witnesses in this case, what should unexpectedly arrive but a brief from
the Pope, directing the archbishop to proclaim the judgment pronounced on
that half-forgotten application of Le Moleur's and Cheminot's! It had
taken His Holiness some years to come to a decision even on the
preliminary point, that of the marriage with Beatrix; on the main
question, the validity of Charles's marriage with Nicole, the judgment was
still silent. But Charles's marriage with Beatrix the document declared
entirely illegal and invalid, formally threatening both parties concerned
with major excommunication if they did not at once separate and
thereafter continue apart, and, moreover, within a given time, purge
themselves by a public and humiliating penance. To Beatrix this judgment
came as a crushing blow. However, she yielded prompt obedience, removing
at once to the distant Hombourg Haut, near Saint-Avold.
Charles evidently cared very much less about the separation, however
little he might relish the idea of a penance. It looks very much as if he
had already grown a little tired of the lovely Beatrix. She was still very
beautiful, and had any amount of love-making left in her. Her little amour
with Charles II. was still to come; and that portrait to be seen at
Windsor, which so much enamoured Flecknoe, actually shows her as she was a
little later. However, the _toujours perdrix_ of one particular beauty had
evidently begun to pall upon Charles's exacting taste. He managed very
soon to find some cheering consolation for his loss, to the infinite
entertainment of the gay Court of Brussels--which delighted in scandal,
and was constantly on the look out for some fresh amusement. Charles
provided such, very opportunely, by a quite unexpected new amour, which
was certainly not wanting in originality. Charles suddenly fell over head
and ears in love with the very _bourgeoise_ daughter of the Burgomaster of
Brussels. He pressed his heart and hand upon her again and again. No
effort was too great for him to make in prosecution of his suit, no
expense too lavish. The girl found herself serenaded, _feted_, asked to
all sorts of festivities--tournaments, concerts, balls--all arranged
specifically in her honour. She found jewellery showered upon her. And, to
secure her good will, the proud Carlovingian Duke even condescended to
compete with the humble burghers at the popular _kermesse_, in the
cross-bow shooting at the "papegay," which, crack marksman that he was, he
brought down in brilliant style, thereby constituting himself
"papegay-king" for the year. That dignity imposed upon him the obligation
of treating all the burghers and their young women to a flow of
liquor--which liquor he did not stint--and, moreover, of holding a
triumphal progress through the town--which he magnified into a sort of
Lord Mayor's procession, himself appearing in the character of his own
ancestor, Godfrey de Bouillon, encased in costly armour, with all his rich
jewellery hung upon his person, and seated, high and lofty, upon a
magnificent car. The buxom Flamande found all this mightily pretty, but
scarcely knew what to make of it so long as her mother strictly forbade
her to give the devoted Charles any encouragement, nor dare so much as to
meet him in private. Once only was the mother prevailed upon to permit a
_tete-a-tete_ for just as long as Charles could manage to hold a live coal
in his palm. To extend the time, Charles extinguished the fire by
heroically crushing the coal with his fingers. All this tomfoolery amused
the Court intensely. But people were just a little astounded when Charles
carried his devotion so far as to refuse to treat with the Spanish
plenipotentiaries for a renewal of his treaty, unless their Excellencies
would first secure the approval and advocacy of his Flemish Dulcinea. The
Spaniards needed the Lorrain troops badly, and so submitted for the
time--but they had their revenge.
Of course the news of all this love-making brought Beatrix back pretty
promptly to the Low Countries. As an excuse she alleged a burning desire
to be reconciled to the Church, whose censure her sensitive conscience
could no longer endure. Charles was by no means equally impatient.
However, late in 1645, he too at length consented, and, accordingly, the
two attended together to hear the Church's commination, prostrate
themselves at full length before the altar, play the abject penitents
throughout, confess their guilt, and receive episcopal absolution--all in
the presence of a very large assemblage, which made the proceeding none
the more pleasant for the principal actors.
That done, Beatrix settled down again, perhaps all the better pleased at
finding that by his new treaty obligations Charles had bound himself to
proceed immediately to the battle-fields in France. Whether she had a
right to be severe upon Charles's little amatory escapades may appear a
trifle doubtful by the light of her own conduct now that he was away. At
Ghent she took a leaf out of his own book. The duke soon heard of her
being in a close _liaison_ with a Polish magnate, Prince Radzivill, _jeune
et bien fait, poli et galant_. And not long after arrived the further
intelligence that one of her most conspicuous and most successful admirers
was our own "gay monarch," Charles Stuart, subsequently Charles II., who
was then a refugee in the Netherlands. There is no reason to believe that
these misfeasances were in any way belittled to Charles's ear, seeing that
it was Princess Marguerite, the Duchess of Orleans, his sister, who played
the principal tale-bearer, a lady who, like all the Lorrain princesses,
had a direct interest in bringing Charles's connection with Beatrix to a
close. Charles took the bait. He was furious with the Princess de
Cantecroix. He would repudiate her for good. He would be reconciled on
the spot with Nicole. All seemed to herald a happy and creditable ending
to the misunderstanding of years, when, all of a sudden, Beatrix announced
herself _enceinte_, and by that announcement upset the whole carefully
reared-up house of cards. Nicole had borne the duke no son. Here was the
prospect of one. Throwing the Pope's warning to the winds, forgetting and
forgiving all about Beatrix's wrong-doings, Charles rushed to join her,
and was overjoyed to be able to be present at the birth of what was
destined to be his only son, Charles, subsequently the gifted and
distinguished Prince de Vaudemont, our William III.'s confidant and
adviser, and the elder Pretender's potent patron and ally. The Papal
Nuncio and the Archbishop of Malines were horrorstruck at this barefaced
breaking of a solemn oath. But no serious harm came of it after all. Only,
it was a little provoking to find that when the confinement was over, and
Charles's back was once more turned, Beatrix calmly resumed her illicit
flirtations, of which the Lorrain princesses, more particularly the
Princess Marguerite, were not slow to advise the duke.
Charles's patience was now completely worn out. As soon as he could manage
it, he posted back to the Low Countries, resolved, as he declared, to
"mettre deux folles a la raison." One _folle_, of course, was
Beatrix--whom Charles protested that nothing would induce him ever to take
into favour again; and the other was his sister Henriette, who had
distinguished herself by a very unconventional match indeed, her third,
between herself, aged fifty, and the youthful Italian banker, Grimaldi,
aged twenty-seven. There were some utilitarian arguments to plead in
excuse of the marriage. Henriette had spent her last _ecu_, had sold every
bit of property of hers that was at all saleable, and was deep in debt to
boot; and Grimaldi had money. But nothing would justify the extraordinary
proceeding which these two lovers, driven into a corner, resorted to, of,
so to speak, "springing themselves" upon the unsuspecting Archbishop of
Malines, and simultaneously declaring their intention to be man and wife,
before he could so much as utter a word of protest. That constituted, the
archbishop had himself previously explained, a legal marriage according to
canon law.
Charles found Beatrix at Antwerp. He at once seized her house in all legal
form, fretting and fuming with rage, and refusing to listen to a word
which she might say in explanation. He had everything put under lock and
key, sentries placed before the door, and, overhauling all the furniture
with his own hands, he claimed back all the property which the lady held
from him; above all, that very valuable collection of jewellery for which
the Lorrain Court was noted. To his dismay he found that a portion of it
was gone. That made matters ten times worse. The missing pieces must
necessarily have been given to Beatrix's _galants_.
The Lorrain princes and princesses were delighted to observe a fresh
rupture, and spared no pains to fan the flame. As it happened, at this
very time, in 1654, the Papal Tribunal of the "Rota" had at last made up
its mind how to adjudicate upon that old plea first raised in 1637, and
formally laid before the Pope in 1642--the question of the validity of
Charles's marriage with Nicole. The "Rota" ruled the whole suit to be
frivolous. The marriage had been "freely contracted," was therefore
binding, and, not to be troubled again with anything of the sort, the
Court imposed upon Beatrix "perpetual silence." Charles accepted the
judgment readily; indeed, he was so earnestly bent upon reconciliation
with Nicole, that he seriously talked of having her excommunicated, should
she withhold her consent. All seemed once more coming right, in spite of
itself, when Europe was surprised by a gross outrage against law and good
faith, namely, the high-handed seizure by the Spanish governor,
Fuensaldana, of the Duke of Lorraine, and his removal, as a prisoner, to
the distant Castle of Toledo. Six long years was the duke destined to pine
in that unwholesome, dark, barred tower, a prey to vermin and to all
discomforts, and a victim to ever freshly-raised, ever sorely-disappointed
hopes. The very Spaniards around him pitied him. The ladies of Toledo
conspired to liberate the interesting captive, who, in spite of his fifty
years, was still handsome, nimble, full of courtesy and full of life. His
own subjects braved tortures, galleys, death--everything, to effect his
rescue. Never was ruler more beloved; rarely did he less deserve it.
Nicole loyally forgot all past grievances, appealed to Mazarin, appealed
to King Louis, appealed to the Pope. Beatrix likewise did her best--more
especially after Nicole's death, in 1657--though roughly rated all the
time by her wrathful and impatient late lover, who never for a day
together knew his own mind. At one time he asked indignantly: Why did she
not come to share his prison? At another he bade her stay where she was,
since there she could be of greater use. A third time he would have
nothing whatever to say to her. When she sent her _intendant_,
Pelletier, to Spain, to exert himself in the cause of the duke's
liberation, Charles brought up the old charges of infidelity and
misappropriation of his jewellery. But he was delighted to receive at
Pelletier's hands the newly-painted portraits of his two children, Anne
and Charles, to whom, as a partially redeeming feature in his character,
he continued devoted to his dying day.
In 1660 Spain found that she could carry on war no longer. The result was
the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which was rather dictated by Mazarin than
negotiated between France and Spain, and which, among other things,
provided that Charles should be set free. Purchasing the glory of a
princely escort from the needy noblemen of Spain by a distribution of the
full sum of compensation just received at Madrid, the duke hurried to
Saint Jean de Luz in state, and there, with his habitual impetuosity,
nearly got himself back into prison. The Spanish Ambassador, Don Louis de
Haro, badgered beyond endurance by Charles, full of his complaints,
seriously threatened to have the duke carried back to Toledo. This brought
our rather romantic Stuart exile to the front, whom nobody then supposed
to be so near becoming Charles II. of England. Indeed, Mazarin held him in
such small estimation, that he would not even admit him to his presence.
But on Don Louis, if he ever seriously intended fresh violence, this bold
manoeuvre had the desired effect. He promptly desisted from further
threats. The Lorrain Charles, touched by the chivalrous conduct of his
namesake, in a burst of gratitude generously offered the latter the free
use of his purse--an offer which must have been peculiarly welcome to the
ever-impecunious Stuart--and frankly forgave him his rivalry in the matter
of Beatrix, which looks, indeed, as if between him and her he now intended
all to be over.
In truth, he did not leave the lady very long in doubt upon that point;
for, finding her at Bar-le-Duc, when, on his way home from Paris, he
passed through that town, he flatly declined to see her. She was staying
with her daughter, whom in Paris Charles had got married to the Prince de
Lillebonne, the governor of the Barrois. He was quite willing that Beatrix
should be treated _en duchesse_, but at this time of day it surely was not
to be expected that he would once more embroil himself with the Pope by
breaking his oath! Just only for a few minutes did he at length consent to
meet her, at the urgent supplication of both his children--outside Bar, in
a little village; and then he was chillingly cold.
Otherwise, he had still fire enough left in him, when occasion
required--as he showed not long after, when at Paris, while engaged on
that hare-brained errand of concluding the "Treaty of Montmartre," he
became madly enamoured of Marianne Pajot, the daughter of his
brother-in-law's (the Duke of Orleans') apothecary. The marriage very
nearly became a fact. Everything was ready, in spite of protests from all
sides. The priest was waiting, the wedding-guests were in attendance,
actually eating the wedding supper, and drinking the young couple's
health--for precisely at midnight the ceremony was to be performed--when
Du Tellier marched into the room with a guard, and at Louis XIV.'s order
carried off Marianne to the convent of Ville l'Eveque. "You would have
had to take a syringe for your armorial device if you had married her,"
said Louis XIV. mockingly. "Yes," replied Charles, alluding to the treaty
just concluded, "with the royal _fleur-de-lys_ at the nozzle."
This was by no means Charles's last amour. Indeed, after various wildish
escapades nearly leading to matrimony he, four years later, when arrived
at the ripe age of sixty, actually took to wife a girl of thirteen, and
settled down a tolerably staid and respectable husband at last. But this
adventure with Marianne Pajot warned Beatrix, whose health was beginning
seriously to fail, that if she wanted to become Charles's wife at all, she
must be quick about it. Accordingly, when the two once more found
themselves in close proximity, unwilling neighbours at Bar-le-Duc--she up
in the castle, he in the lower town, to be out of her way--she took the
liberty of reminding him of his repeated promises to obtain a dispensation
from the Pope and get the marriage renewed. Charles was not at all
prepared for such an appeal, which accordingly made him not a little
cross. "Not yet," he pleaded, "il n'est pas encore temps de songer a notre
mariage"--not when he was fifty-six and she nearly forty-six! Would he not
consent at any rate to see her? God forbid; how could he, a devout
"Catholic," presume to infringe the Pope's explicit command? Indeed, these
repeated appearances of Beatrix, when she was not wanted, were becoming
wearisome to him. She must keep out of the way. Let her go back to
Besancon! He was duke and could command. But Beatrix, loth to fly from
that which alone could cure her heartache, pleaded, like Lot, for a
shorter journey. Might she not stay at Remiremont? Charles acquiesced. In
small Lorrain towns she spent the next year or so. Life was getting hard
for her, in view of progressively failing health--harder under the painful
sense of injustice and unfaithfulness. She gave herself up to religious
devotions. At Mattaincourt it was, while she was burning candles and
offering prayers to the Lorrain saint, P. Fourier, that the startling news
reached her of a fresh amour into which Charles had thrown himself with
all the ardour of a young man of twenty, an amour with the beautiful
Isabelle de Ludres ("Matame te Lutre," as Madame de Sevigne called her,
ridiculing the rough Lorrain accent), a most delicately-formed,
symmetrically-shaped _brunette_, a very tit-bit of womanhood, destined to
shine in after-time for a brief period in the changing firmament of _Le
Roi Soleil_ at Versailles, as an ephemeral favourite star. She was a
canoness of Poussay--_Lavandieres_ they were called in the popular
slang--looking probably all the prettier in her semi-religious garb,
because its wear involved no religious obligations of any kind. The abbess
had obligingly allowed Charles free access to the "nun," and there they
were, acknowledged _fiance_ and _fiancee_, talking of the time when the
marriage was to take place. To be near Isabella, Charles had moved his
court to Mirecourt, which is just about halfway between Poussay and
Mattaincourt, utterly unconscious probably of the proximity of Beatrix.
There were daily _fetes_, dances, tourneys, the whole bit of country
seemed transformed into a "Garden of Love." It was like a ghost rising
from the earth when Beatrix--pale, worn, haggard, but still erect and
dignified in bearing--appeared on the scene, her marriage contract in her
hand, to bid the young canoness beware, and remind her lover of his
promises and broken vows. What right had she to be there? asked Charles in
a pet. Had he not bidden her go back to Besancon? Let her be off at once
and not trouble him any more! Alas! in her state of health, travelling to
Besancon was out of the question. She got as far as Mattaincourt, sending
fresh precatory letters to faithless Charles. He would give them no heed.
But she left him no peace. By a severe effort she got to Besancon at last.
"She may disinherit your children," urged Charles's lawyers. "She may stop
your marriage," chimed in the Churchmen. "Remember, she has but at longest
a few weeks to live," added the doctors. "Really?" asked Charles with
visible relief. "She cannot possibly live longer." Not a moment did he
cease from his amatory merry-making preparatory to a contemplated new
marriage. But, as there was time for celebrating a preliminary one in the
interval, for his children's sake he consented to despatch a messenger to
the Pope to demand a dispensation, which arrived just in time for the
marriage with Beatrix to be solemnised while there was still breath in
her. "Me voila, bien honore," whispered the dying woman, "a la fin de mes
jours!" Scarcely had the priest left her bedside, when he was called in
once more to celebrate another sacrament. "Ah! quelle union," gasped
Beatrix, "du sacrement de mariage et de l'extreme onction!"
Thus ended, on June 5, 1663, the changeful life of that "excellents peace
as Nature ever made," as wrote Richard Flecknoe in contemplation of her
portrait at Windsor, full of "colour" and "freshness," and with eyes whose
very lids were "than other eyes more admirably fair," the lady who on the
canvas in our royal castle looks so happy and serene, but who in real life
tasted far more of the bitterness than of the sweet of man's fleeting
love--not, certainly, without much fault on her own part, yet, in respect
of her relations with Charles, surely more sinned against than sinning.
The news of her death found the feasting at Mirecourt at its merriest.
Trumpets were sounding, flags were flying, drums were beating, all the
jingle of the masquerade of court life was at its noisiest. The widower
scarcely stopped in his amusements to order a brief formal mourning, which
altered but the hue, not the spirit of the feast. For all that his labour
was thrown away. Beatrix had, in self-defence, despatched a protest
against the marriage to the Vicar-general of Toul, who, as a French
bishop, stood in no sort of dependence upon the Duke of Lorraine--rather
delighted in crossing him. Besides, Isabelle's mother, shocked at what she
saw and heard, peremptorily forbade the marriage, and packed her daughter
off in haste to the solitude of Richardmenil.
When Beatrix's will was opened, it was found that she had not forgotten
"her very dear husband." "As a token of respect and submission," she had
"taken the liberty" of bequeathing to him--that very diamond ring with
which he had wedded her, then the worship of all, twenty-six years before,
when his own affection was still fresh and young, and his whole being
seemed bound up in the life and possession of the fervently-loved young
widow. At her death, certainly, she had this to boast of, that of all the
beauties who had riveted Charles's affection, none had for so long a time
and with equal power held sway over his fickle heart. If she was
neglected, it is some satisfaction to think that her children were
honoured and cherished. On the Prince de Vaudemont Charles heaped what
benefits he had to bestow. But the stain of his birth clung to him to his
death. At one time Charles had hoped to seat him on the proud throne of
the Carlovingians. When in 1723 he died, the Lorrain Courts found that no
princely honours could be paid to his body. Quietly, without pomp and
show, were his bones laid beside the bones of his father, in the
Chartreuse of Bosserville, sad memorial that it remains of the duke's
faithlessness to his first wife. Neither of Charles nor of Beatrix has any
offspring survived. Of Charles even later Dukes of Lorraine have scarcely
ever spoken without a protest. Beatrix lies buried at Besancon, and, after
all, considering what evil she unwittingly brought upon her adopted
country, the portrait which alone remains to recall what she was finds,
perhaps, a more fitting place on the walls of Royal Windsor than could
have been given to it in the historic hall of the more than half-destroyed
palace of Nancy, or among the Lorrain portraits preserved, as a memorial
of Lorrain-Hapsburg rule, in the museum of Florence.
V.--THE REMNANT OF A GREAT RACE.[8]
Modern History is, in its rapid march onward, making sad havoc of old
races. New nations are rising up; but only like new banks and headlands on
our coast, by the accumulation of drifted shingle, which the very same
tide is washing away from wasting older rocks. A generation or two hence,
in the making of a new German people, the last remnant will have finally
disappeared of an interesting race, which historians and archaeologists
alike, to whom it is known, will be loth to miss.