon
only brings condign punishment on the impostor, who is sent to
expiate his misdeeds in prison. Shallow pretence and profession of
piety, shibboleths the world has always with it; and the truth of
the picture struck home with such a shock, that the piece ran in
perilous risk of being condemned. The king, however, commanded a
representation of it at Versailles. “_Le roi le veut_, and unfading
laurels crown _Tartufe_.”
Louis was delighted with this comedy; although it had been Mazarin’s
deplorable policy to leave his higher intelligence and taste so
little cultivated, these were naturally capable of appreciating
the wit and humour of Molière’s work, and it formed a shield of
protection against the dramatist’s many bitter enemies. The king
gave him a pension from his own private purse, and Molière was an
honoured guest at his table. The money accruing from his own labour,
alone brought competence. He had a country house at Auteuil, where he
entertained many distinguished persons, and found a little rest from
the arduous demands of his profession. The Prince de Condé also took
great delight in his society. Many a munificent act to youthful or
struggling efforts of genius the popular and admired dramatist and
comedian performed in secret, and ever without ostentation. Perhaps
but for him Racine would never have been heard of. The poet was
nineteen when Molière encouraged him to carry through his _Thêagène
et Chariclée_, a piece too weak for stage production, but for which
Molière made him a present of a hundred louis, and further gave him
the scenario for _Les Frères Ennemis_.
The actor Baron was another star in the dramatic firmament owing
its brilliancy to Molière. Baron, like Garrick, excelled in both
tragedy and comedy; and Molière loved him as if he had been his own
son. One day Baron pleaded with him for a poor country actor, who
wanted enough money to take him to rejoin his troupe. He was an old
fellow-comedian of Molière’s; his name was Mondorge. “How much does
he require?” asked Molière. Baron thought four pistoles would meet
the case. “Give him four pistoles from me then,” said Molière, “and
here are twenty besides, which you can say are from you.” To this he
added a handsome suit of clothes; and in such ways shone the worth
of the actor-dramatist in a naughty world.
It was Molière who exclaimed—“_Où la vertu, va-t’-elle se nicher?_”
one day, when he gave alms to some poor creature, and the man,
finding it to be a louis d’or, thought that it had been given in
mistake, and ran after him to give it back.
The Duchesse de Montpensier, who had inherited the palace of the
Luxembourg from her father, was now spending some months in it,
chiefly occupied in endeavouring to bring the king to consent to her
marriage with Monsieur de Lauzun. She invited Ninon to go and stay
with her, and in all good faith, and unsuspicious of any special
significance attaching to the visit, Ninon went; and as far as
Mademoiselle was concerned, no treachery was intended. Nevertheless,
the duchesse had been drawn into a deep-laid scheme for humbling
Ninon to the dust, by trying to make her the means of bringing her
to draw her own daughter into the ways of life which she herself had
followed, but from which, more and more as time passed, the sense of
its evil revolted her. Sixteen years had flown since she had lost
sight of the child; after making but a half-hearted endeavour to
find it. The whirl of gaiety and excitement in which she was then
living, had quickly dragged her back into its vortex; but Madame de
Fiesque, though she had affected ignorance, knew where the young
girl was, and artfully cultivating herself into the graces of La
Grande Mademoiselle, she had now contrived to introduce her into the
palace, in the guise of a young female dependant, of whom she made a
sort of humble companion or waiting-maid. The girl was evidently as
unhappy as she certainly was very beautiful; and Ninon, interested
and touched with pity for her, entered into conversation with her,
which elicited the fact that she had a lover—one, however, so
far above her in station, that any honourable alliance was not to
be dreamed of, for all the young girl’s heart was pure, and young
Monsieur de Perceval was no profligate. Finding that it was intended,
or rather said to be intended, that a marriage was to be effected
between Clotilde and one of the palace cooks, Ninon took her under
her protection and shelter to the rue des Tournelles. This was
precisely falling in with the designs of Madame de Fiesque, whose
idea was that Ninon would lead Clotilde, ignorant of who she was,
into the free courses of living she herself had followed, and indeed
still followed; but herein lay the mistake of Madame de Fiesque.
Little by little, suspicion that Clotilde was no other than her own
daughter grew to certainty; and that the girl should be exposed to,
or made the victim of, the many miseries and evils underlying the
glitter of her own career, was the one thing the bitterly-repenting
mother determined should never be. And she devised a counterplot,
which she confided to the Duchesse de Montpensier, who warmly lent
her countenance to its carrying out. Monsieur de Perceval was a
relative of Madame de Montausier, whose sincere friendship for Ninon,
her sympathy with her in the distress of mind she was suffering,
and lastly, and perhaps not least, the splendid _dot_ of the Loches
estate, worth 300,000 livres, which Ninon was prepared to bestow on
Clotilde, smoothed the way to the marriage of the two lovers. They
were wedded quietly, and then travelled abroad for two years; so that
the plotters found no chance of interfering with their happiness. As
to who Clotilde really was, those interested were content with the
supposition that she was some connexion of an illustrious family,
about whom it was nobody’s affair to inquire more nearly. From time
to time in after years Ninon saw Clotilde again, but she put a strong
curb on her natural feelings, and never disclosed her identity.
CHAPTER XVIII
A Disastrous Wooing—Fénelon—“Mademoiselle de L’Enclos”—The Pride
that had a Fall—The Death of the Duchesse d’Orléans—Intrigue—The
Sun-King and the Shadows—The Clermont Scholar’s Crime—Monsieur
de Montespan—Tardy Indignation—The Encounter—The _Filles
Répenties_—What the Cards Foretold.
The episode of Clotilde could but forcibly remind Ninon of the son
whom his father, Monsieur de Gersay, had taken away so shortly after
his birth, to rear as his own exclusively, but of whom, unlike
Clotilde, she had not entirely lost traces. On the contrary, she
knew that the Marquis de Gersay lived the most of his time on his
own estates in Brittany, and that therefore Charles, as the child
had been named, was likely to be with him; and Ninon wrote to the
marquis, begging for some intelligence of the young man—for he was
now two-and-twenty. De Gersay informed her that he had taken the
necessary steps for legitimatising him, and that he was called the
Chevalier de Villiers. He added that the secret of his birth was
entirely unknown to the young man, who was a fine, handsome fellow,
and very amiable and intelligent, only needing to rub off the little
corners of his provincial rearing to be perfection. The marquis
added that it would please him very well to bring him to Paris and
introduce him into the circle of Ninon’s friends, so famous for its
refinement and elegance; but it was on the condition that the origin
of his birth should be religiously concealed.
And when young de Villiers arrived in Paris, Ninon received him in
her salon, as she received other young people who sought entry there,
or for whom it was sought, that they might acquire the tone of good
society and _le bon goût_. Ninon was then over sixty years of age.
Whether, as it is said, she absolutely retained all the beauty and
freshness of her youth, may perhaps be taken _cum grano salis_; but
that much of it clung about her with all the charm of her manner,
seems indisputable, since she fascinated the young man of twenty-two.
He fell passionately in love with her; but for a long time he
maintained silence, until he could conceal his love no longer, and
Ninon could no longer remain blind to the true state of the case. She
was deeply distressed and perplexed. She assumed a sort of maternal
tenderness towards him, which had simply the effect of heating the
young man’s ardour to frenzy, and she was forced to forbid him her
house. Fear of never seeing her again, drove him to say that he would
cease to love her. Love forced him to do this, and to this promise
love made him false. The excess of his passion would not permit him
to exist longer in a state of doubt. He sought a last interview of
her. Ninon had gone to her country-house, and thither he followed.
He found her alone, and spoke like a man driven, as indeed he was,
to desperation. Ninon, overcome with pity, overwhelmed with grief
at being the cause of her son’s misery, could no longer maintain
her firmness, and young de Villiers, believing that the moment of
his happiness had arrived, approached her with passionate gestures.
Seized with horror, she shrank from him and told him the truth. “I
am your mother!” she cried in her distress. One instant de Villiers
stood as if thunderstruck; then he turned and rushed into the garden,
hurrying blindly on till he reached the little thicket at the end of
it. There, in his despair, he drew his sword and stabbed himself to
the death.
Ninon waited, and when he did not return, she went in search of him,
to find him weltering in his own blood. He was still breathing, and
strove to speak; but his words were undistinguishable. The passionate
love he felt for her still burned in his eyes; but the agitation her
tenderness and despair occasioned him, only hastened the end, and he
died in her arms.
The horror of this tragedy nearly drove Ninon to take away her own
life. Her pitying friends strove to bring some assuagement to her
sufferings, and Madame Scarron nursed her in the long illness which
ensued, and her gentle, tender ways and words, and her manner of
winning Ninon to speak of the unhappy lost one, at last brought tears
to her eyes, parched with her mental agony, and so relief came, and
Françoise Scarron, weeping with her, was then her best friend. It
was she who ordered a mausoleum tomb for the dead. It was placed
where Charles de Villiers had been interred, a monument of black
marble. Night and day the tapers burned around it, and many an hour
in prayer Ninon knelt beside the last resting-place of Charles de
Villiers.
At this time, Madame Scarron, hitherto very far from a devotee,
introduced to her a young priest of St Sulpice. His name was de
la Mothe Fénelon. His touching words and sincere, gentle sympathy
brought healing as time passed; but the shadow of sorrow and
suffering never fully lifted—the gay, frivolous Ninon was known
no more. Henceforth, till death, she was Mademoiselle de L’Enclos,
bearing herself with dignity, self-restrained, and esteemed by most.
The consent of the king to the marriage of Lauzun and the Grande
Mademoiselle having been at last wrung from him, Lauzun grew
insufferable. His pride was boundless. Except to the king, he would
not even doff his hat. He occupied himself exclusively in arranging
the details of the festivities and ceremonial of the marriage.
But his enemies were at work. His folly and vanity had created a host
of them, and among them were the powerful Louvois, and the vindictive
and ambitious favourite, Madame de Montespan, whom he had frequently
grossly insulted; while Louvois found himself constantly thwarted
and provoked by him. Madame de Montespan, thinking over the matter
of Mademoiselle’s marriage, decided that her vast property would
be much better disposed among the eight children she had brought
the king, than in the pockets of Lauzun, and finding a supporter in
Louvois, she represented the case to His Majesty, the result being
that he withdrew his consent to the marriage, and de Lauzun was
lodged in the Bastille, his character blackened—no such difficult
matter—by the two. The friends of the lovers had warned them of the
imminent possibility of this; and it was believed that they accepted
the advice, and contrived to be privately married. De Lauzun vented
his wrath for the promise—this time so undisputedly broken—by
denouncing Madame de Montespan for her wifely unfaithfulness to her
husband; but it did not hinder his imprisonment, which he spent for
five years in the fortress of Pignerol, that dreary stronghold of
deportation for offending, blue-blooded courtiers. He was conducted
thither by Monsieur d’Artagnan, lieutenant of the Guards. Five years’
further incarceration after this in Pignerol was allotted him; though
on conditions slightly ameliorated. The treatment had first been hard
in the extreme, and had rigidly condemned him to one cell.
Sympathy extended only to the disconsolate Mademoiselle, the victim
of an ambitious coxcomb, and of a venal, faithless woman.
Attention was, however, soon turned entirely from this affair, by
the terrible and sudden death of Henrietta, the Duchesse d’Orléans
of England—daughter of King Charles I.—the amiable and universally
beloved wife of the king’s brother, the Duc d’Orléans.
She was one evening enjoying the cool air on the great balcony of the
palace of St Cloud, in company with her ladies, and requested one
of them to fetch her a glass of chicory water from her apothecary.
The apothecary arrived in a few moments with an enamelled goblet
containing the drink, which he presented to her. Scarcely had she
drunk it, than she was seized with violent convulsive agony, and
cried out that she was poisoned.
They carried her to the nearest bedchamber, and laying her down,
loosened her clothes, and administered all the usual restoratives;
but in vain. Already her face and limbs were livid and distorted. “I
am poisoned—I have drunk poison!” was all she was able to utter.
The king came hurrying to the bedside, followed by his physicians,
whom he had hastily summoned. They examined the agonised woman, grew
themselves pale with dismay, and remained silent.
“Where are your senses?” demanded the king, in an access of
distressful alarm. “It is frightful to let a woman die like this, and
not be able to afford any help.”
The doctors only looked at each other, and still did not utter a word.
Madame herself entreated for an emetic, but Monsieur Valet,
physician-in-chief, declared that it would be dangerous. She had been
seized, he said, with the _miserere_—the term generally then used
for cholera morbus.
Against these silent impotent healers of the body, the physician of
the soul was sent for. He came. It was Monsieur l’Abbé Bossuet, and
amid his pious, gentle consolations Madame passed away. It was also
Bossuet who pronounced the funeral oration a day or two later.
“Madame is dead!—Madame is dead!” So the terrible words rang forth
in the presence of the king and the assembled half-stunned courtiers.
That Madame was universally beloved had an exception to its ruling.
He who should have best loved her, the duke himself, was indifferent
to her. Scandal, busy with his name, said worse—said so much that
was shameful, that it is not to be repeated here. It said so much,
that the king, who was aware of it, had already ordered the immediate
departure of the chevalier de Lorraine from Paris, a dismissal
that was to be final. This minion of the duke had been furious at
the command, and accused Madame as the cause of it, and she had
simply laughed at the accusation. The day following her death, the
chevalier de Lorraine, it was asserted, was seen, wrapped in a long
riding-cloak, and his face concealed by a hat whose broad brims were
drawn down low over his brows, riding hastily by the path of the
gate of St Cloud, and so by the roads to the frontier. He was known
to be a great friend of Monsieur de Luxembourg, and at a later day
more than suspicion implicated Monsieur de Luxembourg in the most
notorious poison _cause celébre_ of its century.
The Court of Louis XIV. was now one vast spider’s-web of intrigue,
woven from the lust and greed of so many of those surrounding him.
It was the Nemesis of his policy of drawing all the nobility and
provincial seigneurs from far and near to Versailles. If these
were not lured into the brilliance of the Sun-King’s presence, and
desired to live on their estates, it was next to an impossibility
to do so, under fear of being suspected of plotting against the
throne. They were required to group themselves all round the great
orb, gathering from it the lustre beyond which all was obscurity, and
this rarely enough to be done, even in Paris, but only at Versailles.
Louis did not love the Louvre. He had never forgotten that in the
days of the Fronde he had been driven thence to find refuge where it
could be had.
And so the castles and lands of fair France were left untenanted
and falling to ruin, and to lie untilled and neglected, for all the
good at least the people reaped; and this at a time when rougher
warfare had ceased, and religious strife had calmed down, and under
other ruling, the promise of prosperity dawned. Such profits and
incomings as did arise from these tenures and estates, by the toil
of the peasant dwellers on them, brought them only starvation wage;
for the money earned by the sweat of the brows of the peasantry was
needed for its overlords’ silks and velvets, and laces and jewelled
snuff-boxes, and solitaires, to add greater bedazzlement to the
salons and galleries where Louis le Grand lived his span of years.
And even when this was ended—the time was still yet afar off for the
breaking of the storm—but on, ever faster and heavier, the clouds
were lowering in. Neither Richelieu or Mazarin tolerated the spirit
which inspires to a man ruling, or striving to rule, with prudence
and protecting care in his own house. They feared it, and taxation
and gabelle, and rents and quit-rents, as they waxed on to their
hideous proportions, set minds working on the problem of why such
things should be, and how came about such “inequality among men.”
“Where is the wonder, is it not my college?” said the king, one day
when he had bestowed his magnificent presence on the representation,
by the pupils of the Jesuit College at Clermont, of a tragedy very
finely performed. “_Collegium Cleromonterum Societate Jesus_” was
originally graven upon the college gate, and the sycophant principal
had now caused this to be effaced, and “_Collegium Ludovici Magni_”
inscribed in gold letters in its place.
The next morning was to be seen, fastened on the gate beneath, a
Latin distich, whose meaning may be thus interpreted—
“Christ’s name expunged, the king’s now fills the stone;
Oh, impious race! by that is plainly shown
That Louis is the only god you own!”
The author of these lines was run to earth. He was found to be a
pupil of the college, and thirty-one years of the Bastille and of St
Marguérite were awarded his crime. The term might have ended only
with his years, had he not suddenly become sole heir to the estates
of his family, and it was then suggested by the governor of the
Bastille, a Jesuit, that setting him free might bring golden rewards.
Being released, probably the reward followed.
And ever the intricate machinery of corruption and intrigue in high
places worked on. Among other schemes of Madame de Montespan, was one
of marrying Louise de la Vallière to the Duc de Lauzun. It would be,
at all events, removing the two incommoding ones from her path; but
it was an arrangement not very likely to appeal to the Duchesse de
la Vallière, and moreover, the imprisoned Duc de Lauzun had not been
consulted. The great idea of the favourite was simply, by fair means
or foul, to get all she could of Mademoiselle’s possessions, and
knowing Mademoiselle’s infatuation for Lauzun, she set the strings to
the best of her power to tempt her to part with an immense portion
of her fortune by the promise of trying to win the king’s consent
to freeing the captive of Pignerol. To this end she flattered and
cajoled Mademoiselle’s ladies, among whom was Madame de Fiesque,
Ninon’s bitter enemy, none the less envenomed against her on account
of the triumphant carrying through of the marriage of Clotilde. And
as it happened one evening, Ninon, departing from her usual custom
of remaining indoors when she visited Madame Montausier at St Cloud,
went for a stroll in the gardens, and at a turn of the clipped hedges
she came face to face with la Montespan, leaning on the arm of Madame
de Fiesque.
Then came the bursting of the thunderclap. Madame de Fiesque, pallid
with rage, whispered a word in the ear of la Montespan, who turned,
and in a tone of disdain indescribable, said—
“La Ninon! Who dares to permit this woman to walk here?”
“This woman!” The words stunned Ninon for the moment; while
indignation raged up into her heart, and angry tears blinded her.
Ninon was—no matter what she was, she had elected to follow her own
ways. These, at all events, were not soiled with the iniquities of
the woman before her. She had not been false to marriage-vows. She
had never betrayed trusts reposed in her and in friendship. She had
not craftily stolen the love of the king from the woman he professed
to be attached to. Blazing with indignation at the Montespan’s
insulting words and insolent stare, she made some excuse to Madame
Montausier for returning home, and sent a message to Monsieur de
Montespan to call on her in the morning. On his arrival, she taxed
him with the knowledge of his wife’s infidelity, and when he strove
to disavow it, she drove the nail home, until he had no choice but to
fall in with her suggestions—that he should find his way straight to
St Cloud and punish the royal favourite in the presence of the king
and all the Court. And this he did, bestowing a sounding box on the
lovely ear of his wife. And when Ninon asked what the king said, the
reply was, “Never a word.” But many a word, or rather epithet, de
Montespan bestowed then on his Athénais.
Ninon recounted this affair with great gusto to Madame Scarron.
Françoise still kept up great intimacy with her friend, Madame
Arnoul, a person for whom Mademoiselle de L’Enclos had an instinctive
dislike. She was a great fortune-teller with the cards, and an
arch-crafty intriguer, and by a series of manœuvres she wormed
herself into the notice of Madame de Montespan, whose husband
subsequently played a sorry part in the scandal occurring at St
Cloud; since he permitted himself to be bribed to continue to
countenance his wife’s connexion with the king.
Madame Arnoul however, was laying her scheme, and played her cards
so well for the amusement of Madame de Montespan, that she managed
to acquaint herself with many secrets of the royal favourite; and in
return, in order to do evil to gain what she considered good, she
whispered to Madame de Montespan the truth about de Montespan’s box
on the ear. The result was an order for Ninon’s conveyance to the
convent-home for the _Filles Répenties_; and the guard who arrested
her allowed her just twenty minutes for her preparations for leaving
the rue des Tournelles.
It was a terrible and humiliating blow for Ninon. All the
consolations and representations of Madame Arnoul, who was permitted
an interview with her, could not reconcile her. Yet they brought some
comfort; for Ninon could see that the woman’s machinations promised
to bring about the fall of the favourite, and in her place to set no
less, no greater, a person than Françoise, the Widow Scarron.
Rome was not, of course, built in a day; and Madame Arnoul, not
forgetful of her own interests, hastened slowly. Indications were not
wanting that the influence of Madame de Montespan was waning.
The favourite’s temper was not a mild one, and sometimes she gave
vent to it in rather startling fashion. Madame Arnoul’s first care
was to lead Madame Scarron into more devout ways than hitherto she
had followed, and the habitual calm, composed bearing of Françoise
was not out of the picture of this new _rôle_. Madame Arnoul, in her
card-telling visits to Madame de Montespan, was favoured by her with
many confidences, and among them the _Maîtresse en Titre_ mentioned
that she was seeking a governess for her children, a lady who was to
be pious and amiable, and of course accomplished, and intellectually
gifted, and rich in patience. Except for the piety, Madame Scarron
possessed all these qualifications, and for the piety, it would come
in time; and meanwhile it could be put on easily enough—it was a
virtue not difficult to assume. And Madame Arnoul, consulting her
cards, gravely informed Madame de Montespan that if she repaired
to the church of St Sulpice, on a certain day, at a certain hour,
she would see among the communicants of the early Mass, the very
person she was seeking for her children’s education. Then followed
a description of the comely, if no longer very youthful, Françoise
d’Aubigné, who was instructed to put in the necessary appearance
at St Sulpice. So the arrangement was brought about and concluded
very satisfactorily, and Madame Scarron found herself in charge
of the little Duc du Maine, and Louis XIV.’s other children, of
whom Athénais de Montespan was the mother, and more and more as
time passed, winning the admiration and liking of the king, who
found great charm in her conversation, which certainly went to show
that his faulty education and rearing had not totally stunted him
mentally, for the wife of Scarron, by nature and long association,
was a woman of no common attainments.
CHAPTER XIX
“In Durance Vile”—Molière’s _Mot_—_Le Malade Imaginaire_—“Rogues
and Vagabonds”—The passing of Molière—The narrowing
Circle—Fontenelle—Lulli—Racine—The little Marquis—A tardy
Pardon—The charming Widow Scarron—A Journey to the Vosges, and
the Haunted Chamber.
“One story is good till another is told.” The tangle of petty
vanities, lust of gold and mutual jealousies disgracing the Court of
Versailles at this time, might well have dragged Ninon de L’Enclos
into the hated durance of _Les Filles Répenties_, at the instigation
of the woman who at least was not the one to cast a stone. One fact
alone was indisputable: that there she was, and as certainly more
than one powerful friend at Court was sparing no endeavour to obtain
her release. Among these was Molière, the man of the generous, kindly
heart, who was not likely to forget the many bounteous acts and the
warm sympathy Ninon had extended to him throughout his career.
And to him it mainly was that she owed her release from the convent.
A representation by Molière and his company had been given at
Versailles of his new play, _Le Malade Imaginaire_, and the king,
on its conclusion, had sent for Molière in some anxiety; for it had
been evident to him that the actor was himself no imaginary invalid,
but suffering and exhausted with the exertion of his arduous _rôle_
of Argan. More than once of late his understudy, Croisy, had been
required to take his place; and the king expressed his sympathy and
his regret that Molière should have over-fatigued himself to afford
him gratification, for that his health was too precious to be trifled
with.
Molière replied that he would have striven to leave his very deathbed
to plead the cause he sought to win of His Majesty; and then he went
on to tell of Ninon’s captivity, of which the king appeared to be
ignorant. “It is, moreover, very absurd, Sire,” added Molière, “for I
assure your Majesty, that Ninon is neither _fille_ nor _répentie_.”
The king laughed at this view of the case, as did his minister
Colbert, who was seated near, and Molière, not losing sight of the
royal proclivity of promise-breaking, wasted not a moment in causing
the order vouchsafed for Ninon’s release, to be delivered in to the
Superior of the _Répenties_. Then a coach was sent for, the gates
were opened, and Ninon was free.
Full of gratitude for the favour which she had not so much as sought
of Molière, she hastened to his house. He was seated wearily in a
chair, but for the moment, in her joyful excitement, she did not
notice his appearance, more especially as he sprang up briskly to
meet her and to take her in his arms, while her tears fell fast,
assuring her that she had done him a world of good. Before she came
in he owned that he had been feeling unusually ill, and was about to
ask Croisy to take his place on the stage that evening; but now—“No,
I will play myself,” added Molière, and his pale cheeks flushed, and
his eyes gathered their wonted brightness and animation. “I will be
_Le Malade Imaginaire_ once more!”
Alas! once more. And a little while before the curtain fell for the
last time on the closing interlude, the word “_juro_,” several times
reiterated through the dialogue, came faintly on a stream of blood
from his lips, and the dying Molière was borne from the stage.
It was but the fulfilment of the apprehensions of his friends.
His lungs had been for some time affected, and he had broken a
blood-vessel. Already half-unconscious, they conveyed him homeward
to his house in the rue de Richelieu; but he fainted on the way, and
he was carried into the convent of St Vincent de Paul and laid on
a couch in the parlour, where, in sore distress, the good sisters
tended him, for he had frequently shown them much hospitality and
generous kindness, and in the arms of the two supporting him he
passed away. His half-inaudible dying request was for religious
consolation; but ere that came he was dead. The priest of St Eustache
did not hurry to attend a stage-player—the “rogue and vagabond”—for
what else in the sight of the law was this fine literary genius,
great philosopher and noble-hearted man? Neither was it the fault
of Monseigneur Harlay de Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris (“so
notorious,” writes the poet’s great biographer, “for his gallant
intrigues”) that he was denied Christian burial.
Molière’s young wife had not been a pattern of conjugal propriety;
but she revered her husband; and in her indignation at the
archbishop’s refusal, she cried—“They refuse to bury a man to whom
in Greece, altars would have been erected!” and asking the Curé
of Auteuil, whose views differed from the archiepiscopal ones, to
accompany her to Versailles, she found her way into the king’s
presence and demanded justice. “If my husband was a criminal, his
crimes were sanctioned by your Majesty in person,” she said. Louis’s
response was elusive, as it was apt to be in the face of difficult
questions. It was, he said, an affair of the archbishop’s; but he
sent secret commands to Monseigneur, which resulted in a compromise,
and the body of the dead poet was interred in the cemetery of St
Joseph, rue Montmartre, accompanied by two priests. But it was not
first admitted into the church, for he had died, as Monseigneur said,
“without the consolations of religion.”
“_A ministering angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling._”
Irresistibly the words of that other great dramatic genius force
themselves into the record of Molière’s laying to his long rest. It
was still only to be secured amid the riot of a rabble which, having
got wind of the dispute in high places, assembled outside the house
in the rue de Richelieu. The disgraceful uproar was quelled only by
Madame Molière throwing money, to a large amount, out of window. Then
the mob silenced down, and followed the simple cortège respectfully.
The widow of Molière subsequently married again; but his memory
must have remained warm in her heart; for some years later, during
a bitter cold winter, she had a hundred loads of wood conveyed to
the cemetery, and burned on the tomb of her husband, to warm all the
poor people of the quarter. “The great heat split in two the stone,
which was still to be seen cracked across the middle in the early
part of the eighteenth century.”[6] The Fontaine Molière, in the rue
de Richelieu, now commemorates the poet, and in the green-room of
the Comédie Française are the bust, and the portrait, by the painter
Coypel, of him who was practically the founder of the world-famous
institution. There were countless epitaphs on Molière, generated for
the most part, by the injustices done him in life as in death. The
following is accounted the most noteworthy:—
“Tu réformas et la ville et la cour;
Mais quelle en fut la récompense?
Les Français rougiront un jour
De leur peu de reconnaissance,
Il leur fallut un comédien
Qui mit à les polir, sa gloire et son étude.
Mais Molière, a ta gloire il ne manquerait rien,
Si, parmi les défauts que tu peignis si bien,
Tu les avais repris de leur ingratitude.”
P. BONHOURS.
And so the journey of her life, shadowed more and more by the
dropping away into the mists of death of so many of the well-loved
ones, Ninon’s own years fled on, still finding content in the
society of the many friends, young and old, not gone before.
Among these was Madame de la Sablière, with la Fontaine ever in
attendance; Marsillac, the comrade of Ninon’s youth—now the Duc de
la Rochefoucauld—with his _Maxims_, which she keenly criticised,
as based on the philosophy of self-love: that self only was the
motive power of human thought and action; Corneille, growing old,
and preferring his latest tragedy of _Surène_ to the immortal _Cid_,
a preference shared by few; with him came his nephew, Fontenelle,
the brilliant scholar and centenarian to be, short of a few weeks,
who on his deathbed said—“My friends, I do not suffer; only I find
existence a little difficult,” and who followed the _viâ media_
philosophy so closely, that he was wont to boast he never either
laughed or wept. Then Ninon would tune her lute, and play the airs
of the new musical conductor of the king’s orchestra, Lulli, the
miller’s son, a scullion once, risen to be master of French dramatic
music, who met his death so disastrously from the bungling treatment
of a quack doctor. The priest who attended his last hours refused
to give him the consolations of religion until he had consented to
have the score of his latest opera destroyed. He consented, to the
indignation of a friend who was with him. “Hush, hush!” said Lulli;
“there is a fair copy of it in my drawer.”
Sometimes Racine, a neighbour now of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, would
declaim passages from his _Iphigénie_, or Madame de la Fayette would
read from her history of Henrietta of England, just then on point
of completion. She and Madame Montausier were Ninon’s sincerest and
best-beloved friends. One day Madame de la Fayette asked her the
cause of the coolness existing between herself and Madame de Sévigné.
It was a coolness all on one side, shrugged Ninon. To be sure, she
had the young Marquis de Grignan, Madame’s grandson, at her feet—as
in times gone by, the Marquis _père_, and the Marquis _grandpère_ had
sighed there. She inclined, however, to his marrying as his mother
desired, all the more that, besides entertaining no overwhelming
admiration for the little marquis, she was jealous of his worshipping
also at the shrine of the great tragic actress, la Champmeslé,
who had rendered herself so famous in the _Andromaque_ of Racine.
The poet had introduced de Sévigné to the _tragédienne_, to whom
Ninon conceded talent, but no beauty. The affair came to an amiable
conclusion, and while a reconciliation was effected between Ninon
and la Champmeslé, she concluded a peace with Madame de Sévigné,
esteeming her friendship above the folly and trifling of her grandson.
To effect this treaty of peace, she was conducted to the house of
Madame de Sévigné by their mutual friend, Madame de la Fayette.
The physical personal attraction of the queen of epistolary
correspondence has been many times recorded; but the critical
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos does not allow her any great claims to it.
Her nose was long and sharp, with wide nostrils, and her countenance
generally had something of a pedantic stamp. Still, Ninon’s opinion,
while Madame de Sévigné’s portrait of her by Mignard exists at Les
Rochers, needs not to be accepted as final, and she hastens to speak
of her manner, at once so dignified and courteous. She went so far,
in discussing Ninon’s _liaison_ with young de Sévigné, as to say that
her objection was mainly rooted in the fear that her son’s attachment
to her would endure and hinder his desire for marriage, for which
Madame de Sévigné herself was so anxious. As things went, de Sévigné
soon after took to himself a wife, and Ninon gained a friend, who
became a frequent guest at the _réunions_ of the rue des Tournelles.
Profiting by Madame Scarron’s favour at Court, Ninon sought to obtain
the king’s pardon for her old friend, St Evrémond; this was accorded.
St Evrémond, however, did not return to France. He found the land of
his exile a pleasant Patmos, and the Court of Whitehall, where he
had won troops of friends, more congenial than Versailles, and he
never crossed the Channel again, but lived his span of life, lengthy
as Ninon’s; and his resting-place is among the great in Westminster
Abbey.
“Carolus de Saint Denis, Duc de St Evrémond.
Viro Clarissimo
Inter Præstantiores
Aloi Sui Scriptores
Semper Memorando
Amici Marantes.
P. P.”
The golden link of their correspondence henceforth was alone to hold
together the names of Ninon de L’Enclos and Henri de St Evrémond.
Madame Arnoul was regarded by Ninon with scant favour. She held her
for a sort of _âme damnée_ of Madame Scarron, an adventuress, who
played her cards well, so skilfully indeed, that her prognostications
seemed more and more surely finding realisation. The Montespan’s
temper did not improve with time, and the placid demeanour of the
royal governess was a great attraction to Louis, who would come
oftener, and stay longer in his visits to the children. Moreover, he
found great charm in her conversation. Ninon, who could not remain
blind to these indications, and was ready to go great lengths to
bring about de Montespan’s disgrace, disliking Madame Arnoul as she
did, was not above lending herself to forward any scheme to that
end, even though it originated in Madame Arnoul’s fertile brain;
and one sufficiently daring did presently find birth there. For the
service she had rendered Ninon conjointly with Molière, in freeing
her from the durance of the _Répenties_, Madame Arnoul had claimed
of her a _quid pro quo_ at some future time. That time, she said,
when she called upon her some few weeks later, was now, for putting
the finishing strokes to the downfall of the favourite—if that
de Montespan could still be designated—and Ninon was to be the
instrument for this. She was, in the first place, to disguise herself
as a man. So far, nothing easier, said Ninon—was it not to do what
she had done so many a time?—and that small matter arranged, she and
Madame Arnoul set out for the frontiers, where the king was about to
go with all his Court to meet Turenne, who had been waging victorious
war against the combined forces of Spain and Austria, waxing ever
more alarmed at, and jealous of, the successes of Louis XIV.
Arrived in Lorraine, the two ladies travelled to Nancy, reaching the
town a day or so before the royal cortège arrived, Madame Arnoul
having acquired the knowledge of the exact route it was to take.
From Nancy, the two women proceeded to Luneville, and thence onward
into Alsace, and far into the very heart of the Vosges, where they
slept on the first night, in a little hamlet called Raon l’Étape.
The next day they reached St Dié, a pretty little town, one day,
said the terrible tradition, to be crushed by the falling of the
huge precipice of l’Ormont; and to avert this catastrophe annual
processions were made; but l’Ormont stands somewhat back from the
area of St Dié, and if it fell, it would probably be short of the
town. Moreover, what is St Dié but the gift of God?—_Dieudonné_
hedged about by the memory of its founder, the assassinated Childéric
II.
Faring on by narrow, half-impassable roads, winding on the verge of
rugged precipices, through dense pine-forests, whose close network
of branches almost hid the sky, they reached St Marie-aux-Mines,
a town forming part of the appanage of the Prince Palatine of
Birkenfeld. It lies cradled between two pine-clad mountains, watered
by innumerable limpid rivulets, meandering in all directions. There
Ninon and Madame Arnoul halted for dinner, whose excellence was much
below par of the natural attractions of the place; but Madame Arnoul
consoled her companion with the information that some few leagues
more would bring them to their journey’s end, and the place where the
mysterious proceedings indicated were to be carried out. And next day
they arrived in the neighbourhood of Ribeauvillé, and Ninon found
herself in a magnificent château belonging to the brother-in-law of
the Prince Palatine. This personage was, however, absent, and in
his place the two ladies were received by the high steward, who,
Madame Arnoul afterwards explained, was the cousin of the king’s
_valet-de-chambre_, whom she had enlisted into her project, and she
handed the steward a letter from this relative.
Having perused the letter, he redoubled his courtesies; but evidently
under the influence of extreme perturbation, which he strove to
cover by silence. The letter he thrust into his pocket without any
reference to its contents; unless a slight shrug of his shoulders
meant anything.
At supper, of which he did the honours, Madame Arnoul asked him why
he had not spoken of the famous Chamber of Phantoms the château
contained. The steward started like a guilty thing half off his
chair, and asked Madame Arnoul if indeed she entertained the
dangerous fancy to—to sleep, save the mark!—in that terrible room,
as his cousin, had written him. He knew his cousin, of course, to be
an idiot, but—but no, the idea was not to be contemplated. Anyone
insane enough to spend a night in that awful apartment would be found
a strangled corpse in the morning.
Madame laughed, and replied that she did not believe in ghosts; that
she and her husband had laid a heavy bet on the point of sleeping in
the haunted chamber, and surely Monsieur would not be the cause of
their losing it.
With a pale face and slow steps, the major-domo went out to order a
bed, and other preparations to be made in the room, for Madame and
her husband—Ninon enacting that _rôle_ in her masculine attire; and
shortly after the two retired for the night, conducted to the door
of the apartment by the pale-faced, agitated steward. No sooner were
they alone than Madame Arnoul proceeded to make a close inspection of
the wainscotted walls. Presently an exclamation of delight escaped
her. “See here,” she cried, and slipping her hand inside the gaping
jaws of a hideous, reptile-like monster, carved in the woodwork of
a panel just beside the bed, she pressed a knob in its throat, and
the panel slid aside into a groove, disclosing beyond a much larger
chamber, luxuriously furnished, and bearing evidence of being ready
prepared for an occupant—“No less a person than His Majesty, Louis
XIV.,” explained Madame Arnoul, as she crossed the room towards the
splendid Carrara marble chimneypiece supported at the corners by
cherubim. Into the ear of one of them Madame put her finger, with the
result of again sending open the panel, which, not a little to the
nervous terror of Ninon, had closed behind them. The walls of this
great State chamber were covered with gilded russia leather, which
entirely concealed the movable panel between the rooms. Madame Arnoul
laughingly began to reassure her disturbed companion. “It was quite
true,” she said, “that a great many persons had been found dead from
strangulation in that smaller chamber, some century earlier; but the
ghosts were not responsible.” The guilt lay with the then lord of the
manor, the Comte de Ribeauvillé, who, ruined by debauch and gambling,
enticed rich passing travellers to spend the night in his castle,
lodged them in this bedchamber, and stealing in by the secret ways
during the night, strangled and robbed his unfortunate guests. While
Madame Arnoul told her tale, there was a knock at the door of the
apartment, and the baggage of the two travellers was brought in and
deposited on the floor. When they were alone again, Madame Arnoul,
opening one of the trunks, drew forth a magnificent robe of brocade,
a _cordon bleu_, and a small medallion locket, containing the
portrait of Anne of Austria. Leading Ninon to a mirror, she placed
the locket in her hands, and bade her compare her own countenance
with that of the dead queen. A few touches here and there, a little
filling out with stuffing, and Ninon would be the very double of the
queen: Louis himself could not know them apart.
Some sort of light broke in upon Ninon. Was she to be the ghost of
Anne of Austria? Just that; but Ninon shook her head. It would be
simply profanation. “Not in such a good cause,” smiled Madame Arnoul.
“Not if it had the effect of terrifying the king into dismissing
Madame de Montespan. It would be a most meritorious act, that.”
Ninon’s heart rose. “But if we should be found out?” she said.
“Trust me,” smiled Madame Arnoul, and in a few moments she was
sleeping the sleep that only the innocent and travel-tired know, in
the great terrible bed of the haunted chamber.
At five o’clock in the morning there was a tap at the door. The
steward had sent to inquire whether the night had been passed
undisturbed. Madame Arnoul replied that nothing could have been more
comfortable.
The Court arrived next day, and Louis XIV., greatly fatigued with the
long journey, retired to bed at nine o’clock. Then began the royal
toilette of Ninon. It was a work of time, for Ninon’s figure called
for considerable expansion, and her brown hair needed golden tints.
These details achieved with consummate art, she donned the brocade
gown and embroidered satins, and crowned the work with the _cordon
bleu_. All being ready, Madame pressed the knob in the griffin’s
throat. The panel fell apart, and the deceased queen, Anne of
Austria, appeared in the king’s chamber.
His Majesty was in a deep sleep, and Ninon glided majestically to the
bedside, lighted by the brilliant but somewhat quivering brilliancy
of a phosphorescent torch which Madame Arnoul waved through the open
panel.
Then Ninon laid her cold hand, half congealed by immersion for a
length of time in iced water, upon the arm of Louis, and he awoke
with a start, and sitting up, stared with haggard, terrified gaze at
the apparition.
“My mother!—my mother!” he gasped, in fear-suffocated tones.
Laying her finger on her lips, Ninon placed on the table, beside the
bed, a paper, and pointing down on it, with a terrible frown on her
brows, she glided backwards till she reached the panel, where she was
lost in the gloom of the night, as Madame Arnoul extinguished the
torch.
It was a hazardous game, and Ninon was half-dead with terror at its
conclusion. Louis was, if possible, still more terrified; and as the
two women stood listening in the Chamber of the Phantoms, they heard
through the not quite closed panel the voice of their accomplice,
Louis’s _valet-de-chambre_, inquiring in agitated tones what ailed
him.
The king could only articulate a command for a light, and by it he
read the terrible warning against his courses of life, written by
Madame Arnoul, who had feared that Louis would detect the fraud
if Ninon had spoken her message. The forgery was perfect in its
imitation of the queen’s handwriting, a piece of which Madame Arnoul
had contrived to procure, and it ran as follows:—
“SIRE,—Heaven is wrath at your disorderly life. Two mistresses,
publicly acknowledged, shed on your kingdom a scandal which must
be put an end to; above all, that one which violates the vows of
marriage, and renders you guilty of twofold adultery. Heaven has
permitted me to communicate this to you myself. This paper, which
I leave in your hands, I beg you to read, my son; weigh well each
word; it will prove to you, when I have disappeared, that you have
not been the victim of an illusion. Repent, Sire, and do not force
the dead to leave their tombs any more.
ANNE OF AUSTRIA.”
Ninon did not close an eye all night. What if returning sense brought
any suspicion of the deception into Louis’s mind? He would order the
adjoining rooms to be searched, and those lodged in them; and if the
deceased queen’s attire should be found in the valises of Madame
Arnoul—Ah! it was terrible to think of! And no sooner day broke,
than the two packed up their baggage, and cleared away from the
Château of Ribeauvillé, not very easy in their minds till they were
safe again in Paris, where they had not been especially missed during
the few days’ absence, and they preserved a golden silence upon their
romantic adventure in the far-off Vosges.
CHAPTER XX
The crime of Madame Tiquet—A charming little Hand—_Aqua
Toffana_—The Casket—A devout Criminal—The Sinner and
the Saint—Monsieur de Lauzun’s Boots—“Sister Louise”—La
Fontanges—“Madame de Maintenant.”—The Blanks in the Circle—The
Vatican Fishes and their Good Example—Piety at Versailles—The
Periwigs and the Paniers—Père la Chaise—A dull Court—Monsieur de
St Evrémond’s Decision.
The eighteenth century in France is stained with the record of three
criminal cases which glare forth in the annals of human wickedness.
The last occurred in the latest years, and culminated in the trial
and execution of the chief criminal, Madame Tiquet. Though she had
accomplices—one of whom also suffered the extreme penalty—and
although the murderous aim fell short, and the intended victim
escaped, the attempt on the life of Monsieur Tiquet—an esteemed
magistrate—charged against his wife, made on two separate occasions,
was held to be sufficient warranty for the capital sentence upon her.
Still, since Monsieur Tiquet was living and well, the decision was
much criticised. The Parliament was accused of exacting too great a
penalty for the crime committed against itself, in the person of one
of its members, and Monsieur Tiquet himself is said to have pleaded
with the king personally for his wife’s reprieve, but to no effect.
Madame Tiquet was a beautiful woman, moving in the best society,
and extenuation was accordingly made by many, some even going the
length of declaring belief in her entire innocence. But Madame Tiquet
was decapitated on the Place de Grêve, while her chief accomplice,
Jacques Moura, was hanged.
The enormity of this crime rivalled that of the recorded murder
already narrated, of the Duchesse de Ganges, some score years
earlier, these both being rivalled by the series of murders,
perpetrated by poison, of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers. It is
recorded in her connection, that
“In the plaster-cast shop is a small, delicate, plump little
hand, dimpled and beautiful, which is sold to artists as a model.
You take it in yours, handle it, admire it, almost fancy you are
shaking hands with the good-humoured and festive little personage
to whom it must have belonged. You ask whose it was, and are told
that it was that of Madame de Brinvilliers, the notorious poisoner.
You recoil as if you had been handling an asp.”
Marguérite d’Aubrai was the daughter of one Monsieur d’Aubrai,
lieutenant-civil of Paris, and she was married at an early age to
the Marquis de Brinvilliers, to whom for a while she was devotedly
attached. In time her affection waned in favour of a Gascon
officer named St Croix, a worthless adventurer. Monsieur d’Aubrai,
discovering his daughter’s infatuation, obtained an order for the
imprisonment of St Croix in the Bastille. During the year he was
confined there, he contrived to make acquaintance with an Italian
named Exili, who was an adept in the art of toxicology, and possessed
the secret of the concoction of the terrible _Aqua Toffana_—to
call it by its best-known name, and as it was in its later form
called by “la Toffana,” the Neapolitan woman who got possession of
the recipe from the reputed witch, la Sphara, the hag of a hundred
years earlier, who was in the pay of the Borgias. In course of time
the secret of the hideous brew—originally styled by la Sphara,
“The Manna of St Nicolas of Bari”—had leaked out through the
confessional, the father-confessors, appalled probably by the many
penitential revelations made, had in course of generations given vent
almost unwittingly to the disclosures of so many crimes at so many
different hands; for it is said the “Manna,” had poisoned over six
hundred persons, and Exili had learnt the secret of the ingredients
of the subtle mortal poison, which was a tasteless colourless drug.
On the release of St Croix, the marchioness’s mad love for him had
only waxed greater, and when she had extracted from him this recipe
for death, they planned together to poison her father, her sister,
and two brothers successively, all in the same year of 1670, the
marchioness, meanwhile, being apparently a most charitable and pious
visitor of the sick in the Hôtel Dieu, and other hospitals of Paris,
but suspected later of trying the effects of her potions on the
various patients.
One day brought the discovery of the crimes of these two. The
poisons that St Croix delighted in, were many of them, so deadly
of breath, that he wore a glass mask to protect his face and lips
from the vapours, and on one occasion, while he was at work, the
mask fell off. He died instantly. No one coming forward to claim
the adventurer’s effects, they fell into the hands of Government.
Among the articles was a certain casket, which the marchioness
claimed, and so insistently and vehemently, that the authorities
became suspicious, and first had the casket opened. Its contents were
composed of packets of many kinds of poisons, each ticketed with a
description of the effects they produced. When she learned of the
opening of the casket, the murderess made her escape to England; but
still in terror of pursuit, she fled back to the Continent, where she
was tracked down at Liège, and taken under arrest back to Paris. The
crimes, one by one, were brought home to her, and she was condemned
to be beheaded and burned. Refusing however, to plead, she was put to
the question by the torture of swallowing water—“Surely,” she cried,
when she saw the three bucketfuls of water standing ready, “it is not
intended to drown me, for it is absurd to suppose that a person of my
dimensions can swallow all that!”
Not content with her own criminal work, she was proved to have
supplied the means for it to many suspected of similar crimes.
Implicated among those was the Duc de Luxembourg, and some of his
friends, who, it will be remembered, were suspected of causing the
death of the amiable and lamented Duchesse d’Orléans.
One person escaped who might well be supposed would have been one of
the marchioness’s first victims—her husband. It is believed that his
indifference to her induced her to pass him over. Madame de Sévigné,
however, mentions the _on dit_ that she did more than once attempt
to poison Brinvilliers; but that St Croix, for his own reason,
administered him an antidote, and the marquis survived to intercede
for his wife’s life, but, of course, ineffectually.
When she was arrested at Liège, a kind of general written formula
framed in vague allusion to her criminal doings was found upon
her, clearly for using in confession, to which she went with great
regularity. This was sufficiently explicit to confirm the other
evidences of her guilt.
“She communicated her poisons frequently in pigeon-pies—by which
a great many were killed,” writes Madame de Sévigné, “not from any
particular reason for despatching them, but out of mere curiosity
to try the effects of her drugs. The chevalier de Guet, who had
been a guest at her delightful entertainments about three years
ago, has been languishing ever since. She inquired the other day if
he was dead; upon being answered ‘No,’ she said, turning her head
on one side, ‘He must have a very strong constitution then.’ This
Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld swears to be true.”
During the next ensuing days, Madame de Sévigné’s letters brim with
details of the wretched woman’s latest hours.
“At six o’clock on the morning of her execution,” she writes, “la
Brinvilliers was carried in a cart, stripped to her shift, with a
cord about her neck, to the church of Notre Dame, to perform the
_amende honorable_. She was then replaced in the cart, where I saw
her lying at her length on a truss of straw, only her shift and a
suit of plain head-clothes, with a confessor on one side and a
hangman on the other. Indeed, my dear, the sight made me shudder.
Those who saw the execution say she mounted the scaffold with great
courage.”
Threatened with the question, it was not applied; since she said at
last that she would confess everything, and an appalling confession
it was. Repeatedly she had tried to poison her father, brother and
several others, before she succeeded; and all under the appearance of
the greatest love and confidence. Finally, Madame de Sévigné writes—
“At length all is over—la Brinvilliers is in the air; after her
execution, her poor little body was thrown into a great fire, and
her ashes dispersed by the wind. And so we have seen the end of a
sinner. Her confessor says she is a saint!!”
After the death of Queen Maria Théresa, which occurred some little
time before the fall of Madame de Montespan, the ascendency of the
royal governess increased rapidly.
Madame Arnoul was now no longer the indispensable friend of Madame
Scarron. She had come, in fact, to be so nearly an encumbrance,
that Françoise had handed her over in marriage to a gentleman of
Marseilles, with a portion of twenty thousand crowns, after having
profited so excellently by the example of the intriguing skill of
that past-mistress in the art, that she was quite capable henceforth
of acting for herself.
Madame Scarron was not slow to mark the preponderating affection of
Louis for his illegitimate children over the children of the queen,
and that to secure His Majesty’s favour and goodwill, was to work
to advance their interests by every possible means. She therefore
took at its turn the tide of the ill-starred fortunes of Mademoiselle
Montpensier’s connection with de Lauzun, to win from her the duchy of
Aumâle, the earldom of Eu, and the principality of Dombes, wherewith
to endow the children, as the price paid for obtaining from Louis the
pardon and release of de Lauzun, from Pignerol. Then came the turn of
Lauzun to extract from Mademoiselle, for himself, the duchy of Saint
Fargeau, the barony of Thiers in Auvergne, also a huge income from
the salt-tax in Languedoc. That done, de Lauzun showed himself for
the base ungrateful creature he was. That before his incarceration
at Pignerol a secret marriage had been made between them, had always
been the supposition; since otherwise she would not, it was thought,
have tolerated his treatment of her now, nor all the insults his
fertile imagination devised for heaping on her. One day, in the
presence of others, he had the cruelty to find fault with her style
of dress as entirely out of keeping with her age. Another time he
accused her of being the cause of all his sufferings at Pignerol.
No money, he declared, would ever make up for it. He was for ever
extorting from her money or jewels, which he lost at cards. Then he
strove to obtain from her the sole command and control of all she
still possessed; but the worm will turn, and Mademoiselle refused.
This enraged him to a pitch that spared her no insults, and his
finishing touch was to stretch out his foot one day when he visited
her at Choisy, and desire her to pull off his boots. Mademoiselle
turned scornfully away, and in a little while sought consolation and
refuge from these indignities in religious exercises of the most
rigid kind.
Mademoiselle de la Vallière, another broken-hearted woman, also about
this time entered into the convent of the Carmelites. She took the
veil, and passed the rest of her days a veritable saint under the
name of “Sister Louise de la Miséricorde.”
Madame de Montespan, finding all attempts to regain the old empire
over Louis in vain, subsequently made some endeavour to live a more
creditable life.
And meanwhile the star of Françoise rose higher and higher in the
royal firmament. The flickering meteor known as Mademoiselle de
Fontanges hardly ruffled her placidity. To Ninon, Françoise merely
referred to her as a proof that the intimacy in which she herself
lived with the king, was no more than one of pure warm friendship,
and had never exceeded those limitations.
As for la Fontanges, she is best known to posterity by the
extraordinary head-dress she adopted. Ugly as it was, it remained in
fashion for half a score of years. It was a structural arrangement
of eight divisions, in wire, covered with pieces of muslin, bows of
ribbon, interlaced with curls. These divisions were severally called:
la Duchesse, le Solitaire, le Chou, le Mousquetaire, le Croissant,
le Firmament, le Septième Ciel, and la Souris. (The Duchess, the
Solitary, the Cabbage, the Musketeer, the Crescent, the Firmament,
the Seventh Heaven and the Mouse.)
The king now bought for Madame Scarron the château and estate of
Maintenon, in Brittany, on the banks of the Gave near Chartres,
and by his desire she was henceforth called “Madame de Maintenon.”
Perhaps hardly so much at his desire, there were some about who made
a slight change in the orthography of the last syllable, and called
her “Madame de _Maintenant_.”
Her marriage with Louis is believed to have been celebrated in the
chapel of the château[7] in 1683—she being fifty and the king
forty-seven years old—in the presence of Harlay and Louvois, the
nuptial knot being tied by the confessor of the marquise, Père la
Chaise. She further obtained his appointment to the office of the
king’s confessor.
Père la Chaise was a priest of the Company of Jesus, a man, if
“neither fanatical nor fawning,” intolerant of all religious creeds
outside his own; and now, holding the conscience of Louis XIV. and of
Madame Louis XIV., Père la Chaise soon became a power in the land.
One by one death was bearing away the friends of Ninon’s earlier
years. The death of Madame de Chevreuse, at Port Royal, was followed
close by that of Madame de Longueville. Madame de Maintenon’s
prediction that de la Rochefoucauld would quickly follow her to whom
his heart had been unchangingly given, was verified. A few months,
and Marsillac, the friend of Ninon’s merry days at Loches, was no
more.
A deep melancholy darkened in upon Ninon as she thought of all those
gone hence, and the many missing now from the circle in the rue
des Tournelles, although new faces were not wanting there, and she
maintained the old hospitalities. She was not sorry, however, to put
an end to these for a while, in order to fall in with the proposition
of Monsieur le Nôtre, that she, with Madame de la Fayette, should
accompany him to Rome, whither he was bound with his friend, the poet
Santeuil, a canon of St Victor, who was making the journey in order
to try and obtain the sanction of the pope to the use of a certain
collection of Latin hymns he had composed—in all the churches of
Christendom; while the pope was anxious to consult the royal gardener
upon the laying out of the parterres of the Vatican.
They went by way of Geneva, Turin, Parma, and Florence, and arrived
in Rome. His Holiness received the travellers with the most gracious
and fatherly of welcomes, surrounded by all the members of the Sacred
College. After a while he conducted the visitors to the gardens,
where he paused on the brink of a great pond, containing fish of all
kinds, some of them carp two hundred years old. Presently one of the
cardinals rang a bell hanging to a post near the water’s edge, and
all the fishes came swimming with lightning rapidity, their heads
lifting high above the surface of the water, and a page approached
with two baskets, one filled with bread-crumbs, the other with grain.
These dainties the pope threw into the pond to his favourites, who
snapped up every morsel in a trice. Then the bell rang again, the
fish twisted and turned joyously for a little while, as if to display
their gratitude and satisfaction, and then disappeared. De Santeuil
remarked that the fish set a fine example to the religious Orders,
observing so excellently as they did, the rule of silence, and
drinking nothing but water. The observation was not very cordially
received by either the pope or his cardinals, and in any case, de
Santeuil, who did not then obtain the permission to use his hymns,
was inclined to blame the fishes. Some grace was accorded the hymns
later; but the Consistory was of opinion that they bore a flavour of
paganism.
Ninon, on returning from the Holy City to Paris, found Corneille
at the point of death. Memories now were her best consolation, and
though she had not been eight months away from Paris, she found as
many changes on her return, as if she had been absent a century.
The king, to begin with, had become converted, and the Court had
followed suit. Everyone was occupied with the concerns of his future
salvation. The king had cut off his moustache, and the courtiers had
all shaved their upper lips. As His Majesty had decided that a grey
wig would add to his air of respectability, everybody had powdered
their hair. Hitherto, hair-powder had been used by women only. Hair
had become so enormously expensive, that moderately-supplied purses
had to be content with a thin kind of crape puffed into curls. The
_justaucorps_, after having developed into a cassock kind of garment,
was now a coat, and the nether clothes Ninon considered to have grown
disgracefully ugly in shape.
The women had borrowed from Spain the hideous deformity of
_vertugadins_, cage-like objects composed of wire, horsehair, or
both, which they bound upon their hips, to extend the hang of their
petticoats. On the top of this monstrosity came the panier, a
whalebone contrivance covered with cloth stuff, put to similar ends,
and so greatly obstructing the thoroughfares, that the women were
frequently obliged to stand on one side to allow of others passing.
Pairing off with the older fashions, went the old French natural
gaiety, graceful manners and conversation, and pompous deportment
and stilted formalities of speech were the vogue. Ninon almost found
consolation for growing old in face of these dreary surroundings,
fostered and assiduously tended by Madame Louis Quatorze and her
Jesuit director, Père la Chaise. Of what consequence was France and
her well-being, provided these two carried their own ends to fruition?
Possibly this altered state of things had something to do with
Monsieur de St Evrémond’s decision to remain in England, where the
natural atmosphere might be brumous, but the social conditions far
less lugubrious. He wrote, at all events, to Ninon that, everything
considered, he preferred to remain where he had now been for fifteen
years, and would content himself with correspondence with her, and “I
shall read with vast satisfaction about things which you will tell
me that I know,” he writes, “but above all, tell me of the things
about which I do not know.”
And Ninon did write bright letters to her old friend, full of chat
and the social events of the day, as of the days that were past—a
sort of long confession, in which she did not specially spare anyone;
certainly not herself.
CHAPTER XXI
A distinguished Salon—The Duke’s Homage—Quietism—The disastrous
Edict—The writing on the Window-pane—The persecution of the
Huguenots—The Pamphleteers—The story of Jean Larcher and _The
Ghost of M. Scarron_—The two Policies.
“The house of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos,” writes a contemporary
author, “was then, 1694, the rendezvous of the persons of the Court
and of the city who were regarded as the most intellectually gifted
and estimable. The house of Ninon was, perhaps, in these latter
years of her life, the only one where talent and wit found fair
breathing-room, and where the time was passed without card-playing
and without ennui, and until the age of eighty-seven she was sought
by the best company of the time.”
“And,” writes another eminent chronicler—
“Ninon had illustrious friends of all sorts, and showed such wit
and tact that she never failed to keep them in good humour with
each other; or at all events free of petty differences. Her friends
were of the most refined and mentally gifted of the people of the
Court; so that it was esteemed very desirable to mingle with them
in her salon. There was never any gaming, nor loud laughter, nor
disputing, nor religious or political discussion, but much flow of
wit, and conversing on topics new and old, subjects of sentiment
or of gallantry, but these never transgressing the bounds of good
taste. All was delicate, graceful, well-balanced, and furnished
themes which she was well able to render full of interest from
her stores of memories of so many past years. The consideration
she had acquired, the number and distinction of her friends and
acquaintance, continued to be her attraction when the charm of her
beauty had faded. She knew all about the intrigues of the present
Court, as of the old, serious and otherwise. Her conversation was
charming, disinterested, frank, guarded, and accurate at every
point, and almost to a weakness blameless and pure. She frequently
assisted her friends with money, and would enter for them into
important negotiations, and ever faithfully guarded money and
secrets entrusted to her keeping. All these things won for her a
repute and respect of the most marvellous kind.”
Such, on the testimony of the Marquis de la Fare and of St Simon, was
the Ninon de L’Enclos of the closing years of her life and of the
century. She herself records, with pardonable pride, that “when the
great Condé used to meet her out driving, he would descend from his
carriage, and cause the window of hers to be let down, that he might
offer her his compliments.”
It has been said that Paris no longer had any salon except hers
where people of wit and breeding and celebrity forgathered. There
came Racine, her near neighbour, Boileau, Fontenelle, la Fontaine,
Huydens, Bussy Rabutin, Charleval, Montreuil, la Fare, Benserade,
Desmarets, Quinault, La Bruyère, and with them many of the prominent
men and women of the Court. Thither also came frequently Fénelon,
and it was in Ninon’s salon that his relative, Madame Guyon, first
expounded her doctrine of Quietism.
Now and again Madame de Maintenon would come to the rue des
Tournelles, and Ninon concedes that she had the good taste not to
unduly assert herself on these occasions; though the air of strict
and devout propriety seemed ever more and more to enfold her. At
that time she showed considerable favour to the theories of Madame
Guyon and of Fénelon; but the Jesuit Père la Chaise had small
appreciation of anything savouring of liberty of conscience, and the
Edict of Nantes was imminent, the evil thing engendered in the brain
of the trio ruling him whose proud mottoes, “_Nec pluribus impor_,”
“_Vires acquiret eundo_,” so belied the weak, superstitious shadow
into which the Grand Monarque had faded.
Louis’s liking for his Huguenot subjects had always been so entirely
of the smallest, that it verged on hatred. Thanks to Mazarin’s
plan of mental cultivation for him, his understanding of the
doctrinal questions at issue between Catholic and Calvinist was so
infinitesimal as to be of no account. It was his arrogant claim of
authority over the minds and bodies of his subjects, far more than
any spiritual convictions, which needed but the representations of
Madame de Maintenon, of the egotistical, vain and unsympathetic
minister Louvois, and of the Jesuit intolerance of Père la Chaise,
to fire the smouldering flame of extermination of the “reformed”
Christianity of France; and on the 22nd of October, 1685, was
re-enacted the new version of the tragedy of St Bartholomew, the
chief _rôle_ in it played by the descendant of the murdered Coligny’s
friend, who had been the progenitor of Françoise d’Aubigné, the
ambitious Madame Louis Quatorze. Gentle and patient in adversity,
as Scarron’s wife, admirable, and perhaps really lovable, in that
far-off day when she did not even then scruple, and successfully,
to win her friend Ninon’s lover away from her—a fact by no means
forgotten, nor likely to be, recorded as Monsieur de Villarceaux had
recorded it at the time on a window of “the Yellow Room” in the rue
des Tournelles. There, diamond-graven on the pane of glass, that
erotic quatrain proclaimed the charms of Françoise as unmistakably
as ever; and though Ninon had no part in it, somehow the lines found
their way into Monsieur Loret’s journal, and forthwith it created
other couplets, which commemorated more than one incident in the
life of Madame Louis Quatorze. The precious rhyming ran into several
verses, varied only by the several names of Madame’s former admirers,
starting gaily with Monsieur de Villarceaux:
“On est ravi que le roi notre sire,
Aime la d’Aubigné
Moi, Villarceaux, je mén créve de rire,
Hi! hé! hi! hi! hi! hé!
Puis je dirai, sans être plus lestes,
Tu n’as que mes restes,
Toi!
Tu n’as que nos restes,” etc. etc.
Briefly, the French nation looked with contempt on the left-handed
marriage contracted by the king. Madame de Maintenon, less a bigot
than an assumed one, hypocritical, ambitious, wrapped about in a
veil of piety, ruled Louis to the disaster of the country. She was
calmly, ruthlessly cruel in her methods of fostering the natural
passion of Louis for getting all under his own control. Not content
with the grasp of government which Richelieu had bequeathed to him,
and he had retained with iron hand, he only too readily allowed
himself to be urged to acquire the grip of the consciences of his
subjects. The Edict of Nantes, established by the other great king,
which had brought peace to the distracted land, and permitted the
Protestants freedom of worship after their own simple forms, was
revoked, religious intolerance was once more rampant, and to such
a degree, that a few months later, a second edict deprived the
Huguenots of keeping their children. The quick death of the night
of St Bartholomew only took on now the guise of slow torture,
prolonged into years, which witnessed the departure of an industrious
community, and sowed the dragon’s teeth of revolution, which in less
than another hundred years was to ripen into such fearful harvesting.
Discontent prevailed, deep hatred rankled against the despotism of
Versailles. The faults of Louis, glaring as they had ever been, had
hitherto been toned in the eyes of his people by the brilliancy
and glory of martial successes, and of great achievement in civil
government; but victory was no longer constant, and the Thirty Years’
War had exhausted the public funds.
The enormous prodigality of the king’s mode of life was beginning to
be more and more recognised for the evil it was. The Sun-King’s light
was fast dimming; the people no longer worshipped from afar, and the
death-stroke to his popularity and renown waned as the domination
of Madame de Maintenon waxed ever more powerful. The pamphleteers
fell to work. Many such productions found circulation in spite of the
efforts of the police to run them to earth. One of marked effect was
entitled, _The Sighs of Enslaved France for Liberty_, and was widely
read. The liberal sentiments of the pamphlets made deep impression.
When they were detected in any person’s possession, the unfortunate
students were forthwith conducted to the torture-chamber or the
Bastille; and while stricture on Louis was harshly enough dealt with,
it was mild compared with any attacks on Madame de Maintenon. The
king was so entirely conscious of the great political mistake he had
made in his marriage with her, that it enraged him to be reminded of
it. One of the tractates was called _The Ghost of M. Scarron_, and it
was adorned with a picture parodying the statue of Louis on the Place
des Victoires, whose four allegorical figures of its pedestal were
replaced in the pamphlet picture by the figures of la Vallière, de
Montespan, Fontanges, and de Maintenon. One morning the king found a
copy of this literary effort under his breakfast napkin, and Madame
Louis Quatorze also found one under hers. It was the princes of the
blood who were her most bitter enemies, and their powerful influence
fomented the enmity, and contrived to defeat, again and again, the
endeavours of Monsieur de la Reynie, the lieutenant of police, to
bring the pamphleteers to “justice.”
_The Ghost of M. Scarron_ was the crowning offence, and Monsieur de
la Reynie was summoned to Versailles, and commanded at any cost to
track down the authors of this pamphlet.
It was a fearful dilemma for Monsieur de la Reynie; that it would end
in his disgrace he could not doubt, and whenever the king chanced to
see the unhappy lieutenant, he flung reproaches at him on account of
the terrible “ghost.”
Curious chance came to the rescue of Monsieur de la Reynie; but
to the undoing and judicial murder of an innocent man, one Jean
Larcher, ending up with a horrible tragedy. This Jean Larcher, who
had sustained a loss of some 5000 livres, which had been stolen from
his house, came to the lieutenant of police to lodge his complaint,
in the hope that the thief might be traced. No sooner had he given
his name, than Monsieur de la Reynie summoned a police officer,
and whispering a few words in his ear, bade him accompany Larcher,
who was a bookbinder, to his house in the rue des Lions St Paul.
Larcher, delighted at the prompt and interested attention shown
him, grew communicative as he went along, and gave the officer much
information as to the exact position of the receptacles in which
he stored his money and stock in trade. On arriving, the officer,
changing his courteous demeanour, called to two of the small throng
of soldiers and police standing about in front of the bookbinder’s
door, and bidding them keep him well in their charge, and follow him
upstairs in company with another officer, went first to a room on the
first floor, where he told the man to climb to the top of a certain
cupboard, loaded with papers and pamphlets ready for the binder, and
bring them down. Selecting one of these, the officer placed it in
the hands of Larcher, who turned white as a sheet, for it was a copy
of _The Ghost of M. Scarron_. The unfortunate man, without more ado,
was hurried off under arrest to the Châtelet, and thence, before any
great loss of time, to the torture-chamber, three times suffering
there, and finally to the gibbet, where he died bravely, and firmly
asserting his innocence to the last.
There came a time when he was justified. The whole matter proved to
be an infamous plot, concocted by a scoundrel who had an intrigue
with Larcher’s wife. This man was Larcher’s assistant, and afterwards
married the widow. At a later time Larcher’s son discovered that
the wretched fellow had placed the pamphlets where they were come
upon in Larcher’s house, and then had written an anonymous letter to
Monsieur de la Reynie, informing him of where they were to be found.
On tracking the exact truth and circumstances of this abominable
treachery, the young man broke, in the dead of night, into the house
where the couple lived, and murdered both. He was arrested; but he
was saved from public death by brain-fever, which struck him down
while he was in prison.
At the time of the conviction of Larcher, it was more than believed
that he was innocent; but, in the first place, M. de la Reynie had
his own safety and position to consider, and somebody had to bear the
brunt; and secondly, riding very hard on the heels of it, Larcher was
a Protestant, and furthermore guilty of the enormity of remaining
in communication with his child, who had been sent for protection to
England.
The pope was far more tolerant in his desires for dealing with the
French Protestants, than was the quartette at Versailles. The liberal
spirit of the Gallican Church was ignored to feed the contemptible
ambition of the converted Françoise d’Aubigné, and to lull to rest
the conscience of the pusillanimous nonentity still called the
King of France. The persecution of the Huguenots was carried on
relentlessly for fifteen years; fire and sword, and rape and murder,
were the lot of those who remained to brave the booted emissaries of
M. Louvois, if they retaliated where they had the chance, and as they
did fiercely in the terrible struggles in the Cévennes. Justice is
even-handed: it was no time to turn the cheek to be smitten. Those
who emigrated, as in such thousands they did, carried with them the
commerce and the prosperity of France. Frugal and industrious for the
most part, and in these later days at least, peacefully disposed,
rarely seeking more than to be let alone, they were the mainstay of
the country. Richelieu had fully recognised their value, and followed
it in his policy with them. The “Old Woman of Versailles,” as she was
widely called, reversed the great cardinal’s provisions, and in time
the avengement fell.
The clergy generally carried out the orders issued from Versailles
for the extermination of the heretics. Monseigneur d’Orléans and the
Abbé de Fénelon alone resisted. The first afforded time for the
Huguenots to make their preparations for emigrating from France, by
lodging the soldiery, sent to disperse them by violence, in his own
palace, and maintaining them at his own expense, forbidding them
meanwhile to harm any one of the Huguenot families in his diocese.
For Monsieur de Fénelon, selected to superintend the raid of the
_booted missionaries_ in Poitou and Saintonge, he, like the Bishop
of Orléans, forbade them to use violence, and brought back more of
the errant ones into the Catholic fold by his sweet, persuasive
eloquence, than the rest of the priests did, with all their
_dragonnades_ and executioner assistants, notwithstanding the view
of Madame de Maintenon and of her spiritual director: that if only
the holy Apostles had employed such emissaries of fire and sword, the
Christian religion would not have been half so long in establishing.
CHAPTER XXII
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ _Cercle_—Madeleine de Scudéri—The
Abbé Dubois—“The French Calliope,” and the Romance of her
Life—“_Revenons à nos Moutons_”—A Resurrection?—Racine and his
Detractors—“Esther”—_Athalie_ and St Cyr—Madame Guyon and the
Quietists.
Among the ladies of distinction forming the _cercle_ of Mademoiselle
de L’Enclos at this time, were the Countesses de la Sablière, de
la Fayette, and de Sévigné, de Souvré, de la Suza, d’Olonne, de
Sandwich, the Marquises de Wardes, de Créquy, de St Lambert; the
Duchesses de Sully and de Bouillon, and the Maréchales de Castelnau
and de la Ferté. The old antagonism between Ninon and Mademoiselle
de Scudéri was smoothed away also by the amiable intervention
of Madame de Sévigné, and the autumn of the lives of these two
women was cheered by the sunshine of a genuine friendship, which,
however, Boileau did his best to dull, by asserting that the
famous romanticist of her day did not merit her popularity. Ninon
succeeded however, in bringing him to soften his severe criticisms on
Madeleine’s works, until they became gentler even than her own views
of the voluminous tales which she regarded as far too wordy, and
almost destitute of the passion which should be the motive power of
romance.
Mademoiselle de Scudéri in everyday life was, however, amiable
and charming in manner and conversation—so that her personal
appearance, which was far from prepossessing, hardly detracted from
her fascination. She was plain of feature, and of masculine build,
but this had not come in the way of the idolatrous admiration, in
former days, of Conrard, the Secretary of the Académie Française; and
Pelisson, the advocate and faithful friend of the ill-fated Fouquet,
remained true as ever to his ardent worship of her. The years of
Madeleine de Scudéri ran even to a length beyond those of her friend
Ninon. She died in her ninety-fourth year.
Among the brilliant company assembling almost nightly in the salon of
the rue des Tournelles, one day came, unbidden and unwelcomed, the
Abbé Dubois, he who at a later time was to acquire such a prominent
position at the Court of the Regency, and die a cardinal. For this
man, more notorious than celebrated, Ninon conceived an instinctive
dislike. The ferret face repelled her, but she did not refuse him the
letter of introduction he sought of her to Monsieur de St Evrémond in
London, whither he was bound.
The “French Calliope,” Madame Deshoulières, was an intimate friend of
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos. Her career was romantic and even heroic.
Her maiden name was Anne Antoinette Ligier de la Garde, she was a
goddaughter of Anne of Austria, who held her at the font when she was
christened. She was the daughter of the queen’s _maître d’hôtel_, and
was born in one of the little apartments of the Louvre. Beauty and
grace and high talent distinguished her as she grew up. Her father
caused her to be very strictly reared, and no books were permitted
her except philosophical and religious works. One day, however, she
detected her maid reading one of the pastoral romances of d’Urfé.
She was immediately fired with desire, as a true daughter of Eve, to
taste of the delightful fruit of the vice of romantic fiction, and
said she would ask her father’s permission for it. This frightened
the _bonne_ so much, that, to purchase her charge’s silence, she
offered to lend her the interesting history of _The Shepherds of
Lignon_, in which she had been so surreptitiously absorbed; and upon
these followed the novels of Calprenède and of Madeleine de Scudéri.
But if these books sufficed for all the intellectual needs of the
run of the young ladies of the period, Antoinette was a girl of
brains, and soon returned to her first love of more healthy and solid
literature, and of poetry; and she studied for some time the art of
versification under Hesnaut, whose fame is best remembered by the
gifts of his pupil.
At eighteen she became the wife of Monsieur de Boisguerry, Seigneur
Deshoulières, a gentleman of Poitou, in the service of the Prince
de Condé. The queen had been displeased at this marriage, whereat
Monsieur de la Garde explained that his child had to be provided for,
and his emolument in Her Majesty’s service had not been so great that
it could be forthcoming from that source. This offended the queen,
and the offence was aggravated by the suspicion of Frondeur leanings
hanging about him, so that Antoinette’s dowry from her royal
godmother was but a small one.
Three months after their marriage, Monsieur Deshoulières was summoned
to follow Condé to Spain, and his wife returned to her old home,
which was, however, no longer at the Louvre, but in a small house at
Auteuil.
Here she spent the time in study, finding her chief delight in the
philosophical works of Gassendi, now for some years a professor of
the College of France. On the return of her husband to the frontier,
she hastened to meet him, and the two repaired to Brussels, where
the Court received her with high distinction; but in addition to her
acquirements, her grace and beauty won her admiration so marked, that
it became aggressive, and she was forced to repulse the unwelcome
attentions thrust upon her. This turned friends into enemies, who
satisfied their revenge by representing her as a spy of Mazarin
and of the queen—a far-fetched accusation enough, which, however,
obtained wide credence.
The State payments to her husband were now withheld, and on seeking
redress from the minister she was decreed an arrest, and sent for
imprisonment to Vilvorde, where she was doomed to spend fourteen
months in complete solitude, and kept from all means of communication
with her friends. But Antoinette’s girlhood had been passed in the
days when natural feminine weakness had been fortified by stirring
public events, and Madame Deshoulières consoled herself with
theological study during the time of her imprisonment, mainly of the
Fathers, from Origen to St Augustine.
Only after a length of time Monsieur Deshoulières discovered the
prison in which his wife was immured. Having ascertained this, he
formed the bold project of carrying her off. To this end he engaged
forty men, armed them to the teeth, and in the dead of a dark night,
he led them to the edge of the moat of the Castle of Vilvorde, at
its narrowest and shallowest part, stationing his men in the water,
which they had previously filled with branches and mud, so as to form
a human bridge. Arrived at the base of the wall, he fixed a ladder
to the ramparts, and mounting, followed by his guard with stealthy
caution, overpowered the two sentinels and gagged them. Then they
hastened on to the governor’s bedroom, and putting a cord round
his neck while he was in profound sleep, and a musket to his face,
they detained him in durance till he had yielded up the keys of his
captive’s apartments, and of the doors of the fortress. The garrison
was then forced to lay down arms, and entering a waiting berline,
Monsieur Deshoulières and his rescued wife gained in a few hours the
ground of France.
The tidings of this intrepid act travelled as fast as they did,
and Le Tellier, the Secretary of State, presented the pair to the
queen and Mazarin. Anne of Austria embraced her goddaughter warmly,
a general amnesty was proclaimed, and all was forgotten—so much
forgotten, that Mazarin and the queen omitted to award Deshoulières
the promised arrears of pay, and the pension which was to reward the
two. The debts and liabilities of Deshoulières became formidable,
and he had no alternative but to obtain a division of maintenance,
pay up from his own small resources all he could, and retire with
his wife to live on the slender dowry Anne had bestowed on her
goddaughter. It did not nearly suffice for their rank and position.
In order to meet their requirements, Madame Deshoulières devoted
herself to her pen, and her verses, first published in the _Mercure
Galant_, won universal admiration, but no money reward. Left to
itself, the nature of the editor ever inclines to the view that
_kudos_ is enough for the author, and this particular editor gave his
contributor to understand that she ought to consider herself only too
fortunate to have made an appearance in his pages.
Once again the admirers looked askance and grew scornful and
sarcastic, and the humour of Madame Deshoulières’ pen acquiring the
sombre tints of her cruel fortunes, she was nicknamed the “_Mendicant
Muse_.” So, with the addition of three children to maintain, the poor
woman remained until the death of Monsieur Deshoulières, forsaken by
her old troops of friends and admirers. Then she penned the immortal
trifle beginning—
“Dans ces près fleuris
Qu’arrose la Seine,
Cherchez qui vous mêne,
Mes chères brébis.”
It was her charming device for winning the attention and generosity
of Louis XIV., and attained its end.
The king awarded her a pension of two thousand livres, and the editor
of the _Mercure Galant_, laying the credit of this good fortune to
his own account, straightened out things by continuing to publish
Madame Deshoulières’ verses _gratis_ in his columns.
Once more the fine-weather friends flocked about her, and belauded
her attractions, personal and intellectual. In these lay no
exaggeration, for Antoinette Deshoulières was exceptionally gifted.
Her conversation was brilliant, delicate, and sparkling with
originality. The poets chanted her praises, and Benserade changed his
sobriquet of the “_Mendicant Muse_” to the “_Calliope Française_.”
Among other well-remembered trifles from her pen, the pretty poem of
_Les Oiseaux_ is to be recorded. It is by these charming productions
that the memory of Antoinette Deshoulières lives. Her aims in graver
poetry and drama fell below their mark. For her, these were the
unattainable, and possibly it was failure in this direction which
impelled her to a jealousy unworthy of her excellent judgment and
native good taste, when she rendered high praise to the _Phèdre_
of Pradon, and criticised in a satirical poem the grand tragedy of
Racine on the same subject.
From every point of view it was a lamentable mistake, and laid her
open to storms of sarcastic abuse—
“Dans un fauteuil doré Phèdre tremblante
Et blême
Dit des vers ou d’abord personne n’entend rien.”
So wrote Madame Deshoulières, and the flippancy on the tremendous
theme evoked general disgust. “What is this tumbled from the clouds?”
cried Madame de la Sablière. “This sweet and interesting shepherdess,
who talked so tenderly to her sheep and flowers and birds, has
suddenly changed her crook into a serpent!”
Madame de Sévigné preferred to be entirely of the opinion of Madame
Deshoulières, but if envy of the great tragic poet was in the heart
of the one, personal animosity was beyond question in that of the
other; for Madame de Sévigné had never forgiven either Boileau or
Racine for favouring the intrigue of her grandson, de Grignan with
the Champmeslé.
Madame Deshoulières burned with desire for dramatic honours, and she
wrote a tragedy called _Genséric_. It was a feeble, ill-constructed
piece of work, and was ill-received; but it was not to be forgotten,
for it perpetuated the immortal figure of speech, as familiar in
England as in France, of the advice to her—“Return to your sheep”
(_anglicé_—“Let us go back to our muttons”).[8]
Once again she wooed the drama in the guise of comedy and opera; but
her efforts were signal failures. She died at the age of sixty-two,
of the same malady as her godmother, and, like her, she bore the
cruel suffering with patience and resignation, writing in the
intervals of pain a paraphrase of the Psalms, and her _Reflections
Morales_, one of her best works. Bossuet, who administered to her the
last consolations of religion, spoke in warm eulogy of those last
days of hers.
A singular circumstance disturbed the smooth flow of Mademoiselle
de L’Enclos’ life at this time. It was the sudden appearance of an
aged woman who declared herself to be Marion Delorme, and claiming a
fifty-seven years’ friendship with Ninon.
She declared that the report of her death had been false; that the
doctor, Guy Patin, had not attended her funeral; but had saved her
life, and then she had left Paris and lived out of France.
Convinced as Ninon was, that the poor woman was demented, or
attempting to impose on her, she sent to the Street of the Dry
Tree, where Guy Patin lived; but the doctor was absent in Prussia,
sharing the exile of his son, who had been condemned for being in
possession of six copies of one of the libellous pamphlets that made
life hideous for the king and Madame Louis Quatorze, and no other
testimony, for or against, was to be found. The magistrate to whom
the unhappy creature had applied to verify her identity, hastened a
little later to assure Ninon that to communicate with Guy Patin would
be troubling him to no purpose; since the Marion Delorme, as she
called herself, had given unmistakable proof of madness, and she had
been placed in the Hôtel Dieu. So the matter ended.
The shafts, impotent as they were, of Madame Deshoulières had
an evil effect on Racine. Ninon, warmly seconded by St Evrémond
especially, endeavoured to win the great tragic poet from his
exclusive associations with the Court; but he turned a deaf ear to
every argument. It is possible that the atmosphere of Versailles,
as it prevailed under the ordering of Madame de Maintenon, tainted
and unhealthy as it was with pharisaical “piety,” assorted with the
sentiments of gloom ill-health had fostered, for Racine suffered
cruelly, long before his death, from an abscess on the liver.
Moreover, by education and rearing he was a Port Royalist, and the
tenets of Jansenism could but have run in his blood. In her earlier
time Madame de Maintenon had looked favourably on these Calvinistic
sectaries of the Catholic Church; only at a later date it was that
the rupture occurred with the Abbé Fénelon and Madame Guyon, the
notable advocate of the doctrines of the Quietest, Michael Molinos
the Spanish monk. Madame Guyon, whose maiden name was de la Motte,
evinced mystic tendencies even as a child. As she grew up, it was
her wish to enter a convent; but her parents prevented this, and she
was married at sixteen. At eight-and-twenty she became a widow, and
then the old mystic sentiments began to rule her more dominantly than
ever. This was further fostered in her by her confessor and other
ecclesiastics about her, who persuaded her that she was destined by
Heaven to be a powerful agent for the advancement of religion.
“Still young,” says Voltaire, “with beauty, riches, and a mind
fitted for society, she became infatuated with what is called
_spiritualism_. Her confessor whose name was Lacombe, a man of a
nature at once passionate and devout, and who died mad, plunged
the mind of his penitent deeper into the mystic reveries by which
it was already affected. Her doctrine,” Voltaire goes on to say,
“was a complete renunciation of self, the silence of the soul, the
annihilation of all its faculties, internal worship, and the pure
and disinterested love of God, which is neither degraded by fear
nor animated by the hope of reward.”
There were times, however, that religious enthusiasm, following its
customary tendency, betrayed her into extravagance, and absurdities
of speech in her efforts to explain her views.
By her written treatises, and by her orations, Madame Guyon made
many proselytes. For five years she travelled from place to place in
Piedmont and Dauphiné; then returning to Paris, she continued her
labours for two years, uninterfered with. Suddenly the Archbishop of
Paris, one of the most infamously profligate of priests on record,
Harlay de Champvallon, found himself horrified at discovering
that Madame Guyon’s teaching was neither more nor less than that
of Molinos, whose Jansenist theories of grace and free-will were
in direct opposition to the Jesuitical tenets, then, of course,
all-dominant at Versailles. He pretended to hold Father Lacombe as
a seducer, and sent him to the Bastille; while Madame Guyon was put
under arrest into the convent of the Visitandines, where she won
universal love, and many believers in her mild faith. From here
Madame de Maintenon, who had made her acquaintance at Ninon’s house,
and bore her considerable affection and esteem, freed her, and gave
her a home in St Cyr. There she was introduced to Fénelon, and they
formed their firm and life-long friendship.
Madame de Maintenon, however, instigated by the bigoted Bishop of
Chartres, who was director of the consciences of the young ladies
of St Cyr and their teachers, ere long withdrew her favour, falling
in also with the prejudices the king had against her. Among other
persecutions to which she was now subjected, was the production
of a letter from Lacombe, or purporting to be from him, exhorting
her to repent of her criminal intimacy with him. The unhappy man,
always of a highly nervous, excitable nature, had now long been
insane, and the accusation was believed by no one. Later, she was
again imprisoned at Vincennes, and in the Bastille, whence she was
delivered by de Noailles, the successor of the infamous Harlay. But
here her sufferings did not end. Once more she was imprisoned in the
Bastille, and finally she was exiled to Blois, where she spent the
last fifteen years of her life, in acts of charity and piety, graced
ever by unswerving patience; but while occasionally betrayed into
extravagance of expression on religious points, her common sense and
excellent judgment in everyday matters were remarkable.
CHAPTER XXIII
A Grave Question—The Troublesome Brother-in-Law—“No
Vocation”—The Duke’s Choice—Peace for la Grande Mademoiselle—An
Invitation to Versailles—Behind the Arras—Between the
Alternatives—D’Aubigné’s Shadow—A Broken Friendship.
While the persecution of His Majesty’s Protestant subjects was
being ruthlessly carried on by fire and sword, and _dragonnading_
generally, a matter of the gravest moment was under consideration at
Versailles, and there was wide division of opinion in high places. It
was on the question of the _Fontanges_ head-gear, and for once the
king openly set his face against that of Madame de Maintenon, which,
he declared, now appeared in the middle of her body, and, he added,
by no means enhanced its charm; for the height of the ugly head-dress
had risen to two feet. Eloquence, mild argument, raillery and
angry words from the Grand Monarque, however, simply fell on stony
ground. Two gauze horns had been added to the abominable structure
of whalebone, ribbon, horsehair, etc., etc. These projections were
fixed behind the ears, and carried upward, crowning the work. The
Sun-King’s defeat was complete, “_Vires acquirit eundo. Nec pluribus
impar_”: his mottoes were ever mocking him, and lest the _Fontanges_
should mount higher still, he said no more.
He had better success on the frontiers, where Catinat in Piedmont,
and Luxembourg in Flanders, brilliant pupil of Condé, routed the
enemy. In this expedition Madame de Maintenon secured the advancement
of de Villars, the lover who had consoled her days of widowhood; and
the first step to glory made, he mounted rapidly, proving himself one
of the bravest of the campaign.
Another thorn in the side of Louis, or rather more absolutely of
Madame, was her brother. Years had not mended d’Aubigné’s ways; he
was just the same _vaurien_ of a _bon viveur_ and gourmet, he had
been in his bouts with Scarron.
De Santeuil, the poet-canon who had been one of the party when Ninon
travelled to Rome, was now d’Aubigné’s _Fidus Achates_, and they were
fairly evenly matched in their modes of life. Santeuil was invited
one morning by Ninon to breakfast with her. D’Aubigné naturally came
too, expressing himself delighted, he said, to kiss Ninon’s hand once
more after such an interval of years. He inquired whether she still
kept up her acquaintance with his _bégueule_ of a sister.
“Is it so you speak of a person who has made the glory of your
family?” demanded Ninon.
D’Aubigné did not regard the case at all in this light. It was a good
joke to call her that, he said, and added that he was furious against
his brother-in-law. “Don’t you know why?” he went on, planting his
hands on his hips in truculent fashion. “Are you not aware of the
persecutions and insults Françoise treats me to? Well, we’ll have
breakfast first, and then I’ll tell you.” And having fortified
himself with a bumper or two of Burgundy, he went on. “Only imagine,
that this infernal bigot—Oh well,” he continued, when Ninon reminded
him that she and Françoise were still on terms of friendship,
“you can tell her what I say. It is all the same to me, and if my
brother-in-law has anything to grumble at in it, let him out with it.
Prison? flames and fury! I’ll pin my dagger into any of them who dare
to lay hand on me, and there you have it. They won’t silence me! Head
of the family indeed! That’s me!—and so much the worse for Louis
Dieudonné! taking it into his head to marry my sister! Prudence?” he
went on, when his hostess suggested its adoption, “it is the mother
of all the vices—a watchword only for cowards. Françoise is my
sister, and I’ll have them pay me proper respect.” Then d’Aubigné,
having mercilessly criticised the mature attractions of Françoise,
went on to say that he loved her, and if need were, would protect her
at the sword’s point; but that because she was saintly and surrounded
herself with Jesuits, it was no reason why he should be made a monk.
Yes, that was her plan. She and the brother-in-law greatly desired
that he should shut himself up in St Sulpice, where the livelong day
was spent in reading litanies. “B-r-r-r-r-t!” shivered d’Aubigné.
“Me!” he added, when Santeuil said if he did such a thing, he would
excommunicate him—“I would sooner be chopped to mincemeat by the
_dragonnades_.”
Santeuil suggested that he might prefer entering St Cyr to St Sulpice.
But d’Aubigné replied that the inmates of St Cyr would be too much
of his sister’s mould for his fancy. Ninon was disturbed at this
forcible language, which she had very good reason to believe was
not reserved for her ear alone; but that d’Aubigné exploded in much
the same fashion in the taverns and the avenues and public gardens,
and possibly also even in the galleries of Versailles, where he had
access. She took Santeuil aside, and begged him to use his influence
in restraining his friend’s ebullitions. But Santeuil was in no mind
to do anything of the kind; he said it was only just and proper that
the widow Scarron, who had not always been a saint, should meet with
those little contrarieties, and the matter must settle itself in its
own way. Soon after this, Santeuil, who was a great favourite with
all the family of the Condés, on account of his wit and gaiety of
disposition, was invited to spend the summer at Dijon; and Madame de
Maintenon, finding her brother thus unprotected, used every endeavour
to persuade him to enter St Sulpice. In any case, however, d’Aubigné
said he saw no reason to hurry over the step.
That same year the marriage took place of the Duc du Maine, the
eldest son of Madame de Montespan. The bride was neither intelligent
or beautiful, but she was huge of frame, and the duke, entertaining
a passion for gigantic women, selected her from a trio of ladies,
one of whom was adorably beautiful, and the other rejected one
brilliantly gifted and accomplished.
And almost within the days of those marriage festivities at
Versailles, la Grande Mademoiselle lay dying in the Luxembourg, and
she sent for Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, very much to the surprise
of that lady; for the two had not met after the misunderstanding
created by the machinations of Madame de Fiesque. Only that morning,
it appeared, Madame de Fiesque had made clean acknowledgment to
the dying woman of the real facts of the rupture; and now, sorely
distressed, she begged Ninon’s forgiveness, and to extend it to the
far greater offender, Madame de Fiesque herself. Ninon replied that
this was freely accorded. Her child was happy in the love of a good
man. It was enough; and she turned and held out her hand to Madame de
Fiesque, who sat sobbing in a corner of the room. Just at that moment
a lady of honour entered, to say that Monsieur de Lauzun was at the
door, desiring an interview; but the dying woman refused, entreating
that he should not be admitted. “If you but knew, Ninon, how wretched
he has made my life,” she gasped out. “Oh, I have cruelly expiated
all my folly. There was never any bond blessed by Heaven between
us. It was no more than a _liaison_. May God forgive me, since my
suffering has been so great.” And so, two hours later, she died.
The noble traits in the disposition of the daughter of Gaston
d’Orléans deserved a happier fate than to be the tool of a selfish
coxcomb like Lauzun, who was, however, himself not destitute of good
qualities; but whose best memory stands recorded by the patience and
fortitude with which he endured the terrible suffering of a cancer
in the mouth, of which he died at the age of more than ninety. The
woman whose infatuation for him was so great as to sacrifice the
natural dignity which distinguished her, was no ordinary character.
Dignified she was, but without pride, and a pleasant and clever
conversationalist. True in friendship, gentle and sensible, and
incapable of any mean or base action. If sometimes her susceptible,
sensitive temperament betrayed her into anger, she would quickly pour
balm on the wound she had caused, by gracious and tender words and
caresses. She had the courage of a soldier, and would endure fatigue,
and face danger as one of the bravest. It is only the fate of ardent,
generous souls like hers, if sometimes she was betrayed into the
many nets which greed, jealousy and base cunning are always at hand
to spread, for rendering nobler natures wretched. Mademoiselle de
Montpensier was, in one word, a true descendant of her grandfather,
Henri IV.
Lauzun, exiled as he had been, from Versailles, soon after passed
over to England, where he contrived to make himself useful by
conducting the queen and infant prince of James II. safely to France,
during the revolution of ’88. Louis, who received the dethroned
English king with great demonstration of sympathy and magnificence,
and gave the exiles his palace of St Germains for their home, was
thus again brought into direct communication with Lauzun, who, being
readmitted to royal favour, was created a duke; but he never really
regained the confidence of Louis.
On the occasion of the death of Mademoiselle, he presented himself at
the palace, attired in a magnificent mourning cloak. This so angered
Louis, that Lauzun ran a parlous risk of once more taking the road to
Pignerol.
All that remained of la Grande Mademoiselle’s possessions was now
proposed to be given to the illegitimate and legitimatized children
of the king; but precisely how to deal with Lauzun and his wealth,
acquired from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, was not so apparent, since
the question still remained open, whether Mademoiselle had been
his lawful wife. No one knew for certain, and Madame de Maintenon
conceived the ingenious idea of trying to worm the true state of the
case from Ninon, whom she knew had been summoned to Mademoiselle’s
dying bed, feeling persuaded that Mademoiselle de L’Enclos was
acquainted with it. She accordingly begged her, in a little note very
affectionately worded, to come to Versailles.
Ninon was greatly tempted to reply that if Françoise desired to
speak to her, she might be at the trouble of coming to the rue des
Tournelles. All circumstances taken into account, and the generosity
with which she had treated Françoise’s little ways, it did not appear
to her that she was bound to wait upon the woman, merely because she
had lighted upon the lucky number in life’s lottery. Ninon, however,
was but a daughter of Eve. Curiosity was strong to see how Madame
Louis Quatorze lived in the lordly pleasure-house, and forthwith she
obeyed the summons.
Queen Maria Théresa’s surroundings and retinue had been modest enough
even to parsimony. Madame Louis Quatorze was attended by a numerous
guard, a train of pages, Swiss door-keepers, and the rest; while
her Court and receptions were as magnificent as those of the king.
Madame took herself very seriously, and her deportment had become
most majestic. To Ninon, however, she unbent, and was simply the
Françoise of old times. She led her into her own richly furnished
private boudoir, adorned with a curious conglomerate of pictures and
statuary, Christian and pagan, where an enormous, life-sized figure
of Christ, in carved ivory, was neighboured by painted Jupiters and
other Olympian deities, in curiously heterogeneous fashion. There
Françoise embraced Ninon with quite a prodigality of affection.
Suddenly, however, her manner changed; she congealed into gravity
and tones of great solemnity, and Ninon saw the tapestry folds
along the wall quiver slightly. It occurred to her that one only,
His Majesty Louis XIV., could have any possible right to be present
in that most private apartment, and even then she felt the need of
putting a strong restraint upon herself and her foot, to prevent it
from bestowing a kick upon the tapestry. Then the truth began to come
out, the lamentable truth that Madame and the king were greatly
perplexed as to the best mode of dealing with the Duc de Lauzan,
whose possessions, made over to him by the Grande Mademoiselle,
those, that is to say, which he still held, were much wanted for the
king’s children. He had so many, as Madame de Maintenon pointed out.
That, admitted Ninon, was true enough, “but I will engage, you will
not be increasing the number,” she added. “What is the point of the
question?” It was whether Mademoiselle had really married Monsieur de
Lauzun.
The full significance of it all now dawned upon Ninon. Had
Mademoiselle not been his wife, it would be a comparatively simple
matter to compel a revocation of the gifts which the princess had
made him in the course of her life, in order that these should enrich
the children of de Montespan. No consideration was yielded to the
fact that, be Lauzun what he might, the gifts had been tokens of
Mademoiselle’s affection for him. Ninon preferred complete inability
to afford any trustworthy sort of information on this head, and
suggested applying for it to Madame de Fiesque, who might be better
instructed: “but,” continued Ninon, “supposing Mademoiselle was not
his wife, surely to publish the fact, would create a scandal which
His Majesty would consider paying too dear a price for the estates of
Auvergne and St Fargeau. Either she was Lauzun’s wedded wife or—”
Here the chronicle goes on to relate: Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ words
were interrupted by a tremendous disturbance at the door, occasioned
by an altercation with the guards, of some person endeavouring to
force his way in. The voice was d’Aubigné’s, and the next instant he
reeled in, far gone in a state of intoxication, and staggering to his
sister, he gripped her by the arm and thrust her back into the chair
from which she had risen.
This chronicle goes on to relate a terrible scene, over which, for
the honour of human nature, some kind of veil may be allowed to hang,
lest veracious history has been embroidered by the ample material
fact has afforded. The family differences of private domestic
relations are frequently unedifying; but when it comes to the base
humiliating of a great monarch, one in whose very vices and mistakes
grace and virtue had been apparent, until the widow Scarron crossed
his path, pen may well refrain from detail, and explain only that
the intruder, d’Aubigné, had burst in upon his sister, to reproach
her for her treachery in the matter of inducing him to enter St
Sulpice. Taking advantage of the absence of his mentor and _alter
ego_, Santeuil, she had contrived to trap him by false promises and
misrepresentation into the hated place. His liberty for one thing,
and of all things prized by d’Aubigné, would not, she had said, be
curtailed; it had, however, been so entirely denied him, that when
he had attempted to leave, he had been unceremoniously “clapped,” as
he phrased it, “into a cellar,” and he had only escaped by wriggling
through an air-grating. To any one possessed of the faintest sense
of humour, the notion of making a monk of any sort of this wild
harum-scarum would have seemed too preposterous; but the sense,
always so lacking in Françoise d’Aubigné, allowed her to indulge in
only too many absurdities whose ending was disastrous; and in any
case, the notion of removing the incommoding one from the taverns and
cafés and other public resorts where he freely gave utterance to his
estimate of Madame Louis Quatorze, and notably of her newly acquired
saintliness, was dominant in her, and to be achieved at any cost. She
earnestly desired his conversion, possibly if only to silence the
hideous music of the ditty, whose refrain he was for ever chanting in
the streets, echoed by so many ribald tongues—
“Tu n’as que les restes,
Toi!
Tu n’as que nos restes!”
Since the chronicle goes on to tell that Louis the king was concealed
behind the tapestry during the interview of Madame and her old friend
Ninon, the appearance of d’Aubigné, with his string of furious
reproach, was of course singularly inopportune; and at last the
king, unable any longer to restrain his wrath, dashed aside the
concealing Gobelins, and white with anger, and his eyes blazing with
indignation, ordered the culprit’s arrest by the guards, and carrying
off to the Bastille. Confounded by the unexpected apparition,
d’Aubigné’s sober sense returned, and he promised everything required
of him with the humblest contrition, adding that if he might suggest
the homely proverb in that august presence, there was nothing like
washing one’s soiled linen at home.
The king’s silence yielded consent, and d’Aubigné was permitted to
depart from his brother-in-law’s presence a free man, on condition
of making St Sulpice his headquarters. It was at least preferable to
a lodging in one of the Bastille towers, he said, but any restraint
or treachery on the part of Françoise, or of Louis, in the way of
his coming and going into what he called that black-beetle trap of
St Sulpice, would be at once signalised. And thus the difficulty was
adjusted, a compromise being effected by appointing a certain Abbé
Madot to shadow the ways of d’Aubigné when he took his walks abroad.
But for Ninon the malice of her old friend took on virulence, and it
was found later that Françoise charged her with having planned the
scandalous scene, in so far as bringing d’Aubigné into it; that she
had connived at his coming just at that moment. Yet exactly, except
for the king’s concealed presence, what overwhelming harm would have
ensued, is not apparent, and certainly for that situation, Ninon
could not have been responsible. Henceforth all shadow of friendship
between the two women died out, and enmity and bitterness were to
supervene when opportunity should be ripe.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Falling of the Leaves—Gallican Rights—“The Eagle of
Meaux”—Condé’s Funeral Oration—The Abbé Gedouin’s Theory—A
Bag of Bones—Marriage and Sugar-plums—The Valour of Monsieur
du Maine—The King’s Repentance—The next Campaign—La Fontaine
and Madame de Sablière—MM. de Port Royal—The Fate of Madame
Guyon—“Mademoiselle Balbien.”
And time passed on—passed on. The brilliant century was in its sere
and yellow leaf, and one of the best and most amiable of the glorious
band, le Nôtre, the gardener _par excellence_, faded and died, to the
great grief of Louis, who dearly loved his company, and would walk by
his chair in the garden of Versailles, when the invalid’s limbs had
failed him. Ninon keenly felt the loss of the kindly friend, who had
been one of the party to Rome with Santeuil—who had nearly missed
the papal benediction on his hymns, as he always believed, by his
witticisms about the carp. And now the good canon was to die, victim
of a practical joke on the part of the young Duc de Condé, who amused
himself with emptying the contents of his snuff-box into his guest’s
glass of champagne. Unawares, Santeuil drained the glass; and the
hideous concoction produced a fit of such convulsive sickness, that
he died of it. Bitterly enough Condé repented, but that did not bring
back his friend.
About the time that the zenith of Louis’s power was attained, when
his very name was uttered on the bated breath of admiration, hatred
and terror—and the yoke of the widow Scarron had not yet entangled
him—and while the Doge of Genoa was compelled by Duquesne to sue for
mercy at the feet of the French monarch—accused of complicity with
the pirates of the Mediterranean—the Court of Rome was compelled to
yield to the demands of the Church in France, in the matter of the
_régale_. This right, which had ever been the strength and mainstay
of religious Catholic independence in France, had fallen in later
days somewhat into abeyance; and when, some nine years earlier,
it had been put into active force again, the pope opposed it. To
establish it on a firm footing was the work of Bossuet, who set forth
and substantiated with the bishops of the dioceses of France the
existing constitution of the Gallican Church under the ruling of the
four famous articles: 1. That ecclesiastical power had no hold upon
the temporal government of princes. 2. That a General Council was
superior to the pope. 3. That the canons could regulate apostolical
power and general ecclesiastical usage. 4. That the judgment of the
Sovereign Pontiff is only infallible after the universal and general
consent of the Church.
The pope and the Court of Rome had no choice but finally to accept
these propositions; but unpalatable as they were, they came between
the worse evil threatening Catholic Unity, of a schism such as it had
suffered in England under Elizabeth and Henry.
The splendid gifts of Bossuet place his memory on a lasting and lofty
eminence, as it placed him, living, in distinguished positions,
Bishop of Meaux, preacher at the Louvre, preceptor to the Dauphin.
From his profound theological learning welled forth the splendid
eloquence which thrilled the vast assemblages flocking to drink in
his orations. One of the most magnificent among these was that at the
obsequies of the great Condé, beginning—
“Cast your gaze around; see all that magnificence and piety
has endeavoured to do, to render honour to the hero: titles,
inscriptions, vain records of what no longer exists, the weeping
figures around the tomb and fragile images of a grief which Time,
with all the rest, will bear away with it, columns which appear
to lift to high heaven their magnificent testimony to him who is
gone; and nothing is lacking in all this homage but him to whom it
is given.... For me, if it is permitted to join with the rest in
rendering the last duties beside your tomb, O Prince! noble and
worthy subject of our praise and of our regrets, you will live
eternally in my memory. I shall see you always, not in the pride of
victory ... but as you were in those last hours under God’s hand,
when His glory was breaking on you. It is thus I shall see you yet
more greatly triumphing than at Fribourg and at Rocroi.... And in
the words of the best-beloved disciple, I shall give thanks and
say—‘The true victory is that which overcometh the world—even our
faith.’”
A noble purity of spirit and deep conviction inspired Bossuet’s
eloquence. His knowledge was limited by his Jesuit training, though
he studied anatomy at a later period, by the king’s desire, in order
to instruct the Dauphin in the science; but with science generally
and physics he was unacquainted. As a Jesuit he was opposed to
Jansenism and the Port-Royalists; but for long the gentle piety of
Fénelon retained the respect and admiration of Bossuet’s more fiery
spirit. Both these great men gave instruction at St Cyr, by the
desire of Madame de Maintenon and the king.
Time must indeed have passed lightly by Ninon; for once again, at
the age of eighty years, she inspired a young abbé, named Gedouin—a
distant relative on the maternal side—with deep fervent admiration.
Ninon at first believed that he was jesting with her, and rebuked him
severely; but it was a very serious matter on his part, and though
she told him of her fourscore years, he declared that it in no way
altered his sentiments. “What of that?” he said; “wit and beauty
know nothing of age,” and the Abbé Gedouin’s pleading, which was not
in vain, terminated Ninon’s last _liaison_ with an affectionate and
endearing friendship. When he was rallied on his conquest, the abbé’s
rejoinder was that—
“Ah, mes amis, lorsqu’une tonne
A contenu d’excellent vin,
Elle garde un parfum divin
Et la lie en est toujours bonne.”
Monsieur de Lauzun, on the other hand, being now over sixty years
old, contracted a marriage with an English girl of sixteen. She
was so fearfully thin, that the Duc de St Simon, who was one of
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ _cercle_, said de Lauzun might as well
have wedded all the bones of the Holy Innocents Cemetery, where the
skulls and bones were piled in pyramids.
St Simon was a delightful conversationalist. He was the son of the
old favourite of Louis XIII. He could be very caustic with his
anecdotes. One night he greatly amused the company with an account
of the marriage of the son of the Grand Dauphin, the little Duke of
Burgundy. He was of the tender age when ordinary and everyday little
boys are occasionally still liable to chastisement by their elders.
The duchess to be, who was still very fond of her doll, was presented
on the occasion by the Queen of England with a very elegantly trimmed
shift, handed to her by the maids of honour on a magnificently
enamelled tray. In this garment she was attired, while her youthful
husband, seated on a footstool, was undressed in the presence of the
king and of all the Court. The bride, being put to bed, the Duc of
Burgundy was conducted in and also put into bed, beside which the
Grand Dauphin then took his seat, while Madame de Lude took her place
beside the young duchess. Then sugar-plums were offered to the bride
and bridegroom, who cracked them up with the greatest enjoyment.
After about a quarter of an hour, the Duc was taken out of bed again,
a proceeding which appeared greatly to displease him, and he was led,
sulking enough, back to the antechamber, where the Duc de Berry, some
two years his junior, clapping him on the shoulder, told him he was
not a bit of a man. “If it had been me,” he added, “I should have
refused to get out of bed.”
The king imposed silence on the little rascal’s rebellious counsel,
and placed the bridegroom back into the hands of his tutors,
declaring that he would not permit him to so much as kiss the tips
of his wife’s fingers, for the next five years to come. “Then,
grandpapa,” demanded the little brother, “why have you let them be
married? It is ridiculous.” It was all certainly something like it.
After that the child was placed for his instruction in the care
of the Abbé de Fénelon, whose rapid advancement at Court had been
attained by his lofty character and talents.
But Louis had far more affection for his illegitimate children
than for these, and aided by Madame de Maintenon’s intrigues, he
finally succeeded in securing a large portion of the heritage of la
Grande Mademoiselle for the Duc du Maine and the Duc du Vendôme;
but the brave spirit of heroes and conquerors he could not endow
them with, for all his desire. It was to no effect that he confided
command to them of his troops in Holland. The Duc du Maine specially
undistinguished himself. Just as the enemy was escaping scot-free, he
found he was hungry, and asked for a cup of bouillon to strengthen
him. “Charge! Charge, Monseigneur!” urged Villeroy’s messenger,
coming to him in a fever of excitement.
“Oh, well, patience,” replied the warrior; “my wing is not in order
yet.”
Finding no sort of response to his repeated messages, Villeroy went
in search himself of the prince, and found him in his tent, at his
confessor’s knees. The first duty of a good Christian, he said,
was to make his peace at such times with Heaven. So the religious
discipline of his governess and stepmother, the widow Scarron and
Madame de Maintenon, had borne fruit. It was of a different flavour
from the prayer of the brave servant of King Charles I.—Sir Edmund
Verney—before Edgehill: “Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this
day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.” And there was no
battle won or lost that day on the Dutch frontier, and Louis, when
they brought to Versailles news of the enemy’s safe retreat, was at a
loss to understand the situation; for no one cared, or dared, to tell
him the truth, until Lavienne, his _valet-de-chambre_ in chief, in
the days of Louis’s amours, hazarded the observation that, after all,
proverbs could speak falsely, and that “Good blood _could_ lie;” and
then he went on to add the other truths concerning Monsieur du Maine.
In the face of the fulsome praise following in the journals—which
lied as only journals know how—the king was overwhelmed with grief
and chagrin; and, beside himself, he broke his cane in a fit of anger
on the back of one of an unlucky servant, whom he happened to detect
surreptitiously eating a bit of marchpane. This ebullition, creating
the consternation of all the Court, just sitting down to dinner,
brought Madame Louis Quatorze and Père la Chaise upon the scene.
“Parbleu, mon père,” said the king, gradually regaining his senses,
“I have just chastised a wretched creature who greatly merited it.”
“Ah!” gasped the confessor.
“And I have broken my cane on his back. Have I offended God?”
“No, my son, no,” replied the holy man. “It is merely that the
excitement may be harmful to your precious health.”
Fortunately the cane, being of slenderest rosewood, had easily
snapped.
Before the end of the next campaign, the redoubtable Duc du Maine
was recalled: d’Elbœuf hastened to say to him, making a profound
bow, “Have the goodness, Monseigneur, to inform me where you propose
entering on the next campaign.”
The duke turned, smiling, and extended his hand to d’Elbœuf, whose
ironical tones he had failed to perceive.
“Wherever it is,” added d’Elbœuf, “I should wish to be there.”
“Why?” demanded the duke.
“Because,” replied d’Elbœuf, after a silence, “at least one’s life
would be safe.”
Monsieur du Maine gave a jump, as if he had trodden on a serpent, and
went away without replying, not being better furnished with wit than
he was with valour.
And the autumn leaves of Ninon’s life were ever fast falling around
her. In her Château de Boulogne Madame de la Sablière passed away,
and la Fontaine, finding life a sad thing without her, quickly
followed her.
The Jesuit conception of religious faith, great as were its merits
as originated in the mind of Loyola, theoretically, and in its
code drawn up by his gifted successor, Lainez, had displayed its
imperfections in its practical working, as time passed. This was
more apparent in France even than elsewhere on the Continent; since
there papal authority was tempered by regulations which afforded
wider scope to thoughtful and devout minds ever occupied by the
problem of final salvation and its attainment.
“Two such opposed foes encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will,”
says Friar Lawrence, musing over his “osier cage,” of weeds and
flowers. There had been no time on Christian record that the question
had not exercised theologians, and when it had burnt into fuller
flame, fanned by the ardent soul of Luther, it spread through Europe
and was called the Reformation; but the spirit of it had been ever
present in the Church, and to endeavour to stamp out the Catholic
faith had, in Luther’s earlier days at all events, formed no part
of his desire. Yet scarcely had his doctrines formulated, than the
fanaticism and extravagance of the ignorant and irresponsible seized
upon them, and wrung them out of all size and proportion to fit their
own wild lusts and inclinations, “stumbling on abuse,” striving
to impose their levelling and socialistic views, and establish a
community of goods, and all else in common—even their wives, though
dispensing with clothing as a superfluity and a vanity displeasing
in Heaven’s sight. So Anabaptism ran riot in Germany under John of
Leyden and his disciples; while upon its heels Calvin’s gloomy and
hopeless tenets kept men’s minds seething in doubt and speculation
over grace and free-will, his narrow creed and private enmity
bringing Servetus to hideous and prolonged torture and death at the
stake, for heresy.
Stirred by the revolt of Protestantism on one side, and the claims
of Rome on the other, supported by the Jesuits, speculation gained
increased activity within the pale of the Catholic Church, animated
further by the writings of Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, whose theories
on grace and the efficacy of good works were grounded mainly on
the _viâ media_, and it was the following of his opinions by the
illustrious students gathered at Port Royal which created the school
of Jansenists that included such names as Fénelon, Pascal, and so
many others, headed by the Abbé Arnauld, whose sister Angélique was
the Superior of the convent of Port Royal, and whose father, the
learned advocate, had been so stern an opponent to the Jesuits as to
have caused their expulsion from France in the reign of Henri IV.
Readmitted later, they found as firm an opponent in his son, who,
when still quite young, wrote a brilliant treatise against the danger
of Jesuit casuistry.
The convent of Port Royal des Champs was situated on the road from
Versailles to Chevreuse, and hard by, in a farmhouse called La
Grange, “Messieurs de Port Royal,” as the Jansenist priests and
students were called, made their home. They had for their friends
the most distinguished men, scholars and poets of the time; Boileau,
Pascal, Racine were of the band. The place itself is now scarcely
more than a memory. It was then, wrote Madame de Sévigné, “_Tout
propre à inspirer le désir de faire son salut_,” and hither came many
a high-born man and woman of the world to find rest and peace. Now
a broken _tourelle_ or two, the dovecote and a solitary Gothic arch
reflecting in a stagnant pool, are all that remain in the sequestered
valley, of the famous Port Royal, which early in the next century was
destroyed by royal decree, when its glory had departed, following the
foreordained ruling of all mundane achievement; and the extravagance
of the _convulsionnaires_ and later followers of Jansenism was
stamped out by the bull “_Unigenitus_” against heresy.
Arnauld’s heart was deposited at Port Royal at his death, with the
remains of his mother and sisters. Louis XIV., as ever his wont had
been to genius and intellect, had invited him “to employ his golden
pen in defence of religion;” but that was before the great king
came under the direction of Madame de Maintenon and Père la Chaise.
But that Madame and her Jesuit confessor would long continue to
regard the Port-Royalists with favour was not possible. Intolerance
succeeded to patronage, and Fénelon was deported to Cambrai, sent
afar from his friend, Madame Guyon, whose order of arrest and
incarceration in the Château de Vincennes was issued very shortly
after Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ interview with Madame Louis Quatorze
in her Versailles sanctum.
In her dismay, Madame Guyon contrived to fly to Ninon, seeking
protection; but it was of no avail. Without a moment’s delay, Ninon
drove to Versailles, and sought an interview with Madame de Maintenon
on behalf of Madame Guyon. The interview was not accorded. Nanon—the
Nanon of Scarron days, but now “Mademoiselle Balbien”—was delegated
to speak with her.—“Mademoiselle Balbien,” who gave Ninon to
understand that she was to be addressed no longer as “_tu_” (“thou”),
but as “_vous_” (“you”), that the question of Madame Guyon could not
even be entered upon, and under threat of being herself again lodged
in the _Répenties_ she was bidden to depart.
Ninon was at first amazed at this strange reception and insolent
behaviour of mistress and maid. But she was not left long in
perplexity, since “Mademoiselle Balbien” permitted the truth to
escape her prim lips, that Madame de Maintenon had credited Ninon
with the design of introducing d’Aubigné into the boudoir in the
middle of that memorable interview, with the intention of disgracing
Madame in the estimation of the king. That Ninon was not made of the
stuff for this, it is almost superfluous to say. Any sins she might
have to answer for, did not include the hypocrisy with which Madame
de Maintenon had clothed herself about, and almost equally needless
is it to repeat that by no possible means the concealed presence of
the king could have been known by any but the two most immediately
concerned. It could be but a matter of their dual consciousness.
For six years Madame Guyon remained in prison. Monsieur Fénelon’s
_Maximes des Saints_ was condemned by the Court of Rome, and the
bigotry and hypocrisy ruling Versailles swelled daily.
Molière, alas! was no more, to expose the perilous absurdities
and lash them to extinction; but the comedy of _La Fausse Prude_,
produced some weeks later at the Italiens, was a prodigious success.
The world greatly enjoyed and admired the fitting of the cap,
built upon the framework supplied by one who had befriended and
sheltered under her own roof the forlorn young orphan girl, Françoise
d’Aubigné.
CHAPTER XXV
The Melancholy King—The Portents of the Storm—The Ambition of
Madame Louis Quatorze—The Farrier of Provence—The Ghost in
the Wood—Ninon’s Objection—The King’s Conscience—A Dreary
Court—Racine’s Slip of the Tongue—The Passing of a Great Poet,
and a Busy Pen Laid Down.
The disastrous thrall holding Louis XIV. to Madame de Maintenon, was
an endless theme of wonder and speculation among his subjects. Very
few of them ascribed it to pure unadulterated love and affection
for his old wife—for she was his elder by three years—while Louis
himself was now at an age when the enthusiasm of life slows into some
weariness and languor as it recognises the emptiness and futility of
all mundane things. There were times when he was lost in brooding
thought, and he would wander about his splendid galleries and salons
and magnificent gardens, absorbed, if his dull aspect expressed the
inward spirit, in melancholy reflection. The glory had departed
of his earlier ruling, leaving the nation loaded with debt. The
price had to be paid for those brilliant victories of long ago, and
accumulation of debt on the many later reverses cried for settlement.
The provinces had been deeply impoverished by the absenteeism of
their overlords, whose presence the Grand Monarque had for so
many years required to grace Versailles, attired in their silks
and velvets, sweeping their plumed, diamond-aigretted hats to the
polished floors, bowing and crowding to gaze at the sublime process
of His Majesty’s getting up, promenading with the great ladies among
the fountains and bosquets of Trianon, spending the heaven-bestowed
hours in the sweetness of doing nothing but manipulate their
rapier-hangers and snuff-boxes; while Jacques Bonhomme, away down in
Touraine and Perigord and Berri, and where you will in the length
and breadth of fair France, was sweating and starving to keep those
high-born gentlemen supplied with money in their purses for the
card-tables, and to maintain their lackeys and gilded coaches in
the sumptuous style which was no more than Louis required of the
vast throng. It was in its way an unavoidable exaction, since the
few of the nobility who remained on their own estates had done so
at the peril of incurring the severe displeasure of the king, the
Sun-King—_Le roi le veut_—whose centre was Versailles.
And still the full time was not yet when all this should be changed.
Even for Louis, the absolute reckoning day was but shadowing in.
“After us the deluge”: that prophetic utterance was spoken long after
Louis was borne to his rest in St Dénis, but when the records of his
life tell of those long-brooding, silent pacings amid the grandeur
and treasures of his splendid palace, comes the question if from afar
off there did not sound the murmur of the flood that was to break
some hundred years hence, if in some dim yet certain way the cloud
no bigger than a man’s hand was not apparent to his introspective
gaze, for as yet the domestic misfortunes of his latest years had
not befallen, death had not robbed him of his heir, and the rest dear
to him; but discontent, not unmingled with contempt, seethed round
the proud King of France. How were the mighty fallen, and how great
the political mistake which indissolubly linked the ambitious woman,
clothed about in her new-found meretricious garb of piety, with his
great responsible destiny—Louis, Dieudonné and elect ruler.
Nor did it stop at the secret, sufficiently open and acknowledged, of
his marriage with Scarron’s widow. The fear was well enough founded
that she was moving earth, and if possible all heaven, to be Queen
of France; but righteousness had small part in the endeavour, and
trickery and chicanery failed to prevail to this crowning end upon
the king’s consciousness and conviction. Pride, and the sense of his
irrevocable bondage, mingled with the poison of the hypocritical
devoutness instilled into him by his wife and her confessor, kept him
silently deferential to this woman, spoiled by prosperity; but she
herself says that all her endeavours to amuse him or bring a smile to
his lips, failed. He had—mildly construing the homely proverb—put
off from shore with a person—more or less mentionable—and he was
bound to sail to land with her.
The _diablerie_ at work was untiring, and had many strings, and there
seem, small, if any, question that to the genius of the Marseilles
merchant’s wife, formerly Madame Arnoul, the curious tale of the
Farrier of Provence is due.
From extreme southward of France came this poor man, who said he was
shoemaker to all the horses of his grace, Monsieur d’Épernon, at his
country mansion near Marseilles—to speak to the king’s Majesty upon
a subject concerning him alone.
The major of the guards to whom he explained his wish, told him such
an interview was impossible. A letter of audience was first required,
and that was to be had only with utmost difficulty. Besides, he
added, the king did not receive all the world. The man objected that
he was not all the world. “Quite so,” said the guard. “By whom are
you sent?”
“By Heaven.”
“Ah!”—and all the bodyguard went into fits of laughter at this
reply. The man stoutly insisted, however, that he had most important
matters to disclose to “the Master of ‘Vesàilles,’” as he phrased
it. At this point of the conversation, the Marshal de Torcy,
Colbert’s nephew, happened to come by. Overhearing what had passed,
he directed that this emissary of Heaven should be conducted to the
ministers, just then sitting in council. They, impressed with the
honest and earnest air of the farrier, informed the king of the
affair. Listening with grave attention to their representation, Louis
commanded the man to be brought before him. Alone with the king, the
farrier unfolded his tale. It was fantastic enough. He was returning,
he said, from the duke’s stables, where he had been shoeing some
of the horses—to his own home, in a hamlet situated not far off,
and was passing through a wood. It was night, and quite dark; but
suddenly he found himself enfolded in a brilliant light, and in the
midst of it stood a tall woman, right in his path. She addressed him
by his name, and bade him repair immediately and without an instant
of delay to Versailles, where he was to tell the king that he had
seen the spirit of the dead queen, his wife, and that she, the ghost
of Maria Théresa, commanded him in the name of heaven, to make public
the marriage he had contracted, which hitherto he had kept secret.
The king objected that the man had probably been the victim of
hallucination. “I thought so too at first,” replied the farrier,
“and I sat down under an elm-tree to collect myself, believing I had
been dreaming; but two days afterwards, as I was passing the same
spot, I again saw the phantom, who threatened all sorts of terrible
misfortunes to me and mine if I did not immediately do what it had
directed.”
Then the king had another doubt; and asked him whether he was not
trying to impose upon him, and had been paid to carry out the affair.
The man replied that in order for His Majesty to be convinced that
he was no impostor, he should wish him to reply to one question he
had to ask. “Have you,” he went on, when the king willingly consented
to this, “have you ever mentioned to living soul a syllable about
the midnight visit the late queen-mother paid you in the Château de
Ribeauvillé years ago?”
“No,” said Louis, with paling lips, “I never confided it to anyone.”
“Very well; the ghost in the forest bade me remind you of that visit,
if you expressed any doubt of my good faith; and,” added the man, as
the king said it was very strange, “before disappearing, the tall
white woman uttered these words—‘He must obey me now, as he then
obeyed his mother.’”
The king, in an access of dismay and perplexity, sent for the Duc de
Duras, and related to him in confidence what had passed during the
interview with the peasant. The duke, who was an intimate friend of
Ninon, told her the wondrous tale.
It took no time for her to arrive at the conclusion that Madame Louis
Quatorze and her faithful card-divining friend and fortune-teller,
Madame Arnoul, were at the bottom of the business, and under promise
on the duke’s part of inviolable secrecy, she told him of the
adventure in the Vosges and the very conspicuous part she had played
in it, actuated by her enmity towards de Montespan. The farrier, she
did not doubt, was honest enough; but, simple and credulous, he had
been made the tool of the two women—an easy prey to Madame Arnoul,
who, living at Marseilles, had seen him, and reckoned him up as
suitable for her design.
The duke was of opinion that there was no doubt Ninon’s solution of
the mystery was correct, and he added that, this being the case, it
was her duty to inform the king of it—“For who knows,” said Duras,
“that he may not be weak enough to obey the ghost’s behests, and
disgrace himself and his throne in the eye of all Europe and the
universe, by seating the Maintenon upon it.” It was a most serious
matter—most serious.
Ninon, however, shrank from the suggestion. She was a woman of
courage; but recent experience had taught her the lengths of malice
to which her old friend Françoise could go, and she had no mind to
measure weapons with her again. To make clean confession of the
affair to the king, was simply to bring down upon herself all the
thunderbolts of the hatred of the woman whose ingenuity was never at
fault in plausibility, and the finding the way to retain the kings
good graces at no matter what cost to anyone.
Ninon saw a far better plan than sacrificing herself for the
destruction of the scheme. She begged the duke not to compromise her
to the king; but to represent to him the advisability of sending
competent and trusted persons to the Ribeauvillé château, accompanied
by the duke himself, and there to sound and search the recesses and
panelling of the haunted room and the adjacent one she indicated, and
little more would be necessary to prove to His Majesty that he had
been duped.
The journey taken, and the search made, the emissaries duly returned.
Their report fully satisfied the king that he had been victimised, by
some person or persons unknown, in the gloomy old mansion—and his
marriage with Madame de Maintenon was not then or ever publicly and
officially proclaimed. If he had any suspicions of her complicity,
he made no sign of them; either he thought her incapable of using
such base means of attaining the desired end, or, on the other hand,
he was indulgent to the not unnatural desire to see published the
fact of the honour he had bestowed on her. At all events, calm and
serene, outwardly dignified, unruffled, Madame Louis Quatorze dwelt
on at Versailles, in the odour of all the sanctimoniousness and
decorum the coming of herself and of Père la Chaise had imparted to
the vast place.
Well endowed personally and mentally, and amiably disposed, Louis was
admirably fitted by nature to represent the beloved and worshipped
king who had maintained the spiritual liberties of his Protestant
subjects, when he himself became a Catholic—since, as he had said,
“_Paris vaut une Messe_.” But though his naturally grand deportment
and the conviction of his own semi-divinity and sense of great-doing
had wrought Louis to brilliant achievements for the State, apart
from the glories of the battlefield, it is more than conceivable
that he was fully conscious of his own inadequate education and
rearing, to which Mazarin’s policy had limited him. Beneath all the
magnificent assumption, the common sense and inner consciousness of
Louis were not likely to fail, as time passed, to show him that he
was but a cipher in the scheme of the universe, an atom; and under
the theological direction of his Jesuit confessor, an exaggerated
estimate of his own sinfulness and imperfections crushed him into
melancholy and self-surrender, till he actually and honestly imagined
that eternal punishment threatened, unless he humbled himself,
as he did to the dust, to follow the instruction of his Jesuit
confessor. Yet Madame de Maintenon herself laments that “she could
never make him understand that humility was a Christian virtue.” _À
qui la faute?_ His most intimate exemplar of the attribute was one
more outwardly shining than profound. There have been apologists for
Madame de Maintenon, and for Père la Chaise, and for these promoters
of the Nantes Revocation they do not seem to be superfluous, these
“_Pièces Justificatives_,” of the _gouvernante_ of the Montespan’s
children, and later of their father. The Duc de St Simon, among many
other writers, makes less than no extenuation; while, on the other
hand, he describes Père la Chaise as a strong Jesuit, yet withal
neither fanatical nor fawning—and yet more powerfully still in his
favour, he says that although he advised the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, he was no party to the merciless persecution by which it
was followed.
Forgetting, or rather ignoring, his own youth, Louis imposed rigorous
discipline upon all about him. The merest peccadillo incurred
possibilities of imprisonment, and only absolute impeccability being
tolerated, pharisaism and hypocrisy were rampant. The royal children
and grandchildren were required, on pain of utter disgrace, to
make weekly confession, and no choice of a spiritual director was
permitted the Grand Dauphin. To Père la Chaise, and to him alone,
was committed the conscience of the Jansenist Fénelon’s pupil; and
at the great annual festivals of the Church, all the members of the
royal family were required to communicate publicly. The Duchess of
Burgundy was sorely rebuked for a breach of this regulation.
The consideration and deference often only meagrely accorded to Queen
Maria Théresa, was never lacking to Louis’s morganatic wife. One day,
at the camp of Compiègne, on the occasion of a mock siege, the king
stood hat in hand, for more than an hour beside her carriage door,
explaining to her the manœuvres of the troops. Any reference not
entirely and absolutely complimentary to Madame Louis Quatorze, or
to anything connected with her past life, would rouse him to violent
anger. It would have seemed that the two went in mortal fear of each
other.
Such a slip of the tongue helped to bring about the disgrace of
Racine. He had long been admitted on an intimate friendly footing
with the royal family, and having in mind a wish to write a history
of the reign of Louis XIV., he was in the habit of bringing his notes
on the projected work to read to Madame de Maintenon. His honest and
veracious nature would have been untrue to itself if he had failed to
animadvert on the defectiveness of the system of administration in
regard to the people, burdened and suffering as they were under heavy
taxation, resulting from prodigality in high places, and the enormous
expenses of the wars, which, glorious as they were, spelt ruin for
the general population. The sympathy and pity of Madame de Maintenon
were genuinely and deeply stirred by the eloquent word-picture
the poet had drawn of this; and she suggested that he should draw
up a memoir of what he thought could be done for alleviating the
widespread misery and distress. Upon this memoir Racine fell to work,
and when completed, he first submitted it for Madame’s perusal; but,
unfortunately, Louis entering at the moment, glanced his eye over the
manuscript, and his wrath kindled. “As Monsieur Racine could make
excellent verses, he fancied that he knew everything,” he said. “Not
content with being a great poet, he must needs imagine he could be a
minister of State,” and wrathfully frowning, the king went out. And
in addition to this offence, Racine had stumbled on the almost more
heinous crime of stirring up the memory of Scarron. Louis, in course
of discussion with Racine on the cause of the decadence of comedy,
or, rather, the diminution of the favour with which it had come to be
regarded, expressed wonder that this should be the case.
“Sire,” said Racine, “there are several causes. Since Molière’s
death, no comedy-writer seems, if he exists, to have dared to enter
his field, and the actors have no material. One cannot always play
Molière; and lacking other plays, they find refuge in the detestable
pieces of Scarron, and—”
But Racine never finished that comment. The words froze on his lips,
and silenced by the scarlet flush on Madame de Maintenon’s face,
and the uncontrollable trembling of the king, as if some reptile
had stung him, Racine, recognising his blunder, stammered out some
words which only made things worse. The whilom wife of the criticised
dead play-writer cast furious glances at the tragic poet, while
Louis said, in tones seething with anger—“I have recently seen
certain scribbled comments of yours, Monsieur, in which you make an
attempt to account for the misery suffered by the people during my
rule. Poets are generally wretched statesmen, and, moreover, we do
not permit criticism, direct or indirect upon our authority. Ah,”
he added, when again Racine strove to defend himself, “no excuses.
Remain at home for the future; and direct the course of your studies
into other channels.”
So Racine received his dismissal from Versailles, and soon after,
taking his disgrace to heart, the melancholy, long stolen over him
from ill-health, increased, and aggravated the cruel disease to which
he succumbed after an operation conducted by the unskilful physician
who attended him. The king’s heart softened towards him during those
last days, and he was constantly sending messengers to inquire after
him. Racine was interred in the cemetery of the place to which his
heart had so warmly attached itself—Port Royal; but after the
destruction of the monastery and the Grange, some twelve years later,
his remains were transferred to Paris, and laid in the church of St
Étienne du Mont, beside those of Pascal; and Louis bestowed a pension
of 2000 livres on his widow, and a reversion of it to her children,
till the death of the last of them.
In the death of Madame de Sévigné, Ninon lost another friend. The
troops of enthusiastic admirers of this most delightful woman and
letter-writer would render further endeavour in the way of eulogy
trite and superfluous. To know her in life must have been to
experience an extraordinary satisfaction; but the content is left to
know her through that flow of correspondence—the voluminous letters
touching upon every conceivable topic of contemporary interest.
From descriptions of Court life and its glitter and splendour, to
the hideous details recorded of the prisoner Brinvilliers, or the
terrible tragedy of the Brittany gentleman in the ballroom, or the
skilful gamester, Dangeau, or Picard, the Paris footman who wouldn’t
make hay. “He was not engaged,” he said, “for such work. It was none
of his business—the silly fellow. If you see him, don’t welcome him;
don’t protect him; and don’t blame me. Only look upon him as of all
the servants in the world the least addicted to hay-making.”
“It is the same with her,” says one English commentator. “From the
first letter quoted, to the last; from the proud and merry boasting
of the young mother with a boy, to the candid shudder about the
approach of old age, and the refusal of Death to grant a moment to
the dying statesman Louvois—‘No, not a single moment.’ She loved
nature and truth without misgiving, and nature and truth loved her
in return, and have crowned her with glory and honour.”[9]
CHAPTER XXVI
Leaving the Old Home—“Wrinkles”—Young Years and Old Friends—“A
Bad Cook and a Little Bit of Hot Coal”—Voltaire—_Irène_—Making a
Library—“Adieu, Mes Amis”—The Man in Black.
The dawn of the new century did not find Mademoiselle de L’Enclos in
the old home of the rue des Tournelles. One by one the relentless
scythe of Death had cut down all the illustrious men and women of
Ninon’s time. The _cercle_ had narrowed, the music and wit and
joyousness the walls of that salon had so long echoed with, were
silent. If Ninon touched her lute now, it could but stir regret and
sadness for the void. At last, she tells, her beauty had faded,
leaving no traces of it; yet much of the old animation, and even
not a little of the _gaieté du cœur_, were with her still. The
empty salon, and the “yellow chamber” and the Place Royale itself,
once echoing with the footsteps of her best friends, must have only
deepened her regrets. Of all the friends left her in Paris, there
were but two as old, one indeed older than herself—Mademoiselle de
Scudéri. The other lady, Madame de Sandwich, somewhere of the same
age, ever _grande dame_, sweet and amiable, and coquette to the last,
in the beautiful old _point de Venise_ and paduasoy silks she adorned
herself with.
Both these ladies occupied apartments in the faubourg St Germain,
and, desiring to be nearer to them, Mademoiselle de L’Enclos
disposed of her house in the rue des Tournelles, and took up her
residence upon the quay, in a house facing the Tuileries. The trio,
enjoying their old terms of friendship, interchanged visits, and
dined together, and chatted, sometimes sighing in unison over the
irrevocable delights of the past. Mademoiselle de Scudéri best
preserved her cheery outlook upon the world; but, to be sure, as
Ninon says, never having been beautiful, she had had the least to
lose; for age could not rob her of her mental charms and delightful
wit and fancy. “Time is a coward,” she said one day; “he only flings
his wrinkles, as the Parthians flung their arrows, as they flew by.”
One day, as the three were together, the message of the gentle lady’s
recall came; and they laid her on a couch, and sent for the medical
aid which was not likely to avail much for the ninety-four years.
“Dry your tears,” she murmured on the last breath. “Soon it will be
your turn, and in a better world we shall find again our young years,
and our old friends.”
Yet another pleasant acquaintance shared those twilight days for
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, never weary of kindly interest and
well-doing where she could bestow it. Fortunately for posterity,
Ninon was afflicted with an atrociously bad cook, and she was often
obliged to go into her kitchen and attend personally to the sauces
and the _rôtis_, and the rest. One day she was busily engaged in
putting together a partridge pasty for the entertainment of her two
friends, who were coming to _déjeuner_ with her.
Suddenly the kitchen door opened, and a little boy of some seven to
eight years old entered, with intelligent eyes, and a bright smile on
his clean-cut features. Taking off his cap, he said in the politest
of tones—“Will you please give me a few cinders, Madame, since your
fire is alight? Our servant upstairs there has let our fire go out,
and papa forbids me to go to school until I have eaten my soup.”
Ninon wondered who this little son of a most wise papa might be. He
was a small child for going to college, as he told her on further
question, was that of the Jesuit College of Clermont. Then, putting
facts together, she had scarcely need to ask his name; though on
questioning him further still, he told her it was François Marie
Arouet.
“The son of the treasurer Arouet, of the Court of Accounts—and you
live on the floor above mine, do you not?”
“That is so, Madame,” nodded the boy, repeating his request, for he
was in fear of the professor’s wrath if he should be late.
“But you have nothing to put your fire in,” said Ninon.
“Ah! how stupid of me,” said the child, as he stooped down, and
gathered a handful of the cold ashes. “Please put the hot coals on
this,” he went on, holding out the cinder-shielded palms.
So that was the little lad of whom her friend, the Abbé de
Châteauneuf had spoken as the unusually intelligent child of
nobly-born, but poor parents, who were great friends of his. “Bravo!”
Ninon had said to him, as he departed with the fire in his hands,
“you will be a clever man one of these days,”—and the sparks of that
fire kindled to a flame of celebrity which is not likely to die out
while the French language or any modern tongue finds expression.
“You will stifle me with roses,” said he, when, on the representation
of his _Irène_ in the winter-time, seventy-eight years later, the
acclaiming crowds did him homage. The excitement was too great for
him, and in the following May he died. A long life full of literary
activity and of extremes of malice and generosity, stirred by the
environment of the ferment of bigotry and philosophy seething in
the society of the eighteenth century. Very early in his career the
young pupil of Clermont, taking his family name of Voltaire, showed
signs of being no model Jesuit. For the rest, it needs to recall only
the memory of Ninon’s youthful protégé by his fatherly care of the
grand-niece of Corneille, when he heard she was in dire need, or his
defence of the unhappy Calvinist Calas, accused of the murder of his
son, prompted by religious conviction, and judicially murdered by
being broken on the wheel. In the face of this terrible injustice,
Voltaire never rested till he had obtained such reparation for Calas’
afflicted family as money could bestow, from the public treasury of
Toulouse, through the influence of the Duc de Choiseul.
The acquaintance begun in Ninon’s kitchen continued on a very
pleasant footing, and in her will she bequeathed him two thousand
francs with which to begin forming himself a library.
And so, in serenity and calm enjoyment of the society of the few
friends time had left her of the old years, and of those the present
had brought her, and in acts of generous charity among her poorer
neighbours and to those who should live after, Ninon de L’Enclos
passed away. “It is almost sweet to die,” she said, re-echoing the
sentiment of those dear to her who had gone before, “for there in the
other world we shall meet again those we have loved.”
And watching by her couch, they heard her murmur—“Adieu, my friends,
adieu,” and the faint breath ceased.
“Qu’un vain espoir ne vienne pas s’offrir
Que puisse ébranler mon courage,
Je suis en age de mourir,
Que-ferais-je davantage!”
So, in his own poetic fancy, St Evrémond seemed to hear her say; for
heart and soul he knew her, and understood her. It was in one of her
letters to him, towards the close of her life, that she expresses
regret for what it had pleased her to designate her “philosophy.”
“Had anyone told me in those young days of mine I should live such a
life, I should have hanged myself sooner,” she writes.
One distinguished biographer, prefacing her letters to the Marquis
de Sévigné, testifies to the consideration in which she was regarded
by the personages of high merit and rank, who held themselves
honoured to be admitted to her intimacy and friendship.
And the same biographer goes on to tell of the wonderful tale of
such sort as is apt to cling to persons of celebrity, or more
or less apart from the rank and file of people—the tale of the
“_Noctambule_,” Ninon’s nocturnal visitant, the little “Man in
Black”; but this is confirmed and best told in the vivid description
of his last visit, as it is handed down to us—
“PARIS, _9th April 1701_.
* * * * *
“Ah! my friend, what a terrible fright I have had! Truly I am not
recovered from it yet, and my limbs still tremble at the thought of
it. Oh, these cruel things that return from the past at intervals,
to stare you in the face, and poison the tranquillity of the
present!
“I have seen my Man in Black! Do you understand? My Man in Black
of the Louvre ball, the man with the red tablets, and the dozen
bottles; the man who appeared to me seventy years ago. Or, rather,
no, it was not he, since I am living still. But great Heaven! what
a resemblance! He wore, as the first did, a black velvet coat, and
breeches, carried an ebony cane, and had the great black moustache.
Oh, I was ready to faint with terror. You may think me crazed, I
daresay, but it is no laughing matter. Wait while I get my wits
together to tell you properly.
“Madeleine de Scudéri, as you know, was taken ill at my house. When
a woman is ninety-four years of age, there is no great chance of
her getting better. Nevertheless, Madame de Sandwich took a coach,
and drove at full speed to a quack doctor, who is very fashionable,
and who is said to have performed many wonderful cures. Presently
she returned with this man. I looked up, to drop back into my
chair, crying in amazement: ‘It is he!—it is the devil! Oh,
Heaven!—Heaven! protect me!’
“He turned to the countess.
“‘What is the matter with her? Is it your invalid?’ he inquired.
“‘Mercy!’ I cried, casting myself on my knees, ‘I signed on your
tablets, certainly; but I did not understand that I was selling my
soul.’
“‘Ah! Ah!’ said he, ‘you should be Mademoiselle de L’Enclos?’
“‘Yes,’ murmured I, in half-suffocated tones.
“‘You regret having given your signature?’
“‘Alas!’
“‘Calm yourself; I am not the devil I seem to be; and we will come
to an understanding.’
“He approached the couch of the sick woman; but during what had
passed, Madeleine had breathed her last.
“‘I should not have saved her,’ said the Man in Black. ‘Let us go
into another room,’ he added, turning to me; ‘we will settle our
little affair.’
“‘Oh, dearest Countess, I implore you do not forsake me!’ I cried,
lifting my trembling hands to Madame de Sandwich.
“‘Excuse me, what I have to say must not be heard by anyone but
yourself, Mademoiselle; for in that case, it would be impossible
for me to arrange the bargain,’ said the Man in Black.
“I was frozen with fear, and I could not put faith in his
assurances. Suddenly remembering that the night before, I had
received from my confessor a reliquary containing a bit of the true
cross, I went for it to my cabinet, and slipped it carefully into
my bosom. ‘Be it so, sir,’ I said to him. ‘Come, I am ready to
listen to you.’ Be just to me, my friend. You have never known me
to be a coward. I retain all my faculties; very well, I swear to
you that to be there, alone with such a companion, I had to summon
all my powers of body and soul. After carefully closing the door,
the Man in Black said to me: ‘Mademoiselle, it is the work of an
honest man I am about to accomplish. I do but ask of you to be
secret upon the disclosure I am about to make to you, and I believe
you to be too entirely a woman of honour to do harm to a person
whose sole desire is to make things agreeable to you.’
“This preamble was sufficiently reassuring; but my horror of him
was hardly less intense, and I kept the holy relic close pressed
against my bosom, to ward off the influences of the spirit of evil.
The Man in Black drew forward a chair for me, and seated himself on
a stool beside me.
“‘I am not the devil, Mademoiselle,’ he continued. ‘I am not even
the same who once had the honour of paying you a visit.’
“I trembled, but looked at him with a little less terror.
“‘What, sir, you are not—’
“‘No,’ said he, without permitting me to finish my sentence, ‘it
was my father.’
“‘Your father?’
“‘Yes, a Portuguese Jew, who profoundly studied the art of healing.
I bear him a very close resemblance, Mademoiselle.’
“‘It is terrible, sir.’
“‘All the more that I have been careful to wear the same clothes.
The resemblance is my fortune. Countless people have been deceived
as you have been; but your mistake might have grave consequences,
and that is why I disabuse you.’
“I began to breathe more freely. ‘But is this that you tell me
really true?’
“‘You still doubt? So much the better. If the most _spirituelle_
woman of the century has believed in the immortality of the man,
what of the others? I give myself, as you know better than anybody,
for some hundred years of age. My son, in fifty years’ time, will
be able to double that. I have only verbal traditions, he will have
written traditions. I shall bequeath him a great number of secrets,
and many family histories. It is certain that there will not be
wanting many persons who, having seen me in my early life, will
take him to be me, as you have taken me for my father. Only, our
fortune having accumulated very largely, I shall wish him to bear a
title. He will be called the Count de St Germain.’
“‘I am overwhelmed with astonishment,’ I said. ‘And what is the use
of this ruse? Why perpetuate such a resemblance from father to son?’
“‘You ask me that?’ he exclaimed. ‘Think what renown and prestige
it gives. Think of the blind confidence reposed in one who has
discovered for himself the secret of not dying. Do you not know
that the faith of a sick person in his physician is frequently the
cause of his cure? Have regard to the moral and mental powers, and
the physical ones will most surely feel the influence. You yourself
are a proof of this.’
“‘I?’
“‘Did you not remain beautiful till you were eighty years old?’
“‘That is true.’
“‘Do you know what was in those bottles which were to render your
beauty of such long duration? They contained pure water.’
“‘Is it possible?’
“‘Yes, Mademoiselle, pure water, mixed with a few drops of an
innocuous chemical drug to keep it incorruptible, and to slightly
colour it. The experiment succeeded. My father had no serious
intention of making you think you had made a compact with the
devil. Just now, in the idea that you recognised me, you received
a terrible shock. Did he not say that the hour when you should see
him again, you would not have three days to live?’
“‘He told me so!’ I replied, shuddering.
“‘How old are you?’
“‘Eighty-six years.’
“‘Your arm, if you please.’
“I stretched it out to him; he felt my pulse.
“‘Just so,’ he said; ‘not only will you not die in three days, but
I guarantee you at least five more years, before you need to be
thinking of the other world. Farewell, Mademoiselle. To complete
your tranquillity and peace of mind, I will look for, and send you
at once the leaf of my father’s tablets on which you wrote your
signature.’
“He kept his word. Before an hour had passed, I received the
hateful red leaf, and my heart glowed with satisfaction.
“Here, my friend, in deepest confidence, you have the conclusion of
my adventure with the devil—and of course I like it much better
that way; but, alas! I see things now in a different light from
those days.
“Adieu, my dear old friend. Reflect a little yourself, weigh the
pros and cons of it all, and in that other world let us hope we
shall not be separated.
NINON.”
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] De Mirecourt.
[2] De Mirecourt.
[3] This anecdote is attributed by St Simon to another source, and to
a much later date; but it truly occurred as here recorded.
[4] “Est animal rubrum, callidum, rapax, et vorax omnium
benificiorum. Mazarin is a misfortune to the queen, her evil genius,
consequently ours. I hate him as I do the devil, and hold him for
what he is, _morus nebule_, a creature destitute of honour, a mime in
a red hat, and a long-robed charlatan.”
GUY PATIN.
[5] Gayot de Pitaval, _Causes Celébres_.
[6] Du Tillet.
[7] St Simon.
[8] Maître Patelin.
[9] Leigh Hunt.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Some accents and hyphens in words have been silently removed, some
added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg v: ‘a New Aquaintance’ replaced by ‘a New Acquaintance’.
Pg 28: ‘he never put’ replaced by ‘He never put’.
Pg 152: ‘clever women’ replaced by ‘clever woman’.
Pg 186: ‘and Hugenots’ replaced by ‘and Huguenots’.
Pg 214: ‘de Champvalon’ replaced by ‘de Champvallon’.
Pg 214: ‘he was not denied’ replaced by ‘he was denied’.
Pg 228: ‘ont he life of’ replaced by ‘on the life of’.
Pg 261: ‘de Chamvallon’ replaced by ‘de Champvallon’.
Pg 265: ‘shivered ’dAubigné’ replaced by ‘shivered d’Aubigné’.
Pg 293: ‘towards the de Montespan’ replaced by
‘towards de Montespan’.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Ninon de l'Enclos and her century" ***
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