This is taken from Landor's _Imaginary Conversations_, and is one
of the best examples of his light, airy, satiric vein.
_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, it is the King's desire that I compliment you
on the elevation you have attained.
_Fontanges_, O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean. His Majesty
is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me was,
"Angélique! do not forget to compliment Monseigneur the Bishop on the
dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the Dauphiness. I
desired the appointment for him only that he might be of rank
sufficient to confess you, now you are Duchess. Let him be your
confessor, my little girl."
_Bossuet_. I dare not presume to ask you, mademoiselle, what was your
gracious reply to the condescension of our royal master.
_Fontanges_. Oh, yes! you may. I told him I was almost sure I should be
ashamed of confessing such naughty things to a person of high rank, who
writes like an angel.
_Bossuet_. The observation was inspired, mademoiselle, by your goodness
and modesty.
_Fontanges_. You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I will confess to
you, directly, if you like.
_Bossuet_. Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of mind, young
lady?
_Fontanges_. What is that?
_Bossuet_. Do you hate sin?
_Fontanges_. Very much.
_Bossuet_. Are you resolved to leave it off?
_Fontanges_. I have left it off entirely since the King began to love
me. I have never said a spiteful word of anybody since.
_Bossuet_. In your opinion, mademoiselle, are there no other sins than
malice?
_Fontanges_. I never stole anything; I never committed adultery; I
never coveted my neighbour's wife; I never killed any person, though
several have told me they should die for me.
_Bossuet_. Vain, idle talk! Did you listen to it?
_Fontanges_. Indeed I did, with both ears; it seemed so funny.
_Bossuet_. You have something to answer for, then?
_Fontanges_. No, indeed, I have not, monseigneur. I have asked many
times after them, and found they were all alive, which mortified me.
_Bossuet_. So, then! you would really have them die for you?
_Fontanges_. Oh, no, no! but I wanted to see whether they were in
earnest, or told me fibs; for, if they told me fibs, I would never
trust them again.
_Bossuet_. Do you hate the world, mademoiselle?
_Fontanges_. A good deal of it: all Picardy, for example, and all
Sologne; nothing is uglier--and, oh my life! what frightful men and
women!
_Bossuet_. I would say, in plain language, do you hate the flesh and
the devil?
_Fontanges_. Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold my hand the
while, I will tell him so.--I hate you, beast! There now. As for flesh,
I never could bear a fat man. Such people can neither dance nor hunt,
nor do anything that I know of.
_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle Marie-Angélique de Scoraille de Rousille,
Duchess de Fontanges! do you hate titles and dignities and yourself?
_Fontanges_. Myself! does anyone hate me? Why should I be the first?
Hatred is the worst thing in the world: it makes one so very ugly.
_Bossuet_. To love God, we must hate ourselves. We must detest our
bodies, if we would save our souls.
_Fontanges_. That is hard: how can I do it? I see nothing so detestable
in mine. Do you? To love is easier. I love God whenever I think of him,
he has been so very good to me; but I cannot hate myself, if I would.
As God hath not hated me, why should I? Beside, it was he who made the
King to love me; for I heard you say in a sermon that the hearts of
kings are in his rule and governance. As for titles and dignities, I do
not care much about them while His Majesty loves me, and calls me his
Angélique. They make people more civil about us; and therefore it must
be a simpleton who hates or disregards them, and a hypocrite who
pretends it. I am glad to be a duchess. Manon and Lizette have never
tied my garter so as to hurt me since, nor has the mischievous old La
Grange said anything cross or bold; on the contrary, she told me what a
fine colour and what a plumpness it gave me. Would not you rather be a
duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if the King gave you your choice?
_Bossuet_. Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the levity of
your question.
_Fontanges_. I am in earnest, as you see.
_Bossuet_. Flattery will come before you in other and more dangerous
forms: you will be commended for excellences which do not belong to
you; and this you will find as injurious to your repose as to your
virtue. An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest
reproof. If you reject it, you are unhappy; if you accept it, you are
undone. The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to
pervert your intellect.
_Fontanges_. There you are mistaken twice over. It is not my person
that pleases him so greatly: it is my spirit, my wit, my talents, my
genius, and that very thing which you have mentioned--what was it? my
intellect. He never complimented me the least upon my beauty. Others
have said that I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a
blossom of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in
your ear--do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans. But His Majesty
never said more on the occasion than that I was _imparagonable_! (what
is that?) and that he adored me; holding my hand and sitting quite
still, when he might have romped with me and kissed me.
_Bossuet_. I would aspire to the glory of converting you.
_Fontanges_. You may do anything with me but convert me: you must not
do that; I am a Catholic born. M. de Turenne and Mademoiselle de Duras
were heretics: you did right there. The King told the chancellor that
he prepared them, that the business was arranged for you, and that you
had nothing to do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you
did gallantly--did not you? And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was very
awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself, and was once
remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the points of two
fingers at a time, when everyone is taught to use only the second,
whether it has a ring upon it or not. I am sorry she did so; for people
might think her insincere in her conversion, and pretend that she kept
a finger for each religion.
_Bossuet_. It would be as uncharitable to doubt the conviction of
Mademoiselle de Duras as that of M. le Maréchali.
_Fontanges_. I have heard some fine verses, I can assure you,
monseigneur, in which you are called the conqueror of Turenne. I should
like to have been his conqueror myself, he was so great a man. I
understand that you have lately done a much more difficult thing.
_Bossuet_. To what do you refer, mademoiselle?
_Fontanges_. That you have overcome quietism. Now, in the name of
wonder, how could you manage that?
_Bossuet_. By the grace of God.
_Fontanges_. Yes, indeed; but never until now did God give any preacher
so much of his grace as to subdue this pest.
_Bossuet_. It has appeared among us but lately.
_Fontanges_. Oh, dear me! I have always been subject to it dreadfully,
from a child.
_Bossuet_. Really! I never heard so.
_Fontanges_. I checked myself as well as I could, although they
constantly told me I looked well in it.
_Bossuet_. In what, mademoiselle?
_Fontanges_. In quietism; that is, when I fell asleep at sermon-time. I
am ashamed that such a learned and pious man as M. de Fénélon should
incline to it, as they say he does.
_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, you quite mistake the matter.
_Fontanges_. Is not then M. de Fénélon thought a very pious and learned
person?
_Bossuet_. And justly.
_Fontanges_. I have read a great way in a romance he has begun, about a
knight-errant in search of a father. The King says there are many such
about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before. The
Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written out in
a charming hand, as much as the copybook would hold; and I got through,
I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the grotto, I
never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his own
story, and left them at once: in a hurry (I suppose) to set out upon
his mission to Saintonge in the _pays de d'Aunis_, where the King has
promised him a famous _heretic-hunt_. He is, I do assure you, a
wonderful creature: he understands so much Latin and Greek, and knows
all the tricks of the sorceresses. Yet you keep him under.
_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, if you really have anything to confess, and if
you desire that I should have the honour of absolving you, it would be
better to proceed in it, than to oppress me with unmerited eulogies on
my humble labours.
_Fontanges_. You must first direct me, monseigneur: I have nothing
particular. The King assures me there is no harm whatever in his love
toward me.
_Bossuet_. That depends on your thoughts at the moment. If you abstract
the mind from the body, and turn your heart toward heaven--
_Fontanges_. O monseigneur, I always did so--every time but once--you
quite make me blush. Let us converse about something else, or I shall
grow too serious, just as you made me the other day at the funeral
sermon. And now let me tell you, my lord, you compose such pretty
funeral sermons, I hope I shall have the pleasure of hearing you preach
mine.
_Bossuet_. Rather let us hope, mademoiselle, that the hour is yet far
distant when so melancholy a service will be performed for you. May he
who is unborn be the sad announcer of your departure hence![231] May he
indicate to those around him many virtues not perhaps yet full-blown in
you, and point triumphantly to many faults and foibles checked by you
in their early growth, and lying dead on the open road you shall have
left behind you! To me the painful duty will, I trust, be spared: I am
advanced in age; you are a child.
_Fontanges_. Oh, no! I am seventeen.
_Bossuet_. I should have supposed you younger by two years at least.
But do you collect nothing from your own reflection, which raises so
many in my breast? You think it possible that I, aged as I am, may
preach a sermon on your funeral. We say that our days are few; and
saying it, we say too much. Marie Angélique, we have but one: the past
are not ours, and who can promise us the future? This in which we live
is ours only while we live in it; the next moment may strike it off
from us; the next sentence I would utter may be broken and fall between
us.[232] The beauty that has made a thousand hearts to beat at one
instant, at the succeeding has been without pulse and colour, without
admirer, friend, companion, follower. She by whose eyes the march of
victory shall have been directed, whose name shall have animated armies
at the extremities of the earth, drops into one of its crevices and
mingles with its dust. Duchess de Fontanges! think on this! Lady! so
live as to think on it undisturbed!
_Fontanges_. O God! I am quite alarmed. Do not talk thus gravely. It is
in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice. I am frightened even
at the rattle of the beads about my neck: take them off, and let us
talk on other things. What was it that dropped on the floor as you
were speaking? It seemed to shake the room, though it sounded like a
pin or button.
_Bossuet_. Leave it there!
_Fontanges_. Your ring fell from your hand, my Lord Bishop! How quick
you are! Could not you have trusted me to pick it up?
_Bossuet_. Madame is too condescending: had this happened, I should
have been overwhelmed with confusion. My hand is shrivelled: the ring
has ceased to fit it. A mere accident may draw us into perdition; a
mere accident may bestow on us the means of grace. A pebble has moved
you more than my words.
_Fontanges_. It pleases me vastly: I admire rubies. I will ask the King
for one exactly like it. This is the time he usually comes from the
chase. I am sorry you cannot be present to hear how prettily I shall
ask him: but that is impossible, you know; for I shall do it just when
I am certain he would give me anything. He said so himself; he said but
yesterday--
'Such a sweet creature is worth a world':
and no actor on the stage was more like a king than His Majesty was
when he spoke it, if he had but kept his wig and robe on. And yet you
know he is rather stiff and wrinkled for so great a monarch; and his
eyes, I am afraid, are beginning to fail him, he looks so close at
things.
_Bossuet_. Mademoiselle, such is the duty of a prince who desires to
conciliate our regard and love.
_Fontanges_. Well, I think so too, though I did not like it in him at
first. I am sure he will order the ring for me, and I will confess to
you with it upon my finger. But first I must be cautious and particular
to know of him how much it is his royal will that I should say.
[Footnote 231: Bossuet was in his fifty-fourth year; Mademoiselle de
Fontanges died in child-bed the year following; he survived her
twenty-three years.]
[Footnote 232: Though Bossuet was capable of uttering and even of
feeling such a sentiment, his conduct towards Fénélon, the fairest
apparition that Christianity ever presented, was ungenerous and unjust.
While the diocese of Cambray was ravaged by Louis, it was spared by
Marlborough, who said to the Archbishop that, if he was sorry he had
not taken Cambray, it was chiefly because he lost for a time the
pleasure of visiting so great a man. Peterborough, the next of our
generals in glory, paid his respects to him some years afterward.]