The Whirligig of Time, and an Old Friend—Going to the Fair—A
Terrible Experience—The Young Abbé—“The Brigands of La
Trappe”—The New Ordering—An Enduring Memory—The King over the
Water—Unfulfilled Aspirations—“Not Good-looking.”
_Tempora mutantur._ Ninon, in the course of the years which were now
bringing her to middle life, had seen many changes; but when her
friend St Evrémond came back about this time from the wars, after
seven or eight years’ absence, he told her that she had not changed
with them. Beautiful and youthful-looking as ever he assured her she
was, and to prove his words, he took a little mirror in one hand, and
in the other the portrait Rubens had painted of her years before, and
bade her make the comparison herself.
There is little doubt, at all events, that Time’s finger had scarcely
dulled the delicacy of her complexion, or the brightness of her eyes.
Were thanks due to the Man in Black for this? It was a question she
put to St Evrémond very seriously, but the cheery Epicurean had only
a smile and a witticism for answer. The devil, he assured her, did
not exist, and he proposed to escort her to the fair of St Germain
that fine February afternoon. This was scarcely the best way to
make good his assertion; for if his Satanic Majesty was to be found
in Paris, it was certainly in that quarter; for was not the rue
d’Enfer, whence the Capucins had ejected him from his house, hard by?
This, however, had by no means hindered the brethren of St Germain
des Prés countenancing the proceedings, which had come to be near to
an orgy, of the annual market, or fair of St Germain des Prés—by
the letting their ground for it to be held upon. From the king, to
the most villainous of the populace, everybody went to the fair. The
booths were within hail of the ground known as the _Pré aux Clercs_,
the haunt of the _basochiens_, the lawyers’ clerks of the Palais de
Justice, away upon the Ile de la Cité, between St Sulpice and St
Germain—the church of the three steeples. The roof of the modern
flower-market now covers this ground. Everything conceivable could
be purchased at the stalls, from the richest silks and velvets to a
pancake or a glass eye, or a wooden leg or a wax arm, or essences
and waters for turning old people young again; every game of chance,
thimblerig, lottery, cards, held out its temptation; every kind of
entertainment, dancing, tumbling, jugglery, music of fiddle and
fife, and drum and tabor—a deafening _tintamarre_; all kinds of
beverages—wine, cider, tea, coffee—“to drive away melancholy;”
syrups were concocted for the dust-dried throats of the surging
crowd of fine ladies, students, lackeys, soldiers, dainty-shod,
short-cloaked, blond-bewigged abbés, pages, beggars, gipsies.
Respectable bourgeois families rubbed shoulders with flaunting women,
and the wretched crew of mendicant impostors from the old _cours
de miracles_. Often it was the scene of fracas and fisticuffs and
damaged countenances. On one occasion, a page of the Duc de Bouillon
cut off the ears of a clerk of the _basoche_ and put them in his
pocket. The students of the quarter fell to murderous assault upon
the fellow, while the pages retaliated, and many a dead body of page
and student was found afterwards in the ditches of the Abbaye. At
once an earthly paradise and a pandemonium was the time-honoured
annual market of St Germain des Prés, and in the midst of the madding
riot and confusion a great deal of serious business was transacted
among the merchants and foreign traders who came from afar to exhibit
their wares, as for centuries had been the custom, ever since
mediæval day, when church porches and convent gates were nearly the
only rendezvous for buying and selling.
Not absolutely accepting St Evrémond’s theory, Ninon and her cavalier
left the fair to walk homewards, little thinking that they were to
be confronted by the blood-chilling tale the pale lips of Madame
de Chevreuse poured hurriedly out to them from the window of her
carriage, which she called to a halt as they passed across the Pont
Neuf—a tale upon whose precise details the chronicles of the time
slightly differ, even to casting doubt upon it as a fact, though
the circumstances are no more than consonant with probability. The
beautiful but profligate Madame de Montbazon, it will be remembered,
had been sent by the queen, on account of her glaring attempts at
mischief-making, to reflect upon her misdeeds at Tours. It was held
that she would not find the punishment so tedious and unpleasant
as it might have been if M. l’Abbé de Rancé had not been in the
neighbourhood. He was her lover, and a most ardent one, constantly
by her side, but not to persuade her to penitence; on the contrary,
de Rancé was wild and profligate of life as the woman he adored. He
was brilliantly clever. At school he out-rivalled his class-fellow
Bossuet, and when but thirteen, he published an essay on the dignity
of the soul; and beneath his dissolute ways the gold of a conscience,
of which so many of the Courtly circle in which he moved seemed
absolutely devoid, often shone through. Armand Jean de Rancé was one
of an old and distinguished family, and he was only ten years old
when the Abbey of la Trappe in Normandy was bestowed on him.
The monastery of la Grand Trappe du Perche, said to have been so
named from its hidden position among the dense forests of the stormy
Norman headland, is of very ancient foundation. It was established in
the twelfth century by Robion, Comte du Perche. The brethren followed
the Cistercian rule, and for several centuries it was in high repute
for the sanctity of its community, and for its wealth, which was put
to its legitimate charitable uses. In course of time, like so many
other abbeys, it was given _in commendam_, and its pious repute fell
away to such an extent that the seven monks—all that remained in the
monastery—were called by the surrounding peasantry “the brigands of
la Trappe.” They were notorious for their evil-living, spending the
time in drinking and hunting; and shunned alike by men, women and
children, the Trappist monks were the terror of the district.
It was at this time that the child, Armand de Rancé, was made Abbé,
and affairs at la Trappe continued to fall from bad to worse. As
de Rancé grew up, among many benefices conferred on him, he was
appointed Almoner to the Duke of Orléans, and spent most of his
time in a whirl of dissipation in the Courtly circles in Paris. His
splendid entertainments, his magnificent house, the trappings of his
horses, especially those of the chase, were the talk of Paris, and
his daring intrigues startled even the licence indulged in by the
society he moved in. In this circle de Rancé specially singled out
the stepmother of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, Madame de Montbazon, a
woman as notorious for her profligacy and unscrupulous character as
she was physically beautiful.
After a time spent in banishment at Touraine, she had been permitted
to return to her Paris home, and de Rancé, who had been absent for a
short time, returning to Paris, hastened to call upon her. Arrived
at the house, he found it deserted, and passing in by an open door,
he hurried along the silent passages, calling for the servants and
upon her name, but there was no response. At last he reached the
door of her apartments, and rushing across the anteroom, he flung
aside the _portières_ of her bedchamber. An open, trestle-supported
coffin, across which a sheet lay carelessly flung, met his eyes, and
turning from it to the table close by, the decapitated head of Madame
de Montbazon confronted him. Momentarily he failed to recognise
the features of the ghastly object; for the face was blurred with
the ravages of smallpox. The fell disease had attacked Madame de
Montbazon, and she had died of it. The body and head were being
prepared for embalming, and for this end—or as some versions of the
tale tell, because the coffin had not been made long enough—the head
had been cut off, and placed upon the table.
The silent horror of this ghastly experience carried an eloquence
beyond all power of words to the heart of de Rancé. Swayed by a
revulsion of feeling, naturally sensitive and imaginative, he looked
back upon his past life with loathing. The hollowness of worldly
pleasures, and uncertainties of a worldly existence were yet still
more deeply impressed upon his mind, by a serious accident he
suffered in the hunting-field, and by the death of his patron, the
Duc d’Orléans. All seemed vanity.
De Rancé was at this time thirty-four years old. With the exception
of the ancient monastery of la Trappe, lost amid the wild forests
verging on the perilous rock-bound shores of extreme North-Western
Normandy, he divested himself of his property and possessions, and
went to take up his residence in la Trappe, endeavouring to establish
the old discipline in it. But the seven spirits he found there were
unruly, and had no mind for being disturbed. So entirely were they
opposed to the abbé’s reforms, that his life was in danger from them,
for they threatened to throw him into the fish-ponds; and Brigadier
Loureur, stationed at Mortagne, the nearest town of importance,
begged de Rancé to accept a guard of his soldiery; but de Rancé
decided that since the brigands of la Trappe had clearly less than
no vocation for the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they
were best entirely got rid of—and he pensioned them off and sent
them away, not in wrath, but in peace. Their place was filled by
Cistercian brethren of the strict observance.
The position of an abbé, or for that matter, an abbess in the ranks
of the Church, had long become an anomalous one. The relaxation of
the old rigid conventual ruling had wrought great changes. It was
not unusual to find some lady of a noble family appointed to the
nominal charge of a monastery, and some equally nobly-born gentleman
set over a community of nuns; and in either case, as likely as not,
they had no knowledge, or next to none, of the everyday mode of
life or working of such community. At the fair of St Germain the
abbés always swarmed thick as flies, in their short black habits
and delicate little linen bands, as where did they not congregate
in the society of the time? The salons of the Hôtel de Rambouillet
and other brilliant assemblies were dotted all over with them. They
were the makers of _petits vers_ and _bouts rimés_, and, if nothing
more, pretty well indispensable to the following of a fine lady as
_cavaliere serventis_. They were wont to make themselves generally
amusing and agreeable, everything, in short, but useful to the
spiritual needs of the Church in whose ranks they were supposed to
serve. They wore their vows too lightly for the Abbé de Rancé to
dream of exercising real authority in virtue of the title alone;
and he qualified himself for the dignity he intended to assume of
Superior of the monastery of la Trappe in Normandy—by entering as a
novice in the Cistercian Abbey of Persigny. This ended, he took the
vows, in company with a servant who was deeply attached to him, and
was confirmed abbot.
The order of strict Cistercian observance is rigid in the
extreme—almost utter silence, hard labour, total abstinence from
wine, eggs, fish, and any seasoning of the simple fare of bread and
vegetables. The earnestness and eloquence of de Rancé stirred the men
desirous of joining the brotherhood to such a deep enthusiasm, that
many of them wanted to take the full vows at once; but the Abbé of la
Trappe refused them this, lest they should not have truly counted the
cost of their sacrifice. And not only in this case, but in others the
famous reformer of the ancient monastery showed a singular judgment
and reasonableness in the ordering of his community. And “his works
do follow him”; for still as of old, hidden amid those dark forests,
though not far from the haunts of men, stands the Priory of Notre
Dame de Grâce de la Trappe, its brethren, spending their time not
given to devotion, in alms-giving and healing and acts of charity of
every kind.
In England, meanwhile, great if not unanticipated changes had
befallen. Oliver Cromwell was dead. He had passed away in comparative
peace in his bed. Had his days numbered even a few more, they might
have terminated in assassination, for deep-laid schemes for this were
hatching. The dreary Commonwealth was growing daily more displeasing,
and the English people were longing for the king to have his own
again. It was a day of joy indeed to Queen Henrietta Maria which saw
the progress of King Charles II. to London. She had some desire that
he should wed la Grande Mademoiselle, Gaston d’Orléans’ daughter; but
Mademoiselle nursed a hope of becoming the wife of her cousin, Louis
XIV., a hope that was not to be realised. Possibly, as Mazarin had
said, the Bastille cannonading had killed that husband; but after her
long wanderings she was again at Court, and in fair favour.
Louis XIV., without being strictly handsome, had agreeable features
and a fine presence, which his pride and self-consciousness knew very
well how to make the most of. He had grown from the mere youth into
a dignified, courtly young manhood, and the want of knowledge and
defective bringing up were fairly well concealed by “the divinity
which doth hedge a king.” It certainly always enfolded Louis XIV.
“Ah, my dear cousin,” cried Queen Christina of Sweden, when she first
saw him, “some one told me you were not good-looking! _Sacré-bleu!_”
she added, bestowing a sounding kiss on both of Louis’s cheeks, “if I
had the man who told that lie here, I would cut off his ears before
you!” and she still stood gazing admiringly at the king. So there
could be no further doubt about his attractive appearance; for Queen
Christina was accounted an unerring judge in such matters.