king, the queen, Monsieur [eldest brother to the king], Madame [that
brother's wife], Mademoiselle [that brother's eldest unmarried
daughter], and every thing else which is royal, together with Madame
de Montespan [the celebrated mistress of the king] and train, and all
the courtiers, and all the ladies--all, in short, which constitutes
the court of France, is assembled in the beautiful apartment of the
king's, which you remember. All is furnished divinely, all is
magnificent. Such a thing as heat is unknown; you pass from one place
to another without the slightest pressure. A game at _reversis_ [the
description is of a gambling scene, in which Dangeau figures as a cool
and skillful gamester] gives the company a form and a settlement. The
king and Madame de Montespan keep a bank together; different tables
are occupied by Monsieur, the queen, and Madame de Soubise, Dangeau
and party, Langlee and party. Everywhere you see heaps of louis d'ors;
they have no other counters. I saw Dangeau play, and thought what
fools we all were beside him. He dreams of nothing but what concerns
the game; he wins where others lose: he neglects nothing, profits by
every thing, never has his attention diverted; in short his science
bids defiance to chance. Two hundred thousand francs in ten days, a
hundred thousand crowns in a month, these are the pretty memorandums
he puts down in his pocket-book. He was kind enough to say that I was
partners with him, so that I got an excellent seat. I made my
obeisance to the king, as you told me; and he returned it as if I had
been young and handsome.... The duke said a thousand kind things
without minding a word he uttered. Marshal de Lorgnes attacked me in
the name of the Chevalier de Grignan; in short, _tutti quanti_ [the
whole company]. You know what it is to get a word from every body you
meet. Madame de Montespan talked to me of Bourbon, and asked me how I
liked Vichi, and whether the place did me good. She said that Bourbon,
instead of curing a pain in one of her knees, injured both.... Her
size is reduced by a good half, and yet her complexion, her eyes, and
her lips, are as fine as ever. She was dressed all in French point,
her hair in a thousand ringlets, the two side ones hanging low on her
cheeks, black ribbons on her head, pearls (the same that belonged to
Madame de l'Hopital), the loveliest diamond earrings, three or four
bodkins--nothing else on the head; in short a triumphant beauty,
worthy the admiration of all the foreign embassadors. She was accused
of preventing the whole French nation from seeing the king; she has
restored him, you see, to their eyes; and you cannot conceive the joy
it has given everybody, and the splendor it has thrown upon the court.
This charming confusion, without confusion, of all which is the most
select, continues from three till six. If couriers arrive, the king
retires a moment to read the despatches and returns. There is always
some music going on, to which he listens, and which has an excellent
effect. He talks with such of the ladies as are accustomed to enjoy
that honor.... At six the carriages are at the door. The king is in
one of them with Madame de Montespan, Monsieur and Madame de Thianges,
and honest d'Hendicourt in a fool's paradise on the stool. You know
how these open carriages are made; they do not sit face to face, but
all looking the same way. The queen occupies another with the
princess; and the rest come flocking after, as it may happen. There
are then gondolas on the canal, and music; and at ten they come back,
and then there is a play; and twelve strikes, and they go to supper;
and thus rolls round the Saturday. If I were to tell you how often you
were asked after, how many questions were put to me without waiting
for answers, how often I neglected to answer, how little they cared,
and how much less I did, you would see the _iniqua corte_ [wicked
court] before you in all its perfection. However, it never was so
pleasant before, and everybody wishes it may last.
There is your picture. Picture, pure and simple, it is--comment none,
least of all, moralizing comment. The wish is sighed by "everybody,"
that such pleasant things may "last." Well, they did last the writer's
time. But meanwhile the French revolution was a-preparing. A hundred
years later it will come, with its terrible reprisals.
We have gone away from the usual translations to find the foregoing
extract in an article published forty years ago and more, in the
"Edinburgh Review." Again we draw from the same source--this time, the
description of a visit paid by a company of grand folks, of whom the
writer of the letter was one, to an iron-foundery:
FRIDAY, _1st Oct._ (1677).
Yesterday evening at Cone we descended into a veritable hell, the true
forges of Vulcan. Eight or ten Cyclops were at work, forging, not arms
for AEneas, but anchors for ships. You never saw strokes redoubled so
justly nor with so admirable a cadence. We stood in the midst of four
furnaces; and the demons came passing about us, all melting in sweat,
with pale faces, wild-staring eyes, savage mustaches, and hair long
and black--a sight enough to frighten less well-bred folks than
ourselves. As for me, I could not comprehend the possibility of
refusing any thing which these gentlemen, in their hell, might have
chosen to exact. We got out at last, by the help of a shower of
silver, with which we took care to refresh their souls, and facilitate
our exit.
Once more:
PARIS, _29th November_ (1679).
I have been to the wedding of Madame de Louvois. How shall I describe
it? Magnificence, illuminations, all France, dresses all gold and
brocade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and stands full of flowers,
confusions of carriages, cries out of doors, lighted torches, pushings
back, people run over; in short, a whirlwind, a distraction; questions
without answers, compliments without knowing what is said, civilities
without knowing who is spoken to, feet entangled in trains. From the
midst of all this issue inquiries after your health, which not being
answered as quick as lightning, the inquirers pass on, contented to
remain in the state of ignorance and indifference in which they [the
inquiries] were made. O vanity of vanities! Pretty little De Mouchy
has had the small-pox. O vanity, _et caetera_!
Yet again. The gay writer has been sobered, perhaps hurt, by a friend's
frankly writing to her, "You are old." To her daughter:
So you were struck with the expression of Madame de la Fayette,
blended with so much friendship. 'Twas a truth, I own, which I ought
to have borne in mind; and yet I must confess it astonished me, for I
do not yet perceive in myself any such decay. Nevertheless, I cannot
help making many reflections and calculations, and I find the
conditions of life hard enough. It seems to me that I have been
dragged, against my will, to the fatal period when old age must be
endured; I see it; I have come to it; and I would fain, if I could
help it, not go any farther; not advance a step more in the road of
infirmities, of pains, of losses of memory, of _disfigurements_ ready
to do me outrage; and I hear a voice which says, "You must go on in
spite of yourself; or, if you will not go on, you must die;" and this
is another extremity from which nature revolts. Such is the lot,
however, of all who advance beyond middle life. What is their
resource? To think of the will of God and of universal law, and so
restore reason to its place, and be patient. Be you, then, patient
accordingly, my dear child, and let not your affection soften into
such tears as reason must condemn.
She dates a letter, and recalls that the day was the anniversary of an
event in her life:
PARIS, _Friday, Feb._ 5, 1672.
This day thousand years I was married.
Here is a passage with power in it. The great war minister of Louis has
died. Madame de Sevigne was now sixty-five years old. The letter is to
her cousin Coulanges:
I am so astonished at the news of the sudden death of M. de Louvois,
that I am at a loss how to speak of it. Dead, however, he is, this
great minister, this potent being, who occupied so great a place;
whose personality [_le moi_], as M. Nicole says, had so wide a sway;
who was the center of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage!
what designs, what projects! what secrets! what interests to unravel,
what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to
play and to direct! Ah! my God, grant me a little time; I want to give
check to the Duke of Savoy--checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no,
you shall not have a moment, not a single moment. Are events like
these to be talked of? Not they. We must reflect upon them in our
closets.
A glimpse of Bourdaloue:
Ah, that Bourdaloue! his sermon on the Passion was, they say, the most
perfect thing of the kind that can be imagined; it was the same he
preached last year, but revised and altered with the assistance of
some of his friends, that it might be wholly inimitable. How can one
love God if one never hears him properly spoken of? You must really
possess a greater portion of grace than others.
A distinguished caterer or steward, a gentleman described as possessing
talent enough to have governed a province, commits suicide on a
professional point of honor:
PARIS, _Sunday, April_ 26, 1671.
I have just learned from Moreuil of what passed at Chantilly with
regard to poor Vatel. I wrote to you last Friday that he had stabbed
himself--these are the particulars of the affair: The king arrived
there on Thursday night; the walk, and the collation, which was served
in a place set apart for the purpose, and strewed with jonquils, were
just as they should be. Supper was served; but there was no roast meat
at one or two of the tables, on account of Vatel's having been obliged
to provide several dinners more than were expected. This affected his
spirits; and he was heard to say several times, "I have lost my
honor! I cannot bear this disgrace!" "My head is quite bewildered,"
said he to Gourville. "I have not had a wink of sleep these twelve
nights; I wish you would assist me in giving orders." Gourville did
all he could to comfort and assist him, but the failure of the roast
meat (which, however, did not happen at the king's table, but at some
of the other twenty-five) was always uppermost with him. Gourville
mentioned it to the prince [Conde, the great Conde, the king's host],
who went directly to Vatel's apartment and said to him, "Every thing
is extremely well conducted, Vatel; nothing could be more admirable
than his majesty's supper." "Your highness's goodness," replied he,
"overwhelms me; I am sensible that there was a deficiency of roast
meat at two tables." "Not at all," said the prince; "do not perplex
yourself, and all will go well." Midnight came; the fireworks did not
succeed; they were covered with a thick cloud; they cost sixteen
thousand francs. At four o'clock in the morning Vatel went round and
found every body asleep. He met one of the under-purveyors, who was
just come in with only two loads of fish. "What!" said he, "is this
all?" "Yes, sir," said the man, not knowing that Vatel had despatched
other people to all the seaports around. Vatel waited for some time;
the other purveyors did not arrive; his head grew distracted; he
thought there was no more fish to be had. He flew to Gourville: "Sir,"
said he, "I cannot outlive this disgrace." Gourville laughed at him.
Vatel, however, went to his apartment, and setting the hilt of his
sword against the door, after two ineffectual attempts, succeeded, in
the third, in forcing his sword through his heart. At that instant the
couriers arrived with the fish; Vatel was inquired after to distribute
it. They ran to his apartment, knocked at the door, but received no
answer; upon which they broke it open, and found him weltering in his
blood. A messenger was immediately dispatched to acquaint the prince
with what had happened, who was like a man in despair. The duke wept,
_for his Burgundy journey depended upon Vatel_.
The italics here are our own. We felt that we must use them.
Is it not all pathetic? But how exquisitely characteristic of the nation
and of the times! "Poor Vatel," is the extent to which Madame de Sevigne
allows herself to go in sympathy. Her heart never bleeds very
freely--for anybody except her daughter. Madame de Sevigne's heart,
indeed, we grieve to fear, was somewhat hard.
In another letter, after a long strain as worldly as any one could wish
to see, this lively woman thus touches, with a sincerity as
unquestionable as the levity is, on the point of personal religion:
But, my dear child, the greatest inclination I have at present is to
be a little religious. I plague La Mousse about it every day. I belong
neither to God nor to the devil. I am quite weary of such a situation;
though, between you and me, I look upon it as the most natural one in
the world. I am not the devil's, because I fear God, and have at the
bottom a principle of religion; then, on the other hand, I am not
properly God's, because his law appears hard and irksome to me, and I
cannot bring myself to acts of self-denial; so that altogether I am
one of those called lukewarm Christians, the great number of whom does
not in the least surprise me, for I perfectly understand their
sentiments, and the reasons that influence them. However, we are told
that this is a state highly displeasing to God; if so, we must get out
of it. Alas! this is the difficulty. Was ever any thing so mad as I
am, to be thus eternally pestering you with my rhapsodies?
Madame de Sevigne involuntarily becomes a maxim-maker:
The other day I made a maxim off-hand without once thinking of it; and
I liked it so well that I fancied I had taken it out of M. de la
Rochefoucauld's. Pray tell me whether it is so or not, for in that
case my memory is more to be praised than my judgment. I said, with
all the ease in the world, that "ingratitude begets reproach, as
acknowledgment begets new favors." Pray, where did this come from?
Have I read it? Did I dream it? Is it my own idea? Nothing can be
truer than the thing itself, nor than that I am totally ignorant how I
came by it. I found it properly arranged in my brain, and at the end
of my tongue.
The partial mother lets her daughter know whom the maxim was meant for.
She says, "It is intended for your brother." This young fellow had, we
suspect, been first earning his mother's "reproaches" for spendthrift
habits, and then getting more money from her by "acknowledgment."
She hears that son of hers read "some chapters out of Rabelais," "which
were enough," she declares, "to make us die with laughing." "I cannot
affect," she says, "a prudery which is not natural to me." No, indeed, a
prude this woman was not. She had the strong aesthetic stomach of her
time. It is queer to have Rabelais rubbing cheek and jowl with Nicole
("We are going to begin a moral treatise of Nicole's"), a severe
Port-Royalist, in one and the same letter. But this is French; above
all, it is Madame de Sevigne. By the way, she and her friends, first and
last, "die" a thousand jolly deaths "with laughing."
A contemporary allusion to "Tartuffe," with more French manners implied:
The other day La Biglesse played Tartuffe to the life. Being at table,
she happened to tell a fib about some trifle or other, which I
noticed, and told her of it; she cast her eyes to the ground, and with
a very demure air, "Yes, indeed, madam," said she, "I am the greatest
liar in the world; I am very much obliged to you for telling me of
it." We all burst out a-laughing, for it was exactly the tone of
Tartuffe--"Yes, brother, I am a wretch, a vessel of iniquity."
M. de la Rochefoucauld appears often by name in the letters. Here he
appears anonymously by his effect:
"Warm affections are never tranquil;" _a maxim_.
Not a very sapid bit of gnomic wisdom, certainly. We must immediately
make up to our readers, on Madame de Sevigne's behalf, for the
insipidity of the foregoing "maxim" of hers, by giving here two or three
far more sententious excerpts from the letters, excerpts collected by
another:
There may be so great a weight of obligation that there is no way of
being delivered from it but by ingratitude.
Long sicknesses wear out grief, and long hopes wear out joy.
Shadow is never long taken for substance; you must be, if you would
appear to be. The world is not unjust long.
Madame de Sevigne makes a confession which will comfort readers who may
have experienced the same difficulty as that of which she speaks:
I send you M. de Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," revised and corrected, with
additions; it is a present to you from himself. Some of them I can
make shift to guess the meaning of; but there are others, that, to my
shame be it spoken, I cannot understand at all. God knows how it will
be with you.
What was it changed this woman's mood to serious? She could not have
been hearing Massillon's celebrated sermon on the "Fewness of the
Elect," for Massillon was yet only a boy of nine years; she may have
been reading Pascal's "Thoughts"--Pascal had been dead ten years, and
the "Thoughts" had been published; or she may have been listening to one
of those sifting, heart-searching discourses of Bourdaloue--the date of
her letter is March 16, 1672, and during the Lent of that year
Bourdaloue preached at Versailles--when she wrote somberly as follows:
You ask me if I am as fond of life as ever. I must own to you that I
experience mortifications, and severe ones too; but I am still unhappy
at the thoughts of death; I consider it so great a misfortune to see
the termination of all my pursuits, that I should desire nothing
better, if it were practicable, than to begin life again. I find
myself engaged in a scene of confusion and trouble; I was embarked in
life without my own consent, and know I must leave it again; this
distracts me, for how shall I leave it? In what manner? By what door?
At what time? In what disposition? Am I to suffer a thousand pains and
torments that will make me die in a state of despair? Shall I lose my
senses? Am I to die by some sudden accident? How shall I stand with
God? What shall I have to offer to him? Will fear and necessity make
my peace with him? Shall I have no other sentiment but that of fear?
What have I to hope? Am I worthy of heaven? Or have I deserved the
torments of hell? Dreadful alternative! Alarming uncertainty! Can
there be greater madness than to place our eternal salvation in
uncertainty? Yet what is more natural, or can be more easily accounted
for, than the foolish manner in which I have spent my life? I am
frequently buried in thoughts of this nature, and then death appears
so dreadful to me that I hate life more for leading me to it, than I
do for all the thorns that are strewed in its way. You will ask me,
then, if I would wish to live forever? Far from it; but if I had been
consulted, I would very gladly have died in my nurse's arms; it would
have spared me many vexations, and would have insured heaven to me at
a very easy rate; but let us talk of something else.
A memorable sarcasm saved for us by Madame de Sevigne, at the very close
of one of her letters:
Guilleragues said yesterday that Pelisson abused the privilege men
have of being ugly.
Readers familiar with Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities" will recognize in
the following narrative a state of society not unlike that described by
the novelist as immediately preceding the French Revolution:
The Archbishop of Rheims, as he returned yesterday from St. Germain,
met with a curious adventure. He drove at his usual rate, like a
whirlwind. If he thinks himself a great man, his servants think him
still greater. They passed through Nanterre, when they met a man on
horseback, and in an insolent tone bid him clear the way. The poor man
used his utmost endeavors to avoid the danger that threatened him, but
his horse proved unmanageable. To make short of it, the coach-and-six
turned them both topsy-turvy; but at the same time the coach, too, was
completely overturned. In an instant the horse and the man, instead of
amusing themselves with having their limbs broken, rose almost
miraculously; the man remounted, and galloped away, and is galloping
still, for aught I know; while the servants, the archbishop's
coachman, and the archbishop himself at the head of them, cried out,
"Stop that villain! stop him! thrash him soundly!" The rage of the
archbishop was so great, that afterward, in relating the adventure, he
said if he could have caught the rascal he would have broke all his
bones, and cut off both his ears.
If such things were done by the aristocracy--and the spiritual
aristocracy at that!--in the green tree, what might not be expected from
them in the dry? The writer makes no comment--draws no moral. "Adieu, my
dear, delightful child. I cannot express my eagerness to see you," are
her next words. She rattles along, three short sentences more, and
finishes her letter.
We should still not have done with these letters were we to go on a
hundred pages, or two hundred, farther. Readers have already seen truly
what Madame de Sevigne is. They have only not seen fully all that she
is. And that they would not see short of reading her letters entire.
Horace Walpole aspired to do in English for his own time something like
what Madame de Sevigne had done in French for hers. In a measure he
succeeded. The difference is, that he was imitative and affected, where
she was original and genuine.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must, of course, also be named, as, by her
sex, her social position, her talent, and the devotion of her talent,
an English analogue to Madame de Sevigne. But these comparisons, and all
comparison, leave the French woman without a true parallel, alone in her
rank, the most famous letter-writer in the world.
X.
CORNEILLE.
1606-1684.
The two great names in French tragedy are Corneille and Racine. French
tragedy is a very different affair from either modern tragedy in English
or ancient tragedy in Greek. It comes nearer being Roman epic, such as
Lucan wrote Roman epic, dramatized.
Drama is everywhere and always, and this from the nature of things, a
highly conventional literary form. But the convention under which French
tragedy should be judged, differs, on the one hand, from that which
existed for Greek tragedy, and, on the other hand, from that existing
for the English. The atmosphere of real life present in English tragedy
is absent in French. The quasi-supernatural religious awe that reigned
over Greek tragedy, French tragedy does not affect. You miss also in
French tragedy the severe simplicity, the self-restraint, the statuesque
repose, belonging to the Greek model. Loftiness, grandeur, a loftiness
somewhat strained, a grandeur tending to be tumid, an heroic tone
sustained at sacrifice of ease and nature--such is the element in which
French tragedy lives and flourishes. You must grant your French
tragedists this their conventional privilege, or you will not enjoy
them. You must grant them this, or you cannot understand them. Resolve
that you will like grandiloquence, requiring only that the
grandiloquence be good, and on this condition we can promise that you
will be pleased with Corneille and Racine. In fact, our readers, we are
sure, will find the grandiloquence of these two tragedy-writers so very
good that a little will suffice them.
Voltaire in his time impressed himself strongly enough on his countrymen
to get accepted by his own generation as an equal third in tragedy with
Corneille and Racine. There was then a French triumvirate of tragedists
to be paralleled with the triumvirate of the Greeks. Corneille was
AEschylus; Racine was Sophocles; and, of course, Euripides had his
counterpart in Voltaire. Voltaire has since descended from the tragic
throne, and that neat symmetry of trine comparison is spoiled. There is,
however, some trace of justice in making Corneille as related to Racine
resemble AEschylus as related to Sophocles. Corneille was first, more
rugged, loftier; Racine was second, more polished, more severe in taste.
Racine had, too, in contrast with Corneille, more of the Euripidean
sweetness. In fact, La Bruyere's celebrated comparison of the two
Frenchmen--made, of course, before Voltaire--yoked them, Corneille with
Sophocles, Racine with Euripides. Mr. John Morley, however, in his
elaborate monograph on Voltaire, remarks: "He [Voltaire] is usually
considered to hold the same place relatively to Corneille and Racine
that Euripides held relatively to AEschylus and Sophocles."
It was perhaps not without its influence on the style of Corneille, that
a youthful labor of his in authorship was to translate, wholly or
partially, the "Pharsalia" of Lucan. His fondness for Lucan, Corneille
always retained. This taste on his part, and the rhymed Alexandrines in
which he wrote tragedy, may together help account for the hyperheroic
style which is Corneille's great fault. A lady criticised his tragedy,
"The Death of Pompey," by saying: "Very fine, but too many heroes in
it." Corneille's tragedies generally have, if not too many heroes, at
least too much hero, in them. Concerning the historian Gibbon's habitual
pomp of expression, it was once wittily said that nobody could possibly
tell the truth in such a style as that. It would be equally near the
mark if we should say of Corneille's chosen mold of verse, that nobody
could possibly be simple and natural in that. Moliere's comedy, however,
would almost confute us.
Pierre Corneille was born in Rouen. He studied law, and he was admitted
to practice as an advocate, like Moliere; but, like Moliere, he heard
and he heeded an inward voice summoning him away from the bar to the
stage. Corneille did not, however, like Moliere, tread the boards as an
actor. He had a lively sense of personal dignity. He was eminently the
"lofty, grave tragedian," in his own esteem. "But I am Pierre Corneille
notwithstanding," he self-respectingly said once, when friends were
regretting to him some deficiency of grace in his personal carriage. One
can imagine him taking off his hat to himself with unaffected deference.
But this serious genius began dramatic composition with writing comedy.
He made several experiments of this kind with no commanding success; but
at thirty he wrote the tragedy of "The Cid," and instantly became
famous. His subsequent plays were chiefly on classical subjects. The
subject of "The Cid" was drawn from Spanish literature. This was
emphatically what has been called an "epoch-making" production.
Richelieu's "Academy," at the instigation, indeed almost under the
dictation, of Richelieu, who was jealous of Corneille, tried to write it
down. They succeeded about as Balaam succeeded in prophesying against
Israel. "The Cid" triumphed over them, and over the great minister. It
established not only Corneille's fame, but his authority. The man of
genius taken alone proved stronger than the men of taste taken together.