The Villarceaux Affair
Party politics raged around Ninon, her "Birds" being men of high rank
and leaders with a large following. They were all her dearest friends,
however, and no matter how strong personal passion was beyond her
immediate presence, her circle was a neutral ground which no one
thought of violating. It required her utmost influence and tenderness,
however, to prevent outbreaks, but her unvarying sweetness of temper
and disposition to all won their hearts into a truce for her sake.
There were continual plots hatched against the stern rule of
Richelieu, cabals and conspiracies without number were entered upon,
but none of them resulted in anything. Richelieu knew very well what
was going on, and he realized perfectly that Ninon's drawing-rooms
were the center of every scheme concocted to drag him down and out of
the dominant position he was holding against the combined nobility of
France. But he never took a step toward suppressing her little court
as a hot-bed of restlessness, he rather encouraged her by his silence
and his indifference. Complaints of her growing coterie of uneasy
spirits brought nothing from him but: "As long as they find amusements
they are not dangerous." It was the forerunner of Napoleon's idea
along the same line: "We must amuse the people; then they will not
meddle with our management of the government."
It is preposterous to think of this minister of peace, this restless
prelate, half soldier, half pastor, meddling in all these cabals and
seditious schemes organized for his own undoing, but nevertheless, he
was really the fomenter of all of them. They were his devices for
preventing the nobility from combining against him. He set one cabal
to watch another, and there was never a conspiracy entered into that
he did not prepare a similar conspiracy through his numerous secret
agents and thus split into harmless nothings and weak attempts what
would have been fatal to a continuance of his power. His tricks were
nothing but the ordinary everyday methods of the modern ward
politician making the dear people believe he is doing one thing when
he is doing another. The stern man pitted one antagonist against
another until both sued for peace and pardon. The nobility were honest
in their likes and dislikes, but they did not understand double
dealings and therefore the craft of Richelieu was not even suspected.
Soon he corrupted by his secret intrigues the fidelity of the nobles
and destroyed the integrity of the people. Then it was, as Cyrano
says: "The world saw billows of scum vomited upon the royal purple and
upon that of the church." Vile rhyming poets, without merit or virtue,
sold their villainous productions to the enemies of the state to be
used in goading the people to riot. Obscene and filthy vaudevilles,
defamatory libels and infamous slanders were as common as bread, and
were hurled back and forth as evidence of an internecine strife which
was raging around the wearer of the Roman scarlet, who was thereby
justified in continuing his ecclesiastical rule to prevent the
wrecking of the throne.
Ninon had always been an ardent supporter of the throne, and on that
account imagined herself to be the enemy of Richelieu. There were many
others who believed the same thing. They did not know that should the
great Cardinal withdraw his hand for a single moment there would not
be any more throne. When the human hornets around him became annoying
he was accustomed to pretend to withdraw his sustaining hand, then the
throne would tremble and totter, but he always came to the rescue;
indeed, there was no other man who could rescue it. Cabals, plots, and
conspiracies became so thick around Ninon at one period that she was
frightened. Scarron's house became a rendezvous for the factious and
turbulent. Madame Scarron was aiming at the throne, that is, she was
opening the way to capture the heart of the king. This was too much
for Ninon, who was more modest in her ambitions, and she fled
frightened.
The Marquis de Villarceaux received her with open arms at his château
some distance from Paris, and that was her home for three years. There
were loud protests at this desertion from her coterie of friends, and
numerous dark threats were uttered against the gallant Marquis who had
thus captured the queen of the "Birds," but Ninon explained her
reason in such a plausible manner that their complaints subsided into
good-natured growls. She hoped to prevent a political conflagration
emanating from her social circle by scattering the firebrands, and she
succeeded admirably. The Marquis was constantly with her, permitting
nobody to intervene between them, and provided her with a perpetual
round of amusements that made the time pass very quickly. Moreover,
she was faithful to the Marquis, so wonderful a circumstance that her
friend and admirer wrote an elegy upon that circumstance, in which he
draws a picture of the pleasures of the ancients in ruralizing, but
reproaches Ninon for indulging in a passion for so long a period to
the detriment of her other friends and admirers. But Ninon was happy
in attaining the summit of her desire, which was to defeat Madame
Scarron, her rival in the affections of the Marquis, keeping the
latter by her side for three whole years as has already been said.
However delighted Ninon may have been with this arrangement, the
Marquis, himself, did not repose upon a bed of roses. The jealousy of
the "Birds" gave him no respite, he being obliged in honor to respond
to their demands for an explanation of his conduct in carrying off
their leader, generally insisting upon the so-called field of honor as
the most appropriate place for giving a satisfactory answer. They even
invaded his premises until they forced him to make them some
concessions in the way of permission to see the object of their
admiration, and to share in her society. The Marquis was proud of his
conquest, the very idea of a three years' tête à tête with the most
volatile heart in France being sufficient to justify him in boasting
of his prowess, but whenever he ventured to do so a champion on the
part of Ninon always stood ready to make him either eat his words or
fight to maintain them.
Madame Scarron, whom he so basely deserted for the superior charms of
her friend Ninon, often gave him a bad quarter of an hour. When she
became the mistress of the king and, as Madame de Maintenon, really
held the reins of power, visions of the Bastile thronged his brain. He
knew perfectly well that he had scorned the charms of Madame Scarron,
who believed them irresistible, and that he deserved whatever
punishment she might inflict upon him. She might have procured a
lettre de cachet, had him immured in a dungeon or his head removed
from his shoulders as easily as order a dinner, but she did nothing to
gratify a spirit of revenge, utterly ignoring his existence.
Added to these trifling circumstances, trifling in comparison with
what follows, was the furious jealousy of his wife, Madame la
Marquise. She was violently angry and did not conceal her hatred for
the woman who had stolen her husband's affections. The Marquise was a
trifle vulgar and common in her manner of manifesting her displeasure,
but the Marquis, a very polite and affable gentleman, did not pay the
slightest attention to his wife's daily recriminations, but continued
to amuse himself with the charming Ninon.
Under such circumstances each was compelled to have a separate social
circle, the Marquis entertaining his friends with the adorable Ninon
as the center of attraction, and Madame la Marquise doing her best to
offer counter attractions. Somehow, Ninon drew around her all the most
desirable partis among the flower of the nobility and wits, leaving
the social circle managed by la Marquise to languish for want of
stamina. It was a constant source of annoyance to the Marquise to see
her rival's entertainments so much in repute and her own so poorly
attended, and she was at her wits' end to devise something that would
give them éclat. One of her methods, and an impromptu scene at one of
her drawing-rooms, will serve to show the reason why Madame la
Marquise was not in good repute and why she could not attract the
élite of Paris to her entertainments.
La Marquise was a very vain, moreover, a very ignorant woman, a
"nouvelle riche" in fact, or what might be termed in modern parlance
"shoddy," without tact, sense, or savoir faire. One day at a grand
reception, some of her guests desired to see her young son, of whom
she was very proud, and of whose talents and virtues she was always
boasting. He was sent for and came into the presence accompanied by
his tutor, an Italian savant who never left his side. From praising
his beauty of person, they passed to his mental qualities. Madame la
Marquise, enchanted at the caresses her son was receiving and aiming
to create a sensation by showing off his learning, took it into her
head to have his tutor put him through an examination in history.
"Interrogate my son upon some of his recent lessons in history," said
she to the tutor, who was not at all loth to show his own attainments
by the brilliancy of his pupil.
"Come, now, Monsieur le Marquis," said the tutor with alacrity, "Quem
habuit successorem Belus rex Assiriorum?" (Whom did Belus, king of the
Assyrians, have for successor?)
It so happened that the tutor had taught the boy to pronounce the
Latin language after the Italian fashion. Wherefore, when the lad
answered "Ninum," who was really the successor of Belus, king of the
Assyrians, he pronounced the last two letters "um" like the French
nasal "on," which gave the name of the Assyrian king the same sound as
that of Ninon de l'Enclos, the terrible bête noir of the jealous
Marquise. This was enough to set her off into a spasm of fury against
the luckless tutor, who could not understand why he should be so
berated over a simple question and its correct answer. The Marquise
not understanding Latin, and guided only by the sound of the answer,
which was similar to the name of her hated rival, jumped at the
conclusion that he was answering some question about Ninon de
l'Enclos.
"You are giving my son a fine education," she snapped out before all
her guests, "by entertaining him with the follies of his father. From
the answer of the young Marquis I judge of the impertinence of your
question. Go, leave my sight, and never enter it again."
The unfortunate tutor vainly protested that he did not comprehend her
anger, that he meant no affront, that there was no other answer to be
made than "Ninum," unfortunately, again pronouncing the word "Ninon,"
which nearly sent the lady into a fit of apoplexy with rage at hearing
the tabooed name repeated in her presence. The incensed woman carried
the scene to a ridiculous point, refusing to listen to reason or
explanation.
"No, he said 'Ninon,' and Ninon it was."
The story spread all over Paris, and when it reached Ninon, she
laughed immoderately, her friends dubbing her "The successor of
Belus." Ninon told Molière the ridiculous story and he turned it to
profit in one of his comedies in the character of Countess
d'Escarbagnas.
At the expiration of three years, peace had come to France after a
fashion, the cabals were not so frequent and the rivalry between the
factions not so bitter. Whatever differences there had been were
patched up or smoothed over. Ninon's return to the house in the Rue
des Tournelles was hailed with joy by her "Birds," who received her as
one returned from the dead. Saint-Evremond composed an elegy beginning
with these lines:
Chère Philis, qu'êtes vous devenues?
Cet enchanteur qui vous a retenue
Depuis trois ans par un charme nouveau
Vous retient-il en quelque vieux château?