THE SPELL OF THE HEART OF FRANCE
The Towns, Villages and Chateaux about Paris
By André Hallays
The Page Company
1920
[Illustration: 0010]
[Illustration: 0013]
INTRODUCTION
Whoever has read "The Spell of Alsace" by André Hallays will need
no introduction to the present book. While the work on Alsace was
undoubtedly read by many because of its timely publication just at the
close of the Great War, when Alsace and all things French were uppermost
in the public mind, these readers found themselves held and charmed as
much by Monsieur Hallays' wondrous talent for visualizing landscape
and for infusing the breath of life into images of the past as by the
inherent interest of the subjects on which he discoursed.
His books are not travel books in the hackneyed sense of the word. He
does not catalogue the things which should be seen, or describe in
guidebook fashion those objects which are starred by Baedeker. He does
not care to take us to see the things which "every traveler ought to
see." He specializes in the obscure and the little-known. He finds that
the beauty of out-of-the-way places and objects far from the beaten
track of tourist traffic is as great as can be found in famous spots,
and far more gratifying because of the fact that it can be observed in
solitude and enjoyed in moods undisturbed by the multitude.
His manner of depicting landscapes is not by meticulous description,
but by apparently casual touches of color, brilliantly illuminating what
might to the ordinary observer seem monotonous and colorless landscapes.
The inspired flash of description clings in the mind and gives an
unforgetable impression of landscape or architectural beauty. In Alsace
he saw everywhere the red-tiled roofs, the pink sandstone of the Vosges,
sharply contrasted against the green foliage of lush summer or the
golden light of the declining sun. In the heart of France, as indeed
also in Alsace, he sees, especially, architectural delights which are
unknown to the guidebook and the multitude.
In fact, it is with the eye of an architect that Monsieur Hallays has
traveled through the outer suburbs of Paris, to write the essays which
are included in this book. Everywhere he is impressed by the marvelous
perfection of French architectural styles at their best, as he has found
them in the regions which he traversed. He makes us see new beauty in
churches and châteaux which we might pass with a casual glance had not
his illuminating vision and description marked that which we might see
and wonder at.
The architectural settings, however, much as they may appeal to his
professional eye, are but the beautiful frames in which to set a
multitude of charming portraits of French worthies, from the most
famous to the most obscure. He knows his French literature, and more
particularly the memoirs and the letters which shed so vital a light
on men and motives. He has resurrected more than one character from
obscurity and forgetfulness. His pathetic picture of Bosc, the lover
of nature, choosing his grave in the woods which he loved so well, in
defiance of the immemorial custom of his race, will seem perhaps more
unusual to the European mind than to the American, for the New
England pioneer of necessity made his own family graveyard in the
most accessible spot, and these little plots on farms and in woods
dot American soil. His portrait of the mystic Martin of Gallardon is
particularly timely in this era of revival of interest in psychical
research.
Written, as these essays were, through a series of years, his
descriptions of Soissons and the valley of the Oise tell us of
since-devastated regions as they were before the whirlwind and havoc of
war swept over heroic France. Doubtless the visitor today would find but
a memory of some of the architectural beauties here described.
Their memories are imperishable, and not the least of the merits of the
book is that the guns of the Hun cannot destroy the written records of
this beauty, though they may have blasted from the earth the stones and
mortar which composed those sacred edifices.
Frank Roy Fraprie.
Boston, June 23,1920.
The SPELL of the HEART of FRANCE
[Illustration: 0025]
I. MAINTENON
[Illustration: 0029]
|THERE is in _L' Education Sentimentale_ a brief dialogue which recurs
to my memory whenever I enter a historic home.
Frédéric and Rosanette were visiting the château of Fontainebleau. As
they stood before the portrait of Diane de Poitiers as Diana of the
Nether World, Frédéric "looked tenderly at Rosanette and asked her if
she would not like to have been this woman."
"'What woman?'
"'Diane de Poitiers!'
"He repeated: 'Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II.'
"She answered with a little, 'Ah!' That was all.
"Her silence proved clearly that she knew nothing and did not
understand, so to relieve her embarrassment he said to her,
"'Perhaps you are tired?'
"'No, no, on the contrary!'
"And, with her chin raised, casting the vaguest of glances around her,
Rosanette uttered this remark:
"'That brings back memories!'
"There could be perceived on her countenance, however, an effort, an
intention of respect...
"That brings back memories." Rosanette does not know exactly what they
are. But her formula translates--and with what sincerity!--the charm
of old châteaux and old gardens about which floats the odor of past
centuries. She "yawns immoderately" while breathing this vague
perfume, because she is unfamiliar with literature. Nevertheless,
she instinctively feels and respects the melancholy and distinguished
reveries of those who know the history of France. And besides, if these
latter in their turn desired to express the pleasure which they feel in
visiting historic places, I would defy them to find any other words than
those which Rosanette herself uses.
This pleasure is one of the most lively which can be felt by a loiterer
who loves the past, but whose listless imagination requires, to set
it in motion, the vision of old architecture and the suggestion
of landscapes. It is also one of those which can most easily be
experienced. The soil of France is so impregnated with history!
Everywhere, "that brings back memories."
It is, therefore, to seek "memories" that I visited Maintenon and its
park on a clear and limpid October afternoon. I had previously read once
more the correspondence of Madame de Maintenon and run through a few
letters of Madame de Sévigné. My memory is somewhat less untrained than
that of Rosanette. But, nevertheless, I am startled, on the day when I
wish to learn again, to perceive how many things I have unlearned, if I
ever knew them.
*****
The Chateau of Maintenon dates from the sixteenth century. Since then
it has been continued and enlarged without rigorous following of the
original plan. It is built of stone and brick, worked and chiseled
like the jewels of the French Renaissance. Its two unsymmetrical wings
terminate, the one in a great donjon of stone, the other in a round
tower of brick. Some parts have been restored, others have preserved
their aspect of ancientness.... But here, as everywhere else, time has
performed its harmonizing work, and what the centuries have not yet
finished, the soft October light succeeds in completing. Diversity
of styles, discordances between different parts of the construction,
bizarre and broken lines traced against the sky by the inequalities of
the roofs, the turrets, the towers and the donjon, neither disconcert
nor shock us. All these things fuse into a robust and elegant whole. The
very contrasts, born of chance, appear like the premeditated fancy of an
artist who conceived a work at once imposing and graceful. The artist is
the autumn sun.
Before the chateau extends a great park which also offers singular
contrasts. Near the building are stiff parterres in the French style.
Beyond, a long canal, straight and narrow, between two grassy banks,
is pure Le Nôtre. But, on both sides of the canal, these stiff designs
disappear and are replaced by vast meadows, fat and humid, sown with
admirable clumps of trees; Le Nôtre never passed here. Nature and
the seventeenth century are now reconciled, and the park of Maintenon
presents that seductiveness common to so many old French parks which are
ennobled by their majestic remnants of the art of Versailles.
Its unusual beauty springs from the ruined aqueduct which crosses its
whole width. These immense arcades, half crumbled to ruin, clothed with
ivy and Virginia creeper, give a solemn melancholy to the spot. They
are the remains of the aqueduct which Louis XIV started to construct, to
bring to Versailles the waters of the Eure, a gigantic enterprise which
was one of the most disastrous of his reign. The gangs employed in this
work were decimated by terrible epidemics caused by the effluvia of the
broken soil. It is said that ten thousand men there met their death and
fifty million francs were wasted. War in 1688 interrupted these works,
"which," says Saint-Simon, "have not since been resumed; there remain of
them only shapeless monuments which will make eternal the memory of this
cruel folly." And, in 1687, Racine, visiting at Maintenon, described
to Boileau these arcades as "built for eternity!" In the eighteenth
century, the architects who were commissioned to construct the château
of Crécy for Madame de Pompadour came to seek materials in the ancient
domain of Madame de Maintenon.... These different memories are an
excellent theme for meditation upon the banks of the grand canal,
in whose motionless waters is reflected this prodigious romantic
decoration.
Within the château, we are allowed to visit the oratory, in which are
collected some elegant wood carvings of the sixteenth century; the
king's chamber, which contains some paintings of the seventeenth
century; a charming portrait of Madame de Maintenon in her youth and
another of Madame de Thianges, the sister of Madame de Montespan; and
lastly, the apartment of Madame de Maintenon.
What is called the apartment of Madame de Maintenon consists of two
narrow chambers, containing furniture of the seventeenth century; I
know not if these are originals or copies. Two portraits attract our
attention, one of Madame de Maintenon, the other of Charles X.
The portrait of Madame de Maintenon is a copy of that by Mignard in
the Louvre. "She is dressed in the costume of the Third Order of St.
Francis; Mignard has embellished her; but it lacks insipidity, flesh
color, whiteness, the air of youth; and without all these perfections it
shows us a face and an expression surpassing all that one can describe;
eyes full of animation, perfect grace, no finery and, with all this, no
portrait surpasses his." (Letter from Madame de Cou-langes to Madame
de Sévigné, October 26, 1694.) Madame de Coulanges does not consider as
finery the mantle of ermine, the royal mantle thrown over the shoulders
of the Franciscan sister.
[Illustration: 0035]
Louis XIV had required this of the painter, and it was one of the
rare occasions on which he almost officially admitted the mysterious
marriage. This portrait, in truth, is one of the best works of Mignard.
But, even without the witness of Madame de Coulanges, we would not have
doubted that the artist had embellished his model. In 1694, Madame de
Maintenon was fifty-nine.
As to the portrait of Charles X, it is placed here to call to memory
the fact that in 1830 the last of the Bourbons, flying from Rambouillet,
came hither, "in the midst of the dismal column which was scarcely
lighted by the veiled moon" (Chateaubriand), and that he found asylum
for a night in the chamber of Madame de Maintenon.
*****
It was on December 27, 1674, that Madame Scarron became owner of the
château, and the domain of Maintenon, for the sum of two hundred and
fifty thousand livres. Louis XIV gave her this present in recognition of
the care which she had given for five years to the children of Madame de
Montespan. At this time the mission of the governess, at first secret,
had become a sort of official charge. The illegitimate offspring had
been acknowledged in 1673. Madame Scarron had then left the
mysterious house in which she dwelt "at the very end of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain... quite near Vaugirard." She appeared at court. But she
had calculated the danger of her position; she dreamt of putting herself
out of reach of changes of fortune and of acquiring an "establishment."
The letters which she then addressed to her spiritual director, Abbé
Gobelin, were full of the tale of her fears and her sorrows. She desired
a piece of property to which she could retire to lead the life of
solitude and devotion, to which she then aspired. She finally obtained
from Madame de Montespan and the King the gift of Maintenon, and, two
months later, she wrote to her friend, Madame de Coulanges, her first
impressions as a landed proprietor:
"I am more impatient to give you news of Maintenon than you are to hear
them. I have been here two days which seemed only a moment; my heart is
fixed here. Do you not find it admirable that at my age I should attach
myself to these things like a child? The house is very beautiful: a
little too large for the way I propose to run it. It has very beautiful
surroundings, woodlands where Madame de Sévigné might dream of Madame
de Grignan very comfortably. I would like to live here; but the time for
that has not yet arrived."
It never came. Madame de Maintenon--the King had given this name to
Scarron's widow--remained at court to carry out her great purpose: the
conversion of Louis XIV. Not that this project was then clearly formed
in her mind. But, little by little, she saw her favor increase, the King
detach himself from Madame de Monte-span, and all things work together
to assure her victory, which was to be that of God. So it was necessary
for her to abandon her project of living in retirement, and to remain
at Versailles upon the field of battle. She had hours of weariness and
sadness; but, sustained by pride and devotion, she always returned to
this court life, which, as La Bruyère expresses it, is a "serious and
melancholy game which requires application."
At first it was necessary that she should struggle against the caprices,
the angers and the jealousies of Madame de Montespan; for a profound
aversion separated the two women. "It is a bitterness," says Madame de
Sévigné, "it is an antipathy, they are as far apart as white is from
black. You ask what causes that? It is because the friend (Madame
de Maintenon) has a pride which makes her revolt against the other's
orders. She does not like to obey. She will mind father, but not
mother." At one time, the preaching of Bourdaioue and the imprecations
of Bossuet had determined the King to break with Madame de Montespan
(during Lent of 1675), and, before departing for the campaign in
Flanders, Louis XIV had bidden farewell to the favorite in a glazed
room, under the eyes of the whole court. But when the King returned
the work of the bigots was in vain. Madame de Montespan regained her
ascendancy. "What triumph at Versailles! What redoubled pride! What a
solid establishment! What a Duchess of Valentinois! What a relish, even
because of distractions and absence! What a retaking of possession!" (No
one has expressed like Madame de Sévigné the dramatic aspect of these
spectacles of the court.) After this dazzling reentry into favor, every
one expected to see the position of Madame de Maintenon become less
favorable. But she had patience and talent. Her moderation and good
sense charmed the King, who wearied of the passionate outbursts of his
mistress and who was soon to be troubled by the frightful revelations of
the La Voisin affair. It is true that the Montespan was succeeded by a
new favorite, Mlle, de Fontanges. But she was "as beautiful as an angel
and as foolish as a basket." She was little to be feared; her reign was
soon over. And Madame de Maintenon continued to make the King acquainted
with "a new country which was unknown to him, which is the commerce of
friendship and conversation, without constraint and without evasion."
But how many efforts and cares there still were before the day of
definite triumph, that is, until the secret marriage!
In going through her correspondence, we find very few letters dated from
Maintenon. During the ten years which it took her to conquer and fix the
King's affection, she made only rare and brief visits to her château.
It is true that Louis XIV had commissioned Le Nôtre "to adjust this
beautiful and ugly property." The domain had been increased by new
acquisitions. But her position as governess, and later when she was
lady of the bed-chamber to the Dauphiness, the wishes of Louis XIV kept
Madame de Maintenon at court.
[Illustration: 0041]
The only time when she remained several months at Maintenon seems to
have been in the spring of 1779; Madame de Montespan, whom the King was
neglecting at the moment for Mile, de Ludres, had come to beg shelter of
the friend of her friend, in order to be delivered under her roof of her
sixth child, Mlle, de Blois. This memory has a special value, if we
wish to become well acquainted with the characteristic morality of the
seventeenth century. Observe, in fact, that this child was adulterous on
both sides; that Madame de Montespan, abandoned, could only hate Madame
de Maintenon, more in favor than ever; that, five years later, Madame
de Maintenon was to marry Louis XIV, and finally that, in spite of this
curious complaisance, Madame de Maintenon had none the less the most
sure and vigilant conscience in regard to everything which touched on
honor.... It is most likely that others will discover some day terrible
indelicacies in acts which we today think very innocent. There is an
evolution in casuistry.
From the epoch of the foundation of Saint Cyr, Madame de Maintenon had
less time than ever for her property. She lived her life elsewhere,
divided between the King and the House of St. Louis. When her niece
married the Duke of Ayen she gave her Maintenon, but reserved the income
for herself but it was to St. Cyr that she retired and there she died.
*****
Under the great trees of the park, where the verdure is already touched
with pale gold, in the long avenue which is called the Alley of Racine,
because the poet is supposed to have planned Athalie there (I do not
know if tradition speaks the truth), I recall that letter to Madame
de Coulanges which I transcribed a little way back. "My heart is fixed
here," said Madame de Main-tenon. But, the more I think of it the less
it seems to me that her heart was ever capable of becoming attached to
the beauty of things. The "very beautiful surroundings" of Maintenon
pleased her because this château was the proof of the King's favor,
because, after the miseries of her childhood, after the years of trials
and anxieties, she finally felt that her "establishment" was a fact. But
there is something like an accent of irony in her way of vaunting the
"woodlands where Madame de Sévigné might dream of Madame de Grignan very
comfortably," for there never was a woman who dreamed less and scorned
dreaming more than this beautiful tutoress, possessed of good sense,
sound reason and a poor imagination.
She was very beautiful and remained so even to an advanced age. She was
about fifty when the Ladies of Saint Cyr drew this marvelous portrait
of her: "She had a voice of the most agreeable quality, an affectionate
tone, an open and smiling countenance, the most natural gestures of
the most beautiful hands, eyes of fire, such affectionate and regular
motions of a free figure that she outshone the most beautiful women
of the court.... Her first glance was imposing and seemed to conceal
severity.... Her smile and her voice opened the cloud...." (This is
better than all the Mignards.) Her conversation was delightful: Madame
de Sévigné bears witness to it, and that at a time when her testimony
cannot be questioned, since nothing could then cause her to foresee the
prodigious destiny of Madame Scarron. She had a sovereign grace in her
apparel, although the material of her clothing was always of extreme
simplicity; and this amazed her confessor, the excellent and respectful
Abbé Gobelin, who said to her: "When you kneel before me I see a mass of
drapery falling at my feet with you, which is so graceful that I find it
almost too much for me."
She knew that she was irresistibly beautiful, and her confessor had
assuredly taught her nothing by telling her that her commonest
robes fell into folds about her with royal elegance. There was no
coquettishness in her.
No one today can have any doubt of her integrity and her virtue.
Bussy-Rabutin has certified this and he was not accustomed to give
such a brevet without good reasons. But, to refute the calumnies of
Saint-Simon, nothing more is required than to read the letters of Madame
de Maintenon. They have a turn and an accent which cannot deceive.
The whole rule of her conduct was double. She was virtuous from devotion
and from care for her reputation. The second sentiment was certainly
much more important to her than the first. She has herself confessed it:
"I would like to have done for God all that I have done in the world to
keep my reputation."
[Illustration: 0047]
"I wanted to be somebody of importance," she said. This explains
everything: her ambition, her prudence, her moderation and her scruples.
She cares little for the advantages which her high position could give
her; she seeks neither titles, nor honors, nor donations. She wishes for
the approbation of honest men; she desires "good glory, _bonne gloire_,"
as Fénelon has expressed it. We find in her, mingled in proportions
which it is impossible to measure, a passion for honor quite in the
manner of Corneille, and a much less noble apprehension of what people
will say about her. But if this is truly her character--and, when
we have read her letters, it is impossible to retain a doubt on this
point--she is incapable of the weaknesses of which she has been accused.
"I have a desire to please and to be well thought of, which puts me
on my guard against all my passions." That is truth itself, and good
psychology. But even more fine and more penetrating appears to me the
remark once made about Madame de Maintenon by a woman of intellect:
"This is what has passed through my mind... and has made me believe that
all the evil they have said about her is quite false: it is that if she
had had something to reproach herself about in regard to her morals, if
she had had weaknesses of a certain kind, she would have had to fight
less against vainglory. Humility would have been as natural to her as it
was-; foreign to her, I mean in the bottom of her heart; for externally
every appearance denied that secret pride of which she complains to her
spiritual director. It was therefore necessary that this should have
been a secret esteem for herself. Now how could she esteem herself, with
the uprightness which was part of her, if she had not known herself to
be estimable, she who in her conversations paints so well those whose
reputation has been tarnished by evil conduct.... I do not know if my
thought is good; but it has pleased me." Thus in the eighteenth century,
Madame de Louvigny wrote to La Beaumelle, the first historian of Madame
de Maintenon. The analysis is just and delicate.
One of the grievances of Saint-Simon against Madame de Maintenon is
the manner in which she used her credit to displace certain prelates of
noble birth, preferring to them "the crass ignorance of the Sulpicians,
their supreme platitude... the filthy beards of Saint-Sulpice." Chance
has brought to my notice a copy of the letters of Madame de Maintenon
which belonged to Scherer and which he annotated when reading it. I find
there this remark penciled upon a page: "Neither Jesuit, nor Jansenist,
but Sulpician." It is impossible to give a better definition of the
devotion of Madame de Maintenon. She had the reasonable piety which is
the mark of Saint Sulpice. From her family and from her infancy she had
preserved a sort of remnant of Calvinism: she did not like the mass
and was pleased with psalm singing. This was to estrange her from the
Jesuits. On the other hand, Jansenism had an air of independence, almost
of revolt, which must have displeased her intelligence, with its love of
order. She was wisely and irreproachably orthodox. Her grave, tranquil,
active piety reveals a conscience without storms and an imagination
without fever.
Thus she had great pride and little vanity, great devotion and little
fervor. She had much common sense in everything. She loved her glory
passionately and her God seriously. She was charitable, as was enjoined
by the religion which she practiced with a submissive heart. But we know
neither a movement of sensitiveness nor an outburst of tenderness in her
life. She had a very lofty soul, a very clear intelligence, a very rigid
will. She was desperately dry.
Did this Sulpician, spiritual, cold and ambitious, ever feel the charm
of the great trees of her park? I doubt it.
$II. LA FERTÉ-MILON
|RACINE was about twelve years old when he left La Ferté-Milon, to go
first to the college of Beauvais and later to Port-Royal des Champs. He
passed his infancy there in the house of his paternal grandmother, Marie
des Moulins, the wife of Jean Racine, controller of the salt warehouse;
he was thirteen months old when his mother died and three years old at
the death of his father. Of these early years we know nothing except
that the grandmother loved the orphan more than any of her own children,
an affection of which Racine retained the most tender memory.
[Illustration: 0053]
He later often returned to the town of his birth, where his sister Marie
had remained and had married Antoine Rivière. The two families remained
united; Racine handled the interests of his brother-in-law at Paris; the
Rivières sent Racine skylarks and cheeses; and when Racine's children
were ill, they were sent to their aunt to be cared for in the open air.
And these were almost all the bonds between Racine and La Ferté-Milon.
It is therefore probable that almost nothing at La Ferté-Milon today
will awaken reminiscences of the poet. However, let us seek.
At the exit from the station a long street, a sort of _faubourg_ of low
houses, with their naïve signs swinging in the wind, leads us to the
bridge across the Ourcq. On the opposite bank, the little old town with
its little old houses clambers up the abrupt slope of a hill which is
crowned by the formidable ruin of the stronghold. Here and there, at the
water's edge are remnants of walls, towers and terraced gardens, which,
with the meadows and the poplars of the valley, compose a ravishing
landscape.
Once across the bridge, behold Racine. It is a statue by David d'Angers.
It is backed by the mayoralty and surrounded by a portico. Racine wears
a great wig, which is not surprising; but, notwithstanding his great
wig, he is half naked, holding up with his hand a cloth which surrounds
his body and forms "harmonious" folds. It is Racine at the bath. Near
him stands a cippus, on which are inscribed the names of his dramatic
works, from _Athalie to Les frères ennemis_, the title of which latter
is half concealed by the inevitable laurels.
While I was contemplating this academic but ridiculous image, a peasant,
carrying a basket on his arm, approached me and delivered the following
discourse: "This is Jean Racine, born in 1639, died in 1699. And you
read upon this marble the list of his dramatic works. He was bom at La
Ferté-Milon and I have at home parchments where one may see the names of
the persons of his family; I possess also his baptismal font. I am,
so to speak, the keeper of the archives of La Ferté.... The _Comédie
française_ will come here April 23.... Racine had two boys and five
girls.... There was a swan in his coat of arms; the swan is the symbol
of purity. Fénelon, Bishop of Cambrai, has been compared to a swan.
Fénelon, born in 1651 and dead in 1715, is the author of _Télémaque_ and
of the _Maximes des Saints_. This last work embroiled him with Jacques
Bénigne Bossuet, in Latin Jacobus Benignus, Bishop of Meaux, who wrote
_Oraisons funèbres and the Discours sur V histoire universelle_, which
he was unfortunately unable to finish.... My name is Bourgeois Parent,
and here is my address. And you, what is your name? You would not belong
to the _Comédie française?_" All this uttered in the voice of a scholar
who has learned his lesson by heart, with sly and crafty winks.... I
thank this bystander for his erudition; I admit humbly that I do
not belong to the _Comédie française_ and I take leave, not without
difficulty, of this extraordinary "Ra-cinian," who truly has the genius
of transition, in the manner of Petit-Jean.
In what house was Racine born? The accepted tradition is that his mother
was brought to bed at No. 3, Rue de la Pescherie (now Rue Saint-Vaast);
in this house lived the Sconin couple, the father and mother of Madame
Racine. The old house has been demolished, and there remains of it
nothing more than a pretty medallion of stone which represents the
_Judgment of Paris_. This is inserted above a door in the garden of the
new house. But, in the same street, there stands another house (No. 14)
which belonged to the paternal grandparents of Jean Racine; it is here,
according to other conjectures, that the author of _Athalie_ was born.
And these two houses are not the only ones at La Ferté which dispute the
honor of having seen the birth of Racine.... I will not get mixed up
in the search for the truth. I have heard that the people of Montauban
recently had recourse to an ingenious means of ending a quarrel of the
same kind. No one knew in which house Ingres had been born; a furious
controversy had arisen between various proprietors of real estate. It
was ended by a referendum. Universal suffrage gave its decision. Now the
question is decided, irrevocably.
[Illustration: 0059]
There is another monument to the poet. Behind the apse of the church, in
a little square, on top of a column, is perched an old bust more or
less roughly repaired; at its foot has been placed a tawdry cast-iron
hydrant. This is called the Racine Fountain. Decidedly La Ferté is a
poor place of pilgrimage: few relics, and the images of the saint are
not beautiful!
Fortunately, to recompense the pilgrim, there are in the two churches
precious stained glass windows of the sixteenth century; those of Notre
Dame, despite grievous restorations, are brilliant in coloring and
free in design. The _Saint Hubert_ is a good picture of almost Germanic
precision, and, above the right-hand altar, the portraits of the donors
and their children are natural and graceful. Above all, there is the
admirable façade of the old castle of Louis of Orleans, an enormous
crenelated fortress, flanked with towers, whose naked grandeur is set
off by sculptures, marvelous but mutilated, alas! There are statues of
armed champions framed in elegant foliage, and, above the arch of
the great door, the celebrated _Coronation of the Virgin_, one of the
masterpieces of French sculpture; a cast of it can be studied at the
Trocadero, and there we can admire at full leisure the truth of the
attitudes and the freedom of the draperies. But no one can imagine the
beauty of this composition, unless he has seen it relieved against and
shining from the ferocious wall of the citadel, colored with the golden
green of mosses, while tufts of yellow wallflowers, growing among the
delicate carvings of the wide frame, give an exquisite sumptuousness to
the whole decoration.
Returning to the terrace on the other side of the castle, which
dominates the houses, the towers and the gardens of the village, I find
myself before the framework of a great tent which is being erected for
the approaching performance by the Comédie française, and find myself
brought back from the Middle Ages to Racine. These juxtapositions no
longer surprise us, since we are now so accustomed to ramble through
history and literature as through a great second-hand store, stopping at
all the curiosities which amuse our eclectic taste. I imagine, however,
that a man of the seventeenth century, a contemporary of Racine, would
have been stupified to think that any one could enjoy the verses of
Bérénice and at the same time be sensitive to the charm of the old
Gothic images, carved upon the wall of this "barbarous" donjon. Time
has done its work; it has effaced the prejudices of centuries; it has
allowed us to perceive that the sculptor of the Coronation of the Virgin
and the poet who wrote Bérénice were, after all, sons of the same race
and servants of the same ideal. No, this is not a vain dream; there
is something Racinian in the statues of La Ferté-Milon. They possess
purity, nobility and elegance. Has not this Virgin, kneeling before the
throne of the Lord, while two angels ceremoniously hold up the train
of her royal mantle, has she not, I say, the attitude and the touching
grace of Racine's Esther at the feet of Ahasuerus?
At the edge of this terrace, I have before me the delightful landscape
of the little hills of the Ourcq valley, and, as I contemplate the soft
and beautiful undulations covered by the forest of Retz, I am more and
more struck by the harmony of this charming spot.
I think of the pages which Taine placed at the beginning of his essay
on La Fontaine, in which he discovers in the French landscape the very
qualities of the Gallic mind. You remember this picture of the land of
Champagne: "The mountains had become hills; the woods were no longer
more than groves.... Little brooks wound among bunches of alders with
gracious smiles.... All is medium-sized here, tempered, inclined rather
toward delicacy than toward strength." How exact all this is! There is a
perfect concordance between the genius of La Fontaine and the aspect of
the country of his birth. In the valley of the Marne, if we follow one
of those long highways which stretch, straight and white, between two
ranks of trembling poplars, it seems unnatural not to see the animals
leave the fields and come to talk to us upon the roadway.
These French landscapes have still another sort of beauty, and, in the
country of Racine, this beauty is more striking than elsewhere; its
design has an incomparable grace and nobleness. The fines of the
different planes intermingle without ever breaking one another. The
undulations unfold with a caressing, almost musical, slowness. These
hillocks which surround La Ferté-Milon have, in truth, the sweetness of
a verse of _Bérénice_. They have the flexibility of rhythm of a chorus
from _Esther_:
Just as a docile brook
Obeys the hand which turns aside its course,
And, allowing the aid of its waters to be divided,
Renders a whole field fertile;
Oh, God, Thou sovereign master of our wills,
The hearts of kings he thus within Thy hand.
We must repeat these verses upon the terrace of La Ferté-Milon, at the
foot of which the Ourcq ramifies among the gardens and the meadows; and
we must follow upon the horizon the elegant sinuosity of the low hills,
to appreciate the mysterious and subtle harmony which was established
for life between the imagination of Racine and the sweet countryside of
his infancy.
I did not wish to leave the town of Racine without following the
Faubourg de Saint-Vaast up to the wooded hillside where the Jansenists
who took refuge at La Ferté-Milon often came to pray. In 1638, the
recluses of Port-Royal had been dispersed; Lancelot had taken refuge at
La Ferté-Milon, with the parents of one of his pupils, Nicolas Yitart
(the Vitarts were relatives of the Racines); then M. Antoine Le Maître
and M. de Sericourt had come to join him. They long led a life of
complete seclusion in the little house of the Vitarts; but in the summer
of 1639 they sometimes decided to go out after supper. Then they went
into the neighboring wood, "upon the mountain," which overlooks the
town, and there they conversed of good things. They never spoke to
anybody; but when they returned at nine o'clock, walking in single file
and telling their beads, the townsfolk, seated before their doors, rose
in respect and kept silence as they passed. (It is still easy to imagine
this admirable scene in the little streets of La Ferté; the architecture
has changed so little!) The good odor, as Lancelot calls it, which was
spread by the three Jansenists, remained as a living influence in the
little town. And this sojourn of the hermits brought Port-Royal near to
the Racine family. The sister of the poet's grandmother was already
cellaress at the abbey; his aunt will later take the veil; his
grandmother will end her life at Port-Royal des Champs; and the young
Jean Racine (he entered the world only after the hermits had departed)
will have for masters Lancelot, Le Maître and Hamon.... Later he will
make a scandal at Port-Royal; he will rally his masters. But, in spite
of this, their lessons will remain ineffaceable; and the author of the
Cantiques spirituelles will desire to be buried at the foot of Hamon's
grave. On what did the destiny of the poet depend? Perhaps Esther and
Athalie would never have been written if these three hermits, fleeing
from persecution, had not come one day to "Jansenize" La Ferté and to
converse about good things upon the "Mountain," as they called this
pretty hillock of the Valois, with its soft and shadowy slopes.
III, MEAUX AND GERMIGNY
|WHILE the glacial downpours of this endless winter continue, I find
pleasure in running over and completing the notes collected in the
course of a stroll which I undertook on a warm and charming day last
autumn. In weather as bad as this one can ramble only in memory, unless
desirous of catching influenza.
*****
[Illustration: 0067]
I went to Meaux and to Germigny-l'Evêque to discover, either at the
episcopal residence or in Bossuet's country house, whatever may still
recall the memory of the "Eagle."
To tell the truth, it was not the "Eagle" who interested me on that day,
but the man himself. I had recently read the remarkable portrait which
forms the close of the beautiful study of M. Rebelliau, those pages
which are so vivid and in which is sketched with so much relief and
truth the figure "of an everyday Bossuet, sweet and simple." [1] It
seemed to me that nowhere could this Bossuet be better evoked than in
the garden of the bishop's house at Meaux and in the park of Germigny.
"_In Germiniaco nostro_," we read at the end of the Latin letters of "M.
de Meaux."
I recalled, besides, with what surprise I had read the _Mémoires_ of
Abbé Le Dieu, those notes, sometimes puerile, but so touching in their
familiar simplicity, which reveal to us a Bossuet very different from
that of Bausset. This cardinal, although he composed his book from the
manuscripts of Abbé Le Dieu, could not resign himself to the simplicity
of the faithful secretary. He has doubtless collected everything; he has
said everything; but he has thought it his duty to ascribe to his
model a continuous majesty and an inexhaustible pride. He has drawn the
Bossuet of Rigaud's portrait.
Shall we cite an example of the way in which Cardinal de Bausset
transposes the descriptions of Abbé Le Dieu? Bossuet invited his priests
to say the mass quickly: "_It is necessary to go roundly_, for fear of
tiring the people." This is the phrase reported by Abbé Le Dieu. And
this is how Cardinal de Bausset translates the expression to make it
more suitable to the gravity of the author of the _Oraisons funèbres_:
"It is necessary to perform all the ceremonies with dignity," said
Bossuet, "but with suitable speed. It is not necessary to tire the
people." A simple shading; but a characteristic trait is effaced.
*****
I commenced my pilgrimage by a visit to the cathedral of Meaux.
"He had taken possession of the bishopric of Meaux on Sunday, February
8, 1682, and, on Ash Wednesday in the following week, preaching in his
cathedral to signalize the beginning of Lent, he declared that he
would devote himself entirely to his flock and would consecrate all his
talents to their instruction. He promised to preach on every occasion
when he should pontificate; and that no business, however pressing,
should ever prevent him from coming to celebrate the high, feasts with
his people and to preach the word of God to them. He never failed in
this, not even to exercise his office of Grand Almoner. He took leave of
the princesses to whom he had been attached with much respect, and left
to others the charge of administering Holy Communion to them on the high
feasts." (_Mémoires_ of Abbé Le Dieu, Volume I, page 182.)
[Illustration: 0071]
The pulpit from which Bossuet preached so many sermons no longer exists.
Its panels have been found and reassembled to form a new pulpit.
Otherwise, in this beautiful Gothic cathedral there is nothing to arouse
the emotions or to speak to the imagination. Externally and internally,
all has been "freshly restored." The soul of the past has departed from
it.
There is soon to be placed under the roof of the church a commemorative
monument which was recently exhibited in the Grand Palace, in the midst
of an amusing crowd of statues. I was told that the authorities have not
yet selected the place which this monument will occupy in the cathedral.
How admirable! The monument has been conceived and executed for an
undetermined position! This formidable pile of sculpture has been
treated like a simple mantelpiece ornament.... But let us pass; this
does not concern in the least the memory of Bossuet.
* * * * *
In the bishopry, the episcopal apartments are on the second floor.
Bossuet did not live there very much. He voluntarily gave up the house
to his nephews and his niece, Madame Bossuet. His family had undertaken
the management of the household; he was a spendthrift and gave little
attention to the cares of daily life, devoting all his time to his
formidable labors. "I would lose more than half of my mental ability,"
he wrote to Marshal de Beliefonds, "if I restricted myself in my
household expenses."
Madame Bossuet knew how to take advantage of this weakness of her uncle,
inability to take care of his income. She had become mistress of the
episcopal mansion; she led a worldly life there; she entertained; she
gave suppers and concerts.
During Lent of 1704, Bossuet lay at death's door. The terrible agonies
of illness had caused him to lose sleep. See what happened just outside
of the room where he lay in agony: "This evening Madame Bossuet gave an
entertainment to the Bishop of Troyes, Madame de La Briffe, the dowager,
Madame Amelot, President Larcher, and other male and female company, to
the number of eight. There was a magnificent repast for those who were
fasting and those who were not, with all the noise which attends such
assemblies, and yet this went on in the very antechamber of M. de
Meaux and in his hearing, when he longed for sleep with the greatest
inquietude." (Mémoires of Abbé le Dieu, Volume III, page 74.)
It is easy to understand that Bossuet did not find in such surroundings
the peace and quiet necessary for his immense labors. He had to find a
retreat where he could escape the sounds of feasting and conversation
which filled the episcopal house.
Let us cross the garden which was once laid out by Le Nôtre. Beyond
the flower beds, overlooking the ancient ramparts of the town of
Meaux, an avenue of clipped yews offers a sure and austere asylum for
meditation. This was, it is said, the bishop's promenade. At the very
end, upon the platform of a former bastion, a little pavilion served
as his study. Its old wainscot-ings have disappeared, but the original
division of the pavilion into two rooms has remained; one contained his
bed, the other his worktable.
Here Bossuet shut himself up every evening. In the middle of the night,
after sleeping four or five hours, he waked up of his own accord, for
he was master of his hours of sleep. He found his desk in readiness,
his armchair in position, his books piled upon chairs, his portfolio of
papers, his pens, his writing pad and his lighted lamp; and he commenced
to think and to write. On winter nights he buried himself to his waist
in a bearskin bag. After a vigil of three hours, he said his matins and
returned to slumber.
While, in the silence of the night, M. de Meaux wrote against heretics
and prayed for them, armed himself for the eternal combat and worked
for the welfare of the souls which were in his charge, the salons of the
episcopal house were made gay by lights and violins.
*****
Bossuet remained faithfully in his diocese during the twenty-two years
that he was bishop of Meaux.
But he always preferred to live in his country house at Germigny rather
than in his episcopal palace.
Two leagues across a pleasant and slightly undulating country, the road
crosses the Marne by a stone bridge. In the seventeenth century there
was only a ferry. On the left bank appears the little village of
Germigny with its few houses dotted pleasantly along the hillside. The
landscape has the grace and freshness which is characteristic of the
whole valley of the Marne: a horizon of tiny hills, humble and smiling,
a fertile and regularly cultivated plain, an old mill lost among the
willows, a line of great poplars, a sluggish, grassy rivulet, resigned
to continual detours, and finally, spread over all these things, a
somewhat humid light which imparts to them a delicate charm--a lovable
spectacle of which the eye cannot tire, since its subtle seductiveness
lies wholly in the changes of the height and the flight of the clouds.
From the twelfth century, the pleasure house of the Bishops of Meaux was
at Germigny, on the banks of the Marne. Kings often stopped there when
they came to hunt in the neighboring forests. Bossuet's predecessor, M.
de Ligny, spent fifty thousand crowns in transforming the old house into
a veritable château. The domain was sold at the time of the Revolution.
But Msr. de Briey has bought back a part of it and has thus renewed the
tradition of the former bishops of Meaux.
What remains of the old château? The park has been cut up. Of the
gardens a lawn and a few alleys remain. The buildings have been ruined.
A dovecote and an old turret are still standing, and the wreckers have
respected the long terrace whose foot was formerly bathed by the Marne;
it is today separated from the river by a highway. This is shaded by
great trees, a charming place which seems to have been made especially
for the meditative promenade of an orator or the relaxation of a
theologian.
Bossuet loved Germigny. In his letters he often celebrated the charm of
"his solitude." He even sung it in Latin in a hymn which he composed in
honor of Saint Barthélémy, the patron of his parish. Every year he came
to his country house to realize that dream of his youth which he had
ingenuously expressed in a sermon: "What an agreeable diversion to
contemplate how the works of nature advance to perfection by insensible
increase! How much pleasure we can have in observing the success of the
trees which we have grafted in a garden, the growth of the wheat, the
flow of a river!" For he was sensitive to the spectacles of nature.
"Do you desire to see a sight worthy of your eyes? Chant with David:
'When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars, which thou hast ordained.' Listen to the word of Jesus Christ who
said to you: 'Consider the lily of the field and the flowers which pass
in a day. Verily, verily, I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory
and with that beautiful diadem with which his mother crowned his head,
was not arrayed like one of these.' See these rich carpets with which
the earth covers itself in the spring. How petty is everything in
comparison with these great works of God! There we see simplicity joined
with grandeur, abundance, profusion, inexhaustible riches, which were
created by a word and which a word sustains...."