THE FOUNDRESS OF CHAILLOT
No cruell guard of diligent cares, that keep
Crown'd woes awake; as things too wise for sleep.
But reverent discipline, and religious fear,
And soft obedience, find sweet biding here;
Silence, and sacred rest; peace and pure joyes;
Kind loves keep house, ly close, make no noise,
And room enough for Monarchs, where none swells
Beyond the kingdomes of contentfull Cells.
R. CRASHAW (out of Barclay)
There is a portion of Henrietta's life which stands apart from its general
current, which seems, indeed, rather an acted commentary on her career than
an integral portion of it: when she retires from the schemes, the passions,
the loves, and the hates of the world, and, laying aside the trappings of
her rank, appears as a humble and sorrowful woman, striving to read, by the
light of prayer and meditation, the lesson of her stormy days. The Queen of
England is gone, and in her stead is seen the foundress of Chaillot.
The temper which produced this fruit must long have been growing up, but it
became active and apparent when the great blow of her life came upon her.
While she was a wife, even a wife separated by evil fortune from her
husband, she continued to live, as far as her straitened means permitted,
in a manner suitable to her rank, and she did not refuse to take part in
the splendid amusements of Paris, which were congenial to her gay
disposition. She was seen at lotteries and dances; she accepted the feasts
and dinners which the French royal family offered in her honour. Her
attendance was as brilliant as her fallen fortunes would allow of, and her
faded beauty was set off to the best advantage by the beautiful dress which
was then worn by ladies of rank.
But with the death of Charles all this was changed. She ceased to accept
invitations, and she rarely went abroad into the streets of Paris, except
to visit some religious house. In her own house the strictest simplicity
was used. Most of the maids of honour were dismissed, and the Queen
exchanged her silks and jewels for a mourning robe, which she wore to the
end of her life.
Her love of dress had been as great as might have been expected of a woman
of her beauty, her rank, and, above all, her nationality. Once in her early
married life she expressed great pleasure in a magnificent gown studded
with jewels which she was wearing. Her confessor, the stern Bérulle, who
was present, reproved her somewhat sharply for her vanity and frivolity.
"Ah, mon père, do not be angry with me," pleaded the young Queen, half
laughing and half penitent. "I am young now, but when I am forty I will
change all this, and become quite good and serious." Her light words were
prophetic, for she was in her fortieth year when she became a widow.
Contemporary prints show of what fashion was her widow's dress. It was of
some black stuff made quite plainly, except that the bodice was shaped to a
point in front, and it was almost high at the neck; the only relief was a
white linen collar, falling down over the shoulders, and matching the
cuffs, which turned back over the wide sleeves. From the head fell a long,
heavy black veil.
This sorrowful garb was the outward expression of a grief which, like most
deep grief, craved the consolation of quiet and retirement. And where, in
the Paris of that day, could quiet be found, except within the protecting
walls of a religious house?
Henrietta, since her return to Paris in 1644, had frequented the Carmelite
convent which her childhood loved, and in her first sorrow she would gladly
have forsaken the world altogether, and remained there among the nuns;[402]
but her duties were incompatible with this step. Her young sons required
her help to restore their shattered fortunes, and, above all, her youngest
daughter needed a mother's care; after her husband's death her worldly
occupations increased rather than diminished, and it was these occupations
which cost her the loss of her calm retreat among the Carmelite nuns.
The daughters of S. Teresa are vowed to an austere separation from all
things worldly, and their rule could not brook the constant coming and
going, the noise and the disturbance which waited upon a Queen who was also
a politician. They were obliged to request the Queen of England to forgo
her visits, and she, however sorrowfully, recognized the justice of their
desire and withdrew, to seek another retirement more suited to the
conditions of her case.
A hasty glance at a map of seventeenth-century Paris will show the great
number of religious houses which then existed, and it might be surmised
that to make a choice among them would be no easy matter; but Henrietta's
circumstances were peculiar, and she had little difficulty in selecting the
one most fitted to them.
[Illustration: HENRIETTA MARIA
FROM AN ENGRAVING]
Some forty years earlier the wise and gentle spirit of S. Francis de Sales
had conceived the idea of a religious foundation in which women, delicately
nurtured and well educated, might live in greater freedom of spirit and
less austerity of body than in the older Orders. He was fortunate enough to
find a woman[403] capable of translating his ideas into fact, and the Order
of the Visitation flourished exceedingly, and by the middle of the
seventeenth century had spread all over France.
Paris was naturally one of the first places to which the new Order came.
The community, which boasted that it had once been ruled over by Mother
Chantal herself, after some wanderings finally settled down in the Rue S.
Antoine, within a stone's-throw of the grim fortress of the Bastille.
Though the tide of fashion had set definitely westward since the final
abandonment of the Place Royal by Louis XIII, the position was still a good
one. Next door was the fine Hôtel de Mayence, which still stands as a
witness of departed glories, but of the convent nothing remains except the
church, which, though but small, was considered in the seventeenth century
"one of the neatest in all Paris."[404] Madame de Motteville was the means
of introducing this convent to Henrietta's notice. Her own young sister, to
whom she was tenderly attached, had lately entered the house as a novice,
greatly against her wishes; but in her visits to the girl she had been so
won by the piety and kindness of the nuns that she begged the Queen of
England to make their acquaintance.
Henrietta was not without solicitation to go elsewhere. "Messieurs de Port
Royal," those remarkable men whose doings were causing such a stir in the
religious world of France, were anxious that she should come to Port Royal,
thinking perhaps to strengthen their position by so direct a connection
with royalty. They offered her apartments, and, what must have been more
tempting, some much-needed money. But the invitation was not accepted,
though the reasons for its refusal are unknown. They may, however, be
conjectured, for it is difficult to imagine Henrietta, the true daughter of
Henry IV, in the repressive atmosphere of Jansenism, and it may be surmised
that had she entered Port Royal she would not have remained there long.
The Rue S. Antoine was more attractive.[405] Henrietta retained a childish
and pleasing memory of S. Francis himself, who, at the marriage of
Christine of France, had come up to the little Princess, then aged about
ten, and, according to his wont, "blending piety and politeness," had
assured her that one day she should receive even greater honours than those
now offered to her sister, honours which perhaps his experienced eye could
see from her expression she was envying with all her childish heart. She
recalled his words when she became Queen of England, and later still she
read into them a deeper meaning when she felt herself to be the recipient
of the honours of unusual suffering. But this link with the remote past was
probably of less interest to her than the presence in the convent of a
lady, destined to become her dearest personal friend, whose romantic story
must be told if one of the strongest influences on Henrietta's later years
is to be appreciated.
Louise de la Fayette was the daughter of one of the noblest houses of
Auvergne, and she bore a name which was to be renowned in the history of
France. She had a childish taste for the cloister, but when she was about
fourteen years of age, her uncle, who was then Bishop of Limoges, presented
her to Queen Anne, who received her as one of her maids of honour.
Louise was a beautiful girl, and she possessed besides many charms and
accomplishments, of which a sweet singing voice was not the least. She
quickly made her mark at Court; but, if her biographers are to be believed,
she retained her simple, pious spirit, and preferred remaining quietly in
her room to direct attendance upon her royal mistress, whose jealousy,
indeed, was soon aroused by the unusual interest shown in the girl by her
husband.
The relations between Louis XIII and his wife were, as is well known, most
unsatisfactory; but at the same time the King was a man of slow passions
and of a certain dull virtue. He liked the society of pretty women, but
while he loaded his favourites with honours and confidences, which must
have cut Anne's proud spirit to the quick, he was usually strictly Platonic
in his intercourse with them. To this position he elected Louise de la
Fayette. She danced for him, sang for him, talked to him, and every day
seemed to increase the spell which her vivacity cast over his slow spirit.
But other eyes were watching her. In the French Court of that time all
depended upon the frown or smile of Richelieu, who himself was ever on the
watch to gain valuable allies. He marked Louise de la Fayette, and
determined to enlist her in his army of spies.
But in this case the Cardinal had reckoned without his host. Louise was
only a young girl, but she had a spirit capable even of resisting
Richelieu. "She had more courage than all the men of the Court,"[406] wrote
Madame de Motteville. She refused to pass on the secrets of the King, or to
play in any way into the hands of his minister, whose jealous anger was
aroused and who determined to part her from her royal friend.
It is not surprising that in these circumstances the girl's mind should
have reverted to her old wishes for a conventual life, but there was
another reason, which, long after, in the safe retreat of Chaillot, she
confessed to her friend Madame de Motteville. Louis was a virtuous man, but
he was an unloved and unloving husband, and she was young and beautiful.
There were signs that the Platonic friendship was ripening into something
stronger and warmer. Louise became alarmed. That which to many women was an
honour, to her pure and upright soul was disgrace unspeakable, and she
determined to fly to the only refuge which the times and the circumstances
permitted her, and to bury her sorrows and her temptations within the walls
of the cloister.
It was hard to persuade the King to part with her, but she had a powerful
ally. Richelieu sent for the royal confessor, Father Caussin, the Jesuit,
and in the bland tones which he knew so well how to use, he gravely
discussed with him the moral dangers of such a friendship as that which
existed between Louis and his wife's maid of honour. Not, he hastened to
add, that he believed that any harm was done, but such things were always
dangerous. The Cardinal thought that he was exactly adapting his remarks to
his audience; but Caussin, who hated and distrusted him, was too acute to
be taken in, and had events gone no farther Louise de la Fayette might have
remained in the world for Father Caussin. But the girl herself, who had
better reason than any one to know the truth of Richelieu's words, and
whose own heart was beginning to betray her, sought the Jesuit's advice. At
first he was a little rough with her. He did not believe that a girl of
seventeen, luxuriously brought up and petted like "a bird of the Indies,"
could really desire to embrace the austerities and abnegations of a
conventual life. He hinted that she was piqued by the refusal of the King
to grant her some request, or that her self-love had been wounded in one of
the little contretemps of Court life. Louise answered gently and quietly.
Nothing had occurred to distress or alarm her in any way. The King's
kindness was unchanged, and so great that at any time he would enable her
to make a splendid marriage; but she had only one desire, and that was to
leave the world. Caussin then pointed out to her the hardness of the
cloister for a girl brought up as she had been, but her answer again was
ready. She was not thinking of a stern Order, for which she knew her health
to be unequal; she wished to enter among the Visitandines, or Filles de
Sainte Marie, as they were more commonly called, whose rule was expressly
framed for gently nurtured and delicate women. The only regret she would
carry away with her, she added, with an irresistible touch of human nature,
was the knowledge that her retirement from the Court would give pleasure to
Cardinal Richelieu.
By these arguments Caussin was won over, but the King still had to be
reckoned with. Louis, however, was superstitiously religious, and pressed
at the same time by his confessor, by the Cardinal, and by Louise, he was
unable to resist. The day of departure arrived; the girl went off gay and
smiling, though her heart was sinking, so that when she thought no one was
looking she crept aside to catch a last glimpse of the man she loved; but
many of the bystanders were in tears, and even Queen Anne was grave and
sympathetic. As for the King, his voice was so broken by grief that he
could scarcely whisper the words of farewell, and afterwards his misery was
so excessive and so prolonged as to give colour to the suspicions that had
been abroad. He could not bear to remain in the place which had witnessed
his idol's departure, and he fled to Versailles, at that time a small
hunting-box, where he remained for some time plunged in the deepest
melancholy.[407]
Louise de la Fayette's retirement from the world caused a great sensation
in Paris, and the convent in the Rue S. Antoine became a place of
fashionable resort, so that Richelieu began to fear that the nun's
influence might be as dangerous as that of the maid of honour. He remarked
with great unction that he thought it a pity that the religious life should
be thus broken in upon; and as the nuns and the young novice were of the
same opinion, the number of visitors decreased. But the King could not be
refused. He was anxious to see Louise once more before her bright beauty
was shrouded by the religious habit; and in this wish he was supported by
Caussin, who still hoped to use her as a political ally. One day Louis
arrived quite unexpectedly in the Rue S. Antoine and knocked at the door of
the convent. He refused to avail himself of an invitation to enter the
enclosure, but across the dividing grill he held a long and eager
conversation with the young girl, feasting his eyes the while upon the face
which there is reason to think he never saw again. Meanwhile, the Mother
Superior, with commendable discretion, retired to as great a distance as
conventual propriety would permit, and the King's attendants on the other
side did the like. Shortly after this visit Louise put on the religious
habit, and when the necessary interval had elapsed the irrevocable vows
were taken. The King refused to be present at the profession, but a large
company of the Court attended the ceremony, including Queen Anne, who
witnessed, doubtless with triumph in her heart, the self-immolation of her
innocent rival.
Louise de la Fayette had spent many quiet years in her convent when
Henrietta first visited it in 1651.[408] She had won the respect of all the
community, and she had been honoured by the special notice of Mother
Chantal. "This girl will be one of the great superiors of our Order," said
the aged saint. It is not probable that she and the Queen of England had
met in the past, but her story cannot have been unknown to the sister of
Louis XIII, and when the introduction was made by Madame de Motteville,
acquaintance ripened at once into friendship. There was much in the nun's
story to arouse the Queen's sympathy, for was not Louise de la Fayette one
more of the victims of Richelieu?
Henrietta was received in the Rue S. Antoine with the respect due to the
blood of Henry IV, and with the affectionate sympathy which her sorrows
called forth, particularly from the superior,[409] a wide-minded woman who
had been educated as a Protestant, and who perhaps in consequence had
followed with special interest the course of events in England. But though
such difficulties as had arisen among the Carmelites were not likely to
occur in a convent of the Visitation, yet, from the scantiness of the
accommodation, it was difficult to receive a royal lady for more than very
short visits, and the position of the house in the centre of Paris rendered
it rather unsuitable for such retirement as the Queen sought. Besides, her
heart yearned for something that would be more truly her own. Other royal
ladies had made religious foundations. Her mother had had her Carmelites,
her sister-in-law had her beautiful Val de Grace. Might not she also become
the foundress of a house which should shelter her while living, and cherish
her memory and pray for her soul after her death? It happened that just at
this time one of the principal nuns had the similar desire to extend the
Order by the foundation of a daughter house. Helène Angélique Lhulier was
no ordinary woman. In the heyday of her youth and beauty, "when she was the
most attached to the world, and the most sought by several persons of the
first quality," she left all at the bidding of S. Francis de Sales, who
wrote her the following short and pithy note: "My daughter, enter religion
immediately, notwithstanding all the oppositions of nature." Her force of
character was remarkable, and particularly her strength of will, which, it
was said, enabled her to do things which appeared impossible. All her
courage and tenacity were called forth by this new enterprise, to which,
learning of Henrietta's desire, she determined to devote herself. Indeed,
the obstacles in the way seemed insurmountable. The house in the Rue S.
Antoine was far from rich, and it had recently made a settlement in the
Faubourg S. Jacques, which had exhausted its resources. The Queen of
England was known to be in no position to give monetary help, and to
complete the difficulties the Archbishop of Paris looked very coldly upon
the scheme.
But Henrietta's friends were determined that she should have the interest
and consolation on which she had set her heart. Mother Lhulier and Mother
de la Fayette, whom the Queen hoped to see the true foundation-stones of
the new edifice, were untiring in their efforts, and Queen Anne showed
herself on this, as on many other occasions, a real friend to her widowed
sister-in-law. The decision was so far made that Henrietta, though she had
no money, and no prospect of money, set about the agreeable task of finding
a home for the new community.
The Queen went hither and thither looking at properties which were in the
market, but none pleased her so much as that which had belonged to her old
friend the Marshal de Bassompierre, who was recently dead. This beautiful
mansion, which had been built by Catherine de' Medici and honoured more
than once by the presence of Richelieu, stood in one of the best positions
in the immediate environs of the city, on rising ground overlooking the
Seine, and commanding magnificent views of the surrounding country. It was
approached by the leafy Cours la Reine, the most fashionable promenade in
Paris, where on summer evenings as many as eight hundred coaches might be
counted, and though the house and grounds were in the village of Chaillot,
the Faubourg de la Conférence had crept up so that the two almost joined.
To the charms of nature were added those of art. Bassompierre was one of
the most accomplished men of his time, and he so lavished the resources of
his ample means and of his refined taste upon his favourite residence, that
it became one of the sights of Paris, and as such was visited by John
Evelyn, who came away delighted with the "gardens, terraces, and rare
prospects,"[410] which he beheld there. Since the death of the owner the
house had fallen on evil days. Bassompierre's heir, the Count de Tillières,
was unable to take possession of the property, and it became a place of
very evil fame, the resort of lewd persons, who defiled its stately halls
and fair walks with scenes of shameless revelry.
Henrietta was always rapid in her decisions, and she speedily made up her
mind that here and nowhere else was the dwelling-place which would at once
furnish an ideal convent for the religious and a pleasant retirement for
herself. She hurried back to the Rue S. Antoine and carried off two of the
nuns to inspect the house. They found it indeed most beautiful, and their
only scruple was that it was too fine and inconsistent with their vow of
poverty; but they waived this objection, not quite unwillingly perhaps,
when they saw how the Queen's heart was set upon Chaillot, and how she was
diverted from her sorrows by the pleasure which she took in her plans for
installing her friends and herself in this charming retreat.
Mother Lhulier took legal steps to gain possession of the property, but
grave difficulties, which perhaps had not been foreseen, arose. Tillières
and the other heirs of Bassompierre claimed the property, but they had
never been in possession of it, and their rights seem to have been ignored
in the transaction with the nuns, whose purchase-money was to be applied to
the liquidation of the late owner's debts. The Count, though he saved his
reputation as a courtier by behaving with great civility to Henrietta, and
assuring her that she was welcome to live in the house as long as she
pleased, provided she did not turn it into a convent, determined to fight
the matter in the law courts. He was supported by the magistrates of
Chaillot, who probably did not wish to see a profitable place of pleasure
closed, and by a large number of persons, some of high quality, who were in
the habit of frequenting it. The pious chronicler of the Order of the
Visitation[411] sees behind these human figures that of the arch-fiend
himself, who was interested in preventing a piece of territory which was
specially his from lapsing to the service of God. But good, as we know, is
stronger than evil. The judges of the case, almost against their will, and
certainly under the direct inspiration of Providence, gave the decision in
favour of the nuns, whose joy was only dashed by the hard condition that a
large sum of money must be forthcoming in twenty-four hours.
The case appeared hopeless. Neither Henrietta nor the nuns had a tenth of
the sum required, and money was just then very scarce; but Mother Lhulier
was a woman to whom seeming impossibilities were only opportunities. She
made the need known to all whom she knew, and then waited in quiet
assurance for the result of her appeal. Her faith was rewarded. Just before
the close of the specified time of grace, a rich gentleman, who was a great
friend of hers, came to say that he was willing to guarantee the whole
amount.
But even now the troubles were not at an end. Tillières was determined to
fight to the last, and he enlisted on his side the ecclesiastical
authorities, who from the first had not looked very kindly upon the project
of the new foundation. The Archbishop of Paris was still that same Jean
François de Gondi who had been so deeply affronted by the refusal to allow
him to officiate at Henrietta's wedding. He was now a very old man, but he
was none the less willing to avenge an ancient slight. He pointed out
petulantly that there were already two houses of the Visitation in Paris
and another in the neighbourhood of S. Denys. That the charge of the new
convent would certainly come upon the public, and that a household of
fifteen persons, however pious, could not be supported for nothing. He
ended up by remarking with great acerbity that exiled queens with political
business in their hands should not choose religious houses as their place
of retirement.
"However," we are told, "God who holds the hearts of the great in His hand,
soon changed that of the Prelate," and the instrument of this happy
conversion was Queen Anne. Attempts were made to play on her cupidity and
that of her young son by pointing out that Chaillot had originally been a
royal residence, and would make again another nice country house for the
King; but she refused to listen, and devoted herself to winning over the
Archbishop, who was far too good a courtier not to yield quickly to such
persuasion. His views changed with a wonderful rapidity, and very soon
Henrietta had the happiness of knowing that the last obstacle was removed,
and that nothing stood in the way of the realization of her wish.
She herself undertook the work of preparing the house for the reception of
the nuns. Hers was a busy, active nature, and she was never happier than
when spending herself for those she loved. Some of the furniture she
supplied herself and some was sent from the Rue S. Antoine, where the
little band of women under the guidance of Mother Lhulier and Mother de la
Fayette was ready to set out. The removal took place upon the 21st of June,
1651. The nuns were seen off from their old home by Vincent de Paul,[412]
that strange figure of seventeenth-century Paris, whose shabby _soutane_
was found in the _salon_ of the noble as in the hovel of the poor, and
whose advice was sought at the council table of the King as in the home of
the meanest of his subjects. He was at this time director of the mother
house, and though he is not known ever to have set foot within the convent
of Chaillot, his memory is linked with it by the blessing which he bestowed
upon its beginning.
At Chaillot Henrietta was waiting, radiant and expectant. She greeted her
guests with delight, giving perhaps a specially warm welcome to two of the
younger members of the little band of nine or ten--one, the only novice of
the house, Eugénie Madeline Berthaud, the sister of her dear friend Madame
de Motteville; the other a Scotch girl, Mary Hamilton[413] by name, whom in
earlier days she had welcomed at her Court in London, but whose desire for
a conventual life was such that leaving home and country she had set out
for Paris, where she entered the convent in the Rue S. Antoine, without
knowing a single word of the French tongue.
Henrietta led the nuns all over the house, discoursing upon its charms and
conveniences, and dwelling specially upon the beauties of the situation.
She had arranged that her own rooms should be in the front, overlooking the
public road, while the nuns were to take the quieter apartments which faced
the garden. She was surprised and disconcerted when these ladies, who were
less used to palaces than she was, objected to the splendour of the lodging
provided for them, and insisted upon retiring to the garrets, which they
said were more suitable to their vow of poverty, and whence they were only
induced to descend some days later, at the Queen's special request, and
when she had carefully removed from the downstairs rooms all that
savoured of worldly vanity; but neither this little difficulty nor the more
serious trouble that, owing to the continued opposition of Tillières, it
was necessary to defend the house with a guard of archers, could damp
Henrietta's joy on such a day. She spent several hours with the nuns in
happy talk and plans, and then drove back to the Palais Royal, where she
was living at this time, happier perhaps than she had ever been since her
husband's death.
Chaillot was honoured by letters patent from the Crown of France, which
gave it the status of a royal foundation and Henrietta the title of
foundress. When the enclosure was set up about a week after the arrival of
the nuns, a number of distinguished persons assisted at the ceremony,
though it had to be done quickly for fear of disturbance from those who had
struggled so hard to keep this fair property out of the hands of the
Church. Henrietta heard the first Mass which was sung in the chapel with a
triumph which was all the sweeter to her bold and enterprising nature from
the many difficulties which had beset the undertaking.
Congratulations were not lacking. Among the most graceful were those which
Walter Montagu made public two years later in a dedication to the Queen of
a volume of religious essays. "Under that notion, Madam," he wrote, "of an
aspirer to a more transcendent Majestie I present your Religious Mind these
entertainments: which will be the less unmannerly the greater privacie and
retreat they intrude themselves upon; and truly, as your life stands now
dispos'd the greater part of your time is favourable for such admissions.
Since you pass the most of it in that holy retirement, whither you have
carry'd up the Cross in triumph; having set That over your Head and the
most tempting part (perhaps) of the whole world, as it were, under your
feet.
"And, methinks, Madam, this remark may not a little indear to you the seat
of your pious retirement; viz. That you, who have been dispossess'd of so
many noble houses and pleasant scituations, by the worlds violence and
injustice, and have had many religious receptacles (by your means
consecrated) taken from you by the Prince of this world, transferring them
to his profane uses: That your vertue yet should have made so eminent a
reprizal upon the world's possessions in your retreat out of it. And what a
comfort may it be to you to think that God has made use of you, to take
from this Prince one of the chiefest holds; and convert it, as it were,
into a Religious Citadel, furnish'd with such a Garrison as professing
irreconcileable enmitie to him and all his partie, bears away as many
conquests as it has combatants, daily singing Te Deum for their continual
victories."[414]
Henrietta, as is hinted in the above passage, was not slow to take
advantage of the retreat which she had won with so much difficulty. "Our
good Queen," wrote Sir Richard Browne in August, 1651, "spends much of her
time of late in a new monastery ... of which she is the titular
foundress."[415] The more she saw of her new friends the more she loved
them, and her affection was warmly returned. It became an understood thing
that year by year she should pass at Chaillot the seasons of the great
festivals of the Church, and her visits, which were usually for ten days or
a fortnight, sometimes extended to several months. She came to look upon
the convent as the best substitute for the home she had lost. There she
passed the happiest days of her latter years, and there, had not a sudden
death surprised her, she would have died.
Nor was her retirement without agreeable society from outside, for Chaillot
was the resort of some who were among the ornaments of the Parisian world.
There might often have been seen the Queen-Regent, whose visits at the time
of the foundation were continued to the day when, on her dying journey to
S. Germain-en-Laye, she was carried "to see this poor convent once
more,"[416] and who in that holy retreat was able at last to forget the
jealousies of bygone days, and to hold out the hand of cordial friendship
to Louise de la Fayette. Sometimes an even greater honour was bestowed on
the religious when the lad who was afterwards "le grand Monarque" appeared
at the door, to be welcomed with all the ceremony due to the God-given hope
of France. Not infrequently the bright and gifted Madame de la Fayette, who
was winning a literary reputation, to be crowned later by the publication
of _La Princesse de Clèves_, came to chat with her husband's sister, or to
lay the foundation of that intimacy with Henrietta of England which fitted
her to be the biographer of her short life. Most constant visitor of all,
Madame de Motteville brought her wit, her accomplishments, and her long
experience of Court life to enliven the dullness of the cloister. When the
death of Queen Anne released her from the faithful attendance of years she
spent a great part of her time at Chaillot, where she was the frequent
companion of the Queen of England, who beguiled the long, quiet hours by
recounting her past experiences, particularly her adventures during the
Civil War, all of which her listener carefully wrote down and finally
incorporated in the charming memoirs which were the principal occupation of
her later days, and which contain many details of Henrietta's character and
career lost but for her in the silence of time.
But perhaps the most romantic visitor who ever appeared at Chaillot was a
runaway Princess, who found there an asylum after her conversion from the
Protestant to the Catholic religion. Louise of the Palatine was a
connection of the Queen of England, for she was the daughter of Elizabeth
of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, whose beauty had turned so many men's heads
and hearts. Louise lived with her unfortunate family at The Hague, and she
solaced the weary days of an exiled Princess by the study of
accomplishments, especially of painting, for which she had real talent. The
attractions of the Church of Rome were represented to her by a priest, who
gained her ear and her confidence as an instructor in her favourite art.
She determined to abandon the religion of her family; and, as she knew that
her position in her mother's house would be intolerable, she sought refuge
in flight, and threw herself upon the protection of her aunt by marriage,
whose devotion to the Church of Rome was a matter of common knowledge.
Louise was not disappointed. Henrietta, to whom the conversion of any
Protestant was a matter of real interest, and who must have felt a certain
satisfaction in the secession to the enemy's camp of one of the children of
the Queen of Bohemia, whose Protestantism had often in the past been
unfavourably compared with her Catholicism, received the girl with motherly
kindness, and bestowed her at Chaillot under the care of Mother de la
Fayette. Louise soon expressed a desire to enter the religious life, and it
was thought that she would take the veil in the convent which sheltered
her; but Mother de la Fayette, with the good sense which distinguished her,
objected to the profession of a Princess, whose birth would necessitate her
election to a high office, to which perhaps her personal qualities would
not entitle her. So the royal lady went on to the Cistercians, who had no
such scruples, and who made her Abbess of Maubuisson, near Pontoise, where
she lived in much repute to a green old age, and famed perhaps as well as
her younger sister Sophia, whose steadfast Protestantism was rewarded by
the reversion of the crown of the Three Kingdoms, and whose descendants sit
to this day upon the throne which she missed by a few weeks.
In 1654 Mother Lhulier died. She was succeeded[417] in the office of
Superior, as might have been expected, by Mother de la Fayette, whose
election was much desired by the Queens of both England and France. These
royal ladies considerately abstained, from expressing any opinion on the
subject that the nuns' choice might be free, but their wishes must have
been well known, and they no doubt fell in with those of the religious.
Louise de la Fayette fully justified the prophecy of Mother Chantal, and if
Chaillot owed much to the force of character and strength of will of the
first Superior, it owed even more to the sagacious rule of the second, who
endeared herself to all, whether religious or visitors. The house was
already sufficiently established, but the financial condition gave great
cause for anxiety, and almost justified the ungracious forebodings of the
Archbishop of Paris, though kind friends, among whom Madame de Motteville
was one of the most generous, gave considerable gifts, and some of the
religious, such as her sister, the first professed nun of the house, were
able to bring dowries. Queen Henrietta, who had no money to give, exerted
herself to procure high-born little pupils for the convent school, whose
liberal pensions were indeed for some time the chief support of the house.
She set the example by placing her own little daughter, Princess Henrietta,
under the care of Mother de la Fayette, and, as was hoped, her presence
attracted other children of equal rank, among whom was the daughter of the
Duchess of Nemours, who was afterwards Queen of Portugal. No children could
have had a more beautiful home or a more apt instructress; for the nun, in
her long years of conventual life, had lost no whit of the graces and
accomplishments of her courtly youth or of her natural kindliness of heart.
Her charity, indeed, rose superior even to the acerbities of theological
passion. To her care was confided one of the exiled nuns of Port Royal, and
it is recorded that, in honourable contrast to the Superiors of other
religious houses charged with a like burden, she treated her unwelcome
guest with constant courtesy and kindness.
Chaillot was to Henrietta a peaceful retreat after all her sorrows, for the
world was strictly excluded, and the convent never became, like Val de
Grace, a centre of political intrigue. There, removed from the troubles of
dangerous schemes, of jarring religions, and of perpetual disappointments,
the Queen regained something of the brightness and more than the
tranquillity of her earlier years. The quiet days, passed in a round of
prayer, of conversation, and of reading, flowed on undisturbed; and as she
grew older she pleased herself by talking of the time when she should take
up her abode permanently with her dear nuns, only, she said, she feared the
damp of the river-side house a little. The kindness of the nuns, who saw in
her not only a royal foundress, but a much-tried and suffering woman, was
very great. At one time they even permitted her to join them at their
recreation; and when this was found to be undesirable, her particular
friends among the community were still ready to cheer and amuse her by
their agreeable conversation, while they in their turn were often much
diverted by her witty talk and stories of the surprising adventures which
had befallen her, and which assuredly lost nothing in the telling. She was
too clear-sighted and humorous not to appreciate that a queen was of
necessity a troublesome member of a religious household, and she set
herself to mitigate the annoyance as far as possible. She kept a very small
household, only one lady-in-waiting, two or three other attendants, and as
many girls to do the cooking, and she was careful to select only such women
as would conduct themselves with quietness and decorum. One of her chief
objects in choosing a situation on the outskirts of Paris had been to avoid
the flow of idle visitors who in the city itself were a real annoyance to
religious houses, and she refused to receive those who came on idle and
frivolous pretexts. No one, however high his rank or pressing his business,
was permitted to enter the enclosure without the leave of the Superior; and
once, when Henrietta herself was unable to walk and was carried out from
Paris in a chair, she insisted upon waiting at the gate of the convent
until permission for her bearers to enter had been obtained. On all
ordinary occasions she came down to the parlour and interviewed her
visitors through the grill, even when the matter in hand was so intimate as
that of trying on new clothes. She was equally considerate in any question
which might disturb the religious routine of the house; and this delicate
woman of over fifty, a princess by birth and a queen by marriage, whose
health had been ruined by her troubles and privations, dragged herself from
her bed at an early hour in the cold winter mornings that the community
Mass, at which she liked to assist, might not be delayed.
Perhaps the greatest pleasure of Henrietta's life at Chaillot was the long
conversations which she held with Mother de la Fayette, whose attraction
was as great for her as years before it had been for her brother. Into the
nun's sympathizing ear she poured the tale of her sorrows, her fears, and
her aspirations, and from her she received those instructions and counsels
which made her in her latter years, in the words of Madame de Motteville, a
_dévote_ without the pretensions of one. Mother de la Fayette taught her
the art of meditation, an art which must have been difficult to the Queen's
vivacious and easily distracted mind, and it was probably under her advice,
as well as that of her confessor, that she refused to interest herself in
the various theories of grace which the controversies of Port Royal were
making a fashionable subject of conversation, and confined her spiritual
reading to a perusal and reperusal of a book which has brought consolation
to thousands of weary spirits, the _De Imitatione Christi_. Her confidence
in Mother de la Fayette, which probably was due in some measure to the
isolation and independence which her position as a nun gave her, was very
great. It extended even to her worldly affairs, which she would hardly have
discussed with an ordinary friend. It was still more marked with regard to
those inner matters of the spirit in which heart speaks to heart. It was to
this chosen friend that Henrietta made the touching confession, which
Bossuet, through Madame de Motteville, was able to proclaim to the world
after her death, that every day on her knees she thanked God that He had
made her two things, a Christian and an unhappy Queen (_une reine
malheureuse_). But the pleasure of this friendship was not to be
Henrietta's to the end. In 1664 the Queen was in England. She kept up a
constant communication with the nuns at Chaillot, and she was much
gratified to receive a letter telling her of the return of Mother de la
Fayette to the convent, from which she had been absent on a reforming
mission to another religious house, and of her re-election as Superior.
Very shortly another letter followed telling of the nun's sudden and
serious illness, and hardly had the Queen grasped this intelligence when
the news came that Louise de la Fayette was dead. Though she had spent
twenty-seven years in religion she was even now only forty-six years old,
and the community mourned her as one who had been taken away in the midst
of her age. It is not likely that she ever regretted her early decision,
for the position of a highly born nun in those days, particularly if she
resided in the capital, was dignified and important, and compared
favourably with that of the worldly woman in all but variety and
excitement. A convent parlour might be, and often was, the scene of
conversations as interesting and influential as any held in a _salon_ or
boudoir; and if Louise de la Fayette did not wield a distinctly political
influence, it was rather from choice than from inability. Her early and
tragic experience had taught her a real contempt for the fleeting glitter
of Court life, and she never lost the spirit which, in her early convent
days, led her, when one of her former friends reproached her for the change
which had come over her, and hinted that she was mad, to reply gently: "No,
I think I have left you the madness in leaving you the world."
She had no truer mourner than the Queen of England, who hastened to
associate herself with the sorrowing community. "One day you tell me," she
wrote, "of the serious condition of Mother de la Fayette, and the next you
announce to me her death, which grieves me deeply. It is a loss for the
whole Order, and particularly for our house. I cannot express to you the
grief which I feel; it is too great. I pray you to tell all our daughters
that I sympathize with their sorrow, and to assure them that they will
always find me ready to make proof of the friendship which I have for them,
and which I had for the Mother they are mourning."[418]
The picture which is presented of Henrietta through the medium of the
Chaillot Papers, though in no sense false, is necessarily one-sided. All
persons are influenced by the surroundings in which they find themselves,
and if the Queen of England appeared to the nuns as a woman of almost
saintly piety, whose every thought was given to heaven, and whose sorrows
had completely detached her from the world, it is because thus she really
was in their gentle society within the charmed walls of their convent. They
did not see her in the outside world, where thorny problems again beset
her, and where her old faults of temper and judgment tended to reappear.
She had ever been not only a woman of strong religious and moral principle,
but one whose qualities of heart and head had gained her more affection
than often falls to the lot of a royal lady, and the effect of Chaillot was
to emphasize and develop every virtue and charm she possessed, and to throw
completely into the background all that was harsh and discordant and
unlovely. Among the many portraits which remain to show her "in her habit
as she lived" is one which represents her as the recluse of Chaillot, and
which brings strong corroboration to the loving pen-and-ink sketches of the
good nuns. A woman, still comely and showing the remains of great beauty,
looks out upon us from the canvas; the heavy mourning dress corresponds
with the deep melancholy of the face, and if there are no tears in the
eyes, it is only because the painter has caught that saddest of all
moments, when
"The eyes are weary and give o'er,
But still the soul weeps as before."[419]
Thus she must often have appeared as she sat in her quiet room at Chaillot,
or knelt in the convent chapel; and if in later years she was able to take
up life again with something of her old courage and cheerfulness, it was
because her wounded spirit had met healing and peace in this beloved home,
which had been founded, as the archives of the Order recorded, for the
consolation of a suffering woman, and which, after sheltering the sorrows
of one exiled Queen of England, was to extend a like welcome to another
hardly less unfortunate, Mary Beatrice d'Este, the wife of Henrietta's
second son, James II.[420]
[Footnote 402: "Mon inclination est de me retirir dans les Carmelites ...
car après ma perte je ne puis avoir un moment de aucune joye."--_Lettres de
Henriette Marie à sa soeur Christine_, p. 71.]
[Footnote 403: Jeanne Chantal.]
[Footnote 404: _A New Description of Paris_ (1887), p. 121. The chapel is
now a church of the _église réformée_.]
[Footnote 405: Queen Anne of Austria was very fond of this convent.
Mazarin, in the early days of his power, believed that the nuns tried to
influence her against him.]
[Footnote 406: Mme de Motteville: _Mémoires_ (1783), I, 72.]
[Footnote 407: This account is taken from that written by Caussin, an old
copy of which is preserved in the Bibliothèque S. Geneviève, in Paris.
Caussin's manuscript was only seen by Mother de la Fayette shortly before
her death.]
[Footnote 408: Her profession took place in July, 1637.]
[Footnote 409: Louise Eugénie de la Fontaine. During the second war of the
Fronde this lady received into the convent a number of religious (among
them the Chaillot nuns) who were afraid to remain outside Paris. "Il
sembloit que cette maison étoit un petit Paradis Terrestre ou une arche qui
vaguoit en assurance dans un repos admirable pendant que tout étoit dans
une confusion épouvantable et qu'on entendoit de tous cotez les canons et
les mosquets qui se tiroient à la batail de la porte S. Antoine."--_Vie de
la Ven. Mère Louise Eugénie de la Fontaine._]
[Footnote 410: Evelyn: _Diary_. December 5th, 1643.]
[Footnote 411: MS. 2436, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris. From this history
many of the details of this chapter are taken.]
[Footnote 412: He was an old friend and disciple of Bérulle.]
[Footnote 413: She was apparently a sister of Sir William Hamilton, the
Queen's late agent in Rome.]
[Footnote 414: _Miscellanea Spiritualia_, Pt. II (1653).]
[Footnote 415: _Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn_ (1859), Vol. IV,
p. 352.]
[Footnote 416: Madame de Motteville: _Mémoires_, VI, p. 212 (1783).]
[Footnote 417: The Superiors of the Order of the Visitation are chosen for
three years. Mother de la Fayette held office three times, from 1654-7,
from 1657-60, and from 1663 until her death in the following year.]
[Footnote 418: C[arlo] C[otolendi]: _Vie de la très haute et très puissante
Princesse Henriette Marie de France Reyne de la Grande Bretagne_, p. 311.]
[Footnote 419: D. G. Rossetti.]
[Footnote 420: Of Chaillot literally not one stone remains upon another.
The convent was destroyed in the Revolution, and its site is occupied by
the Trocadero.]