resolution, he summoned his page, and, after having made him promise
inviolable secrecy, and having undertaken, on that condition, to prove
his gratitude by buying him a regiment, explained what was expected of
him. The poor youth, to whom nothing could have been more unexpected
than such a communication, took it at first for a trick by which the
marquis meant to make him own his love, and was ready to throw himself
at his feet and declare everything; but the marquis seeing his
confusion, and easily guessing its cause, reassured him completely by
swearing that he authorised him to take any steps in order to attain the
end that the marquis had in view. As in his inmost heart the aim of the
young man was the same, the bargain was soon struck: the page bound
himself by the most terrible oaths to keep the secret; and the marquis,
in order to supply whatever assistance was in his power, gave him money
to spend, believing that there was no woman, however virtuous, who could
resist the combination of youth, beauty, and fortune: unhappily for the
marquis, such a woman, whom he thought impossible, did exist, and was
his wife.
The page was so anxious to obey his master, that from that very day his
mistress remarked the alteration that arose from the permission given
him--his prompt obedience to her orders and his speed in executing them,
in order to return a few moments the sooner to her presence. She was
grateful to him, and in the simplicity of her heart she thanked him. Two
days later the page appeared before her splendidly dressed; she observed
and remarked upon his improved appearance, and amused herself in conning
over all the parts of his dress, as she might have done with a new doll.
All this familiarity doubled the poor young man's passion, but he stood
before his mistress, nevertheless, abashed and trembling, like Cherubino
before his fair godmother. Every evening the marquis inquired into his
progress, and every evening the page confessed that he was no farther
advanced than the day before; then the marquis scolded, threatened to
take away his fine clothes, to withdraw his own promises, and finally to
address himself to some other person. At this last threat the youth
would again call up his courage, and promise to be bolder to-morrow; and
on the morrow would spend the day in making a thousand compliments to
his mistress's eyes, which she, in her innocence, did not understand. At
last, one day, Madame de Perrant asked him what made him look at her
thus, and he ventured to confess his love; but then Madame de Perrant,
changing her whole demeanour, assumed a face of sternness and bade him
go out of her room.
The poor lover obeyed, and ran, in despair, to confide his grief to the
husband, who appeared sincerely to share it, but consoled him by saying
that he had no doubt chosen his moment badly; that all women, even the
least severe, had inauspicious hours in which they would not yield to
attack, and that he must let a few days pass, which he must employ in
making his peace, and then must take advantage of a better opportunity,
and not allow himself to be rebuffed by a few refusals; and to these
words the marquis added a purse of gold, in order that the page might,
if necessary, win over the marquise's waiting-woman.
Guided thus by the older experience of the husband, the page began to
appear very much ashamed and very penitent; but for a day or two the
marquise, in spite of his apparent humility, kept him at a distance: at
last, reflecting no doubt, with the assistance of her mirror and of her
maid, that the crime was not absolutely unpardonable, and after having
reprimanded the culprit at some length, while he stood listening with
eyes cast down, she gave a him her hand, forgave him, and admitted him
to her companionship as before.
Things went on in this way for a week. The page no longer raised his
eyes and did not venture to open his mouth, and the marquise was
beginning to regret the time in which he used to look and to speak,
when, one fine day while she was at her toilet, at which she had allowed
him to be present, he seized a moment when the maid had left her alone,
to cast himself at her feet and tell her that he had vainly tried to
stifle his love, and that, even although he were to die under the weight
of her anger, he must tell her that this love was immense, eternal,
stronger than his life. The marquise upon this wished to send him away,
as on the former occasion, but instead of obeying her, the page, better
instructed, took her in his arms. The marquise called, screamed, broke
her bell-rope; the waiting-maid, who had been bought over, according to
the marquis's advice, had kept the other women out of the way, and was
careful not to come herself. Then the marquise, resisting force by
force, freed herself from the page's arms, rushed to her husband's room,
and there, bare-necked, with floating hair, and looking lovelier than
ever, flung herself into his arms and begged his protection against the
insolent fellow who had just insulted her. But what was the amazement of
the marquise, when, instead of the anger which she expected to see break
forth, the marquis answered coldly that what she was saying was
incredible, that he had always found the young man very well behaved,
and that, no doubt, having taken up some frivolous ground of resentment
against him, she was employing this means to get rid of him; but, he
added, whatever might be his love for her, and his desire to do
everything that was agreeable to her, he begged her not to require this
of him, the young man being his friend's son, and consequently his own
adopted child. It was now the marquise who, in her turn, retired
abashed, not knowing what to make of such a reply, and fully resolving,
since her husband's protection failed her, to keep herself well guarded
by her own severity.
Indeed, from that moment the marquise behaved to the poor youth with so
much prudery, that, loving her as he did, sincerely, he would have died
of grief, if he had not had the marquis at hand to encourage and
strengthen him. Nevertheless, the latter himself began to despair, and
to be more troubled by the virtue of his wife than another man might
have been by the levity of his. Finally, he resolved, seeing that
matters remained at the same point and that the marquise did not relax
in the smallest degree, to take extreme measures. He hid his page in a
closet of his wife's bedchamber, and, rising during her first sleep,
left empty his own place beside her, went out softly, double-locked the
door, and listened attentively to hear what would happen.
He had not been listening thus for ten minutes when he heard a great
noise in the room, and the page trying in vain to appease it. The
marquis hoped that he might succeed, but the noise increasing, showed
him that he was again to be disappointed; soon came cries for help, for
the marquise could not ring, the bell-ropes having been lifted out of
her reach, and no one answering her cries, he heard her spring from her
high bed, run to the door, and finding it locked rush to the window,
which she tried to open: the scene had come to its climax.
The marquis decided to go in, lest some tragedy should happen, or lest
his wife's screams should reach some belated passer-by, who next day
would make him the talk of the town. Scarcely did the marquise behold
him when she threw herself into his arms, and pointing to the page,
said:--
"Well, monsieur, will you still hesitate to free me from this insolent
wretch?"
"Yes, madame," replied the marquis; "for this insolent wretch has been
acting for the last three months not only with my sanction but even by
my orders."
The marquise remained stupefied. Then the marquis, without sending away
the page, gave his wife an explanation of all that had passed, and
besought her to yield to his desire of obtaining a successor, whom he
would regard as his own child, so long as it was hers; but young though
she was, the marquise answered with a dignity unusual at her age, that
his power over her had the limits that were set to it by law, and not
those that it might please him to set in their place, and that however
much she might wish to do what might be his pleasure, she would yet
never obey him at the expense of her soul and her honour.
So positive an answer, while it filled her husband with despair, proved
to him that he must renounce the hope of obtaining an heir; but since
the page was not to blame for this, he fulfilled the promise that he had
made, bought him a regiment, and resigned himself to having the most
virtuous wife in France. His repentance was not, however, of long
duration; he died at the end of three months, after having confided to
his friend, the Marquis d'Urban, the cause of his sorrows.
The Marquis d'Urban had a son of marriageable age; he thought that he
could find nothing more suitable for him than a wife whose virtue had
come triumphantly through such a trial: he let her time of mourning
pass, and then presented the young Marquis d'Urban, who succeeded in
making his attentions acceptable to the beautiful widow, and soon became
her husband. More fortunate than his predecessor, the Marquis d'Urban
had three heirs to oppose to his collaterals, when, some two years and a
half later, the Chevalier de Bouillon arrived at the capital of the
county of Venaissin.
The Chevalier de Bouillon was a typical rake of the period, handsome,
young, and well-grown; the nephew of a cardinal who was influential at
Rome, and proud of belonging to a house which had privileges of
suzerainty. The chevalier, in his indiscreet fatuity, spared no woman;
and his conduct had given some scandal in the circle of Madame de
Maintenon, who was rising into power. One of his friends, having
witnessed the displeasure exhibited towards him by Louis XIV, who was
beginning to become devout, thought to do him a service by warning him
that the king "gardait une dent" against him. [ Translator's
note.--"Garder une dent," that is, to keep up a grudge, means literally
"to keep a tooth" against him.]
"Pardieu!" replied the chevalier, "I am indeed unlucky when the only
tooth left to him remains to bite me."
This pun had been repeated, and had reached Louis XIV, so that the
chevalier presently heard, directly enough this time, that the king
desired him to travel for some years. He knew the danger of
neglecting--such intimations, and since he thought the country after all
preferable to the Bastille, he left Paris, and arrived at Avignon,
surrounded by the halo of interest that naturally attends a handsome
young persecuted nobleman.
The virtue of Madame d'Urban was as much cried up at Avignon as the
ill-behaviour of the chevalier had been reprobated in Paris. A
reputation equal to his own, but so opposite in kind, could not fail to
be very offensive to him, therefore he determined immediately upon
arriving to play one against the other.
Nothing was easier than the attempt. M. d'Urban, sure of his wife's
virtue, allowed her entire liberty; the chevalier saw her wherever he
chose to see her, and every time he saw her found means to express a
growing passion. Whether because the hour had come for Madame d'Urban,
or whether because she was dazzled by the splendour of the chevalier's
belonging to a princely house, her virtue, hitherto so fierce, melted
like snow in the May sunshine; and the chevalier, luckier than the poor
page, took the husband's place without any attempt on Madame d'Urban's
part to cry for help.
As all the chevalier desired was public triumph, he took care to make
the whole town acquainted at once with his success; then, as some
infidels of the neighbourhood still doubted, the chevalier ordered one
of his servants to wait for him at the marquise's door with a lantern
and a bell. At one in the morning, the chevalier came out, and the
servant walked before him, ringing the bell. At this unaccustomed sound,
a great number of townspeople, who had been quietly asleep, awoke, and,
curious to see what was happening, opened their windows. They beheld the
chevalier, walking gravely behind his servant, who continued to light
his master's way and to ring along the course of the street that lay
between Madame d'Urban's house and his own. As he had made no mystery to
anyone of his love affair, nobody took the trouble even to ask him
whence he came. However, as there might possibly be persons still
unconvinced, he repeated this same jest, for his own satisfaction, three
nights running; so that by the morning of the fourth day nobody had any
doubts left.
As generally happens in such cases, M. d'Urban did not know a word of
what was going on until the moment when his friends warned him that he
was the talk of the town. Then he forbade his wife to see her lover
again. The prohibition produced the usual results: on the morrow, as,
soon as M. d'Urban had gone out, the marquise sent for the chevalier to
inform him of the catastrophe in which they were both involved; but she
found him far better prepared than herself for such blows, and he tried
to prove to her, by reproaches for her imprudent conduct, that all this
was her fault; so that at last the poor woman, convinced that it was she
who had brought these woes upon them, burst into tears. Meanwhile, M.
d'Urban, who, being jealous for the first time, was the more seriously
so, having learned that the chevalier was with his wife, shut the doors,
and posted himself in the ante-chamber with his servants, in order to
seize him as he came out. But the chevalier, who had ceased to trouble
himself about Madame d'Urban's tears, heard all the preparations, and,
suspecting some ambush, opened the window, and, although it was one
o'clock in the afternoon and the place was full of people, jumped out of
the window into the street, and did not hurt himself at all, though the
height was twenty feet, but walked quietly home at a moderate pace.
The same evening, the chevalier, intending to relate his new adventure
in all its details, invited some of his friends to sup with him at the
pastrycook Lecoq's. This man, who was a brother of the famous Lecoq of
the rue Montorgueil, was the cleverest eating-house-keeper in Avignon;
his own unusual corpulence commended his cookery, and, when he stood at
the door, constituted an advertisement for his restaurant. The good man,
knowing with what delicate appetites he had to deal, did his very best
that evening, and that nothing might be wanting, waited upon his guests
himself. They spent the night drinking, and towards morning the
chevalier and his companions, being then drunk, espied their host
standing respectfully at the door, his face wreathed in smiles. The
chevalier called him nearer, poured him out a glass of wine and made him
drink with them; then, as the poor wretch, confused at such an honour,
was thanking him with many bows, he said:--
"Pardieu, you are too fat for Lecoq, and I must make you a capon."
This strange proposition was received as men would receive it who were
drunk and accustomed by their position to impunity. The unfortunate
pastry-cook was seized, bound down upon the table, and died under their
treatment. The vice-legate being informed of the murder by one of the
waiters, who had run in on hearing his master's shrieks, and had found
him, covered with blood, in the hands of his butchers, was at first
inclined to arrest the chevalier and bring him conspicuously to
punishment. But he was restrained by his regard for the Cardinal de
Bouillon, the chevalier's uncle, and contented himself with warning the
culprit that unless he left the town instantly he would be put into the
hands of the authorities. The chevalier, who was beginning to have had
enough of Avignon, did not wait to be told twice, ordered the wheels of
his chaise to be greased and horses to be brought. In the interval
before they were ready the fancy took him to go and see Madame d'Urban
again.
As the house of the marquise was the very last at which, after the
manner of his leaving it the day before, the chevalier was expected at
such an hour, he got in with the greatest ease, and, meeting a
lady's-maid, who was in his interests, was taken to the room where the
marquise was. She, who had not reckoned upon seeing the chevalier again,
received him with all the raptures of which a woman in love is capable,
especially when her love is a forbidden one. But the chevalier soon put
an end to them by announcing that his visit was a visit of farewell, and
by telling her the reason that obliged him to leave her. The marquise
was like the woman who pitied the fatigue of the poor horses that tore
Damien limb from limb; all her commiseration was for the chevalier, who
on account of such a trifle was being forced to leave Avignon. At last
the farewell had to be uttered, and as the chevalier, not knowing what
to say at the fatal moment, complained that he had no memento of her,
the marquise took down the frame that contained a portrait of herself
corresponding with one of her husband, and tearing out the canvas,
rolled, it up and gave it to the chevalier. The latter, so far from
being touched by this token of love, laid it down, as he went away, upon
a piece of furniture, where the marquise found it half an hour later.
She imagined that his mind being so full of the original, he had
forgotten the copy, and representing to herself the sorrow which the
discovery of this forgetfulness would cause him, she sent for a servant,
gave him the picture, and ordered him to take horse and ride after the
chevalier's chaise. The man took a post-horse, and, making great speed,
perceived the fugitive in the distance just as the latter had finished
changing horses. He made violent signs and shouted loudly, in order to
stop the postillion. But the postillion having told his fare that he saw
a man coming on at full speed, the chevalier supposed himself to be
pursued, and bade him go on as fast as possible. This order was so well
obeyed that the unfortunate servant only came up with the chaise a
league and a half farther on; having stopped the postillion, he got off
his horse, and very respectfully presented to the chevalier the picture
which he had been bidden to bring him. But the chevalier, having
recovered from his first alarm, bade him go about his business, and take
back the portrait--which was of no use to him--to the sender. The
servant, however, like a faithful messenger, declared that his orders
were positive, and that he should not dare go back to Madame d'Urban
without fulfilling them. The chevalier, seeing that he could not conquer
the man's determination, sent his postillion to a farrier, whose house
lay on the road, for a hammer and four nails, and with his own hands
nailed the portrait to the back of his chaise; then he stepped in again,
bade the postillion whip up his horses, and drove away, leaving Madame
d'Urban's messenger greatly astonished at the manner in which the
chevalier had used his mistress's portrait.
At the next stage, the postillion, who was going back, asked for his
money, and the chevalier answered that he had none. The postillion
persisted; then the chevalier got out of his chaise, unfastened Madame
d'Urban's portrait, and told him that he need only put it up for sale in
Avignon and declare how it had come into his possession, in order to
receive twenty times the price of his stage; the postillion, seeing that
nothing else was to be got out of the chevalier, accepted the pledge,
and, following his instructions precisely, exhibited it next morning at
the door of a dealer in the town, together with an exact statement of
the story. The picture was bought back the same day for twenty-five
Louis.
As may be supposed, the adventure was much talked of throughout the
town. Next day, Madame d'Urban disappeared, no one knew whither, at the
very time when the relatives of the marquis were met together and had
decided to ask the king for a 'lettre-de-cachet'. One of the gentlemen
present was entrusted with the duty of taking the necessary steps; but
whether because he was not active enough, or whether because he was in
Madame d'Urban's interests, nothing further was heard in Avignon of any
consequences ensuing from such steps. In the meantime, Madame d'Urban,
who had gone to the house of an aunt, opened negotiations with her
husband that were entirely successful, and a month after this adventure
she returned triumphantly to the conjugal roof.
Two hundred pistoles, given by the Cardinal de Bouillon, pacified the
family of the unfortunate pastry-cook, who at first had given notice of
the affair to the police, but who soon afterwards withdrew their
complaint, and gave out that they had taken action too hastily on the
strength of a story told in joke, and that further inquiries showed
their relative to have died of an apoplectic stroke.
Thanks--to this declaration, which exculpated the Chevalier de Bouillon
in the eyes of the king, he was allowed, after travelling for two years
in Italy and in Germany, to return undisturbed to France.
Thus ends, not the family of Ganges, but the commotion which the family
made in the world. From time to time, indeed, the playwright or the
novelist calls up the pale and bloodstained figure of the marquise to
appear either on the stage or in a book; but the evocation almost always
ceases at her, and many persons who have written about the mother do not
even know what became of the children. Our intention has been to fill
this gap; that is why we have tried to tell what our predecessors left
out, and try offer to our readers what the stage--and often the actual
world--offers; comedy after melodrama.
----