whole or with the principle of belief combined to make the Protestant
minority by far more moral than the Catholic majority. Perhaps the
social disadvantage attached to Protestantism was the strongest
reason for its superiority. When a practically powerless minority is
surrounded and kept under surveillance by a powerful majority, unless
pride and vanity have blinded its prudence the minority keeps careful
watch of its actions. By a natural process minorities of agitators
cast cowardly and selfish members out of their ranks; in other words,
they weed out the useless, the feeble, the derogatory elements, and
the elements which, being dependent upon the favour of the public, or
susceptible to public criticism, flinch if subjected to unfavourable
judgment. The Protestant minority eliminated all who, fearing the
ridicule or the animosity of the Court, shrank from standing shoulder
to shoulder with the men in the fighting ranks of Protestantism.
Impelled by personal interest, the converts to the reform movement went
back to the Catholic majority. There were so many advantages attendant
upon the profession of Catholicism that with few exceptions the great
lords declared their faith in the religion powerful to endow them with
military commands and with governmental and other lucrative positions.
The Protestant ranks were thinned, but the few who stood their ground
were the picked men of the reform movement. The ranks of the Catholics
were swelled by the hypocrites and the turncoats who had deserted
from the army of the Protestants. The Protestants gained morally by
the defection of their converts, and the Catholics lost; the few who
sustained Protestantism were sincere; the fact of their profession
proved it.
The Protestant pastor had no selfish reason for his profession; he
had nothing to hope for; he was lured by no promise of an abbey,
nor could he expect to be rewarded for his open revolt against the
King's church. Looking at it in its most illusive light, his was a
bad business; there was nothing in it to tempt the favourites of the
great; not even a lackey could find advantage in appointment to the
Protestant ministry, and no man entered upon the painful life of the
Protestant pastor unless forced by an all-mastering vocation. The
cause of the Reformation was safe because it was in the hands of men
who boasted of "a judge that no king could corrupt," and who believed
that they had armed themselves with "the panoply of God." The pastors
laboured with unfailing zeal, first to kindle the spark of a faith
separated from all earthly interests; next to nourish sincere belief
in God as the vital principle of religious life. Under their influence
the Protestants of the upper middle classes and the Protestants of
the lower classes--there were still fewer of the latter than of the
former--not only practised, but lived their religion, giving an example
of good conduct and of intelligent appreciation of the name and the
meaning of their profession. Their adversaries were forced to render
them the homage due to their efforts and their sincerity. They, the
Protestants, were charitable in the true sense of the term; they loved
the brethren; they cared for the bodies as well as for the souls of the
poor; they proved their love for their fellows by guarding the public
welfare; they kept the laws and, whenever it was possible, enforced
them. The pastors knew that they must practise what they preached, and,
profiting by the examples of the ignoble priests, they set a guard upon
their words and movements, lest their disciples should question their
sincerity. They were austere, energetic, and devoted to their people
and to their cause. They were convinced that they were warders of the
inheritance of the saints, and they patrolled their circuit, and went
about in the name of Christ proclaiming the mercy of God and warning
men of Eternity and of The Judgment.
Let us be loyal to our convictions and give to those early pastors the
credit due to their candour and to their efforts; they surpassed us
in many ways. They were learned; they were versed in science, kind to
strangers, strict in morality, brotherly to the poor.
François de Sales said of them: "The Protestants were Christians;
Catholicism was not Christian."[104]
So matters stood--the churches ruined and abandoned, Religion mocked
and the priests despised[105]--when a little phalanx of devoted men
arose to rescue the wrecked body of the French Clergy. They organised
systematically, but their plan of action was independent. François de
Sales was among the first who broke ground for the difficult work. He
was a calm, cool man, indifferent to abuse, firm in the conviction
that his power was from God. There were many representatives of the
Church, but few like him. One of his chroniclers dwelt upon his
"exalted indifference to insult" another, speaking of his "supernatural
patience," said:
"A Du Perron could not have stopped short in an argument with a
heretic, but, on the other hand, a Du Perron would not have converted
the heretic by the ardour of his forbearing kindness." Strowski said
of de Sales that he "saw as the wise see, and lived among men not as
a nominal Christian but as a man of God, gifted with omniscience." By
living in the world de Sales had learned that a germ of religion was
still alive in many of the abandoned souls; he knew that there were a
few who were truly Catholic; he knew that those few were cherishing
their faith, but he saw that they lived isolated lives, away from
the world, and he believed that the limitations of their spiritual
hermitage hindered their usefulness. De Sales believed in a community
of religion and Christian love. The few who cherished their religion
were a class by themselves. They knew and respected each other, they
theorised abstractly upon the prevailing evils, but they had no thought
of bettering man's condition. Their sorrows had turned their thoughts
to woeful contemplation of their helplessness, and all their hopes
were straining forward toward the peaceful cloister and the silent
intimacy of monachism. For them the uses of life were as a tale that
is told. They had no thought of public service, they were timid, they
abhorred sin and shrank from sinners, their isolation had developed
their tendency to mysticism, and the best efforts of their minds were
concentrated upon hypotheses.
Père François believed that they and all who loved God could do good
work in the world. He did not believe in controversy, he did not
believe in silencing skeptics with overwhelming arguments. He used
his own means in his own way; but his task was hard and his progress
slow, and months passed before he was able to form a working plan. His
idea was to revive religious feeling and spiritual zeal, to increase
the piety of life in community, to exemplify the love which teaches
man to live at peace with his brother, to fulfil his mission as the
son of man made in the likeness of God, and to act his part as an
intelligent member of an orderly solidarity. De Sales's first work was
difficult, but not long after his mission-house was established he saw
that his success was sure, and he then appointed deputies and began
his individual labour for the revival of religious thought. He knew
that the people loved to reason, and he had resolved to develop their
intelligence and to open their minds to Truth: the strong principle of
all reform. His doubt of the utility of controversy had been confirmed
by the spectacle of the recluses of the Church. Study had convinced him
that theologians had taken the wrong road and exaggerated the spiritual
influence of the "power of piety." He believed in the practical piety
of Charity, and he accepted as his appointed task the awakening of
Christian love. His impelling force was not the bigotry which
proves religion orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks,
nor was it the contemplative faith which, by living in convents,
deprives the world of the example of its fervour; it was that practical
manifestation of the grace of God "which fits the citizen for civil
life and forms him for the world."
In the end Père François's religion became purely practical and he had
but one aim: the awakening of the soul.
His critics talked of his "dreams," his "visions," and his
"religio-sentimental revival." His piety was expressed in the saying:
"Religious life is not an attitude, nor can the practice of religion
save a man; the true life of the Christian springs from a change
of heart, from the intimate and profound transformation of his
personality." We know with what ardour Père François went forward to
his goal, manifesting his ideals by his acts. By his words and by his
writings he worked a revolution in men's souls. His success equalled
the success of Honoré d'Urfé; few books have reached the number of the
editions of the _Introduction à la vie dévote_.[106]
In Paris de Sales had often visited a young priest named Pierre de
Bérulle, who also was deeply grieved by the condition of Catholicism,
and who was ambitious to work a change in the clergy and in the Church.
Père Bérulle had discussed the subject with Vincent de Paul, de Sales,
Bourdoise, and other pious friends, and after serious reflection,
he had determined to undertake the stupendous work of reforming the
clergy. In 1611 he founded a mission-house called the Oratoire. "The
chief object of the mission was to put an end to the uselessness of
so many ecclesiastics." The missionaries began their work cautiously
and humbly, but their progress was rapid. Less than fifteen months
after the first Mass was offered upon the altar of the new house, the
Oratoire was represented by fifty branch missions. The brothers of the
company were seen among all classes; their aim, like the individual
aim of Père François, was to make the love of God familiar to men by
habituating man to the love of his brother. They turned aside from
their path to help wherever they saw need; they nursed the sick,
they worked among the common people, they lent their strength to the
worn-out labourer.
They were as true, as simple, and as earnest as the men who walked with
the Son of Mary by the Lake of Galilee. Bound by no tie but Christian
Charity, free to act their will, they manifested their faith by their
piety, and it was impossible to deny the beneficence of their example.
From the mother-house they set out for all parts of France, exhorting,
imploring the dissolute to forsake their sin, and proclaiming the love
of Christ. Protestants were making a strong point of the wrath of
God; the Oratorians talked of God's mercy. They passed from province
to province, they searched the streets and the lanes of the cities,
they laboured with the labourers, they feasted with the bourgeois.
Dispensing brotherly sympathy, they entered the homes of the poor as
familiar friends, confessing the adults, catechising the children,
and restoring religion to those who had lost it or forgotten it. They
demanded hospitality in the provincial presbyteries, aroused the
slothful priests to repentant action, and, raising the standard of the
Faith before all eyes, they pointed men to Eternal Life and lifted the
fallen brethren from the mire.
Shoulder to shoulder with the three chevaliers of the Faith, de Sales,
de Bérulle, and Père Vincent, was the stern Saint Cyran (Jean Duvergier
de Hauranne) who lent to the assistance of the Oratorians the powerful
influence of his magnetic fervour. The impassioned eloquence of the
author of _Lettres Chrétiennes et Spirituelles_ was awe-inspiring. The
members of the famous convent (Port Royal des Champs) were equally
devoted; their fervour was gentler, but always grave and salutary.
Saint Cyran's characteristics were well defined in Joubert's _Pensée_.
The Jansenists carried into their religious life more depth of
thought and more reflection; they were more firmly bound by
religion's sacred liens; there was an austerity in their ideas and
in their minds, and that austerity incessantly circumscribed their
will by the limitations of duty.
They were pervaded, even to their mental habit, by their uncompromising
conception of divine justice; their inclinations were antipathetic to
the lusts of the flesh. The companions of the community of Port Royal
were as pure in heart as the Oratorians, but they were childlike in
their simplicity; they delighted in the beauties of nature and in the
society of their friends; they indulged their humanity whenever such
indulgence accorded with their vocation; they permitted "the fêtes of
Christian love," to which we of the present look back in fancy as to
visions of the first days of the early Church. Jules Lemaître said in
his address at Port Royal:[107]
Port Royal is one of the most august of all the awe-inspiring
refuges of the spiritual life of France. It is holy ground; for
in this vale was nourished the most ardent inner life of the
nation's Church. Here prayed and meditated the most profound of
thinkers, the souls most self-contained, most self-dependent, most
absorbed by the mystery of man's eternal destiny. None caught in
the whirlpool of earthly life ever seemed more convinced of the
powerlessness of human liberty to arrest the evolution of the
inexorable Plan, and yet none ever manifested firmer will to battle
and to endure than those first heralds of the resurrection of
Catholicism.
François de Sales loved the convent of Port Royal; he called it his
"place of dear delight"! In its shaded cloisters de Bérulle, Père
Vincent, and Saint Cyran laboured together to purify the Church, until
the time came when the closest friends were separated by dogmatic
differences; and even then the tempest that wrecked Port Royal could
not sweep away the memory of the peaceful days when the four friends
lent their united efforts to the work which gave the decisive impulsion
to the Catholic Renaissance.
Whenever the Church established religious communities, men were called
to direct them from all the branches of de Bérulle's Oratoire, because
it was generally known that the Oratorians inspired the labourers of
the Faith with religious ardour, and in time the theological knowledge
gained in the Oratoire and in its branches was considered essential
to the true spiritual establishment of the priest. Men about to
enter the service of the Church went to the Oratoire to learn how to
dispense the sacramental lessons with proper understanding of their
meaning; new faces were continually appearing, then vanishing aglow
with celestial fire. Once when an Oratorian complained that too many of
their body were leaving Paris, de Bérulle answered: "I thank God for
it! This congregation was established for nothing else; its mission is
to furnish worthy ministers and workmen fitted for the service of the
Church."
[Illustration: ST. VINCENT DE PAUL
FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING]
De Bérulle knew that, were he to give all the members of his community,
their number would be too feeble to regenerate the vast and vitiated
body of the French clergy. He could not hope to reap the harvest, but
he counted it as glory to be permitted to sow the seed.
Vincent de Paul was the third collaborator of the company. It was
said of him that he was "created to fill men's minds with love of
spiritual things and with love for the Creator." Père Vincent was a
simple countryman. In appearance he resembled the disciples of Christ,
as represented in ancient pictures. His rugged features rose above a
faded and patched soutane, but his face expressed such kindness and
such sympathy that, like his heavenly Ensample, he drew men after him.
Bernard of Cluny deplored the evil days; but the time of Louis XIII.
was worse than the time of Bernard. The mercy proclaimed by the Gospel
had been effaced from the minds of men, and the Charity of God had
been dishonoured even by the guides sent to make it manifest. Mercy
and Charity incarnate entered France with Père Vincent, and childlike
fondness and gentle patience crept back into human relations--not
rapidly--the influences against them were too strong--but steadily and
surely. Père Vincent was amusing; it was said of him that he was "like
no one else"; the courtiers first watched and ridiculed, then imitated
him. When they saw him lift the fallen and attach importance to the
sufferings of the common people, and when they heard him insist that
criminals were men and that they had a right to demand the treatment
due to men, they shrugged their shoulders, but they knew that through
the influence of the simple peasant-priest something unknown and very
sweet had entered France.
Vincent de Paul was a worker. He founded the Order of the Sisters of
Charity, the Convicts' Mission-Refuge, a refuge for the unfortunate,
the Foundling Hospital, and a great general hospital and asylum where
twenty thousand men and women were lodged and nourished. To the
people of France Père Vincent was a man apart from all others, the
impersonation of human love and the manifestation of God's mercy. By
the force of his example pity penetrated and pervaded a society in
which pity had been unknown, or if known, despised. The people whose
past life had prepared them for anything but good works sprang with
ardour upon the road opened by the gentle saint who had taught France
the way of mercy. Even the great essayed to be like Père Vincent;
every one, high and low, each in his own way and to the extent of his
power, followed the unique example. Saint Vincent became the national
standard; the nobles pressed forward in his footsteps, concerning
themselves with the sick and the poor and trying to do the work of
priests. They laboured earnestly lavishing their money and their time,
and, fired by the strength of their purpose, they came to love their
duty better than they had loved their pleasure. They imitated the
Oratorians as closely as they had imitated the shepherds of _Astrée_,
and "the monsters of the will," Indifference, Infidelity, and Licence,
hid their heads for a time, and Charity became the fashion of the day.
Père Vincent's religious zeal equalled his brotherly tenderness; he
was de Bérulle's best ally. A special community, under his direction,
assisted in the labours of the Oratoire. The chief purpose of the
mother-house and its branches was the purification of the priesthood
and the increase of religion. When a young priest was ready to be
ordained he was sent to Père Vincent's mission, where, by means of
systematic retreats, he received the deep impression of the spiritual
devotion and the charity peculiar to the Oratorians.
Bossuet remembered with profound gratitude the retreats that he made
in Père Vincent's Oratoire. But there was one at Court to whom the
piety of Père Vincent was a thorn in the flesh. We have seen that
de Bérulle's work was the purification of the clergy, and that Père
Vincent was de Bérulle's chief ally. Mazarin was the Queen's guardian,
and the Queen held the list of ecclesiastical appointments. A Council
called the _Conseil de Conscience_ had been instituted to guide the
Regent in her "Collation of Benefices." The nominees were subject to
the approbation of the Council. When their names were read the points
in their favour and against them were discussed. In this _Conseil
de Conscience_ Père Vincent confronted Mazarin ten years. Before
Père Vincent appeared men were appointed abbots regardless of their
characters. Chantelauze says in _Saint Vincent de Paul et les Gondis_
that "Mazarin raised Simony to honour." The Cardinal gave the benefices
to people whom he was sure of: people who were willing to devote
themselves, body and soul, to his purposes. Père Vincent had awakened
the minds of many influential prelates, and a few men and women
prominent at Court had been aroused to a sense of the condition of the
Church. These few priests and laymen were called the "Saints' Party."
They sat in the Council convened for the avowed purpose of purifying
the Church. When Mazarin made an ignoble appointment, Père Vincent
objected, and the influential prelates and the others of their party
echoed his objections. Through the energy of the "Saints," as they
were flippantly called by the courtiers, many scandalous appointments
were prevented, and gradually the church positions were filled by
sincere and devoted men. The determined and earnest objections of so
many undeniably disinterested, well-known, and unimpeachable people
aroused the superstitious scruples of the Queen, and when her scruples
were aroused, she was obstinate. Mazarin knew this. He knew that Anne
of Austria was a peculiar woman, he knew that she had been a Queen
before he had had any hold upon her, and he knew that he had not been
her first favourite. He was quick, keen-sighted, flexible. He was
cautious. He had no intention of changing the sustained coo of his
turtle-dove for the shrill "_Tais-toi!_" of the Regent of France.
But he was not comfortable. His little diaries contain many allusions
to the distress caused by his inability to digest the interference
of the "Saints." He looked forward to the time when he should be so
strong that it would be safe for him to take steps to free himself
from the obsessions of the _Conseil de Conscience_. He was amiable
and indulgent in his intercourse with all the cabals and with all the
conflicting agitations; he studied motives and forestalled results; he
brought down his own larks with the mirrors of his enemies. He had a
thousand different ways of working out the same aims. He did nothing
to actively offend, but there was a persistence in his gentle tenacity
which exasperated men like Condé and disheartened the frank soldiers
of the Faith of the mission of Port Royal and the Oratoire. He foresaw
a time when he could dispose of benefices and of all else. A few years
later the _Conseil de Conscience_ was abolished, and Père Vincent was
ignominiously vanquished. Père Vincent lacked the requisites of the
courtier; he was artless, and straightforward, and intriguers found
it easy to make him appear ridiculous in the eyes of the Queen.[108]
Mazarin watched his moment, and when he was sure that Anne of Austria
could not refuse him anything, he drew the table of benefices from
her hand. From that time "pick and choose" was the order of the day.
"Monsieur le Cardinal" visited the appointments secretly, and secured
the lion's share for himself. When he had made his choice, the men who
offered him the highest bids received what he had rejected. In later
years Mazarin was, by his own appointment, Archbishop of Metz and the
possessor of thirty fat benefices. His revenues were considerable.
Nowhere did the Oratorians meet as determined opposition as at Court.
The courtiers had gone to Mass because they lost the King's favour if
they did not go to Mass, but to be inclined to skepticism was generally
regarded as a token of elegance. Men thought that they were evincing
superior culture when they braved God, the Devil, and the King, at one
and the same time, by committing a thousand blasphemies. Despite the
pressure of the new ideas, the "Saints' Party" had been difficult to
organise. It was a short-lived party because Mazarin was not a man to
tolerate rivals who were liable to develop power enough to counteract
his influence over Anne of Austria concerning subjects even more vital
than the distribution of the benefices. The petty annoyances to which
the Prime Minister subjected the "Saints' Party" convinced people that
when a man was of the Court, if he felt the indubitable touch of the
finger of Grace, the only way open to him was the road to the cloister.
It was known that wasps sting, and that they are not meet adversaries
for the sons of God, and the wasps were there in swarms. François de
Sales called the constantly recurring annoyances, "that mass of wasps."
As there was no hope of relief in sight, it was generally supposed
that the most prudent and the wisest course for labourers in the
vineyard of the Lord was to enter the hive and take their places in the
cells, among the manufacturers of honey. So when La Grande Mademoiselle
looked upon the convent as her natural destination, she was carrying
out the prevalent idea that retreat from the world was the natural
result of conversion to true religion. It was well for her and for the
convent which she had decided to honour with her presence that just
at the moment when she laid her plans her father had one of his rare
attacks of common sense--yes, well for her and well for the convent!
IV
Mademoiselle's crisis covered a period of six months; when she
reappeared patches adorned her face and powder glistened in her hair.
She said of her awakening: "I recovered my taste for diversions, and I
attended the play and other amusements with pleasure, but my worldly
life did not obliterate the memory of my longings; the excessive
austerity to which I had reduced myself was modified, but I could
not forget the aspirations which I had supposed would lead me to the
Carmelites!" Not long after she emerged from her religious retreat
politics called her from her frivolity. Political life was the arena
at that hour, and it is not probable that the most radical of the
feministic codes of the future will restore the power which women then
possessed by force of their determined gallantry, their courage, their
vivacity, their beauty, and their coquetry. The women of the future
will lack such power because their rights will be conferred by laws;
legal rights are of small importance compared to rights conferred and
confirmed by custom. The women of Mademoiselle's day ordered the march
of war, led armies, dictated the terms of peace, curbed the will of
statesmen, and signed treaties with kings, not because they had a right
to do so, but because they possessed invincible force. Richelieu, who
had a species of force of his own, and at times wielded it to their
temporary detriment, planned his moves with deference to their tactics,
and openly deplored their importance. Mazarin, who dreaded women, wrote
to Don Luis del Haro: "We have three such amazons right here in France,
and they are fully competent to rule three great kingdoms; they are the
Duchesse de Longueville, the Princesse Palatine, and the Duchesse de
Chevreuse." The Duchesse de Chevreuse, having been born in the early
century, was the veteran of the trio. "She had a strong mind," said
Richelieu,[109] "and powerful beauty, which, as she knew well how to
use it, she never lowered by any disgraceful concessions. Her mind was
always well balanced."
[Illustration: DUCHESSE DE CHEVREUSE]
Retz completed the portrait: "She loved without any choice of objects
for the simple reason that it was necessary for her to love some one;
and when once the plan was laid it was not difficult to give her a
lover. But from the moment when she began to love her lover, she loved
him faithfully,--and she loved no one else." She was witty, spirited,
and of a very vigorous mind. Some of her ideas were so brilliant that
they were like flashes of lightning; and some of them were so wise
and so profound that the wisest men known to history might have been
proud to claim them. Rare genius and keen wits which she had trained
to intrigue from early youth had made her one of the most dangerous
politicians in France. She had been an intimate friend of Anne of
Austria, and the chief architect of the Chalais conspiracy. After the
exposure of the conspiracy, Richelieu sentenced her to banishment for
a term of twenty-five years, and no old political war-horse could have
taken revenge sterner than hers. She did not rest on her wrongs; her
entrance upon foreign territory was marked by the awakening of all
the foreign animosities. Alone and single-handed, the unique Duchess
formed a league against France, and when events reached a crisis she
had attained such importance in the minds of the allies that England,
though vanquished and suing for peace, made it a condition of her
surrender that the Duchesse de Chevreuse, "a woman for whom the King
of England entertained a particular esteem," should be recalled to
France. Richelieu yielded the point instantly; he was too wise to
invest it with the importance of a parley; he recalled the woman who
had convened a foreign league against her own people, and eliminated
the banishment of powerful women from his list of penalties. He had
learned an important political lesson; thereafter the presence of the
Duchesse de Chevreuse was considered in high diplomatic circles the one
thing needful for the even balance of the State of France. After the
Spanish intrigue, which ended in Val de Grâce, the Cardinal, fearing
another "league," made efforts to keep the versatile Duchess under his
hand, but she slipped through his fingers and was seen all over France
actively pursuing her own peculiar business. (1637.)
The Duchesse de Chevreuse once traversed France on horseback, disguised
as a man, and she used to say that nothing had ever amused her as well
as that journey. She must have been a judge of amusements, as she had
tried them all. When she ran away disguised as a man, her husband and
Richelieu both ran after her, to implore her to remain in France,
and, in her efforts to escape her pursuers, she was forced to hide
in many strange places, and to resort to stratagems of all kinds. In
one place where she passed the night, her hostess, considering her a
handsome boy, made her a declaration of love. Her guides, deceived by
her appearance gave her a fair idea of the manners worn by a certain
class of men when they think that they are among men and free from
the constraint of woman's presence. On her journeys through Europe,
she slept one night or more in a barn, on a pile of straw, the next
night in a field, under a hedge, or in one of the vast beds in which
our fathers bedded a dozen persons at once without regard to their
circumstances. Alone, or in close quarters, the Duchesse de Chevreuse
maintained her identity. Hers was a resolute spirit; she kept her
own counsel, and she feared neither man nor devil. Thus, in boys'
clothes, in company with cavaliers who lisped the language of the
_Précieuses_, or with troopers from whose mouths rushed the fat oaths
of the Cossacks, sleeping now on straw and now with a dozen strangers,
drunk and sober, she crossed the Pyrenees and reached Madrid, where she
turned the head of the King of Spain and passed on to London, where she
was fêted as a powerful ally, and where, incidentally, she became the
chief official agent of the enemies of Richelieu.
When Louis XIII. was dying he rallied long enough to enjoin the
Duchesse de Chevreuse from entering France.[110] Standing upon the
brink of Eternity, he remembered the traitress whom he had not seen in
ten years. The Duchesse de Chevreuse was informed of his commands, and,
knowing him to be in the agonies of death, she placed her political
schemes in the hands of agents and hurried back to France to condole
with the widow and to assume the control of the French nation as the
deputy of Anne of Austria. She entered the Louvre June 14, 1643,
thinking that the ten years which had passed since she had last seen
her old confidante had made as little change in the Queen as in her
own bright eyes. She found two children at play together,--young Louis
XIV. and little Monsieur, a tall proud girl with ash-blonde hair: La
Grande Mademoiselle, and a mature and matronly Regent who blushed when
she saluted her. One month to a day had passed since Louis XIII. had
yielded up the ghost.
The Duchesse de Chevreuse installed herself in Paris in her old
quarters and bent her energies to the task of dethroning Mazarin.
* * * * *
The Palatine Princess, Anne de Gonzague, was a ravishingly beautiful
woman endowed with great executive ability. "I do not think," said
Retz, "that Elizabeth of England had more capacity for conducting a
State." Anne de Gonzague did not begin her career by politics. When, as
a young girl, she appeared in the world of the Court, she astonished
France by the number and by the piquancy of her adventures. She was
another of the exalted dames who ran upon the highways disguised as
cavaliers or as monks. No one was surprised no matter when or where he
saw Anne de Gonzague, though she was often met far beyond the limits
of polite society. Fancy alone--and their own sweet will--ruled the
fair ladies of those heroic days. During five whole years Anne de
Gonzague[111] gave the world to understand that she was "Mme. de Guise,
wife of Henri de Guise, Archbishop of Rheims" (the same Henri de Guise
who afterward married Mme. de Bossut).
Having passed for "Mme. de Guise" sixty months, the Lady Anne appeared
at Court under her own name "as if nothing had happened," reported
Mademoiselle. Whatever may have here "happened," Anne de Gonzague
reappeared at Court as alluring as in the flower of her first youth;
and, as the _Chronicle_ expressed it: "had the talent to marry
herself--between two affairs of womanly gallantry--to the Prince
Palatine,[112] one of the most rabidly jealous of gentlemen," because,
as the pious and truthful Bossuet justly remarked, "everything gave way
before the secret charm of her conversation." When nearly thirty years
of age she obeyed the instincts of her genius and engaged in politics,
with other politically inclined ladies, including Mme. de Longueville,
whose only talent lay in her blonde hair and charming eyes.
Despite the poverty of her mental resources, Mme. de Longueville was
a natural director of men, and she was but one of a very brilliant
coterie. The prominent and fiery amazons of the politics of that epoch
are too historically known to require detailed mention. They were: the
haughty, dazzlingly superb, but too vicious and too practical in vice,
Montbazon; the Duchesse de Chatillon (the imperious beauty who had her
hand painted upon a painted lion whose face was the face of the great
Condé), and many others who to the measure of their ability played
with the honour and the lives of men, with Universal Suffrage, and with
the stability of France, and who, like La Grande Mademoiselle, were
called from their revelries by the dangers which threatened them.
The daughter of Gaston d'Orléans had grown up firmly convinced that
the younger branch of the House of Paris (her own branch) could do
anything. That had been the lesson taught for more than a century
of history. From Charles VIII. to Louis XIII. the throne had been
transmitted from father to son but three times; in all other cases it
had passed to brothers or to cousins. The collaterals of the royal
family had become accustomed to think of themselves as very near the
throne, and at times that habit of thought had been detrimental to the
country. Before the birth of Louis XIV. Gaston d'Orléans had touched
the crown with the tips of his fingers, and he had made use of his
title as heir-presumptive to work out some very unsavoury ends. After
the birth of his nephews he had lived in a dream of possible results;
he had waited to see what "his star" would bring him, and his hopes
had blazed among their ashes at the first hint of the possibility of
a change. When Louis XIV. was nine years old he was very sick and
his doctors expected him to die; he had the smallpox. Monsieur was
jubilant: he exhibited his joy publicly, and the courtiers drank to the
health of "Gaston I." Olivier d'Ormesson stated that the courtiers
distributed all the offices in the King's gift and planned to dispose
of the King's brother. Anne of Austria, agonising in prayer for the
life of the King, was horrified to learn that a plot was on foot
to abduct little Monsieur. She was warned that the child was to be
stolen some time in the night between Saturday and Sunday. Maréchal
de Schomberg passed that night on his horse, accompanied by armed men
who watched all the windows and doors of the palace. When the King
recovered Monsieur apologised for his conduct, and the sponge of the
royal forgiveness was passed over that episode as it had been over many
others. Under the Regency of Anne of Austria the Court was called upon
to resist the second junior branch, whose inferiority of pretensions
was more than balanced by its intelligence and audacity.
The pretensions of the Condés had been the cause of one of Mazarin's
first anxieties. They were vast pretensions, they were unquestionably
just, and they were ably sustained by the father of the great Condé,
"Monsieur le Prince," a superior personage whose appearance belied his
character. People of his own age remembered him as a handsome man; but
debauchery, avarice, and self-neglect had changed the distinguished
courtier and made him a repulsive old man, "dirty and ugly."[113] He
was stoop-shouldered and wrinkled, with great, red eyes, and long,
greasy hair, which he wore passed around his ears in "love-locks." His
aspect was formidable. Richelieu was obliged to warn him that he must
make a serious attempt to cleanse his person, and that he must change
his shoes before paying his visits to the King.[114] His spirit was as
sordid as his body. "Monsieur le Prince" was of very doubtful humour;
he was dogged, snappish, peevish, coarse, contrary, and thoroughly
rapacious. He had begun life with ten thousand livres of income, and he
had acquired a million, not counting his appointments or his revenues
from the government.[115] His friends clutched their pockets when
they saw him coming; but their precautions were futile; he had a way
of getting all that he desired. Everything went into his purse and
nothing came out of it; but where his purse was not concerned Monsieur
le Prince was a different man; there he "loved justice and followed
that which was good."[116] He was a rigorous statesman; he defended
the national Treasury against the world. His keen sense of equity made
him a precious counsellor and he was an eminent and upright judge.
His knowledge of the institutions of the kingdom made him valuable
as State's reference; he knew the origins, the systems, and the
supposititious issues of the secret aims of all the parties.
The laws of France were as chaotic as the situation of the parties,
and no one but a finished statesman could find his way among them; but
to Monsieur le Prince they were familiar ground. Considerable as were
his attainments, his children were his equals. Mme. de Longueville,
though shallow, was as keen a diplomat as her father, and by far more
dangerous; the Duc d'Enghien was an astute and accomplished politician.
The world considered the Condés as important as the d'Orléans', and
fully able to meet the d'Orléans' on the super-sacred footing of
etiquette. We shall see to what the equality of the two families
conducted them. Struggles between them were always imminent; their
quarrels arose from the exigencies of symbolical details: the manner of
the laying of a carpet, the bearing of the train of a State robe, et
cetera. Such details seem insignificant to us, but that they do so is
because we have lost the habit of monarchical traditions. When things
are done according to hierarchical custom, details are very important.
At every session of the King's Council "peckotings" passed between
Gaston d'Orléans and Monsieur le Prince and an attentive gallery looked
on and listened. But something of sterner stuff than "peckotings" was
the order of the day when the Court met for a ceremonious function;
material battles marked the meetings between Mlle. de Montpensier
and Mme. la Princesse de Condé; Mme. de Longueville was brave, and
La Grande Mademoiselle was not only brave, but fully determined to
justify her title and defend her honour as the Granddaughter of France.
The two princely ladies entered the lists with the same ardour, and
they were as heroic as they were burlesque. The 5th December the
Court was scheduled to attend a solemn Mass at Notre Dame, and by
the law of precedence Mademoiselle was to be followed by Mme. la
Princesse de Condé. The latter summoned her physician who bled her in
order to enable her to be physically incapable of taking her place
behind Mademoiselle. Gossips told Anne-Marie-Louise of her cousin's
stratagem, and Mademoiselle resorted to an equally efficient, though
entirely different, means of medical art calculated to make bodily
motion temporarily undesirable, if not impossible. Mademoiselle was
determined that she would not humiliate her quality by appearing at
Mass without her attendant satellite (Saint Simon would have applauded
the sufferings of both of the heroic ladies, for like them he had been
gifted by nature with a subtle appreciation of the duties and the
privileges of rank), but the incident was not closed. By a strange
fatality, at that instant Church came in conflict with State. Cardinal
Mazarin, representing the Church, inspired Queen Anne to resent her
niece's indisposition. The Queen became very angry at Mademoiselle,
and impelled by her anger, Monsieur commanded his daughter to set out
immediately for Notre Dame; he told her rudely that if she was too sick
to walk, she had plenty of people to carry her. "You will either go or
be carried!" he cried violently, and Mademoiselle, much the worse for
her stratagem, was forced to yield. She deplored her fate, and wept
because she had lost her father's sympathy.
The reciprocal acidity of the junior branches was constantly manifested
by fatalities like the event just noted, and by episodes like the
affair of "the fallen letters" (August, 1643). Although all the
writers of that day believed that the reaction of that puerile matter
was felt in the Fronde, the quarrel, like all the other quarrels,
was of so senseless a character that it awakened the shame of the
nation. The story is soon told: Mme. de Montbazon picked up--no one
knew where--some love letters in which, as she said, she recognised
the writing of Mme. de Longueville. Her story was false, and Anne of
Austria, who frowned upon the gossip and the jealousies of the Court,
condemned Mme. Montbazon to go to the Hôtel de Condé and make apologies
for the wrong that she had done the Princess. All the friends of the
House of Condé were expected to be present to hear and to witness the
vindication of Mme. la Princesse.
Monsieur was there [wrote Mademoiselle], and for my part I could
not stay away. I had no friendship for Mme. la Princesse, or for
any of her friends, but on that occasion I could not have taken a
part contrary to hers with decorum; to be present there was one of
the duties of relationship which one cannot neglect.
On that occasion the relatives of the family were all in the Hôtel de
Condé, but their hearts were not in their protestations, and the Condés
were not deceived. The petty scandal of the letters fed the flame of
enmity, which Mazarin watched and nourished because he knew that it
was to his interest and to the interest of the State to foment the
quarrel between the rival cousins. An anonymous collection of "memoirs"
says:
Seeing that he was pressed from all sides, the Cardinal thought
that the safety of his position required him to keep the House of
Orleans separate from the House of Bourbon, so that by balancing
one by the other he could remain firmly poised between the two and
make himself equally necessary to both. It was as if Heaven itself
had dropped the affair of the fallen letters into his hands, and he
turned his celestial windfall to such account that the Luxembourg
and the Hôtel de Bourbon found it difficult to maintain a decent
composure; at heart they were at daggers' points. The Duc d'Orléans
and the Duc d'Enghien were regarded as the chiefs of the two
hostile parties, and the courtiers rallied to the side of either as
their interests or their inclinations led them![117]
Apparently Mazarin's position was impregnable. The world would have
been blind had it failed to see that the arguments used by the Prime
Minister when he conferred with his sovereign were of a character
essentially differing from the arguments generally used by politicians,
but it was believed that the Cardinal's method was well fitted to his
purpose, and that to any woman--and particularly to a woman who had
passed maturity--it would be, by force of nature, more acceptable and
more weighty than the abstract method of a purely political economist,
and more convincing than the reasons given by statesmen,--or, in fact,
any reason.
Anne of Austria had not been a widow four months when Olivier
d'Ormesson noted, in his journal, that the Cardinal "was recognised as
the All-Powerful." For his sake the Queen committed the imprudences
of a love-sick schoolgirl. She began by receiving his visits in the
evening. The doors were left open, and the Queen said that the Cardinal
visited her for the purpose of giving her instructions regarding
the business of the State. As time went on the Cardinal's visits
lengthened; after a certain time the doors were closed, and, to the
scandal of the Court, they remained closed. At Rueil the Queen tried
to make Mazarin sit with her in her little garden carriage. Mazarin
"had the wisdom to resist her wish, but he had the folly to accompany
her with his hat upon his head." As no one ever approached the Queen
with head covered, the spectacle of the behatted minister astonished
the public. (September, 1644.) A few weeks later every one in Paris
knew that an apartment or suite of rooms in the Palais Royal, was being
repaired, and that it was to be connected with the Queen's apartments
by a secret passage. The public learned gradually, detail by detail,
that Mazarin was to occupy the repaired apartment, and that the secret
passage had been prepared so that the Prime Minister might "proceed
commodiously" to the royal apartments to hold political conferences
with the Queen. When everything was ready, the _Gazette_ (19th
November) published the following announcement:
The Queen in full Council made it plain that, considering the
indisposition of Cardinal Mazarin, and considering that he is
forced, with great difficulty, to cross the whole length of the
great garden of the Palais Royal,[118] and considering that some
new business is constantly presenting itself to him, and demanding
to be communicated to the Queen, the Queen deems it appropriate to
give the Cardinal an apartment in the Palais Royal, so that she
may confer with him more conveniently concerning her business. Her
Majesty's intention has been approved by Messieurs, her ministers,
and with applause, so that next Monday (21st November), his
Eminence will take possession of his new residence.
The Queen's indiscretion won the heart of the favourite, and he longed
for her presence. Twice, once at Rueil and once at Fontainebleau, he
displaced La Grande Mademoiselle and installed himself in her room at
the Queen's house. The first time that Mazarin supplanted Mademoiselle,
the haughty Princess swallowed the affront and found a lodging in the
village, but the second time she lost her patience. "It is rumoured in
Paris," wrote d'Ormesson, "that Mademoiselle spoke to the Queen boldly,
because the Cardinal wished to take her room in order to be near her
Majesty." (September, 1645.)
Some historians have inferred that the Queen had been secretly married
to her Minister. We have no proof of any such thing, unless we accept
as proof the very ambiguous letter which the Cardinal wrote to the
Queen when he was in exile. In that letter he spoke of people who tried
to injure him in the Queen's mind. "They will gain nothing by it,"
wrote Mazarin; "_the heart of the Queen and the heart of Mazarin are
joined_[119] by liens which cannot be broken either by time or by any
effort,--as you yourself have agreed with me more than once." In the
same letter he implores the Queen to pity him: "for I deserve pity! it
is so strange for this child to be married, then, at the same time,
separated from ... and always pursued by them to whom I am indebted for
the obstacles to my marriage." (27th October, 1651.) These words are
of obscure meaning, and they may as easily be interpreted figuratively
as literally. They who believed that the Queen had married Mazarin
secretly must have drawn their conclusions from the intimate fondness
of her manner. Anne of Austria was infatuated, and her infatuation made
it impossible for her to guard her conduct; her behaviour betrayed the
irregularity of the situation, and it is probable that her friends were
loth to believe that anything less than marriage could induce such
familiarity. However that may have been, Mazarin's letters give no
proof of marriage, nor has it ever been proved that he claimed that he
had married the Queen.
When judgment is rendered according to evidence deduced from personal
manners, changes in time and in the differences of localities should be
considered. Our consideration of the Queen's romance dates from the
period of the legitimate, or illegitimate, honeymoon. (August, 1643, or
within six weeks of that time.)
The public watched the royal romance with irritation. Having greeted
the Mazarin ministry with a good grace, they (the people) were
unanimously seized by a feeling of shame and hatred for the handsome
Italian who made use of woman's favour to attain success. The friends
of the Queen redoubled their warnings, and retired from the royal
presence in disgrace. One of her oldest servitors, who had given
unquestionable proof of his devotion,[120] dared to tell her to her
face that "all the world was talking about her and about his Eminence,
and in a way which ought to make her reflect upon her position." ...
"She asked me," said La Porte, 'Who said that?' I answered, 'Everybody!
it is so common that no one talks of anything else.' She reddened and
became angry."[121] Mme. de Brienne, wife of the Secretary of State,
who had spoken to the Queen on the same subject, told her friends that
"More than once the Queen had blushed to the whites of her eyes."[122]
Every one wrote to the Queen; she found anonymous letters even in her
bed. When she went through the streets she heard people humming songs
whose meaning she knew only too well. Her piety and her maternity had
endeared her to the common people, and they, the people, had looked
indulgently upon her passing weaknesses; but now things had come to a
crisis. One day, when the Regent was attending a service in Notre Dame,
she was surprised by a band of women of the people, who surrounded her
and fell at her feet crying that she was dissipating the fortune of
her ward. "_Queen_," they cried, "_you have a man in your house who is
taking everything!_"[123]
The fact that the young King was being despoiled was a greater grief
to the people than the abasement of the Queen. It must be avowed that
Mazarin was the most shameless thief who ever devoured a kingdom in
the name of official duty and under the eyes and by the favour of a
sovereign. His cry was the cry of the daughters of the horseleech. It
was understood that Mazarin would not grant a service, or a demand
of any kind, until his price had been put down, and in some cases
the commission was demanded and paid twice. Bussy-Rabutin received a
letter commanding him to "pay over and without delay" the sum of seven
hundred livres. The letter is still in existence. Condé wrote it and
despatched it, but it bears his personal endorsement to the effect that
he had been "ordered" to write it. Montglat states that Anne of Austria
asked for a fat office for one of her creatures, that the office was
immediately granted, and that the appointee was taxed one hundred
thousand écus. Anne of Austria was piqued: she had supposed that her
position exempted her from the requirements of the ministerial tariff;
she expostulated, but the Cardinal-Minister was firm; he made it clear,
even to the dim perceptions of his royal lady, that the duties of
the director of the French nation ranked the tender impulses of the
lover. Patriotic duty nerved his hand, and the Queen, recognising the
futility of resistance, trembling with excitement, and watering her
fevered persuasions with her tears, opened her purse and paid Mazarin
his commission. By a closely calculated policy the State's coffers were
subjected to systematic drainage, the national expenses were cut, and
millions, diverted from their regular channels, found their way into
the strong box of the favourite. The soldiers of France were dying of
starvation on the frontiers, the State's creditors were clamouring
for their money, the Court was in need of the comforts of life[124];
the country had been ravaged by passing armies, pillaged by thieving
politicians, harrowed by abuses of all kinds. The taxes were wrung from
the beggared people by armed men; yet "poor Monsieur, the Cardinal,"
as the Queen always called him, gave insolently luxurious fêtes and
expended millions upon his extravagant fancies. No one cared for his
foreign policy. Would political triumphs bring back the dead, feed
the starving, rehabilitate the dishonoured wives and daughters of the
peasants, restore verdure to the ruined farms?
The Queen's anxiety to create an affection strong enough to blind the
eyes of her courtiers to her intimacy with Mazarin had inspired her
with a desire to lavish gifts. "The Queen gives everything" had become
a proverb; the courtiers knew the value of their complaisancy, and
they flocked to the Palais Royal with petitions; offices, benefices,
privileges, monopolies either to exploit, to concede, or to sell were
freely bestowed upon all who demanded them. Each courtier had some new
and unheard-of fancy to gratify, either for his own pleasure or for the
pleasure of his friends; anything that could be made visible, anything
that could be so represented as to appear visible to the imagination,
was scheduled in the minds of the courtiers as dutiable and some one
drew revenues from it. One of the ladies of the Court obtained from the
Queen the right to tax all the Masses said in Paris.[125] "The 13th
January, 1644, the Council of the King employed part of its session
in refusing 'a quantity of gifts' which the Queen had accorded, and
which were all of a character to excite laughter." The royal horn had
ceased to pour; the Queen's strong-box was empty. The courtiers knew
that there was nothing more to gain; one and all they raised their
voices, and the threatening growl of the people of Paris echoed them.
The day of reckoning was at hand; had Anne of Austria possessed all
that she had given to buy the indulgence of her world, and had she
willed to give it all again, she could not have stilled the tumult;
to quote Mme. de Motteville's record: "The people's love for the Queen
had diminished; the absolute power which the Queen had placed in the
hand of Mazarin had destroyed her own influence, and from too fondly
desiring that the Parisians should love her lover she had made them
hate him." In the beginning of the Regency Mazarin had been popular;
after a time the people had lost confidence in him, and the hatred
which followed their distrust was mingled with contempt.
Mazarin had emptied the treasury of France. No better statement of
his conduct was ever given than Fénelon gave his pupil, the Duc de
Bourgogne, in his _Dialogues des Morts_. Mazarin and Richelieu are the
persons speaking. Each makes known the value of his own work; each
criticises the work of the other. Mazarin reproaches Richelieu for his
cruelty and thirst for blood; Richelieu answers:
"You did worse to the French than to spill their blood. You
corrupted the deep sources of their manners and their life. You
made probity a mask. I laid my hand upon the great to repress their
insolence; you beat them down and trampled upon their courage.
You degraded nobility. You confounded conditions. You rendered
all graces venal. You were afraid of the influence of merit. You
permitted no man to approach you unless he could give you proof of
a low, supple nature,--a nature complaisant to the solicitations
of mischievous intrigue. You never received a true impression. You
never had any real knowledge of men. You never believed anything
but evil. You saw the worst in a man and drew your profit from it.
To your base mind honour and virtue were fables. You needed
knaves who could deceive the dupes whom you entrapped in business;
you needed traffickers to consummate your schemes. So your name
shall be reviled and odious."
[Illustration: CARDINAL MAZARIN]
This is a fair portrayal, as far as it goes; but it shows only one side
(the worst side) of Mazarin's character. The portrait is peculiarly
interesting from the fact that it was especially depicted and set
forth for the instruction of the great-grandson of the woman who loved
Mazarin.
It is probable that stern appreciation of the duty of the
representative of Divine Justice primed the virulence of the pious
Fénelon, when he seated himself to point out an historical moral for
the descendant of the weak Queen who sacrificed the prosperity of
France on the altar of an insensate passion.
La Grande Mademoiselle was one of Mazarin's most hostile enemies, and
her memoirs evince unbending severity. The weakness of her criticism
detracts from the importance of a work otherwise valuable as a
contemporary chronicle. She regarded Mazarin's "lack of intelligence"
as his worst fault. She was convinced that he possessed neither
capacity nor judgment "because he acted from the belief that he could
reject the talents of a Gaston d'Orléans with impunity. His conduct
to Princes of the Blood proved that he lacked wisdom; he stinted the
junior branches of their legitimate influence; he would not yield to
the pillars of the throne the power that belonged to them by right; he
thrust aside the heirs-presumptive, when he might have leaned upon
them! Manifestly he was witless, stupid, unworthy the consideration of
a prince."
Mademoiselle asserted that Mazarin deserved the worst of fates and
the scorn of the people. She believed that many evils could have been
averted had Monsieur been consulted in regard to the government of the
kingdom. She affirmed that it was her conviction that all good servants
of the Crown owed it to their patriotism to arm and drive the Cardinal
across the frontier of France. That was her conception of duty, and it
smiled upon her from all points of the compass.
Not long before the beginning of the Fronde, the fine world of Paris,
stirred to action by the spectacle of the royal infatuation and by the
subjection of the national welfare to the suppositive exigencies of
"the foreigner," embraced the theory of Opposition, and to be of the
Opposition was the fashion of the hour. All who aspired to elegance
wore their rebellion as a badge, unless they had private reasons for
appearing as the friends of Mazarin. The women who were entering
politics found it to their interest to join the opposing body.
Politics had become the favourite pastime of the highways and the
little streets. Men and women, not only in Paris, but in the châteaux
and homes of the provinces, and children--boys and girls--began to
express political opinions in early youth.
"Come, then, Grandmamma," said little Montausier to Mme. de
Rambouillet, "now that I am five years old, let us talk about affairs
of State." Her grandmother could not have reproved with a good
grace, because her own "Blue Room" had been one of the chief agents
responsible for the new diversion just before the Fronde. A mocking but
virile force arose in the Opposition to check the ultra-refinements of
the high art, the high intellectual ability, and the other superfine
characteristics of the school of Arthénice. The mockery of the
Opposition was as keen and its irony was as effective as the mental
sword-play of the literary extremists. Wit was its chief weapon and its
barbed words, and merry yet sarcastic thrusts had power to overthrow a
ministry. The country knew it and gloried in it. The people of France
would have entered upon revolution before they would have renounced
their "spirituality." In the polemics of the new party the turn of a
sentence meant a dozen things at once; a syllable stung like a dagger.
Frenchmen are the natural artists of conversation, and they never
found field more favourable to their art than the broad plains of the
Opposition. Avowed animosity to the pretensions of the pedants and
light mockery of the preciosity of the _Précieuses_ offered a varied
choice of subjects and an equally varied choice of accessories for
their work. The daring cavaliers of the Opposition passed like wild
huntsmen over the exhausted ground, with eyes bent upon the trail,
and found delicate and amusing shades of meaning in phrases scorned
and stigmatised as "common" by the hyper-spiritual enthusiasts of the
Salons.
In the exercise of free wit, the women of the new political school
found an influence which before their day had been monopolised
by the polemists of the State's Councils. They--the women of the
Opposition--swept forward and seized positions previously held by men,
and since then, either from deep purpose or from pure conviction,
they have held their ground and exercised their right to share,
or to attempt to share, in the creation and in the destruction of
governments. Mademoiselle followed the fashion of the day when she
frequented the society of people who were in disgrace at Court. She
ridiculed the King's Minister, and as she was influential and popular,
outspoken and eager to declare her principles, she was called an
agitator, though in the words of Mme. de Motteville, "she was not quite
sure what she was trying to do." Mazarin, whom Mademoiselle considered
"stupid," had entangled the wires of the cabals and confused the minds
of the pretenders with such consummate art that the keenest intriguers
gazed in bewilderment upon their own interests, and doubted their
truest friends. For instance, Monsieur, who had mind and wit "to burn,"
could not explain, even to himself, why he repudiated Mademoiselle
when she quarrelled with the second junior branch. He knew that he was
jealous of his rights and of all that belonged to him; he knew that the
power of the Condés was a menace, that his daughter was a powerful
ally for any party, that her championship was, and always had been, his
strongest arm against an unappreciative world, and after one of the
senseless exhibitions of anger against Mademoiselle to which Anne of
Austria, impelled by Mazarin, frequently incited him, he asked himself
why he maltreated his daughter when she resisted the usurpations of his
hated cousins, the Condés.
[Illustration: MADEMOISELLE DE MONTPENSIER
FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING]
"Why," he queried piteously, "should I plunge the knife into my own
breast?"
Why he did so, and why many another as astute as he moved heaven and
earth to effect his own downfall was the secret of Mazarin.
Mademoiselle wept bitter tears for the loss of her father's friendship;
then she arose in her pride, resolved to tread the path of life
alone, according to her independent will. She was twenty years old
and in the fulness of her beauty. She described her appearance with
complaisancy[126]:
I am tall; I am neither fat nor lean; I have a graceful and freely
moving figure, and my bearing is natural and easy. My bust is well
formed. My hands and feet are not beautiful, but there is great
beauty in their flesh, and the flesh of my throat is also very
pretty. My leg is straight, and my foot is well formed. My hair is
a beautiful ash-blonde. My face is long, and its contour is fine.
The nose is large and aquiline. The mouth neither large nor little,
but distinctly outlined and of a very agreeable form. The lips are
the colour of vermilion. My teeth are not handsome, but neither
are they horrible. My eyes are blue, neither large nor small, but
brilliant, gentle, and proud, like my mien. I have a haughty, but
not self-glorified air; I am polite and familiar, but of a manner
to excite respect rather than to attract the lack of it. I am
indeed very indifferent about my dress, but my negligence does not
go as far as untidiness. I hate that! I am neat, and whether I am
laced or loosely robed, everything that I wear looks well. This is
not because I do not look incomparably better with tightly fitting
garments, but it is because negligence and loose garments sit less
ill upon me than upon another, for I may say, without boasting,
that I become whatever I put on better than anything that I put
on becomes me.... God ... has given me unparalleled health and
strength. Nothing breaks me down; nothing fatigues me; and it is
difficult to judge of the events and the changes in my fortunes by
my face, for my face rarely shows any change. I had forgotten to
say that I have a healthy complexion, which is in accord with what
I have just said. My tint is not delicate, but it is fair, and very
bright and clear.
Before the lessons of experience and evil fortune changed
Mademoiselle's handsome face, she was thus vivaciously described by an
anonymous contemporary:
This Princess of the blood of kings and of princes is haughty,
daring, and of a courage much more like the courage of a man than
is commonly found in woman. It may be said with truth that she is
an amazon, and that she is better fitted to carry a lance than to
hold a distaff. She is proud, enterprising, adventurous, quick, and
free of speech. She cannot bear to hear anything contrary to her
own opinion. As she has never loved either the King's ministers
or her father's ministers, she has avoided them; because had she
received them in her home, or frequented their society, civility
would have constrained her to show them deference. Her humour is
impatient, her mind is active, and her heart is ardently set upon
whatever she undertakes. As to dissimulation, she does not know
the meaning of the term. She tells what she thinks, careless of the
opinion of the world.
She was described in divers ways, according to the impressions of
her associates. One said that her manner gave evidence of serious
reflection; another called her too vivacious. It was supposed that she
had been the first to assert that the soul ought not to be susceptible
to love, and therefore her admirers sang to her of the aversion felt by
Pallas for the allurements of Venus. Mademoiselle had said:
"_Je n'ai point l'âme tendre._"
and she had meant what she said, and been glad to have it known that
she was heart-free.
She was blamed for her rude manners and for her outbursts of anger.
When she declared that she longed to go to war with the soldiers her
critics laughed at her pretensions. It was generally believed that her
faults were numerous, and that she had few of the qualities considered
desirable in woman; but no one ever called her petty, cowardly, or
false. La Grande Mademoiselle was never a liar; she never betrayed
friend or foe. She was brave and generous; and it was not her fault if
when nature placed her soul in the form of a woman it gave her the mien
and the inclinations of a man.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 87: _Registres de l'Hôtel de Ville_ (Collection Danjou).]
[Footnote 88: _Mémoire du roi au plénipotentiaires_ (6th January,
1644). ("Il ne faut pas s'étonner de tout ce que disent nos enemies;
C' est à nous de tenir: il est indubitable qu'ils se rangeront peu à
peu.")]
[Footnote 89: The first of our casinos.]
[Footnote 90: _Mémoires_ of Mademoiselle.]
[Footnote 91: Olivier d'Ormesson.]
[Footnote 92: Mademoiselle erred as to the date; the _Gazette de
France_ fixes it March 8th.]
[Footnote 93: About six millions of francs.]
[Footnote 94: Mademoiselle errs in supposing (in her memoirs) that it
was but one year. Such errors are frequent in her writings.]
[Footnote 95: _Père de Bérulle et l'Oratoire de Jésus_, M. l'Abbé
Houssaye.]
[Footnote 96: _Saint François de Sales_, Fortunat Strowski.]
[Footnote 97: The Abbé Houssaye, _loc cit._]
[Footnote 98: _Saint Vincent de Paul et les Gondis_, Chantelauze.]
[Footnote 99: _Le Cardinal de Bérulle et Richelieu_, the Abbé Houssaye.]
[Footnote 100: _Les Libertins en France au XVII. Siècle_, F. T.
Perrens.]
[Footnote 101: _Oraison funèbre d'Anne de Gonzague_, Bossuet.]
[Footnote 102: _Port Royal_, Sainte Beuve.]
[Footnote 103: _Bérulle et l'Oratoire_, the Abbé Houssaye.]
[Footnote 104: Fortunat Strowski.]
[Footnote 105: Their uselessness, their ignorance have made us despise
them.--Bossuet.]
[Footnote 106: _Manuel de l'histoire de la littérature française_, F.
Brunetière.
The first edition of _La vie dévote_ appeared in 1688, the _Traité de
l'amour de Dieu_ appeared in 1612.]
[Footnote 107: The address delivered on the occasion of Racine's
Centennial, 26th April 1899.]
[Footnote 108: Motteville.]
[Footnote 109: _Mémoires._]
[Footnote 110: _Declaration pour la Régence_ (21st April, 1643).]
[Footnote 111: Born in 1616.]
[Footnote 112: Édouard, Prince Palatine, a younger son of the Elector
Palatine, Frédéric V.]
[Footnote 113: Motteville.]
[Footnote 114: Duc d'Aumale's _Histoire des princes de Condé_.]
[Footnote 115: Among other emoluments he had 800,000 livres.]
[Footnote 116: _Mémoires_ of Lenet.]
[Footnote 117: Manuscript _Mémoires_ published in fragments with
Olivier d'Ormesson's Journal, by M. Chervel (who appears to have been a
member of the House of Condé).]
[Footnote 118: Mazarin lived in a palace which became the Bibliothèque
Nationale.]
[Footnote 119: In Mazarin's letters the words in italics are either
in cipher or in words which he had agreed upon with the Queen when
arranging the details of his absence; in this instance we have used the
translation given by M. Ravenel in his _Lettres du Cardinal Mazarin à
la Reine_, etc.]
[Footnote 120: La Porte.]
[Footnote 121: _Mémoires_ of La Porte.]
[Footnote 122: _Mémoires_ of de Brienne, junior.]
[Footnote 123: See the journal of Olivier d'Ormesson. This scene took
place March 19, 1645.]
[Footnote 124: Motteville.]
[Footnote 125: _La misère au temps de la Fronde_ (quoted from the
records of the Council).]
[Footnote 126: _La Galerie des portraits de Mlle. de Montpensier._ (New
edition.) Édouard de Barthélemy.]