FOR a month Monsieur de Montragoux was the happiest of men. He adored
his wife, and regarded her as an angel of purity. She was something
quite different, but far shrewder men than poor Bluebeard might have
been deceived as he was, for she was a person of great cunning and
astuteness, and allowed herself submissively to be ruled by her
mother, who was the cleverest jade in the whole kingdom of France. She
established herself at Guillettes with her eldest daughter Anne, her
two sons, Pierre and Cosme, and the Chevalier de la Merlus, who kept
as close to Madame de Montragoux as if he had been her shadow. Her good
husband was a little annoyed at this; he would have liked to keep his
wife always to himself, but he did not take exception to the affection
which she felt for this young gentleman, as she had told him that he was
her foster-brother.
Charles Perrault relates that a month after having contracted this
union, Bluebeard was compelled to make a journey of six weeks’ duration
on some important business. He does not seem to be aware of the reasons
for this journey, and it has been suspected that it was an artifice,
which the jealous husband resorted to, according to custom, in order to
surprise his wife. The truth is quite otherwise. Monsieur de Montragouz
went to Le Perche to receive the heritage of his cousin of Outarde, who
had been killed gloriously by a cannon-ball at the battle of the Dunes,
while casting dice upon a drum.
Before leaving, Monsieur de Montragoux begged his wife to indulge in
every possible distraction during his absence.
“Invite all your friends, madame,” he said, “go riding with them, amuse
yourselves, and have a pleasant time.”
He handed over to her all the keys of the house, thus indicating that
in his absence she was the sole and sovereign mistress of all the
_seigneurie_ of Guillettes.
“This,” he said, “is the key of the two great wardrobes; this of the
gold and silver not in daily use; this of the strong-boxes which contain
my gold and silver; this of the caskets where my jewels are kept; and
this is a pass-key into all the rooms. As for this little key, it is
that of the Cabinet, at the end of the Gallery, on the ground floor;
open everything, and go where you will.”
Charles Perrault claims that Monsieur de Montragoux added:
“But as for the little Cabinet, I forbid you to enter that; and I forbid
you so expressly that if you do enter it, I cannot say to what lengths
my anger will not go.”
The historian of Bluebeard in placing these words on record, has fallen
into the error of adopting, without, verification, the version concocted
after the event by the ladies Lespoisse. Monsieur de Montragoux
expressed himself very differently. When he handed to his wife the key
of the little Cabinet, which was none other than the Cabinet of the
Unfortunate Princesses, to which we have already frequently alluded, he
expressed the desire that his beloved Jeanne should not enter that part
of the house which he regarded as fatal to his domestic happiness. It
was through this room, indeed, that his first wife, and the best of
all of them, had fled, when she ran away with her bear; here Blanche
de Gibeaumex had repeatedly betrayed him with various gentlemen; and
lastly, the porphyry pavement was stained by the blood of a beloved
criminal. Was not this enough to make Monsieur de Montragoux connect the
idea of this room with cruel memories and fateful forebodings?
The words which he addressed to Jeanne de Lespoisse convey the desires
and impressions which were troubling his mind. They were actually as
follows:
“For you, madame, nothing of mine is hidden, and I should feel that I
was doing you an injury did I fail to hand over to you all the keys of
a dwelling which belongs to you. You may therefore enter this little
cabinet, as you may enter all the other rooms of the house; but if you
will take my advice you will do nothing of the kind, to oblige me, and
in consideration of the painful ideas which, for me, are connected
with this room, and the forebodings of evil which these ideas, despite
myself, call up into my mind. I should be inconsolable were any
mischance to befall you, or were I to bring misfortune upon you. You
will, madame, forgive these fears, which are happily unfounded, as being
only the outcome of my anxious affection and my watchful love.”
With these words the good _seigneur_ embraced his wife and posted off to
Le Perche.
“The friends and neighbours,” says Charles Perrault, “did not wait to be
asked to visit the young bride; so full were they of impatience to see
all the wealth of her house. They proceeded at once to inspect all
the rooms, cabinets, and wardrobes, each of which was richer and more
beautiful than the last; and there was no end to their envy and their
praises of their friend’s good fortune.”
All the historians who have dealt with this subject have added that
Madame de Montsagoux took no pleasure in the sight of all these
riches, by reason of her impatience to open the little Cabinet. This
is perfectly correct, and as Perrault has said: “So urgent was her
curiosity that, without considering that it was unmannerly to leave her
guests, she went down to it by a little secret staircase, and in such a
hurry that two or three times she thought she would break her neck.” The
fact is beyond question. But what no one has told us is that the reason
why she was so anxious to reach this apartment was that the Chevalier de
la Merlus was awaiting her there.
Since she had come to make her home in the castle of Guillettes she had
met this young gentleman in the Cabinet every day, and oftener twice a
day than once, without wearying of an intercourse so unseemly in a young
married woman. It is Impossible to hesitate, as to the nature of the
ties connecting Jeanne with the Chevalier: they were anything but
respectable, anything but chaste, Alas, had Madame de Montragoux merely
betrayed her husband’s honour, she would no doubt have incurred the
blame of posterity; but the most austere of moralists might have found
excuses for her. He might allege, in favour of so young a woman, the
laxity of the morals of the period; the examples of the city and the
Court; the too certain effects of a bad training, and the advice of
an immoral mother, for Madame Sidonie de Lespoisse countenanced her
daughter’s intrigues. The wise might have forgiven her a fault too
amiable to merit their severity; her errors would have seemed too common
to be crimes, and the world would simply have considered that she was
behaving like other people. But Jeanne de Lespoisse, not content with
betraying her husband’s honour, did not hesitate to attempt his life.
It was in the little Cabinet, otherwise known as the Cabinet of the
Unfortunate Princesses, that Jeanne de Lespoisse, Dame de Montragoux, in
concert with the Chevalier de la Merlus, plotted the death of a kind and
faithful husband. She declared later that, on entering the room, she saw
hanging there the bodies of six murdered women, whose congealed blood
covered the tiles, and that recognizing in these unhappy women the first
six wives of Bluebeard, she foresaw the fate which awaited herself.
She must, in this case, have mistaken the paintings on the walls for
mutilated corpses, and her hallucinations must be compared with those
of Lady Macbeth. But it is extremely probable that Jeanne imagined
this horrible sight in order to relate it afterwards, justifying her
husband’s murderers by slandering their victim.
The death of Monsieur de Montragouz was determined upon. Certain letters
which lie before me compel the belief that Madame Sidonie Lespoisse had
her part in the plot. As for her elder daughter, she may be described as
the soul of the conspiracy. Anne de Lespoisse was the wickedest of the
whole family. She was a stranger to sensual weakness, remaining chaste
in the midst of the profligacy of the house; it was not a case of
refusing pleasures which she thought unworthy of her; the truth was that
she took pleasure only in cruelty. She engaged her two brothers,
Cosme and Pierre, in the enterprise by promising them the command of a
regiment.