RICHELIEU, THE ROUÉ
In the drama of the French Court many a fine-feathered villain "struts
his brief hour" on the stage, dazzling eyes by his splendour, and
shocking a world none too easily shocked in those days of easy morals by
his profligacy; but it would be difficult among all these gilded rakes
to find a match for the Duc de Richelieu, who carried his villainies
through little less than a century of life.
Born in 1696, when Louis XIV. had still nearly twenty years of his long
reign before him, Louis François Armand Duplessis, Duc de Richelieu,
survived to hear the rumblings which heralded the French Revolution
ninety-two years later; and for three-quarters of a century to be known
as the most accomplished and heartless roué in all France. Bearer of a
great name, and inheritor of the splendours and riches of his
great-uncle, the Cardinal, who was Louis XII.'s right-hand man, and, in
his day, the most powerful subject in Europe, the Duc was born with the
football of fortune at his feet; and probably no man who has ever lived
so shamefully prostituted such magnificent opportunities and gifts.
As a boy, still in his teens, he had begun to play the rôle of Don Juan
at the Court of the child-King, Louis XV. The most beautiful women at
the Court, we are told, went crazy over the handsome boy, who bore the
most splendid name in France; and thus early his head was turned by
flatteries and attentions which followed him almost to the grave.
The young Duchesse de Bourgogne, the King's mother, made love to him, to
the scandal of the Court; and from Princesses of the Blood Royal to the
humblest serving-maid, there was scarcely a woman at Court who would not
have given her eyes for a smile from the Duc de Fronsac, as he was then
known.
How he revelled in his conquests he makes abundantly clear in the
Memoirs he left behind him--surely the most scandalous ever written--in
which he recounts his love affairs, in long sequence, with a
cold-blooded heartlessness which shocks the reader to-day, so long after
lover and victims have been dust. He revels in describing the artifices
by which he got the most unassailable of women into his power--such as
the young and beautiful Madame Michelin, whose religious scruples proved
such a frail barrier against the assaults of the young Lothario. He
chuckles with a diabolical pride as he tells us how he played off one
mistress against another; how he made one liaison pave the way to its
successor; and how he abandoned each in turn when it had served its
purpose, and betrayed, one after another, the women who had trusted to
his nebulous sense of honour.
A profligate so tempted as the Duc de Richelieu was from his earliest
years, one can understand, however much we may condemn; but for the man
who conducted his love affairs with such heartlessness and dishonour no
language has words of execration and contempt to describe him.
From his earliest youth there was no "game" too high for our Don Juan to
fly at. Long before he had reached manhood he counted his lady-loves by
the score; and among them were at least three Royal Princesses,
Mademoiselle de Charolais, and two of the Regent's own daughters, the
Duchesse de Berry and Mademoiselle de Valois, later Duchess of Modena,
who, in their jealousy, were ready to "tear each other's eyes out" for
love of the Duc. Quarrels between the rival ladies were of everyday
occurrence; and even duels were by no means unknown.
When, for instance, the Duc wearied of the lovely Madame de Polignac,
this lady was so inflamed by hatred of her successor in his affections,
the Marquise de Nesle, that she challenged her to a duel to the death in
the Bois de Boulogne. When Madame de Polignac, after a fierce exchange
of shots, saw her rival stretched at her feet, she turned furiously on
the wounded woman. "Go!" she shrieked. "I will teach you to walk in the
footsteps of a woman like me! If I had the traitor here, I would blow
his brains out!" Whereupon, Madame de Nesle, fainting as she was from
loss of blood, retorted that her lover was worthy that even more noble
blood than hers should be shed for him. "He is," she said to the few
onlookers who had hurried to the scene on hearing the shots, "the most
amiable _seigneur_ of the Court. I am ready to shed for him the last
drop of blood in my veins. All these ladies try to catch him, but I hope
that the proofs I have given of my devotion will win him for myself
without sharing with anyone. Why should I hide his name? He is the Duc
de Richelieu--yes, the Duc de Richelieu, the eldest son of Venus and
Mars!"
Such was the devotion which this heartless profligate won from some of
the most beautiful and highly placed ladies of France. What was the
secret of the spell he cast over them it is difficult to say. It is true
that he was a handsome man, as his portraits show, but there were men
quite as handsome at the French Court; he was courtly and accomplished,
but he had many rivals as clever and as skilled in courtly arts as
himself. His power must, one thinks, have lain in that strange magnetism
which women seem so powerless to resist in men, and which outweighs all
graces of mind and physical perfections.
The Duc's career, however, was not one unbroken dallying with love.
Thrice, at least, he was sent to cool his ardour within the walls of the
Bastille--on one occasion as the result of a duel with the Comte de
Gacé. His lady-loves were desolate at the cruel fate which had overtaken
their idol. They fell on their knees at the Regent's feet, and, with
tears streaming down their pretty cheeks, pleaded for his freedom. Two
of the Royal Princesses, both disguised as Sisters of Charity, visited
the prisoner daily in his dungeon, carrying with them delicacies to
tempt his appetite, and consolation to cheer his captivity.
In vain did Duc and Comte both declare that they had never fought a
duel; and when, in the absence of proof, the Regent insisted that their
bodies should be examined for the convicting wounds, the impish
Richelieu came triumphantly through the ordeal as the result of having
his wounds covered with pink taffeta and skilfully painted!
It was a more serious matter that sent him again to the Bastille in
1718. False to his country as to the victims of his fascinations, he had
been plotting with Spain, France's bitterest enemy, for the seizure of
the Regent and the carrying him off across the Pyrenees; and certain
incriminating letters sent to him by Cardinal Alberoni had been
intercepted, and were in the Regent's hands. The Regent's daughter,
Mademoiselle de Valois, warned her lover of his danger, but too late.
Before he could escape, he was arrested, and with an escort of archers
was safely lodged in the Bastille.
Our Lothario was now indeed in a parlous plight. Lodged in the deepest
and most loathsome dungeon of the Bastille--a dungeon so damp that
within a few hours his clothes were saturated--without even a chair to
sit on or a bed to lie on, with legions of hungry rats for company, he
was now face to face with almost certain death. The Regent, whose love
affairs he had thwarted a score of times, and who thus had no reason to
love the profligate Duc, vowed that his head should pay the price of his
treason.
Once more the Court ladies were reduced to hysterics and despair, and
forgot their jealousies in a common appeal to the Regent for clemency.
Mademoiselle de Valois was driven to distraction; and when tears and
pleadings failed to soften her father's heart, she declared in the
hearing of the Court that she would commit suicide unless her lover was
restored to liberty. In company with her rival, Mademoiselle de
Charolais, she visited the dungeon in the dark night hours, taking flint
and steel, candles and bonbons, to weep with the captive.
She squandered two hundred thousand livres in attempts to bribe his
guards, but all to no purpose: and it was not until after six months of
durance that the Regent at last yielded--moved partly by his daughter's
tears and threats and partly by the pleadings of the Cardinal-Archbishop
of Paris--and the prisoner was released, on condition that the Cardinal
and the Duchesse de Richelieu would be responsible for his custody and
good behaviour.
A few days later we find the irresponsible Richelieu climbing over the
garden-walls of his new "prison" at Conflans, racing through the
darkness to Paris behind swift horses, and making love to the Regent's
own mistresses and his daughter!
But such facilities for dalliance with the Regent's daughter were soon
to be brought to an end. Mademoiselle de Valois, in order to ensure her
lover's freedom, had at last consented to accept the hand of the Duke of
Modena, an alliance which she had long fought against; and before the
Duc had been a free man again many weeks she paid this part of his
ransom by going into exile, and to an odious wedded life, in a far
corner of Italy--much, it may be imagined, to the Regent's relief, for
his daughters and their love affairs were ever a thorn in his side.
It was not long, however, before the new Duchess of Modena began to sigh
for her distant lover, and to bombard him with letters begging him to
come to her. "I cannot live without your love," she wrote. "Come to
me--only, come in disguise, so that no one can recognise you."
This was indeed an adventure after the Lothario Duc's heart--an
adventure with love as its reward and danger as its spur. And thus it
was that, a few weeks after the Duchess had sent her invitation, two
travel-stained pedlars, with packs on their backs, entered the city of
Modena to find customers for their books and phamphlets. At the small
hostelry whose hospitality they sought the hawkers gave their names as
Gasparini and Romano, names which masked the identities of the
knight-errant Duc and his friend, La Fosse, respectively.
The following morning behold the itinerant hawkers in the palace
grounds, their wares spread out to tempt the Court ladies on their way
to Mass, when the Duchess herself passed their way and deigned to stop
to converse graciously with the strangers. To her inquiries they
answered that they came from Piedmont; and their curious jargon of
French and Italian lent support to the story. After inspecting their
wares she asked for a certain book. "Alas! Madame," Gasparini answered,
"I have not a copy here, but I have one at my inn." And bidding him
bring the volume to her at the palace, the great lady resumed her devout
journey to Mass.
A few hours later Gasparini presented himself at the palace with the
required volume, and was ushered into the august presence of the
Duchess. A moment later, on the closing of the door, the Royal lady was
in the "hawker's" arms, her own flung around his neck, as with tears of
joy she welcomed the lover who had come to her in such strange guise and
at such risk.
A few stolen moments of happiness was all the lovers dared now to allow
themselves. The Duke of Modena was in the palace, and the situation was
full of danger. But on the morrow he was going away on a hunting
expedition, and then--well, then they might meet without fear.
On the following day, the coast now clear, behold our "hawker" once more
at the palace door, with a bundle of books under his arm for the
inspection of Her Highness, and being ushered into the Duchess's
reading-room, full of souvenirs of the happy days they had spent
together in distant Paris and Versailles. Among them, most prized of
all, was a lock of his own hair, enshrined on a small altar, and
surmounted by a crown of interlocked hearts. This lock, the Duchess told
him, she had kissed and wept over every day since they had parted.
Each day now brought its hours of blissful meeting, so seemingly short
that the Princess would throw her arms around her "hawker's" neck and
implore him to stay a little longer. One day, however, he tarried too
long; the Duke returned unexpectedly from his hunting, and before the
lovers could part, he had entered the room--just in time to see the
pedlar bowing humbly in farewell to his Duchess, and to hear him assure
her that he would call again with the further books she wished to see.
Certainly it was a strange spectacle to greet the eyes of a home-coming
Duke--that of his lady closeted with a shabby pedlar of books; but at
least there was nothing suspicious in it, and, getting into conversation
with the "hawker," the Duke found him quite an entertaining fellow, full
of news of what was going on in the world outside his small duchy.
In his curious jargon of French and Italian, Gasparini had much to tell
His Highness apart from book-talk. He entertained him with the latest
scandals of the French Court; with gossip about well-known personages,
from the Regent to Dubois. "And what about that rascal, the Duc de
Richelieu?" asked the great man. "What tricks has he been up to lately?"
"Oh," answered Gasparini, with a wink at the Duchess, who was crimson
with suppressed laughter, "he is one of my best customers. Ah, Monsieur
le Duc, he is a gay dog. I hear that all the women at the Court are
madly in love with him; that the Princesses adore him, and that he is
driving all the husbands to distraction."
"Is it as bad as that?" asked the Duke, with a laugh. "He is a more
dangerous fellow even than I thought. And what is his latest game?"
"Oh," answered the hawker, "I am told that he has made a wager that he
will come to Modena, in spite of you; and I shouldn't be at all
surprised if he does!"
"As for that," said the Duke, with a chuckle, "I am not afraid. I defy
him to do his worst; and I am willing to wager that I shall be a match
for him. However," he added, "you're an entertaining fellow; so come and
see me again whenever you please."
And thus, by the wish of the Duchess's husband himself, the ducal
"hawker" became a daily visitor at the palace, entertaining His Highness
with his chatter, and, when his back was turned, making love to his
wife, and joining her in shrieks of laughter at his easy gullibility.
Thus many happy weeks passed, Gasparini, the pedlar, selling few
volumes, but reaping a rich harvest of stolen pleasure, and revelling in
an adventure which added such a new zest to a life sated with more
humdrum love-making. But even the Duchess's charms began to pall; the
ladies he had left so disconsolate in Paris were inundating him with
letters, begging him to return to them--letters, all forwarded to him
from his château at Richelieu, where he was supposed to be in retreat.
The lure was too strong for him; and, taking leave of the Duchess in
floods of tears, he returned to his beloved Paris to fresh conquests.
And thus it was with the gay Duc until the century that followed that of
his birth was drawing to its close; until its sun was beginning to set
in the blood of that Revolution, which, if he had lived but one year
longer, would surely have claimed him as one of its first victims.
Three wives he led to the altar--the last when he had passed into the
eighties--but no marital duty was allowed to interfere with the amours
which filled his life; and to the last no pity ever gave a pang to the
"conscience" which allowed him to pick and fling away his flowers at
will, and to trample, one after another, on the hearts that yielded to
his love and trusted to his honour.