as to an old friend, and in all confidence, to intercede for him
with the parents of Mademoiselle de Combes. Fortia promised his best
services, went several times to the house, and assured his friend
that he took all care of his interests, but that it would be unwise
to precipitate matters. These assurances he renewed in his letters to
Fayet, who, being compelled about this time to make a journey to Paris,
was received on his return with every mark of joy by the mistress of
his affections. Still, although she had reached her twenty-fifth year,
she seemed in no hurry to take the steps necessary to their marriage;
she was less eager to hear from her lover, and less assiduous in
writing to him. Some time afterwards, Fayet discovered that she was in
correspondence with M. Fortia, and chancing to see one of her letters,
he nearly fainted with surprise and grief at its contents. "Do not
press me, Sir, I entreat you," wrote the perfidious beauty, "to reply
very exactly to the last passage in your letter. You well know that
word is difficult to utter, and still more so to write; be satisfied
with the assurance that as a good Christian I strictly obey the
commandment that bids me love my neighbour. Another time you shall know
more." Poor Fayet sought his mistress, who denied having written to
Fortia, and protested that her sentiments were unchanged. Persuaded of
her dissimulation, and overwhelmed with sorrow, he addressed her in a
strain of feeling wholly thrown away upon the calculating and deceitful
damsel. "If my suspicions are just, Madam," he said amongst other
things, "and you are more moved by the fortune of an Intendant than by
the sincere passion of a lover lacking such brilliant recommendations,
I feel that you will render me the most miserable of men; but I consent
to be miserable so that you be the happier." The lady consoled him,
taxed him with injustice in thus suspecting her after ten years'
fidelity, dismissed him only half persuaded, and wrote to him that
same evening to beg him to return her letters. Fayet saw that he was
sacrificed. He sent back the letters, retaining only a few of the best,
especially the one written in blood. To add to his annoyance, his false
friend the Intendant had the hypocritical assurance to protest that he
had done all in his power for him, but that, finding all in vain, he at
last, subjugated by the lady's charms, had pleaded his own cause. He
then told him in confidence that he was to be married in a few days,
and, with more anxiety than delicacy, entreated him to say how far his
familiarity with Mademoiselle de Combes had been carried during the
ten years' courtship. Gentle creature as the jilted suitor evidently
was, he could not resist the temptation thus indiscreetly held out,
and, without compromising to the last point the lady's reputation, he
contrived, by his ambiguous replies, greatly to perplex and torment
his rival. The latter, in his uneasiness, consulted other persons;
the report of his indiscretion got wind, and was made the subject of
songs and pasquinades, rather witty than decent. The marriage, which
was to have taken place in a few days, had been several months pending
when Fléchier heard the story, and the general opinion was, that the
Intendant was only amusing himself, and that it would never occur.
Meanwhile poor feeble Fayet could not get cured of his love; he thought
continually of his lost mistress, took pleasure in praising and talking
of her, sought excuses for her conduct, and only spoke of her as his
"adorable deceiver." "The incidents of your narrative," says Fléchier,
when thanking the obliging gentleman for the pleasure he had procured
him, "are very pleasant, and you have told them so agreeably, that I
find them marvellously so. If you ask my opinion, I take part with
Fayet against his false mistress, and I wish that, for her punishment,
the Intendant may amuse her for a while and then leave her; that she
may then seek to return to Fayet, and that Fayet may have nothing to
say to her. Heaven often punishes one infidelity by another." The
_adorable trompeuse_, as we are informed by a note, ultimately married
neither Fortia nor Fayet, but became the wife of a M. de la Barge.
If we have thus lingered over the love story with which Fléchier
commences his _Mémoires_, it is because these milder episodes are,
to our thinking, more agreeable to dwell upon, and, in their style
of telling, more characteristic of the writer, than the details of
barbarous crimes and sanguinary scenes with which, at a later period of
the volume, we are abundantly indulged. We will get on to the staple of
the book, the proceedings of the Grands-Jours. This tribunal, although,
as already mentioned, it took cognisance of all manner of causes, civil
as well as criminal, and judged offenders of every degree, from the
meanest peasant to the highest noble, was intended chiefly for the
benefit of the turbulent and tyrannical nobility, who in those latter
days of expiring feudality, still oppressed their weaker neighbours,
murdered their dependents, and kept up bloody feuds amongst themselves.
Such excesses and injustice were common in Bretagne, Dauphiné, and
other provinces of France; but we cannot trace them as having taken
place any where quite so late as in Auvergne, whose remote position and
mountainous configuration, as well as the rude and obstinate character
of its inhabitants, gave greater liberty and pretext for a state of
things recalling in some degree the lawless periods of the middle ages.
"The license that a long war has introduced into our provinces," says
the King's letter to the _Echevins_, or chief magistrates of Clermont,
"and the oppression that the poor suffer from it, having made us
resolve to establish in our town of Clermont in Auvergne, a court
vulgarly called the Grands-Jours, composed of persons of high probity
and consummate experience, who, to the extent of the authority we
have intrusted to them, shall take cognisance of all crimes, and pass
judgment on the same, punishing the guilty, and powerfully enforcing
justice; we will, and command you, &c." "This letter," (of which the
remainder refers to the quarters to be provided for the judges, and to
the consideration to be shown to their persons and quality,) "read,
with sound of trumpet, upon the principal squares and cross-streets of
the town, produced an effect difficult to describe. One can form an
idea of it, only when the picture of the Grands-Jours, unrolled before
our eyes by Fléchier, shall have permitted us to imagine the system
of oppression under which the people groaned. The letter was like a
signal of general deliverance." (Introduction, p. xix.) Of deliverance,
that is to say, for the lower orders, the vast majority, who foresaw,
in the severity and omnipotence of the dreaded tribunal, revenge for
their long sufferings at the hands of arrogant and lawless masters.
The aristocracy of the province, on the other hand, few of whom could
boast clear consciences, beheld the arrival of the royal commissioners
with feelings far less pleasing; and although a body of them, including
many notorious delinquents, went out to meet and welcome the Messieurs
des Grands-Jours, the ceremony was scarcely at an end when most of them
took to flight, to await in distant hiding-places the subsidence of
the storm of retribution. These were the gentlemen referred to in the
popular song of the day, composed for the occasion, and which resounded
in the streets of Clermont on the morrow of the receipt of the King's
letter. It is given, at its full length of twenty-two couplets, in
the appendix to the _Mémoires_, and breathes a bitter hatred of the
unfeeling nobles and insolent retainers who ill-treated the people--a
savage joy at their impending castigation. One of the verses may be
quoted, as comprising the principal hardships and extortions suffered
by the peasantry.
A parler Français,
Chaque gentilhomme
Du matin au soir
Fait croitre ses cens,
Et d'un liard en a six.
Il vit sans foi,
Prend le pré, le foin,
Le champ et les choux du bonhomme;
Puis fait l'économe
De ses pois, de son salé,
Bat celui qui lui déplaît;
Et, comme un roi dans son royaume,
Dit que cela lui plaît.[28]
"_Tel est notre plaisir_," such is our pleasure, the customary
termination of all royal edicts and ordinances, was the closing
phrase of the letter already cited, conveying the King's will to the
authorities of Clermont. And the insolent assumption of the Auvergnat
nobles had to yield to the strong will and energetic measures of the
fourteenth Louis. Without dreaming of disputing the royal mandate, the
guilty fled in confusion and dismay.
"On my arrival at Clermont," says Fléchier, "I remarked universal
terror, there, and throughout the country. All the nobility had taken
to flight, and not a gentleman remained who did not examine his
conscience, recall the evil passages of his life, and endeavour to
repair the wrongs done his vassals, in hopes of stifling complaint.
Numerous were the conversions wrought, less by the grace of God than by
the justice of man, but which were not the less advantageous for being
compulsory. Those who had been the tyrants of the poor became their
suppliants, and more restitutions were made than had been operated
at the great jubilee of the holy year. The arrest of M. de la Mothe
Canillac was the chief subject of consternation." Evil was the fate
of the unlucky delinquents who fell into the clutches of the dread
tribunal, before the severity of its zeal had been appeased by the
infliction of punishment, and daunted by the popular effervescence its
first sanguinary measures occasioned. The Viscount de la Mothe was
the most estimable of the numerous and powerful family of Canillac;
he was much esteemed in the province, and by no means the man who
should have been selected for condign chastisement, as an example
to titled evil-doers. Nevertheless, the judges had scarcely arrived
at Clermont, when their president, Monsieur de Novion, (himself
distantly connected by marriage with the Canillac family,) and Talon,
the advocate-general, agreed to arrest M. de la Mothe. The provost of
Auvergne and his archers found him in bed, and so surprised was he
at the intimation of arrest, that he lost his presence of mind, and
gave up some letters he had just received from a mistress. At dinner,
that day, his friends had bantered him about the Grands-Jours, but he
thought himself so innocent, that he could not believe his danger. Nor
would he, perhaps, have been interfered with, but for reasons which
ought never to have swayed ministers of justice. The name of Canillac
was in ill repute, as that of a turbulent and tyrannical family: M. de
Novion desired to strike terror and prove his impartiality by arresting
a man of first-rate importance, who was also a connexion of his own;
and, moreover, the Viscount had borne arms against the king in the
civil wars. The crime alleged against him could hardly be deemed very
flagrant, and did not justify, at least in those days, the rigour of
his judges. During the wars, M. de la Mothe had received a sum of
money from the Prince de Condé, to be employed in levying cavalry.
The Viscount sought assistance from his friends, and especially from
a certain M. d'Orsonette, to whom he remitted five thousand francs
to equip a troop of horse. The levies not coming in fast enough to
please the prince, he flew into a passion with the Viscount, who,
proud as Lucifer, would not put up with blame, abandoned Condé, and
demanded an account from d'Orsonette of the cash intrusted to him.
This person, however, neither produced his recruits nor restored the
enlistment money, and, whilst acknowledging the debt, showed little
haste to discharge it. Ill blood was the consequence; the two gentlemen
met, each with retainers at his back, a fight ensued, D'Orsonette was
wounded and his falconer killed. All this was an old story in 1665, and
a malicious animus appeared in the eagerness of the court to revive
it. La Mothe even obtained letters of pardon for the offence, but by
a legal quibble these were nullified and made to serve against him.
The evidence was very contradictory as to who had been the assailant,
although it seemed well established that the Viscount had greatly
the advantage of numbers. At the worst, and to judge from Fléchier's
account, the offence did not exceed manslaughter and would have been
sufficiently punished by a less penalty than death, to which M. de
la Mothe was condemned, and which he suffered four hours afterwards.
Fléchier displays some indignation, cloaked by his habitually-guarded
phrase, in his comments on the hard measure of justice shown to the
poor Viscount. "I know," he says, "that many persons, who judge
things very wisely, thought the president and M. Talon might well
have consulted the principal of those Messieurs" (the members of the
tribunal) "on this affair, and especially M. de Caumartin, who held so
high a rank among them; and that they would have done better not to
have thus spread the alarm amongst a great number of gentlemen, who
took their departure immediately after this arrest. To prevent the
escape of a man who was only half guilty, they lost the opportunity
of capturing a hundred criminals; and every one agrees that this
first arrest is a good hit for the judge, but not for justice." There
was one very singular circumstance in the case, and which could have
been met with, as the Abbé observes, only in a country so full of
crime as Auvergne then was. The accuser, the person who laid the
information, and the witnesses, were all more criminal than the accused
himself. The first was charged by his own father with having killed
his brother, with having attempted parricide, and with a hundred
other crimes; the second was a convicted forger; and the others, for
sundry crimes, were either at the galleys or in perpetual banishment,
or actually fugitives. So that, to all appearance, the Viscount must
have been acquitted for want of testimony, had not the president, by
a pettifogging manœuvre, not very clearly explained but manifestly
unfair, managed to turn against him his own admissions in the letters
of pardon granted by M. de Caumartin, and in which it was customary to
set down the criminal's full confession of his offences. Fléchier's
account is, however, too disconnected and imperfect to afford us a
clear view of the singular system of jurisprudence argued by this
remarkable trial and sentence. The versatile Abbé does not plume
himself on his legal knowledge, and indeed is rather too apt, as many
will think, to turn from the rigorous and somewhat partial proceedings
of the tribunal, to flowery topics of gallant gossip. The town of
Clermont finds little favour in his eyes, and he doubts that there
is one more disagreeable in all France, the streets being so narrow
that one carriage only can pass along them; so that the meeting of two
vehicles caused a terrible blaspheming of coachmen, who swear there,
Fléchier thinks, better than anywhere else, and who assuredly would
have set fire to the town had they been more numerous, and but for the
many beautiful fountains at hand to extinguish the flames. "On the
other hand, the town is well peopled, the women are ugly but prolific,
and if they do not inspire love, they at least bear many children. It
is an established fact, that a lady who died a short time ago, aged
eighty years, made the addition of her descendants, and counted up four
hundred and sixty-nine living, and more than a thousand dead, whom she
had seen during her life. After that, can one doubt the prodigious
propagation of Israel during the time of the captivity, and may not
one ask here what the Dutch asked when they entered China and saw the
immense population, whether the women of that country bore ten children
at a time?" If Fléchier, when inditing the lively record of his
residence in Auvergne, contemplated the probability of his manuscript
some day finding its way into print, it is evident that he cared little
for the suffrages of the ladies of Clermont. Had he valued their good
opinion, or expected the _Mémoires_ to be submitted to them, he would
hardly have ventured to note thus plainly--not to say brutally--his
depreciation of their personal attractions. Ugly, child-bearing
housewives! Such crude uncivil phrase would have been more appropriate
in the day of the eccentric monarch who used firetongs to remove a
love-letter from a lady's bosom,[29] than in that of the graceful
lover of La Vallière, who cloaked the extremity of egotism under the
most exquisite external courtesy. Not often do we catch Fléchier thus
transgressing the limits of polite comment. His keen perception of
the ridiculous more frequently finds vent in sly and guarded satire.
But the rusticity and want of court-usage of the Auvergne dames meet
in him a cruel censor. "All the ladies of the town come to pay their
respects to our ladies, not successively, but in troops. Each visit
fills the room; there is no finding chairs enough; it takes a long
time to place all these little people; (_ce petit monde;_) you would
think it a conference or an assembly, the circle is so large. I have
heard say that it is a great fatigue to salute so many persons at one
time, and that one is much embarrassed before and after so many kisses.
As the greater number (of the visitors) are not accustomed to court
ceremony, and know nothing but their provincial customs, they come in
a crowd, to avoid special notice, and to gain courage from each other.
It is a pleasant sight to see them enter, one with her arms crossed,
another with her hands hanging down like those of a doll; all their
conversation is trivial (_bagatelle_;) and it is a happiness for them
when they can turn the discourse to their dress, and talk of the
_points d'Aurillac_."[30] Even the homage paid to his own talents and
growing reputation is insufficient to mollify the Abbé and blunt the
point of his sarcastic pen. A capuchin monk of worldly tastes, who
passed his time at watering places, coquetting with sick belles and
belles lettres, had read some of Fléchier's poetry, and spread his
fame amongst the Clermont blue-stockings. Forthwith the Abbé received
the visits of two or three of these _précieuses languissantes_, who
thought, he informs us with less than his usual modesty,--"that to be
seen with me would make them pass for learned persons, and that wit is
to be acquired by contagion. One was of a height approaching that of
the giants of antiquity, with a face of Amazonian ugliness; the other,
on the contrary, was very short, and her countenance was so covered
with patches, that I could form no opinion of it, except that she had
a nose and eyes. It did not escape me that she was a little lame, and
I remarked that both thought themselves beautiful. The pair alarmed
me, and I took them for evil spirits trying to disguise themselves
as angels of light." Then comes a dialogue, _à la_ Molière--clumsy
compliments on the one hand, modestly declined on the other, and at
last the ladies take their departure, after turning over the Abbé's
books, and borrowing a translation of the "Art of Love." "I wish,"
concludes the Abbé, "I could also have given them the art of becoming
loveable." These incidents and digressions, petty in the abstract, will
have a collective worth in the eyes of those who seek in the _Mémoires_
what we maintain ought to be there sought:--a valuable addition to our
knowledge of the manners, follies, and foibles of a very interesting
period.
The comprehensive nature of the court of the Grands-Jours, competent
to judge every description of case, is one cause of the motley
appearance of Fléchier's pages. There was little sorting of causes,
civil or criminal, but all were taken as they came uppermost, and
strong contrasts are the result. We pass from farce to tragedy, and
thence again to comedy, with curious rapidity of transition. Now we are
horrified by the account of an atrocious assassination or wholesale
massacre; turn the leaf, and we trace the derelictions of a rakish
husband, or the scandalous details of conventual irregularities.
Here we have a puissant count or baron brought up for judgment, or,
more often, condemned by default; thereafter followeth the trial and
sentence of a scoundrel-peasant, or unlucky _fille-de-joie_. The
Grands-Jours would certainly have been improved by the establishment
of a court of appeal; many of the sentences needed revision, and
the errors committed were seldom on the side of mercy. The reproach
usually made to partial judges, of favouring the rich, and dealing
hardly with the poor, would here have been unjustly applied, for it
was the wealthy and powerful whom this tribunal chiefly delighted to
condemn. These, it is true, in some degree neutralised the effects
of such disfavour by getting out of the way; but their houses were
razed, their lands confiscated, or struck with a heavy fine, and they
themselves were frequently decapitated in effigy, a ceremony to which
they attached but slight importance. After the execution of poor
Canillac, the court flagged a little in their proceedings, and resumed
their energy only towards the close of the session, and under terror
of its further prolongation--one having already taken place. "Then,"
says Fléchier, "they applied themselves without pause or relaxation to
the consideration of important offences, and despatched them so rapidly
that they did not give us time to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted
with the circumstances." Assassinations, abductions, and oppression,
were the usual subjects of their deliberations; and so numerous were
the condemnations, that in one day thirty persons were executed in
effigy. These pasteboard punishments must seriously have diminished
the _prestige_ of the Grands-Jours, by imparting an air of ridiculous
impotency to their proceedings. And amongst others, the Marquis of
Canillac, a cousin of La Mothe, and the biggest and oldest sinner in
the province, was greatly diverted by the bloodless beheading of his
counterfeit. Fléchier believes it was matter of deep regret to this
hardened offender that he could not look on at his own execution, as
he had done once before when similarly condemned by the parliament of
Toulouse. "He had seen his execution himself from an adjacent window,
and had found it very pleasant to be at his ease in a house whilst he
was beheaded in the street; and to see himself die out of doors, when
perfectly comfortable at his fire-side." Judging from the smallness
of the sum (thirty livres) set down in the account of expenses of the
Grands-Jours as paid the painter, the decapitated portraits were by
no means masterpieces of art, nor probably was it deemed necessary to
obtain a very exact resemblance of the contumacious originals.