The Rift in the Lute—In the Vexin—The Miracle of the Gardener’s
Cottage—Italian Opera in Paris—Parted Lovers—“Ninum”—Scarron
and Françoise d’Aubigné—Treachery—A Journey to
Naples—Masaniello—Renewing Acquaintances—Mazarin’s Mandate.
Again victorious at Nordlingen, the Duc d’Enghien, now Prince de
Condé, for his father was now dead, returned to Paris—but not to
Ninon. She had given great offence to his family by permitting de
la Rochefoucauld and Madame de Longueville to meet at her house,
and Condé sternly reproached her for the indiscretion; hence the
tie between them was broken—perhaps merely a little sooner than
otherwise; for the distinction of winning the admiration of the
hero of the hour had played for Ninon a very powerful part in the
_liaison_. And after all, she preferred to receive homage more
than to offer it; for though she liked to ruffle it in masculine
attire, she was a very woman; and taking her heart back again, she
permitted it to be captured by the Marquis de Villarceaux, who had
sued for long past. Villarceaux was handsome and agreeable, but he
had a serious defect in Ninon’s eyes: he was fair, and a fat man or
a fair man she ordinarily found detestable. Still he was eloquent,
and she allowed herself to be persuaded to go and rusticate with
him in the Vexin, as the guest of a friend of the Marquis, Monsieur
de Vicariville. This gentleman found great pleasure in discoursing
on philosophical themes with Ninon, while Monsieur Villarceaux went
out to amuse himself in the neighbourhood, flitting from flower to
flower, as ready to converse with the maids as with the mistress.
In the course of a few days, visitors arrived at the château. One
of them was the Chevalier Villars Orondate, afterwards ambassador
to Spain, a man full of originality and humour. During his stay, he
rendered his host a signal service by the exercise of his quaint wit
and ingenuity. Monsieur de Vicariville’s château was reached by a
long, noble avenue, whose perspective would have been incomparable,
but for the intrusion of a miserable tumbledown cottage just about
midway.
Large sums had been offered when the avenue was made, to its owner,
whose name was Jérome, to sell his small holding; but he flatly
refused. His father had built the cottage, he had been born in it,
and desired to die in it when his time came, continuing meanwhile to
follow in it his trade, which was a tailor’s; and the eyesore had to
be left.
Orondate asked his host what he would give him if he got the cottage
removed within a week’s time.
“With Jérome’s consent, of course?” laughed Vicariville.
“That would not be required.”
“I would give you a hundred louis, gladly.”
“Money? For shame! It is for glory’s sake I would go to work—or at
all events for a kiss from Mademoiselle.”
Villarceaux demurred at this; but Ninon cheerfully agreed; and going
in search of the tailor, Orondate told him he wanted a handsome suit
made for Monsieur de Villarceaux, who was going to Court with him.
Was he capable of fulfilling the order? Certainly, Jérome was as able
to do it as the grandest tailor in Paris.
“Very good. I will give you a pistole a day, if you agree to come and
work in the château, never leaving off all day, and entirely under
my supervision. Your food will be all found for you; and you will be
paid on completion of the task.”
The tailor accepted the bargain with delight, and fell to work; while
Orondate caused a scrupulously exact plan of the cottage to be made,
with precise measurements of every thing in its interior, taking note
even of the position of each piece of furniture, and the smallest
object in the place. Then he had the entire cottage taken to pieces,
the walls knocked down, and the whole load of it transported to a
spot a little outside the avenue. There the skilful workmen he had
engaged, put it all together again, and all the smallest things back
in their places, not forgetting the good man’s little soup saucepan,
and the enclosing garden hedge.
The avenue, meanwhile, was carefully swept, and cleared of all traces
of the removal. Nothing remained to be seen of either the cottage or
the garden.
The tailor’s work being now completed, he received his honorarium
from Orondate, with a couple of louis in addition. Then going home,
well satisfied, towards nightfall he passed down the avenue. It
seemed rather long, yet he arrived at the end at last, sooner than he
quite expected. Returning, he came and went, came and went, and could
find his house nowhere. The poor man spent the night in searching for
it. The day broke, and shed light on the avenue, but there was no
cottage. Had the foul fiend been at work? Reaching the outskirts of
the park, he saw, just beyond the wall, a house resembling his own.
Rushing forward, he recognised his own sheltering trees, the garden,
the grass-plot, and the honeysuckle hedge. The door faced him, and
Jérome inserted the key in its lock.
It fell open smoothly. Going in, he found everything in its proper
place—only the table, instead of being bare, bore a smoking hot leg
of mutton, flanked by two bottles of wine.
The tailor crossed himself devoutly, convinced that he was bewitched.
The leg of mutton, however, looked appetising, and Jérome was hungry
after his long nocturnal perambulations; he approached the joint, and
contemplated it with lessening repugnance. Then, fetching his little
holy-water brush, he sprinkled the mutton to see if it disappeared;
but it smoked on. It certainly had not been cooked in the infernal
regions. Jérome took heart therefore, and sat down to dine.
The authors of this curious transformation scene, concealed to watch
what would happen, waited till Jérome had well banqueted; then they
entered, and with bursts of laughter, asked him what he thought of
the sorcerers of the château?
Monsieur Orondate was paid the price he had asked, Monsieur
Vicariville gave Jérome the hundred louis his guest had declined,
and the tailor contented himself with pulling a grimace at the trick
which had been played him.[3]
* * * * *
It was Mazarin France had to thank for establishing in Paris, musical
Italian plays, in other words, Italian operas. From time to time,
since the days of Henri III., Italian dramatic singers had visited
Paris, finding no regular stage or fair opportunity for their
beautiful presentations. Mazarin, however, secured them the rights
for these at the Hôtel Bourgogne, and by one of the exercises of his
wily ingenuity, also contrived to win away from Charles II. Budeaud,
the musical leader of the Court-revels in London, as the conductor of
the Paris company.
Early in the winter, whose approach brought Ninon and everybody back
to Paris, invitations were issued for the performance of an Italian
opera on a magnificent scale, in the Palais Royal, and to Ninon the
invitation was sent by the Duc de Condé—who had repented of his
harsh estimate of her conduct—and finding his way to her fauteuil in
the course of the performance, the two made their peace by mutual
concessions. Meanwhile Condé had diplomatically set several hundred
leagues between the lovers, by pairing off Madame de Longueville with
her husband to Münster, while he caused the Duc de la Rochefoucauld
to be summoned to his duties as governor of Poitou. Independently
of the ardent but brief attachment of Rocroi and Nordlingen days,
the Duc de Condé entertained sterling admiration and esteem for the
qualities of Ninon, and their friendship remained sincere through
life.
For three years Ninon came to Paris only at intervals; she remained
in the Vexin, with the erratic Marquis de Villarceaux for her
companion. Of a furiously jealous nature in regard to the object of
his affectionate consideration, he permitted himself a wide range.
The lawful wife he owned was, not unnaturally, jealous of Ninon, and
made her a constant subject of contention between them. One day she
requested the tutor of her little son to examine him before some
company she was entertaining, upon his recent classical studies.
“_Quem habuit successorum Bellus, rex Assyriorum?_” (“Who succeeded
Belus, King of the Assyrians?”) inquired the tutor, who was no less a
person than the Abbé Scarron.
“_Ninum_,” replied the little boy.
The word, so absolutely resembling Ninon, threw Madame de Villarceaux
into a furious rage. Scarron vainly endeavoured to explain and
justify himself. She would not listen. The answer, she said, was
quite enough for her; and Scarron was dismissed. It was a cruel
accident for him, crippled as he was, so utterly as not to be able
to stir from his wheel-chair. Bodily “a wretched log,” as he called
himself, intellectually more brilliant than ever, and in a human
sense, ever the same kindly, generous epicurean philosopher as of
old, “always” as he said, “unfortunate.” On the top of all his other
troubles he had fallen in love. Alas! for the poor prisoner of that
wheeled-chair, the helpless wreck of the ex-canon! Ninon found refuge
in silence as she stood before him where he had been carried in from
his coach. It was long since they had met, and her heart was full
of pity. The object of his affection, Scarron went on to tell her,
was one Françoise d’Aubigné, a native of Niort. “Ah, d’Aubigné,”
interrupted Ninon at last. “A Protestant then?” A Calvinist by
birth, went on Scarron, and reared in that teaching by an aunt who
had adopted her on the death of her parents; but the aunt died,
and then a lady, Madame de Neuillan, a friend of the Marquise de
Villarceaux, had taken her in hand. It was a misuse of words to call
it befriending. It was in this way Scarron had seen her, a charmingly
pretty girl of about seventeen.
This Countess de Neuillan was a gorgon of virtue and principle,
and, as also a bigot of a Catholic, she had compelled Françoise to
become one. In return for all her tender care, Madame de Neuillan
imposed the most menial duties on the young girl, who was of
angelic disposition as well as beautiful. Her father had been the
son of the friend of Henri IV. More or less worthy as he might be
represented—_de mortuis nil nisi bonum_—he had died in prison,
guilty of no other crimes, perhaps, than being a Protestant; and so
his two children had been left cast in indigence upon the world. The
lot of Françoise in the house of Madame de Neuillan was deplorable,
and Scarron, as well as some other friends, had advised her to leave
her, and get her living by the work of her hands sooner than remain
in such dependence; and for twelve months past she had lodged in
a little street of a neighbouring faubourg, with her brother, a
ne’er-do-well; but still her brother; and her goodness to him was the
only fault Scarron had to find in the adorable Françoise. And Ninon’s
generous heart overflowed with sympathy for the young girl, and she
took her to her own home, and they were warm friends, living in the
closest ties of affection; and ere long the sweet, modest, gentle
girl repaid the kind friend’s goodness by winning her lover, Monsieur
de Villarceaux, away from her, and Ninon, who was sincerely attached
to him, felt the sting acutely. She taxed Françoise with the attempt,
which was quite successful, and refused to listen to any denial or
excuse, merely saying that they would have the field quite free to
themselves, as she was leaving on the following day for Naples.
And thither she went, taking the sea-journey from Marseilles. For
travelling companion, she had the Chevalier de Méri. This gentleman
who had been one of the guests of Monsieur Vicariville had a sister
who was married to a Spanish Grandee, to whom was promised the
viceroyalty of Naples.
Monsieur de Méri was in every way far more desirable as a companion
than the man she had left in the company of Françoise, to whom she
also entrusted the _ménage_ in the rue des Tournelles, only making
the condition that she and Villarceaux should hold their sweet
converse exclusively in the “Yellow Chamber,” which was the most
retired of the rooms. Finding this a little restrictive however, they
betook themselves to Brie-Comte Robert, where they spent a fortnight
at the house of a cousin of the marquis, who possessed the gift of a
still tongue.
Arrived in Naples, Ninon established herself with her faithful
servant Perrote, who had attended her _en courrier_, in a small house
near the park, and yielded herself up to the charm of the place. “See
Naples and die,” but it thrilled Ninon with new life. The sunshine,
the colour, the curious mingling of indolence and the activity of a
seaport, the cloudless azure overhead, the clear blue depths of the
bay, the islands washed by the sparkling waters, Vesuvius, calm and
treacherous, enchanted her. She lost no time in providing herself
with a Neapolitan costume, in which she roved about as the will took
her. Nothing was more likely than that when she chartered a barque to
sail away and dream her dreams, rocked by the gentle waves of that
inland sea, it should have been guided by a young fisherman of some
five-and-twenty years old. His handsome features wore a nobility of
expression and energy—a picture worthy of a painter’s brush, with
his sunburnt skin and flashing dark eyes, and dark locks, surmounted
by his red woollen cap. This young fisherman, who told Ninon, when
she asked him his name, that it was Aniello—Tommaso Aniello—but the
people and his comrades called him “Masaniello.” Forever a favourite
with them, they were in those early July days of that year of 1647
beginning to idolise him as their champion and leader in the revolt
against the oppression and robbery of their Spanish masters.
The viceroyalty of Naples equalled in pomp and extravagance the
Court of Madrid, and what wealth was found more than could be used
for Naples, was shipped off and transported to Spain, leaving the
Neapolitans crushed with poverty, neglected and groaning under the
haughty tyranny of the delegated power. Recently the viceroy of
the Spanish king, Philip IV., the Duke of Arcos, who wanted more
and more funds for carrying on the war with France, had bethought
himself of levying a tax on fruit and vegetables. It was but
Mazarin’s Toisé over again, ever for Jacques Bonhomme and his Italian
equivalent to keep things spinning for the honour and glory of a
spendthrift nobility, while they robbed the country of their young
men, to draft them as soldiers to Spain. In the course of a century,
millions of ducats had been paid from one source alone, into the
Spanish treasury. These wrongs were stirring the indignation of
the Neapolitans to seething heat, and to the people Aniello spoke
aloud and with fiery eloquence of the iniquities. To add fuel to
the flame, his young wife—or, as other chroniclers tell, his deaf
and dumb sister, living at Portici—had been arrested and cast into
prison for having in her possession some contraband flour, and
Aniello had been made to pay to obtain her release. A disturbance in
the market-place over the sale of a basket of figs, upon which the
unfortunate man who had brought them for sale, was finally required
to pay the imposts, ignited the smouldering rage of the oppressed
people, and at the head of a troop of thousands of men, women and
boys, who wrought destruction on every side as they went, Masaniello
forced a way into the viceroy’s palace. There with the help and
counsel of the Archbishop of Naples, a man popular and respected,
the demand for exemption of taxation on all articles of food was
accorded. The triumph of Masaniello was complete; but the excitement
and the adulation not alone of the people for whose rights he had so
successfully striven, but of the viceroy himself, proved too much for
him. His mind gave way, he began to act like a maniac; he complained
of a sensation like boiling lead in his head. Some of the wretched
dregs of the people he had so nobly served, took umbrage at his wild
conduct, and the shot from an arquebuse, in the hands of one of the
mob thus turned on him, pierced him to the heart. There was nothing
left but to regret the heroic man, and he was laid to rest, after his
young life’s fitful fever, with great pomp and ceremony in the church
of S. Maria del Carmine.
[Illustration: S^T. EVREMOND.
Né en 1613. Mort en 1703.
Aug. S^t Aubin
_To face page 112._]
No mere demagogue was Masaniello; but a man of noble patriotic
aspiration, victim of his own passionate ardour for a great cause.
Perhaps as a soldier he would have risen to highest rank and glory;
but Masaniello would be no soldier for Spain, and in this resolution
he had been strengthened, if that were needed, by Salvator Rosa, the
painter, who was one of his friends, and by the Duc de Guise, who
swore to avenge the death of Masaniello, and kept his word.
Not content with her Neapolitan bodice and skirt, Ninon attired
herself in a fisherman’s garb, with the object of mingling in the
fray of the Neapolitan uprising, and she witnessed the sharp, swift
close of Masaniello’s little day of triumph. But she left Naples
almost immediately after, experiencing various adventures of a
sort which she found sufficiently agreeable to detain her still
some five or six months from Paris, meeting on her way old friends
and new, among them her agreeable acquaintance, the Chevalier
Orondate, who was bound for Naples, as legate of Mazarin, who was
anxious for acquaintance with every detail of the revolt. There was
little Ninon could not tell him of this. She had been a close and
intelligent observer. It was more likely that Orondate could get
accurate information from one who had witnessed the whole _émeute_,
than any gathering up of particulars, now comparative tranquillity
had been restored in the city. Therefore the Chevalier did not go
on to Naples, but paired off with Ninon for a while into a studious
seclusion at Lyons, during which she furnished him with a vivid
narrative of the disturbance itself, and of the manner in which the
people had been relieved of their cruel burden. It contained the
elements of a good object-lesson for Mazarin and for the Court party,
now engaged in bitter contention with the Parliament, for the storm
of the Fronde had broken.