I. The Earliest Influences of the Theatre--II. Mademoiselle and
the School of Corneille--III. Marriage Projects--IV. The Cinq-Mars
Affair--Close of the Reign.
I
La Grande Mademoiselle and her companions cherished the still existent
passion for the theatre, which is a characteristic of the French
people. The great received comedians, or actors, in their palaces;
the palace had audience-rooms prepared to permit of the presentation
of theatrical plays; in the summer, when the social world went into
the country, the comedians accompanied or followed them to their
châteaux. Society required the diversion of the play when it journeyed
either for pleasure or for duty, and play-acting, whatever its quality
and whatever the subject of its action, elicited the indulgent
satisfaction and the applause that it elicits to-day, be its subject
and its quality good or bad. At the end of the sixteenth century,
play-actors superseded the magicians who until that time had afforded
public amusement; the people hailed the change with enthusiasm; and
the innovation prevailed. The courtiers loved the spectacle, and
from the beginning of the reign of Louis XIII. the Court and the
comedy were inseparable. Louis XIII. had witnessed the play in early
infancy. In 1614, when the King and the Court went upon a journey they
lingered upon the road between Paris and Nantes six weeks, halting to
witness the plays then being given in the cities along their route,
and receiving their favourite actors in their own lodgings. The King
was less than thirteen years old, yet it is stated in the journal
kept by Hérouard, the King's physician, that the child was regaled
with theatrical plays throughout his journey. At Tours he was taken
to the Abbey of Saint Julian to witness the French comedy given by de
Courtenvaut, who lodged at the abbey. At Paris the little King went
to the palace with the Queen to see a play given by the pupils of the
Jesuit Brothers. At Loudun the King ordered a play, and it was given in
his own house; at La Flèche he attended three theatrical entertainments
in one day. To quote from the doctor's (Hérouard's) journal:
The King attended mass and from mass he went to the Jesuits'
college, where he saw the collegians play and recite a pastoral.
After dinner he returned to the college of the Jesuits, where
in the great hall, the tragedy of _Godefroy de Bouillon_ was
represented; then in the grand alley of the park, at four o'clock,
the comedy of _Clorínde_ was played before the Queen.
When Gaston d'Orléans took his young wife to Chantilly immediately
after his marriage, he sent for a troupe of comedians, who went to
the château with their band and with violins,--"thus," reports a
contemporary, "rendering the little journey very diverting." On the
occasion already mentioned, when the same Prince conducted his daughter
to Tours so that he might present Louison Roger to her, he did not
permit the little Princess to languish for the theatre. "Monsieur
sent for the comedians," wrote Mademoiselle, "and we had the comedy
nearly every day."[60] When Monsieur returned to his château in Blois
his troupe followed him. When Mademoiselle returned to the Tuileries
(November, 1637) she found a private theatre in every house to which
she was invited.
Actors worked without respite; they had no vacations; they played in
the French, in the Spanish, and in the Italian languages; and English
comedy also, played by English actors, was seen in Paris. Richelieu's
theatre in the Hôtel de Richelieu[61] "was provided with two audience
halls,--one large, the other small. Both were luxuriously mounted. The
decorations and the costumes of the actors displayed such magnificence
that the audience murmured with delight."
The _Gazette de France_, which bestowed nothing but an occasional
casual notice upon the royal theatre of the King's palace, dilated
admiringly upon the Théâtre de Richelieu and the marvels with which the
Cardinal regaled his guests. The _Gazette_ reported the occasion of the
presentation of "the excellent comedy written by Sieur Baro," and the
ballet which followed it.
The ballet was interlaced by a double collation. One part of the
collation was composed of the rarest and most delicious of fruits;
the other part was composed of confitures in little baskets,
which eighteen dancing pages presented to the guests. The baskets
were all trimmed with English ribands and with golden and silvern
tissue. The pages presented the baskets to the lords and then the
lords distributed them among the ladies.
Mademoiselle was one of the company, and she received her basket with
profound satisfaction. Three days after the first comedy of Baro was
played the Court again visited the Cardinal's theatre to witness a
second play by the same author. Baro was a well-known literary hack. He
had been d'Urfé's secretary and had continued _Astrée_ when d'Urfé laid
down his pen. The success of the second representation was phenomenal.
The ornamentation of the theatre [commented the _Gazette_], the
pretty, ingenious tricks invented by the author, the excellences of
the verse ... the ravishing concert of the lutes, the harpsichords,
and the other instruments, the elocution, the gestures, and the
costumes of the actors compromised the honour of all the plays that
have been seen either in past centuries or in our own century.
We consider Baro's plays insipid, but they were very successful in
their day.
February 19th was a gala day at the Théâtre de Richelieu. A fête was
given in honour of the Duke of Parma. First of all they gave a very
fine comedy, with complete change of play, with interludes; lutes,
spinnets, viols, and violins were played.
The _Gazette de France_ tells us that there was a ballet, and then a
supper, at which the guests saw "the fine buffet, all of white silver,"
which the Cardinal gave to the King some years later. Though the
theatre was the chief amusement in 1636, the theatrical representations
and ballets, "interlaced by collations" and by interludes, were
considered a good deal of dancing and a good deal of play-acting for a
priest, even when disseminated over a period of three weeks.
The conclusion of the report in the _Gazette_ proved that Richelieu was
conscious of his acts, and that he did not disdain to justify himself.
"Without flattering his Eminence," said the _Gazette_, "it may be said
that all which takes place by his orders is always in conformity with
reason and with right, and that the duties which he renders to the
State never conflict with those that all Christians owe--and which he,
in particular, owes--to the Church." Mademoiselle attended all the
fêtes, and she was less than ten years old. She, herself, gave a ball
and a comedy in honour of the Queen in the palace of the Tuileries.
In that day children in their nurses' arms were taken to see the play.
A contemporary engraving depicts the royal family at the theatre in
Richelieu's palace. The "hall" is in the form of an immense salon much
longer than it is broad; at one end is the stage, raised by five
steps; along the walls are two ranks of galleries for the invited
guests. The women sit in the lower gallery, the men sit above them;
seats have been brought into the centre of the hall, and on them sit
Louis XIII. and his family. In the picture Monsieur is sitting on
the King's left hand. On Anne of Austria's right hand, in a little
arm-chair made for a child, sits the Dauphin, who must have been three,
or possibly four, years old at that time. On the right hand of the
Queen, beyond the Dauphin, stands a woman holding a great doll-like
infant, the brother of the Dauphin.
The playgoing infantine assiduity, the custom of carrying children in
swaddling bands to the theatre to witness comedies of every species,
good or bad, assured the theatre of a position in public education; the
children of the aristocracy drank in the drama with eye and ear--if I
dare express myself thus--and at an age when reason was not present to
correct the effect of impressions. The repertory of the theatre was one
of the most dramatically romantic and sentimental ever known to France
and the one of all others best fitted to turn a generation from sound
reality to false and fantastic visions.
The general movement of that day may be classed as an aberration due
to the fact that the drama was a new pleasure; the inconveniences
attendant upon its influences had not been recognised, but it is
probable that some of the condemnations uttered by the moralists and
by the preachers of the seventeenth century in the name of religion
and of decency were called forth by the presence of children at the
play; the men who were most bitter in denunciations which amaze us by
the excess of their hostility spoke from experience and had reason for
their bitterness. The Prince de Conti, the brother of the great Condé,
might have furnished unique commentaries on the criticisms of the day,
had he cared to recall a treatise which he wrote (_The Plays of the
Theatre, and Spectacles_) when he was emerging from a youth far from
edifying.
The treatise was written for the benefit of light-minded people, who
saw no harm in playgoing. In the beginning of his work the Prince
said: "I hope to prove that comedy in its present condition is not the
innocent amusement that it is considered; I hope to prove that a true
Christian must regard it as an evil." As his treatise progressed it
became explicit; his arraignment was animated by _Astrée_; he declared
that a play free from the sentimentality and the passions of love and
from the thoughts and the actions of lovers was not acceptable to the
public. Love forms the foundation of the play, and therefore it must
be discussed freely from its first principles. Now a play, however
fine its dramatic composition may be, can have no other effect than
to disgust refined minds and to ruin the reputations of its actors,
unless the love on which it is based is represented delicately, and
in a tenderly impassioned manner. And as few actors are capable of
producing a perfect representation of the most subtle and many-sided
of passions, the general effect of our comedy is deteriorating. As its
basis and its structure depend upon one single subject, it can have
but one subject of interest. Our comedies are considered commendable
according to their manners of discussing love; the divers beauties of
our dramas consist in their various exposures of the intimate effects
of love. Love is the theme, and the mind must either accept it and
work upon it or rest unemployed; there is no choice; no other theme
is given. When love is not the chief agent, it serves as an irritant
to draw out some other passion and to make sensuous display not only
possible but cogent, if not imperatively necessary; be the play what
it may, love is represented as the "passion ruling the heart." Conti
opposed to the popular "corruption of the drama" the grave lessons
offered by the great tragedies. Segrais treated the subject in the same
way; he said: "During more than forty years nearly all of the subjects
of our plays have been drawn from _Astrée_, and, generally speaking,
the dramatists have been satisfied with their work if they have changed
to verse the phrases which d'Urfé put in the mouths of his characters
in plain prose."
Segrais exaggerated. _Astrée_ did not furnish "nearly all" of the
subjects of the plays; but the extraordinary importance of stage love
and of stage lovers was drawn from _Astrée_, and, despite the temporary
reaction due to Corneille, _Astrée_ persuaded the great body of French
society that there was nothing pathetic in the world but love, and
neither our dramatists nor our moralists have been able to break away
from an error which singularly circumscribes their art. Love is now the
subject of the romance and of the play, as it was in the early days of
La Grande Mademoiselle.
Invitations to the Louvre or to the homes of the great were not too
easy to procure, and there were many people who never entered the
private theatres; but there were two "paying theatres," or theatres to
which the public were admitted on paying a fixed price; one of the two
houses was the Hôtel de Bourgogne, which stood in the rue Mauconseil,
between the rue Montmartre and the rue Saint Denis; the other was the
Théâtre du Marais, in the Veille rue du Temple. The Marais was then
an out-of-the-way quarter, very dangerous after nightfall. I have not
spoken of this place until now, because it was almost impossible for
any one in the polite society of which I have written to visit it. No
woman dared to enter the Marais unless she lived there. The woman of
quality could not even think of entering it except on gala days, when
the Court of France went in a body to visit the play-actors in their
own quarter. At ordinary times the Hôtel de Bourgogne "was neither a
good place nor a safe place." In form and arrangement the audience
hall was like the hall of the Théâtre de Richelieu; two galleries, one
above the other, ran the whole length of the walls, and in certain
places the walls were connected with the gallery to form stalls or
boxes. The parterre was a vast space in which people watched the play
standing. In that part of the theatre there were no seats. An hour,
or perhaps two hours, before the play began the great unclean space
was filled with the most boisterous and ungovernable representatives
of the dregs of Paris and with all the active members of the lesser
classes[62]: students, pages, lackeys, artisans, drunkards, the scum
of the canaille, and professional thieves; and there, on the floor of
the parterre, they gambled, lunched, drank, and fought each other with
stones, with swords, or with any weapon which came to hand; and as
they gratified their appetites or abused their neighbours, all strove
in the way best known to them to protect their purses and to keep the
thieves from carrying off their cloaks. The air resounded with shouts,
shrieks, songs, and obscene apostrophes. Contemporary writers regarded
everything as fit for the record, and therefore in all our researches
we come upon heartrending evidences of inenarrable depravity. The
charivari of the assistants of the pit continued throughout the
performance, ending only when the vociferous throngs were turned into
the streets so that the theatre might be locked for the night. At their
quietest the spectators of the parterre were noisy and obstreperous. To
quote one of their chroniclers[63]:
"In their most perfect repose they continued to talk, to whistle, and
to scream without ceasing; they did not care at all to hear what the
comedians were saying." We differ from the chroniclers as to this last
opinion; it is probable that they cared only too much; it was to please
the rabble that abominably gross farces were played in the paying
theatres. Tragedy was relished only by the higher classes.
An eye-witness, the Abbé d'Aubignac,[64] wrote: "We see that tragedies
are liked better than comedies at the Court of France; while among the
lesser people comedies, and even farces and unclean buffooneries are
considered more amusing than tragedies." The same d'Aubignac wrote in
or about the year 1666: "Fifty years ago an honest woman dared not go
to the theatre."[65] Between the universally ardent desire to enjoy the
fashionable form of pleasure and the efforts to make the stage less
licentious the purification of the drama was accomplished.
The increasing delicacy of the public taste demanded a reform, and in
deference to it the moral atmosphere of both of the popular theatres
was renewed at the same time; a new and decent repertory was adopted,
and the foul programme of the past was cast away. Popular feeling
acclaimed the change and hastened the accomplishment of the reformation.
At the time when the _Cid_[66] was played the lower classes had
ceased to rule the paying theatres; the masses went out of Paris for
their pleasure; to the fairs of Saint Laurent and Saint Germain, and
to the entertainments on the Pont-Neuf or the Place Dauphine; they
crowded around the trestled planks, they hung about the stands of the
charlatans, the buffoons, and the trick players. The paying theatres
were filled by the upper middle classes. Women who had not dared to
go to the play in 1620 attended the theatre of the Hôtel de Bourgogne
as freely as they would have attended or as they did attend the
Luxembourg.[67] The fine world of the quality had found its way to
the theatre of the Marais; the _Cid_ was in course of representation
when the stage of the Marais and the courtiers thronged to the obscure
quarter to witness its marvels. The _Cid_ was played in the private
theatres as well as in the Hôtel de Bourgogne. M. Lanson tells us that
the comedians were summoned to the Louvre three times and twice to the
Hôtel de Richelieu, but the great were too impatient to wait for the
play to come to them, they ran to meet it; every one longed to see it
not at a future time but on the instant, and therefore they flocked to
the Veille rue du Temple.
In 1637 (18th January) Mondory, the actor, who played the part of
_Rodrigue_, wrote to Balzac:
Last night they who are usually seen in the Gold Room and on seats
bearing the fleur-de-lys, were visible upon our benches not singly
but in groups. At our doors the crowd was so great, and our place
was so small, that the nooks which ordinarily serve as recesses for
the pages, were reserved for the Knights of the Saint Esprit; and
the whole scene was bedight with Chevaliers of the Order.
All women could attend the play at will; and they all ardently wished
to attend it, not once but always. They who saw it at Court, or at
the houses of the great, were none the less anxious to frequent the
paying theatres, where, though the scene had been purged of many of its
abuses, the spectacle differed essentially from that presented to the
great. Many distinct peculiarities of the old plays had been retained;
added to that was the novelty of the place, and the lack of courtly
ceremony, and the diversion afforded two different spectacles: the play
and the audience. Like the children of the great, the wives and the
daughters of the inferior classes abused their privilege and visited
the theatre incessantly and the rich and the poor suffered from the
influences of the superficial amusement. The play tended to deceive the
mind, and to give a false impression of the aims and the needs of life.
The majority of women were ignorant; they had never learned anything.
If they could read they read works of fiction, and their literature
was calculated to foster illusions. Exaltedly idealistic as _Astrée_
had been, the writings of La Calprenède, de Gomberville, and others
of their school were still more sentimentally romantic; compared
with his successors, Honoré d'Urfé was a realist. The influence of
the theatre was shown in the intellectual development of woman, the
imagination of all classes was encouraged, the more useful mental
agents were neglected, and the minds of the people were visibly weak
and ill-balanced; the general impulse was to seek adventures on any
road and at any price. The thirst for unknown sensations was a fully
developed desire in their day, so we cannot with justice class it as a
"curiosity" emanating from the inventive imaginations of the decadents.
The writer, Pierre Costar, wilfully lingered three weeks in a tertian
fever so that he might enjoy the sickly dreams which accompanied the
recurrent paroxysms of the disease. In our day Pierre Costar would be
an opium-eater, or a morphinomaniac.
II
La Grande Mademoiselle owed much of her turn of mind to the dramatic
plays that she had watched from infancy. I doubt if she was given any
lessons in history, or that she had any lessons of the kind before she
reached her twenty-fifth year, when she acquired a taste for reading.
All that she knew of history had been gleaned by her from the tragedies
that she had seen at the theatre, and as she was refractory to the
sentiment of _Astrée_, it cannot be inferred that she had learned much
from d'Urfé; so it may be said that Corneille was her teacher in all
branches of learning, that no one of that time was in deeper debt to
the influence that he exerted over minds, and that no one so plainly
manifested his influence. From the education afforded by Corneille
came good and evil mingled. As we follow the course of Mademoiselle's
life we are forced to admit that however high and noble were the
ideas sown broadcast by Corneille, they were not always devoid of
inconveniences when they fell among people whose experimental knowledge
and practicality were inferior to their susceptibility to impressions.
In the years which followed the advent of the _Cid_ Corneille was the
literary head of France; he had discovered the French scene through the
influence of d'Urfé, but his power was his own, and it was an inherent
power; he was the creator of a tendency.
The unclean farce, which delighted the lockpickers and the gamblers of
the Paris of those days, has no place here, because it has no place in
literature. When "good company" invaded the paying theatres the farce
followed the canaille and took its place upon the trestled stages of
the Pont-Neuf. The farce played a part of its own, in a world unknown
to Mademoiselle; but the pastoral demands our attention, not only
because it was in high favour in Mademoiselle's society, but because
Corneille exerted his influence against it.
[Illustration: CORNEILLE
FROM AN ENGRAVING OF THE PAINTING BY LEBRUN]
In the pastoral, love took possession of the stage, as it had been
announced to do, in the play which opened the way for its successors,
Tasso's _Aminta_.[68] In the prologue the son of Venus appeared
disguised as a shepherd, and declaimed, for the benefit of the other
shepherds, a discourse which, little by little, became the programme of
all imaginative literature:
To-day these forests shall he heard speaking of love in a new
way.... I will inspire gross hearts with noble sentiments; I will
subdue their language and make soft their voices; for, wherever I
may be, I still am Love; in shepherds as in heroes. I establish, if
so it please me, equality in all conditions, no matter how unequal;
and my supreme glory, and the miracle of all my power, is to change
the rustic musettes into sounding lyres.
Modern poets and novelists do not insist that all men are equal in
passion as they are equal in suffering and in death; but the people of
the nineteenth century fully believed in such equality. George Sand
expresses her real feelings in _La Petite Fadette_; and Pouvillon meant
all that he said in _Les Antibel_. The contemporaries of Louis XIII.
looked askance upon such theories; in their opinion the love, like the
suffering, of the inferior was below the conception of the quality, a
thing as hard for the noble mind to grasp as the invisible movement of
life in an atom; to be ignorant of the needs, the hopes, the anguish
of inferiors was one of the first proofs of exalted nobility. But the
nobles knew that the shepherds of the dramatic stage were gentlemen
travestied, and, therefore, they bestowed the interest formerly
accorded to the heroes of the heroic drama upon the woes of the mimic
Celadons of the comedy. Love would have become the dramatic pivot had
it not been for Corneille's plays; d'Urfé's characters were "sighing
like a furnace" when Corneille took command and gave the posts of
honour to "the manly passions"; but not even Corneille could reach such
a point at a bound; he attained it by strenuous effort. He began his
literary career by writing comedies in verse. Before he produced the
_Cid_, between the years 1629 and 1636, he wrote six plays; an inferior
serio-comedy, _Clitandre; or, Innocence Delivered_, and a tragedy,
_Médée_. To quote M. Lemaître:
We now enter a world which is superficial, because its people
have but one object in living: their only occupation, their only
pleasure, their only interest is love; all else, all the interests
of social life are eliminated.... To love.... To be loved, ...
this is the only earthly object, according to the teachings of the
drama, and truly, in the long run it becomes tiresome! Such a world
must be impossible, because it is artificial; in it hearts are
the subjects of all the quarrels; men fight for them, lose them,
find them; they are stolen, they are restored to their owners,
they are tossed like shuttlecocks through five acts of a play. As
they "chassay" to and fro before the reader he loses all sense of
their identity, and takes one for the other; in the end the mind is
wearied. Excessive handling exhausts the vitality of the subject,
and leaves an impression as of something vapid and unsavoury. But
Corneille was Cornélien even when he wrote rhymed comedy--he could
not have been anything else--and he never would have fallen into
rhyme had he not wished to make concessions to the prevailing
fashion.[69]
Even when engaged in the most absorbing of intrigues his lovers
pretend that they are their own masters, and that they feel only such
sentiments as they have elected to feel. At that early day--when
_Médée_ and _Clitandre_ were written--the culte of the will had
germinated; and time proved that it was predestined to become the chief
director of Corneille's work. In _La Place Royale_ Alidor says of
_Clitandre_[70]:
Je veux la liberté dans le milieu des fers,
Il ne faut pas servir d'objet, qui nous possède.
Il ne faut point nouirrir d'amour qui ne nous cède,
Je le hais s'il me force, et, quand j'aime, je veux
Que de ma volonté dépendent tous mes voeux,
Que mon feu m'obéisse au lieu de me contraindre,
Que je puisse, à mon gré, l'enflammer ou l'éteindre,
Et toujours en état de disposer de moi,
Donner quand il me plaît et retirer ma foi.
In Corneille's plays young girls are raised to believe that they
can love, or cease to love, at will; and their pride is interested.
Ambition demands that they remain in command of their affections. When
old Pleirante perceives that his daughter Célidée is fond of Lysandre
he lets her know that he has divined her secret and that he approves of
her choice, but Célidée answers proudly:
"Monsieur, il est tout, vrai, Son légitime ardor
A tant gagné sur moi que j'en fais de l'estime . . .
J'aime son entretien, je cheris sa présence;
Mais cela n'est enfin qu'un peu de complaisance,
Qu'un mouvement léger qui passe en moins d'un jour,
'Vos seuls commandements produiront mon amour.'"
--_Galerie du Palace._
Another ingenuous daughter answers, in an offended tone, when her mother
intimates that she seems to be in love with Alcidon, that she
"_Knows that appearances are against her!_ But," she adds, "my
heart has gone only as far as I willed that it should go. It
is always free; and it holds in reserve a sincere regard for
everything that my mother prescribes for me.... My wish is yours,
do with me what you will."--_La Veuve._
The public approved this language. It commended people who married
their daughters without consulting their hearts. And who shall say that
this way was not the one best fitted for their times? Faith added to
necessity engenders miracles, and miracles are what morality demands.
In the great world, the world of the great and the noble, love was
mentioned only as Corneille regarded it in his plays. Every one was in
love,--or feigned to be in love; on all hands were heard twitterings
as of birds in the springtime; but the pretty music ceased when
marriage was suggested, for no one had thought of founding a domestic
hearth on a sentiment as personal and as ephemeral as love. It was
understood that the collective body came first, that the youth--man
or maid--belonged to the family, not to self. Contrary to our way of
looking at things, it was considered meet and right for the individual
to subject himself to a species of public discipline in everything
relating to the essential actions of private life; the demand for
the public discipline of individuals was based upon the interests
of the community. This law--or social tyranny, if you will--covered
marriage, and upon occasion Parliament did police duty and enforced
it. Parliament forbade the aged Mme. de Pibrac to marry a seventh
time--although her six marriages had all been accomplished under normal
conditions--because it was supposed that a seventh marriage might
entail ridicule. The reason given by Parliament when it forbade Mme. de
Limoges to permit her daughter to marry a very honourable man of whom
she was fond, and who was supposed to be fond of her, was this: that
her guardian and tutor "did not approve of the marriage." The history
of this subject of marriage shows us that our great grandmothers did
not bear malice against destiny; they were truly Cornéliennes in
their conviction that a decorous control of the will constrained the
sentiments of an high-born soul, and they married their daughters
without scruple, and without anxiety, as freely and as carelessly as
they had married themselves. Religion was always close at hand, waiting
to staunch the wounds which social exigencies and family selfishness
made in the hearts of the unfortunate lovers.
The understanding between Corneille and his readers was perfect; all
that he did pleased the playgoers, and when, as he was searching
for what we should call "the realistic," he came upon the idea that
he might tempt the public taste by presenting a play with a Spanish
setting, his critics were well pleased. He wrote the _Cid_ and it was
an unqualified success; but its exotic sentiments and the generous
breadth of its morals excited vigorous protestations; the piece was met
by resistance like that which greeted the appearance of Ibsen's _Doll's
House_.
It is known [said Jules Lemaître] that despite the fact that the
popular enthusiasm was prodigious the critics were implacable.
Perhaps the criticisms were not all inspired by base envy of the
author. I believe in the good faith of the Academy, and to my
mind, it seems possible that the criticisms of the Academy were
not considered either partial or unjust by every one in France; it
may be that there were many thinkers who shared the opinions of
Cardinal de Richelieu and the majority of the Academy.
These lines are truth itself; the _Cid_ was an immoral play because
it was the apotheosis of passionate love, whose rights it proclaimed
at the expense of the most imperious duties. There was enough in the
_Cid_ to shock any social body holding firmly fixed opinions adverse to
the public exhibition of intimate personal feelings; there were such
bodies--the Academy was one of them--they made their own conditions,
and the license of the prevailing morals was insignificant to them. The
national idea of the superior rights of the family was well-grounded,
and when the Academy reproached Chimène because she was "too sensible
of the feelings of the lover--too conscious of her love ... too
unnatural a daughter"--it did no more than echo a large number of
voices.
Until he wrote the _Cid_ Corneille was more exigeant than the Academy.
The only thing required of lovers by the Academy was that they, the
lovers, should govern their feelings and love, or not love, according
to the commands of their families or their notaries. The Academy asked
nothing of them but to control their actions regardless of their
hearts; surely that was indulgence; beyond that there remained but one
thing more,--to suppress the mind.
We do not consider it essential [said _Sentiments Sur le Cid_]
to condemn Chimène because she loved her father's murderer; her
engagement to Rodrigue had preceded the murder, and it is not
within the power of a person to cease loving at will. We blame
her because, while she was pursuing Rodrigue, ostensibly to his
disadvantage, she was making vows and besieging Heaven in his
favour; this was a too evident betrayal of her natural obligations
in favour of her passion; it was too openly searching for a cloak
to cover her wishes, and making less of the daughter than of
the daughter's power to love her lover; in other words, it was
cheapening the natural character of the daughter to the advantage
of the lover.
The example was especially pernicious, because the genius of the
author had rendered it seductive, and because the part which Chimène
played assured her of the sympathy of the audience. Corneille was
very sensitive to the criticisms of the Academy, and after the _Cid_
appeared something more serious than synthetic form was placed under
the knives of the literary doctors; either because the denunciations
of his friends bore fruit, or because, in the depths of his heart, he
harboured the feelings which the unbridled ardour of the _Cid_ had
aroused in the Academy and in the other honest people "who upbraided
him, he retreated from the field of sentimental romanticism, and turned
his talents in another direction.... Nature's triumph over a social
convention was never given another occasion to display its graces or to
celebrate its truths under his auspices and the love passion was not
heard of again until it came forth in _Horace_ (Camille), to be very
severely dealt with."
We are led to believe that had Corneille met the subject of the _Cid_
fifteen years later, he would never have granted Chimène and Rodrigue
a marriage license.[71] Nor is this all. Having reformed, he was as
fanatical as the rest of the reformers; having become Catholic, he was
more Catholic than the Pope. He disclaimed love, and would have none of
it; he affirmed that it was unworthy of a place in tragedy. In his own
words, written some time later:
The dignity of tragedy demands for its subject some great interest
of the State, ... or some passion more manly than love; as, for
instance, ambition or vengeance. If fear is permitted to enter such
a work it should be a fear less puerile than that inspired by the
loss of a mistress. It is proper to mingle a little love with the
more important elements, because love is always very pleasing, and
it may serve as a foundation for the other interests and passions
that I have named. But if love is permitted to enter tragedy it
must be content to take the second rank in the poem, and to leave
the first places to the capital passions.
Having chosen his bone in this high-handed fashion, Corneille gnawed
at it continually; he could never get enough of it. Love had triumphed
in the _Cid_, but that day was past; in _Horace_ it struggled for
existence; in _Polyeucte_ it was vanquished, though not before it
had opposed sturdy resistance. It was weak enough in _Cinna_. After
the arrival of _Pompée_ it gave up the struggle, though it was heard
piteously murmuring at intervals. When _Pompée_ appeared the ladies
disappeared from the drama as if by magic; hardly a woman worthy of the
name could be found in literature: a few beings there were draped with
the time-worn title, but they were as virile as wild Indians.
_A little hardness sets so well upon great souls!_
Nothing could be seen but ambition, blood, thirst for power, and Fury,
cup-bearer to the God of Vengeance. There was no more love-passion,
the manly passions ramped upon the stage like lions, and, with few
exceptions, all, male and female, were monsters of the Will.
Long years passed before anything but the Will was heard of. After a
long reign the "monsters" disappeared. But they have reappeared in the
literature of our century. The worship of the Will, which originated
with Corneille, was recently revived by Nietzsche, whose famous
"Sur-homme" bears a very strong family resemblance to the Cornélien
heroes. "Life," said Nietzsche, "is that which ought always to surpass
and to exceed itself." Corneille's personages kept all the springs of
their will well in hand. They intended to succeed, to surpass, and to
get ahead of themselves if the thing was to be done; and when they were
convinced that to surpass themselves was impossible their future looked
very dark, and they sold their lives at cut prices,--or threw them in
for nothing--letting them go to any one who would carry them away. In
the fifth act of the play Horace became very anxious to die because, as
he expressed it, he feared that, after what he had done, he should be
unable to "surpass himself."
"Votre Majesté, Sire, à vu mes trois combats;
Il est bien malaisé qu'un pareil les seconde,
Qu'une autre occasion à celle-ci réponde,
Et que tout mon courage, après de si grands coups,
Parvienne à des succès qui n'aillent au dessous;
Si bien que pour laisser une illustre mémoire,
La mort seule aujourd'hui peut conserver ma gloire."
The analogy between the "Sur-homme" and the Cornélien heroes does not
end here; logic would not permit that; nothing weakens and enslaves the
firm and exalted will as effectually as the sentiment of pity, and both
Corneille and Nietzsche enfranchised their ideal humanity. Corneille
makes some one assure Horace that there is no great merit in exposing
himself to death, but that concession to weakness is of an early
period; the advanced man--the man out of the common order--is easily
recognised by the fact that he does not hesitate to bring the greatest
sufferings upon the beings who are dearest to him.
Combattre un ennemi pour le salut de tous,
Et contre un inconnu s'exposer seul aux coups,
D'une simple vertu c'est l'effet ordinaire ...
Mais vouloir au public immoler ce qu' on aime,
S'attacher au combat contre un autre soi-même ...
Une telle vertu n'appartenait qu' à nous.
The lines which follow were written by Nietzsche, and they seem a
paraphrase of the discourse of Horace:
To know how to suffer is nothing; feeble women, even slaves, may be
past masters in this art. But to stand firm against the assaults
of the pain of doubt, to withstand the weakness of remorse when
we inflict torment,--this is to be a hero; this is the height of
courage; in this lies the first condition of all grandeur.
Corneille's contempt for pity was shared by his contemporaries, and
so were his views of marriage as expressed in his first comedies.
The seigniors whom he met at the Hôtel de Rambouillet would have
blushed to feel compassion. They left the womanish weakness of pity
to the inferior beings of the lower orders. The great had always been
convinced that elevation in rank raised man above the consciousness
of the sufferings of beings of an inferior order; and in the day of
Corneille they were fully persuaded that noblemen ought to find higher
reasons for justice and for generosity than the involuntary emotions
which we of this later day have learned to recognise as symptoms of
"nervous disturbance."
I am very little sensible of pity [wrote La Rochefoucauld], and I
would prefer not to feel it at all. Nevertheless there is nothing
that I would not do for the afflicted, and I believe that I ought
to do what I can for them--even to expressing compassion for their
woes, for the wretches are so stupid that it does them the greatest
good in the world to receive sympathy; but I believe that we ought
to confine ourselves to expressing pity; we ought to take great
care not to feel it; pity is a passion which is good for nothing
in a well-made soul; when entertained it weakens the heart, and
therefore we ought to relegate it to beings who need passions to
incite them to do things because they are incapable of acting by
reason.
The manly characters in Corneille's heroic comedies never lower
themselves to the plane of the common people, nor to a plane where they
can think as the people think. Corneille was "of the Court" by all his
feelings and by all his prejudices, and he shared Mademoiselle's belief
that there is a natural difference between the man of quality and the
man below the quality, because generous virtues are mingled with the
blood which runs in noble veins, while the blood of the man of lower
birth is mingled with lower passions. Being a true courtier, Corneille
believed that above the two varieties of the human kind--the quality
and the lesser people--Providence set the order of Princes who are of
an essence apart, elect, and quasi-divine.
In _Don Sancho d'Aragon_ Carlos did his best to prove that he was
the son of a fisherman. His natural splendour gave the lie to his
pretence. "Impossible that he could have sprung from blood formed by
Heaven of nothing but clay."
Don Lope affirms that it cannot be true.
Non, le fils d'un pêcheur ne parle point ainsi ...
Je le soutien, Carlos, vous n'êtes point son fils,
La justice du ciel ne peut l'avoir permis,
Les tendresses du sang vous font une imposture,
Et je démens pour vous la voix de la nature.
He discovers that Carlos is the son of a King of Aragon. His
extraordinary merit is explained and consistency is satisfied. On the
whole Corneille did nothing but develop the maxims and idealise the
models offered to his observation on all sides; as much may be said of
the plots of his great plays. His subjects were suggested by the events
of the day. Had there been no Mme. de Chevreuse and no conspiracies
against Richelieu there could have been no _Cinna_. And it is possible
that there might not have been such a work as _Polyeucte_ had there
been no Jansenism.[72]
Corneille did not understand actuality as we understand it. His tragedy
is never a report of real occurrences, that is evident. But he was
besieged, encompassed, possessed, by the life around him, and it left
impressions in his mind which worked out and mingled with every subject
upon which he entered. He was guided by his impressions,--though he did
not know it,--and by their influence he was enabled to find a powerful
tragedy in a few indifferent lines dropped by a mediocre historian,
or by an inferior narrator of insignificant events. His surroundings
furnished him with precise representations, made real to his mind by
the vague abstractions of history. In the forms and conditions of the
present he saw and felt all the past.[73]
[Illustration: RACINE
FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING]
His constant contact with the world of his times favoured the action
of his mind upon the minds of his auditors. He exhibited to them
their passions, their thoughts, their feelings, their different
ways of looking upon social duty, upon politics, and upon the part
played, or to be played, by the aristocracy in the general movement.
The people of Paris loved the play because it exhibited openly, in
different, but always favourable lights, everything in which they had
any interest. In it they saw their own life, their aims, their needs,
their longing to be great and admirable in all things.[74] They saw
depicted all that they had dreamed of being, all that they had wished
to be; and something more vital than love of literature animated their
transports and lighted the fond glances fixed on the magic mirror
reflecting the ideals they so ardently caressed. The people listened to
Corneille's plays and trembled as they now tremble at the sound of _La
Marseillaise_. It has been said that they did not understand Racine;
if they did not, their lack of comprehension was natural. Racine was
of another generation, and he was not in sympathy with his forerunner.
Mme. de Sévigné was accused of false judgment in her criticism of
_Bejazet_,[75] but she also was of another school. She had little
sympathy for Racine's heroes. She understood Corneille's heroes, and
could not listen to his verses without the tremor of the heart which
we all feel when something recalls the generous fancies of our youth.
The general impression was that Corneille was inspired by the image of
Mlle. de Montpensier when he wrote _Pulcherie_ (1672), an heroic comedy
in which an empress stifles the cries of her heart that she may listen
to the voice of glory.
_The throne lifts the soul above all tenderness._
It is not impossible that Corneille had some such thought in his mind.
Certainly Mademoiselle was a model close at hand. One day when her
bold poltroon of a father told her, in the course of a sharp reproof,
that she was compromising her house for the pleasure of "playing the
heroine," she answered haughtily and truthfully:
"I do not know what it is to be anything _but_ a heroine! I am of
birth so high that no matter what I might do, I never could be
anything but great and noble. And they may call it what they like,
_I_ call it following my inclination and taking my own road. I was
born to take no other!"
Given such inclinations, and living in the Louvre, where Corneille's
plays were constantly enacted by Queen Anne's order, Mademoiselle
was accustomed to regard certain actions as the reverse of common and
ignoble, and to consider certain other actions "illustrious."
The justice of super-exalted sentiments was proclaimed by nobility,
and they who were disposed to closely imitate the examples set by
the literary leader of the day ran the risk of losing all sense of
proportions and of substance. Mademoiselle did lose that sense, nor was
she the only one to do so among all the children of quality who were
permitted to abuse their right to see the play. Through the imprudent
fashion of taking young children to the theatre, the honest Corneille,
who taught the heroism of duty, the poetry of sacrifice, the value of
strong will and self-control, was not absolutely innocent of the errors
in judgment and in moral sense by which the wars of the Fronde were
made possible. When he attempted to lift the soul of France above its
being, he vitiated a principle in the unformed national brain.
III
Mademoiselle had grown tall. She had lost her awkward ways; she was
considered pretty--although the Bourbon type might, at any moment,
become too pronounced. She had remained simple and insignificantly
innocent and childish, in a world where even the children discussed
politics and expressed opinions on the latest uprising. Side by side
with all her infantine pleasures were two serious cares which had
accompanied her from her cradle, one: her marriage; the other, the
honour of her house. The two cares were one, as the two objects were
one, because in that day a princess knew her exalted duty and accepted
her different forms of servitude without a frown, and certainly the
most painful of all those forms was the marriage in which the wife was
less than nothing; a being helpless in her inferiority, so situated
that she was unable to claim any share of the general domestic
happiness. The noble princesses had consented to drink their cup to the
dregs because it was part of their caste to do so, and many were they
who went to the altar as Racine's "Iphigénie" went to the sacrifice.
The idea that woman is a creature possessing a claim upon herself, with
the right to love, to be happy, and to seat herself upon the steps of
the throne, or even upon the throne, is a purely modern conception. The
day when that mediocre thought first germinated in the brain of the
noblewoman marked a date in the history of royalty, and it may be that
no surer sign was given to warn the nations of contemporary Europe of
the decay of the monarchical idea.
La Grande Mademoiselle had faith in the old traditions. She had always
been used to the idea that life would be full enough when she had
accomplished her high destiny and perpetuated the noble name borne
by her ancestors and she was fully satisfied with the idea that her
husband should see in her nothing but the "granddaughter of France,"
and accept her and her princely estates as he would accept any of
the other gifts directly bestowed on noblemen by Divine Providence.
Her husband had been ordained her husband from all time; and she was
prepared to yield her all to him without a murmur. What though he
should be ugly, gouty, doddering--or a babe in arms, "brutal," or
an "honest man"? Such details were for the lower orders, they were
puerile; unworthy of the attention of a great Princess. He would be the
_husband of Mlle. de Montpensier, niece of Louis XIII._, and that would
be enough. But in spite of herself she felt a lurking curiosity as to
who he should be. What was to be his name.... His Majesty, was he to be
a king, "_His Highness_," or simply "_Monseigneur_?" there lay the root
of the whole matter.
Of what rank were the wives whose right it was to remain seated in the
King's presence, ... and on what did they sit, arm-chairs or armless
seats?
_That was the question_, the only consideration of any importance.
We should prefer to think that Mademoiselle mourned because she was
reduced by her condition to forget that however princely a marriage
may be it must entail a husband, but we are the slaves of truth, we
must take our history as we find it, and be the fact pleasing or
painful,--here it is: Mademoiselle knew that she should marry the first
princely aspirant to her hand, and she was well content to let it be
so.
The first to arouse her imagination was one of her mother's ancient
lovers, Comte de Soissons, a brilliant soldier, but a man of very
ordinary intellect. "M. le Comte" had not only aspired to the favour
of Anne-Marie's mother, but he had also addressed her cousin Marie,
Duchesse de Montpensier, and so lively had been the wooing that there
had been some talk of an abduction. Then Gaston had entered the field
and carried off the Duchess, and, gnawed by spite and jealous fury,
Soissons had quarrelled with him.
Less than a year later the unexpected death of Madame brought about a
reconciliation between the rivals. Monsieur, wifeless, charged with
an infant daughter, who was the sole heiress to almost incalculable
wealth, clasped hands with Soissons, under circumstances favourable
to the brightest dreams. Madame's timely death had restored intact a
flattering prospect. M. le Comte again and for the third time announced
pretensions to the hand of a Montpensier, and Gaston smiled approval.
He considered it all very natural; given a like occasion, he would have
followed a like course.
So, as far back as her youthful memory could travel, Mlle.
Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans found along her route traces of the
assiduous attentions of the even-then ripe cousin, who had regaled her
with sugared almonds through the medium of a gentleman named Campion,
accredited and charged with the mission of rendering his master
pleasing to Mademoiselle, the infant Princess of the Tuileries. M.
le Comte sent Campion to Court with sugared almonds, because he, the
Comte de Soissons, rarely set foot in Paris at any time, and at the
time which we are now considering a private matter of business (an
assassination which he and Gaston had planned together), had definitely
retired him from Court.
All this happened about the year 1636. Gaston was living in an obscure
way, not to say in hiding; for it would have been difficult to hide so
notable a personage,--nor would there have been any logic in hiding
him, after all that had passed,--but he was living a sheltered, and, so
to speak, a harmless life. He was supposed to be in Blois, but he was
constantly seen gliding about the Louvre, tolerated by the King, who
practised his dancing steps with him, and treated by Richelieu with all
the contempt due to his character. The Cardinal made free with Gaston's
rights; he changed and dismissed his servants without consulting their
master; and more than one of the fine friends of Monsieur learned the
way to the Bastille.
At times Richelieu gave Gaston presents, hoping to tempt the
light-minded Prince to reflect upon the advantages attending friendly
relations with the Court. Richelieu had tried in vain to force Gaston
to consent to the dissolution of his marriage with Marguerite de
Lorraine. He had never permitted Gaston to present his wife at Court,
but Gaston had always hoped to obtain the permission and the anxious
lady had remained just outside of France awaiting the signal to enter.
She was generally supposed to be within call of her husband.
The time has come when justice of a new kind must be done to Monsieur,
and probably it is the only time when a creditable fact will be
recorded in his history. He stood firm in his determination to maintain
his marriage. Try as the Cardinal might, and by all the means familiar
to him from habitual use, he could not force Monsieur to relax his
fidelity to his consort. D'Orléans was virtuous on this one point, but
his manner of virtue was the manner of Gaston; there are different
ways of sustaining the marriage vows, and Monsieur's way was not
praiseworthy. His experience had passed as a veil blown away by the
wind. His passion for intrigue still held sway, he always had at least
one plot in process of infusion, and his results were fatal to his
assistants. In the heat of his desire to rid himself of the Cardinal,
he simulated change of heart so well that the Cardinal was deceived.
Suspicious at first of the sincerity of Gaston's professions, after
long and close observation he became convinced that the Prince was,
in truth, repentant. It was at that epoch, when free exercise of an
undisciplined will was made possible by Richelieu's conviction of his
own security, that Monsieur laid his plan of assassination with de
Soissons; at that time there was but opinion in France--de Richelieu
was a tyrant, there could be no hope of pleasure while he lived. Let
him die, let France hear that he was dead, and all the world could be
happy and free to act, not according to the dogmas of an egotist by
the grace of God, but by the rule of the greatest good to the greatest
number.
The conspirators had found a time and a place favourable to their
enterprise. It was during the siege of Corbie. The King was there
attended by his Minister. Monsieur and the Count were there; so were
the men whom they had engaged to kill the Cardinal. Culpable as the two
scoundrels had always been, when the whole country was in arms it was
impossible to find a reasonable excuse for refusing them commands, so
they were at the front with all the representative men of the country,
and they had good reason for supposing that one murder--a movement
calculated to relieve the nation--might pass unnoticed in the general
noise and motion of the siege. The time was ripe; Monsieur and Soissons
had put their heads together and decided that the moment had come to
strike the blow and rid the country of the Cardinal.
Their plans were well laid. A council of war had been called. De
Richelieu was to pass a certain staircase on his way to it; de Soissons
was to accompany Richelieu and distract his attention; Gaston was
to be waiting at the foot of the stairs to give the signal to the
assassins. But Monsieur had not changed since the days of Chalais, and
he could not control his nerves. He was a slave to ungovernable panics.
According to his plans the part which he had to play was easy. He had
nothing to do but to give the signal; all the accomplices were ready;
the assassins were awaiting the word; he himself was at his post;
but when the Cardinal passed, haughty and calm, to take his place in
his carriage, terror seized Monsieur and he turned and sprang up the
stairway. As he fled one of his accomplices, thinking to hold him back,
seized him by his cloak, and Gaston, rushing forward, dragged him after
him.
The affrighted Prince and his astonished follower reached the first
landing with the speed of lightning; and then, carried away by emotion,
Monsieur, still dragging his companion, fled into an inner room, where
he stopped, dazed; he did not know where he was, nor what he was doing,
and when he tried to speak he babbled incoherent words which died in
his throat. De Soissons was waiting in the courtyard; he had spoken
so calmly that Richelieu had passed on unconscious of the unusual
excitement among the courtiers.
Though the plot had failed, there had been no exposure; but the fact
that the accomplices held the secret and that they had much to gain
from the Cardinal by a denunciation of their principals made it
unsafe for the conspirators to remain in Paris; before the Cardinal's
policemen were warned they fled, Monsieur to Blois and de Soissons
to Sedan. Not long after their flight the story was in the mouths of
the gossips, and Mademoiselle knew that she could not hope for the
Cardinal's assistance in the accomplishment of her marriage; so the
child of the Tuileries advanced to maidenhood while her ambitious
cousin (Soissons) turned grey at Sedan. When Anne-Marie-Louise reached
her fourteenth year the Comte thought that the time had come to bring
matters to a crisis. He was not a coward, and as there was no reason
for hypocrisy or secrecy, he boldly joined the enemies of his country
and invaded France with the armies of de Bouillon and de Guise. Arrived
in France, he charged one of his former mistresses, Mme. de Montbazon,
to finish the work begun by Campion. Mme. de Montbazon lent her best
energies to the work, and right heartily.
I took great interest in M. le Comte de Soissons, [wrote
Mademoiselle]; his health was failing. The King went to Champagne
to make war upon him; and while he was on the journey, Mme. de
Montbazon--who loved the Count dearly and who was dearly loved by
him--used to come to see me every day, and she spoke of him with
much affection; she told me that she should feel extreme joy if
I would marry him, that they would never be lonely or bored at
the Hôtel de Soissons were I there; that they would not think of
anything but to amuse me, that they would give balls in my honour,
that we should take fine walks, and that the Count would have
unparalleled tenderness and respect for me. She told me everything
that would be done to render my condition happy, and of all that
could be done to make things pleasant for a personage of my age. I
listened to her with pleasure and I felt no aversion for the person
of M. le Comte.... Aside from the difference between my age and
his my marriage with him would have been feasible. He was a very
honest man, endowed with grand qualities; and although he was the
youngest of his house he had been accorded[76] with the Queen of
England.
Having been unable to acquire the mother, de Soissons turned his
attention to the daughter. Mademoiselle recorded:
M. le Comte sent M. le Comte de Fiesque to Monsieur to remind him
of the promise that he had made concerning me, and to remind him
that affairs were then in such a condition that they might be
terminated. M. le Comte de Fiesque very humbly begged Monsieur to
find it good that de Soissons should abduct me, because in that way
only could the marriage be accomplished. Monsieur would not consent
to that expedient at all, and so the answer that M. le Comte de
Fiesque carried back touched M. le Comte very deeply.
Not long after this episode the Comte de Soissons was killed at Marfée
(6th July, 1641), and Mademoiselle's eyes were opened to the fact that
she and M. le Comte "had not been created for each other." She wrote of
his death as follows:
"I could not keep from weeping when he died, and when I went to see
Madame his mother at Bagnolet, M. and Mlle. de Longueville and the
whole household did nothing but manifest their grief by their continual
cries."
Mademoiselle had desired with earnest sincerity to become the Comtesse
de Soissons; it is difficult to imagine why,--unless, perhaps, because
at her age girls build air-castles with all sorts of materials.
M. le Comte had been wept over and buried and sentiment had nothing
more to do with Mademoiselle's dreams of establishment. Her fancy
hovered over Europe and swooped down upon the princes who were
bachelors or widowers, and upon the married nobles who were in a fair
way to become widowers; more than once she was seen closely following
the current reports when some princess was taken by sickness; and
she abandoned or developed her projects, according to the turn taken
by the diseases of the unfortunate ladies. The greater number of the
hypothetical postulants upon whom she successively fixed her mind were
strangers whom she had never seen, and among them were several who
had never thought of her, and who never did think of her at any time;
but she pursued her way with unflagging zeal, permitting indiscreet
advances when she did not encourage them; she considered herself more
or less the Queen or the Empress of France, of Spain, or of Hungary,
as the prospect of the speedy bereavement of the incumbents of the
different thrones brightened. La Grande Mademoiselle had not entered
the world as the daughter of a degenerate with impunity; there were
subjects upon which she was incapable of reasoning; in the ardour of
her faith in the mystical virtues of the Blood she surpassed Corneille.
She believed that the designs of princes ranked with the designs
of God, and that they should be regarded as the devout regard the
mysteries of religion. To quote her own words: "The intuitions of the
great are like the mysteries of the Faith; it is not for men to fathom
them! they ought to revere them; they ought to know that the thoughts
of the great are given to their possessors for the well-being and for
the salvation of the country."
Mademoiselle surpassed the Corneille of Tragedy in her disdainful
rejection of love; Corneille was content to station love in the
rear rank, and he placed it far below the manly passions in his
classification of "the humanities." It will be remembered that by his
listings the "manly passions" were Ambition, Vengeance, Pride of Blood,
and "Glory." Mademoiselle believed that love could not exist between
married people of rank; she considered it one of the passions of the
inferior classes.
Le trône met une âme au dessus des tendresses.
_Pulcherie._
When we examine the subject we see that it was not remarkable that
Mademoiselle recognised illegitimate love, although her own virtue was
unquestionable. She liked lovers, and accepted the idea of love in
the abstract; she repudiated the idea of love legalised because she
was logical; she thought that married love proclaimed false ideas and
gave a bad example. If married people loved each other and were happy
together because of their common love, young noble girls would long
to marry for love and to be happy in marriage because of love, and
the time would come when there would be no true quality, because the
nobles would have followed their desires or their weaker sentiments and
formed haphazard unions brought about by natural selection. Man or maid
would "silence the voice of glory in order to listen to the voice of
love," should the dignity of hierarchical customs be brought down to
the level of the lower passions. So Mademoiselle reasoned, and from her
mental point of view her reasoning was sound. She was strong-minded;
she realised the danger of permitting the heart to interfere in the
marriage of the Elect.
The year 1641 was not ended when Mademoiselle appeared in spiritual
mourning for a suitor who seems to us to have been nothing but a
vision, the first vision of a series. Anne of Austria had never
forgotten the Cardinal's cruel rebuke when he found Mademoiselle
playing at man and wife with a child in long clothes. She had tried to
console the little girl, and her manner had always been motherly and
gentle. "It is true," she had said, "the Cardinal told the truth; my
son is too small; you shall marry my brother!" When she had spoken thus
she had referred to the Cardinal Infant,[77] who was in Flanders acting
as Captain-General of the country and commanding the armies of the King
of Spain.