Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle Part 11

It is certain that nature had not prepared her for this role. "I would rather pa.s.s my life in solitude," wrote she, "than restrain in any way my proud humour, even at the expense of my fortune. I have no complaisance, and I demand a great deal from others."[94] She also adds: "I do not willingly praise others and very rarely blame myself." With this avowed disposition, it would perhaps have been wiser not to go too often to the Louvre. It was a great imprudence to attract the crowd to herself as she had done at the time in which she was openly opposing the Tuileries.

The salon of Mademoiselle became the first in Paris, the most interesting and select. Since Paris had tasted the pleasures of clever conversation and discovered, under the direction of Mme. de Rambouillet, the genius of this delicate art, it could not do without it. The initiator was still living, but she was old and ill, and her circle had long been dispersed.[95]

Mlle. de Scudery had collected together as many of the remnants of her first salon as she could, and had thus laid the foundation for the famous Sat.u.r.days, at which wit and knowledge were dispensed in abundance. Nevertheless, it was not the same. The Sat.u.r.days of "Sapho"

brought back the literary people to the pedantry from which Mme. de Rambouillet had more or less delivered them. They were left too much to themselves, and, thus isolated, they had lost a certain intellectual grace acquired by the friction between the aristocrats and the blue-stockings.

The mind as well as the body has its own manners, and they may be bad or good. In 1661, the Court alone had breeding. There existed no other society in which the first comer understood how to speak a language easy and _galant_, well adapted to plumed hats and elegant bows. These belonged to the traditions of the place. Such courtesies were lacking with the learned friends of Mlle. de Scudery, who no longer felt themselves spurred on by the fine gentlemen, so alert, capable of such light railleries, and detesting pedants.

The feminine society of the Sat.u.r.days had also too little intercourse with d.u.c.h.esses and marquises to replace the Hotel Rambouillet. Mlle.

Bocquet, who filled a large place in the chronicles of the Sat.u.r.days, was very amiable and played the lute "marvellously,"[96] but she belonged to the small bourgeoisie. Mlle. Dupre, another intimate, was an intelligent and educated girl, who had made a special study of philosophy. She quoted Descartes too often to have "the air _galant_" in conversation. As much could be said of others. Mlle. de Scudery herself, who had been received in the best company and who had formally combated the "Blue-stockingism" with admirable good sense, had not written thirty-two octavo volumes with impunity. There still remained a little ink on the end of her fingers. It seemed as if all the pedants of France held their cla.s.ses in her house. Plays upon words filled the papers scattered about, upon which "Prosecutions" were held. The "Ill.u.s.trious Sapho" had truly inspired Moliere when he wrote _Les Precieuses Ridicules_; in vain, M. Cousin refuses to believe it.[97] I do not myself think that she escaped.

Mademoiselle rendered to the wits of the day the service of sending them back to the Court for lessons in language and manners. We are well informed of this, thanks to the fantasy of a Princess which produced a little literature upon the model offered by the Luxembourg.

In 1657, Mademoiselle, being at Champigny for the Richelieu lawsuit, the Princess of Tarente[98] and Mlle. de la Tremouille[99] showed her their literary portraits written by themselves.[100] These were imitations of those which Mlle. de Scudery, creator of the kind, gave in her romances,--the personalities to be divined with a key. "I had never before seen anything of the kind; I found them very _galants_, and wrote my own." After her own, she made others, and exacted them from those about her.

From this resulted a repertoire unique of its kind, in which n.o.ble personages, of both s.e.xes and all ages, have been so obliging as not to leave us ignorant of themselves, from the state of their teeth to their opinions upon love, nor have they omitted to present similar details concerning their friends.

The collection of these _Portraits_[101] reveals to us how the aristocracy then viewed itself, or, at least, how it wished to be estimated by others. The ordinary beginning was to picture the face and bearing. The fas.h.i.+on was to do this with sincerity, which by no means indicates modesty. The famous d.u.c.h.esse de Chatillon warned readers that she was going to speak with a navete "the greatest possible."

This is why [continues she] I can say that I have the most beautiful and best formed figure which has ever been seen.

There is none so regular, so free, so easy. My bearing is entirely agreeable, and in all my actions I have an air infinitely _spirituel_. My face is a most perfect oval, according to all standards; my forehead is slightly elevated, which aids the regularity of the oval. My eyes are brown, very brilliant, and very deeply set; the gaze is very gentle and, at the same time, full of fire and spirit. I have a well-made nose, and as for the mouth, it is not only fine and well coloured, but infinitely agreeable, made so by a thousand little natural expressions not to be seen in any other mouths.

My teeth are very beautiful and regular. I have a very small chin. I have not a very white skin. My hair is a clear chestnut, and very l.u.s.trous. My neck is more beautiful than ugly. As for my arms and hands, I am not proud of them; but the skin is very soft and smooth. It would be impossible to find a thigh better made than mine or a foot better turned.

The description of the physique was a rule of the Portraits, not even the _religieuses_ believing that it should be dispensed with.

Among the Portraits is found one of an Abbess who visited Mademoiselle, the inspiring Marie-eleonore de Rohan, a person much esteemed on account of her mother, the famous d.u.c.h.esse de Montbazon, but very disconcerting, notwithstanding, for our modern ideals of monastic life.

She divided herself between the cloister and the world, sufficiently edifying when it was needful, lively and brilliant the remainder of the time, and as natural in the one role as in the other. The Abbess composed works of piety for her nuns,--among others _La Morale de Salomon_, many times re-edited, and the _Paraphrases des sept Psaumes de la Penitence_. The lady of society placed herself before her mirror and wrote without a shade of embarra.s.sment: "I have some haughtiness in my physiognomy and some modesty. I have too large a nose, a mouth not disagreeable, lips suitable, and teeth neither beautiful nor ugly." This "nose too large" shocked the savant Huet. In reproducing the portrait of Mme. l'Abbesse, he wrote: "As the beauty of the nose is one to which I am very sensitive, permit, Madame, that I should begin with yours. It is large; it is white, slightly aquiline, and gives something _spirituel_ to your smile."

Another phrase of Huet's gives us a vision of how these pseudo-religieuses, whose species was destined to disappear with the reform of convents, a not regrettable fact, accommodated the convent garb with coquetry: "One cannot imagine," pursued the future bishop, "more beautiful hair than yours; it is ash colour, blond, curls in a very agreeable manner, and admirably suits your face, as far as I have been able to judge, when it has escaped by chance, in spite of your care to conceal it."

After the body comes the temper, tastes, qualities, and defects of the mind. Here lies the lasting interest of the Portraits. It is valuable to know from first hand, through its own confidences, that this aristocratic society, from which the King exacted the complete sacrifice of its independence, hated nothing more than restraint, and did not hesitate to say so. Men and women, speaking for themselves, return constantly to this point, and always in the same terms: "I hate restraint. Restraint is insupportable to me." "I have an aversion for all that is called restraint." "I suffer oppression impatiently and I pa.s.sionately love liberty."

From the point of view of absolute monarchy and the discipline which it wished to impose upon the Court, the French n.o.bility had very bad habits. This n.o.bility professed love of the chivalric virtues, and hatred of anything resembling baseness or disloyalty. In this, it was sincere, only we must admit that opinions are constantly changing even in relation to morals, and that to-day, we might have difficulty in agreeing with a gentleman of 1660 as to what is loyal or base and what is not. Honour commanded the gentleman to avenge offences against himself without too closely examining into the methods of so doing.

Custom authorised him to be unjust and to act with bad faith towards the lowly, common, and feeble, in particular when money was owed. Honesty was a bourgeois virtue. Mademoiselle considered it unworthy that people of quality should abuse their authority to "ruin miserable creditors,"

but she was an exception.

The obligations of "honour" were extending to all conditions. Vatel was praised for having killed himself because the fish did not rise. "It was said," wrote Mme. de Sevigne, "that this sort of honour was a strength."

It was not the same with another sentiment which filled the plays of Corneille and which is constantly referred to in all the writings of the time. General consent reserved for people of quality the privilege of having ideas of "Glory and of the 'Beautiful' or the True," which led, according to Huet's definition, to the desire for grand things. The desire for "true glory," which is carefully distinguished from what he called the "halo of glory," was the aristocratic sentiment "par excellence." Even among the authors of the _Portraits_, every one was not considered to possess the high capacity for strongly feeling this longing.

In spite of the prevailing licentiousness of the Court, there still remained in this brilliant society many pure women. At the same time, virtue was not particularly honoured. It was a matter of personal taste, the n.o.bility only attaching a secondary and conventional importance to its practice. The women "pure," or those who were supposed so to be, received praise from friendly pens. The others were not looked at askance, except by the Jansenists and other sombre spirits.

The young Comtesse de Fiesque, with whom Mademoiselle had been embroiled at Saint-Fargeau, had a well-established reputation for gallantry. The anonymous author of her Portrait makes allusion to this, and hastens to add, "Truly this does her no harm." No harm at all! Mademoiselle did not think of it when Mme. de Fiesque came to demand pardon for her impertinences: "She threw herself on her knees before me; I raised her up and embraced her; she wept with joy. She is a worthy woman, only too easily led away, but good at heart."

Naturally men spoke very freely of women; it was like the crowing of c.o.c.ks. An anonymous writer, who might have been the poet Racan,[102]

represents himself as "very ugly, very stammering, and very disagreeable, very grumbling besides and untruthful," and goes on, "I am very bold with women and quite as successful as if I were good-looking and possessed the most agreeable qualities in the world to make myself well received. I have indeed found myself sometimes as you see me..."

There is still greater contempt expressed for women in the following pa.s.sage from the Portrait of La Rochefoucauld by himself: "Formerly I was a little _galant_; now not at all, although still youthful. I have renounced all flirtations. I am only astonished that there should still be so many worthy people who occupy themselves in culling these 'little flowers.'" Considering Mme. de Longueville, this statement is rather hard. I would remark in pa.s.sing, that La Rochefoucauld was forty-five[103] at the moment in which he found himself somewhat "young to renounce flirtations." Moliere, however, was soon to make all Paris laugh at the expense of Arnolphe,[104] who indulged in love affairs at the age of forty-two. Shall we conclude that Moliere attempted to lessen the limit of the age of love, or was it only in the theatre that fas.h.i.+on exacted young lovers? I leave this question to the clever. It is not without importance in the history of sentiments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =FRANcOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD= From the engraving by Hopwood after the painting by Pet.i.tot]

The fas.h.i.+on of Portraits lasted but little more than two years with those who were its sponsors; as soon as the custom reached the bourgeoisie, the people of quality abandoned it. The very lively taste developed in the middle cla.s.s, in their turn, for this diversion proved of real service to literature. The imitators of the "Galerie" learned, as previously the creators of the game had done, to know the "interior of people."[105] "The anatomies" of their own hearts, imperfect as they were, habituated them to discern the "qualities and temper of people,"[106] and thus a large public was prepared to comprehend the women of Racine.

Mademoiselle was one of the first to profit by the "soul studies" which she had brought into favour. There remains a little pa.s.sage in a portion of her _Memoires_, written after 1660, which clearly indicates this.

Progress is equally marked in a little romance with a key, ent.i.tled _Histoire de la Princesse de Paphlagonie_, which was composed and printed at Bordeaux in 1659, during the prolonged sojourn of the Court at that place.

This is not the only imaginative work for which this facile pen[107] is responsible, but it is the only one worthy of notice. The subject is without interest; Mademoiselle has incorporated in a literary tale the absurd quarrels of her household: "I made a little history which was finished in three days, by writing in the evening after returning from the Queen." In compensation, there are in the _Princesse de Paphlagonie_ some sketches after nature, written with a firm and live touch, a novelty with Mademoiselle. A pa.s.sage upon the blue room of Mme. de Rambouillet will prove a great aid in any attempt to reconstruct an elegant interior under Louis XIV., if the experiment should ever be made as has been suggested of playing the comedies of Moliere in the true "chamber" of Philaminte or of Celimene. Others have spoken of the rooms in which Mme. de Rambouillet received. The harmonious decoration and the scholarly disorder have been before described, yet no one but Mademoiselle has given us the intimate atmosphere of the sanctuary, with its measured and discreet light, its luxury of flowers, its objects of art, and its small but choice library betraying the tastes and the preferences of the divinity of the place. The description resembles more nearly the salon of an intelligent woman of the twentieth century than a suite of the Chateau of Versailles.

The guests of Mademoiselle profited also by the refinement of her tastes. She enforced one single rule in her salon: cards were banished.

No one was exposed to the danger of being ruined, as was the case in the circle of the King, who encouraged heavy play. It did not displease Louis XIV. to be the Providence of the losers, this again being a method of keeping his n.o.bles in hand. His cousin in no way shared in such considerations. She said: "I hate to play cards," and only played when it was impossible to avoid doing so. She did not at all like to lose. It was remarked that the Luxembourg had gained in gaiety with the exclusion of gambling games. "There is a hundred times as much laughter," relates the Abbe de Choisy,[108] at this date very young and a frequent guest at the palace of the Luxembourg, where he met numerous companions of his own age.

The three daughters of the old Madame, Mlles. d'Orleans, d'Alencon, and de Valois,[109] were always with their step-sister. They escaped from their deserted apartment to run towards the noise and movement; their life was too sad with Madame and her eternal "vapours." Relegated to their chambers as at Blois, with some childish companions, among whom was Louise de La Valliere,[110] still unknown, they lived in a state of distrust of their almost invisible mother, who never addressed a word to them except in scolding.

At least, with Mademoiselle one had the right to move. Young people had great freedom. Little games were organised. Parties of hide and seek and blind-man's-buff were enjoyed. "As I had violin players, it was easy to dance in any room sufficiently distant from Madame." The Abbe de Choisy adds a gracious detail: "There were violinists, but ordinarily they were silent and we danced to singing. It is so charming to dance to the sound of the voice." While the young moved gaily about, their elders had also their little games.

Everything yielded, however, to the unequalled pleasure of conversation.

Among those who gave eclat to the Luxembourg, the names of La Rochefoucauld, Segrais, Mme. de Lafayette, and Mme. de Sevigne may be mentioned. Mademoiselle herself often led the conversation, beating the drums a little, her fas.h.i.+on in everything, but also with a certain spontaneity which she always displayed.

Conversation was, during more than a century, even to the time of the Revolution, to be the great delight of intelligent France, and this pleasure rendered incomparable service to the French language, which had rather deteriorated during the first periods of the seventeenth century.

It was immediately perceived that the worst fault for a talker was to speak like a book, and the French owe to this simple observation the lesson which taught them to become the first in the world for vivacity and naturalness in the art of conversation. The habitues of the Luxembourg only regretted that the conversation did not oftener turn upon love. But, in this respect, Mademoiselle was not as complaisant as at Saint-Fargeau. We have seen that, in practice, she closed her eyes; this simplified life. For her own pleasure, she preferred other topics; this particular one became at length insupportable to her. "I am much criticised," says she in her _Portrait_, "because the verses I like the least, are those which are pa.s.sionate, for I have not a tender soul."

Besides, she had really nothing more to say upon the subject of love.

She had just made her profession of faith in a correspondence with Mme.

de Motteville, who, while awaiting something better, circulated a ma.n.u.script in which one reads, "Its conditions are shameful; it is robbery and unjust, without faith and without equity. It is an impiety; it mocks the holy sacrament. Marriage adjusts nothing: everything is given to man."

"Let us escape from slavery," cried Mademoiselle. "Let there be at least one corner of the globe in which one can say that women are their own mistresses." Every one has the right to despise love and marriage, provided only that one does not insist on applying this sentiment only to others. The youth of the Luxembourg knew too well that Mademoiselle sought with an increasing ardour that "slavery" against which in conversation or in writing she called her s.e.x to revolt. Her intimate friends realised that she was inventing illusions, under the influence of a possible possession which induced a belief in their reality. She had believed in an eager tenderness on the part of the little Monsieur who had married some one else. After the restoration of the Stuarts (April, 1660), she imagined (the recital is fully given in her _Memoires_) that the King, Charles II., whom she had refused with disdain when he was only a poor pretender, had no other intention in remounting the throne than again to demand her hand, and that she would n.o.bly respond: "I do not deserve this, having rejected your suit when you were in disgrace. The remembrance of this would always rest on our two hearts and would prevent true happiness." This fine response has been quoted a hundred times. Unfortunately, it is very clearly proved through the testimony of English doc.u.ments[111] that Mademoiselle had no occasion to make it.

Advances, alas! had come from one side only and had been ill received.

"I very much desire the marriage of Mademoiselle," wrote Lady Derby[112] to her sister-in-law, Mme. de la Tremouille, through whom pa.s.sed the "insinuations," "but the King has a great aversion to it on account of the contempt which she has shown him. I have spoken of her to Marquis d'Ormond, but I have met with little encouragement." In another letter: "I have proposed Mademoiselle, but I have little hope. If the King looks for wealth, we can hardly expect greater than with Mademoiselle. But I fear that having been despised in his poverty, he may be little disposed to regard such a marriage." Charles II. would listen to nothing; he had guarded a grudge against his cousin. On the other hand, there is every appearance of truth when she states that the old Duc Charles III. de Lorraine,[113] had demanded her "on his knees"

for a youth of eighteen, Prince Charles de Lorraine, his nephew, who became afterwards one of the most famous Austrian generals. It was a question, as can well be understood, of a political combination.

Unfortunately, Prince Charles himself had another project, better suited to his age. He was in love with the eldest daughter of Madame, Marguerite d'Orleans, who returned his affection with all her heart. The youthful society of the Luxembourg accuses Mademoiselle of having, through jealousy, caused this project to fail. "The affair had been advanced," relates that gossip, the Abbe de Choisy, "but the old Mademoiselle had talked and cackled so much that she spoiled everything." She was desperate at the thought of her younger sisters, beggars compared to herself, marrying under her very eyes. Marguerite d'Orleans made, out of spite, a marriage which turned out badly,[114]

but through which Mademoiselle in no way profited. Owing to a singular change of desire, from the day on which it had depended upon herself to marry Prince Charles, she had only felt contempt for this little prince "_sans forts_."[115]

These caprices made the King impatient, who ended by making negotiations with Lorraine without any longer occupying himself with his cousin.

Louis XIV. still retained the old monarchical principles in relation to the marriage of princesses. He regarded them simply from the point of view of politics; questions to be settled by governments and into which sentiments must not be permitted to intrude. The idea that every human being has a right to happiness did not belong to his times, and if it had been suggested, the King would have surely condemned it, for it insisted upon individual interests as opposed to those of the community, the rights of which appeared specially sacred to the people of the seventeenth century.

Louis XIV. did not believe for himself that he had the right to accept only the agreeable duties belonging to his "trade of king," since he had undertaken an existence devoted to strenuous labour, when it would have been so pleasant to do nothing. According to his principle, the higher the position of an individual, the more it was fitting that he should sacrifice his own desires to the public good. Mademoiselle had the honour of being his first cousin; he had firmly resolved to marry her, or not to marry her, to bestow her hand upon a hero or a monster, according as he should judge it useful to "the service of the King."

There was a certain grandeur in this fas.h.i.+on of recognising relations.h.i.+p.

It had not occurred to the King that Mademoiselle would ever have the audacity to resist him. It can be said that any real understanding between the two was an impossibility. Mademoiselle had lived too long in the midst of the opposition to yield to the notion of absolute royal power without limitations and including all possible persons. Louis XIV.

had a too profound faith in the doctrine of the divine right of kings to refuse for himself any of the prerogatives devolving upon him. Both these opinions represented Frenchmen at large; but for the moment Mademoiselle was being borne along by the ebbing tide, Louis XIV. by the rising one.

This Prince had entered the world at an opportune moment to profit by a doctrine which, according to a happy expression, seemed made for him as he for it. After the Reform, the enforcing the old theory of the divine origin of power had a beneficial result. The populace in many a country and province had found themselves as much interested as the sovereigns in suppressing the political power of the Pope outside of his own States, and resenting his interference in the affairs of other countries.

In France, in the sixteenth century, one meets with Calvinist theologians amongst the writers who claimed that princes received their power directly from G.o.d, and from G.o.d alone. The immediate consequence of this doctrine was to heighten the eclat of royalty. Princes became images of divinity, and even something more; Louis XIV., not yet five, heard himself spoken of as the "Divinity made visible." Two years later, the Royal Catechism[116] explained to him that he was "Vice-Dieu."

Twenty years later Louis XIV. was "Dieu," without any qualification, and Bossuet himself declared it from the pulpit. On April 2, 1662, preaching at the Louvre and speaking of the duties of kings, Bossuet cried: "O G.o.ds of nations and of lands, you must die like mortals; nevertheless, until Death, you are G.o.ds."

When a man hears such statements without shrinking, he is quite ready to accept all the consequences. "Kings," writes an anonymous person, "are absolute lords of all who breathe in any portion of their empire."[117]