An Eastern Allegory.--Who comes Here?--A Mad Freak and its
Consequences.--Making an Abbé of him.--The May-Fair of
Paris.--Scarron's Lament to Pellisson.--The Office of the
Queen's Patient.--'Give me a Simple Benefice.'--Scarron's
Description of Himself.--Improvidence and Servility.--The
Society at Scarron's.--The Witty Conversation.--Francoise
D'Aubigné's Début.--The Sad Story of La Belle
Indienne.--Matrimonial Considerations.--'Scarron's Wife will
live for ever.'--Petits Soupers.--Scarron's last Moments.--A
Lesson for Gay and Grave.
There is an Indian or Chinese legend, I forget which, from which Mrs.
Shelley may have taken her hideous idea of Frankenstein. We are told in
this allegory that, after fashioning some thousands of men after the
most approved model, endowing them with all that is noble, generous,
admirable, and loveable in man or woman, the eastern Prometheus grew
weary in his work, stretched his hand for the beer-can, and draining it
too deeply, lapsed presently into a state of what Germans call
'other-man-ness.'--There is a simpler Anglo-Saxon term for this
condition, but I spare you. The eastern Prometheus went on seriously
with his work, and still produced the same perfect models, faultless
alike in brain and leg. But when it came to the delicate finish, when
the last touches were to be made, his hand shook a little, and the more
delicate members went awry. It was thus that instead of the power of
seeing every colour properly, one man came out with a pair of optics
which turned everything to green, and this verdancy probably transmitted
itself to the intelligence. Another, to continue the allegory, whose
tympanum had slipped a little under the unsteady fingers of the
man-maker, heard everything in a wrong sense, and his life was
miserable, because, if you sang his praises, he believed you were
ridiculing him, and if you heaped abuse upon him, he thought you were
telling lies of him.
But as Prometheus Orientalis grew more jovial, it seems to have come
into his head to make mistakes on purpose. 'I'll have a friend to laugh
with,' quoth he; and when warned by an attendant Yaksha, or demon, that
men who laughed one hour often wept the next, he swore a lusty oath,
struck his thumb heavily on a certain bump in the skull he was
completing, and holding up his little doll, cried, 'Here is one who will
laugh at everything!'
I must now add what the legend neglects to tell. The model laugher
succeeded well enough in his own reign, but he could not beget a large
family. The laughers who never weep, the real clowns of life, who do
not, when the curtain drops, retire, after an infinitesimal allowance of
'cordial,' to a half-starved, complaining family, with brats that cling
round his parti-coloured stockings, and cry to him--not for jokes--but
for bread, these laughers, I say, are few and far between. You should,
therefore, be doubly grateful to me for introducing to you now one of
the most famous of them; one who with all right and title to be
lugubrious, was the merriest man of his age.
On Shrove Tuesday, in the year 1638, the good city of Mans was in a
state of great excitement: the carnival was at its height, and everybody
had gone mad for one day before turning pious for the long, dull forty
days of Lent. The market-place was filled with maskers in quaint
costumes, each wilder and more extravagant than the last. Here were
magicians with high peaked hats covered with cabalistic signs, here
Eastern sultans of the medieval model, with very fierce looks and very
large scimitars: here Amadis de Gaul with a wagging plume a yard high,
here Pantagruel, here harlequins, here Huguenots ten times more
lugubrious than the despised sectaries they mocked, here Cæsar and
Pompey in trunk hose and Roman helmets, and a mass of other notabilities
who were great favourites in that day, appeared.
But who comes here? What is the meaning of these roars of laughter that
greet the last mask who runs into the market-place? Why do all the women
and children hurry together, calling up one another, and shouting with
delight? What is this thing? Is it some new species of bird, thus
covered with feathers and down? In a few minutes the little figure is
surrounded by a crowd of boys and women, who begin to pluck him of his
borrowed plumes, while he chatters to them like a magpie, whistles like
a song-bird, croaks like a raven, or in his natural character showers a
mass of funny nonsense on them, till their laughter makes their sides
ache. The little wretch is literally covered with small feathers from
head to foot, and even his face is not to be recognized. The women pluck
him behind and before; he dances round and tries to evade their fingers.
This is impossible; he breaks away, runs down the market pursued by a
shouting crowd, is again surrounded, and again subjected to a plucking
process. The bird must be stripped; he must be discovered. Little by
little his back is bared, and little by little is seen a black jerkin,
black stockings, and, wonder upon wonder! the bands of a canon. Now they
have cleared his face of its plumage, and a cry of disgust and shame
hails the disclosure. Yes, this curious masker is no other than a
reverend abbé, a young canon of the cathedral of Mans! 'This is too
much--it is scandalous--it is disgraceful. The church must be respected,
the sacred order must not descend to such frivolities.' The people,
lately laughing, are now furious at the shameless abbé and not his
liveliest wit can save him; they threaten and cry shame on him, and in
terror of his life, he beats his way through the crowd, and takes to his
heels. The mob follows, hooting and savage. The little man is nimble;
those well-shaped legs--_qui ont si bien dansé_--stand him in good
stead. Down the streets, and out of the town go hare and hounds. The
pursuers gain on him--a bridge, a stream filled with tall reeds, and
delightfully miry, are all the hope of refuge he sees before him. He
leaps gallantly from the bridge in among the oziers, and has the joy of
listening to the disappointed curses of the mob, when reaching the
stream, their quarry is nowhere to be seen. The reeds conceal him, and
there he lingers till nightfall, when he can issue from his
lurking-place, and escape from the town.
Such was the mad freak which deprived the Abbé Scarron of the use of his
limbs for life. His health was already ruined when he indulged this
caprice; the damp of the river brought on a violent attack, which closed
with palsy, and the gay young abbé had to pay dearly for the pleasure of
astonishing the citizens of Mans. The disguise was easily accounted
for--he had smeared himself with honey, ripped open a feather-bed, and
rolled himself in it.
This little incident gives a good idea of what Scarron was in his
younger days--ready at any time for any wild caprice.
Paul Scarron was the son of a Conseiller du Parlement of good family,
resident in Paris. He was born in 1610, and his early days would have
been wretched enough, if his elastic spirits had allowed him to give way
to misery. His father was a good-natured, weak-minded man, who on the
death of his first wife married a second, who, as one hen will peck at
another's chicks, would not, as a stepmother, leave the little Paul in
peace. She was continually putting her own children forward, and
ill-treating the late 'anointed' son. The father gave in too readily,
and young Paul was glad enough to be set free from his unhappy home.
There may be some excuse in this for the licentious living to which he
now gave himself up. He was heir to a decent fortune, and of course
thought himself justified in spending it before-hand. Then, in spite of
his quaint little figure, he had something attractive about him, for his
merry face was good-looking, if not positively handsome. If we add to
this, spirits as buoyant as an Irishman's--a mind that not only saw the
ridiculous wherever it existed, but could turn the most solemn and awful
themes to laughter, a vast deal of good-nature, and not a little
assurance--we can understand that the young Scarron was a favourite with
both men and women, and among the reckless pleasure-seekers of the day
soon became one of the wildest. In short, he was a fast young Parisian,
with as little care for morality or religion as any youth who saunters
on the Boulevards of the French capital to this day.
But his stepmother was not content with getting rid of young Paul, but
had her eye also on his fortune, and therefore easily persuaded her
husband that the service of the church was precisely the career for
which the young reprobate was fitted. There was an uncle who was Bishop
of Grenoble, and a canonry could easily be got for him. The fast youth
was compelled to give in to this arrangement, but declined to take full
orders; so that while drawing the revenue of his stall, he had nothing
to do with the duties of his calling. Then, too, it was rather a
fashionable thing to be an abbé, especially a gay one. The position
placed you on a level with people of all ranks. Half the court was
composed of love-making ecclesiastics, and the _soutane_ was a kind of
diploma for wit and wickedness. Viewed in this light, the church was as
jovial a profession as the army, and the young Scarron went to the full
extent of the letter allowed to the black gown. It was only such stupid
superstitious louts as those of Mans, who did not know anything of the
ways of Paris life, who could object to such little freaks as he loved
to indulge in.
The merry little abbé was soon the delight of the Marais. This distinct
and antiquated quarter of Paris was then the Mayfair of that capital.
Here lived in ease, and contempt of the bourgeoisie, the great, the gay,
the courtier, and the wit. Here Marion de Lorme received old Cardinals
and young abbés; here were the salons of Madame de Martel, of the
Comtesse de la Suze, who changed her creed in order to avoid seeing her
husband in this world or the next, and the famous--or infamous--Ninon de
l'Enclos; and at these houses young Scarron met the courtly
Saint-Evremond, the witty Sarrazin, and the learned but arrogant
Voiture. Here he read his skits and parodies, here travestied Virgil,
made epigrams on Richelieu, and poured out his indelicate but always
laughable witticisms. But his indulgences were not confined to
intrigues; he also drank deep, and there was not a pleasure within his
reach which he ever thought of denying himself. He laughed at religion,
thought morality a nuisance, and resolved to be merry at all costs.
The little account was brought in at last. At the age of five-and-twenty
his constitution was broken up. Gout and rheumatism assailed him
alternately or in leash. He began to feel the annoyance of the
constraint they occasioned; he regretted those legs which had figured
so well in a ronde or a minuet, and those hands which had played the
lute to dames more fair than modest; and to add to this, the pain he
suffered was not slight. He sought relief in gay society, and was
cheerful in spite of his sufferings. At length came the Shrove Tuesday
and the feathers; and the consequences were terrible. He was soon a prey
to doctors, whom he believed in no more than in the church of which he
was so great a light. His legs were no longer his own, so he was obliged
to borrow those of a chair. He was soon tucked down into a species of
dumb-waiter on castors, in which he could be rolled about in a party. In
front of this chair was fastened a desk, on which he wrote; for too wise
to be overcome by his agony, he drove it away by cultivating his
imagination, and in this way some of the most fantastic productions in
French literature were composed by this quaint little abbé.
Nor was sickness his only trial now. Old Scarron was a citizen, and had,
what was then criminal, sundry ideas of the liberty of the nation. He
saw with disgust the tyranny of Richelieu, and joined a party in the
Parliament to oppose the cardinal's measures. He even had the courage to
speak openly against one of the court edicts; and the pitiless cardinal,
who never overlooked any offence, banished him to Touraine, and
naturally extended his animosity to the conseiller's son. This happened
at a moment at which the cripple believed himself to be on the road to
favour. He had already won that of Madame de Hautefort, on whom Louis
XIII. had set his affections, and this lady had promised to present him
to Anne of Austria. The father's honest boldness put a stop to the son's
intended servility, and Scarron lamented his fate in a letter to
Pellisson:
O mille écus, par malheur retranchés,
Que vous pouviez m'épargner de péchés!
Quand un valet me dit, tremblant et hâve,
Nous n'avons plus de bûches dans la cave
Que pour aller jusqu'à demain matin,
Je peste alors sur mon chien de destin,
Sur le grand froid, sur le bois de la grève,
Qu'on vend si cher, et qui si-tôt s'achève.
Je jure alors, et même je médis
De l'action de mon père étourdi,
Quand sans songer à ce qu'il allait faire
Il m'ébaucha sous un astre contraire,
Et m'acheva par un discours maudit
Qu'il fit depuis sur un certain édit.
The father died in exile: his second wife had spent the greater part of
the son's fortune, and secured the rest for her own children. Scarron
was left with a mere pittance, and, to complete his troubles, was
involved in a lawsuit about the property. The cripple, with his usual
impudence, resolved to plead his own cause, and did it only too well; he
made the judges laugh so loud that they took the whole thing to be a
farce on his part, and gave--most ungratefully--judgment against him.
Glorious days were those for the penniless, halcyon days for the toady
and the sycophant. There was still much of the old oriental munificence
about the court, and sovereigns like Mazarin and Louis XIV. granted
pensions for a copy of flattering verses, or gave away places as the
reward of a judicious speech. Sinecures were legion, yet to many a
holder they were no sinecures at all, for they entailed constant
servility and a complete abdication of all freedom of opinion.
Scarron was nothing more than a merry buffoon. Many another man has
gained a name for his mirth, but most of them have been at least
independent. Scarron seems to have cared for nothing that was honourable
or dignified. He laughed at everything but money, and at that he smiled,
though it is only fair to say that he was never avaricious, but only
cared for ease and a little luxury.
When Richelieu died, and the gentler, but more subtle Mazarin mounted
his throne, Madame de Hautefort made another attempt to present her
_protégé_ to the queen, and this time succeeded. Anne of Austria had
heard of the quaint little man who could laugh over a lawsuit in which
his whole fortune was staked, and received him graciously. He begged for
some place to support him. What could he do? What was he fit for?
'Nothing, your majesty, but the important office of The Queen's Patient;
for that I am fully qualified.' Anne smiled, and Scarron from that time
styled himself 'par la grace de Dieu, le malade de la Reine.' But there
was no stipend attached to this novel office. Mazarin procured him a
pension of 500 crowns. He was then publishing his 'Typhon, or the
Gigantomachy,' and dedicated it to the cardinal, with an adulatory
sonnet. He forwarded the great man a splendidly bound copy, which was
accepted with nothing more than thanks. In a rage the author suppressed
the sonnet and substituted a satire. This piece was bitterly cutting,
and terribly true. It galled Mazarin to the heart, and he was
undignified enough to revenge himself by cancelling the poor little
pension of £60 per annum which had previously been granted to the
writer. Scarron having lost his pension, soon afterwards asked for an
abbey, but was refused. 'Then give me,' said he, 'a simple benefice, so
simple, indeed, that all its duties will be comprised in believing in
God.' But Scarron had the satisfaction of gaining a great name among the
cardinal's many enemies, and with none more so than De Retz, then
_coadjuteur_[27] to the Archbishop of Paris, and already deeply
implicated in the Fronde movement. To insure the favour of this rising
man, Scarron determined to dedicate to him a work he was just about to
publish, and on which he justly prided himself as by far his best. This
was the 'Roman Comique,' the only one of his productions which is still
read. That it should be read, I can quite understand, on account not
only of the ease of its style, but of the ingenuity of its improbable
plots, the truth of the characters, and the charming bits of satire
which are found here and there, like gems amid a mass of mere fun. The
scene is laid at Mans, the town in which the author had himself
perpetrated his chief follies; and many of the characters were probably
drawn from life, while it is likely enough that some of the stories were
taken from facts which had there come to his knowledge. As in many of
the romances of that age, a number of episodes are introduced into the
main story, which consists of the adventures of a strolling company.
These are mainly amatory, and all indelicate, while some are as coarse
as anything in French literature. Scarron had little of the clear wit of
Rabelais to atone for this; but he makes up for it, in a measure, by the
utter absurdity of some of his incidents. Not the least curious part of
the book is the Preface, in which he gives a description of himself, in
order to contradict, as he affirms, the extravagant reports circulated
about him, to the effect that he was set upon a table, in a cage, or
that his hat was fastened to the ceiling by a pulley, that he might
'pluck it up or let it down, to do compliment to a friend, who honoured
him with a visit.' This description is a tolerable specimen of his
style, and we give it in the quaint language of an old translation,
published in 1741:--
'I am past thirty, as thou may'st see by the back of my Chair. If I live
to be forty, I shall add the Lord knows how many Misfortunes to those I
have already suffered for these eight or nine Years past. There was a
Time when my Stature was not to be found fault with, tho' now 'tis of
the smallest. My Sickness has taken me shorter by a Foot. My Head is
somewhat too big, considering my Height; and my Face is full enough, in
all Conscience, for one that carries such a Skeleton of a Body about
him. I have Hair enough on my Head not to stand in need of a Peruke; and
'tis gray, too, in spite of the Proverb. My Sight is good enough, tho'
my Eyes are large; they are of a blue Colour, and one of them is sunk
deeper into my Head than the other, which was occasion'd by my leaning
on that Side. My Nose is well enough mounted. My Teeth, which in the
Days of Yore look'd like a Row of square Pearl, are now of an Ashen
Colour; and in a few Years more, will have the Complexion of a
Small-coal Man's Saturday Shirt. I have lost one Tooth and a half on the
left Side, and two and a half precisely on the right; and I have two
more that stand somewhat out of their Ranks. My Legs and Thighs, in the
first place, compose an obtuse Angle, then a right one, and lastly an
acute. My Thighs and Body make another; and my Head, leaning perpetually
over my Belly, I fancy makes me not very unlike the Letter Z. My Arms
are shortened, as well as my Legs; and my Fingers as well as my Arms. In
short, I am a living Epitome of human Misery. This, as near as I can
give it, is my Shape. Since I am got so far, I will e'en tell thee
something of my Humour. Under the Rose, be it spoken, Courteous Reader,
I do this only to swell the Bulk of my Book, at the Request of the
Bookseller--the poor Dog, it seems, being afraid he should be a Loser by
this Impression, if he did not give Buyer enough for his Money.'
This allusion to the publisher reminds us that, on the suppression of
his pension--on hearing of which Scarron only said, 'I should like,
then, to suppress myself'--he had to live on the profits of his works.
In later days it was Madame Scarron herself who often carried them to
the bookseller's, when there was not a penny in the house. The publisher
was Quinet, and the merry wit, when asked whence he drew his income,
used to reply with mock haughtiness, 'De mon Marquisat de Quinet.' His
comedies, which have been described as mere burlesques--I confess I have
never read them, and hope to be absolved--were successful enough, and if
Scarron had known how to keep what he made, he might sooner or later
have been in easy circumstances. He knew neither that nor any other art
of self-restraint, and, therefore, was in perpetual vicissitudes of
riches and penury. At one time he could afford to dedicate a piece to
his sister's greyhound, at another he was servile in his address to some
prince or duke.
In the latter spirit, he humbled himself before Mazarin, in spite of the
publication of his 'Mazarinade,' and was, as he might have expected,
repulsed. He then turned to Fouquet, the new Surintendant de Finances,
who was liberal enough with the public money, which he so freely
embezzled, and extracted from him a pension of 1,600 francs (about £64).
In one way or another, he got back a part of the property his stepmother
had alienated from him, and obtained a prebend in the diocese of Mans,
which made up his income to something more respectable.
He was now able to indulge to the utmost his love of society. In his
apartment, in the Rue St. Louis, he received all the leaders of the
Fronde, headed by De Retz, and bringing with them their pasquinades on
Mazarin, which the easy Italian read and laughed at and pretended to
heed not at all. Politics, however, was not the staple of the
conversation at Scarron's. He was visited as a curiosity, as a clever
buffoon, and those who came to see, remained to laugh. He kept them all
alive by his coarse, easy, impudent wit; in which there was more
vulgarity and dirtiness than ill-nature. He had a fund of _bonhommie_,
which set his visitors at their ease, for no one was afraid of being
bitten by the chained dog they came to pat. His salon became famous; and
the admission to it was a diploma of wit. He kept out all the dull, and
ignored all the simply great. Any man who could say a good thing, tell a
good story, write a good lampoon, or mimic a fool, was a welcome guest.
Wits mingled with pedants, courtiers with poets. Abbés and gay women
were at home in the easy society of the cripple, and circulated freely
round his dumb-waiter.
The ladies of the party were not the most respectable in Paris, yet some
who were models of virtue met there, without a shudder, many others who
were patterns of vice. Ninon de l'Enclos--then young--though age made no
alteration in _her_--and already slaying her scores, and ruining her
hundreds of admirers, there met Madame de Sévigné, the most respectable,
as well as the most agreeable, woman of that age. Mademoiselle de
Scudéry, leaving, for the time, her twelve-volume romance, about Cyrus
and Ibrahim, led on a troop of Molière's Précieuses Ridicules, and here
recited her verses, and talked pedantically to Pellisson, the ugliest
man in Paris, of whom Boileau wrote:
'L'or même à Pellisson donne un teint de beauté.'
Then there was Madame de la Sablière, who was as masculine as her
husband the marquis was effeminate; the Duchesse de Lesdiguières, who
was so anxious to be thought a wit that she employed the Chevalier de
Méré to make her one; and the Comtesse de la Suze, a clever but foolish
woman.
The men were poets, courtiers, and pedants. Ménage with his tiresome
memory, Montreuil and Marigni the song-writers, the elegant De Grammont,
Turenne, Coligni, the gallant Abbé Têtu, and many another celebrity,
thronged the rooms where Scarron sat in his curious wheelbarrow.
The conversation was decidedly light; often, indeed, obscene, in spite
of the presence of ladies; but always witty. The hostility of Scarron to
the reigning cardinal was a great recommendation, and when all else
flagged, or the cripple had an unusually sharp attack, he had but to
start with a line of his 'Mazarinade,' and out came a fresh lampoon, a
new caricature, or fresh rounds of wit fired off at the Italian, from
the well-filled cartridge-boxes of the guests, many of whom kept their
_mots_ ready made up for discharge.
But a change came over the spirit of the paralytic's dream. In the Rue
St. Louis, close to Scarron's, lived a certain Madame Neuillant, who
visited him as a neighbour, and one day excited his curiosity by the
romantic history of a mother and daughter, who had long lived in
Martinique, who had been ruined by the extravagance and follies of a
reprobate husband and father; and were now living in great poverty--the
daughter being supported by Madame de Neuillant herself. The
good-natured cripple was touched by this story, and begged his neighbour
to bring the unhappy ladies to one of his parties. The evening came; the
abbé was, as usual, surrounded by a circle of lady wits, dressed in the
last fashions, flaunting their fans, and laughing merrily at his
sallies. Madame de Neuillant was announced, and entered, followed by a
simply-dressed lady, with the melancholy face of one broken-down by
misfortunes, and a pretty girl of fifteen. The contrast between the
new-comers and the fashionable _habituées_ around him at once struck the
abbé. The girl was not only badly, but even shabbily dressed, and the
shortness of her gown showed that she had grown out of it, and could not
afford a new one. The _grandes dames_ turned upon her their eye-glasses,
and whispered comments behind their fans. She was very pretty, they
said, very interesting, elegant, lady-like, and so on; but, _parbleu!_
how shamefully _mal mise!_ The new-comers were led up to the cripple's
dumb-waiter, and the _grandes dames_ drew back their ample petticoats as
they passed. The young girl was overcome with shame, their whispers
reached her; she cast down her pretty eyes, and growing more and more
confused, she could bear it no longer, and burst into tears. The abbé
and his guests were touched by her shyness, and endeavoured to restore
her confidence. Scarron himself leant over, and whispered a few kind
words in her ear; then breaking out into some happy pleasantry, he gave
her time to recover her composure. Such was the first _début_ in
Parisian society of Françoise d'Aubigné, who was destined, as Madame
Scarron, to be afterwards one of its leaders, and, as Madame de
Maintenon, to be its ruler.
[Illustration: SCARRON AND THE WITS--FIRST APPEARANCE OF LA BELLE
INDIENNE.]
Some people are cursed with bad sons--some with erring daughters.
Françoise d'Aubigné was long the victim of a wicked father. Constans
d'Aubigné belonged to an old and honourable family, and was the son of
that famous old Huguenot general, Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné, who fought
for a long time under Henry of Navarre, and in his old age wrote the
history of his times. To counterbalance this distinction, the son
Constans brought all the discredit he could on the family. After a
reckless life, in which he squandered his patrimony, he married a rich
widow, and then, it is said, contrived to put her out of the way. He was
imprisoned as a murderer, but acquitted for want of evidence. The story
goes, that he was liberated by the daughter of the governor of the gaol,
whom he had seduced in the prison, and whom he married when free. He
sought to retrieve his fortune in the island of Martinique, ill-treated
his wife, and eventually ran away, and left her and her children to
their fate. They followed him to France, and found him again
incarcerated. Madame d'Aubigné was foolishly fond of her
good-for-nothing spouse, and lived with him in his cell, where the
little Françoise, who had been born in prison, was now educated.
Rescued from starvation by a worthy Huguenot aunt, Madame de Vilette,
the little girl was brought up as a Protestant, and a very stanch one
she proved for a time. But Madame d'Aubigné, who was a Romanist, would
not allow her to remain long under the Calvinist lady's protection, and
sent her to be converted by her godmother, the Madame de Neuillant above
mentioned. This woman, who was as merciless as a woman can be, literally
broke her into Romanism, treated her like a servant, made her groom the
horses, and comb the maid's hair, and when all these efforts failed,
sent her to a convent to be finished off. The nuns did by specious
reasoning what had been begun by persecution, and young Françoise, at
the time she was introduced to Scarron, was a highly respectable member
of 'the only true church.'
Madame d'Aubigné was at this time supporting herself by needlework. Her
sad story won the sympathy of Scarron's guests, who united to relieve
her wants. _La belle Indienne_, as the cripple styled her, soon became a
favourite at his parties, and lost her shyness by degrees. Ninon de
l'Enclos, who did not want heart, took her by the hand, and a friendship
thus commenced between that inveterate Laïs and the future wife of Louis
XIV. which lasted till death.
The beauty of Françoise soon brought her many admirers, among whom was
even one of Ninon's slaves; but as marriage was not the object of these
attentions, and the young girl would not relinquish her virtue, she
remained for some time unmarried but respectable. Scarron was
particularly fond of her, and well knew that, portionless as she was,
the poor girl would have but little chance of making a match. His
kindness touched her, his wit charmed her; she pitied his infirmities,
and as his neighbour, frequently saw and tried to console him. On the
other hand the cripple, though forty years old, and in a state of health
which it is impossible to describe, fell positively in love with the
young girl, who alone of all the ladies who visited him combined wit
with perfect modesty. He pitied her destitution. There was mutual pity,
and we all know what passion that feeling is akin to.
Still, for a paralytic, utterly unfit for marriage in any point of view,
to offer to a beautiful young girl, would have seemed ridiculous, if not
unpardonable. But let us take into account the difference in ideas of
matrimony between ourselves and the French. We must remember that
marriage has always been regarded among our neighbours as a contract for
mutual benefit, into which the consideration of money of necessity
entered largely. It is true that some qualities are taken as equivalents
for actual cash: thus, if a young man has a straight and well-cut nose
he may sell himself at a higher price than a young man there with the
hideous pug; if a girl is beautiful, the marquis will be content with
some thousands of francs less for her dower than if her hair were red or
her complexion irreclaimably brown. If Julie has a pretty foot, a
_svelte_ waist, and can play the piano thunderingly, or sing in the
charmingest soprano, her ten thousand francs are quite as acceptable as
those of stout awkward, glum-faced Jeannette. The faultless boots and
yellow kids of young Adolphe counterbalance the somewhat apocryphal
vicomté of ill-kempt and ill-attired Henri.
But then there must be _some_ fortune. A Frenchman is so much in the
habit of expecting it, that he thinks it almost a crime to fall in love
where there is none. Françoise, pretty, clever, agreeable as she was,
was penniless, and even worse, she was the daughter of a man who had
been imprisoned on suspicion of murder, and a woman who had gained her
livelihood by needlework. All these considerations made the fancy of the
merry abbé less ridiculous, and Françoise herself, being sufficiently
versed in the ways of the world to understand the disadvantage under
which she laboured, was less amazed and disgusted than another girl
might have been, when, in due course, the cripple offered her himself
and his dumb-waiter. He had little more to give--his pension, a tiny
income from his prebend and his Marquisat de Quinet.
The offer of the little man was not so amusing as other episodes of his
life. He went honestly to work; represented to her what a sad lot would
hers be, if Madame de Neuillant died, and what were the temptations of
beauty without a penny. His arguments were more to the point than
delicate, and he talked to the young girl as if she was a woman of the
world. Still, she accepted him, cripple as he was.
Madame de Neuillant made no objection, for she was only too glad to be
rid of a beauty, who ate and drank, but did not marry.
On the making of the contract, Scarron's fun revived. When asked by the
notary what was the young lady's fortune, he replied: 'Four louis, two
large wicked eyes, one fine figure, one pair of good hands, and lots of
mind.' 'And what do you give her?' asked the lawyer.--'Immortality,'
replied he, with the air of a bombastic poet 'The names of the wives of
kings die with them--that of Scarron's wife will live for ever!'
His marriage obliged him to give up his canonry, which he sold to
Ménage's man-servant, a little bit of simony which was not even noticed
in those days. It is amusing to find a man who laughed at all religion,
insisting that his wife should make a formal avowal of the Romish
faith. Of the character of this marriage we need say no more than that
Scarron had at that time the use of no more than his eyes, tongue, and
hands. Yet such was then, as now, the idea of matrimony in France, that
the young lady's friends considered her fortunate.
Scarron in love was a picture which amazed and amused the whole society
of Paris, but Scarron married was still more curious. The queen, when
she heard of it, said that Françoise would be nothing but a useless bit
of furniture in his house. She proved not only the most useful appendage
he could have, but the salvation alike of his soul and his reputation.
The woman who charmed Louis XIV. by her good sense, had enough of it to
see Scarron's faults, and prided herself on reforming him as far as it
was possible. Her husband had hitherto been the great Nestor of
indelicacy, and when he was induced to give it up, the rest followed his
example. Madame Scarron checked the licence of the abbé's conversation,
and even worked a beneficial change in his mind.
The joviality of their parties still continued. Scarron had always been
famous for his _petits soupers_, the fashion of which he introduced, but
as his poverty would not allow him to give them in proper style, his
friends made a pic-nic of it, and each one either brought or sent his
own dish of ragout, or whatever it might be, and his own bottle of wine.
This does not seem to have been the case after the marriage, however;
for it is related as a proof of Madame Scarron's conversational powers,
that, when one evening a poorer supper than usual was served, the waiter
whispered in her ear, 'Tell them another story, Madame, if you please,
for we have no joint to-night.' Still both guests and host could well
afford to dispense with the coarseness of the cripple's talk, which
might raise a laugh, but must sometimes have caused disgust, and the
young wife of sixteen succeeded in making him purer both in his
conversation and his writings.
The household she entered was indeed a villainous one. Scarron rather
gloried in his early delinquencies, and, to add to this, his two sisters
had characters far from estimable. One of them had been maid of honour
to the Princesse de Conti, but had given up her appointment to become
the mistress of the Duc de Trêmes. The laugher laughed even at his
sister's dishonour, and allowed her to live in the same house on a
higher _étage_. When, on one occasion, some one called on him to solicit
the lady's interest with the duke, he coolly said, 'You are mistaken; it
is not I who know the duke; go up to the next storey.' The offspring of
this connection he styled 'his nephews after the fashion of the Marais.'
Françoise did her best to reclaim this sister and to conceal her shame,
but the laughing abbé made no secret of it.
But the laugher was approaching his end. His attacks became more and
more violent: still he laughed at them. Once he was seized with a
terrible choking hiccup, which threatened to suffocate him. The first
moment he could speak he cried, 'If I get well, I'll write a satire on
the hiccup.' The priests came about him, and his wife did what she could
to bring him to a sense of his future danger. He laughed at the priests
and at his wife's fears. She spoke of hell. 'If there is such a place,'
he answered, 'it won't be for me, for without you I must have had my
hell in this life.' The priests told him, by way of consolation, that
'God had visited him more than any man.'--He does me too much honour,'
answered the mocker. 'You should give him thanks,' urged the
ecclesiastic. 'I can't see for what,' was the shameless answer.
On his death-bed he parodied a will, leaving to Corneille 'two hundred
pounds of patience; to Boileau (with whom he had a long feud), the
gangrene; and to the Academy, the power to alter the French language as
they liked.' His legacy in verse to his wife is grossly disgusting, and
quite unfit for quotation. Yet he loved her well, avowed that his chief
grief in dying was the necessity of leaving her, and begged her to
remember him sometimes, and to lead a virtuous life.
His last moments were as jovial as any. When he saw his friends weeping
around him he shook his head and cried, 'I shall never make you weep as
much as I have made you laugh.' A little later a softer thought of hope
came across him. 'No more sleeplessness, no more gout,' he murmured;
'the Queen's patient will be well at last' At length the laugher was
sobered. In the presence of death, at the gates of a new world, he
muttered, half afraid, 'I never thought it was so easy to laugh at
death,' and so expired. This was in October, 1660, when the cripple had
reached the age of fifty.
Thus died a laugher. It is unnecessary here to trace the story of his
widow's strange rise to be the wife of a king. Scarron was no honour to
her, and in later years she tried to forget his existence. Boileau fell
into disgrace for merely mentioning his name before the king. Yet
Scarron was in many respects a better man than Louis; and, laugher as he
was, he had a good heart. There is a time for mirth and a time for
mourning, the Preacher tells us. Scarron never learned this truth, and
he laughed too much and too long. Yet let us not end the laugher's life
in sorrow:
'It is well to be merry and wise,' &c.
Let us be merry as the poor cripple, who bore his sufferings so well,
and let us be wise too. There is a lesson for gay and grave in the life
of Scarron, the laugher.