a lovely round hall, decorated by beautiful carved wainscotings, removed
from one of the hunting lodges of the forest of Dreux. The other rooms
are ornamented with Chinese silks and lacquers, with Beauvais and
Gobelins tapestries, with precious furniture and various hunting
pictures. We see there also two modern paintings by Olivier Merson, one
representing Théophile and Sylvie, the other Mlle, de Clermont and M. de
Melun; they recall two famous chapters of the chronicles of Chantilly.
The first belongs to history, for nothing is more certain than the
misadventure of the unfortunate Théophile. The second is known to us
only from a novel of Madame de Genlis in which, for lack of documents,
it is difficult to decide which parts are due to the imagination of
the author; we might even inquire if this moving and tragic anecdote is
anything more than simple romantic fiction.
Of these two stories, let us call up first the most distant, that which
gave to the charming wood of Chantilly the adornment of a delightful
name and of some elegant verses.
*****
In 1623, when Théophile composed his odes on the _Maison de Sylvie_,
Chantilly belonged to Henri II de Montmorency, grandson of the grand
constable Anne de Montmorency, and to his wife Marie Felice Orsini.
Their tragic destiny is well known, how the Duke, involved by Gaston
d'Orléans in a foolish prank, lost his head in 1632 and how the Duchess
went to hide her tears and her mourning with the Visitandines de
Moulins. But at this time they lived happy and powerful in the most
beautiful of the residences of France and everything smiled on their
youth; he was twenty-nine years old; she was twenty-four. Louis XIII
continued toward Henri II the great friendship which Henri IV had always
witnessed toward his "crony," Henri I de Montmorency. Like his father he
often came to Chantilly.
The chateau, built by Pierre Chambiges for the constable Anne de
Montmorency, on the foundations of the old feudal fortress, decorated by
the greatest artists of the Renaissance, was still being embellished day
by day: the original gardens, laid out to the west of the château and
consisting of a few flower beds, had been enlarged. In this magnificent
house the Duke held a most brilliant court: he was, says Tallemant,
"brave, rich, gallant, liberal, danced well, sat well on horseback and
always had men of brains in his employ, who made verses for him,
who conversed with him about a million things, and who told him what
decisions it was necessary to make on the matters which happened in
those times."
Among these "men of brains," who ate the bread of the Duc de
Montmorency, the most celebrated was the poet Théophile de Viau, a
native of Clairac sur le Lot, a Huguenot and a "cadet of Gascony."
Under Henri IV, men of his religion and of his country were well
received at court: it was under "the Béarnais" that Paris commenced to
dislike them. The young man from the region of Agen had therefore left
his little paternal manor and settled in the capital to seek his fortune
when he was twenty years old, in 1610. The assassination of the King
must have shaken his hopes for a moment. But Théophile was soon assured
of the protection of the Duc de Montmorency; he found means to retain
it in the midst of the frightful catastrophes of his existence. In
any case, this sort of domesticity did not weigh too heavily on his
shoulders, for he said to his master:
Now, I am very happy in your obedience.
In my captivity I have much license,
And any other than you would end by tiring
Of giving so much freedom to a serf so libertine.
The fame of the poet Théophile has suffered much from two lines by
Boileau:
... To prefer Théophile to Malherbe or to Raoan
And the false money of Tasso to the pure gold of Virgil.
So, when the Romanticists began to revive the classics and to discover
far-distant ancestors in old French literature, they thought of
Théophile: Boileau himself pointed him out to them. In Les Grotesques,
Gautier rehabilitated him and called him a "truly great poet," esteeming
that one cannot make bad verses when one bears the glorious Christian
name of Théophile. To completely demonstrate this to us, he quoted
several pieces by his namesake which he abridged and even tastefully
corrected--a stratagem which revolted the scrupulous Sainte-Beuve. To
tell the truth, now that we are free from romantic prejudices, it is
difficult for us not to think that on this occasion, as on many others,
Boileau was right. Among the poets of the time of Louis XIII, Théophile
is perhaps the one whom we now read with the least pleasure. We find in
him neither the beauty, the force and the style of Malherbe, nor that so
lively sentiment for nature which gives so much value to various bits
by Racan, nor the vigorous local color of Saint Amant. He shows a facile
and sometimes brilliant imagination; but he lacks taste and restraint
in a continuous and desolating fashion. La Bruyère has finely expressed
this in comparing Théophile with Malherbe: "The other (Théophile),
without choice, without exactness, with a free and unequal pen,
overloads his descriptions too much, emphasises the details; he makes a
dissection; sometimes he paints, he exaggerates, he overpasses the truth
of nature; he makes a romance of it."
Théophile, who had a brilliant mind, rendered justice to Malherbe; but
he decorated with the name of originality his distaste for labor, his
scorn of rules:
Let him who will imitate the marvels of others.
Malherbe has done very well, but he did it for himself.
*****
I love his fame and not his lesson.
*****
I know some who make verses only in the modern fashion,
Who seek Phobus at mid-day with a lantern,
Who scratch their French so much that they tear it all to tatters,
Blaming everything which is easy only to their own taste. *****
Rules displease me, I write confusedly;
A good mind never does anything except easily.
* * * * *
I wish to make verses which shall not be constrained,
To send forth my mind beyond petty designs,
To seek out secret places where nothing displeases me,
To meditate at leisure, to dream quite at my ease,
To waste a whole hour in admiring myself in the water,
To hear, as if in a dream, the flowing of a brook,
To write within a wood, to interrupt myself, to be silent by myself,
To compose a quatrain without thinking of doing it.
Here are eight lines which make us think of La Fontaine, in accent
and in sentiment. But we would be embarrassed if we had to find twenty
others as well turned in all the works of Théophile. What emphatic odes!
What fastidious elegies! What feeble sonnets! Without the divine gift,
this kind of nonchalance leads the poet either to platitudes or to
disorder. Théophile is not lyrical. Here and there, by fits and starts,
a few striking images appear, but the strophes come forth without grace,
with terrible monotony. His love poems are frozen: gallantry mingled
with sensuality takes the place of passion with him, and while it
sometimes inspires a few lines which are happy by reason of gentleness
or voluptuousness, most often they are poor nonsense. His best odes,
like Matin or Solitude, whence we may select a few delicately shaded
lines, repel us as a whole because of his fashion of painting too
minutely, too dryly, too exactly....
[Illustration: 0359]
So, what caused the great fame of Théophile in the seventeenth century
and later gave him the indulgence of the Romanticists, was much less his
poetic talent than the renown of his adventures. As Gautier took care to
inform us, this poor devil was bor "under a mad star"; he knew exile and
prison, he just escaped being burned alive for atheism and libertinage.
In a page of charming prose (Théophile's prose is better than his verse)
the poet has told us his taste and his philosophy: "One must have a
passion not only for men of virtue, for beautiful women, but also for
all sorts of beautiful things. I love a fine day, clear fountains, the
sight of mountains, the spread of a wide plain, beautiful forests; the
ocean, its calms, its swells, its rocky shores; I love also all which
more particularly touches the senses: music, flowers, fine clothes,
hunting, blooded horses, sweet smells, good cheer; but my desires cling
to all these only as a pleasure and not as a labor; when one or another
of these diversions entirely occupies a soul, it passes from affection
to madness and brutality; the strongest passion which I can have never
holds me so strongly that I cannot quit it in a day. If I love, it is as
much as I am loved, and, as neither nature nor fortune has given me much
power to please, this passion with me has never continued very long
either its pleasure or its pain. I cling more closely to study and to
good cheer than to all the rest. Books have sometimes tired me, but they
have never worn me out, and wine has often rejoiced me, but never
intoxicated...." [Once more the memory of La Fontaine crosses our minds
and we recall _The Hymn of Passion_ at the end of _Psyche_.] Théophile
is thus a perfect Epicurean by birth and by principle, an Epicurean in
the diversity and the brevity of his enjoyments, an Epicurean in the
prudent and wise administration of his pleasures.
Did he carry further than he admits the practice of doctrine, and
freedom of manners? Did he use the free and obscene speech which has
been ascribed to him? Had he still other passions of which he says
nothing in this public confession?
It is only necessary to read Tallemant to be instructed as to the way of
living common to libertines at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
and to judge that, even if Théophile practiced all the vices which
his enemies have ascribed to him, fate was nevertheless very cruel in
inflicting on him a punishment which so many others might then have
merited.
The poet's misfortune was to unloose against himself the ire of some
Jesuits who--for reasons which have remained obscure--sought for his
destruction with frenzied zeal. Imprudence in writing and speaking had
already compromised him: when exiled for the first time, he had had to
seek a refuge in Gascony, in Languedoc, even to take refuge in England
for several months. But he had been recalled and, following an august
example, and thinking that Paris was well worth a mass, he had abjured
Calvinism: he could thenceforth believe himself in safety. Then burst
the storm. A collection of licentious and sacrilegious poetry appeared
at Paris in 1622 under the title of _Parnasse Satyrique_; certain pieces
were attributed to Théophile, who endeavored, but in vain, to disavow
the publication. A year after, he was accused before Parliament and
condemned, in contumacy, to be burned alive. On the eve of his sentence,
Father Garasse had published a formidable quarto entitled _La Doctrine
curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps,_ in which were heaped up
calumnies, insults and invectives against Théophile and his disciples,
whom the Jesuit called "the school of young calves." While he was
being executed in effigy upon the Place de Grève, and while the Jesuits
aroused the court and the magistrates against him, Théophile prudently
escaped to Chantilly and from there set out for the frontier of the
kingdom. But he was arrested near Saint-Quentin, brought back to Paris,
thrown into the prison of Ravaillac. He remained there two years waiting
for a new trial. The Jesuits were in charge of the proceedings and
the investigation. The poet was again found guilty. But this time the
sentence was less rigorous: it was banishment. He died two years later,
at the age of thirty-six.
During these trials, the Duke and Duchess de Montmorency had not ceased
to interest themselves in their protégé. More than once the Duke had
intervened in his favor, but without success. After the first sentence
he gave him asylum at Chantilly in a "cool hall" built in the woods at
the end of the pool. It was the memories of this retreat that the poet
later evoked in his prison, to make them the subject of the ten little
odes which he entitled, _La Maison de Sylvie_.
I doubt that the odes of the Maison de Sylvie are superior to the other
works of Théophile. However, if any one asked me: "What must I read by
Théophile?" I would reply to him: "La Maison de Sylvie, on condition
that you read it at Chantilly beside the pool." The great poets have
sometimes added a special grace or nobility to the landscapes which
they have described. But it is also true that ancient verses, whose
attractiveness seems lost today, réassumé an indescribable savor in the
very places which have formerly inspired them. The poet sometimes makes
us better feel the beauty of nature; but by a mysterious sorcery, nature
can return a breath of life to dead poems.
To leave, before dying,
The living features of a painting
Which can never perish
Except by the loss of nature,
I pass golden pencils
Over the most revered spots
Where virtue takes refuge,
Whose door was open to me
To put my head in shelter,
When they burned my effigy.
Poor rhymer, they are indeed effaced, the lines of your "golden
pencils"! You promised yourself immortality, you promised it to Sylvie:
Thus, under modest vows
My verses promise Sylvie
That charming fame which posterity
Calls a second life;
But you added with more reason:
What if my writings, scorned,
Cannot be authorized
As witnesses of her glory,
These streams, these woods,
Will assume souls and voices,
To preserve its memory.
Such has been fate: it is the soul and the voices of the waters, the
woods and the rocks which preserve today the memory of the beautiful
Italian princess and her poor devil of a poet!
It is not for the pure beauty of the verses (which, however, do not lack
grace), it is for the elegance of the picture which they evoke from far
away, from very far away, that we love today to read once more these
lines:
One evening when the salty waves
Lent their soft bed
To the four red coursers
Which are yoked by the sun,
I bent my eyes upon the edge
Of a bed where the Naiad sleeps,
And, watching Sylvie fish,
I saw the fishes fight
To see which would soonest lose its life
In honor of her fishhooks.
Warning against noise with one hand
And throwing her fine with the other,
She causes that, at the onset of night,
The day should decline more sweetly.
The sun feared to light her
And feared to go away;
The stars did not dare to appear,
The waves did not dare to ripple,
The zephyr did not dare to pass,
The very grass restrained its growing.
(This is the scene which M. Oliver Merson desired to represent upon
one of the walls of Sylvie's pavilion; I do not dare to affirm that he
rendered all its charm.)
Despite a very obscure and very pretentious mythological machinery, we
may still enjoy the Tritons transformed into a troop of white deer by a
single glance of Sylvie, and gamboling timidly among the thickets of the
wood:
Their hearts, deprived of blood by fear,
Can only with timidity
Behold the sky or trample on the earth.
(Here is one of those pictures which abound in Théophile and disconcert
the reader, even when the coolness of the charming grove disposes him to
every indulgence.)
We will also discover an Albanesque grace in a combat of Loves and
Nereids in the waters of the
Now together, now scattered,
They shine in this dark veil
And beneath the waves which they have pierced
Allow their shadow to disappear;
Sometimes in a clear night,
Which shines with the fire of their eyes,
Without any shadow of clouds,
Diana quits her swain
And goes down below to swim
With her naked stars.
But the plays of the Naiads are not the only visions which present
themselves to the memory of the prisoner in the inky dungeon where
the hatred of Father Garasse has condemned him to rhyme his idyls.
He remembers that one day Thyrsis, whom he loves with a "chaste and
faithful friendship," came to visit him at Chantilly and to tell him
a frightful and interminable nightmare in which were announced all his
future misfortunes. This episode might appear superfluous if it did
not give Théophile the opportunity to establish in eleven lines the
innocence of his manners, an opportune apology after the defamations of
the Jesuit.... Soon, casting aside these unpleasant images, he returns
to the marvels of the "enchanted park"; he sings the perfume of the
flowers, the glances of his mistress, the coolness of the waters, the
graces of the spring, the fecundity of nature and the concert of birds
which salutes Sylvie in the woods.... And the ode terminates by an
abrupt flattery addressed to the King. But he has not yet exhausted the
whole chaplet of lovable remembrances; he diverts himself by imagining
the song of the nightingales, and in the darkness of his prison, it is
always Chantilly that he sees. How sad that a better poet might not have
treated this charming thought!
Forth from my dark tower
My soul sends out its rays which pierce
To this park which the eyes of day
Traverse with so much difficulty.
My senses have the whole picture of it:
I feel the flowers at the edge of the water.
I sense the coolness which endews them.
The princess comes to sit there.
I see, as she goes there in the evening,
How the day flees and respects her.
The last ode is a promenade about the pool, and, while lacking in poetic
beauty, it contains some topographical indications which it would be
amusing to verify with the aid of the plans and the documents of the
archives. There is a question there of a "lodge today deserted" where
Alcandre once came to enjoy solitude. Alcandre is Henri IV, and we thus
know the place of the "King's Garden," a retreat where Henri IV loved to
pass his time, when he came to Chantilly. Then Théophile leaves on the
left a thick wood favorable for lovers' meetings, a "quarter for the
Faun and for the Satyr," and stops at a chapel, probably the little
chapel of Saint Paul, which still exists today; he remains there a long
time and prays the Lord, with the fervor of a poor poet persecuted by
the Jesuits and accused of atheism; but words, already sufficiently
undisciplined when he wishes to employ them to sing the sport of the
nymphs, refuse to obey him when he seizes the harp of David: his prayer
is a miracle of platitude....
And if, following my advice, you shall one day read La Maison de Sylvie
under the trees of Chantilly, perhaps, despite its poverty of style and
monotony of rhymes, you may still find some pleasure there, in spite of
the disdain of Boileau, in spite of the enthusiasms of Gautier.
II-MADEMOISELLE DE CLERMONT
We are in 1724. A century has elapsed since the day when the proscribed
poet found asylum in a little house built at the extremity of the
pool, and now there remains hardly a remnant of the Chantilly of the
Montmorencies. Le Nôtre and Mansart have been here. Immense regular
gardens, traversed by canals, decorated with statues and fountains, have
replaced the modest garden plots of the Renaissance. The swelling woods
which neighbored the château are transformed to a majestically clipped
park. Of the ancient buildings, the great Condé has allowed only the
little château to remain, and he has arranged the apartments of even
this in a new fashion. For the old manor house which the architects
of the sixteenth century had transformed into a luxurious, elegant and
picturesque residence, he has substituted a veritable palace, with grand
though monotonous façades, flanked with sufficiently disgraceful pepper
boxes. He has built the orangery and the theater, and created a mass of
cascades, basins and fountains which rival Versailles. Henri Jules has
continued the work of his father, built a house for his gentlemen in
place of the farm of Bucan, established a magnificent menagerie
at Vineuil, designed the labyrinth of Sylvie's grove and dispersed
throughout the park a multitude of marbles copied from the antique. Now
the master of Chantilly is the Duc de Bourbon, Monsieur le Duc, Prime
Minister of the King; he also is a great lover of gardens and the
buildings; he transforms the chapel, he demolishes and reconstructs the
three faces of the interior court of the chateau, and he confides to
Jean Aubert the task of finishing the construction of the Great Stables,
commenced by Mansart. [29]
[Illustration: 0369]
Chantilly is then, after Versailles and Marly, the most beautiful of
the residences of France. It is also the theater of the most sumptuous
festivals. M. le Duc there spends royally an immense fortune, which
is still growing from operations in the funds. His mistress, Agnes de
Pléneuf, Marquise de Prie, holds a veritable court there.
[Illustration: 0373]
The King comes to pass two months at Chantilly and, every day, he
is offered "the diversion of stag hunting or wild boar hunting." The
evenings are reserved for the opera, for the comedy and for the dance.
The gazettes of Paris describe with a thousand details the hecatombs of
wild boars, the lansquenet parties and the suppers at which shine the
three sisters of M. le Duc, Mlles, de Charolais, de Clermont and de
Sens. The peddlers offer in the streets the list of expert beauties whom
chance, added by Madame de Prie, has put in the path of the young King,
and for whom the young King has not lusted.
On August 30, 1724, one of the friends of the Duc de Bourbon, the Duc de
Melun, is killed in one of the hunts given in honor of the King. Here is
the story from the gazettes: "Towards seven o'clock in the evening, half
a league from the château, the Duc de Melun, riding at a gallop in one
of the forest ways, was wounded by the stag which was being tracked and
which was almost at bay. The blow which he gave in passing was so hard
that horse and horseman were thrown. The Duc de Melun was aided at
first by the Due de Bourbon and the Comte de Clermont. Sieur Flandin du
Montblanc, surgeon to the King, gave him first aid and had him carried
to the château where he died today, the 31st, at five o'clock in the
morning, in the thirtieth year of his age, after having received all the
sacraments and made his will."
This tragic event moves the guests of the château, for the Duc de Melun
is related to all the great families of the kingdom. The King sheds
a few tears and talks of leaving the same evening. But he is made to
understand that so sudden a departure will be interpreted in a fashion
not very complimentary to the Prime Minister. He consents to remain two
days longer at Chantilly and returns to Versailles.
*****
Madame de Genlis is the author of a historical novel entitled
_Mademoiselle de Clermont_. In it she relates that this princess had
secretly married the Duc de Melun eight days before the accident which
led to his death. Of the history of the amours of Mlle, de Clermont and
M. de Melun, she had composed a touching and dramatic little story.
At the bottom of the first page of this work she puts the following
note: "The substance of this history, and almost all the details which
it contains, are true; the author received them from a person (the late
Marquise de Puisieulx-Sillery) who was as noteworthy for the sincerity
of her character as for the superiority of her mind, and whom Mlle, de
Clermont honored for twenty years, up to the day of her death, with her
most intimate friendship. It was at Chantilly itself and in the fatal
alley, which still bears the name of Melun, that this story was told for
the first time to the author, who then wrote down its principal features
and afterward forgot this little manuscript for thirty years. It was
neither finished, nor written for the public, but no historic detail
has been excised."
Is not this merely one of those subterfuges which romancers use to
persuade us that they have "invented nothing" and to give us the
illusion that it "really happened"? Or did Madame de Genlis really
receive the confidences of a well-informed old lady?