Love affairs of the Courts of Europe Part 12

The young d.u.c.h.esse de Bourgogne, the King's mother, made love to him, to the scandal of the Court; and from Princesses of the Blood Royal to the humblest serving-maid, there was scarcely a woman at Court who would not have given her eyes for a smile from the Duc de Fronsac, as he was then known.

How he revelled in his conquests he makes abundantly clear in the Memoirs he left behind him--surely the most scandalous ever written--in which he recounts his love affairs, in long sequence, with a cold-blooded heartlessness which shocks the reader to-day, so long after lover and victims have been dust. He revels in describing the artifices by which he got the most una.s.sailable of women into his power--such as the young and beautiful Madame Michelin, whose religious scruples proved such a frail barrier against the a.s.saults of the young Lothario. He chuckles with a diabolical pride as he tells us how he played off one mistress against another; how he made one liaison pave the way to its successor; and how he abandoned each in turn when it had served its purpose, and betrayed, one after another, the women who had trusted to his nebulous sense of honour.

A profligate so tempted as the Duc de Richelieu was from his earliest years, one can understand, however much we may condemn; but for the man who conducted his love affairs with such heartlessness and dishonour no language has words of execration and contempt to describe him.

From his earliest youth there was no "game" too high for our Don Juan to fly at. Long before he had reached manhood he counted his lady-loves by the score; and among them were at least three Royal Princesses, Mademoiselle de Charolais, and two of the Regent's own daughters, the d.u.c.h.esse de Berry and Mademoiselle de Valois, later d.u.c.h.ess of Modena, who, in their jealousy, were ready to "tear each other's eyes out" for love of the Duc. Quarrels between the rival ladies were of everyday occurrence; and even duels were by no means unknown.

When, for instance, the Duc wearied of the lovely Madame de Polignac, this lady was so inflamed by hatred of her successor in his affections, the Marquise de Nesle, that she challenged her to a duel to the death in the Bois de Boulogne. When Madame de Polignac, after a fierce exchange of shots, saw her rival stretched at her feet, she turned furiously on the wounded woman. "Go!" she shrieked. "I will teach you to walk in the footsteps of a woman like me! If I had the traitor here, I would blow his brains out!" Whereupon, Madame de Nesle, fainting as she was from loss of blood, retorted that her lover was worthy that even more n.o.ble blood than hers should be shed for him. "He is," she said to the few onlookers who had hurried to the scene on hearing the shots, "the most amiable _seigneur_ of the Court. I am ready to shed for him the last drop of blood in my veins. All these ladies try to catch him, but I hope that the proofs I have given of my devotion will win him for myself without sharing with anyone. Why should I hide his name? He is the Duc de Richelieu--yes, the Duc de Richelieu, the eldest son of Venus and Mars!"

Such was the devotion which this heartless profligate won from some of the most beautiful and highly placed ladies of France. What was the secret of the spell he cast over them it is difficult to say. It is true that he was a handsome man, as his portraits show, but there were men quite as handsome at the French Court; he was courtly and accomplished, but he had many rivals as clever and as skilled in courtly arts as himself. His power must, one thinks, have lain in that strange magnetism which women seem so powerless to resist in men, and which outweighs all graces of mind and physical perfections.

The Duc's career, however, was not one unbroken dallying with love.

Thrice, at least, he was sent to cool his ardour within the walls of the Bastille--on one occasion as the result of a duel with the Comte de Gace. His lady-loves were desolate at the cruel fate which had overtaken their idol. They fell on their knees at the Regent's feet, and, with tears streaming down their pretty cheeks, pleaded for his freedom. Two of the Royal Princesses, both disguised as Sisters of Charity, visited the prisoner daily in his dungeon, carrying with them delicacies to tempt his appet.i.te, and consolation to cheer his captivity.

In vain did Duc and Comte both declare that they had never fought a duel; and when, in the absence of proof, the Regent insisted that their bodies should be examined for the convicting wounds, the impish Richelieu came triumphantly through the ordeal as the result of having his wounds covered with pink taffeta and skilfully painted!

It was a more serious matter that sent him again to the Bastille in 1718. False to his country as to the victims of his fascinations, he had been plotting with Spain, France's bitterest enemy, for the seizure of the Regent and the carrying him off across the Pyrenees; and certain incriminating letters sent to him by Cardinal Alberoni had been intercepted, and were in the Regent's hands. The Regent's daughter, Mademoiselle de Valois, warned her lover of his danger, but too late.

Before he could escape, he was arrested, and with an escort of archers was safely lodged in the Bastille.

Our Lothario was now indeed in a parlous plight. Lodged in the deepest and most loathsome dungeon of the Bastille--a dungeon so damp that within a few hours his clothes were saturated--without even a chair to sit on or a bed to lie on, with legions of hungry rats for company, he was now face to face with almost certain death. The Regent, whose love affairs he had thwarted a score of times, and who thus had no reason to love the profligate Duc, vowed that his head should pay the price of his treason.

Once more the Court ladies were reduced to hysterics and despair, and forgot their jealousies in a common appeal to the Regent for clemency.

Mademoiselle de Valois was driven to distraction; and when tears and pleadings failed to soften her father's heart, she declared in the hearing of the Court that she would commit suicide unless her lover was restored to liberty. In company with her rival, Mademoiselle de Charolais, she visited the dungeon in the dark night hours, taking flint and steel, candles and bonbons, to weep with the captive.

She squandered two hundred thousand livres in attempts to bribe his guards, but all to no purpose: and it was not until after six months of durance that the Regent at last yielded--moved partly by his daughter's tears and threats and partly by the pleadings of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris--and the prisoner was released, on condition that the Cardinal and the d.u.c.h.esse de Richelieu would be responsible for his custody and good behaviour.

A few days later we find the irresponsible Richelieu climbing over the garden-walls of his new "prison" at Conflans, racing through the darkness to Paris behind swift horses, and making love to the Regent's own mistresses and his daughter!

But such facilities for dalliance with the Regent's daughter were soon to be brought to an end. Mademoiselle de Valois, in order to ensure her lover's freedom, had at last consented to accept the hand of the Duke of Modena, an alliance which she had long fought against; and before the Duc had been a free man again many weeks she paid this part of his ransom by going into exile, and to an odious wedded life, in a far corner of Italy--much, it may be imagined, to the Regent's relief, for his daughters and their love affairs were ever a thorn in his side.

It was not long, however, before the new d.u.c.h.ess of Modena began to sigh for her distant lover, and to bombard him with letters begging him to come to her. "I cannot live without your love," she wrote. "Come to me--only, come in disguise, so that no one can recognise you."

This was indeed an adventure after the Lothario Duc's heart--an adventure with love as its reward and danger as its spur. And thus it was that, a few weeks after the d.u.c.h.ess had sent her invitation, two travel-stained pedlars, with packs on their backs, entered the city of Modena to find customers for their books and phamphlets. At the small hostelry whose hospitality they sought the hawkers gave their names as Gasparini and Romano, names which masked the ident.i.ties of the knight-errant Duc and his friend, La Fosse, respectively.

The following morning behold the itinerant hawkers in the palace grounds, their wares spread out to tempt the Court ladies on their way to Ma.s.s, when the d.u.c.h.ess herself pa.s.sed their way and deigned to stop to converse graciously with the strangers. To her inquiries they answered that they came from Piedmont; and their curious jargon of French and Italian lent support to the story. After inspecting their wares she asked for a certain book. "Alas! Madame," Gasparini answered, "I have not a copy here, but I have one at my inn." And bidding him bring the volume to her at the palace, the great lady resumed her devout journey to Ma.s.s.

A few hours later Gasparini presented himself at the palace with the required volume, and was ushered into the august presence of the d.u.c.h.ess. A moment later, on the closing of the door, the Royal lady was in the "hawker's" arms, her own flung around his neck, as with tears of joy she welcomed the lover who had come to her in such strange guise and at such risk.

A few stolen moments of happiness was all the lovers dared now to allow themselves. The Duke of Modena was in the palace, and the situation was full of danger. But on the morrow he was going away on a hunting expedition, and then--well, then they might meet without fear.

On the following day, the coast now clear, behold our "hawker" once more at the palace door, with a bundle of books under his arm for the inspection of Her Highness, and being ushered into the d.u.c.h.ess's reading-room, full of souvenirs of the happy days they had spent together in distant Paris and Versailles. Among them, most prized of all, was a lock of his own hair, enshrined on a small altar, and surmounted by a crown of interlocked hearts. This lock, the d.u.c.h.ess told him, she had kissed and wept over every day since they had parted.

Each day now brought its hours of blissful meeting, so seemingly short that the Princess would throw her arms around her "hawker's" neck and implore him to stay a little longer. One day, however, he tarried too long; the Duke returned unexpectedly from his hunting, and before the lovers could part, he had entered the room--just in time to see the pedlar bowing humbly in farewell to his d.u.c.h.ess, and to hear him a.s.sure her that he would call again with the further books she wished to see.

Certainly it was a strange spectacle to greet the eyes of a home-coming Duke--that of his lady closeted with a shabby pedlar of books; but at least there was nothing suspicious in it, and, getting into conversation with the "hawker," the Duke found him quite an entertaining fellow, full of news of what was going on in the world outside his small duchy.

In his curious jargon of French and Italian, Gasparini had much to tell His Highness apart from book-talk. He entertained him with the latest scandals of the French Court; with gossip about well-known personages, from the Regent to Dubois. "And what about that rascal, the Duc de Richelieu?" asked the great man. "What tricks has he been up to lately?"

"Oh," answered Gasparini, with a wink at the d.u.c.h.ess, who was crimson with suppressed laughter, "he is one of my best customers. Ah, Monsieur le Duc, he is a gay dog. I hear that all the women at the Court are madly in love with him; that the Princesses adore him, and that he is driving all the husbands to distraction."

"Is it as bad as that?" asked the Duke, with a laugh. "He is a more dangerous fellow even than I thought. And what is his latest game?"

"Oh," answered the hawker, "I am told that he has made a wager that he will come to Modena, in spite of you; and I shouldn't be at all surprised if he does!"

"As for that," said the Duke, with a chuckle, "I am not afraid. I defy him to do his worst; and I am willing to wager that I shall be a match for him. However," he added, "you're an entertaining fellow; so come and see me again whenever you please."

And thus, by the wish of the d.u.c.h.ess's husband himself, the ducal "hawker" became a daily visitor at the palace, entertaining His Highness with his chatter, and, when his back was turned, making love to his wife, and joining her in shrieks of laughter at his easy gullibility.

Thus many happy weeks pa.s.sed, Gasparini, the pedlar, selling few volumes, but reaping a rich harvest of stolen pleasure, and revelling in an adventure which added such a new zest to a life sated with more humdrum love-making. But even the d.u.c.h.ess's charms began to pall; the ladies he had left so disconsolate in Paris were inundating him with letters, begging him to return to them--letters, all forwarded to him from his chateau at Richelieu, where he was supposed to be in retreat.

The lure was too strong for him; and, taking leave of the d.u.c.h.ess in floods of tears, he returned to his beloved Paris to fresh conquests.

And thus it was with the gay Duc until the century that followed that of his birth was drawing to its close; until its sun was beginning to set in the blood of that Revolution, which, if he had lived but one year longer, would surely have claimed him as one of its first victims.

Three wives he led to the altar--the last when he had pa.s.sed into the eighties--but no marital duty was allowed to interfere with the amours which filled his life; and to the last no pity ever gave a pang to the "conscience" which allowed him to pick and fling away his flowers at will, and to trample, one after another, on the hearts that yielded to his love and trusted to his honour.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE INDISCRETIONS OF A PRINCESS

It was an ill fate that brought Caroline, Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenb.u.t.tel to England to be the bride of George, Prince of Wales, one April day in the year 1795; although probably no woman has ever set forth on her bridal journey with a lighter or prouder heart, for, as she said, "Am I not going to be the wife of the handsomest Prince in the world?" If she had any momentary doubt of this, a glance at the miniature she carried in her bosom rea.s.sured her; for the pictured face that smiled at her was handsome as that of an Apollo.

No wonder the Princess's heart beat high with pride and pleasure during that last triumphal stage of her journey to her husband's arms; for he was not only the handsomest man, with "the best shaped leg in Europe,"

he was by common consent the "greatest gentleman" any Court could show.

Picture him as he made his first appearance at a Court ball. "His coat,"

we are told, "was of pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat of white silk, embroidered with various-coloured foil and adorned with a profusion of French paste. And his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in number, with a b.u.t.ton and a loop of the same metal, and c.o.c.ked in a new military style." See young "Florizel" as he makes his smiling and gracious progress through the avenues of courtiers; note the winsomeness of his smiles, the inimitable grace of his bows, his pleasant, courtly words of recognition, and say if ever Royalty a.s.sumed a form more agreeable to the eye and captivating to the senses.

"Florizel" was indeed the most splendid Prince in the world, and the most "perfect gentleman." He was also, though his bride-to-be little knew it, the most dissolute man in Europe, the greatest gambler and voluptuary--a man who was as false to his friends as he was traitor to every woman who crossed his path, a man whom no appeal of honour or mercy could check in his selfish pursuit of pleasure.

"I look through all his life," Thackeray says, "and recognise but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then--nothing.

French ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procuresses, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel and gimcrack-merchants--these were his real companions."

Such was the husband Princess Caroline came so light-heartedly, with laughter on her lips, from Brunswick to wed, little dreaming of the disillusion and tears that were to await her on the very threshold of the life to which she had looked forward with such high hopes.

We get the first glimpse of Caroline some twelve years earlier, when Sir John Stanley, who was making the grand tour, spent a few weeks at her father's Court. He speaks of her as a "beautiful girl of fourteen," and adds, "I did think and dream of her day and night at Brunswick, and for a year afterwards I saw her for hours three or fours times a week, but as a star out of my reach." Years later he met her again under sadly changed conditions. "One day only," he writes, "when dining with her and her mother at Blackheath, she smiled at something which had pleased her, and for an instant only I could have fancied she had been the Caroline of fourteen years old--the lovely, pretty Caroline, the girl my eyes had so often rested on, with light and powdered hair hanging in curls on her neck, the lips from which only sweet words seemed as if they would flow, with looks animated, and always simply and modestly dressed."

Lady Charlotte Campbell, too, gives us a glimpse of her in these early and happier years, before sorrow had laid its defacing hand on her. "The Princess was in her early youth a pretty girl," Lady Charlotte says, "with fine light hair--very delicately formed features, and a fine complexion--quick, glancing, penetrating eyes, long cut and rather small in the head, which gave them much expression; and a remarkably delicately formed mouth."

It was in no happy home that the Princess had been cradled one May day in 1768. Her father, Charles William, Duke of Brunswick, was an austere soldier, too much absorbed in his military life and his mistress, to give much thought to his daughters. Her mother, the d.u.c.h.ess Augusta, sister of our own George III., was weak and small-minded, too much occupied in self-indulgence and scandal-talking to trouble about the training of her children.

Princess Caroline herself draws an unattractive picture of her home-life, in answer to Lady Charlotte Campbell's question, "Were you sorry to leave Brunswick?" "Not at all," was the answer; "I was sick tired of it, though I was sorry to leave my fader. I loved my fader dearly, better than any oder person. But dere were some unlucky tings in our Court which made my position difficult. My fader was most entirely attached to a lady for thirty years, who was in fact his mistress. She was the beautifullest creature and the cleverest, but, though my fader continued to pay my moder all possible respect, my poor moder could not suffer this attachment. And de consequence was, I did not know what to do between them; when I was civil to one, I was scolded by the other, and was very tired of being shuttlec.o.c.k between them."

But in spite of these unfortunate home conditions Caroline appears to have spent a fairly happy girlhood, thanks to her exuberant spirits; and such faults as she developed were largely due to the lack of parental care, which left her training to servants. Thus she grew up with quite a shocking disregard of conventions, running wild like a young filly, and finding her pleasure and her companions in undesirable directions.

Strange stories are told of her girlish love affairs, which seem to have been indiscreet if nothing worse, while her beauty drew to her many a high-placed wooer, including the Prince of Orange and Prince George of Darmstadt, to all of whom she seems to have turned a cold shoulder.

But the wilful Princess was not to be left mistress of her own destiny.

One November day, in 1794, Lord Malmesbury arrived at the Brunswick Court to demand her hand for the Prince of Wales, whom his burden of debts and the necessity of providing an heir to the throne of England were at last driving reluctantly to the altar. And thus a new and dazzling future opened for her. To her parents nothing could have been more welcome than this prospect of a crown for their daughter; while to her it offered a release from a life that had become odious.