Charles IX. The poor, frail, Austrian Princess Elizabeth, after being
for hours on her knees, declared her incapacity for remaining any
longer without some material support from food or wine. The Cardinal
declared that such an irreligious innovation was not to be thought of.
He stoutly opposed, well-fed man that he was, the supplying of any
refreshment to the sinking Queen; and it was only when he reflected
that her life might be imperiled that he consented to “the smallest
quantity of something very light,” being administered to her.
He was the only man of his family who was not possessed of the knightly
virtue of bravery. He was greatly afraid of being assassinated.
In council, he was uncourteous. Thus, he once accused the famous
Chancellor le Hospital of wishing to be “the cock of the assembly,” and
when the grave chancellor protested against such language, the Cardinal
qualified him as “an old ram.” It may be added that, if he feared the
dagger directed by private vengeance, he believed himself protected
by the guardianship of Heaven, which more than once, as he averred,
carried him off in clouds and thunder, when assassins were seeking him.
He was wily enough to have said this, in order to deter all attempts at
violence directed against himself.
He died edifyingly, kissed Catherine de Medicis, and was believed by
the latter, to mysteriously haunt her, long after his death. The real
footing on which these two personages stood has yet to be discovered by
curious inquiries.
The Cardinal-brother of the third Duke, Louis of Lorraine, loved good
living, and was enabled at an early age to indulge his propensities,
out of the rich revenues which he derived from his numerous
ecclesiastical preferments. He held half a dozen abbeys while he was
yet in his cradle; and he was a bishop at the mature age of eighteen.
Just before his death, in 1598, when he was about fifty years of age,
he resigned his magnificent church appointments, in favor of his nephew
and namesake, who was to be a future Cardinal at the side of the
fourth Duke. Louis was a man of ability and of wit. He chose a device
for his own shield of arms. It consisted of nine zeros, with this apt
motto: “Hoc per se nihil est; sed si minimum addideris, maximum erit,”
intending, it is said, to imply that man was nothing till grace was
given him. He was kindly-dispositioned, loved his ease, was proud of
his church, and had a passion for the bottle. That was his religion.
His private life was not marked by worse traits than those that
characterized his kinsmen in the priesthood. He showed his affection
for his mother after a truly filial fashion, bequeathing to her all his
estates, in trust, to pay his debts.
The third duke had a second cardinal-brother, known as the Cardinal de
Guise, who was murdered by Henri III. He was an intriguer; but as brave
as any knight of his family. It was long before the king could find men
willing to strike a priest; and when they _were_ found, they approached
him again and again, before they could summon nerve wherewith to smite
him. After all, this second murder at Blois was effected by stratagem.
The cardinal was requested to accompany a messenger to the royal
presence. He complied with some misgiving, but when he found himself in
a dark corridor with four frowning soldiers, he understood his doom;
requested a few moments respite to collect his thoughts; and then,
enveloping his head in his outer robe, bade them execute their bloody
commission. He was instantly slain, without offering resistance, or
uttering a word.
This cardinal was father of five illegitimate sons, of whom the most
celebrated was the Baron of Ancerville, or, as he proudly designated
himself, “Bastard of Guise.”
By the side of the son of Balafré, Charles, the fourth duke, there
stood the last cardinal-brother who was able to serve his house, and
whose character presents any circumstance of note. This cardinal, if
he loved anything more than the bottle, was fondest of a battle. He
characteristically lost his life by both. He was present at the siege
of St. Jean d’Angely, held by the Protestants in the year 1621. It was
on the 20th of May; and the sun was shining with a power not known to
our severe springs. The cardinal fought like a fiend, and swore with
more than fiendish capacity. The time was high noon, and he himself was
in the noontide of his wondrous vigor, some thirty years of age. He was
laying about him in the bloody _mêlée_ which occurred in the suburb,
when he paused for awhile, panting for breath and streaming with
perspiration. He called for a flask of red wine, which he had scarcely
quaffed when he was seized with raging fever, which carried him off
within a fortnight. He was so much more addicted to knightly than to
priestly pursuits, that, at the time of his death, a negotiation was
being carried on to procure from the pope permission for the cardinal
to give up to his lay-brother, the Duc de Chevreuse, all his benefices,
and to receive in return the duke’s governorship of Auvergne. He was
for ever in the saddle, and never more happy than when he saw another
before him with a resolute foe firmly seated therein. He lived the life
of a soldier of fortune, or knight-errant; and when peace temporarily
reigned, he rode over the country with a band of followers, in search
of adventures, and always found them at the point of their swords. He
left the altar to draw on his boots, gird his sword to his hip, and
provoke his cousin De Nevers to a duel, by striking him in the face.
The indignant young noble regretted that the profession of his insulter
covered the latter with impunity, and recommended him, at the same
time, to abandon it, and to give De Nevers satisfaction. “To the devil
I have sent it already!” said the exemplary cardinal, “when I flung off
my frock, and belted on my sword:” and the two kinsmen would have had
their weapons in each other’s throat, but for the royal officers, who
checked their Christian amusement.
This roystering cardinal, who was interred with more pomp than if he
had been a great saint, or a merely honest man, left five children.
Their mother was Charlotte des Escar. They were recognised as
legitimate, on allegation that their parents had been duly married, on
papal dispensation. He was the last of the cardinals, and was as good a
soldier as any of the knights.
Neither the pride nor the pretensions of the house expired with either
Dukes or Cardinals. There were members of the family whose arrogance
was all the greater because they were not of the direct line of
succession. Their great ambition in little things was satisfied with
the privilege granted to the ladies of Guise, namely, the one which
they held in common with royal princesses, at being presented at court
previous to their marriage. This ambition gained for them, however,
the hatred of the nobles and the princes of the Church, and at length
caused a miniature insurrection in the palace at Versailles.
The occasion was the grand ball given in honor of the nuptials of
Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin. Louis XV. had announced that he
would open the brilliant scene by dancing a _minuet_ with Mlle. de
Lorraine, sister of the Prince de Lambesc. The uproar that ensued was
terrific. The entire body of nobility protested against such marked
precedence being allowed to the lady in question. The Archbishop of
Rheims placed himself at the head of the opposing movement; and,
assembling the indignant peerage, this successor of the Apostles, in
company with his episcopal brother from Noyon, came to the solemnly
important resolution, that between the princes of the blood-royal and
_haute noblesse_ there could be no intermediate rank; and that Mlle. de
Lorraine, consequently, could not take precedence of the female members
of the aristocracy, who had been presented. A memorial was drawn up.
The entire nobility, old and new, signed it eagerly; and the King was
informed that if he did not rescind his determination, no lady would
dance at the ball after the _minuet_ in question had been performed.
The King exerted himself to overcome the opposition: but neither
bishops nor baronesses would give way. The latter, on the evening of
the ball, walked about the grand apartments in undress, expressed
loudly their resolution not to dance, and received archiepiscopal
benison for their pious obstinacy. The matter was finally arranged by
compromise, whereby the Dauphin and the Count d’Artois were to select
partners among the nobility, and not, as was _de rigueur_, according
to the law of _minuets_, among princesses of their own rank. The
hour for opening the famous ball was retarded in order to give the
female insurrectionists time to dress, and ultimately all went off _à
merveille!_
With the Prince de Lambesc above-named, the race of Guise disappeared
altogether from the soil of France. He was colonel of the cavalry
regiment, _Royal Allemand_, which in 1789 came into collision with the
people. The Prince was engaged, with his men, in dispersing a seditious
mob. He struck one of the most conspicuous of the rioters with the flat
of his sword. This blow, dealt by a Guise, was the first given in the
great Revolution, and it helped to deprive Louis XVI. of his crown. The
Prince de Lambesc was compelled to fly from the country, to escape the
indignation of the people. Nearly three centuries before, his great
ancestor, the boy of the mule, had entered the kingdom, and founded a
family which increased in numbers and power against the throne, and
against civil and religious liberty. And now, the sole survivor of the
many who had sprung from this branch of Lorraine, as proud, too, as the
greatest of his house, having raised his finger against the freedom of
the mob, was driven into exile, to seek refuge for a time, and a grave
for age, on the banks of the distant Danube.
When Cardinal Fleury annexed the Duchy of Lorraine to France, it
was by arrangement with Austria; according to which, Francis, Duke
of Lorraine, received in exchange for his Duchy, the Grand Duchy of
Tuscany and the hand of Maria Theresa. Their heirs form the imperial
house of Hapsburgh-Lorraine. Such of my readers as have visited Nancy,
the capital of old Lorraine, will remember there the round chapel
near what is left of the old palace of the old Dukes. This chapel
contains the tombs of the principal of the twenty-nine Dukes who ruled
sovereignly in Lorraine. The expense of supporting the service and
fabric, altar and priests, connected with this chapel, is sustained
entirely by Austria. It is the only remnant preserved of the Lorraine
sovereignty of the olden time. The priests and _employes_ in the
edifice speak of Hapsburgh-Lorraine as _their_ house, to which they
owe exclusive homage. When I heard expression given to this sentiment,
I was standing in front of the tomb of that famous etcher, old Jean
Callot. The latter was a native of Nancy; and I could almost fancy
that his merry-looking lip curled with scorn at the display of this rag
of pride in behalf of the house of Lorraine.
With the story of part of that house I fear I may have detained the
reader too long. I will tell more briefly the shifting fortunes of a
material house, the knightly edifice of Rambouillet.
THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET.
“Imagine that this castle were your court,
And that you lay, for pleasure, here a space,
Not of compulsion or necessity.”--KIT MARLOWE.
Rambouillet is an old château where feudal knights once lived like
little kings. In its gardens Euphuism reigned supreme. It is a palace,
in whose chambers monarchs have feasted, and at whose gates they have
asked, when fugitives, for water and a crust of bread. It commenced
its career as a cradle of knights; it is finishing it as an asylum for
the orphan children of warriors. The commencement and finale are not
unworthy of one another; but, between the two, there have been some
less appropriate disposals of this old chevalier’s residence. For a
short period it was something between Hampton Court and Rosherville.
In the very place where the canons of the Sainte Chapelle were
privileged to kiss the cheeks of the Duchess of Burgundy, the denizens
of the Faubourg St. Antoine could revel, if they could only pay for
their sport. Where the knightly D’Amaurys held their feudal state,
where King Francis followed the chase, and the Chevalier Florian
sang, and Penthièvre earned immortality by the practice of heavenly
virtues; where Louis enthroned Du Barry, and Napoleon presided over
councils, holding the destiny of thrones in the balance of his will,
there the sorriest mechanic had, with a few francs in his hand,
the right of entrance. The gayest _lorettes_ of the capital smoked
their _cigarettes_ where Julie D’Angennes fenced with love; and the
bower of queens and the refuge of an empress rang with echoes, born
of light-heartedness and lighter wine. Louis Napoleon has, however,
established a better order of things.
To a Norman chief, of knightly character, if not of knightly title,
and to the Norman tongue, _Rabouillet_, as it used to be written, or
the “Rabbit warren,” owes the name given to the palace, about thirteen
leagues from Paris, and to the village which clusters around it. The
former is now a quaint and confused pile, the chief tower of which
alone is now older than the days of Hugues Capet. Some authors describe
the range of buildings as taking the form of a horseshoe; but the hoof
would be indescribable to which a shoe so shaped could be fittingly
applied. The changes and additions have been as much without end as
without taste. In its present architectural entirety it wears as motley
an aspect as Cœur de Lion might, were he to walk-down Pall Mall with a
modern _paletót_ over his suit of complete steel.
The early masters of Rambouillet were a knightly, powerful but
uninteresting race. It is sufficient to record of the chivalric
D’Amaurys that they held it, to the satisfaction of few people but
themselves, from 1003 to 1317. Further record these sainted proprietors
require not. We will let them sleep on undisturbedly, their arms
crossed on their breast, in the peace of a well-merited oblivion.
_Requiescat!_
One relic of the knightly days, however, survived to the period of the
first French Revolution. In the domain of Rambouillet was the fief of
Montorgueil. It was held by the prior of St. Thomas d’Epernon, on the
following service: the good prior was bound to present himself yearly
at the gate of Rambouillet, bareheaded, with a garland on his brow, and
mounted on a piebald horse, touching whom it was bad service if the
animal had not four white feet.
The prior, fully armed like a knight, save that his white gloves were
of a delicate texture, carried a flask of wine at his saddle-bow. In
one hand he held a cake, to the making of which had gone a bushel of
flour--an equal measure of wheat was also the fee of the lord. The
officers of the latter examined narrowly into the completeness of the
service. If they pronounced it imperfect the prior of Epernon was
mulcted of the revenues of his fief for the year ensuing.
In later days the ceremony lost much of its meaning; but down to the
period of its extinction, the wine, the cake, and the garland, were
never wanting; and the maidens of Rambouillet were said to be more
exacting than the baronial knights themselves, from whom many of them
were descended. The festival was ever a joyous one, as became a feudal
lord, whose kitchen fireplace was of such dimensions that a horseman
might ride into it, and skim the pot as he stood in his stirrups.
It is a singular thing that scarcely a monarch has had anything to
do with the knightly residence of Rambouillet, but mischance has
befallen him. The kings were unjust to the knights, and the latter
found for the former a Nemesis. Francis I. was hunting in the woods of
Rambouillet when he received the news of the death of Henry VIII. that
knight-sovereign, with whom he had struggled on the Field of the Cloth
of Gold. With the news, he received a shock, which the decay sprung
from various excesses could not resist. He entered the chateau as the
guest of the Chevalier d’Angennes, in whose family the proprietorship
then resided. The chamber is still shown wherein he died, roaring in
agony, and leaving proof of its power over him, in the pillow, which,
in mingled rage and pain, he tore into strips with his teeth.
The French author, Leon Gozlau, has given a full account of the
extraordinary ceremonies which took place in honor of Francis after
his death. In front of the bed on which lay the body of the king,
says M. Gozlau, “was erected an altar covered with embroidered cloth;
on this stood two gold candlesticks, bearing two lights from candles
of the whitest wax. The cardinals, prelates, knights, gentlemen, and
officers, whose duty it was to keep watch, were stationed around the
_catafalque_, seated on chairs of cloth of gold. During the eleven
days that the ceremony lasted, the strictest etiquette of service was
observed about the king, as if he had been a living monarch in presence
of his court. His table was regularly laid out for dinner, by the
side of his bed. A cardinal blessed the food. A gentleman in waiting
presented the ewer to the figure of the dead king. A knight offered him
the cup mantling with wine: and another wiped his lips and fingers.
These functions, with many others, took place by the solemn and subdued
light of the funeral torches.”
The after ceremonies were quite as curious and extraordinarily
magnificent; but it is unnecessary to rest upon them. A king, in not
much better circumstances than Francis, just before his death, slept
in the castle for one night in the year 1588. It was a night in May,
and the knight proprietor Jean d’Angennes, was celebrating the marriage
of his daughter. The ceremony was interrupted by a loud knocking
at the castle gates. The wary Jean looked first at the clamorous
visitors through the wicket, whence he descried Henri III. flurried,
yet laughing, seated in an old carriage, around which mustered dusty
horsemen, grave cavaliers, and courtiers scantily attired. Some had
their points untrussed, and many a knight was without his boots. An
illustrious company, in fact; but there were not two nobles in their
united purses. Jean threw open his portals to a king and his knights
flying from De Guise. The latter had got possession of Paris, and Henri
and his friends had escaped in order to establish the regal authority
at Chartres. The two great adversaries met at Blois: and after the
assassination of Guise, the king, with his knights and courtiers,
gallopped gayly past Rambouillet on his return to Paris, to profit
by his own wickedness, and the folly of his trusty and well-beloved
cousin, the duke.
Not long before this murder was committed, in 1588, the Hotel Pisani
in Paris was made jubilant by the birth of that Catherine de Vivonnes,
who was at once both lovely and learned. She lived to found that
school of lingual purists whose doings are so pleasantly caricatured
in the _Précieuses Ridicules_ of Molière. Catherine espoused that
noble chevalier, Charles d’Angennes, Lord of Rambouillet, who was made
a marquis for her sake. The chevalier’s lady looked upon marriage
rather as a closing act of life than otherwise; but then _hers_ had
been a busy youth. In her second lustre she knew as many languages as
a _lustrum_ has years. Ere her fourth had expired, her refined spirit
and her active intellect were disgusted and weary with the continual
sameness and the golden emptiness of the court. She cared little to
render homage to a most Christian king who disregarded the precepts of
Christianity; or to be sullied by homage from a monarch, which could
not be rendered without insult to a virtuous woman. Young Catherine
preferred, in the summer eve, to lie under the shadow of her father’s
trees, which once reared a world of leafy splendor on the spot now
occupied by the Palais Royal. There she read works coined by great
minds. During the long winter evenings she lay in stately ceremony
upon her bed, an unseemly custom of the period, and there, surrounded
by chevaliers, wits, and philosophers, enjoyed and encouraged the
“cudgelling of brains.” At her suggestion the old hotel was destroyed,
and after her designs a new one built; and when, in place of the old
dark panelling, obscurely seen by casements that kept out the light,
she covered the walls of her reception-rooms with sky-blue velvet,
and welcomed the sun to shine upon them, universal France admiringly
pronounced her mad, incontinently caught the infection, and broke out
into an incurable disease of fancy and good taste.
The fruit of the union above spoken of was abundant, but the very jewel
in that crown of children, the goodliest arrow in the family quiver,
was that Julie d’Angennes who shattered the hearts of all the amorous
chevaliers of France, and whose fame has, perhaps, eclipsed that of
her mother. Her childhood was passed at the feet of the most eminent
men in France; not merely aristocratic knights, but as eminent wits
and philosophers. By the side of her cradle, Balzac enunciated his
polished periods, and Marot his tuneful rhymes, Voiture his conceits,
and Vaugelas his learning. She lay in the arms of Armand Duplessis,
_then_ almost as innocent as the little angel who unconsciously smiled
on that future ruthless Cardinal de Richelieu; and her young ear heard
the elevated measure of Corneille’s “Melite.” To enumerate the circles
which was wont to assemble within the Hôtel Rambouillet in Paris, or to
loiter in the gardens and hills of the country château, whose history
I am sketching, would occupy more space than can be devoted to such
purpose. The circle comprised parties who were hitherto respectively
exclusive. Knights met citizen wits, to the great edification of the
former; and Rambouillet afforded an asylum to the persecuted of all
parties. They who resisted Henry IV. found refuge within its hospitable
walls, and many nobles and chevaliers who survived the bloody
oppression of Richelieu, sought therein solace, and balm for their
lacerated souls.