PARIS, Friday, April 12, 1680.
You mention the dauphiness to me; the chevalier can tell you more
about her than I can. However, I think she does not seem to attach
herself much to the queen. They have been to Versailles together, but
on other days they generally make their separate parties. The king
frequently visits the dauphiness in an afternoon, when he is sure not
to be crowded. She holds her circle from eight in the evening till half
after nine; all the rest of the day she is alone, or with her ladies
in waiting. The Princess of Conti almost always makes one of these
private parties; for, as she is yet but very young, she stands in need
of such a pattern to form her conduct by. The dauphiness is a miracle
of wit, understanding, and good education. She frequently mentions
her mother with great affection; and says, that she is indebted to
her for all the prosperity and happiness she enjoys, by the pains she
bestowed on her. She learns music, singing, and dancing; she reads,
she works at her needle; in short, she is a complete being. I must
own that I had a great curiosity to see her. Accordingly I went with
Madame de Chaulnes and Madame de Carman; she was at her toilet when
we came in, and engaged in a conversation in Italian with the Duke of
Nevers. We were presented to her, and she received us very politely.
It is easy to perceive that, if a moment could be found of putting
in a word opportunely, it would not be difficult to engage her in
conversation. She is fond of Italian, of poetry, of new publications,
music, and dancing. You see that one need not be long dumb amid such a
variety of topics for discourse; but it requires time--she was going to
mass. Neither Madame de Maintenon nor Madame de Richelieu was in her
apartment.
The court, my dear child, is by no means a place for me; I am past the
time of life to wish for any settlement there. If I were young I would
take pleasure in rendering myself agreeable to this princess; but what
right have I to think of returning there? You see what my views are. As
for those of my son, they seem to have become more reasonable; he will
make a virtue of necessity, and keep his commission quietly. Indeed
it is not an object for any one to give himself much trouble to gain,
though Heaven knows it has cost us trouble enough; but the truth is,
that money is very scarce, and he sees plainly that he must not make
a foolish bargain. So, my dear, we must even wait for what Providence
shall bring forth.
Yesterday the Bishop of Autun pronounced the funeral oration of Madame
de Longueville,[181] at the church of the Carmelites, with all the
powers and grace that man is capable of. Here was no _Tartuffe_,[182]
no hypocrite; but a divine of rank, preaching with dignity, and giving
an account of that princess’s life with all the elegance imaginable,
passing lightly over the most delicate parts of it, and dwelling upon
or omitting all that should or should not be said. His text was these
words, “Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that
feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.” He divided his oration into
two parts, equally beautiful; he spoke of the charms of her person,
and of the late wars, inimitably; and I need not tell you, that the
second part, which was taken up in giving an account of her exemplary
penitence for the last twenty-seven years of her life, gave him an
ample field to expatiate upon the virtues of her mind, and to place
her in the bosom of her God.[183] He took occasion very naturally to
praise the king; and the prince was also compelled to digest a great
many eulogiums; but as delicately prepared, though in a different
manner, as those of Voiture. This hero was present, as were the duke,
the Princess of Conti, and all the family, besides an infinite number
of other persons; though, in my opinion, too few, for I think this
respect was at least due to the prince, on occasion of an event he had
not yet ceased to lament. You may perhaps ask me how I came there?
Madame de Guénégaud offered the other day at M. de Chaulnes’, to take
me with her; as it was not inconvenient to me, I was tempted to embrace
the offer; and I assure you I did not at all repent having done so.
There were a great many women present, who had as little to do there as
myself. Both the prince and the duke paid great attention to all who
were there.
[181] Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, daughter of Henry Bourbon,
second of the name, Prince of Condé, who died the 15th of April,
1679.
[182] It was imagined at that time, that the Bishop of Autun
(Gabriel de Roquette) was the person whom Molière had in view in
the character of Tartuffe.
We can not forbear adding an epigram of Boileau’s upon him:
On dit que l’Abbé Roquette
Preche les sermons d’autrui;
Moi qui sais qu’il les achète,
Je soutiens qu’il sont à lui.
Which may be Englished by a parody on a well-known epigram in our
language:
The sermons that Roquette pronounces
Are his;--who’d so have thought them?
He swears they’re his; say not he bounces,
For I know where he bought them!
[183] To estimate the skillfulness of the panegyrist, it is
proper to know the soil on which he labored. The life of
Madame de Longueville presented the Abbé Roquette with strange
circuitous roads to measure, before he brought her to the way of
salvation, whither he conducted her. She was one of the three
ladies of whom Cardinal de Mazarin said to Don Louis de Haro:
“We have three, among others, who create greater confusion than
arose at the tower of Babel.” Like Madame de Chevreuse and La
Palatine, the part she took in the intrigues of the minority of
Louis XIV. is notorious; like them, she united the triumphs of
beauty to the success of factions, and the love of business to
the love of amours. Voiture represents her as already serious and
political, when, at an early age, she appeared at the Congress
of Munster, where her husband presided over the French embassy.
The Fronde began; her artifices and blandishments seduced the
sage Turenne, when he came at the head of the Spaniards to
give battle to the French. Beloved, not much in the style of a
brother, by the Prince de Conti, she made him the chief of the
Frondeurs, and general of the insurgents, thus opposing him to
her other brother, the great Condé, who commanded the army of
the court. It was she who afterward dragged this hero into the
civil war, and joined him to the Spaniards. She long wandered as
a heroine, or as Cardinal de Retz said, who had himself been her
lover, as a fugitive adventurer. She went alternately, commanding
or intriguing, to Holland, Flanders, Dieppe, Stenay, Montrond,
Bordeaux. In 1649 she reigned in the Hôtel-de-ville of Paris,
and did what no one had ever done before, nor will perhaps do
after her, she lay-in there; and that at a time when this hotel
served as a palace to the court, as the seat of government, and
as the head-quarters of the army. Two of her lovers, the Count de
Coligny and the Duke de Nemours, were killed in a duel. The first
fought by her orders, in her quarrel, and under her inspection.
The Duke de la Rochefoucault, who had long loved her, was
betrayed by her, both as a friend and as a lover. When the peace
of the Pyrénées had brought back the princes to France, it was
found that age prescribed repose to her, at the same time that
the state of affairs obliged her to it. She endeavored at first
to escape it, by forming a party for Voiture’s sonnet against
Benserades. But these little contests of wit were insipid, in
comparison with those she had been engaged in. Nothing remained
for her but devotion; and as a character and a party were always
essential to her, she became the protectress of the Jansenists at
court, and, what is more, mediatrix between them and Rome. For it
was Madame de Longueville who in 1668 mediated the theological
transaction which suspended the debates of the Formulary, and
which was called _the peace of Clement IX_. Singular woman! who
had the art of making herself conspicuous while working out her
salvation, and of saving herself on the same plank from perdition
and from ennui. It was asserted at the time, that she died for
want of food, and there is no doubt she practiced the most
rigid austerities. “Though naturally delicate,” says Madame de
Maintenon, “she never relaxed in the practice of self-denial.”
There is a life of this lady in two volumes by Villefore, which
is said to be well written.
I saw Madame de la Fayette as we were coming out of the church; she
was bathed in tears; it seems that some of M. de la Rochefoucault’s
hand-writing had by accident fallen in her way, which had awakened
all her sorrows. I had just parted from the Mesdemoiselles de la
Rochefoucault at the Carmelites, who had been also weeping the loss of
their father; the eldest, in particular, equaled M. de Marsillac in
affectionate sorrow. I really do not think that Madame de la Fayette
will ever be comforted; for my part, I am the worst of any of her
acquaintance to be with her; for we can not help indulging ourselves in
talking of that worthy man, and the conversation is death to her. She
was certainly more deserving of his regard than any of those he had an
affection for. She has read your little note, and thanks you warmly for
the manner in which you seem to enter into her grief.
Have I told you of the reception Madame de Coulanges met with at
St. Germain? The dauphiness told her that she already knew her by
her letters; that her ladies had also told her a great deal of her
wit, and that she wished to judge of it herself. Madame de Coulanges
supported her character admirably upon the occasion; her repartees were
brilliant, sallies of wit flew without number; in the afternoon she was
invited to be of the princess’s private party, with her three friends:
all the ladies of the court would have strangled her. You see that by
means of these friends she gets admittance to a private conversation;
but what does all this tend to? She can not be one of their party in
public, nor at table. This spoils the whole; she is fully sensible of
the humiliation; and has been these four days tasting these pleasures
and dissatisfactions.