Mélusine—Cinq-Mars—An Ill-advised Marriage—The Conspiracy—The
Revenge—The Scaffold—A Cry from the Bastille—The Lady’s
Man—“The Cardinal’s Hangman”—Finis—Louis’s Evensong—A Little
Oversight—The King’s Nightcap—Mazarin—Ninon’s Hero.
Some few miles from Tours, along the banks of the Loire, at one of
its most beautiful parts above Saumur, stands the little town of St
Médard, better known as Cinq-Mars. A ruined castle crowns the heights
above. It was the ancestral home of the d’Effiats, a noble family of
long lineage; and before their coming, tradition told of its being
the dwelling of Mélusine the _fée_, the beautiful snake-woman, who
was the wife of Raymond, Count de Lusignan, placed under the terrible
spell of transformation into a snake, from the waist downwards, every
seventh night, for having immured her father in a rock-bound cavern,
for cruelty to her mother. Disobeying Mélusine’s command, never to
intrude upon her on those fatal Saturday nights, Raymond discovered
the appalling reason for it, and in his rage cast her forth. The
despairing cry that broke from her then, is still to be heard of
stormy nights above the river; and it may be, mingles with the
lamentations of the mourners over the deed of blood which was enacted
in after centuries when Louis the Just was king.
The young lord of the castle then, was the son of the Maréchal
Cinq-Mars. He was scarcely more than a youth; for he was but nineteen
when Richelieu introduced him at Court, loading him with favours,
causing him to be made the royal master of the horse, and otherwise
specially recommending him to the notice of Louis, who conceived
so vast a liking for him, that it was even touched with some real
warmth; and Cinq-Mars, handsome, gallant, distinguished, brave, and
not a little spoiled by the splendour of his existence, but amiable
and generous-hearted, beloved by his friends—of whom a dear one
was de Thou, the son of the great historian—basked in all the full
sunshine of his young life. The pale, stern cardinal, attenuated
by bodily suffering, and more than ever soured by care, was hardly
likely to win much love from a gay butterfly of a creature like the
young marquis, and before long Cinq-Mars came to know from Louis’s
own lips, that he privately hated Richelieu, a hate nourished by his
deadly fear of him.
Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars had cast amorous eyes upon Marion Delorme,
the cardinal’s protégée. Marion, still beautiful, though no
longer young—being in fact double the age of this her latest
admirer—returned his passionate affection, and, dazzled by the
prospect of being his wife—for his infatuation impelled him to seek
her as such—she braved the consequences of her protector’s wrath,
and the two were secretly married. Richelieu, from whom nothing
could long be hidden, was furious; he had planned a brilliant
alliance for the king’s young favourite, who had shortly before
leagued himself with the queen’s party; Gaston d’Orléans, the Duc de
Bouillon—burning to supplant the cardinal-minister—and others—and
they entered into correspondence with Olivarez, the Spanish
prime-minister, which resulted in a treaty of alliance between him
and the conspiring enemies of the cardinal. Louis had for some time
past treated Richelieu with coldness; and Richelieu, suspecting the
cause of it, left Paris, and went to Tarascon, to lie in wait till
his spies were able to place him in full possession of every detail
of the plot, and of a copy of the treaty. Then, disabled by illness
and infirmity, he desired to see the king, who travelled for the
interview from Perpignan, where he was then staying, and all the
thunder of the cardinal’s reproaches and wrath was flung upon him.
Apparently with justice, Louis succeeded in justifying himself,
on the plea of ignorance, and the king departed again, enjoining
everybody to obedience to Richelieu as if he were himself.
After their marriage, Marion and Cinq-Mars went to the castle on the
Loire, where they spent a brief period of delight. Only the servants
of the household were there, and Cinq-Mars was their lord. They
showed willing, even delighted, obedience to all his behests; but
the marquise his mother returned home somewhat unexpectedly, and her
anger at the stolen marriage equalled in its way that of Richelieu
himself. Doubtless this fomented the affair to a yet speedier issue,
and Cinq-Mars was arrested, and along with him, his friend de Thou,
who was entirely innocent of complicity in the plot. The two were
taken into the presence of Richelieu at Tarascon (a place old stories
tell named after one Tarasque, “a fearful dragon who infested the
borders of the Rhone, preying upon human flesh, to the universal
terror and disturbance”), and hence his dying Eminence—for death was
very near—commanded them to be placed, tied and bound, in a boat
fastened behind his own, in which he was returning to Paris by the
waterway of the Rhone, as far as Lyons. There, being disembarked, the
two young victims were led immediately to a hastily-erected scaffold,
and there bravely they met their fate by the headsman’s axe—de Thou
guilty of refusing to betray his friend, and Cinq-Mars’ crime not
proved, suffering mainly from the cowardly depositions laid against
him by the Duke of Orléans. Then Richelieu continued his triumphal
way to Paris, where in his magnificent palace he died; and during his
last agonies, the king was seen to smile at what he called “Death’s
master-stroke of policy.”
There was a letter, written three days before the cardinal’s death,
found among his papers. It was dated from the Bastille, and it
consisted of one bitter reproach of his injustice to the writer, in
keeping him immured in the terrible place for eleven years. It was a
letter of some length, and an eloquently written appeal for release.
“There is a time, my lord,” it began, “when man ceases to be
barbarous and unjust; it is when his approaching dissolution compels
him to descend into the gloom of his conscience, and to deplore the
cares, griefs, pains and misfortunes which he has caused to his
fellow-creatures. Had I,” the unhappy man, whose name was Dessault,
goes on to say, “performed your order, it would have condemned
my soul to eternal torment, and made me pass into eternity with
blood-stained hands.... I implore you, my lord, order my chains to be
broken before your death-hour comes,—permit yourself to be moved by
the most humble prayer of a man who has ever been a loyal subject to
the king.”
This letter bore date of December 1st; on December 4th, the cardinal
died. It is not known whether he ever saw it. After his death, it
came into the hands of those on whom the power now devolved, and
Dessault, far from gaining his release, was kept in the Bastille till
the year of 1692, after being a prisoner for sixty-one years. Such
remnant of life as may have remained to him, is one too forlorn and
dreary to contemplate.
And to this piteous appeal were added the sobs and frenzied
reproaches of Marion Delorme, who found access to the death-chamber,
just as the cardinal was about to receive the Viaticum.
A gentleman named de Saucourt was a slave to Ninon’s charms at this
time, causing a vast amount of envy among her friends. He was a man
of refinement and brilliant wit, so raved about by the ladies, that
Benserade composed this quatrain upon him—
“Contre se fier demon voyez vous aujourd’hui
Femme qui tienne?
Et toutes cependant sont contentes de lui,
Jusqu’ à la sienne.”
Ninon, however, was then suffering great distress of mind at the
terrible fate of Cinq-Mars, reproaching herself not a little for
the light, thoughtless way in which she had half encouraged Marion
Delorme, half warned her off from accepting the young man’s rash
proposition to make her his wife; for Marion had seriously consulted
her in the matter. It came to light after Cinq-Mars’ death that it
was Gaston d’Orléans himself who had in his possession the original
of the treaty with Olivarez, and he had had the baseness to hand
this to Laffemas, the infamous procureur-general and chief tool
of Richelieu, when the cardinal was bent on a man’s destruction.
Laffemas earned the distinction of being called the cardinal’s
hangman-in-chief. No one stretched out a finger to help the Chevalier
de Jars, whom Richelieu kept in the Bastille for two years, on the
charge of being in the secrets of Anne of Austria’s connections
with Spain. It was in vain that de Jars produced absolute proof
of his innocence, and Laffemas added insults and threats to the
interrogatory he subjected him to. Under a strong guard, de Jars one
Sunday obtained leave to attend Mass at St Gervais, where he knew
the wretched creature would be, and as he was about to kneel at the
altar to receive the communion, de Jars, with a bound, sprang at him,
seized him by his _pourpoint_, and dragging him down the nave of the
church, flung him outside the door. “Away with thee!—away from here,
cowardly hypocrite!” he cried. “Do not soil this holy place with thy
foul presence,” and the poisonous reptile crawled away, while de
Jars, turning to the officiating priest, said—“And you, my father,
did you not know to whom you were about to give the Body of our Lord?
To an iniquitous judge—another Judas—an abomination!”
Finally de Jars obtained his release, and spent his later life in
peace and happiness, but not before he had been made to mount the
scaffold itself. As he was about to lay his head upon the block,
calmly defiant, Laffemas, who had got up the scene to terrify de Jars
into a confession, approached and besought him, in consideration
of the pardon he had brought him, to disclose all he knew; but he
received scant satisfaction on the point, since de Jars, according
to some authorities, persisted in his refusal and defiance of the
monster. According to another account, the suffering and tension of
mind he had endured temporarily deprived him of consciousness, and
for some days he lay in a state of exhaustion, from which he only
gradually recovered.
And those were but instances of the cardinal’s tyranny, and there was
so little his red robe had not covered, sufficiently at all events
for him to die in his bed. And the magnificent tomb, joint work of
two great artists, that covers the spot where he was laid in the
church of the Sorbonne, bears the recumbent statue of the cardinal,
sustained by Religion and weeping angels.
Whether Louis, the king, shed any tears, is not specially recorded.
They could hardly, in any case, have been more than of the crocodile
kind; since he was so very visibly seen to smile more than once
during the passing away of his great minister. In the days when
Vitry relieved him of Concini by assassination, Louis thanked him
warmly for the service. “Now I am king, Vitry,” he said. But it had
not been for long, except in name; for he had only been free to
become the slave of Richelieu, and now his own life was ebbing fast
away, not, apparently, to his very great regret. Those last days
were sorely troubled at the thought of his mother, who had died in
exile at Cologne. He put the blame of this on Richelieu, and made
all the reparation now possible, by ordering prayers throughout the
kingdom for the repose of her soul. This seemed to bring him some
tranquillity, of mind. He loved music, and he composed for himself a
_De Profundis_ to be chanted when his last hour should arrive. Seated
one day at the window of the Château of St Germains, he pointed out
the route which was best for the funeral cortège to follow, to reach
St Denis, and reminded of a turn of the road which was awkward to
pass, bidding care be taken to keep the hearse well in hand.
The death of Richelieu in no way softened the strained relations
and conjugal coldness between the king and queen. On the day of the
child’s birth, Louis was about to leave the queen without bestowing
the embrace customary on such occasions, until he was reminded of his
omission, which only a stretch of courtesy might call forgetfulness.
The little Louis, who was in his fifth year at the time of the king’s
death, does not seem greatly to have interested him or afforded him
any satisfaction; while the child rather shrank from him, notably
when he saw him in his night-cap. Then he broke into piercing screams
of terror. This the king laid, with all her other misdeeds, at the
queen’s door. He declared that she prompted the little boy to his
objections.
It was a pitiable ending to a melancholy existence—inexpressibly
lonely, for in those last months, Anne left him entirely to himself.
Less desolate than the king, finding distraction for ennui in the
society of her ladies, and the gentlemen of her own little Court,
among whom Monsignor Giulio Mazarini figured ever more and more
prominently.
Previously to Richelieu’s death, the handsome, fascinating Mazarin
had been a constant frequenter of Ninon’s _réunions_; but from these
he soon withdrew almost entirely, in favour of the dazzling metal to
be found in the Louvre, for there it rang of ambitions, which there
was every chance of finding fully satisfied. His first master-stroke
was to set aside the late king’s will—which constituted a counsel
of regency, himself being chief of the counsel, which he had
himself recommended to Louis—making Anne regent, with himself for
prime-minister. The king was dead, Louis XIV. but a small child, and
for Mazarin it was “Long live the Queen!” while Ninon found ample
consolation in the devotion of her splendid hero, Louis de Bourbon,
the great Condé, Duc d’Enghien.
Hitherto love had been a fragile toy for her, hanging about her by
the lightest of chains made to be broken. For Condé, the sentiment
lay deeper, nourished by the breath of adulation surrounding him
when he returned, victorious over the Spaniards, from the field of
Rocroi; and she was fired to flames of admiration and of delight in
his distinguished presence. Handsome, amiable, gallant, to Ninon and
to France he was as a demigod.