Invalids in the rue des Tournelles—On the Battlements—“La Grande
Mademoiselle”—Casting Lots—The Sacrifice—The Bag of Gold—“Get
Thee to a Convent”—The Battle of the Sonnets—A Curl-paper—The
Triumph and Defeat of Bacchus—A Secret Door—Cross Questions and
Crooked Answers—The Youthful Autocrat.
Several of the severely wounded, under the firing of the Bastille
cannon, were carried by Ninon’s desire into her house in the rue
des Tournelles. Among these were the Comte de Fiesque and the Abbé
d’Effiat. Both of these gentlemen were so cruelly weakened by loss
of blood, that it was long before either of them was able to be
removed. Fiesque had the misfortune to be married to an exceedingly
disagreeable woman, cross and ill-tempered with everybody, herself
included. There was no longer any affection between her and her
husband, and as he made no pretence of being true to her, it was
little less than a matter of course that he should find himself
fascinated by the charms of his kind nurse and hostess, while the
abbé was no less enthralled; and Ninon, weary of the Fronde—as
in fact who was not?—resumed the old society ways of the rue des
Tournelles.
It was Gondi, the bishop’s coadjutor, who laid to his singular
half-devout, half-profligate soul the flattering unction that he was
the author of the restored peace; and on the strength of it, he
obtained the red hat he so ardently coveted, and became the Cardinal
de Retz, so renowned for his romantic and adventurous career; but
he did not escape the vengeance of his mortal foe Mazarin, who
arrested him and confined him in the castle of Vincennes. Thence de
Retz obtained removal to the Château of Nantes, a stronghold safely
walled and moated round about, which appertained to his family. Some
chroniclers credit it with being the scene of the crimes of the
terrible Bluebeard, Gilles de Retz, Marquis de Laval. It is almost as
stern and forbidding-looking as “Black Angers,” and with as long a
record of interest. Its massive walls were first built into the bed
of the deep-flowing Loire in the fourteenth century, and its frowning
towers vividly conjure to the mind’s eye the picture of Sister Anne
watching from their summits for “anybody coming.”
Its bastions and walls, and slate and granite round-towers bear the
cross of Lorraine, carved on them during the wars of the League. Anne
of Brittany, born within its walls, is said to have been married for
the second time in its chapel—now a powder-magazine—and here, too,
Henri IV. signed the Edict of Nantes, which gave to the Huguenots
their religious freedom, to be so shamefully withdrawn at the
instigation of the amiable Françoise d’Aubigné.
One night, while de Retz was languishing in an upper chamber of the
Mercœur tower of this prison of his, a boat lay moored beneath in
the shadow, and de Retz contrived that the guard and sentry of the
castle should all be furnished with ample means for a carouse. It was
tempting, and not one declined the generosity of his good-natured
Eminence. The revellers grew sleepy and dazed; too entirely so to
do more than gaze lacklustrely up at their prisoner’s red cloak and
hat, blowing about in the evening breeze upon the upper walls of the
battlements which he was permitted to pace for exercise. De Retz,
meanwhile, who had slipped out of his vesture, and hung it there, was
dropping rapidly down by a rope moored fast to the stanchions of his
loophole casement in the Tour de Mercœur, into the boat which was
then sped away to the shore by the oars of one of his trusty waiting
friends, of whom he had scores; and in this way gained the spot upon
the banks where a horse was waiting ready saddled. Springing up,
de Retz bounded away on his steed, which in very short time flung
him, and his shoulder was dislocated; but, the pain notwithstanding,
he mounted again, and then reaching the shelter of the Château de
Beaupréau, he made his way through Spain to Rome and perfect safety,
until by resigning his archbishopric, which through the death of his
uncle had become his, he was reconciled to the governing powers of
France and returned to Paris.
Of the two most prominent leaders in the long civil contention, Condé
retired to Spain, and Mademoiselle de Montpensier wandered about
from château to château in Normandy, forbidden to come to Paris
for several years. All idea of her marriage with Louis XIV. was
extinguished on the day she fired upon the royal troops. “Very
good!” exclaimed Mazarin then, “she has killed her husband.”
[Illustration: Ninon de Lenclos.
_Deveria del^t_ _Tavernier sculp^t_
_To face page 127._]
Something less than a year later a little daughter was born to
Ninon. There was so much doubt concerning its paternity, that the
Comte de Fiesque and the Abbé d’Effiat had no choice but to make
a throw of the dice for the rightful claim on it, and de Fiesque
being the winner, subsequently had the child educated and reared at
his own cost, insisting on this in despite of Ninon wishing to keep
it under her own care. But towards herself the attachment of the
count rapidly cooled. To bring him back to her feet, she conceived
the ruse of cutting off her hair, the real locks, for these having
grown again. There was, however, something in this of the virtue of
necessity; as it was again threatening to become scanty—and sending
them by a servant to the count, it exercised its intended effect;
as he regarded it as a touching sacrifice, and Fiesque was again at
her feet, penitent, and tender as ever. But Ninon, thus triumphing,
dismissed him from the old position, and relegated him to the ranks
only of friendship. Once more the hair of Ninon began to grow
luxuriantly, and she devised a fashion of arranging it that was so
charming, as to find the sincere flattery of imitation—“_Se coiffer
à la Ninon_”—became the rage.
The wife of de Fiesque wrote Ninon a terrible letter of reproach for
her intrigue with the count. It would seem to have been prompted
simply by revenge, as the lady made no pretence of affection for
her husband; but the fear of entailing injury to the child, strongly
influenced Ninon to desire to have it in her own care. The count,
however, had left the country for Spain, and she had difficulty
in discovering with whom the poor babe had been placed. She was,
moreover, moving at that time in one of her whirling rounds of
gaiety, and of a thoughtless folly, that at a later day brought its
sincere regrets; and she abandoned the search, and followed on by the
old ways, bestowing her smiles chiefly on the Comte de Miossens, who
had been distinguishing himself greatly under Maurice of Orange.
An old friend, Monsieur de Gourville—who, as a warm partisan of
the Duc de Condé and the Duchesse de Longueville, had remained away
from Paris for a long time—returned one day somewhat unexpectedly,
and Ninon, naturally looking for a visit from him, waited, but in
vain. At last she wrote him a little note to ascertain why he so
long delayed his coming, and so much the more since he had entrusted
to her keeping a large sum of money in gold in a bag, having at the
same time placed as much more with the Grand Penitentiary. This
individual had now, he told de Gourville, given it all to the poor;
as he supposed that had been as de Gourville had intended, but it had
not been the intention. The money had been deposited in trust, said
de Gourville, who added he should have liked to strangle the Grand
Penitentiary.
“And did you have the fancy,” said Ninon, “that I had distributed the
sixty thousand livres also in good works?”
“No, but in gowns and fal-lals. At least, you would own to the truth
of it,” said de Gourville, “and I like that better.”
But Ninon owned to no such thing. She bade de Gourville understand
her rightly. Light, perhaps frivolous, she might be, but she prided
herself on being honest; and going to fetch the bag of gold, she
placed it before him with the fastenings intact.
When de Gourville mentioned this circumstance among his friends,
it was to accord Ninon signal praise; but to that Ninon utterly
disclaimed right. There was, she said, no merit in doing one’s duty.
Her mode of life was the result of the philosophical system she had
adopted. To be honest, what should one be else?
And for her mode of life, it had none of the glaring indifference to
decent outward conduct, which some of the dames of society indulged
in. Many ladies of blameless living came to her _réunions_. Among
them was the Comtesse de Choisy, lady of honour to the queen, and
she promised to befriend Ninon in the matter of the threat Anne ever
held over her of sending her to a convent. The thought of cloistral
seclusion was a terror to Ninon; unless now and again, theoretically
it might be pleasant. Ninon observed certain restraints in her
ways of life; and more than once she excluded from her _réunions_
fashionable high-born women who had scandalised society by their
loose conduct. Moreover, Madame de Longueville was one now of her
intimate friends, and she often brought with her to Ninon’s house
her young brother, who had distinguished himself bravely in the
Fronde, and she would not countenance corruption of the youthful hero
by including women of notorious evil-living among her guests.
Madame de Longueville, lacking the power to carry on any more
political intrigue, took up literature, and set the Hôtel Rambouillet
in a ferment, by her championing of Voitures sonnet on _Uranie_
against Benserade, who had composed one on _Job_. The Uranists
and the Joblins contended fiercely over the merits of the two
productions. The news of the victory of Rocroi did not create greater
excitement than the clamour of rivalry made over the two poets.
Madame de Longueville failed to win back the favour of the queen
after the part she had taken in the Fronde. She grew disgusted with
the world, and retired into the convent of the Visitation at Moulins,
of which her aunt, the widow of the Duc de Montmorency, was the
superior. Some time later, her husband persuaded her to return to the
world; but it was not to Paris, but to Rome she went to live, and so
the ties of friendship between her and Ninon fell away.
The whim once seized Ninon to pretend to one of her admirers that she
wished to marry. The young man ardently expressed his willingness
for this; but Ninon insisted on having a settlement from him, and
no small one, being in fact nearly his whole fortune. He signed it
away to her. Long before the arrival of the proposed wedding-day,
however, the _fiancé’s_ ardour had cooled; and his misery at the loss
of his money would have melted a stone to compassion. Having carried
on her amusement long enough, Ninon one morning told him, as she sat
at her toilet-table, to unroll the curl-paper on her left temple. He
did so, and Ninon bade him keep it, which he joyfully did; for it was
his little bill of eighty thousand or so of livres. Then she released
him from his allegiance, warning him to be more careful in future
of rash promises; since some women were designing and absolutely
unscrupulous.
Monsieur de Navailles, the husband of the lady who had the care of
the queen’s young ladies of honour, was another admirer of Ninon’s.
His devotion was out-rivalled, however, by that he paid to Bacchus.
Piqued at his neglect of her, she contrived to punish him on one
of the several occasions when the vine-leaves were in his hair, by
appearing to him, after his prolonged sleep, in his own _pourpoint_,
and putting his hat on her head, she entered the room where he lay
snoring. Flourishing a sword, and swearing like a trooper, she
threatened to run him through; and then, having succeeded in really
alarming him, she laughingly revealed her identity.
Madame de Navailles was a rigid disciplinarian with her charges—not
without cause, for Louis XIV., arriving at years of discretion,
had evinced great interest in the mode of life led by them in
their private apartments; but Madame de Navailles was adamant. De
Navailles, therefore, who was ambitious of advancement at Court,
devised the notion of becoming once more greatly enamoured of his
wife; and thus gaining access to the general salon of the ladies, he
contrived, without madame’s knowledge, to get a panel knocked out
in the wall skirting a small stairway, by which nothing was easier
than for his youthful Majesty to come and go at pleasure. This means
of communication being however, very soon discovered, the aperture
was blocked up; so greatly to the annoyance of the king, that he
dismissed Madame de Navailles from her post; though he had the
gratitude to present her husband with the marshal’s bâton.
It was at this time, for a good while past, that Ninon lived under
the terror of the queen’s threat of sending her into a convent, the
more likely to be carried out now on account of the part she had
taken in the events of the Fronde. Her numerous friends and partisans
were also anxious on this score, and the matter became one of so much
interest and discussion, that one day a champion presented himself
at her door, seeking an interview. He represented himself as an
ex-captain of the Guards of Christina, Queen of Sweden, who, he said,
entertained a considerable appreciation of such fine, tall, robust
giants as he was. Ninon, however, who accepted his services and
his sword at the wage of a pistole a day, soon found him rather an
incubus, and was glad to hand him over to the service of Monsieur de
Navailles.
The consecration of the young king was now about to take place at
Rheims. Each of the queen’s ladies of honour was authorised to
choose a companion from among her friends for the ceremony, and
Madame de Choisy invited Ninon for this purpose, having the generous
intention of trying to restore her to the regent’s favour. It was
entirely successful. Not only was all fear of the terrible injunction
being carried out removed, but Ninon, on the return to Paris,
was invited to join the friendly _réunions_ at the Palais Royal.
Sometimes these took place in the queen’s small salon, sometimes
in the apartments of Mazarin. The invited ones vastly enjoyed
themselves, with the exciting pastimes of questions and answers,
and broken sentences. Sometimes the violins were sent for, and they
danced the _Quénippe_ or the _Diablesse_, and still oftener there
were games of romps.
The cardinal’s four nieces were nearly always present at these
gatherings. They were all charming and beautiful, Olympe,
Hortense and Laure Mancini, though not absolutely and perfectly
sweet-tempered. It was reserved to Marie, less regularly featured
than her sisters, but far more fascinating and amiable, to bear the
palm, and to win the attentions of the king. These were carried so
far, that it was thought by many—Mazarin indeed hoped, and his hopes
were apt to find fulfilment—that she would be queen. She assumed
great authority over Louis, to the extent of not allowing him to
cast stray glances of admiration on the ladies of the Court or at
her sisters. Louis, however, was apt to rebel on this head. To this
influence, Marie, then a girl of fourteen only, the well-known fact
is ascribed of Louis, then but a youth of sixteen, hurrying from the
chase, back to Paris, and booted and spurred, his whip in his hand,
entering the grand council chamber of the Parliament, where some new
financial edicts were being considered after the holding of a Bed
of Justice, and revised with a view to seeking some modification
of them. In haughty tones, and with a majestic air, Louis bade the
councillors disperse and leave the edicts as they had been drawn up.
“Monsieur le President,” he said, “the evils attending these meetings
of Parliament are but too well known. Henceforward I forbid them, as
I also forbid these edicts just registered, to be tampered with.”
These words echoed through all Europe. They provoked murmurs long and
deep of the Parliament, and it was only with the greatest difficulty
that the prudence of Turenne was able to keep under the widespread
dissatisfaction.
The policy of Mazarin’s “education” of the young king was already
bearing the fruit of the future misery of the country which his
Eminence’s alien authority so disastrously ruled.
The intimacy of Ninon and Marie Mancini grew into friendship, and
Marie’s confidences made it clear to Ninon that it was her uncle’s
intention, if not her own avowed one, that she should be the wife of
Louis XIV. But the constancy of the great young monarch was ever a
fragile thing.