“In Durance Vile”—Molière’s _Mot_—_Le Malade Imaginaire_—“Rogues
and Vagabonds”—The passing of Molière—The narrowing
Circle—Fontenelle—Lulli—Racine—The little Marquis—A tardy
Pardon—The charming Widow Scarron—A Journey to the Vosges, and
the Haunted Chamber.
“One story is good till another is told.” The tangle of petty
vanities, lust of gold and mutual jealousies disgracing the Court of
Versailles at this time, might well have dragged Ninon de L’Enclos
into the hated durance of _Les Filles Répenties_, at the instigation
of the woman who at least was not the one to cast a stone. One fact
alone was indisputable: that there she was, and as certainly more
than one powerful friend at Court was sparing no endeavour to obtain
her release. Among these was Molière, the man of the generous, kindly
heart, who was not likely to forget the many bounteous acts and the
warm sympathy Ninon had extended to him throughout his career.
And to him it mainly was that she owed her release from the convent.
A representation by Molière and his company had been given at
Versailles of his new play, _Le Malade Imaginaire_, and the king,
on its conclusion, had sent for Molière in some anxiety; for it had
been evident to him that the actor was himself no imaginary invalid,
but suffering and exhausted with the exertion of his arduous _rôle_
of Argan. More than once of late his understudy, Croisy, had been
required to take his place; and the king expressed his sympathy and
his regret that Molière should have over-fatigued himself to afford
him gratification, for that his health was too precious to be trifled
with.
Molière replied that he would have striven to leave his very deathbed
to plead the cause he sought to win of His Majesty; and then he went
on to tell of Ninon’s captivity, of which the king appeared to be
ignorant. “It is, moreover, very absurd, Sire,” added Molière, “for I
assure your Majesty, that Ninon is neither _fille_ nor _répentie_.”
The king laughed at this view of the case, as did his minister
Colbert, who was seated near, and Molière, not losing sight of the
royal proclivity of promise-breaking, wasted not a moment in causing
the order vouchsafed for Ninon’s release, to be delivered in to the
Superior of the _Répenties_. Then a coach was sent for, the gates
were opened, and Ninon was free.
Full of gratitude for the favour which she had not so much as sought
of Molière, she hastened to his house. He was seated wearily in a
chair, but for the moment, in her joyful excitement, she did not
notice his appearance, more especially as he sprang up briskly to
meet her and to take her in his arms, while her tears fell fast,
assuring her that she had done him a world of good. Before she came
in he owned that he had been feeling unusually ill, and was about to
ask Croisy to take his place on the stage that evening; but now—“No,
I will play myself,” added Molière, and his pale cheeks flushed, and
his eyes gathered their wonted brightness and animation. “I will be
_Le Malade Imaginaire_ once more!”
Alas! once more. And a little while before the curtain fell for the
last time on the closing interlude, the word “_juro_,” several times
reiterated through the dialogue, came faintly on a stream of blood
from his lips, and the dying Molière was borne from the stage.
It was but the fulfilment of the apprehensions of his friends.
His lungs had been for some time affected, and he had broken a
blood-vessel. Already half-unconscious, they conveyed him homeward
to his house in the rue de Richelieu; but he fainted on the way, and
he was carried into the convent of St Vincent de Paul and laid on
a couch in the parlour, where, in sore distress, the good sisters
tended him, for he had frequently shown them much hospitality and
generous kindness, and in the arms of the two supporting him he
passed away. His half-inaudible dying request was for religious
consolation; but ere that came he was dead. The priest of St Eustache
did not hurry to attend a stage-player—the “rogue and vagabond”—for
what else in the sight of the law was this fine literary genius,
great philosopher and noble-hearted man? Neither was it the fault
of Monseigneur Harlay de Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris (“so
notorious,” writes the poet’s great biographer, “for his gallant
intrigues”) that he was denied Christian burial.
Molière’s young wife had not been a pattern of conjugal propriety;
but she revered her husband; and in her indignation at the
archbishop’s refusal, she cried—“They refuse to bury a man to whom
in Greece, altars would have been erected!” and asking the Curé
of Auteuil, whose views differed from the archiepiscopal ones, to
accompany her to Versailles, she found her way into the king’s
presence and demanded justice. “If my husband was a criminal, his
crimes were sanctioned by your Majesty in person,” she said. Louis’s
response was elusive, as it was apt to be in the face of difficult
questions. It was, he said, an affair of the archbishop’s; but he
sent secret commands to Monseigneur, which resulted in a compromise,
and the body of the dead poet was interred in the cemetery of St
Joseph, rue Montmartre, accompanied by two priests. But it was not
first admitted into the church, for he had died, as Monseigneur said,
“without the consolations of religion.”
“_A ministering angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling._”
Irresistibly the words of that other great dramatic genius force
themselves into the record of Molière’s laying to his long rest. It
was still only to be secured amid the riot of a rabble which, having
got wind of the dispute in high places, assembled outside the house
in the rue de Richelieu. The disgraceful uproar was quelled only by
Madame Molière throwing money, to a large amount, out of window. Then
the mob silenced down, and followed the simple cortège respectfully.
The widow of Molière subsequently married again; but his memory
must have remained warm in her heart; for some years later, during
a bitter cold winter, she had a hundred loads of wood conveyed to
the cemetery, and burned on the tomb of her husband, to warm all the
poor people of the quarter. “The great heat split in two the stone,
which was still to be seen cracked across the middle in the early
part of the eighteenth century.”[6] The Fontaine Molière, in the rue
de Richelieu, now commemorates the poet, and in the green-room of
the Comédie Française are the bust, and the portrait, by the painter
Coypel, of him who was practically the founder of the world-famous
institution. There were countless epitaphs on Molière, generated for
the most part, by the injustices done him in life as in death. The
following is accounted the most noteworthy:—
“Tu réformas et la ville et la cour;
Mais quelle en fut la récompense?
Les Français rougiront un jour
De leur peu de reconnaissance,
Il leur fallut un comédien
Qui mit à les polir, sa gloire et son étude.
Mais Molière, a ta gloire il ne manquerait rien,
Si, parmi les défauts que tu peignis si bien,
Tu les avais repris de leur ingratitude.”
P. BONHOURS.
And so the journey of her life, shadowed more and more by the
dropping away into the mists of death of so many of the well-loved
ones, Ninon’s own years fled on, still finding content in the
society of the many friends, young and old, not gone before.
Among these was Madame de la Sablière, with la Fontaine ever in
attendance; Marsillac, the comrade of Ninon’s youth—now the Duc de
la Rochefoucauld—with his _Maxims_, which she keenly criticised,
as based on the philosophy of self-love: that self only was the
motive power of human thought and action; Corneille, growing old,
and preferring his latest tragedy of _Surène_ to the immortal _Cid_,
a preference shared by few; with him came his nephew, Fontenelle,
the brilliant scholar and centenarian to be, short of a few weeks,
who on his deathbed said—“My friends, I do not suffer; only I find
existence a little difficult,” and who followed the _viâ media_
philosophy so closely, that he was wont to boast he never either
laughed or wept. Then Ninon would tune her lute, and play the airs
of the new musical conductor of the king’s orchestra, Lulli, the
miller’s son, a scullion once, risen to be master of French dramatic
music, who met his death so disastrously from the bungling treatment
of a quack doctor. The priest who attended his last hours refused
to give him the consolations of religion until he had consented to
have the score of his latest opera destroyed. He consented, to the
indignation of a friend who was with him. “Hush, hush!” said Lulli;
“there is a fair copy of it in my drawer.”
Sometimes Racine, a neighbour now of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, would
declaim passages from his _Iphigénie_, or Madame de la Fayette would
read from her history of Henrietta of England, just then on point
of completion. She and Madame Montausier were Ninon’s sincerest and
best-beloved friends. One day Madame de la Fayette asked her the
cause of the coolness existing between herself and Madame de Sévigné.
It was a coolness all on one side, shrugged Ninon. To be sure, she
had the young Marquis de Grignan, Madame’s grandson, at her feet—as
in times gone by, the Marquis _père_, and the Marquis _grandpère_ had
sighed there. She inclined, however, to his marrying as his mother
desired, all the more that, besides entertaining no overwhelming
admiration for the little marquis, she was jealous of his worshipping
also at the shrine of the great tragic actress, la Champmeslé,
who had rendered herself so famous in the _Andromaque_ of Racine.
The poet had introduced de Sévigné to the _tragédienne_, to whom
Ninon conceded talent, but no beauty. The affair came to an amiable
conclusion, and while a reconciliation was effected between Ninon
and la Champmeslé, she concluded a peace with Madame de Sévigné,
esteeming her friendship above the folly and trifling of her grandson.
To effect this treaty of peace, she was conducted to the house of
Madame de Sévigné by their mutual friend, Madame de la Fayette.
The physical personal attraction of the queen of epistolary
correspondence has been many times recorded; but the critical
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos does not allow her any great claims to it.
Her nose was long and sharp, with wide nostrils, and her countenance
generally had something of a pedantic stamp. Still, Ninon’s opinion,
while Madame de Sévigné’s portrait of her by Mignard exists at Les
Rochers, needs not to be accepted as final, and she hastens to speak
of her manner, at once so dignified and courteous. She went so far,
in discussing Ninon’s _liaison_ with young de Sévigné, as to say that
her objection was mainly rooted in the fear that her son’s attachment
to her would endure and hinder his desire for marriage, for which
Madame de Sévigné herself was so anxious. As things went, de Sévigné
soon after took to himself a wife, and Ninon gained a friend, who
became a frequent guest at the _réunions_ of the rue des Tournelles.
Profiting by Madame Scarron’s favour at Court, Ninon sought to obtain
the king’s pardon for her old friend, St Evrémond; this was accorded.
St Evrémond, however, did not return to France. He found the land of
his exile a pleasant Patmos, and the Court of Whitehall, where he
had won troops of friends, more congenial than Versailles, and he
never crossed the Channel again, but lived his span of life, lengthy
as Ninon’s; and his resting-place is among the great in Westminster
Abbey.
“Carolus de Saint Denis, Duc de St Evrémond.
Viro Clarissimo
Inter Præstantiores
Aloi Sui Scriptores
Semper Memorando
Amici Marantes.
P. P.”
The golden link of their correspondence henceforth was alone to hold
together the names of Ninon de L’Enclos and Henri de St Evrémond.
Madame Arnoul was regarded by Ninon with scant favour. She held her
for a sort of _âme damnée_ of Madame Scarron, an adventuress, who
played her cards well, so skilfully indeed, that her prognostications
seemed more and more surely finding realisation. The Montespan’s
temper did not improve with time, and the placid demeanour of the
royal governess was a great attraction to Louis, who would come
oftener, and stay longer in his visits to the children. Moreover, he
found great charm in her conversation. Ninon, who could not remain
blind to these indications, and was ready to go great lengths to
bring about de Montespan’s disgrace, disliking Madame Arnoul as she
did, was not above lending herself to forward any scheme to that
end, even though it originated in Madame Arnoul’s fertile brain;
and one sufficiently daring did presently find birth there. For the
service she had rendered Ninon conjointly with Molière, in freeing
her from the durance of the _Répenties_, Madame Arnoul had claimed
of her a _quid pro quo_ at some future time. That time, she said,
when she called upon her some few weeks later, was now, for putting
the finishing strokes to the downfall of the favourite—if that
de Montespan could still be designated—and Ninon was to be the
instrument for this. She was, in the first place, to disguise herself
as a man. So far, nothing easier, said Ninon—was it not to do what
she had done so many a time?—and that small matter arranged, she and
Madame Arnoul set out for the frontiers, where the king was about to
go with all his Court to meet Turenne, who had been waging victorious
war against the combined forces of Spain and Austria, waxing ever
more alarmed at, and jealous of, the successes of Louis XIV.
Arrived in Lorraine, the two ladies travelled to Nancy, reaching the
town a day or so before the royal cortège arrived, Madame Arnoul
having acquired the knowledge of the exact route it was to take.
From Nancy, the two women proceeded to Luneville, and thence onward
into Alsace, and far into the very heart of the Vosges, where they
slept on the first night, in a little hamlet called Raon l’Étape.
The next day they reached St Dié, a pretty little town, one day,
said the terrible tradition, to be crushed by the falling of the
huge precipice of l’Ormont; and to avert this catastrophe annual
processions were made; but l’Ormont stands somewhat back from the
area of St Dié, and if it fell, it would probably be short of the
town. Moreover, what is St Dié but the gift of God?—_Dieudonné_
hedged about by the memory of its founder, the assassinated Childéric
II.
Faring on by narrow, half-impassable roads, winding on the verge of
rugged precipices, through dense pine-forests, whose close network
of branches almost hid the sky, they reached St Marie-aux-Mines,
a town forming part of the appanage of the Prince Palatine of
Birkenfeld. It lies cradled between two pine-clad mountains, watered
by innumerable limpid rivulets, meandering in all directions. There
Ninon and Madame Arnoul halted for dinner, whose excellence was much
below par of the natural attractions of the place; but Madame Arnoul
consoled her companion with the information that some few leagues
more would bring them to their journey’s end, and the place where the
mysterious proceedings indicated were to be carried out. And next day
they arrived in the neighbourhood of Ribeauvillé, and Ninon found
herself in a magnificent château belonging to the brother-in-law of
the Prince Palatine. This personage was, however, absent, and in
his place the two ladies were received by the high steward, who,
Madame Arnoul afterwards explained, was the cousin of the king’s
_valet-de-chambre_, whom she had enlisted into her project, and she
handed the steward a letter from this relative.
Having perused the letter, he redoubled his courtesies; but evidently
under the influence of extreme perturbation, which he strove to
cover by silence. The letter he thrust into his pocket without any
reference to its contents; unless a slight shrug of his shoulders
meant anything.
At supper, of which he did the honours, Madame Arnoul asked him why
he had not spoken of the famous Chamber of Phantoms the château
contained. The steward started like a guilty thing half off his
chair, and asked Madame Arnoul if indeed she entertained the
dangerous fancy to—to sleep, save the mark!—in that terrible room,
as his cousin, had written him. He knew his cousin, of course, to be
an idiot, but—but no, the idea was not to be contemplated. Anyone
insane enough to spend a night in that awful apartment would be found
a strangled corpse in the morning.
Madame laughed, and replied that she did not believe in ghosts; that
she and her husband had laid a heavy bet on the point of sleeping in
the haunted chamber, and surely Monsieur would not be the cause of
their losing it.
With a pale face and slow steps, the major-domo went out to order a
bed, and other preparations to be made in the room, for Madame and
her husband—Ninon enacting that _rôle_ in her masculine attire; and
shortly after the two retired for the night, conducted to the door
of the apartment by the pale-faced, agitated steward. No sooner were
they alone than Madame Arnoul proceeded to make a close inspection of
the wainscotted walls. Presently an exclamation of delight escaped
her. “See here,” she cried, and slipping her hand inside the gaping
jaws of a hideous, reptile-like monster, carved in the woodwork of
a panel just beside the bed, she pressed a knob in its throat, and
the panel slid aside into a groove, disclosing beyond a much larger
chamber, luxuriously furnished, and bearing evidence of being ready
prepared for an occupant—“No less a person than His Majesty, Louis
XIV.,” explained Madame Arnoul, as she crossed the room towards the
splendid Carrara marble chimneypiece supported at the corners by
cherubim. Into the ear of one of them Madame put her finger, with the
result of again sending open the panel, which, not a little to the
nervous terror of Ninon, had closed behind them. The walls of this
great State chamber were covered with gilded russia leather, which
entirely concealed the movable panel between the rooms. Madame Arnoul
laughingly began to reassure her disturbed companion. “It was quite
true,” she said, “that a great many persons had been found dead from
strangulation in that smaller chamber, some century earlier; but the
ghosts were not responsible.” The guilt lay with the then lord of the
manor, the Comte de Ribeauvillé, who, ruined by debauch and gambling,
enticed rich passing travellers to spend the night in his castle,
lodged them in this bedchamber, and stealing in by the secret ways
during the night, strangled and robbed his unfortunate guests. While
Madame Arnoul told her tale, there was a knock at the door of the
apartment, and the baggage of the two travellers was brought in and
deposited on the floor. When they were alone again, Madame Arnoul,
opening one of the trunks, drew forth a magnificent robe of brocade,
a _cordon bleu_, and a small medallion locket, containing the
portrait of Anne of Austria. Leading Ninon to a mirror, she placed
the locket in her hands, and bade her compare her own countenance
with that of the dead queen. A few touches here and there, a little
filling out with stuffing, and Ninon would be the very double of the
queen: Louis himself could not know them apart.
Some sort of light broke in upon Ninon. Was she to be the ghost of
Anne of Austria? Just that; but Ninon shook her head. It would be
simply profanation. “Not in such a good cause,” smiled Madame Arnoul.
“Not if it had the effect of terrifying the king into dismissing
Madame de Montespan. It would be a most meritorious act, that.”
Ninon’s heart rose. “But if we should be found out?” she said.
“Trust me,” smiled Madame Arnoul, and in a few moments she was
sleeping the sleep that only the innocent and travel-tired know, in
the great terrible bed of the haunted chamber.
At five o’clock in the morning there was a tap at the door. The
steward had sent to inquire whether the night had been passed
undisturbed. Madame Arnoul replied that nothing could have been more
comfortable.
The Court arrived next day, and Louis XIV., greatly fatigued with the
long journey, retired to bed at nine o’clock. Then began the royal
toilette of Ninon. It was a work of time, for Ninon’s figure called
for considerable expansion, and her brown hair needed golden tints.
These details achieved with consummate art, she donned the brocade
gown and embroidered satins, and crowned the work with the _cordon
bleu_. All being ready, Madame pressed the knob in the griffin’s
throat. The panel fell apart, and the deceased queen, Anne of
Austria, appeared in the king’s chamber.
His Majesty was in a deep sleep, and Ninon glided majestically to the
bedside, lighted by the brilliant but somewhat quivering brilliancy
of a phosphorescent torch which Madame Arnoul waved through the open
panel.
Then Ninon laid her cold hand, half congealed by immersion for a
length of time in iced water, upon the arm of Louis, and he awoke
with a start, and sitting up, stared with haggard, terrified gaze at
the apparition.
“My mother!—my mother!” he gasped, in fear-suffocated tones.
Laying her finger on her lips, Ninon placed on the table, beside the
bed, a paper, and pointing down on it, with a terrible frown on her
brows, she glided backwards till she reached the panel, where she was
lost in the gloom of the night, as Madame Arnoul extinguished the
torch.
It was a hazardous game, and Ninon was half-dead with terror at its
conclusion. Louis was, if possible, still more terrified; and as the
two women stood listening in the Chamber of the Phantoms, they heard
through the not quite closed panel the voice of their accomplice,
Louis’s _valet-de-chambre_, inquiring in agitated tones what ailed
him.
The king could only articulate a command for a light, and by it he
read the terrible warning against his courses of life, written by
Madame Arnoul, who had feared that Louis would detect the fraud
if Ninon had spoken her message. The forgery was perfect in its
imitation of the queen’s handwriting, a piece of which Madame Arnoul
had contrived to procure, and it ran as follows:—
“SIRE,—Heaven is wrath at your disorderly life. Two mistresses,
publicly acknowledged, shed on your kingdom a scandal which must
be put an end to; above all, that one which violates the vows of
marriage, and renders you guilty of twofold adultery. Heaven has
permitted me to communicate this to you myself. This paper, which
I leave in your hands, I beg you to read, my son; weigh well each
word; it will prove to you, when I have disappeared, that you have
not been the victim of an illusion. Repent, Sire, and do not force
the dead to leave their tombs any more.
ANNE OF AUSTRIA.”
Ninon did not close an eye all night. What if returning sense brought
any suspicion of the deception into Louis’s mind? He would order the
adjoining rooms to be searched, and those lodged in them; and if the
deceased queen’s attire should be found in the valises of Madame
Arnoul—Ah! it was terrible to think of! And no sooner day broke,
than the two packed up their baggage, and cleared away from the
Château of Ribeauvillé, not very easy in their minds till they were
safe again in Paris, where they had not been especially missed during
the few days’ absence, and they preserved a golden silence upon their
romantic adventure in the far-off Vosges.