Madame de Sevigne.--Madame de Grignan.--Madame de Montespan at the
Carmelites.--Madame de la Valliere.--These Two Great Ruins Console One
Another.--An Angel of Sweetness, Goodness, and Kindness.
Fifteen or twenty days before the death of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, my
sister and I were taking a walk in the new woods of Versailles. We met
the Marquise de Sevigne near the canal; she was showing these marvellous
constructions to her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan. They greeted us
with their charming amiability, and, after having spoken of several
indifferent matters, the Marquise said to me: "We saw, five or six days
ago, a person, madame, of whom you were formerly very fond, and who
charged us to recall her to the memory of her friends. You are still of
that number,--I like to think so, and our commission holds good where you
are concerned, if you will allow it."
Then she mentioned to me that poor Duchesse de la Valliere, to whom I was
once compelled by my unhappy star to give umbrage, and whom, in my fatal
thoughtlessness, I had afflicted without desiring it.
Tears came into my eyes; Madame de Sevigne saw them, and expressed her
regret at having caused me pain. Madame de Thianges and I asked her if
my old friend was much changed. She and Madame de Grignan assured us
that she was fresh, in good health, and that her face appeared more
beautiful. On the next day I wished absolutely to see her, and drove to
the Carmelites.
On seeing my pretty cripple, who hobbled among us with so great a charm,
I uttered a cry, which for a moment troubled her. She sank down to
salute the crucifix, as custom demands, and, after her short prayer, she
came to me. "I did not mention your name to Mesdames de Sevigne," said
she; "but, however, I am obliged to them, since they have been able to
procure me the pleasure of seeing you once more."
"The general opinion of the Court, and in the world, my dear Duchess,"
answered I, "is that I brought about your disgrace myself; and the
public, that loved you, has not ceased to reproach me with your
misfortune."
"The public is very kind still to occupy itself with me," she answered;
"but it is wrong in that, as in so many other matters. My retirement
from the world is not a misfortune, and I never suspected that the soul
could find such peace and satisfaction in these silent solitudes.
"The first days were painful to me, I admit it, owing to the
inexpressible difference which struck me between what I found here and
what I had left elsewhere. But just as the eye accustoms itself, little
by little, to the feeble glimmer of a vault, in the same way my body has
accustomed itself to the roughness of my new existence, and my heart to
all its great privations.
"If life had not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and
inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at
length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy. But all that
will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end. I left you young,
beautiful, adored, and triumphant in the land of enchantments. But six
years have passed, and they assure me that your own afflictions have
come, and that you, yourself, have been forced to drink the bitter cup of
deprivation."
At these words, pronounced in a melancholy and celestial voice, I felt as
though my heart were broken, and burst into tears.
"I pity you, Athenais," she resumed. "Is, then, what I have been told
lightly, and almost in haste, only too certain for you? How is it you
did not expect it? How could you believe him constant and immutable,
after what happened to me?
"To-day, I make no secret to you of it, and I say it with the peaceful
indifference which God has generously granted me, after such dolorous
tribulations. I make no secret of it to you, Athenais; a thousand times
you plunged the sword and dagger into my heart, when, profiting by my
confidence in you, by my sense of entire security, you permitted your own
inclination to substitute itself for mine, and a young man seething with
desires to be attracted by your charms. These unlimited sufferings
exhausted, I must believe, all the sensibility of my soul. And when this
corrosive flame had completely devoured my grief, a new existence grew up
in me; I no longer saw in the father of my children other than a young
prince, accustomed to see his dominating will fulfilled in everything.
Knowing how little in this matter he is master of himself, he who knows
so well how to be master of himself in everything to do with his numerous
inferiors, I deplored the facility he enjoys from his attractions, from
his wealth, from his power to dazzle the hearts which he desires to move
and subdue.
"Recognise these truths, my dear Marquise," she added, "and gain, for it
is time, a just idea of your position. After the unhappiness I felt at
being loved no longer, I should have quitted the Court that very instant,
if I had been permitted to bring up and tend my poor children. They were
too young to abandon! I stayed still in the midst of you, as the swallow
hovers and flits among the smoke of the fire, in order to watch over and
save her little ones. Do not wait till disdain or authority mingles in
the matter. Do not come to the sad necessity of resisting a monarch, and
of detesting to the point of scandal that which you have so publicly
loved; pity him, but depart. This kind of intimacy, once broken, cannot
be renewed. However skilfully it may be patched up, the rent always
reappears."
"My good Louise," I replied to the amiable Carmelite, "your wise counsels
touch me, persuade me, and are nothing but the truth. But in listening
to you I feel overwhelmed; and that strength which you knew how to gain,
and show to the world, your former companion will never possess.
"I see with astonished eyes the supernatural calm which reigns in your
countenance; your health seems to me a prodigy, your beauty was never so
ravishing; but this barbarous garb pierces me to the heart.
"The King does not yet hate me; he shows me even a remnant of respect,
with which he would colour his indifference. Permit me to ask from him
for you an abbey like that of Fontevrault, where the felicities of
sanctuary and of the world are all in the power of my sister. He will
ask nothing better than to take you out, be assured."
"Speak to him of me," answered Louise; "I do not oppose that; but leave
me until the end the role of obedience and humility that his fault and
mine impose on me. Why should he wish that I should command others,--I
who did not know how to command myself at an epoch when my innocence was
so dear to me, and when I knew that, in losing that, one is lost?"
As she said these words two nuns came to announce her Serene Highness,
that is to say, her daughter, the Princesse de Conti. I prayed Madame de
la Valliere to keep between ourselves the communications that had just
taken place in the intimacy of confidence. She promised me with her
usual candour. I made a profound reverence to the daughter, embraced the
mother weeping, and regained my carriage, which the Princess must have
remarked on entering.