PARIS.--A FEMALE POLITICIAN AND AN ECCLESIASTICAL ONE.--SUNDRY OTHER
MATTERS.
THE ex-minister was received both at Calais and at Paris with the most
gratifying honours: he was then entirely the man to captivate the
French. The beauty of his person, the grace of his manner, his
consummate taste in all things, the exceeding variety and sparkling
vivacity of his conversation, enchanted them. In later life he has
grown more reserved and profound, even in habitual intercourse; and
attention is now fixed to the solidity of the diamond, as at that time
one was too dazzled to think of anything but its brilliancy.
While Bolingbroke was receiving visits of state, I busied myself in
inquiring after a certain Madame de Balzac. The reader will remember
that the envelope of that letter which Oswald had brought to me at
Devereux Court was signed by the letters C. de B. Now, when Oswald
disappeared, after that dreadful night to which even now I can scarcely
bring myself to allude, these initials occurred to my remembrance, and
Oswald having said they belonged to a lady formerly intimate with my
father, I inquired of my mother if she could guess to what French lady
such initials would apply. She, with an evident pang of jealousy,
mentioned a Madame de Balzac; and to this lady I now resolved to address
myself, with the faint hope of learning from her some intelligence
respecting Oswald. It was not difficult to find out the abode of one
who in her day had played no inconsiderable role in that 'Comedy of
Errors,'--the Great World. She was still living at Paris: what
Frenchwoman would, if she could help it, live anywhere else? "There are
a hundred gates," said the witty Madame de Choisi to me, "which lead
into Paris, but only two roads out of it,--the convent, or (odious
word!) the grave."
I hastened to Madame Balzac's hotel. I was ushered through three
magnificent apartments into one which to my eyes seemed to contain a
throne: upon a nearer inspection I discovered it was a bed. Upon a
large chair, by a very bad fire--it was in the month of March--sat a
tall, handsome woman, excessively painted, and dressed in a manner which
to my taste, accustomed to English finery, seemed singularly plain. I
had sent in the morning to request permission to wait on her, so that
she was prepared for my visit. She rose, offered me her cheek, kissed
mine, shed several tears, and in short testified a great deal of
kindness towards me. Old ladies who have flirted with our fathers
always seem to claim a sort of property in the sons!
Before she resumed her seat she held me out at arm's length.
"You have a family likeness to your brave father," said she, with a
little disappointment; "but--"
"Madame de Balzac would add," interrupted I, filling up the sentence
which I saw her /bienveillance/ had made her break off, "Madame de
Balzac would add that I am not so good-looking. It is true: the
likeness is transmitted to me within rather than without; and if I have
not my father's privilege to be admired, I have at least his capacities
to admire," and I bowed.
Madame de Balzac took three large pinches of snuff. "That is very well
said," said she, gravely: "very well indeed! not at all like your
father, though, who never paid a compliment in his life. Your clothes,
by the by, are in exquisite taste: I had no idea that English people had
arrived at such perfection in the fine arts. Your face is a little too
long! You admire Racine, of course? How do you like Paris?"
All this was not said gayly or quickly: Madame de Balzac was by no means
a gay or a quick person. She belonged to a peculiar school of
Frenchwomen, who affected a little languor, a great deal of stiffness,
an indifference to forms when forms were to be used by themselves, and
an unrelaxing demand of forms when forms were to be observed to them by
others. Added to this, they talked plainly upon all matters, without
ever entering upon sentiment. This was the school she belonged to; but
she possessed the traits of the individual as well as of the species.
She was keen, ambitious, worldly, not unaffectionate nor unkind; very
proud, a little of the devotee,--because it was the fashion to be
so,--an enthusiastic admirer of military glory, and a most prying,
searching, intriguing schemer of politics without the slightest talent
for the science.
"Like Paris!" said I, answering only the last question, and that not
with the most scrupulous regard to truth. "Can Madame de Balzac think
of Paris, and not conceive the transport which must inspire a person
entering it for the first time? But I had something more endearing than
a stranger's interest to attach me to it: I longed to express to my
father's friend my gratitude for the interest which I venture to believe
she on one occasion manifested towards me."
"Ah! you mean my caution to you against that terrible De Montreuil.
Yes, I trust I was of service to you /there/."
And Madame de Balzac then proceeded to favour me with the whole history
of the manner in which she had obtained the letter she had sent me,
accompanied by a thousand anathemas against those /atroces Jesuites/ and
a thousand eulogies on her own genius and virtues. I brought her from
this subject so interesting to herself, as soon as decorum would allow
me; and I then made inquiry if she knew aught of Oswald or could suggest
any mode of obtaining intelligence respecting him. Madame de Balzac
hated plain, blunt, blank questions, and she always travelled through a
wilderness of parentheses before she answered them. But at last I did
ascertain her answer, and found it utterly unsatisfactory. She had
never seen nor heard anything of Oswald since he had left her charged
with her commission to me. I then questioned her respecting the
character of the man, and found Mr. Marie Oswald had little to plume
himself upon in that respect. He seemed, however, from her account of
him, to be more a rogue than a villain; and from two or three stories of
his cowardice, which Madame de Balzac related, he appeared to me utterly
incapable of a design so daring and systematic as that of which it
pleased all persons who troubled themselves about my affairs to suspect
him.
Finding at last that no further information was to be gained on this
point, I turned the conversation to Montreuil. I found, from Madame de
Balzac's very abuse of him, that he enjoyed a great reputation in the
country and a great favour at court. He had been early befriended by
Father la Chaise, and he was now especially trusted and esteemed by the
successor of that Jesuit Le Tellier,--Le Tellier, that rigid and bigoted
servant of Loyola, the sovereign of the king himself, the destroyer of
the Port Royal, and the mock and terror of the bedevilled and persecuted
Jansenists. Besides this, I learned what has been before pretty clearly
evident; namely, that Montreuil was greatly in the confidence of the
Chevalier, and that he was supposed already to have rendered essential
service to the Stuart cause. His reputation had increased with every
year, and was as great for private sanctity as for political talent.
When this information, given in a very different spirit from that in
which I retail it, was over, Madame de Balzac observed, "Doubtless you
will obtain a private audience with the king?"
"Is it possible, in his present age and infirmities?"
"It ought to be, to the son of the brave Marshal Devereux."
"I shall be happy to receive Madame's instructions how to obtain the
honour: her name would, I feel, be a greater passport to the royal
presence than that of a deceased soldier; and Venus's cestus may obtain
that grace which would never be accorded to the truncheon of Mars!"
Was there ever so natural and so easy a compliment? My Venus of fifty
smiled.
"You are mistaken, Count," said she; "I have no interest at court: the
Jesuits forbid that to a Jansenist, but I will speak this very day to
the Bishop of Frejus; he is related to me, and will obtain so slight a
boon for you with ease. He has just left his bishopric; you know how he
hated it. Nothing could be pleasanter than his signing himself, in a
letter to Cardinal Quirini, 'Fleuri, Eveque de Frejus par l'indignation
divine.' The King does not like him much; but he is a good man on the
whole, though jesuitical; he shall introduce you."
I expressed my gratitude for the favour, and hinted that possibly the
relations of my father's first wife, the haughty and ancient house of La
Tremouille, might save the Bishop of Frejus from the pain of exerting
himself on my behalf.
"You are very much mistaken," answered Madame de Balzac: "priests point
the road to court as well as to Heaven; and warriors and nobles have as
little to do with the former as they have with the latter, the unlucky
Duc de Villars only excepted,--a man whose ill fortune is enough to
destroy all the laurels of France. /Ma foi/! I believe the poor Duke
might rival in luck that Italian poet who said, in a fit of despair,
that if he had been bred a hatter, men would have been born without
heads."
And Madame de Balzac chuckled over this joke, till, seeing that no
further news was to be gleaned from her, I made my adieu and my
departure.
Nothing could exceed the kindness manifested towards me by my father's
early connections. The circumstance of my accompanying Bolingbroke,
joined to my age, and an address which, if not animated nor gay, had not
been acquired without some youthful cultivation of the graces, gave me a
sort of /eclat/ as well as consideration. And Bolingbroke, who was only
jealous of superiors in power, and who had no equals in anything else,
added greatly to my reputation by his panegyrics.
Every one sought me; and the attention of society at Paris would, to
most, be worth a little trouble to repay. Perhaps, if I had liked it, I
might have been the rage; but that vanity was over. I contented myself
with being admitted into society as an observer, without a single wish
to become the observed. When one has once outlived the ambition of
fashion I know not a greater affliction than an over-attention; and the
Spectator did just what I should have done in a similar case, when he
left his lodgings "because he was asked every morning how he had slept."
In the immediate vicinity of the court, the King's devotion, age, and
misfortunes threw a damp over society; but there were still some
sparkling circles, who put the King out of the mode, and declared that
the defeats of his generals made capital subjects for epigrams. What a
delicate and subtle air did hang over those /soirees/, where all that
were bright and lovely, and noble and gay, and witty and wise, were
assembled in one brilliant cluster! Imperfect as my rehearsals must be,
I think the few pages I shall devote to a description of these
glittering conversations must still retain something of that original
piquancy which the /soirees/ of no other capital could rival or
appreciate.
One morning, about a week after my interview with Madame de Balzac, I
received a note from her requesting me to visit her that day, and
appointing the hour.
Accordingly I repaired to the house of the fair politician. I found her
with a man in a clerical garb, and of a benevolent and prepossessing
countenance. She introduced him to me as the Bishop of Frejus; and he
received me with an air very uncommon to his countrymen, namely, with an
ease that seemed to result from real good-nature, rather than artificial
grace.
"I shall feel," said he, quietly, and without the least appearance of
paying a compliment, "very glad to mention your wish to his Majesty; and
I have not the least doubt but that he will admit to his presence one
who has such hereditary claims on his notice. Madame de Maintenon, by
the way, has charged me to present you to her whenever you will give me
the opportunity. She knew your admirable mother well, and for her sake
wishes once to see you. You know perhaps, Monsieur, that the extreme
retirement of her life renders this message from Madame de Maintenon an
unusual and rare honour."
I expressed my thanks; the Bishop received them with a paternal rather
than a courtier-like air, and appointed a day for me to attend him to
the palace. We then conversed a short time upon indifferent matters,
which I observed the good Bishop took especial pains to preserve clear
from French politics. He asked me, however, two or three questions
about the state of parties in England,--about finance and the national
debt, about Ormond and Oxford; and appeared to give the most close
attention to my replies. He smiled once or twice, when his relation,
Madame de Balzac, broke out into sarcasms against the Jesuits, which had
nothing to do with the subjects in question.
"Ah, /ma chere cousine/," said he: "you flatter me by showing that you
like me not as the politician, but the private relation,--not as the
Bishop of Frejus, but as Andre de Fleuri."
Madame de Balzac smiled, and answered by a compliment. She was a
politician for the kingdom, it is true, but she was also a politician
for herself. She was far from exclaiming, with Pindar, "Thy business, O
my city, I prefer willingly to my own." Ah, there is a nice distinction
between politics and policy, and Madame de Balzac knew it. The
distinction is this. Politics is the art of being wise for others:
policy is the art of being wise for one's self.
From Madame de Balzac's I went to Bolingbroke. "I have just been
offered the place of Secretary of State by the English king on this side
of the water," said he; "I do not, however, yet like to commit myself so
fully. And, indeed, I am not unwilling to have a little relaxation of
pleasure, after all these dull and dusty travails of state. What say
you to Boulainvilliers to-night? you are asked?"
"Yes! all the wits are to be there,--Anthony Hamilton, and Fontenelle,
young Arouet, Chaulieu, that charming old man. Let us go, and polish
away the wrinkles of our hearts. What cosmetics are to the face wit is
to the temper; and, after all, there is no wisdom like that which
teaches us to forget."
"Come then," said Bolingbroke, rising, "we will lock up these papers,
and take a melancholy drive, in order that we may enjoy mirth the better
by and by."