The Falling of the Leaves—Gallican Rights—“The Eagle of
Meaux”—Condé’s Funeral Oration—The Abbé Gedouin’s Theory—A
Bag of Bones—Marriage and Sugar-plums—The Valour of Monsieur
du Maine—The King’s Repentance—The next Campaign—La Fontaine
and Madame de Sablière—MM. de Port Royal—The Fate of Madame
Guyon—“Mademoiselle Balbien.”
And time passed on—passed on. The brilliant century was in its sere
and yellow leaf, and one of the best and most amiable of the glorious
band, le Nôtre, the gardener _par excellence_, faded and died, to the
great grief of Louis, who dearly loved his company, and would walk by
his chair in the garden of Versailles, when the invalid’s limbs had
failed him. Ninon keenly felt the loss of the kindly friend, who had
been one of the party to Rome with Santeuil—who had nearly missed
the papal benediction on his hymns, as he always believed, by his
witticisms about the carp. And now the good canon was to die, victim
of a practical joke on the part of the young Duc de Condé, who amused
himself with emptying the contents of his snuff-box into his guest’s
glass of champagne. Unawares, Santeuil drained the glass; and the
hideous concoction produced a fit of such convulsive sickness, that
he died of it. Bitterly enough Condé repented, but that did not bring
back his friend.
About the time that the zenith of Louis’s power was attained, when
his very name was uttered on the bated breath of admiration, hatred
and terror—and the yoke of the widow Scarron had not yet entangled
him—and while the Doge of Genoa was compelled by Duquesne to sue for
mercy at the feet of the French monarch—accused of complicity with
the pirates of the Mediterranean—the Court of Rome was compelled to
yield to the demands of the Church in France, in the matter of the
_régale_. This right, which had ever been the strength and mainstay
of religious Catholic independence in France, had fallen in later
days somewhat into abeyance; and when, some nine years earlier,
it had been put into active force again, the pope opposed it. To
establish it on a firm footing was the work of Bossuet, who set forth
and substantiated with the bishops of the dioceses of France the
existing constitution of the Gallican Church under the ruling of the
four famous articles: 1. That ecclesiastical power had no hold upon
the temporal government of princes. 2. That a General Council was
superior to the pope. 3. That the canons could regulate apostolical
power and general ecclesiastical usage. 4. That the judgment of the
Sovereign Pontiff is only infallible after the universal and general
consent of the Church.
The pope and the Court of Rome had no choice but finally to accept
these propositions; but unpalatable as they were, they came between
the worse evil threatening Catholic Unity, of a schism such as it had
suffered in England under Elizabeth and Henry.
The splendid gifts of Bossuet place his memory on a lasting and lofty
eminence, as it placed him, living, in distinguished positions,
Bishop of Meaux, preacher at the Louvre, preceptor to the Dauphin.
From his profound theological learning welled forth the splendid
eloquence which thrilled the vast assemblages flocking to drink in
his orations. One of the most magnificent among these was that at the
obsequies of the great Condé, beginning—
“Cast your gaze around; see all that magnificence and piety
has endeavoured to do, to render honour to the hero: titles,
inscriptions, vain records of what no longer exists, the weeping
figures around the tomb and fragile images of a grief which Time,
with all the rest, will bear away with it, columns which appear
to lift to high heaven their magnificent testimony to him who is
gone; and nothing is lacking in all this homage but him to whom it
is given.... For me, if it is permitted to join with the rest in
rendering the last duties beside your tomb, O Prince! noble and
worthy subject of our praise and of our regrets, you will live
eternally in my memory. I shall see you always, not in the pride of
victory ... but as you were in those last hours under God’s hand,
when His glory was breaking on you. It is thus I shall see you yet
more greatly triumphing than at Fribourg and at Rocroi.... And in
the words of the best-beloved disciple, I shall give thanks and
say—‘The true victory is that which overcometh the world—even our
faith.’”
A noble purity of spirit and deep conviction inspired Bossuet’s
eloquence. His knowledge was limited by his Jesuit training, though
he studied anatomy at a later period, by the king’s desire, in order
to instruct the Dauphin in the science; but with science generally
and physics he was unacquainted. As a Jesuit he was opposed to
Jansenism and the Port-Royalists; but for long the gentle piety of
Fénelon retained the respect and admiration of Bossuet’s more fiery
spirit. Both these great men gave instruction at St Cyr, by the
desire of Madame de Maintenon and the king.
Time must indeed have passed lightly by Ninon; for once again, at
the age of eighty years, she inspired a young abbé, named Gedouin—a
distant relative on the maternal side—with deep fervent admiration.
Ninon at first believed that he was jesting with her, and rebuked him
severely; but it was a very serious matter on his part, and though
she told him of her fourscore years, he declared that it in no way
altered his sentiments. “What of that?” he said; “wit and beauty
know nothing of age,” and the Abbé Gedouin’s pleading, which was not
in vain, terminated Ninon’s last _liaison_ with an affectionate and
endearing friendship. When he was rallied on his conquest, the abbé’s
rejoinder was that—
“Ah, mes amis, lorsqu’une tonne
A contenu d’excellent vin,
Elle garde un parfum divin
Et la lie en est toujours bonne.”
Monsieur de Lauzun, on the other hand, being now over sixty years
old, contracted a marriage with an English girl of sixteen. She
was so fearfully thin, that the Duc de St Simon, who was one of
Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ _cercle_, said de Lauzun might as well
have wedded all the bones of the Holy Innocents Cemetery, where the
skulls and bones were piled in pyramids.
St Simon was a delightful conversationalist. He was the son of the
old favourite of Louis XIII. He could be very caustic with his
anecdotes. One night he greatly amused the company with an account
of the marriage of the son of the Grand Dauphin, the little Duke of
Burgundy. He was of the tender age when ordinary and everyday little
boys are occasionally still liable to chastisement by their elders.
The duchess to be, who was still very fond of her doll, was presented
on the occasion by the Queen of England with a very elegantly trimmed
shift, handed to her by the maids of honour on a magnificently
enamelled tray. In this garment she was attired, while her youthful
husband, seated on a footstool, was undressed in the presence of the
king and of all the Court. The bride, being put to bed, the Duc of
Burgundy was conducted in and also put into bed, beside which the
Grand Dauphin then took his seat, while Madame de Lude took her place
beside the young duchess. Then sugar-plums were offered to the bride
and bridegroom, who cracked them up with the greatest enjoyment.
After about a quarter of an hour, the Duc was taken out of bed again,
a proceeding which appeared greatly to displease him, and he was led,
sulking enough, back to the antechamber, where the Duc de Berry, some
two years his junior, clapping him on the shoulder, told him he was
not a bit of a man. “If it had been me,” he added, “I should have
refused to get out of bed.”
The king imposed silence on the little rascal’s rebellious counsel,
and placed the bridegroom back into the hands of his tutors,
declaring that he would not permit him to so much as kiss the tips
of his wife’s fingers, for the next five years to come. “Then,
grandpapa,” demanded the little brother, “why have you let them be
married? It is ridiculous.” It was all certainly something like it.
After that the child was placed for his instruction in the care
of the Abbé de Fénelon, whose rapid advancement at Court had been
attained by his lofty character and talents.
But Louis had far more affection for his illegitimate children
than for these, and aided by Madame de Maintenon’s intrigues, he
finally succeeded in securing a large portion of the heritage of la
Grande Mademoiselle for the Duc du Maine and the Duc du Vendôme;
but the brave spirit of heroes and conquerors he could not endow
them with, for all his desire. It was to no effect that he confided
command to them of his troops in Holland. The Duc du Maine specially
undistinguished himself. Just as the enemy was escaping scot-free, he
found he was hungry, and asked for a cup of bouillon to strengthen
him. “Charge! Charge, Monseigneur!” urged Villeroy’s messenger,
coming to him in a fever of excitement.
“Oh, well, patience,” replied the warrior; “my wing is not in order
yet.”
Finding no sort of response to his repeated messages, Villeroy went
in search himself of the prince, and found him in his tent, at his
confessor’s knees. The first duty of a good Christian, he said,
was to make his peace at such times with Heaven. So the religious
discipline of his governess and stepmother, the widow Scarron and
Madame de Maintenon, had borne fruit. It was of a different flavour
from the prayer of the brave servant of King Charles I.—Sir Edmund
Verney—before Edgehill: “Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this
day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.” And there was no
battle won or lost that day on the Dutch frontier, and Louis, when
they brought to Versailles news of the enemy’s safe retreat, was at a
loss to understand the situation; for no one cared, or dared, to tell
him the truth, until Lavienne, his _valet-de-chambre_ in chief, in
the days of Louis’s amours, hazarded the observation that, after all,
proverbs could speak falsely, and that “Good blood _could_ lie;” and
then he went on to add the other truths concerning Monsieur du Maine.
In the face of the fulsome praise following in the journals—which
lied as only journals know how—the king was overwhelmed with grief
and chagrin; and, beside himself, he broke his cane in a fit of anger
on the back of one of an unlucky servant, whom he happened to detect
surreptitiously eating a bit of marchpane. This ebullition, creating
the consternation of all the Court, just sitting down to dinner,
brought Madame Louis Quatorze and Père la Chaise upon the scene.
“Parbleu, mon père,” said the king, gradually regaining his senses,
“I have just chastised a wretched creature who greatly merited it.”
“Ah!” gasped the confessor.
“And I have broken my cane on his back. Have I offended God?”
“No, my son, no,” replied the holy man. “It is merely that the
excitement may be harmful to your precious health.”
Fortunately the cane, being of slenderest rosewood, had easily
snapped.
Before the end of the next campaign, the redoubtable Duc du Maine
was recalled: d’Elbœuf hastened to say to him, making a profound
bow, “Have the goodness, Monseigneur, to inform me where you propose
entering on the next campaign.”
The duke turned, smiling, and extended his hand to d’Elbœuf, whose
ironical tones he had failed to perceive.
“Wherever it is,” added d’Elbœuf, “I should wish to be there.”
“Why?” demanded the duke.
“Because,” replied d’Elbœuf, after a silence, “at least one’s life
would be safe.”
Monsieur du Maine gave a jump, as if he had trodden on a serpent, and
went away without replying, not being better furnished with wit than
he was with valour.
And the autumn leaves of Ninon’s life were ever fast falling around
her. In her Château de Boulogne Madame de la Sablière passed away,
and la Fontaine, finding life a sad thing without her, quickly
followed her.
The Jesuit conception of religious faith, great as were its merits
as originated in the mind of Loyola, theoretically, and in its
code drawn up by his gifted successor, Lainez, had displayed its
imperfections in its practical working, as time passed. This was
more apparent in France even than elsewhere on the Continent; since
there papal authority was tempered by regulations which afforded
wider scope to thoughtful and devout minds ever occupied by the
problem of final salvation and its attainment.
“Two such opposed foes encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will,”
says Friar Lawrence, musing over his “osier cage,” of weeds and
flowers. There had been no time on Christian record that the question
had not exercised theologians, and when it had burnt into fuller
flame, fanned by the ardent soul of Luther, it spread through Europe
and was called the Reformation; but the spirit of it had been ever
present in the Church, and to endeavour to stamp out the Catholic
faith had, in Luther’s earlier days at all events, formed no part
of his desire. Yet scarcely had his doctrines formulated, than the
fanaticism and extravagance of the ignorant and irresponsible seized
upon them, and wrung them out of all size and proportion to fit their
own wild lusts and inclinations, “stumbling on abuse,” striving
to impose their levelling and socialistic views, and establish a
community of goods, and all else in common—even their wives, though
dispensing with clothing as a superfluity and a vanity displeasing
in Heaven’s sight. So Anabaptism ran riot in Germany under John of
Leyden and his disciples; while upon its heels Calvin’s gloomy and
hopeless tenets kept men’s minds seething in doubt and speculation
over grace and free-will, his narrow creed and private enmity
bringing Servetus to hideous and prolonged torture and death at the
stake, for heresy.
Stirred by the revolt of Protestantism on one side, and the claims
of Rome on the other, supported by the Jesuits, speculation gained
increased activity within the pale of the Catholic Church, animated
further by the writings of Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, whose theories
on grace and the efficacy of good works were grounded mainly on
the _viâ media_, and it was the following of his opinions by the
illustrious students gathered at Port Royal which created the school
of Jansenists that included such names as Fénelon, Pascal, and so
many others, headed by the Abbé Arnauld, whose sister Angélique was
the Superior of the convent of Port Royal, and whose father, the
learned advocate, had been so stern an opponent to the Jesuits as to
have caused their expulsion from France in the reign of Henri IV.
Readmitted later, they found as firm an opponent in his son, who,
when still quite young, wrote a brilliant treatise against the danger
of Jesuit casuistry.
The convent of Port Royal des Champs was situated on the road from
Versailles to Chevreuse, and hard by, in a farmhouse called La
Grange, “Messieurs de Port Royal,” as the Jansenist priests and
students were called, made their home. They had for their friends
the most distinguished men, scholars and poets of the time; Boileau,
Pascal, Racine were of the band. The place itself is now scarcely
more than a memory. It was then, wrote Madame de Sévigné, “_Tout
propre à inspirer le désir de faire son salut_,” and hither came many
a high-born man and woman of the world to find rest and peace. Now
a broken _tourelle_ or two, the dovecote and a solitary Gothic arch
reflecting in a stagnant pool, are all that remain in the sequestered
valley, of the famous Port Royal, which early in the next century was
destroyed by royal decree, when its glory had departed, following the
foreordained ruling of all mundane achievement; and the extravagance
of the _convulsionnaires_ and later followers of Jansenism was
stamped out by the bull “_Unigenitus_” against heresy.
Arnauld’s heart was deposited at Port Royal at his death, with the
remains of his mother and sisters. Louis XIV., as ever his wont had
been to genius and intellect, had invited him “to employ his golden
pen in defence of religion;” but that was before the great king
came under the direction of Madame de Maintenon and Père la Chaise.
But that Madame and her Jesuit confessor would long continue to
regard the Port-Royalists with favour was not possible. Intolerance
succeeded to patronage, and Fénelon was deported to Cambrai, sent
afar from his friend, Madame Guyon, whose order of arrest and
incarceration in the Château de Vincennes was issued very shortly
after Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ interview with Madame Louis Quatorze
in her Versailles sanctum.
In her dismay, Madame Guyon contrived to fly to Ninon, seeking
protection; but it was of no avail. Without a moment’s delay, Ninon
drove to Versailles, and sought an interview with Madame de Maintenon
on behalf of Madame Guyon. The interview was not accorded. Nanon—the
Nanon of Scarron days, but now “Mademoiselle Balbien”—was delegated
to speak with her.—“Mademoiselle Balbien,” who gave Ninon to
understand that she was to be addressed no longer as “_tu_” (“thou”),
but as “_vous_” (“you”), that the question of Madame Guyon could not
even be entered upon, and under threat of being herself again lodged
in the _Répenties_ she was bidden to depart.
Ninon was at first amazed at this strange reception and insolent
behaviour of mistress and maid. But she was not left long in
perplexity, since “Mademoiselle Balbien” permitted the truth to
escape her prim lips, that Madame de Maintenon had credited Ninon
with the design of introducing d’Aubigné into the boudoir in the
middle of that memorable interview, with the intention of disgracing
Madame in the estimation of the king. That Ninon was not made of the
stuff for this, it is almost superfluous to say. Any sins she might
have to answer for, did not include the hypocrisy with which Madame
de Maintenon had clothed herself about, and almost equally needless
is it to repeat that by no possible means the concealed presence of
the king could have been known by any but the two most immediately
concerned. It could be but a matter of their dual consciousness.
For six years Madame Guyon remained in prison. Monsieur Fénelon’s
_Maximes des Saints_ was condemned by the Court of Rome, and the
bigotry and hypocrisy ruling Versailles swelled daily.
Molière, alas! was no more, to expose the perilous absurdities
and lash them to extinction; but the comedy of _La Fausse Prude_,
produced some weeks later at the Italiens, was a prodigious success.
The world greatly enjoyed and admired the fitting of the cap,
built upon the framework supplied by one who had befriended and
sheltered under her own roof the forlorn young orphan girl, Françoise
d’Aubigné.