preserved their aspect of earlier years. Some changes which dated from
the eighteenth century have been removed in order that the house might
be as it was in the time of Claude de Bullion.
Three Renaissance chimney pieces adorn the great rooms of Wideville.
They are constructed of white stone and of different colored marbles,
ornamented with marvelous carvings, which represent foliage, sirens and
female heads, and they were found in the earlier manor which Bullion
demolished. Perhaps it was by the advice of Sarazin that he had them
moved to the new home.
Except the guardroom, whose ceiling is a masterpiece of architectural
ingenuity, all the rooms of the château have ceilings with painted
beams. The enameled brick pavements are intact. Everywhere are
tapestries, one of which with deliciously faded tones represents the
siege of La Rochelle, precious paintings, family portraits. In the
"King's Chamber" almost nothing has been changed since January 23, 1634;
it was on this day that Louis XIII paid M. de Bullion the compliment
of sleeping at Wideville. And everywhere there occurs to our memory the
line of Victor Hugo:
It was a grand chateau of the time of Louis Treize.
XVI. THE ABBEY OF LIVRY
|THE ancient abbey of Livry, situated between the village of
Livrv-en-l'Aulnoye and that of Clichy-sous-Bois, three leagues from
Paris, is about to be sold by public auction. This property belonged to
the Congregation of the Fathers of the Assumption, who had their houses
of novices here. As in a short time it will probably be turned over
to speculators, who will cut it into lots for suburban houses, it is
necessary before its destruction to evoke some of the souvenirs which
have rendered this place illustrious.
Other than precious and charming memories, there is nothing which can
interest us at Livry; and these relate only to literary history. The
religious chronicles of the abbey of Notre Dame de Livry, founded at the
end of the twelfth century as a monastery of canons regular, offers no
episode worthy of attention. There is nothing here for the archaeologist
save a pile of old stones, remnants of capitals and of funeral slabs,
which were discovered a few years ago. Of the architecture of
the ancient monastery, there remains only a dwelling house of the
seventeenth century. The rest of the buildings were destroyed after the
Revolution and have since been replaced by characterless structures.
Finally, though the park presents almost its former beautiful design,
its trees were replanted in the nineteenth century. But Livry was the
"pretty abbey" dear to Madame de Sévigné. It is here that she wrote her
most charming pages, passed her sweetest horns, felt the most vividly
the seduction of the country. So Livry is sacred soil for every lover of
French letters.
[Illustration: 0409]
*****
In 1624 the King gave the abbey of Livry to Christophe de Coulanges as
commendator. He was then only eighteen years old.
In both a spiritual and a worldly sense the abbey was in a pitiable
condition: its church was crumbling, its houses were scarcely
inhabitable, and great disorder reigned among the few ecclesiastics who
remained in the cloister. The young abbot was pious and economical. The
abbey was reformed with his consent, the church restored, and a part of
the cloister rebuilt. He put up this grand building of noble and simple
aspect, which still stands; he made of it an agreeable country house,
surrounded by orange trees, flower beds bits of water, and easily
accessible, for a fine avenue joined it to the highway from Paris
to Meaux. He furnished apartments there, received his family and
his friends, and led a life without display, but without privations.
Besides, if the rule was then strictly observed in the monastery, the
monks were not very numerous: in 1662, there were only eight professed
friars there. [30]
In 1636, the Abbé de Coulanges was invested with the guardianship of a
little orphan, his niece, Marie de Chantai: the child was ten years old;
the tutor twenty-nine. For fifty years he watched over the person and
the property of his ward with an entirely paternal solicitude, gave her
very wise masters, like Ménage and Chapelain, occupied himself with
her establishment and, when she became a widow, wisely administered her
fortune. But everything was said by Madame de Sévigné herself, when
the "very good" died: "There is nothing good that he did not do for
me, either in giving me his own property entirely, or in preserving and
reestablishing that of my children. He drew me from the abyss in which
I was at the death of M. de Sévigné, he won lawsuits, he restored all
my properties to good condition, he paid our debts, he made the estate
which my son inhabits the most handsome and agreeable in the world, he
married off my children; in a word I owe peace and repose in life to his
continuous cares..." And she adds this reflection so tenderly true and so
sadly human: "The loss that we feel when the old die is often
considerable when we have great reasons for loving them and when we have
always seen them." (September 2, 1687.)
Madame de Sévigné had passed her youth at Livry near this worthy man.
After the death of her husband she stayed there from choice. She lived
happily there with her daughter, and the latter even returned there
several times after her marriage. These memories rendered Livry still
more dear to Madame de Sévigné, who, on an April day, after having heard
the nightingales and contemplated the budding greenery of the park,
wrote to Madame de Grignan: "It is very difficult for me to revisit this
place, this garden, these alleys, this little bridge, this avenue, this
meadow, this mill, this little view, this forest, without thinking of
my very dear child." (April 22, 1672.) In the summer, when they put
her little daughter in her care, she took her to Livry: "Presently I am
going to Livry; I will take with me my little child and her nurse and
all the little household...." (May 27, 1672.) She loved to receive her
son at Livry. She went to Livry to care for her maladies and to follow
her treatments.
She also went there to pay her devotions in Holy Week: "I have made
of this house a little Trappe.... I have found pleasure in the sadness
which I have had here: a great solitude, a great silence, a sad office,
Tenebræ intoned with devotion (I had never been at Livry in Holy Week),
a canonical fast and a beauty in these gardens with which you would
be charmed, all these have pleased me." (March 24, 1671.) It was her
favorite place for writing, and she said that her mind and her body were
there in peace. And, truly, almost all the letters which she wrote from
Livry breathed joy and health.
So what despair, when, at the death of the Abbé de Coulanges, she
believes that she will no longer be able to return to Livry and that she
must say farewell to that agreeable solitude which she loves so much!
"After having wept for the Abbé," she cries, "I weep for the abbey."
(November 13, 1687.) Happily the successor of the Abbé de Coulanges
is Séguier de la Verrière, former bishop of Nîmes. He is a very holy
prelate, and allows Madame de Sévigné liberty to go to Livry, as in the
days of the "very good." But Séguier dies. New anxieties. Finally the
abbey is given to Denis Sanguin, bishop of Senlis, an uncle of Louis
Sanguin, Lord of Livry, friend of the Coulanges and of Madame de
Sévigné. Then she writes to her daughter: "It is true that these
Sanguins, this Villeneuve, the idea of the old Pavin, these old
acquaintances, are so confused with our garden and our forest, that it
seems to me it is the same thing, and that not only have we lent it to
them, but that it is still ours by the assurance of again finding there
our old furniture and the same people whom we saw there so often.
Finally, my child, we were worthy of this pretty solitude by the taste
which we had and which we still have for it."
*****
Since we have opened the letters of Madame de Sévigné, let us continue
to mark the pages in which she has spoken of Livry, and let us seek the
reason for the taste for this "pretty solitude" which she showed to the
end.
She knew how to enjoy the days of sadness in this "solitude," for
example when she had just been separated from her daughter, or when she
had received some unpleasant news from Grignan. On these days she tasted
the silence of the forest and of the meadow: "Here is a true place for
the humor in which I am: there are hours and alleys whose holy horror
is interrupted only by the love affairs of our stags, and I enjoy this
solitude." (October 4, 1679.) And, a few days later: "I wish to boast of
being all afternoon in this meadow talking to our cows and our sheep.
I have good books and especially the little letters and Montaigne. What
more is needed when I have not you?" (October 25, 1679.) But she was not
the woman to content herself with the holy horror of the woods and to
converse forever with the beasts of her meadow. She had a little of
the turn of imagination of the good La Fontaine. But, affectionate and
sociable, she also wished friends about her and loved conversation. At
Livry she very often met her uncle, her cousins, the de Coulanges,
her friend Corbinelli, the Abbé de Grignan and many others. She was
neighborly with the families and guests of de Pomponne, de Clichy and de
Chelles. Chariots brought from Paris loquacious visitors, rich in news.
Walks on foot in the near-by forest were improvised.
Nowhere--not even at Les Rochers, where she drew so many pleasant
landscapes--did Madame de Sévigné better express the pleasure given her
by the spectacles of nature. She has expressed with inimitable art
the particular charm of each season in a few words, and we might, by
collecting certain passages of the letters written at Livry, compose, as
it were, the picturesque calendar of Madame de Sévigné. Let us try it.
February: "We have passed here the three days of carnival, the sun which
shone Saturday made us decide on it.... We have tempered the brilliancy
of approaching Lent with the dead leaves of this forest; we have had
the most beautiful weather in the world, the gardens are clean, the
view beautiful, and a noise of birds which already commences to announce
spring has seemed to us much more pleasant than the horrid cries of
Paris...." (February 2, 1680.)
April: "I departed quite early from Paris: I went to dine at Pomponne;
there I found our bonhomme (Arnaud d'Andilly).... Finally, after six
hours of very agreeable, though very serious conversation, I left him
and came here, where I found all the triumph of the month of May. The
nightingale, the cuckoo, the warbler have opened the spring in our forests.
I walked there all evening quite alone." (April 29, 1671.)
May: "The beauty of Livry is above everything that you have seen; the
trees are more beautiful and more green; everything is full of those
lovely honeysuckles. This odor has not yet sickened me; though you
greatly scorn our little bushes, compared with your groves of oranges."
(May 30, 1672.)
July: "Ah, my very dear one, how I would wish for you such nights as we
have here! What sweet and gracious air! What coolness! What
tranquillity! What silence! I would like to be able to send it to you
and let your north wind be confounded by it." (July 3, 1677.)
August: "You well remember that beautiful evenings and full moonlight
gave me a sovereign pleasure." (August 14, 1676.)
November: "I have come here to finish the fine weather and bid adieu
to the leaves; they are all still on the trees; they have only changed
color; instead of being green, they are the color of dawn and of so many
kinds of dawn that they compose a rich and magnificent cloth of gold
which we wish to find more beautiful than green, even if it were only
as a change (November 3, 1677.)--I leave this place with regret, my
daughter: the country is still beautiful; this avenue and all that was
stripped by the caterpillars and which has taken the liberty of growing
out again with your permission, is greener than in the spring of the
most beautiful years; the little and the great palisades are adorned
with those beautiful shades of autumn by which the painters know so
well how to profit; the great elms are somewhat stripped, but we do
not regret these punctured leaves; the country as a whole is still all
smiling..."
These samples, chosen from a hundred others, show how delicate was the
sentiment of nature in Madame de Sévigné. We find in her letters all
the themes with which modern poets since Lamartine have experimented: the
first songs of birds announcing the spring, the "triumph of May," the
serenity of summer nights, the beauty of moonlight, the charm of Indian
summer, the sumptuous sadness of autumn. We may say that these are the
commonplaces of universal poetry. But as it was long since conceded
that, except for La Fontaine, no one in the seventeenth century
was sensible of the charm of landscapes, it is well to note these
impressions of Madame de Sévigné. I know the reply: Madame de Sévigné is
herself a second exception. Is this quite certain? Observe that Madame
de Sévigné does not witness in the least that she considers it original
to take a Virgilian pleasure in the song of the nightingale or even in
the full moon. Her correspondents whose letters we possess, do not
show any more surprise at these effusions. There is no doubt that they
themselves are moved by the same emotion before the same pictures. They
do not say so. Therefore, the rule is to communicate one's intimate
thoughts and sentiments only with all sorts of reserves and precautions;
one's "impressions" are not written down. La Fontaine scorns this rule,
like all others. Madame de Sévigné does not submit to it any more than
he does, because she writes only for a little group of friends, and
because she abandons herself to her expansive nature in everything.
But, even if not the object of literature, the love of the country was
neither less lively nor less widespread in the seventeenth century than
at any other period.
Madame de Sévigné, then, is pleased at Livry because she is sensitive to
the varied shadings of landscapes and to the changes of nature. But she
has a singular preference for this bit of soil, so much so that she
does not seem to feel the dampness there--which is unusual for a
rheumatic--and that one day she will regret all of it, even to the rain:
"How charming these rainy days are! We will never forget this little
place." Perhaps the landscape of Livry, this modest and gracious
landscape of the Parisis which she describes so charmingly--"this
garden, these alleys, this little bridge, this avenue, this meadow,
this mill, this little view, this forest"--is what accords best with
her imagination. Exalted in her maternal tenderness, passionate in
her friendships, Madame de Sévigné offers the contrast of ardent
sensitiveness and controlled taste. Her judicious spirit shudders at
excess and disorder. The humble and fine elegance of this countryside in
the surroundings of Paris must have enchanted her. She loves her
estate of Les Rochers greatly, but more as a proprietor proud of the
improvements with which she has enriched her domain. For Livry she has a
tenderness of the heart.
The comparison between Livry and Grignan recurs incessantly in her
letters, as we have seen. Without doubt she is thinking principally of
the health of her daughter when she curses the north wind of Provence
and "this sharp and frosty air which pierces the most robust." But, at
the same time, how clearly we see that to the harsh and rocky sites of
the Midi she prefers northern nature, more gentle, more smiling, and
to "this devil of a Rhone, so proud, so haughty, so turbulent," the
"beautiful Seine" whose gracious banks are "ornamented with houses,
trees, little willows, little canals, which we cause to issue from this
great river!" On another occasion she writes: "How excessive you are
in Provence! All is extreme, your torridities, your calms, your north
winds, your rains out of season, your thunders in autumn: there is
nothing gentle nor temperate. Your rivers are out of their banks, your
fields drowned and furrowed. Your Durance has almost always the devil
in its bosom; your Isle of Brouteron very often submerged." (November 1,
1679.)
In the last years of her life, she ended by pardoning Provence for its
north wind and its sharp air; one winter, she will even decide that
the mountains covered with snow are charming, and she will wish that
a painter might reproduce these frightful beauties. And it will be not
only the joy of living near her daughter which will cause her thus to
abjure her tastes of aforetime, but also the softness of the sun and of
the light. There are no old people who can resist this sorcery. In the
last letters written to Grignan there is no longer a mention of Livry.
We would like to, find today in the house and the garden of the old
abbey some trace of the sojourn of Madame de Sévigné; but everything has
been upset since the end of the eighteenth century.
Here is the dwelling house constructed by the Abbé de Coulanges, in
which Madame de Sévigné dwelt. Where was the apartment of the Marquise?
In a letter of August 12, 1676, she says: "We have made a casement
opening on the garden in the little cabinet, which takes away all the
damp and unhealthy air which was there, and which gives us extreme
pleasure; it does not make the room warm, for only the rising sun visits
it for an hour or two...." The indication is precise. We are oriented,
and we recognize very nearly the position of the little cabinet. But
was this on the first or second floor? It is impossible to discover any
indication. And we walk about soberly in the apartments, deserted since
the departure of the Assumptionists: some abandoned books, collections
of sermons, rest on a shelf of the library; old priests' hats lie on the
floor; a béret lies on a corner of a table, a great map of Paris in the
eighteenth century hangs askew upon a wall; the breeze blows through the
windows whose panes are broken....
The gardens have long since given place to meadows and thickets. An
old orange house with broken glass is half in ruins. The basins have
disappeared. Here is, however, the canal where M. du Plessis, tutor
of the children of M. de Pomponne, tried to down himself. The little
bridge, near which Madame de Sévigné went to wait for her visitors or
her mail, no longer exists, but the abutments mark its position, and,
there also, an iron gate which assuredly dates from the time of the
Abbé de Coulanges still hangs between two stone pillars. And this poor
remnant of the ancient architecture is sufficient to render more lively
the little picture which Madame de Sévigné has drawn in one of her
letters: "I pace about the little bridge; I emerge from the 'Humor of my
Daughter' and look through the 'Humor of my Mother' to see if La Beauce
(one of her lackeys) does not come; and then I walk up again and return
to put my nose into the end of the path which leads to the little
bridge; and by dint of taking this walk, I see this dear letter come,
and I receive it and read it with all the sentiments which you may
imagine." (August 4, 1677.) And naturally, nothing exists of the two
alleys which had been given those singular names, "under which"--the
remark is by Father Mesnard, the best of the biographers of Madame de
Sévigné--"one cannot fail to imagine the so different tastes of
the mother and of the daughter, their so opposite characters, their
occasional poutings, and their promenades separated after some quarrel,
and which make us always think, the one of a beautiful smiling alley,
full of light and verdure, the other of some path more cramped, more
sad and more dry." In the park, if we no longer promenade under the very
trees that sheltered the reveries of Madame de Sévigné, the alleys at
least have remained rectilinear and still present the perspectives which
were ingeniously arranged by the gardener of the Abbé de Coulanges.
Finally, the "little view" which charmed Madame de Sévigné has not
changed. There is always, beyond the meadows and the park, the same
horizon harmoniously bounded by a swell of land covered with woods--a
gracious site, ennobled by so many beautiful memories that, if we were
not entirely barbarous, we would have to save it from the woodcutters
and the builders. Ah! if there could only be found some friend of Madame
de Sévigné to prevent them from touching the "pretty solitude!"
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Page 28. Bossuet by Rebelliau, in the series "Grands Écrivains
français."]
[Footnote 2: Page 42. Le Naturaliste Bosc. Un Girondin herborisant, by
Auguste Rey.--Versailles, published by Bernard.]
[Footnote 3: Page 45. Mémoires de Larêveillière-Lêpeaux.]
[Footnote 4: Page 53. Mémoires de Larêveillière-Lêpeaux, Vol. I, page 167.]
[Footnote 5: Page 61. I owe this quotation to the excellent work of Canon
Müller: Senlis et ses environs. Why can we not have a book written with
such knowledge and skill about every city of France!]
[Footnote 6: Page 82. Sainte-Beuve] Port-Royal, Vol. Ill, pages 510-512.]
[Footnote 7: Page 82. The historian of Juilly is M. Charles Hamel. His book
(Paris, Gervais, 1888) is a moving and very vivid picture of the college
during its three centuries of existence.]
[Footnote 8: Page 83. L'Oratoire de France, by Cardinal Perraud.]
[Footnote 9: Page 88: Published in four volumes by Dufey, Paris, 1833.]
[Footnote 10: Page 101. In regard to the history of the Oratory in the
nineteenth century we may profitably read the work in which Father
Chauvin has preserved the life and work of Father Gratry.]
[Footnote 11: Page 105. The Louvre has just bought an Egyptian stele for a
hundred and three thousand francs, and the Château de Maisons going to
be demolished.]
[Footnote 12: Page 113. We may remark that the Château de Maisons was later
purchased by the State while M. Henri Marcel was Director of Fine Arts.]
[Footnote 13: Page 130. It must be understood that this impression does not
correspond to archaeological facts.]
[Footnote 14: Page 136. The most important document about Thomas of Gallardon
is the medical report, addressed to the Ministry of Police, by Doctors
Pinel and Royer-Collard, in 1816. I owe to the courtesy of M. Gazier
the opportunity of seeing a copy of this report. At the same time, this
learned professor of the Sorbonne has been kind enough to place at
my disposal a mass of pamphlets and manuscripts, some of which are
unpublished, in regard to the seer of Gallardon: I have made use of
these various documents in preparing this little essay.--In 1892,
Captain Marin published an interesting book: Thomas Martin de Gallardon
(published by Carré of Paris), in which he studied numerous articles
which appeared during the Restoration, and reproduced the report of the
doctors from a copy in the possession of M. Anatole France. We may add
that the latter wrote a charming article in review of Captain Marin's
book (Temps, March 13, 1892).]
[Footnote 15: Page 165. The most extraordinary thing was that ingenious
Legitimists later found a way to give credence to the prophecies of
Martin of Gallardon without ceasing to be faithful to the Count de
Chambord. In 1871, thirty-seven years after Martin's death, an anonymous
author (the question of Louis XVII has been handled by a number of
anonymous writers) relates a conversation which M. Hersent, a Lazarist,
had with the visionary in 1830. The latter then announced that the crown
of France would return to its true heir.
"But," said the curious Lazarist, "how will he ascend to the throne?"
"Monsieur, he will ascend to the throne over corpses!"
"Who will lead him to us?"
"The troops of the north."
"How long will he reign?"
"Not very long; he will leave the crown to a prince of his race."
"And when will all this happen?"
"When France shall have been sufficiently punished for the death of his
father."