A “Delicious Person”—Voiture’s Jealousy—A Tardy
Recognition—Coward Conscience—A Protestant Pope—The Hôtel de
Rambouillet—St Evrémond—The Duel—Nurse Madeleine—Cloistral
Seclusion and Jacques Callot—“Merry Companions Every One”—and One
in Particular.
Six years had passed since as girl and boy Ninon and Marsillac had
parted at Loches. At sixteen years old he had entered the army, and
was now Monsieur le Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld, returned to Paris
invalided by a serious wound received in the Valtellina warfare.
Handsome, with somewhat pensive, intellectual features, chivalrous
and amiable, he was “a very parfite gentle knight,” devoted to the
service of the queen, which sorely interfered with his military
promotion: devotion to Anne of Austria was ever to meet the hatred of
the cardinal, and to live therefore in peril of life.
The daring young hoyden of Loches was now a graceful, greatly admired
woman of the world, welcomed and courted in the ranks of the society
to which her birth entitled her.
It was quite possible that the change in her appearance was
sufficiently great to warrant de la Rochefoucauld’s failure to
recognise her in the salon of Madame de Rambouillet when he passed
her, seated beside her chaperon, the Duchesse de la Ferté—not,
however, without marking her beauty; and he inquired of the man
with whom he was walking who the “delicious person” was. The
gentleman did not know. It was the first time, he believed, that
the lady had been seen in the brilliant company. The impressionable
young prince lost little time in securing himself an introduction,
further economising it by expressing his sentiments of admiration so
ardently, that they touched on a passionate and tender declaration.
Ninon accepted this with the equanimity distinguishing her; she
was already accustomed to a pronounced homage very thinly veiled.
It was to her as the sunshine is to the birds of the air, almost
indispensable; but she found the avowals of his sentiments slightly
disturbing in the reflection that Marsillac had altogether forgotten
his Ninon. That, in fact, he had done long since. The fidelity of de
la Rochefoucauld in those days, was scarcely to be reckoned on even
by hours. Already he was in the toils of Ninon’s beautiful rival,
Marion Delorme, a woman Ninon herself describes as “adorably lovely.”
Beauty apart, the very antithesis of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, weaker
of will, more pliably moulded, warm-hearted, impulsive, romantically
natured, apt to be drawn into scrapes and mistakes which Ninon was
astute enough rarely to encounter. The two women lived within a
stone’s throw of each other, and it needed hardly the gossip of the
place for Ninon to observe that Marsillac was but one more of the
vast company of arch-deceivers. It was Voiture, the poet and renowned
reformer of the French tongue, who hinted the fact to Ninon with,
no doubt, all his wonted grace of expression, further inspired by
jealousy of the handsome young captain, that at the very moment he
was speaking, de la Rochefoucauld was spending the afternoon in
Marion’s company, _en tête-à-tête_.
Thereupon, linking her arm in Voiture’s, Ninon begged him to conduct
her to Number 6, rue des Tournelles. The poet, vastly enjoying the
excitement his words had evoked, readily complied, and arrived at
Marion’s apartments where the Capitaine de la Rochefoucauld was duly
discovered. Then broke the storm, ending in Marsillac’s amazement
when Ninon demanded how it was that he had not discovered in her
his old friend Ninon de L’Enclos. Then, in the joy and delight of
recognition, Marsillac, forgetting the very presence of her rival,
sprang to her side, and offering her his arm, sallied forth back to
Ninon’s abode, spending the rest of the day in recalling old times
at Loches, and in transports of happiness. Only late into the night,
long after Marsillac had left her presence and she was lost in
dreamful sleep, it brought the faces of her mother and of St Vincent
de Paul vividly before her, gazing with sad reproachful eyes; and
with her facile pen she recorded the memory of that day, fraught with
its conflict of spirit and desire.
“O sweet emotions of love! blessed fusion of souls! ineffable joys
that descend upon us from Heaven! Why is it that you are united to
the troubles of the senses, and that at the bottom of the cup of
such delight remorse is found?”
Whether through the silence of the small hours any echoes touched
her vivid imagination of the Man in Black’s mocking laughter, no
record tells; but in any case, with the fading of the visions, the
disturbing reflections were quickly lost in the joy of Marsillac’s
society, as also in that of St Evrémond—the very soul of gaiety and
wit and every delightful characteristic.
“How happy could I be with either,
Were t’other dear charmer away,”
says Captain MacHeath, and there were days together that Marsillac
did absent himself. The grand passion of his life was not with either
of the two women, or with any of the fair dames then immediately
around. They were merely the toys of his gallant and amiable nature,
and at that time he was deeply absorbed in the duties of his
profession, and his ardent devotion to the queen’s cause. It was,
indeed, one most difficult and dangerous, ever facing, as it did, the
opposition of Richelieu, who saw in every friend and partisan of Anne
of Austria Spanish aggression and a foe to France.
Some cause there surely was. Political and religious strife raged
fast and hotly. From the outset—that is, at least, as far back
as the time when the Calvinists banded together to resist the
Catholics—it was not a question alone of reform or of change in
religious conviction. It could not have remained at that: the whole
framework of government would have been shaken to its foundation
had the Reformed party ultimately triumphed; but the passing of
a century had wrought startling changes. There were many of the
Catholic nobility whose policy was as much to side with the Huguenot
party, as it had been the wisdom of the Protestant Henri IV. to adopt
the Catholic creed. Richelieu, in conquering Rochelle, showed the
vanquished Huguenots so much leniency, that public clamour nicknamed
him “the Cardinal of Rochelle,” and “the Protestant Pope,” and he
laughed, and said that there was more such scandal ahead; since he
intended to achieve a marriage between the king’s sister, Henrietta
Maria, and the non-Roman Catholic king, Charles I. of England.
To hedge his country from the encroachment of Spain was the life-long
aim and endeavour of Richelieu, and he was ruthless in the means.
The eastern and northern frontiers of France were constantly menaced
and invaded by Austria and Spain and their allies, and to and fro to
Paris came the great captains and soldiers engaged in the constant
warfare against the enemy—men of long lineage, brave, skilful in
arms, dauntless in action, and certainly no laggards in love when
opportunity afforded; and they returned loaded with honour, covered
with glory, and often seriously wounded, to be welcomed and made
much of in the salons of noble and titled women, like the Duchesse
de Rambouillet, and other _réunions_ scarcely less celebrated and
brilliant, where the fine art of wit, and the _culte_ of poetry and
belles-lettres, mingled with a vast amount of love-making, and at
least as much exquisite imitation of it, were assiduously conducted.
It was the hall-mark of good society, a virtue indispensable, and
to be assumed if it did not really exist, and too greatly valued
for other virtues to be set great store by. So that the line of
demarcation between women of unimpeachable repute, and those
following a wider primrose path grew to be so very thinly defined as
sometimes to be invisible and disregarded. Notably in the refined and
elegant salon of Ninon de L’Enclos were to be counted many ladies of
distinction and modes of life untouched by the faintest breath of
scandal, who loved her and sought her friendship, as there were men
who were quite content to worship from afar, and to hold themselves
her friends pure and simple to life’s end.
Who of her admirers was the first winner of the smiles of a more
tender intimacy, is not more than surmise, remaining recorded only
in invisible ink in a _lettre de cachet_ whose seal is intact. If
the friend of her early girlhood at Loches is indicated, it may be
intentionally misleading. Count Coligny was an acquaintance at whose
coming Ninon’s bright eyes acquired yet greater lustre, and de la
Rouchefoucauld’s reappearance had not yet taken place—“_ce cher
Marsillac_,” whose devotion, even while it lasted, was tinctured
with divided homage, and was to dissolve altogether, in the way of
love sentiments, in the sunshine of his deep undying attachment
to Madame de Longueville. There was, however, no rupture in this
connection; the burden of the old song was simply reversed, and if
first Marsillac came for love, it was in friendship that he and
Ninon parted, giving place to the adoration of St Evrémond—bonds
which were never broken, and whose warm sentiments the waters of the
English Channel, flowing between for forty years, could not efface.
The effect might have been even the contrary one, and absence made
the heart grow fonder, though the temperaments of Ninon and of St
Evrémond were undoubtedly generously free of any petty malignance and
small jealousies.
Monsieur de L’Enclos had survived his wife only by one year. He died
of a wound received in an encounter arising from a private quarrel.
Had he recovered, it would probably have been to lose his head by the
axe, paying the penalty of the law for some years past rigorously
enforced against duelling. The scene of such encounter being most
frequently the open space of the Place Royale, the locality of the
cardinal’s own house—as it was of Ninon and of Marion Delorme—so
that his stern eyes were constantly reminded of the murderous
conflicts. The law, having been enacted by Henri IV., had fallen
into abeyance, until the specially sanguinary duel between the Comte
de Bussy and the Comte de Bouteville, in 1622, when de Bouteville
mortally wounded de Bussy, and Richelieu inflicted the penalty of
decapitation on de Bouteville and on Rosmadec his second, as he
did on others who disobeyed; so that the evil was scotched almost
to stamping out. It was in this fashion that Richelieu made his
power felt among the nobility and wealthier classes, and let it be
understood that the law was the law for all.
Almost immediately following on the death of Monsieur de L’Enclos,
came that of Ninon’s old nurse, Madeleine—whose kind soul and
devoted attachment were in no wise ill-affected by the small nips
of _eau de vie_ she inclined to—and just about the same time died
Madame de Montaigu, her aunt at Loches; and thus within six months
she had lost the few of her nearest and dearest from childhood,
and she felt so saddened and desolate and heart-broken, that she
formed the resolution of giving up the world and being a nun after
all—yearning for the consolation which religion promises of reunion,
and a fulness of sympathy not to be found in ordinary and everyday
environments! Scarcely as yet with her foot on womanhood’s bank
of the river of life, the warm kindly nature of Ninon was chilled
and dulled by sorrow and regret; and one evening, at the Hôtel de
Rambouillet, in her ardent desire to find some peace and rest of
spirit, she entered into conversation with the Père d’Orléans, a
renowned Jesuit, on the subject of religious belief—but his best
eloquence failed in convincing her of its efficacy.
The right of private judgment, ever one of her strongest
characteristics, asserted itself, and she declared herself
unconvinced. “Then, mademoiselle,” said the ecclesiastic, “until you
find conviction, offer Heaven your incredulity.”
But while words failed, her heart still impelled her to the idea
of the cloistered life, and she went to seek it in Lorraine, at a
convent of Recollettes sisters near Nancy. There were many houses of
this Order in the duchy. The one sought entrance to by Ninon, was
under the patronage of St Francis, and she was received with effusion
by the Reverend Mother, a charming lady, herself still youthful. She
had not, however, been there many days, relegated to a small cell,
whose diminutive casement looked upon some immediately-facing houses,
before she became impressed with the idea that, great as the desire
might be to snatch in her a brand from the consuming of the wicked
world, it was greater still for the little fortune she was known to
possess; and with the passing of time, the gentle assuager of more
poignant grief, she was beginning to feel less attracted towards
the conventual mode of existence, and to wonder whether she really
had the vocation for it. Meantime, the old spirit of adventure was
strongly stirring her to defer the recital of a formidable list of
_Aves_ and penitential psalms, in favour of watching a window facing
her loophole of a lattice, through which she could see a man busily
engaged with burin and etching implements. While this in itself
was not uninteresting, the interest was increased tenfold, when
she contrived to discover that he was the already famous Jacques
Callot, the engraver; and very little time was lost before the two
had established means of communication by the aid of a long pole,
to which they tied their manuscript interchange of messages and
ideas—which culminated in Ninon’s descent by a ladder of ropes from
the lattice, and flight from the convent.
More sober chronicles relate of Jacques Callot, that through all
the curious vicissitudes and adventures of his earlier life, he
remained blameless and of uncorrupted morality. It appears certain
that his real inclination was ever for such paths, and the romantic
love-affair which ended in his union with the woman he adored, was
calculated to keep him in them; in which case the attributed version
of his _liaison_ with Ninon must be accepted with something over
and above its grain of salt, and allowed to lie by. That he was a
fearless, high-minded man, as well as a great artist, stands by his
honoured name in a golden record; for when the imbroglio occurred
between Louis XIII. and the Duke of Lorraine—in which, under the
all-conquering cardinal prime-minister, France was the victor—Callot
was commanded to commemorate the siege with his pencil—he refused.
Callot was a Lorrainer, and the duke was his patron and liege-lord,
and Callot refused to turn traitor, and prostitute his gift by
recording the defeat of the duke, preferring to run the very close
chance of death for high treason sooner than comply. If, as it is
asserted, Ninon obtained for him the pardon of Richelieu, by virtue
of some former favour or service she had done the cardinal, leaving
him as yet in her debt for it, all was well that so well ended;
and it adds one more to the list of Ninon’s generous acts, never
neglected where she had the power to perform them for those she loved.
Whether it is an undoubted fact that the fascination of Ninon—so
absolutely all-potent as she herself claims for it—did tempt Callot
temporarily even from his allegiance to the love of the woman he won
under such romantic circumstances, it is certain that she mercifully
decided to leave him in tranquillity with his wife in Lorraine,
returning to Paris in company with a little contingent of her old
friends and admirers who had been engaged in fighting for their king
along the north-eastern borderlands. Paris was so rich in convents,
that the question irresistibly suggests itself why she should have
travelled that hundred or so of miles to Nancy to take the veil.
Possibly, knowing that Coligny, Scarron, Gondi, de la Rochefoucauld,
St Evrémond, and other _bons camarades_ were all in that direction,
she was prompted to go thither to take final farewells of them before
she stepped over the threshold masculine foot must not desecrate;
but in this instance it was the propositions of man that triumphed
in the face of every spiritual consideration, and all idea of the
contemplative life was flung to the four winds in the delight of the
old companionships and renewal of the _joie de vivre_. The reunion
was celebrated in an impromptu feast, of reason and recherché dishes,
and flow of sparkling wine, and unrestrained merriment and sallies
of wit; for where Scarron and St Evrémond and de la Rochefoucauld
were, wit could but abound. Next day they all started for Paris,
transported thither by matchlessly swift-footed post-horses, Ninon
choosing for her travelling companion _en tête-à-tête_, Coligny;
and when the two arrived at rue des Tournelles, they did not part
company; but arranged to retire to the _rus in urbe_ of her Picpus
dwelling, away by Charenton, where they established _ménage_ in the
small but beautiful old house, once the dwelling of Henri Quatre
and the fair Gabrielle, with one maid-servant, and one man servitor
Ninon called Perrote, who had been the faithful valet of Monsieur
de L’Enclos. Here the two passed an idyllic life, where more
material enjoyments were diversified by intellectual conversation,
sometimes profane, but more often taking a turn so far sacred, as to
include the points of doctrine upon which Catholic and Protestant
differed. Coligny, as a descendant of the great murdered Huguenot
leader, was a Protestant; and while Richelieu treated the Huguenots
socially with indulgence, he would not tolerate them as a political
party, and to be of the Reformed, was utterly to lose chance of
advancement—and Ninon was ambitious for her lover, and hence the
religious discussions and her endeavours to inoculate him with clear
conceptions of Catholic teaching. Coligny, however, was apt to show
signs of boredom on these occasions, and to yawn so portentously,
that she had to desist, leaving him heretical still, when one morning
the Picpus _maisonette_ was invaded by messengers from Richelieu,
accompanied by halberdiers from the Bastille, who demanded the
delivering up of the young man’s sword, and bore him off a prisoner
to the horrible old prison, on the charge of neglect of military
duty. Once again Ninon’s intercessions with Richelieu procured
release and restoration; but Coligny was ungrateful and jealous of
the red-robed priest, and would-be _galant homme_, and passing away
from Ninon’s presence, he never entered it again, and in a very few
weeks was married to the sister of the Duc de Luxembourg, an alliance
possibly already entered upon at an earlier date, and the real ground
of his rupture with Ninon.
She soon found balm for the inflicted wounds of Coligny’s
ingratitude, in the ardent admiration of the son of the Marquise de
Rambouillet, seeing in him only the one absurd defect of desiring
unchanging constancy, and on this point he was so tiresome that she
was driven to promise fidelity for three months—“An eternity,” said
Ninon, ever mocking at love, which she ranked far below friendship.
[Illustration: FRANÇOIS VIDUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Né en M·DC·XIII M en M·DC·LXXX
_Peint en émail par Petitot_
_Gravé en 1770 par PP Choffard. Desel Grav. de L. M. Imp. et du Roi
d’Espagne._
_To face page 48._]
The greatest apologist of the society of the seventeenth century
could hardly describe it as strait-laced; except by comparison with
the first half of the one succeeding; and if some of the _grandes
dames_ of the circle in which she moved held aloof and deprecated
the unconventionalities of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, for the most
part they accepted them, more or less silently, and treated her
with cordiality, delighting in her friendship, and fascinated by
the elegance and dignity with which she conducted the hospitalities
of her crowded salons. The prevailing charm of one graced with the
refinement of no surface education, and accomplishments never unduly
self-asserted, shone through the gentle gaiety of her demeanour. She
was absolutely innocent of any shadow of self-interest; taste alone
guided her inclinations, her competence protected her from greed,
and natural generosity was ever prompting her to kindly actions.
Once, at a later day, when Anne of Austria was beginning to settle
into the calm austerities of maturer years, and urged by some prudes
about her, she sent orders for the temporary retirement of Ninon into
a convent, leaving her to select the one she preferred—the tale goes
that she expressed her gratitude to the exempt of the guards who
delivered the message, for the choice so left her, and that she would
choose the convent of the Grands Cordeliers, an establishment about
to be suppressed for the scandals attaching to it; but it is far more
probable that the jest originated with some acquaintance; for to make
light of orders from the Court was in no wise according with Ninon’s
code.
That command, however, again reached her at a yet later time, and
then was enforced. In Louis XIII.’s days, Ninon was often a guest
at the Louvre, and on the occasion of one of the State balls given
there, she was present with Rambouillet for her cavalier in chief. As
she was entering her carriage to return home, she felt a pull at her
mantle, and turning, she saw beside her “a little man, clad entirely
in black velvet, whose smile was mocking and full of sarcasm, and his
eyes shone like carbuncles. Rambouillet, seeing my terror,” she wrote
later, “demanded of the man what he wanted; but the Man in Black
silenced him with an imperious gesture, and said to me, in a tone of
profound melancholy—‘You are proud of your beauty, mademoiselle,
and you are right, for it is marvellous. But alas! all these charms
will one day fade. The rosy hues of your skin will die out, age will
come, and bring its wrinkles. Ah, believe me! Beware! Endeavour to
hinder this misfortune, for afterwards there will be nothing left to
you.’ So saying, he gravely saluted me, and disappeared among the
arches of the colonnade.”[1]