Transcriber’s Note: Two pages of adverts have been moved to the end of
the book.
THE YOUTH
OF
MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE,
OR
NEW REVELATIONS
OF
COURT AND CONVENT IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY.
FROM THE FRENCH OF VICTOR COUSIN.
BY F. W. RICORD.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON & CO., 346 & 348 BROADWAY,
AND 16 LITTLE BRITAIN, LONDON.
M DCCC LIV.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854,
BY D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Southern District of New York.
TO
ABRAM COLES, M. D.,
OF NEWARK, N. J.,
AS A TRIBUTE TO HIS MANY VIRTUES,
AND AS A SMALL RETURN FOR HIS MANY KINDNESSES,
This Volume
IS RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY HIS FRIEND,
THE TRANSLATOR.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
The person of Madame de Longueville—Description
of contemporaries—Authentic portraits—Her wit and
style—Her character—Explanation of her conduct in the
Fronde—Mademoiselle de La Vallière and Madame de Longueville 15
CHAPTER I.
1619 to 1635.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon in her family—Her mother, Charlotte de
Montmorency—Her father, M. the Prince—Her brother, the Duke
d’Enghien—Her religious education—The convent of the Carmelites
of the Rue Saint-Jacques—The four great prioresses—Mademoiselle
d’Epernon—Mademoiselle de Bourbon at the ball of the Louvre,
February 18, 1635—Her portrait at the age of fifteen years 79
CHAPTER II.
1635 to 1642.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon at the hôtel de Rambouillet—The Genre
Précieux—Madame de Sablé, type of the true précieuse—Corneille
and Voiture—Mademoiselle de Bourbon at Chantilly—At Ruel—At
Liancourt—Her young friends—Mademoiselle Du Vigean and
Condé—Marriage of Mademoiselle de Bourbon 150
CHAPTER III.
1642 to 1644.
Poetry and gallantry—State of affairs in 1643—Battle of
Rocroy—Mazarin and the _Importants_—Madame de Montbazon—Letter
attributed to Madame de Longueville—Duel between Coligny and De
Guise—An unpublished novel of the seventeenth century 241
CHAPTER IV.
1644 to 1649.
Campaigns of Condé in Flanders and on the Rhine—Congress
and peace of Munster—Madame de Longueville at Munster—Her
portrait by Van Hull—Her return to France—Her brother, the
Prince de Conti—Sonnets of Voiture and of Benserade—La
Rochefoucauld—Commencement of his connection with Madame de
Longueville—The first Fronde—Noble conduct of Condé—Madame de
Longueville at the hôtel de Ville—Birth of Charles de Paris,
Count de Saint-Paul—Peace of 1649 309
PREFACE.
Villefore has written the life of Madame de Longueville, and it is
not our intention to re-write it. We have only wished to penetrate
into the intimacy of a lofty spirit, that inspires us with an especial
interest, by the aid of the most reliable documents that history can
employ—confidential correspondences, in which hearts, opening themselves
far from the eye of the public, involuntarily reveal characters, that
is to say, the truest causes of human events. In order to procure such
documents, we have delved, with the perseverance of passion, in libraries
public and private, and have succeeded in laying hands upon a very great
number of unpublished letters, which have elucidated for us many obscure
points in the life of Mme. de Longueville, of that of Condé, her brother,
of their most celebrated contemporaries, male and female.
In default, then, of every other merit, this production will at least
have that of offering to the reader things hitherto unknown, or scarcely
perceived: for example, the interior, for the first time opened, of that
great convent of the Carmelites of the _Rue Saint Jacques_, which served
as an asylum to so many wounded hearts, where Mlle. de Bourbon was, as
it were, brought up, and wished, at fifteen years of age, to bury her
beauty and her genius; the graceful pastimes of her youth at the Louvre,
at the hôtel de Rambouillet, at Chantilly, at Ruel, at Liancourt; her
charming friends, her brilliant and valiant adorers; the skilful and too
little appreciated politics of her father; the military education, and
also the first loves of Condé; above all, that pure and touching Mlle. Du
Vigean, worthy object of the tenderness of a hero, whom we have in some
sort found again, whom we dare to put by the side of Mlle. de La Vallière.
For more than fifteen years, in our hours of leisure, we have dreamed of
a work the most foreign to our ordinary labors, which has attracted us,
and attached us by its very contrast. The great men, and particularly the
great writers, of the seventeenth century, are almost our contemporaries;
but the women were then not less remarkable than the men, and scarcely
any of them, except Mme. de Sévigné, Mme. de La Fayette, and a very few
others, are known; whilst there were everywhere, at the court and in the
_salons_ of Paris, in the brilliant country-seats of the aristocracy,
and in the austere retreats of religion, women of great spirit and great
heart, who doubtless knew not how to write like professional authors,
who nevertheless wrote much, because it was the mode of the times, who
would not write in a mediocre manner, with the thoughts and sentiments
on which they had been nourished. We have therefore amused ourselves in
searching for, and we have succeeded in discovering a literature wholly
feminine, three-quarters unknown, which does not seem to us unworthy
of having a place by the side of the manly literature in possession of
universal admiration. Hence the project of a gallery of illustrious
females of the seventeenth century, upon the model of the illustrious men
of Perrault. We have given the first page of such a history in JACQUELINE
PASCAL;[1] and this is probably the last. Age is coming on; the heavens
are growing dark; and we owe ourselves to more serious thoughts, to a
great cause which we have heretofore served with the ardor and the energy
of youth, which to-day, compromised by some, betrayed by others, claims
our last efforts, and our highest devotion.[2] Nevertheless, we shall
not regret the moments that we have given to these studies, somewhat
light, if they can increase the knowledge of, and a taste for the most
admirable epoch of our history, of that powerful French society of the
seventeenth century, which is the more admired the more it is seen under
its different aspects; when France was a spectacle to the nations, and
marched at the head of humanity, when philosophy was an honor, as well as
poetry and the arts, the religious spirit and the military spirit; when
Descartes divided public esteem with Corneille and Condé; when Mme. de
Grignan studied him with a passionate vivacity; when Bossuet and Arnauld,
Fénelon and Malebranche, openly declared themselves his disciples.
So that, to speak truly, at that common focus of the great and the
beautiful, our literary predilections and our philosophic faith are tied
to each other in an intimate manner, and reciprocally vivify each other.
But if the seventeenth century has more than ever our admiration, we
guard ourselves from the too much accredited error that confounds that
century with the reign of Louis XIV. Surely Louis XIV. is for us also a
great king. He had, what is rarest in the world, grandeur in character;
that is his immortal glory. Moreover, he was reserved, attentive,
laborious, capable of a firm and persistent course; but, it must be said,
he was profoundly selfish, and loved his person and his family much
more than France. He was radically deceived in the only two enterprises
that originated in his own will,—the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
and the wars of the Succession. He left France humiliated, enfeebled,
discontented, and already full of the germs of revolutions; whilst Henry
IV., Richelieu, and Mazarin had transmitted it to him covered with glory,
powerful and preponderant abroad, tranquil and satisfied at home. Louis
XIV. terminates the seventeenth century: he did not inspire it, and he
is far from being its perfect representative. It was under Henry IV.,
under Louis XIII., and under Queen Anne, that were born, formed, and
even developed, the great statesmen and the great warriors, as well as
the greatest writers of either sex, those even, like Madame de Sévigné
and Bossuet, whose career was most prolonged. The influence of Louis
XIV. made itself felt sufficiently late. He took the reins of government
only in 1661, and at first he followed his times, and did not control
them; he truly appeared himself, only when he was no longer guided by
Lyonne and Colbert, the last disciples of Richelieu and Mazarin. It was
then that, governing almost alone and superior to all around him, he
placed everywhere the impress of his taste, in politics, in religion, in
manners, in arts, and in letters. He substituted in every way simplicity
for _naïveté_, nobility for grandeur, dignity for force, elegance for
grace: he effaced characters, and polished, as it were, the surface of
souls; he eradicated great vices and great virtues; he put the purely
literary, and consequently the somewhat inferior school of Racine and
Boileau in the place of that great school of virtue, politics, and war,
instituted by Corneille; as heirs to Descartes, Pascal, and Bossuet,
he gave Massillon, Fontenelle, and Voltaire—the true children of the
end of the seventeenth century. After Madame de Sévigné, that rival of
Molière, formed, like him, from 1640 to 1660, appeared Mme. de Maintenon,
the model of the common-place, with her agreeable small-talk, Mme. de
Coylus, Mme. de Stael, and Mme. Lambert. Add to that, as we have already
said, the wholly gratuitous revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when
Protestants, subdued, but protected, rivalled in zeal the Catholics for
the service of the state, and when their most illustrious families were
by degrees converted; add especially, the deplorable wars undertaken by
Louis XIV., with a ministry of court clerks and generals, in order to put
the crown of Spain on the head of his grandson, when in exchange for his
pretensions, and without drawing the sword, he might have given Belgium
to France; and you have the end of a reign that little resembles its
beginning; for the beginning comes from a wholly different genius—from
that genius which inspired Henry IV., Richelieu, and Mazarin, dictated
the Edict of Nantes, the treaty of Munster, and that of the Pyrenees,
the Cid, Polyeucte, and Cinna, the Discours de la Méthode, and the
Provinciales, Don Juan, and the Misanthrope, and the most pathetic
sermons of Bossuet. It is genius that we recall, and glorify everywhere
in this work; because to our eyes it is the genius itself of France at
the epoch of her true greatness.
If the public receives these studies somewhat favorably, we shall offer
to it their sequel; we will exhibit also Mme. de Longueville during the
Fronde, and after her conversion, from 1649 to 1680. It is certainly not
the least beautiful part of the seventeenth century.
V. COUSIN.
DECEMBER 15, 1852.
MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE.
INTRODUCTION.
The person of Madame de Longueville—Description of
contemporaries—Authentic portraits—Her wit and style—Her
character—Explanation of her conduct in the Fronde—Mademoiselle
de La Vallière and Madame de Longueville.
There are three well-defined periods in the life of the Duchess de
Longueville.[3]
Born in 1619, in the castle of Vincennes, during the captivity of her
father, Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé, whose imprisonment was shared
by his young wife, that celebrated beauty, Charlotte Marguerite de
Montmorency, we at first see Mademoiselle de Bourbon, growing in graces
by the side of such a mother, dividing her time between the convent
of the Carmelites and the hôtel de Rambouillet, nourishing her heart
with pious emotions and romantic reading; going to a ball, but with
an under-garment of hair-cloth; sharing the confidence of a hero, her
brother, the Duke d’Enghien; sympathizing with him in his love of the
beautiful Mademoiselle Du Vigean, and witnessing her entrance into a
cloister, where she herself is destined at last to die. At the age of
twenty-three years she marries M. de Longueville, who is forty-seven, and
who, instead of making up for this disparity, by an assiduous tenderness,
continues in the suite of the saddest coquette of the time, the famous
Duchess de Montbazon. Outraged by this rival, unprotected by a husband,
who is even incapable of jealousy, she yields little by little to the
contagion which surrounds her; and returning to Paris, after passing some
time amid the magnificent distractions of the embassy of Munster, she
suffers herself to be captivated by the wit, grand air, and chivalrous
appearance of Prince de Marcillac, afterwards Duke de La Rochefoucauld.
This liaison shapes her life, and closes its first period in 1648.
The Fronde with its vicissitudes; love—such as it was understood at
the hôtel de Rambouillet, the love of Corneille and Scudéry—with its
enchantments and its griefs, mingled with dangers and glory, crossed
by a thousand adventures, the vanquisher of the rudest obstacles, and
yielding to its own infirmities—in fine, exhausting itself;—such is the
second period, so short and so full, beginning in 1648, and closing in
the midst of 1654.
From this time the whole life of Madame de Longueville is one long,
austere penance, performed successively in Normandy, near her aged
husband, among the Carmelites, at Port Royal, and finally concluded in
1679.
Thus at first a spotless reputation, then faults, then expiation divide
the career of Madame de Longueville.
It is in this order that we have collected, and that we shall present
all that patient research has enabled us to gather concerning Madame
de Longueville. We shall give political and religious writings, and
especially confidential letters, thrown off from her pen during every
important moment of her life, and which exhibit it in a manner equally
faithful and agreeable.
But if the writings and letters which we are about to publish, elucidate
the character of Madame de Longueville, it is quite as true that the
character, well comprehended, explains them and places them in their true
light. To introduce and give interest to a work, it is usual to begin
with some details respecting its author; and as in this case the author
is a woman, it is necessary to become acquainted with her person, as
well as with her mind and her heart.
I.
Anne Geneviève de Bourbon was the daughter, as we have said, of that
Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, Princess de Condé, who had turned
the head of Henry IV., and whom, it is said, he wished to snatch from
the hands of her jealous husband, at the risk of setting all Europe in
commotion. The daughter was at least as beautiful as the mother, and this
was a principal advantage of Madame de Longueville, which, we confess,
possesses for us no ordinary attractions.
Beauty extends its prestige to posterity itself, and attaches a charm,
for centuries, to the name alone of the privileged creatures upon whom
it has pleased God to bestow it. But I speak of true beauty. This is not
less rare than genius and virtue. Beauty has also its epochs. It does not
belong to all men and to all ages to taste it in its exquisite truth.
As there are fashions which spoil it, there are periods which affect
its sentiment. For example, it became the eighteenth century to invent
pretty women—those charming dolls, perfumed and powdered, affecting the
attractions which they do not possess under their vast hoops and great
furbelows. It was quite sufficient to prattle in a _salon_, to write
_Lettres peruviennes_, to serve as models for the heroines of the younger
Crébillon, and to turn the heads of the heroes of Rosbach. Those of
Rocroy and of Lens, the contemporaries of Richelieu, of Descartes, and of
Corneille, the energetic and somewhat rude men who preceded Louis XIV.,
and who delighted in a life of agitation, but to end it like Pascal and
Rancé, would not have been tempted to bend the knee before such frail
idols. Let us dare to say that the foundation of true beauty, as of
true virtue, as of true genius, is force. Shed over this force a ray of
heaven, elegance, grace, delicacy, and you have beauty. Its perfect type
is the Venus of Milo;[4] or again, that pure and mysterious apparition,
goddess or mortal, which is called the Psyche, or the Venus of Naples.[5]
Beauty is certainly to be seen in the Venus de Médicis, but in this we
feel that it is declining, or about to decline. Look at, not the women
of Titian, but the virgins of Raphael and of Leonardi: the face is of
infinite delicacy, but the body evinces strength; they will disgust you
forever with the shadows and monkeys _à la Pompadour_. Adore grace, but
do not in every thing separate it too much from force, for without force
grace soon shares the fate of the flower that is separated from the stem
which animates and sustains it.
It was Florence, it was its artists and its princes, that carried into
France the sentiment of true beauty. Here it was rapidly developed, and,
for various reasons which I cannot now even point out, it reigned among
us until near the close of the XVIIth century.
What a train of accomplished women this century presents to us! women who
were loaded with admiration, drawing after them all hearts, and spreading
from rank to rank that worship of beauty which throughout all Europe
received the name of French gallantry! They accompany this great century
in its too rapid course; they mark its principal epochs, beginning
with Charlotte de Montmorency, and finishing with Madame de Montespan.
Between these place the lady of the High Constable of Luynes, afterwards
Duchess de Chevreuse, Madame de Hautefort, Madame de Montbazon, Madame
de Guimenée, Madame de Châtillon, Marie de Gonzague, afterwards Queen of
Poland, her sister the Palatine, and so many others, among whom, to my
extreme regret, I dare not mention Mademoiselle de La Vallière, and yet
am compelled to place Madame de Maintenon.
Madame de Longueville has her place in this dazzling gallery. She had all
the characteristics of true beauty, joining to it a peculiar charm.
She was of good stature and of an admirable form. Embonpoint with all
its advantages were not wanting to her. She possessed, as I cannot doubt
in examining the authentic portraits before me, that kind of attraction
so much prized during the XVIIth century, and which, with beautiful
hands, had made the reputation of Anne of Austria. Her eyes were of the
most tender blue. Her fine light hair, descending in large ringlets,
displayed the graceful contour of her face, and overspread her admirable
shoulders, much exposed, according to the fashion of the times. Behold
the foundation of true beauty. Add to it a complexion whose whiteness,
delicacy, and tempered lustre have given it the name of pearly. This
charming complexion displayed every shade of sentiment that crossed her
soul. In speech she was most gentle. Her gestures, with the expression
of her countenance, and the sound of her voice, produced the completest
music; such is the language of a disinterested contemporary, a Jansenist,
Nicole, perhaps, who describes her as “the most perfect actress in the
world.” But her peculiar charm consisted in a graceful ease, a languor,
as all her contemporaries expressed it, which would change to the highest
degree of animation when passion seized her, but which usually gave her
an air of indolence and aristocratic carelessness, mistaken sometimes
for _ennuie_, sometimes for disdain. I have observed this air in but one
person in all France, and this person has left a memory so pure, I may
say so holy, that I dare not name her in this connection, even to compare
her with Madame de Longueville.
Believe me, I am not drawing upon my fancy for a portrait. I confine
myself strictly to the best authorities. I will cite them, if necessary,
to prove my perfect exactness.
Let us begin with him who knew her best, and who certainly has
not flattered her. “This princess,” says La Rochefoucauld in his
_Mémoires_,[6] “had all the advantages of mind and beauty in such
perfection, that it seemed as if nature had in her taken peculiar
pleasure in forming a masterpiece.”
Listen also to Cardinal de Retz, a very good judge in such matters, and
who would have gladly taken the place of La Rochefoucauld. “In regard to
Madame de Longueville, the small-pox had marred her original beauty,[7]
but it had left her nearly all its brilliancy, and this brilliancy,
joined to her quality, her wit, and her languor, which in her possessed
a peculiar charm, rendered her one of the most amiable persons in
France.”[8] And elsewhere: “She had a languor in her manner more touching
than the animation of those who were more beautiful.”
After consulting her male contemporaries, let us examine the opinions
of those of her own sex. We may, it would seem, believe them when they
eulogize the beauty of another. Observe what Madame de Motteville says in
several places concerning that of Madame de Longueville: “Mademoiselle de
Bourbon was beginning to display the first charms of that angelic face
which has since become so celebrated.”[9] “If Madame de Longueville[10]
exerted great influence in this way (by her mind and fortune), the
influence of her beauty was not less powerful; for although the
small-pox had, since the regency, somewhat injured the perfection of her
complexion, the brilliancy of her charms attracted those who saw her; and
she possessed in the highest degree what the Spanish language expresses
by those words—_donayre, brio, y byzarria_ (gallant air). She had an
admirable form, and her personal appearance had a charm whose power
extended even over our own sex. It was impossible to see her without
loving her, and without desiring to please her. Her beauty, however,
consisted more in the coloring of her face than in the perfection of her
features. Her eyes were not large, but beautiful, soft, and brilliant,
and their blue was admirable; it was similar to that of the turquoise.
Poets could compare the white and incarnation of her face to lilies and
roses only; and the light shining hair which accompanied so many other
wonderful things, made her resemble an angel, such as our feeble nature
can conceive one, rather than a woman:
‘Poca grana y mucha nieve
Van competiendo en su cara,
Y entre lirios y iasmines
Assomanse algunas rosas.’”
To these different passages from Madame de Motteville, we would add
a single line from the great Mademoiselle, who was not troubled with
extreme benevolence: “Madame de Longueville was old; Mademoiselle de
Bourbon was young and beautiful as an angel.”[11]
And the angelic air as well as the pearly complexion must have belonged
to Madame de Longueville in a peculiar manner, since we again find these
expressions in an unpublished letter[12] of another female of the same
period, Mademoiselle de Vaudy, who writes to Madame de Longueville in
1655: “Though your Highness had not the tint of the pearl, the mind and
the sweetness of an angel....” Does not this unintentional agreement
of different persons prove the general effect produced by Madame de
Longueville, and the justness of the comparisons naturally suggested by
her beauty?
This fortuitous and striking harmony authorizes and fully justifies
the language, which might otherwise be suspected, of Scudéry, in the
dedication of _Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus_: “The beauty which you possess
in the highest degree ... is not the most remarkable of your gifts,
although an object of wonder to all the world. Doubtless we realize in
your Highness the most perfect idea, whether it be of form, of which
yours is so beautiful and so noble, or of majestic bearing, or of
beautiful hair, or of brilliancy, as well in the eyes, in the clearness
and vivacity of complexion, in the just proportion of all the features,
and in that modest and gallant air, which is the soul of beauty.”[13]
Not content with this description, Scudéry has taken it up again, and,
as we would now-a-days say, illustrated it with a portrait of Madame
de Longueville, just as Chapelain, in dedicating _La Pucelle_ to her
husband, placed the portrait of that prince at the beginning of his work.
This leads us to say a few words in regard to the different portraits
which we have seen of Madame de Longueville; they present her to us in
the gracefulness of youth, in the full splendor of all her charms, in her
maturity.
King Louis-Philippe conceived the happy idea of assembling at Versailles,
in the galleries of the second floor, all the portraits which he could
collect of the celebrated personages of France. Among them we find[14] a
portrait of Madame de Longueville in youth, by the side of her father,
Henri de Bourbon, and of her mother, Charlotte de Montmorency. It is
unfortunately a copy. A note placed behind the frame says that this
copy was made from an original painting of Ducayer executed in 1634.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon, born in 1619, was then but fifteen years old.
It is impossible to see or to imagine a more charming creature. All the
signs of her future great beauty are already visible; certain attractions
are still wanting, but the strength which promises and assures them is
stamped upon every part.
We again behold her, after her marriage, and during the embassy of
Munster, in 1646 and 1647. She is now twenty-seven or twenty-eight years
of age. Anselm Van Hull is the author of this portrait. It is a bust,
with a highly ornamented frame. The young woman has well preserved all
that the young girl promised. The forms of beauty are developed. Her
tresses are magnificent. She has the collar of pearls, which seldom quits
her. This portrait is engraved in the collection of the negotiators of
Munster.[15]
That which is prefixed to the first volume of the _Grand Cyrus_
represents Madame de Longueville in 1649.[16] Her age at this period is
thirty years. This engraving is by Regnesson, brother-in-law of Nanteuil,
after Chauveau. There are also two other engravings, slightly differing
from each other, one by Moncornet, the other by Frosne. Among the
enamel pictures of Petitot, in the museum of the Louvre, is one, in our
opinion, ordinary enough, marked No. 50, which is referred to Madame de
Longueville. All these portraits are of nearly the same period, and give
her the same character of beauty, strength, and ampleness of form, face
more full than in Van Hull, and a more marked embonpoint. To the honor
of Scudéry, it must be said that the passages from the dedication of the
_Grand Cyrus_, which we have quoted, may serve as a faithful text to the
engraving which accompanies them. Here are those light tresses, those
eyes so soft, that complexion of dazzling brightness, and I may add that
graceful and noble dress so becoming to beauty, even as the female dress
of the eighteenth century seems to have been invented for ugliness itself.
Finally, the museum of Versailles[17] contains another portrait of Madame
de Longueville, attributed to Mignard. It is easy to recognize in it the
noble lady, whose image is prefixed to the _Grand Cyrus_. It is truly
Madame de Longueville, with that grand air and amiable languor, which
every one attributes to her. She is sitting, dressed in a rich court
costume, and holding a bouquet of flowers in her hand.
Let us not forget to mention a beautiful silver medallion,[18] without
date, and without engraver’s name, which represents her at nearly the
same age as the portrait of Versailles, in her beautiful maturity, and in
the opulence of her charms.[19]
Even after her conversion, and when she had entirely renounced the world,
she preserved a portion of her beauty; and a gentleman who saw her at
this time at the house of her brother, the Prince de Condé, declared[20]
that the progress of age was scarcely visible upon her; that her piety
became her; that her candor, her modesty, and her sweetness, ennobled by
her air of dignity, rendered her at this period as capable of pleasing as
ever.
II.
In describing the person of Madame de Longueville, we find ourselves
tracing the character of her mind and of her soul.
Her mind has received the homage of the most delicate connoisseurs.
We have seen that La Rochefoucauld, Retz, and Madame de Motteville
praise it as much as they do her beauty. Retz urges particularly that
this mind owed every thing to nature, and almost nothing to study, its
indolence removing it from every effort in ordinary things. “Madame de
Longueville,” says he, “has naturally a great fund of wit, but she has
still more finesse and tact. Her capacity, which has not been aided
by her indolence, is not exercised upon business matters,[21] etc.”
And speaking of the languor of her manners: “She had even a languor
of the mind, which was charming, because it had, if we may so speak,
luminous and startling awakenings.” Madame de Motteville coincides with
the Cardinal de Retz: “This princess ... was very indolent.”[22] The
occupation furnished by the applause of the great world, which ordinarily
regards with too much admiration the fine qualities of persons of rank,
had deprived Madame de Longueville of opportunities for reading and
for storing her mind sufficiently to be called learned.[23] She was
indeed far enough from this, and did not pique herself at all upon her
acquirements. While her two brothers, the Prince de Condé and the Prince
de Conti, had studied assiduously with the Jesuits of Bourges and of
Paris, Mademoiselle de Bourbon had received, under the direction of her
mother, nothing more than the simple instructions given in those times to
women. A happy disposition and social intercourse with the choice spirits
around her supplied every thing. Even at an early age she acquired a
great reputation, and I find that while yet a child she was loaded with
praises and even with dedications. I have now before me a _pastoral
tragic comedy_, entitled _Uranie_,[24] which a certain Bridard dedicated
to her in 1631, that is, when she was twelve years old. This Bridard says
to her: “The most perfect courtiers know that you have a mind far before
your years. I can myself testify to this, having heard you recite verses
with so much grace, that one might suppose that an angel, borrowing
your beauty, had descended upon the earth to discourse upon the wonders
of heaven.” I quote this passage from that book forgotten, and justly
forgotten, because it forestalls all those of Madame de Motteville, of
Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and of Mademoiselle de Vaudy. At twelve
years we find her an _angel_, and so called ever afterwards. From early
youth she had, with her brother, the Duke d’Enghien, frequented the
hôtel de Rambouillet; and the _salons_ of the Rue Saint Thomas du Louvre
were not the most proper school for a mind characterized by grandeur and
finesse, but a grandeur tending to the romantic, and a finesse often
degenerating into subtility—a mind, too, like that of Corneille, the
perfect representative of its epoch. It seems, however, that the hôtel
de Rambouillet did not fasten upon her its likes and dislikes, for one
day, while listening to the reading of _La Pucelle_ of Chapelain, so
praised in this quarter, and hearing the remarks upon its pretended
beauties—“Yes,” said she,[25] “it is very beautiful, but it is very
tiresome!” Somewhat in the same manner her brother, the great Condé,
defended Corneille against the rules, exclaiming that he could not pardon
rules which forced the Abbé d’Aubignac to write such bad tragedies. She
was everywhere proclaimed the sovereign judge of all writings, the queen
of wit, the arbiter of taste and of elegance, as Horace says. In 1649, in
the quarrel concerning the two sonnets of Benserade and of Voiture, the
whole court took the part of Benserade; but Madame de Longueville having
declared herself in favor of Voiture, every one went over to her side.
And at this period of her life she must have yielded to the prevailing
taste, and must have been somewhat of a _précieuse_, for Madame de
Motteville, in speaking of the principal beauty of her mind, which lay in
delicacy of thought, accuses her of affectation, adding immediately, as
if to excuse herself for finding any blemish in so accomplished a person:
“All men partake of that clay from which they originate, and God alone
is perfect.”[26]
All agree in saying that she conversed divinely, and with an exquisite
mixture of vivacity and sweetness. The charm of her conversation must
have been very extraordinary to have survived her youth and her worldly
life, and still subsist in devotion and penitence. The Jansenist writer
who left us a portrait, or, as it was then called, a _character_ of
Madame de Longueville,[27] does not hesitate to compare, and almost
prefer her, to one of the most intellectual men, and most celebrated
conversationists, of the XVIIth century, M. de Tréville.[28] “The manner
in which Madame de Longueville conversed is something to be studied....
Every thing that she said was so well said, that it would have been
difficult, even with much study, to say it better. There were more
lively and rare things in what M. de Tréville uttered, but there was
more delicacy, and more spirit and good sense in Madame de Longueville’s
manner of expression.”
But to speak and to write are two very different things, each demanding
a particular cultivation; and that Madame de Longueville did not study,
is evident as soon as she takes up the pen. Her great natural qualities
showed themselves with difficulty through the faults of every kind
which resulted from her inexperience. It is in fact no small affair to
express one’s sentiments and ideas in a natural order, with their true
shades, and in terms neither too nice nor too vulgar, terms which neither
exaggerate nor enfeeble them. It is not unusual to find men full of
wit, enthusiasm, and grace when they speak, and who, when they take up
the pen, become contemptible. It is because writing is an art, a very
difficult art, and which must have been learned. Madame de Longueville
was entirely ignorant of it, and so were the most eminent women of
her time. I have elsewhere[29] spoken of Madame Angélique Arnaud and
of Jacqueline Pascal, who, though highly gifted, have left but very
imperfect works. All are unanimous in representing the Princess Palatine
as a person of great mind, who treated the greatest men as their
equal. Retz[30] and Bossuet[31] affirm this, and I believe them, for in
this matter they were better judges than I. Read, however, some of the
manuscript letters of the Palatine. They are not, certainly, deficient
in respect to solidity, finesse, and ingenuity; but I am forced to admit
that they are often full of inaccuracies, that their construction is very
awkward, and that the most common rules of orthography are sometimes
outrageously violated. I do not conclude from this that the Palatine had
not a mind of the first order, but simply that she had not been taught
the art of writing properly her sentiments and thoughts. In this Madame
de Longueville was no better skilled. Thus, all that we shall publish
from her pen exhibits at once the beauty of her genius and the defects of
her education.
With these women who write so well and so badly, we may contrast Madame
de Sévigné and Madame de La Fayette, who always write well. To be just,
however, it seems to me that we should take into consideration two very
important things.
In the first place, these two ladies had received an education
altogether different from that given to Madame de Longueville; they had
been under the tuition of skilful masters of language and of literature,
among whom was one of the most learned men of the seventeenth century,
who at the same time made the greatest pretensions to wit, gentility, and
gallantry. Ménage had, during their youth and even after their marriage,
taught Mademoiselle de Rabutin, and afterwards Madame de Lavergne, not
only the French language as it was spoken and written by the Academy,
but the language of the wits of the time, the Italian, and even somewhat
of the Latin; he excused them from the Greek alone. He exercised them in
writing, pointing out their errors, cultivating their happy instincts,
polishing and regulating their mind and style. He retained them for
a considerable time under this discipline, which was indeed highly
agreeable to himself. Their professor was also their Platonic admirer,
more Platonic than he perhaps desired. He addressed to them stanzas,
sonnets, idyls, madrigals, and all sorts of verses in French, in Italian,
and in Latin. He celebrated by turns the _formosissima Laverna_ and the
_bellissima Marchesa di Sevigni_.[32] He certainly would not have taken
the trouble to compose, in honor of their wit and charms, Latin and
Italian verses which they might have been unable to comprehend. On the
contrary, both of them wrote very well in Italian.[33] In a manuscript
correspondence of Madame de La Fayette, lately in my possession, I
have found more than one allusion to the time when, thus to speak, she
pursued her studies under Ménage.[34] Nature had done every thing for
Madame de Sévigné: it had given her perfect exactness and solidity, with
inexhaustible playfulness and sparkling vivacity. Art and genius united,
made of her the incomparable letter-writer who left Balzac and Voiture
a thousand leagues behind, and whom Voltaire himself has not surpassed.
Like a mad and ignorant person, she appears to defy every thing; but in
her boldest strokes she never miscalculates, which is an infallible sign
of a finished art. Observe again, that if Madame de Sévigné wrote well,
it was because she knew that her letters would be shown; but of this she
does not betray the least suspicion: it is true that she wrote nothing
but letters; I even doubt whether she could have written a book, and I
could not imagine her engaged upon a romance, or upon any work whatever,
except, perhaps, memoirs and satires, like those of her Cousin Bussy or
Saint-Simon, or perhaps upon theological treatises like those of her
daughter, Madame de Grignan.[35] This was not the case with Madame de
La Fayette. She was not only a person of great wit and information, but
she was also an author. It is not surprising that she knew how to write,
since she made a profession of it. An exquisite polish is her prominent
characteristic, and it may be in part referred to the literary discipline
which she preserved much longer than her friend; it may also be accounted
for by the fact that she never wrote a word without submitting it to
that same Ménage, to Sagrais, who resided with her, and who, if he did
not lend her his pen, aided her with his counsels and his name, to Huet,
or to La Rochefoucauld. Madame de La Fayette is certainly far superior
to Madame de La Suze, to Madame de Brégy, to Madame Deshoulières, to
Mademoiselle de Scudéry, to Madame d’Aulnoy, to Madame Lambert, but she
belongs to their family. Although she passed her life with Madame de
Sévigné, she differs from her essentially, and she belongs, too, to a
very different world from that of Madame de Longueville.
But it is important to remember that Madame de Longueville preceded, by
several years, the two illustrious friends, and that, early separated
from the world, and buried in retirement during the last twenty-five
years of her life, she was unable to profit by the then rapid progress
of language and taste. There are in fact two very different parties in
the literature of the seventeenth century: that of Louis XIII. and of
the Regency, represented by Corneille and Pascal; and that which is
particularly the work of Louis XIV., of which Racine and Fénelon are the
most accomplished expression. In one we find a grandeur somewhat uncouth;
in the other a charming art, sometimes felt too sensibly. In the style as
well as in the conversation of the women of the seventeenth century, we
observe prolixity, carelessness, and even incorrectness, for the language
which they write or speak is not settled. They are neither able to choose
between their thoughts, nor to give them that happy turn, that precision
and elegance which, thanks to the superabundance of genius, became so
common at the close of the century. But their attainment to all great
things, political and religious, worldly ambition and holy penitence,
gave their minds a much harder tempering than that possessed by the
women who came after the Fronde, and who, with all France, were stamped
with the taste of Louis XIV. Madame de Sévigné, born and formed in the
first epoch, became fully developed in the second. Her heart is with
the first, her genius springs from it; the second gave her its polish
without depriving her of its vigor and its original fervor.[36] Madame de
Longueville was in full splendor under the Fronde; afterwards she lived
among the Carmelites and at Port-Royal; the cultivation of her taste
ceased about the year 1650. Let us not then demand in her qualities which
she cannot possess. Let us recognize in her a mind of the first rank, but
still the mind of a woman—of a great lady, of a very indolent princess,
who has not made the least improvement of her talents, and who shows
equally her merits and defects, which are also the merits and defects of
the times in which she lived, namely, an uncultivated grandeur, a refined
delicacy, with a perpetual negligence.
III.
If the mind of Madame de Longueville displays the woman, her soul
especially is in the highest degree feminine, and, far from accusing,
I desire to praise her for it. Yes, Madame de Longueville belongs to
her own sex; she possesses its adorable qualities and its well-known
imperfections. In a world in which gallantry was the order of the day,
this young and ravishing creature, married to a man already old and even
otherwise connected, followed the universal example. Naturally tender,
the senses, according to her own most humble confession, had no part in
the affairs of her heart; but, overwhelmed with homage, she yielded to
it. Amiable, she made her happiness in being loved. The sister of the
great Condé, she was not insensible to the idea of playing a conspicuous
part; but far from pretending to rule, she was so much the woman, that
she permitted herself to be governed and guided by him whom she loved.
While around her, interest and ambition so often took the colors of love,
she listened to her heart alone, and devoted herself to the ambition
and interest of another. All authors are unanimous in this particular.
Her enemies reproach her with severity for not having a proper aim, and
for having despised her own interests. They do not suspect that in
the expectation of overwhelming her, they elevate her; and even they
themselves take care to conceal her conduct and her faults, which, after
all, may be reduced to a single one.
She could even be touched by the devotion of Coligny, who shed his
blood to avenge her of the outrage of Madame de Montbazon;[37] for a
moment she listened[38] heedlessly to the gallantries of the brave and
intellectual Moissons, afterwards Marshal d’Albret; still later she
compromised herself somewhat with the Duke de Nemours; but the only
person that she loved truly was La Rochefoucauld. She devoted herself to
him entirely; she sacrificed every thing to him; her duty, her interests,
her repose, her reputation. For him she staked her fortune and her life.
She exhibited the most equivocal and the most contrary conduct. It
was La Rochefoucauld, who caused her to take part in the Fronde, who,
according to his liking, made her advance or recede, who united her to,
or separated her from, her family, who governed her absolutely. In a
word, she consented to be in his hand a mere heroic instrument. Pride
and passion had doubtless something to do with this life of adventure
and this contempt of peril. But of what stamp must have been the soul
that could find consolation in this! And, as often happens, the man to
whom she devoted herself was not wholly worthy of her. He had infinite
spirit; but he was profoundly selfish, meanly ambitious; he measured
others by himself; he was as subtile in evil as she was in good; he
was full of refinement in his self-love, and in the pursuit of his own
interest; in reality, the least chivalrous of men, although he affected
all the appearance of the highest chivalry. So, as soon as he believes
that Madame de Longueville has left him for a moment, and listened too
long to the Duke de Nemours, he returns against her, and pursues her
with the most pitiful resentment. He blackens her character in the eyes
of her brother; he reveals the weaknesses of which he himself has taken
advantage; and when she is devoted to the task of repairing the errors
of her life, when she is expiating them by the severest penitence, he
seeks, by publications in a foreign land, which he dares not own,[39]
to blast her name, just as at a later period he will cause Madame de
Sablé to print to his glory newspaper articles, which his own hand will
correct, and carefully relieve of the little criticisms, inserted for the
purpose of adding weight to the praise;[40] so that the poor woman on
returning from the Carmelites or from Port-Royal was forced to encounter
in the few _salons_ which she still entered, the history of her amours
and the narrative of her errors penned by the hand of him who should
have died in her defence, even, if necessary, against the truth. On the
breaking up of the Fronde, La Rochefoucauld managed his affairs so well
as to retain a good position with the court; he entered the carriage of
Mazarin, uttering those famous words: “Every thing happens in France;” he
solicited and obtained great favors for his son; he sought for himself
the situation of governor of the Dauphin, which was given to Montausier;
he knew how to surround himself with amiable women, who bestowed upon
him their admiration and their little cares, and one of whom, Madame de
La Fayette, consecrated to him her life, and took the place of Madame
de Longueville. How different the conduct of Anne de Bourbon! Love had
drawn her into the Fronde, love had there retained her; when love no
longer exists, she knows not where she is. The proud heroine, who, to war
upon Mazarin, had sold her jewels, pledged her fortune, risked her life
in a frail bark upon the sea, aroused the South, and held in check the
royal power, as soon as she finds that her exertions must avail herself
alone, withdraws into obscurity, and, at the age of thirty-five years,
in all her beauty, plunges into solitude to grieve, like Mademoiselle de
La Vallière, over the errors of her past life. Ah! doubtless it would
have been better to struggle against the heart, and by force of courage
and vigilance to fly all weakness. We bow the knee before those who have
never transgressed; but when, with Mademoiselle de La Vallière, or with
Madame de Longueville, one would compare Madame de Maintenon, with the
endless calculations of her worldly prudence, and the tardy scruples
of her piety, which ever come to the aid of her fortune, we protest
with all our soul. We speak boldly in behalf of the sister Louise de la
Miséricorde, and for the penitent of M. Singlin and of M. Marcel. We
prefer a thousand times the opprobrium with which they sought in vain
to cover themselves, to the vain consideration which, in a degenerate
court, surrounded Madame Scarron, who became privately the wife of Louis
XIV. Two things only move us—virtue and true passion: the one is above
all things else, and can be recompensed worthily by God alone; the other
should not be too much celebrated; but it has its excuse in the grandeur
of its disinterested transports, in its sacrifices, in its sufferings,
and, above all, in its expiations.
Let us endeavor to comprehend Madame de Longueville. She was not a
politician like the Palatine; she had no true business tact. It is folly
to accuse her of not having consistency and personal character. Her true
character and the unity of her life should be sought where they are—in
her devotion to him whom she loved. It is there wholly and always the
same, at once consistent and absurd, and touching even in her follies.
I attribute all her disorderly movements to the uneasy and fickle spirit
of La Rochefoucauld. He it is who is ambitious; he it is who is full of
intrigues; he it is who wanders at random here and there, according to
circumstances, solely occupied with his own interests, and without any
other great merit than a mind fertile in expedients of every kind, and
a dashing courage, without military talents. And I attribute to Madame
de Longueville—to the blood of the Condés, to that great heart which she
ever exhibited—I attribute to her boldness in danger, a certain secret
contentment in the excess of misfortune, and after reverses a pride
before the victors which yields not to that of the Cardinal de Retz.
Madame de Longueville, therefore, did not cast down her eyes; she lifted
them to a more worthy object. Stripped of what was her all, she bid adieu
to the world, and, making no apology to the court, went to ask pardon of
God alone.
This considered, all the criticisms which have been lavished upon Madame
de Longueville, result in her favor.
La Rochefoucauld, after having eulogized Madame de Longueville in
the words which we have quoted, adds: “But these fine qualities were
rendered less brilliant by a stain which was never seen upon a princess
of such merit, which found no imitations on those who entertained for
her a particular adoration; a stain which so transformed her in their
sentiments that she did not recognize her own. At this time the Prince
de Marcillac shared her mind, and as he joined his ambition to his love,
he inspired her with a desire for business to which she had a natural
aversion.” This stain, with which La Rochefoucauld here reproaches her,
is precisely her glory—the affection of a loving and devoted woman.
The future author of the _Maximes_ has no difficulty in confessing that
he was attached to her as much from interest as from affection. After
such a declaration, we cannot admit the chivalrous exclamation:
That I might win her heart, be pleasant in her eyes,
War I’ve waged with kings, I would have storm’d the skies.
No, it was not to please her that you entered the Fronde; it was a
passion for movement and intrigue that prompted you to take part in it.
You know that she had a natural aversion to business, and that contrary
to her taste and her manifest interests, she entered into it for your
sake alone.
La Rochefoucauld relates, in the new part of his _Mémoires_, how and with
what intentions he became connected with Madame de Longueville. He was
striving to revenge himself of the queen and of Mazarin; to accomplish
this he had need of the Prince de Condé, and he sought to secure the
brother by means of the sister. But let us permit him to speak for
himself: “So much unprofitable labor and so much weariness, finally gave
me other thoughts, and made me attempt dangerous ways in order to show my
resentment to the queen and the Cardinal Mazarin. The beauty of Madame de
Longueville, her wit and the charms of her person attached to her all who
could hope for her favor. Many men and women of quality sought to please
her; and in addition to the charms of this court, Madame de Longueville
was upon such good terms with all her house, and so tenderly beloved
by the Duke d’Enghien, her brother, that the esteem and friendship of
this prince could be safely counted upon by any one fortunate enough to
secure the approval of his sister. Many people uselessly attempted this
game, mingling other sentiments with those of ambition. Miossens, who
afterwards became marshal of France, persisted longest, and with similar
success. I was one of his particular friends, and he informed me of his
designs. They were soon destroyed of themselves. He knew it, and told me
several times that he had resolved to renounce them; but vanity, which
was the strongest of his passions, prevented him often from telling me
the truth, and he dissembled hopes which he had not, and which I knew he
ought not to have entertained. Some time passed in this way, and finally
I had reason to believe that I could make a more considerable use than
Miossens of the friendship and confidence of Madame de Longueville. I
convinced him of this. He knew my position at court. I told him my views,
stating that consideration for him would always restrain me, and that I
should not seek to form a connection with Madame de Longueville without
his permission. I confess that to obtain this, I purposely excited him
against her; not, however, by uttering any thing untrue. His full consent
was finally obtained; but he repented of having given it to me when he
saw the result of this connection.”
The declared enemy of Madame de Longueville was her daughter-in-law,
Madame de Nemours, whose character was entirely the opposite of her own.
She was judicious but severe. She was quite naturally on the side of M.
de Longueville, her father, whom she endeavored to withdraw from the
influence of his wife. In her _Mémoires_ she recognizes the perfect
disinterestedness of Madame de Longueville, her sincere attachment
to her brother, and her want of taste for politics: “It is certainly
astonishing[41] that Madame de Longueville should have been one of the
first (to take part in the Fronde), she who had nothing to hope from this
party, and who had no reason to complain of the court.... The prince
entertained an extreme tenderness for his sister. She, on her side,
managed him less from interest than for the particular esteem and tender
friendship which she felt for him.... Madame de Longueville knew very
little about politics.” At the same time she accuses her of being fond of
show, of having no weighty motive for her conduct; of having sacrificed
fortune and repose to a false glory, and all under the influence of La
Rochefoucauld. “It was,” said she, “M. de La Rochefoucauld who inspired
this princess with so many foolish and false sentiments. As he had a very
great power over her, and as, besides, he thought only of himself, he
engaged her in all the intrigues with which she was connected, only to
promote his own selfish designs.... Marcillac, who ruled her absolutely,
and who wished that others should have no credit with her, or even to
appear to have any, alienated her from the deputy, who would not have
been sorry to rule her also.... Marcillac, to promote his own interest,
showed Madame de Longueville.... As soon as Marcillac, who urged on
Madame de Longueville only to procure sooner what had been promised to
him by the court, had obtained what he desired, he thought no more of
the interests of others; he found in his own all that he sought. He even
persuaded Madame de Longueville that she herself was little thought of.”
Retz confirms the insinuations of Madame de Nemours concerning
himself, and takes good care to explain her pretensions, and even
her expectations. He thus concludes the portrait which he has traced
of Madame de Longueville: “She would have had few defects had it not
been for gallantry. As her passion compelled her to make politics a
secondary matter, instead of the heroine of a great party, she became its
adventurer.”
To justify the sentiments of Madame de Longueville, we might have
limited ourselves to quoting two decisive passages from the most
impartial witness of the things and persons of this period, Madame
de Motteville:[42] “In attaching himself politically to the prince,
Marcillac devoted himself to Madame de Longueville in a manner somewhat
more tender, uniting the sentiments of the heart to the consideration of
grandeur and fortune. It was quite apparent to the whole court that this
princess treated him with great attention. In all that she afterwards
did, it was clearly seen that her mind was not solely occupied with
ambition, but that the interests of the Prince de Marcillac filled a
prominent place therein. For him she became ambitious; for him she
ceased to love repose, and, in order to be sensible to this affection,
she became too insensible to her own glory.... The wishes of the Prince
de Marcillac, as I have said, were not displeasing to her; and this
nobleman, who was perhaps more selfish than tender, anxious to benefit
himself through her, thought it his duty to inspire her with the desire
of ruling the princes her brothers.”
Let us crown all these quotations with one from Guy-Joly: “The Prince de
Marcillac managed her with care, judging that she would have particular
consideration in the party, by reason of the ascendency which she had
over the Princes de Condé and de Longueville, and that, being in her good
graces, it would be easy for him to obtain great advantage whenever it
might be necessary for him to treat with the court.”[43]
Thus, by the admission of every one, La Rochefoucauld pursued in the
Fronde his own interest alone, and Madame de Longueville pursued only the
interest of La Rochefoucauld.
But we must not stop here; we must establish, by undoubted facts, and
present clearly the point of view which we have just indicated. La
Rochefoucauld himself, closely interrogated, testifies that, far from
having been drawn into the Fronde by Madame de Longueville, as some have
been pleased to represent, it was he himself who drew her in, and he
himself who directed all her movements.
It is he himself who informs us of the motive which prompted him to the
connection which he formed with Madame de Longueville at the close of
1647, or at the beginning of 1648. He continued wonderfully faithful to
the plan which he had proposed to himself.
1st. At the close of 1647, La Rochefoucauld was irritated because he
could not obtain from the cardinal either the place of Governor of Havre
or that of a colonel of cavalry. He succeeded in turning Madame de
Longueville against Mazarin, by making her believe that Condé had not
received all that was due to him. “Madame de Longueville, whose entire
confidence I possessed, felt as keenly as I could desire the conduct of
the cardinal towards the Duke d’Enghien.”[44] In 1648, before embracing
the party of the Fronde, La Rochefoucauld tried for the last time to gain
Mazarin, and demanded “for his house the same advantages which had been
accorded to those of Rohan, of La Trémouille, and some others.” “I found
myself,” said he,[45] “so removed from favor that I stopped here. I spoke
of it to the cardinal in leaving him. He promised positively to grant my
request in a short time. On my return I should have received the title
of duke in order that my wife might have the privilege of sitting in the
presence of the king. I went to Poitou with this expectation, and there I
quelled the disorders (the first movements of the Fronde); but I saw that
the cardinal, far from keeping his promise, had granted dukes’ patents
to six persons of quality, without remembering me.” And then he engaged
in the sedition. Madame de Longueville, following the instructions which
he had given to her, had commenced laying snares for the deputy and the
parliament, had overcome Conti, gained her husband, and circumvented
Condé; but she held so loosely the reins of this intrigue, that she
wrote to La Rochefoucauld, submitting to him her own proceedings,
and begging him to come and decide what should be done. The passage
from La Rochefoucauld on this subject is very curious, and deserves
to be quoted.[46] “I was in the first transports which a treatment so
extraordinary might be expected to produce, when I learned from Madame
de Longueville that the whole plan of the civil war had been resolved
upon at Noisy between the Prince de Conti, the Duke de Longueville, the
Deputy of Paris, and the most prominent members of the parliament. She
informed me that there was hope of gaining the Prince de Condé; that she
did not know precisely what to do at this juncture, being ignorant of my
sentiments, and she besought me to come by diligence to Paris, that we
might decide together whether she ought to push or delay this project.
This news consoled me in my chagrin, and I felt myself able to convince
the queen and the cardinal that it would have been well for them to humor
me. I asked leave of absence; I had difficulty in obtaining it; and it
was granted only on condition that I would not complain of the treatment
which I had received, and that I would not insist upon my pretensions.
It was easy to promise all this, and I arrived in Paris full of the
resentment which I had a right to feel. I there found things precisely
in the condition described by Madame de Longueville; but I found less
excitement, either because the first steps had been taken, or because
the diversity of interests and grandeur of the design had diminished
the ardor of those who had undertaken it. Madame de Longueville herself
had purposely raised difficulties, in order that I might have time to
make my appearance, and to render myself competent to decide. I did not
hesitate to do it, and I felt great pleasure in knowing that, to whatever
extremity the severity of the queen and the hatred of the cardinal might
reduce me, I had still the means to be revenged.”
2. Thus engaged in the Fronde, Madame de Longueville appeared to become
entirely reckless. She delivered the Prince de Conti into the hands of
La Rochefoucauld; she conspired to lead away M. de Longueville; she
deceived her mother by refusing to accompany her to court, under pretence
of sickness; she went so far as to commit herself, notwithstanding
her approaching confinement, to the hands of the people at the Hôtel
de Ville. She did more: for the sake of La Rochefoucauld, she became
embroiled with her brother Condé, for whom she entertained the greatest
affection; she strove to draw him into the Fronde; he became angry with
her; hence that rupture so astonishing after such tender friendship,
and those outbursts of wrath now so easily accounted for. “The Prince
de Conti ... was weak and fickle; he depended entirely upon Madame de
Longueville, and she left to me the care of guiding him.[47] The Duke de
Longueville possessed mind and experience; he entered easily into the
parties opposed to the court, and left them still more easily.... He was
continually raising obstacles, and repenting of his engagements in it.
I was afraid that he might do more, and discover to the prince what he
knew of the enterprise. With this apprehension, I sent Gourville to Paris
to notify Madame de Longueville and the deputy of the suspicion which
there was reason for entertaining of the Duke de Longueville.... The
Marquis de Noirmontiers and myself were constrained to tell him that we
were going to carry away the Prince de Conti, and that we would declare
to the world that he alone had shown a want of fidelity to his friends,
after engaging them in an undertaking which he abandoned. He could not
bear these reproaches, and suffered himself to be led as we desired....
The king, followed by the queen, the Duke d’Orleans, and the prince, set
out secretly from Paris at midnight, near the close of the year 1649,
and went to Saint-Germain. All the court followed in great disorder.
The princess wished to carry along Madame de Longueville, who was on
the point of being confined; but she feigned illness, and remained at
Paris.... The Prince de Conti and Madame de Longueville, in order to give
more confidence, lodged in the Hôtel de Ville, and committed themselves
entirely into the hands of the people.” ... In another place he says:[48]
“Madame de Longueville was again obliged to reside at the Hôtel de Ville
as a pledge of the fidelity of her brother and husband to the people, who
are naturally suspicious of the great, because they are ordinarily the
victims of their evil doings.... The Prince de Condé[49] ... had taken
measures with the court. The connection which I had with the Prince de
Conti and Madame de Longueville was not agreeable to him.... The cardinal
was preparing to quit the kingdom; but the prince soon reassured him; and
the bitterness which he exhibited towards the Prince de Conti, towards
Madame de Longueville and myself, was so great, that the cardinal could
not doubt that it was genuine.”
3. At the end of this first Parisian war, in 1649, the Prince de Condé
became reconciled with his family, and even with La Rochefoucauld. The
latter was included in the treaty which was consummated; he obtained for
his house “the same advantages of rank that had been accorded to those
of Rohan, of Foix, and of Luxembourg.” Such is the declaration of La
Rochefoucauld;[50] but the truth is, that it was Madame de Longueville
who claimed for him these advantages, and who labored energetically in
his interests. So Madame de Mottville asserts: “Madame de Longueville[51]
omitted nothing in her efforts to secure the favor of the court for the
Prince de Marcillac.... To satisfy[52] her fully it was necessary to
promote the Prince de Marcillac, and in this conjuncture she procured for
his wife the right of sitting in the royal presence, and of entering the
Louvre in her carriage. These advantages placed him above dukes, and upon
an equality with princes, though he was neither the one nor the other:
he was not a member of the royal family.” Madame de Nemours goes still
farther:[53] “Madame de Longueville interfered in this settlement, and it
is even pretended that M. de Marcillac received some money.” What a part
in all this affair was that of La Rochefoucauld! Madame de Longueville
is at least disinterested. She at the same time suffers herself to be
eclipsed and to be compromised, anxious only to serve and to please.
4. In 1650, Mazarin thinking that he ought to revoke the favors which
Madame de Longueville had obtained for La Rochefoucauld, all minds became
exasperated: troubles recommenced; the princes were put in prison; the
arrest of Madame de Longueville was contemplated, and an order was
issued directing her to appear before the Queen at the Palais-Royal.
“Instead[54] of obeying, she resolved, by the advice of the Prince de
Marcillac, to set out at once, with all speed, for Normandy, for the
purpose of engaging that province, and the parliament of Rouen, on the
side of the princes, and of securing in her friendship the fortresses
of the Duke de Longueville and of Havre-de-Grace..... The Prince de
Marcillac accompanied her in this journey.” I ask, which of the two drew
the other into this second war, much more serious than the first? But I
hasten to say that on this occasion both conducted themselves equally
well. While Madame de Longueville was pledging her jewels in Holland for
her defence at Sténay, La Rochefoucauld was also exposing his fortunes
in Guyenne. It was the saddest and the most touching moment in the
history of their loves and their adventures. They were separated from one
another, but still they loved; they served with ardor the same cause;
they struggled and they suffered together.
5. In 1651, after the deliverance of the princes, La Rochefoucauld
grew weary of war, into which he seems to have engaged only to please
Madame de Longueville. “The Duke de La Rochefoucauld[55] could not
testify so openly his repugnance to this war; he was obliged to consult
the feelings of Madame de Longueville, and all that he could then do
was to try to make her desire peace.” What then were the feelings of
Madame de Longueville? Did she wish to continue the war for the sake of
playing a conspicuous part, and with a view to gratify that ambition
of glory with which she has been so often reproached? By no means. Her
thoughts were much more humble. Still attached to La Rochefoucauld, she
contemplated with pain a peace which threatened to separate them. Madame
de Longueville[56] knew that the deputy had embroiled her irrevocably
with her husband, and that after the impressions made upon him as to
her conduct, she could not return to him in Normandy without at least
hazarding her liberty. The Duke de Longueville, however, wished to keep
her near him, and she had no pretext for avoiding this dangerous journey,
except the desire of instigating her brother to carry on a civil war. At
the same time La Rochefoucauld informs us that he persuaded her to avoid
such a responsibility, to retire to Montrond with the Princess de Condé,
and to allow matters to unravel themselves. He[57] showed Madame de
Longueville that her removal from Paris alone could satisfy her husband,
and prevent him from making the journey which she dreaded; that the
prince might easily grow weary of the protection which he had until then
afforded her, having a pretext so specious as that of reconciling a woman
with her husband, and especially if he thought that he might thereby
attach to himself the Duke de Longueville; besides, that she alone would
be accused of fomenting disorder; that she would be, in various ways,
held responsible both to her brother and to the world, for kindling in
the kingdom a war whose results might be grievous to her house and to
the State.... In fine, to avoid so many difficulties, he advised her to
ask the prince to permit the princess, the Duke d’Enghien, and herself
to retire to Montrond, in order that he might not be embarrassed in a
precipitate march if he found himself obliged to depart, and in order
that he might have no scruple in deciding either to fire the kingdom by
a civil war, or to risk his life, his liberty, and his fortune, upon the
doubtful faith of Cardinal Mazarin. This advice met the approbation of
Madame de Longueville, and the prince soon after consented to have it
followed.
Madame de Longueville, in this instance, as in all the others, did not
then lead away La Rochefoucauld; she permitted herself to be guided by
him; she obeyed his counsels, which to her were laws.
Here again is the true and perfect unity of her conduct: Madame de
Longueville pursues the course marked out for her by another, with an
indefatigable constancy, amid all intrigues and dangers, and, as it were,
with her eyes shut to the motives which actuate La Rochefoucauld.
Her blindness is for a long time complete; but, as she united great
shrewdness to great passion, after they had been long separated, and when
she was no longer under the charm or under the yoke of his presence,
her eyes became partly opened; and in the voyage from Guyenne, having
encountered the Duke de Nemours, who showed every appearance of perfect
chivalry, and who was then said to be very attentive to Madame de
Châtillon, absence, the void already in her heart, the innate love of
pleasing, the desire of showing the power of her charms, and of troubling
somewhat a rival who wished at the same time to retain both Nemours and
Condé, in short, the feeling of liberty inspired by a voyage rendered her
more open than she should have been to the addresses of the young and
handsome cavalier. There is no proof that she was beyond temptation.[58]
Scarcely had he returned to Paris when M. de Nemours forgot her,
submitted to the chains of Madame de Châtillon, who triumphed, with her
accustomed perfidy, over the sacrifice which had been made to her. Justly
wounded, La Rochefoucauld falls out with her forever. It is said[59]
that he seized with joy this occasion for separating himself from her,
as he had long desired it. Let this be so; he might have stopped there;
it was unnecessary to calumniate her in the mind of Condé, to impute to
her the base design of having wished to ruin the party and betray her
brother in order to serve the interests of the Duke de Nemours,[60] an
absurd accusation, and one which her whole conduct falsifies, and to
paint her as a vulgar creature, capable of going to the same extremities
for another, if that other so desired; it was unnecessary, as Madame
de Motteville so well says,[61] “from a lover to become an enemy, from
an enemy an ingrate,” and to suffer himself through revenge to commit
offences which went, as Madame de Motteville again says, “beyond what a
Christian owes to God, and a man of honor to a lady.”
Is it possible, in fact, that resentment, of which wounded self-love
was the occasion (for then La Rochefoucauld loved Madame de Longueville
very feebly, if ever he loved[62] her truly), could have degraded a man
of honor like him so far as to make him engage in the shameful plots of
Madame de Châtillon? Madame de Motteville exhibits, as if with regret,
the conduct of La Rochefoucauld in this affair:[63] “Madame de Châtillon
made use of the Duke de La Rochefoucauld and of his passions.... M. de La
Rochefoucauld told me that jealousy and revenge made him act carefully,
and that he did all that she desired.” Now, what Madame de Châtillon
desired, was to humiliate Madame de Longueville, to keep Nemours for her
pleasures, and Condé for her fortune. La Rochefoucauld has in so small
a degree the sentiment of the good and the bad, of the honest and the
dishonest, that he relates what he has done with a sort of satisfaction;
he appears to triumph in an intrigue so skilfully planned. “Madame de
Châtillon[64] brought about a desire for peace by very agreeable means.
She believed that so great a good ought to be the work of her beauty,
and mingling ambition with the design of making a new conquest, she
wished at the same time to triumph over the heart of the prince, and
to draw from the court all the advantages of the negotiation. These
were not her only reasons for entertaining such thoughts: a desire to
gratify vanity and revenge actuated her as much as any thing else. The
emulation which beauty and gallantry often produce among ladies, had
caused an extreme bitterness between Madame de Longueville and Madame
de Châtillon; they had long concealed their feelings, but they finally
made a full exhibition of them; and Madame de Châtillon did not content
herself with compelling M. de Nemours to break off all commerce with
Madame de Longueville; she wished, besides, to obtain the sole disposal
of the conduct and interests of the prince. The Duke de Nemours, who
had a perfect understanding with her, approved this design; he thought
that, being able to regulate the conduct of Madame de Châtillon towards
the prince, she would inspire him with such sentiments as he could wish
to give him, and that thus he would be able to dispose of the prince
by the power which he possessed over Madame de Châtillon. The Duke de
la Rochefoucauld was much deeper than any one in the confidence of the
prince, and was, at the same time, very closely connected with the Duke
de Nemours and Madame de Châtillon.... He induced the prince to engage
with her and to give her, in her own right, the lands of Merlou; he
disposed her also to humor the prince and M. de Nemours, so that she
might preserve them both, and made M. de Nemours approve this connection,
and even appear not to suspect it, since he was to make his account in
it and make use of it for obtaining the principal part in affairs. This
machine being conducted and regulated by the Duke de La Rochefoucauld,
gave him almost the entire disposition of all that composed it, and
thus these four persons therein equally finding their advantage, it
would have doubtless had the success which they contemplated, had not
fortune opposed it.” Let us finish this picture by a stroke which La
Rochefoucauld has forgotten, and which Mademoiselle furnishes: “Madame
de Châtillon,[65] MM. de Nemours and de La Rochefoucauld, who expected
great advantages by a treaty, the first a hundred thousand crowns, the
other a government, and the last a similar sum, thought only of making
peace for the prince.”
Thus, in the end as well as in the midst and at the beginning of
his connection with Madame de Longueville, the only motives of La
Rochefoucauld were interest and self-love. One day in his _Maximes_ he
will thereunto reduce all human nature, inclosing it within the precincts
of his own person, and giving as limits to the moral world those of his
very small experience as a frondeur and a courtier.[66]
Truly we may smile to hear the author of the _Mémoires_ and the _Maximes_
say in the portrait which he has left us of himself: “Ambition does not
move me ... I have virtuous sentiments ... I can keep a secret, and I
have less difficulty than others in keeping to myself what has been told
me in confidence.... I love my friends, and my love is of such a nature
that I would not hesitate to sacrifice my interests to theirs.” Segrais
was hard to suit with eulogy, or he had not read the above passages,
when he said that La Rochefoucauld never praised himself.[67] Madame
de Longueville would have recognized La Rochefoucauld by the following
traits: “I am not incapable of avenging myself if I have been offended,
and when it concerns my honor to resent an injury committed against me;
on the contrary, I should be sure that duty would perform so well in me
the office of hatred, that I would pursue my revenge with greater vigor
than another.” The true portrait of La Rochefoucauld is that which has
been drawn by Retz.[68] “There has always been something indescribable in
M. de La Rochefoucauld: he took pleasure in intrigues at an early age,
and at a time when he did not trouble himself with little things, never
a weakness with him, and at a time, too, when he was unacquainted with
great ones, which were not his forte; he never had much capacity for
business ... his views were not sufficiently extended ... he always had
an habitual irresolution ... he was never a warrior, though a very good
soldier; he was never of himself a good courtier, although he had the
best intention to be one; he was never a good party man, though all his
life a partisan.... All these things, together with his _Maximes_, which
do not exhibit much faith in virtue, and his policy which has always
been to withdraw from business with as much impatience as he engaged in
it, makes me conclude that he would have done much better to have known
himself, and to have passed, as he might have done, for the most polished
courtier, and for the most civil man in common life which his century
produced.”
As to Madame de Longueville, she is certainly far from being perfect,
and perhaps she would have been less loved had she been so; but amid the
follies into which passion plunged her, we feel at least that interest
is nothing to her. The defect of which she continually accuses herself,
is the desire of pleasing and of appearing. The only injury which
she committed against La Rochefoucauld was that momentary display of
giddiness and coquetry during the journey from Guyenne. This was her real
stain. All the rest of her conduct in the Fronde is explained and easily
defended when viewed as we have indicated.
Besides, no one’s conduct in the Fronde should be regarded in too serious
a light, for the Fronde was not a serious affair;[69] it was a series of
intrigues, in which no one had any other object than interest, vanity,
love of importance, with gallantry, and pleasure. Princes thought only of
themselves, of increasing their authority and their fortune; and to this
end, they went by turns from one party to another according to events
and to the daily changes around them. Condé, the prominent person in the
drama, and the only one who with his rival Mazarin merits a place in
history, despised at bottom all parties; but in the end he fixed his mind
upon a place incompatible with royal grandeur. His natural inclination
was to the side of the Court: the Fronde, properly speaking, and the
parliament were odious to him, and he never served them except with great
disrelish. His chief spring of action was war, for which he had a genius;
and this it was which, after much deliberation and hesitation, finally
carried him away. The parliament, forgetting its part and its duties,
was agitated by young lords—burlesque tribunes. The people of Paris were
set in commotion: they were excited against the Court; but as soon as
serious reforms and a convocation of the States-General were talked of,
the parliament took alarm, and receded as well as the opposing party.[70]
The only use of the Fronde, in the admirable economy of our history,
has been to strengthen the royal power, to make every one sensible of
its absolute necessity, and to promote, perhaps to excess, the work of
Louis XI., of Henri IV., and of Richelieu. Under the League, two great
opinions, two great causes, were in hostility. The League also produced
minds, stamped characters, was a school of politics and of war, and
formed the strong men of the first half of the seventeenth century. The
Fronde is in our annals an episode without grandeur; it formed no one,
either a warrior or a statesman; the nation took very little part in
it, because it felt that in it no great interest was at stake; it was a
pastime for gentlemen, for wits, and belles. To the ladies especially the
Fronde belonged: they were at once its motive power and its instruments,
its most interested actors; and among them Madame de Longueville played
the most conspicuous part.
IV.
We should be tempted to be more severe towards the faults of more
than one kind into which she was drawn by her sad connection with La
Rochefoucauld if she herself had felt less remorse, if her repentance
had not been so long and so severe. Her errors began at the close of
1647, or during the first months of 1648—they did not extend beyond 1652;
her remorse ceased only with her life in 1679. Madame de Longueville
was roused to reflection in 1653: she became converted in the middle
of the year 1654. At this period she was thirty-five years of age, and
in all the splendor of her beauty. For a long time yet she might have
enjoyed the pleasures of life and of the world. She renounced them to
devote herself unreservedly and forever to God. During twenty-five
years, in Normandy, among the Carmelites, and at Port-Royal, she lived
only for duty and repentance, seeking to become dead to every thing
that had formerly occupied her life—the cares of her beauty, the
tendernesses of the heart, the graceful employments of the mind. But
in the dress of hair-cloth as well as in fashionable attire, among the
Carmelites and at Port-Royal as well as at the hôtel de Rambouillet
and in the Fronde, she preserved what she could never lose—an angelic
face, a mind charming in the most extreme negligence, with a certain
loftiness of soul and character. This third and last epoch of the life
of Madame de Longueville, will here be presented as fully as the subject
demands: therein we shall see, in all its truth, a devotion continually
increasing, and more and more scrupulous, sometimes reducing her to the
most pitiful condition, sometimes elevating her to an admirable grandeur;
as, for example, in her struggles, after the death of her husband, with
her brother Condé, in regard to her two sons, and in the defence which
she undertook of persecuted Port-Royal.
We do not think that we debase Mademoiselle de Lavallière by comparing
with her Madame de Longueville. It is true that the loves of Mademoiselle
de Lavallière move us in a very different manner from those which we
shall have to relate. In setting aside the circumstance of royalty, which
in this case forms the disagreeable side, and which is always somewhat
injurious to true and disinterested love, Louis XIV. was much better
calculated to please than La Rochefoucauld; he was much younger and
much more handsome; he was, or appeared to be, a great man and a hero.
He adored Mademoiselle de Lavallière at once with an impetuous ardor
and with the most delicate tenderness, and his passion continued for a
long time. Mademoiselle de Lavallière loved the king as she would have
loved a simple gentleman. It is this which gives her a separate place
among the favorites of Louis XIV., and places her far above Madame de
Montespan, and especially above Madame de Maintenon. It cannot be denied
that Madame de Longueville loved with the same disinterestedness and the
same abandonment; but her affection was ill bestowed, but she mingled
with it wit and vanity, but she became giddy and coquettish. Thus far the
comparison is entirely against her. But, besides, she was far superior
to Mademoiselle de Lavallière. She was incomparably more beautiful and
more intellectual. Her soul was also more proud. At the least suspicion
of change in the affection of Louis XIV., she would have fled from the
court; while Mademoiselle de Lavallière remained in it some time, in
the presence of her proud, triumphing rival, thinking that by force of
humility, of patience, and of devotion, she would reconquer the heart
that she had lost. And then, what better could she do than to enter a
cloister? Would she not have rendered herself contemptible by remaining
in the world, by giving to society the spectacle of a favorite of the
king consoling herself, like Madame de Soubise, for the inconstancy
of her royal lover, in the enjoyment of a fortune sadly acquired and
shamefully preserved! In entering the convent of the Carmelites,
Mademoiselle de Lavallière did no more than she was compelled to do.
There is in the conversion and retirement of Madame de Longueville
something more free and more unusual, and to glorify her penitence,
nothing is wanting but the voice of Bossuet. If the incomparable orator
who had consecrated to God Louise de La Miséricorde, and who, at a later
period, had made his words equal in greatness to the actions of Condé,
if his voice had been heard at the celebration of the obsequies of Anne
de Bourbon, Christian letters would have counted another masterpiece,
of which the funeral oration of the Princess Palatine may give us some
idea, and the name of Madame de Longueville would be surrounded with an
immortal halo.
THE YOUTH OF MADAME DE LONGUEVILLE.
CHAPTER I.
1619 to 1635.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon in her family—Her mother, Charlotte de
Montmorency—Her father, M. the Prince—Her brother, the Duke
d’Enghien—Her religious education—The convent of the Carmelites
of the Rue Saint-Jacques—The four great prioresses—Mademoiselle
d’Epernon—Mademoiselle de Bourbon at the ball of the Louvre,
February 18, 1635—Her portrait at the age of fifteen years.
I shall some day attempt to make known in Madame de Longueville the
heroine, or, if you prefer, the adventuress of the Fronde, casting
herself amid dangers and intrigues of every kind in order to serve the
interests and the passions of another. I shall afterwards show her
overcome, disabused, her soul at once wounded and bereaved, turning its
regards towards the only side that cannot deceive her, towards duty
and God. At present, I would recount her life before the Fronde, and
even before the unequal marriage imposed upon her by her family, the
source, indeed, of her errors and her misfortunes. I would paint the
youth of Madame de Longueville, show Mademoiselle de Bourbon in her days
of innocent splendor, yet bearing in herself all the seeds of a stormy
future; born in a prison, and leaving it to mount almost upon the steps
of a throne; surrounded early by the most gloomy spectacles, with all the
felicities of life, beautiful and intellectual; proud and tender, ardent
and melancholy, wishing to bury herself at fifteen in a cloister, and,
once thrown, in spite of herself, into the world, allowing herself there
to be intoxicated with her own success; becoming the ornament of the
court of Louis XIII. and of the hôtel de Rambouillet, eclipsing the most
accomplished beauties by a peculiar sweetness and a ravishing languor;
giving ear to two proposals, but still pure and free; and advancing,
apparently, towards the most beautiful destiny, under the wing of a
mother like Charlotte de Montmorency, by the side of a brother like the
Duke d’Enghien.
I agree that this picture of a brilliant but fortunate youth, without
adventures and without blemishes, may seem somewhat tame to readers
accustomed to the great bustle and the sudden turns of fortune in
fashionable romances. In order to indemnify them, I shall place with
this picture another more highly colored. After the young girl growing
up innocently between religion and the muses, as heretofore described,
I shall exhibit the young woman, rushing, in her turn, into the arena of
gallantry, scattering around her conquests and quarrels, and becoming
the subject of the most famous of the great duels which, during so many
years, reddened the Place-Royale, and were not arrested even before the
implacable axe of Richelieu. These will be scenes sufficiently animated;
but, while waiting for the tragi-comedy, endure, a little while, the
pastoral. It was then a necessary interlude, and I beg you to assume for
a moment with me the taste and the manners of the seventeenth century.
Anne Geneviève de Bourbon was born August 28, 1619, in the tower of
Vincennes, where her father and mother had been prisoners for three years.
Her mother was Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency, granddaughter of
the high constable, and, according to unanimous testimonies, the most
beautiful person of her times. Dazzling in her early youth, she preserved
even in advanced age a remarkable beauty. In addition to her portraits,
we have two faithful descriptions, one by Cardinal Bentivoglio, who
knew her and loved her, it is said, at Brussels, where he was apostolic
nuncio in 1609, when she was nearly sixteen years of age; the other,
by the hand of Madame de Motteville, who has portrayed her as she saw
her later at the court of Queen Anne. “She had a complexion,” says
Bentivoglio,[71] “of extraordinary whiteness, eyes and features full of
charm; she was graceful in gestures and manner of speaking; and all her
different qualities heightened each other, because she added to them none
of the affectations of which women are accustomed to avail themselves.”
Madame de Motteville thus expresses herself:[72] “Among the princesses,
she who was first had also the most beauty; and, though not young, she
still caused admiration in those who saw her.... I wish to testify that
her beauty was still great, when, in my infancy, I was at court, and that
it endured to the end of her life. We praised her during the regency of
the queen, at fifty years of age, and we praised her without flattery.
Her complexion was fair; she had blue and perfectly beautiful eyes. Her
mien was lofty and full of majesty, and her whole person, which was in
every way agreeable, always pleased, except when she proudly and sharply
opposed those who dared to displease her.” When, at fifteen years of age,
she appeared at the court of Henry IV., she turned the head of the old
king. He married her to his nephew, the Prince de Condé, in the hope of
finding him a convenient husband; but he, proud and amorous, was clearly
of the opinion that he had married the beautiful Charlotte for himself;
and, seeing the king more and more inflamed, he found no other means of
extricating himself from his difficult position, than by taking his wife
and flying with her to Brussels. We know all the follies that Henry IV.
then committed, and to what extremities he was about to go when he was
assassinated, in 1610.[73]
Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, was no ordinary man. He owed much to
Henry IV., and he expected much from him; but he had not the courage to
peril the fortune of his house by voluntarily exiling himself; and later
he compromised himself anew by his resistance to the tyrannical conduct
of Marshal d’Ancre, under the regency of Marie de Médicis. Arrested in
1616, he did not leave his prison until the end of 1619, and from that
time he no longer thought of any thing but his fortune. Born Protestant,
he had embraced Catholicism through policy, after the example of Henry
IV. His wife had brought to him a great part of the immense riches of
the Montmorencys. He submitted himself to Luynes, and served Richelieu.
He forced his son, the Duke d’Enghien, to espouse a niece of the
all-powerful cardinal, who had just decapitated his brother-in-law. As
avaricious as ambitious, he amassed property and heaped up honors. At the
death of Richelieu, he became the chief of the council, and displayed in
that difficult conjuncture a fortunate mixture of prudence and firmness.
He sustained the regency of Anne of Austria, and saved France from the
first perils of the long minority of Louis XIV. He merits a place in the
gratitude of his country, for having given to it twice, as it were, the
great Condé, by imposing upon that nature of fire—a nature wholly made
for war, the severest military education that ever prince received, and
by preparing him to take, at twenty-one years of age, the command in
chief of the army, on which rested, in 1643, the destinies of France.
When Henri de Bourbon, who was called M. the Prince, was arrested,
he preferred but one petition, and that was dictated by jealousy and
love; he demanded that his wife might be allowed to share his prison.
Charlotte de Montmorency was scarcely twenty-one years of age; she did
not love her husband, and they did not live agreeably together; but,
without hesitation, she besought the king in person to permit her to
imprison herself with her husband, accepting the condition of remaining
a prisoner as long as he should be the same. This captivity, at first
very hard at the Bastile, then a little less rigorous at Vincennes,
continued three years. The young princess was often ill; she was several
times unfortunately the mother of untimely children.[74] Finally, August
28, 1619, between midnight and one o’clock, she gave to the world Anne
Geneviève. It seems as if the birth of this child brought good fortune
to her parents; for two months had not passed away, when the Prince de
Condé left prison with his wife and daughter, and resumed his rank and
all his honors.
Anne Geneviève passed very soon from the tower of Vincennes to the hôtel
de Condé. There, two years afterwards, September 2, 1621, was born the
brother, who was destined to give such lustre to the name of Condé,
Louis, Duke d’Enghien; and later, in 1629, another brother still, Armand,
Prince de Conti. This last was not wanting in spirit; but he was feeble
in body, and even considerably deformed. He was destined for the Church.
He pursued his studies at the college of Clermont, with the Jesuits,
in company with Molière, and studied theology at Bourges, under Father
Deschamps. He made his appearance in the world in the early part of
1647, a little previous to the Fronde. The Duke d’Enghien, charged with
sustaining the greatness of his house, was brought up by his father with
the masculine tenderness already spoken of, the fruits of which have been
too great to allow us to show them in a single moment.
M. the Prince gave no governor to his son; he chose to direct his
education himself, calling to his aid two gentlemen, one for exercises
of the body, the other for those of the mind. The young duke pursued
his studies, under the Jesuits of Bourges, with the greatest success.
He maintained there, with a certain _éclat_, philosophical theses. He
learned the principles of law under the celebrated Doctor Edmond Mérille.
He studied history and mathematics, without neglecting the Italian,
dancing, boxing, horsemanship, and the chase. On his return to Paris, he
saw again his sister, and was charmed with her grace and spirit: he bound
himself to her in a most tender friendship, which suffered some changes,
but resisted all trials, and, after the passionate age, became as firm as
at first it had been ardent. At the hôtel de Condé, the Duke d’Enghien
learned, in the company of his sister and his mother, politeness, elegant
manners, and gallantry. His father placed him at the academy, under a
renowned master, to whom he gave absolute authority over him. Louis de
Bourbon was there treated as severely as a simple gentleman. He had at
the academy the same success as at college, which he left, the most
capable of all those that were there with him. Let us listen to the words
of Lenet,[75] the reliable witness of all that he recounts:
“No one had yet seen a prince of the blood brought up and instructed in
that common manner; nor had any one seen a prince who, in so short a
time, and in such extreme youth, exhibited so much knowledge, so much
experience, and so much address in every thing. The prince, his father,
skilful and enlightened in all matters, believed that in the academy he
would be less diverted from that occupation, so necessary to a young
man of birth, than in the hôtel. He also thought that those lords and
gentlemen who were there, and who had entered it in order to have the
honor of his company, would be servants and friends, who would attach
themselves to his person and his fortune. During all those days devoted
to work, nothing could divert his mind. The whole court admired his air
and his grace in skilfully managing a horse, in running at the ring,
in dancing and fencing. The king himself compelled him, from time to
time, to give an account of his conduct, and often praised the profound
judgment of the prince his father in every thing, and particularly in the
education of the duke his son, saying to everybody that in this he wished
to imitate him, and to have Monsieur the Dauphin instructed and brought
up in the same manner.”...
... “After the young duke had remained at this excellent school the time
necessary to perfect himself, as he did, he left it; and after having
been some months at court and among the ladies, where, in the beginning,
he exhibited that noble and gallant air so universally admired, the
prince his father persuaded the king and Cardinal Richelieu—that
powerful, skilled, and authoritative minister—to send him into his own
government of Burgundy, with letters-patent, to command there in his
absence.”...
... “The troops often traversed Burgundy, and frequently made it their
winter-quarters. There the young prince began to learn the manner of
properly establishing and governing them, that is, of giving subsistence
to the troops without ruining the places where they sojourned. He learned
how to mark out lines of march and places of bivouac, and to make
soldiers live with order and discipline. He received the complaints of
all, and caused justice to be done them. He found a manner of satisfying
the soldiers and the people. He often received orders from the king, and
letters from the ministers; he was punctual in replying to them; and
the court, like the province, saw with astonishment his application to
business. He entered the parliament when important subjects rendered his
presence necessary, or when the discussion of some interesting question
excited his curiosity. The intendant of justice completed nothing without
rendering an account of it to him. He began from that moment, whatever
might be his confidence in his secretaries, to sign no order, no letters,
which he had not previously commanded, which he had not read from end
to end.... These great and serious occupations did not interfere with
his amusements, and his pleasures were no obstacle to his studies. He
found days and hours for all things. He went to the chase, and was
among the best at shooting on the wing; he gave balls to the ladies; he
looked after the management of his servants; he danced; he continued to
learn languages and read history; he applied himself to mathematics, and
especially to geometry and fortifications; he planned and raised a fort
of four bastions, a league from Dijon, in the plain of Bloye; and such
was his eagerness to see it completed and in readiness for attack and
defence—as was the case several times with the young lords and gentlemen
who rendered themselves assiduous about him—that he had his table removed
thither, and took there most of his meals.”
Thus prepared, the Duke d’Enghien went, during the summer of 1640,
to serve, in the capacity of volunteer, in the army of Marshal de La
Meilleraye. The marshal wished to take his orders, and to have the
appearance at least of depending on him. The young duke firmly refused,
saying that he had come to learn his trade, and wished to fulfil all the
functions of a volunteer, without regard to his rank. In one of the first
engagements, La Ferté-Seneterre was wounded, and had his horse killed
by a cannon-shot. The Duke d’Enghien was so near him, that the blood of
the horse covered his face. At the siege of Arras, he was everywhere seen
at the head of the volunteers. He was found at all the sallies made by
the besieged. He rarely left the trench; often slept there, and had his
food brought there. Three engagements took place during this siege. The
young duke distinguished himself in all. “The great heart which he showed
upon these occasions,” says Lenet;[76] “the obliging manner with which he
treated every one; the liberality with which he assisted friends who were
in need, wounded officers and soldiers; the secrecy which he observed in
rendering them assistance, made the clear-sighted predict that he would
some day be one of the greatest captains of the world.”
It was in the winter of 1641, that he was compelled to espouse
Mademoiselle de Brézé, niece of Richelieu. The Duke d’Enghien did every
thing in his power to shun an alliance which was repugnant to his heart
as well as to his ambition. He had cast his eyes upon Mademoiselle, then
the only daughter of the Duke of Orleans, beautiful, young, rich, and
intellectual. He had already allowed his soul to be penetrated with a
particular sentiment for another person, whom he at length adored. He
yielded only after a long resistance, protesting officially and before
a notary, that he gave way to force and to the deference that he owed
to the will of his father. He fell sick, and was even in danger, when,
suddenly, the report was spread abroad that the campaign was about to
be opened, and that the army of Marshal de La Meilleraye was marching
into Flanders, to attack the stronghold of Aire. This news reached him
when still so feeble that he could scarcely quit his bed. “He sets out
immediately,” says Lenet.[77] “The prayers of his family, the tears of
his mistress, the command of the king himself are not able to arrest
him. He learns on his march, being at Abbeville, that the cardinal
was approaching from the besieged place in order to attack the lines.
He quits his coach, mounts a horse at the same hour with the Duke de
Nemours, his intimate friend, a handsome prince, full of spirit and
courage, whom death took from him soon after.[78] He passes in the night
by Hesdin, so near the enemy that one might almost say that he passed
through their army, and arrives fortunately in the camp, where he is
received with testimonies of joy that it would be difficult to express.
This fatigue, which might have been expected to cause a relapse in a
feeble and reduced convalescent, gives to him new strength, and from
that moment he is seen exposing himself to all the perils of war. He
often sleeps in the trench; he eats there; and there is no work, however
advanced, where he is not seen taking part like a simple soldier....
At the siege of Bapaume, the duke wished to end the campaign as he had
commenced it; that is, by going everywhere, and incurring all the hazards
and all the perils of the trench and advance works. It was not possible
for him to leave the army as long as he thought there was any thing of
importance to undertake.”
Some time after, he followed the Cardinal de Richelieu and the king to
the siege of Perpignan. He was there wounded, and there covered with
glory; so that no one was astonished when, in 1643, after the death
of Richelieu, Louis XIII., also near his death, at the same time that
he established the Prince de Condé chief of council, named the Duke
d’Enghien Generalissimo of the principal army of France, destined to
defend the frontier of Flanders, menaced by a powerful Spanish army. The
Duke d’Enghien was not twenty-two years of age. A month afterwards he
gained the battle of Rocroy, soon to be followed by those of Friburgh,
Nortlingen, and Lens.
Such was the brother. The sister had not disregarded the examples of
her house, but on the contrary had rapidly attained, by her wit and her
beauty, a renown sufficiently great.
From her infancy, great lessons had never been wanting to her.
She was eight years of age in 1627, when one of the near relatives
of her mother, Montmorency-Boutteville, was beheaded in the Place de
Grève, for having fought a duel in spite of the edict of the king,
leaving, under the protection of Madame the Princess, his widow and
three young children,—Marie-Louise, afterwards Marchioness de Valençay;
Isabelle-Angélique, afterwards Duchess de Châtillon; and François-Henri
de Montmorency, born after the death of his father, who became the
Duke Marshal de Luxembourg, one of the most faithful friends and best
lieutenants of Condé.
She was thirteen in 1632, when the own brother of her mother, the Duke
de Montmorency, ascended the scaffold at Toulouse for having revolted
against the king, or rather against Richelieu, upon the uncertain faith
of Gaston, Duke of Orleans. This terrible catastrophe, which resounded
from one end of France to the other, filled the hôtel de Condé with
mourning, and made a profound impression upon the delicate and proud
soul of Mademoiselle de Bourbon. She was so troubled by it, that her
grief, adding new ardor to the piety in which she had been nourished,
caused her to think seriously of quitting the world and becoming a
Carmelite in the great convent of the Rue Saint-Jacques.
What religious education had Mademoiselle de Bourbon received, then, that
such a thought should come to her at thirteen or fourteen years of age?
How did she know the convent of the Carmelites—what ties had she already
formed there, which attracted her so powerfully?
It was the time when the religious spirit, after having gone astray in
the civil wars, and produced the great crimes and the great virtues of
the League, refined, but not enfeebled, by the Edict of Nantes and the
policy of Henry IV., found in peace new strength, and covered France,
no longer with inimical parties armed against each other, but with
pious institutions, in which weary souls were eager to seek an asylum.
Everywhere the ancient orders were reformed, and new orders were founded.
Richelieu courageously undertook the reformation of the clergy, created
seminaries, and above these, as their model and tribunal, raised the
Sorbonne. Bérulle instituted the _Oratoire_, César de Bus the _Doctrine
chrétienne_. The Jesuits, who sprang up in the middle of the sixteenth
century, and who spread themselves so rapidly over France, at first
decried and even banished for their participation in culpable excesses,
little by little regained favor under the protection of the immense
services which their heroic skill daily rendered, beyond the ocean, to
Christianity and civilization. The order of Saint Benedict engaged in
a salutary reform, and the Benedictines of Saint-Maur gave the prelude
to their gigantic works. But who can enumerate the fine institutions,
designed for women, that were founded on every hand by Christianity,
during the first half of the seventeenth century? The two most
illustrious, after reformed Port-Royal, are the Sisters of Charity about
1640, and the Carmelites in 1602.
The first convent of the Carmelites was established at Paris, in the
Faubourg Saint-Jacques, under the auspices and by the munificence of that
house of Longueville, into which Mademoiselle de Bourbon was destined to
enter. Her mother, Madame the Princess, was one of the benefactresses
of the rising institution. There she had an apartment, where she
often retreated for a long time. At an early period, she thither led
her daughter, and there filled her soul with the principles and the
devotional habits of the times. Mademoiselle de Bourbon grew up in the
shade of the holy monastery. There she beheld the reign of virtue,
goodness, concord, peace, silence: there she was loved, and there she
was called. It is, then, natural that at the first sight of the tempests
which menaced all the great things of the earth, and struck the most
illustrious members of her own family, she should think of forestalling
her destiny, and seek a shelter under the humble roof of the Carmelites.
She had there sweet and noble friendships, which she never abandoned.
We possess a multitude of letters, addressed by her to the Carmelites
of the convent of the Rue Saint-Jacques, at all the epochs of her life,
before, during, and after the Fronde. We feel that they were written
to persons who had her entire confidence and whole soul. But what were
those persons? She calls them sometimes the Mother Prioress, sometimes
the Mother Sub-prioress, Sister Marthe, Sister Anne-Marie, Mother
Marie-Madeleine, Mother Agnès, etc. One could wish to pierce the veil
that covers the family names of all these nuns. We doubt much whether
the friends of Mademoiselle de Bourbon and Madame de Longueville could
have been common creatures; and as we know that many women of the first
quality and of noblest heart found a refuge among the Carmelites, as the
name of Sister Louise de La Miséricorde has become the popular symbol of
disinterested and unfortunate love, a curiosity, somewhat profane but
very natural, leads us to inquire what these nuns, so dear to the sister
of the great Condé, were in the world.
Hitherto we have been reduced to conjectures, suggested to us by bringing
together different passages from Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Motteville,
and Mademoiselle. The French Carmelites have no history. Faithful to
their vow of obscurity, these worthy daughters of Saint Theresa have
passed away without leaving any traces of themselves behind. As during
their life, an impenetrable cloister shut them out from all eyes, and
buried them in advance, so the genius of their order seems to have taken
care to annihilate them in the memory of men. At long intervals have
appeared a few memoirs of the Carmelites, consecrated to edification,
filled with holy maxims, void of human facts, and almost with out dates.
At the beginning of this century, a priest, M. Boucher, in a new _Life of
the blessed Sister Marie, of the Incarnation, Madame Acarie, Foundress of
the reformed Carmelites of France_,[79] has, for the first time, thrown
a little light upon the origin of that holy house, presenting, or rather
withholding, in the notes of his work, a few short biographies of the
principal nuns. The national library, so rich in manuscripts of every
kind, possesses none that comes from the Carmelites of the Faubourg
Saint-Jacques, or that relates to them. The general Archives have
inherited all their principal titles. We have studied them sufficiently
to give the assurance that a record[80] of the greatest interest might
be formed of them. Among other precious pieces, we may designate an
inventory of paintings, by different celebrated masters,[81] statues,[82]
and objects of art which the liberal and generous piety of the faithful
of every rank had, during two centuries, accumulated for the Carmelites,
and which were again noticed in 1790. But there were other treasures
which we had wished to discover—we desired an exact list of all the nuns
of that convent during the seventeenth century, with their religious
and their family names, the date of their profession and that of their
death. We placed a particular value upon knowing the succession of
prioresses who had, by turns, governed the convent, spoken or written in
its name. It was conceived, in fact, that without these two documents,
the friendships of Mademoiselle de Bourbon and Madame de Longueville
would remain, for us, almost impenetrable.
Light has come to us from a quarter where we had not, at first, sought
for it.
In the ruins of the convent of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, spared by
the revolutionary tempest, yet barely standing, some poor nuns, having
escaped a stupid persecution, have been trying, for fifty years past,
to collect the traditions of the Carmelites, and they continue it in
obscurity, prayer, and toil:
Præcipites atra sue tempestate columbæ,
Condensæ et divûm amplexæ simulacra sedebant.
Weary of uselessly searching archives and libraries, I addressed myself
to these good nuns, and they responded to me with the most graceful
kindness. The two documents that I needed were sent to me, with
manuscript annals, and a collection of biographies ample and full of
details. Thanks to these precious communications, it is easy to make out
the history of the Carmelites of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. Under the
pious designations and mystic symbols of Carmel, we recognize more than
one person who has already been met in the memoirs of the times. Instead
of beings in some sort abstract and anonymous, we have before us animated
and living creatures, whose regards were doubtless finally directed
towards heaven, not to be turned thence, who, nevertheless, for a longer
or shorter period, inhabited the earth, knew our sentiments, felt our
weaknesses, and, always remaining pure, sometimes felt sorely tempted,
and shared our humanity. Some day we shall deliver to the public the key
that has been lent us, which will give the secret of many mysterious
things in the intimate history of the manners of the seventeenth century.
Here we shall allow ourselves only a few rapid sketches that can throw
light upon the obscure part of the youth and of the whole life of Madame
de Longueville.
Saint Theresa, who died in 1582, had refounded in Spain the ancient and
degenerate order of Carmel. The saintly renown of the new Carmelites of
Spain spread itself rapidly in Italy and France. An admirable woman,
Madame Acarie, afterwards Sister Mary of the Incarnation, conceived the
idea of sending to Spain for some disciples of Saint Theresa, and of
establishing them at Paris in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. Such was the
origin of the first convent of French Carmelites.
There are two Princesses de Longueville who obtained from Henri IV.,
in 1602,[83] the necessary letters-patent, Catherine and Marguerite
d’Orleans, daughters of Henri, Duke de Longueville, who died
unmarried,—Marguerite in 1615, Catherine in 1638, both buried in the
convent whose second founders they were called, the title of first
founder having been reserved for Marie de Médicis. And when, in 1617,
the young institution was already strong enough to need another house at
Paris, it was again a Princess de Longueville who defrayed the expense of
the new establishment, in the Rue Chapon,[84] to wit, the sister-in-law
of Marguerite and of Catherine,[85] the widow of their brother, Henri
d’Orleans, first of the name, and the mother of Henri II., who espoused
Mademoiselle de Bourbon. Madame the Princess de Condé was not backward in
bestowing her benefits on the convent of the Rue Saint-Jacques, and she
became especially attached to it. So it may be said that Mademoiselle de
Bourbon was, in advance, consecrated in every way to the Carmelites.
Let us endeavor to represent what was, in the seventeenth century,
the convent of the Carmelites, where Mademoiselle de Bourbon wished
to conceal her life, where Madame de Longueville returned to die. It
was situated in the street of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, directly
opposite to Val-de-Grâce. It extended from the Rue Saint-Jacques to
the Rue d’Enfer, and finally embraced, with all its dependencies,
the vast space which, from the garden and inclosure of the Oratorian
seminary of Saint-Magloire, at present the Sourds-Muets, ascends to the
buildings now occupied in the Rue Saint-Jacques and in the Rue d’Enfer,
by the establishment called the brew-house of Luxembourg. There were
two entrances, one from the Rue Saint-Jacques, the other from the Rue
d’Enfer. The entrance from the Rue d’Enfer still exists, at No. 67, and
is now what it was two centuries ago. It led into the existing court,
which served as a public passage to the Rue Saint-Jacques. Almost
opposite, a little to the right, was the church; a little farther to the
right, on the grounds where the wholly new street of Val-de-Grâce has
been opened, were vast gardens, with numerous chapels, the monastery
itself, and, entirely upon the Rue d’Enfer, the infirmary and the
apartments reserved for particular persons. On the other side, to the
left, towards Saint-Magloire, were the different main-houses of the
monastery and their dependents.[86]
But the monastery had thus increased only with time.
The first seat of the community had been the ancient priory of
Nôtre-Dame-des-Champs, whose church was of the time of Hugh Capet,
and, according to ancient tradition, was established upon the ruins of
a temple of Ceres, where Saint Denis had already taken refuge when he
preached the gospel at Paris. At least, excavations made in 1630, have
brought to light some remains of pagan antiquity. There was, therefore,
already some mystery about the new establishment at the beginning of the
seventeenth century.[87]
If it was the Spanish Carmelites who founded the convent of the Rue
Saint-Jacques, and established there the spirit and rule of Saint
Theresa, it must be remembered that, those nuns having left France
in 1618, to return to Spain, or to end their days in Belgium in the
monasteries of their order, it was the French genius which early took
possession of the convent of the Rue Saint-Jacques, and made it what it
became.
In the number of the prioresses who governed it, may be distinguished
four, who aided the rising congregation to advance rapidly towards
the perfection which it attained at the close of the seventeenth
century. These were Mademoiselle de Fontaines, the Mother Madeleine de
Saint-Joseph; the Marchioness de Bréauté, Marie de Jésus; Mademoiselle
Lancri de Bains, Marie-Madeleine; and Mademoiselle Bellefonds, the Mother
Agnès de Jésus-Maria. Mademoiselle de Bourbon knew them all, and some of
them were her friends.
Mademoiselle de Fontaines was the first French head-prioress. She was
of an excellent family of Touraine. Her father had been ambassador
to Flanders, and her mother was sister to the wife of Sillery the
chancellor. It was the Cardinal de Bérulle who, meeting her at Tours,
and seeing her there young and already filled with holy thoughts, pointed
out to her the Carmelites of the Rue Saint-Jacques as the way to the
perfection after which she aspired. She did not walk thither, but ran,
as Madame Acarie says of her. And yet she loved her family so tenderly
that she felt a poignant grief in leaving it, and, as she herself said
at a subsequent period, the coach that took her to the Carmelites seemed
to her like a car that carries criminals to punishment. Touched by her
example, two of her sisters followed her to the Carmelites.[88] She
joined them at twenty-six years of age. For some time she had before her
the Spanish mothers, and from them caught that holy ardor which excites
and vivifies, and can alone surmount the difficult commencements of
every great establishment. She was constantly faithful to the device of
Saint Theresa: Endure or die. She is the Saint Theresa of France. The
nun who succeeded her has thus painted the effects of the government of
Mother Madeleine de Saint-Joseph: “When she was prioress, I can truly
say the monastery resembled a paradise, so much fervor and desire for
perfection of heart was seen. The question was who should be the most
humble, the most penitent, the most subdued, the most collected, the
most meditative, the most solitary, the most charitable; in brief, who
should be most conformed to our Lord Jesus Christ; and all this, too,
with a peace, an innocence, a beatitude, and an elevation to God that
surpass the power of expression. This servant of God was among us like a
torch that gave us light, like a fire that warmed us, a living rule by
whose example we could learn how to become saints.” Some admirable words
of hers have been preserved. We will cite but a single sentence: “Yes,”
said she to her daughters, who for the most part were of high rank, “yes,
we are of a very good house; we are daughters of a king, sisters of a
king, spouses of a king; for we are the daughters of the Father Eternal,
the sisters of Christ, and the spouses of the Holy Spirit.” She had one
of those great hearts that make heroes of every kind, and which are the
primary source of miracles. She therefore performed miracles like Saint
Theresa: like her she had ecstasies and visions. It was the heart in
her that warmed the imagination, and, in fact, the heart is the sacred
source of all great things. What[89] philosophy would interpose here its
miserable objections! Be on your guard; those objections would turn
against Socrates and his demon, as well as against the good angel of
Mother Madeleine de Saint-Joseph. That good angel was at least the inner
vision, the secret and truly marvellous voice of a great soul.
Mother Madeleine de Saint-Joseph was born in 1578, entered the convent in
1604, pronounced her vows in 1605, and died in 1637.[90]
Marie de Jésus is a nun of a wholly different character.
Charlotte de Sancy was daughter of Nicolas de Harlay, Lord de Sancy,
who was under Henri IV. ambassador, superintendent of the finances,
and colonel of the Swiss. The two sons of Harlay de Sancy, after
having occupied important positions, retired to the Oratoire. His
first daughter was married to M. d’Alincourt, grandfather of Duke de
Villeroy; the second, Charlotte, was married to the Marquis de Bréauté.
Having remained a widow twenty-one years—beautiful,[91] spirituelle,
of a charming temper, she was the delight of her family, and one of
the ornaments of the court of Henri IV. Two circumstances conspired to
snatch her from the pleasures that surrounded her. One day, at Spa, while
dancing at a ball during a storm, she heard a clap of thunder, and wished
to retire. The gentleman who was her partner laughed at her fright, and
retained her. At the same instant the thunder again sounded, and the
man by her side was struck dead. Some time afterwards she met with the
writings of Saint Theresa, read them, and was so touched by them, that,
young as she was, she resolved at once to quit the world. She entered
among the Carmelites, and took the veil, under the name of Marie de
Jésus, the same year with Mademoiselle de Fontaines. She preserved in the
cloister that winning gentleness which, in the world, added to the effect
of her beauty, and subjected to her all hearts. She was adored by her
new companions, as she had been at the court. Her particular gift was,
with sweetness and humility, a boundless charity, which was especially
exercised in the salvation of souls. She excelled in the art of bringing
sinners to God. These were her miracles. Here is one of them that the
tradition of the Carmelites has preserved for us:[92]
A man of merit, who possessed goods and important occupations, formed a
culpable connection. His mother was in distress about it, and often went
to pour her grief into the bosom of her daughter, a nun at the convent
of the Rue Saint-Jacques. One day when she was in the parlor, Marie de
Jésus was inspired to go to her and console her. She gave her Saint
Augustine’s _Confessions_ and Saint Theresa’s _Way to Perfection_, asking
her to make her son promise to read them for a quarter of a hour only
every morning. He made the promise, but did not keep it for eight days.
One night, feeling urged to keep his word, he arose and read some pages
of these books. As he continued reading, God enlightened him, and so
touched him, that he shed tears for several hours, troubled and agitated
lest he should lose the Holy Spirit. Finally he became calm, and, during
several nights, was penetrated, and, as it were, inundated with light
in regard to the perfection of God. One morning, at the break of day,
he drove to the Place de Grenelle with the person who held him captive.
There he announced to her that he should never see her again. He left
her his carriage to drive where she wished. Returning home on foot, he
went to the Carmelites to visit his sister, whom he had not seen for many
years. She called Marie de Jésus, and said to her brother: Behold your
benefactress! Marie de Jésus had not ceased to pray for him. She lavished
upon him the most affectionate counsels, which she renewed regularly once
a week for several years. He followed them with great docility, and made
such progress in virtue, that, giving up his charge, and renouncing all
the pleasures of life, he retired into a country-place, lived there in
penitence, and died in the love of God.
Marie de Jésus was loved much by Anne of Austria, who often went to
see her, accompanied by Louis XIV. and his brother the Duke d’Anjou.
She contributed largely to the aggrandizement and embellishment of the
monastery, which lost her in 1652.
In the year 1620, the Carmelites acquired a worthy sister in one of the
maids of honor of Queen Marie de Médicis, Mademoiselle Marie Lancri de
Bains. In order to show what Mademoiselle de Bains was, we shall avail
ourselves of a manuscript life, composed by a Carmelite who knew her
perfectly well.[93]
“Madame de Bains had her daughter brought up among the Ursulines: she
removed her from their charge at the age of twelve years, to place her at
court, hoping that her beauty and acquirements might procure for her an
establishment, little reflecting upon the perils to which she exposed her
by leaving her to herself in a place so full of dangers. But God, who had
already appropriated this soul, kept watch over her, and preserved her,
without a stain, in the midst of that court. Her virtue was there admired
as much as her perfect beauty; her portrait passed even into foreign
lands, where the most famous painters emulously drew it, in order to
exhibit the skill of their pencil. She afterwards declared that until the
age of fifteen years, she never reflected upon this advantage, but that
she then saw herself with the same eyes as the public. The attractions of
her person, and still more her sweetness and modesty, won the esteem and
affection of the queen. Mademoiselle de Bains never gloried in any thing
but in doing good to the unfortunate. This generosity had its source in
a noble, tender, constant heart, united with a mind solid, judicious,
capable of great things; and it seemed as if the Creator had been pleased
to prepare in this masterpiece of nature the triumph of grace. So many
amiable qualities attracted the attention of the whole court. A number
of lords, as the Duke de Bellegarde, the Marshal de Saint-Luc, etc.,
sued for an alliance so desirable. But He who had elected her from all
eternity for his bride, did not allow that heart, worthy of himself
alone, to be shared by any creature. Divine Providence continued to bring
upon her at the same time some mortification (we are ignorant of its
nature), which began to open her eyes, and to give her some slight idea
of a calling for the religious life.”
Mademoiselle de Bains never accompanied the Queen Marie de Médicis to the
Carmelites, without wishing to remain there. A sickness which she had at
eighteen years of age, redoubled her fervor, but she was opposed by the
efforts of the whole court to retain her, especially by the entreaties
and tears of her mother. When Mademoiselle de Bains threw herself among
the Carmelites, at scarcely twenty years of age, her mother followed
her thither. “She conducted her daughter to the bottom of the garden,
and there, during three whole hours, employed all the persuasives that
tenderest love could suggest. After having exhausted endearments, and
tried to move her conscience by telling her that it was her duty to help
her widowed mother in her old age, finally, getting beside herself, she
fell at the feet of her daughter, drowned in tears. What a trial for
Mademoiselle de Bains, who loved that tender mother as much as she was
loved by her! Her recourse to God enabled her to come out victorious from
that first contest, which was not the last, for, during the entire period
of her novitiate, Madame her mother often returned to the charge.”
For some time the convent of the Rue Saint-Jacques was besieged by
noblemen of the first rank, who went to offer their alliance to the
beautiful novice. Her constancy was not in the least shaken, and she
would have refused all these visits if the mother prioress had not, in
order to prove her, constrained her to receive them. She pronounced her
vows in 1620, under the name of Marie-Madeleine de Jésus.
Her beauty must have had something very extraordinary in it, to judge
by the following anecdote, related by the pious author of whom we avail
ourselves: “Humility being the foundation of every spiritual edifice,
Sister Marie-Madeleine de Jésus seized with avidity every means of
destroying, in her own eyes and in the eyes of others, the gifts of
nature and of grace with which God had favored her. She was not contented
with refusing the visits of the great, as well as of all her friends, but
desirous of being forgotten, and of removing from their sight every thing
that might remind them of her, she endeavored, under different pretexts,
to recall her portraits from their hands, in order to burn them. One
of these portraits having been sent to Mother Madeleine Saint-Joseph,
she amused herself by showing it to the assembled community. At the
sight of it all the nuns, not recognizing it at first, were touched, and
besought God not to leave in the world that masterpiece of nature, worthy
of himself alone, but to bestow her upon Carmel. One of them, Marie de
Saint-Theresa, daughter of Madame Acarie, offered herself to God, to
suffer every thing that it might please him to inflict in return for such
a grace. Then Mother Madeleine de Saint-Joseph, smiling and touching her
on the shoulder, told her that the goodness of God had anticipated her
desires, that the person for whom she trembled was already in the order,
and that it was only necessary to ask for her perseverance.”[94]
Sister Marie-Madeleine passed rapidly through all the grades of the
order. Elected prioress in 1635, and often re-elected, she witnessed,
in 1637, the death of the venerable Mother Madeleine de Saint-Joseph,
in 1652 the death of Mother Marie de Jésus, and successively the death
of the head visitors of the order and of the instructors of the holy
monastery.[95] The wars of the Fronde were to her a perilous trial,
wherein she often found herself sharing danger with Queen Anne and
the Princess de Condé, the two protectresses of the convent. She was
obliged to quit for some time the house in the Rue Saint-Jacques, which
was too much exposed to the soldiery, to send a part of the community
to Pontoise, and to take the rest to the Rue Chapon. It required great
firmness to maintain religious discipline in the midst of such trouble.
Through fear of the least abatement, she continually applied herself
to renew the fervor of the primitive spirit in the souls committed
to her charge. It is said that she then spoke to her daughters with
words of fire, which filled them with a holy emulation. She displayed
usually a sweet and majestic cheerfulness, a charming affability, with
an intrepidity that was proof against every trial when the question
was concerning the interests of God, of those of the order, or of the
salvation of souls. On such occasions, says our manuscript, without being
surprised or arrested, she would have overcome a world of opposition, and
sacrificed her own life. So much virtue united with so much sensibility,
had acquired for her such an ascendancy over the hearts and minds of her
daughters, that one of them wrote that if she had undertaken to persuade
them that white was black and day night, they would have believed her, so
thoroughly were they convinced that she could not be deceived. In fine,
she possessed in the highest degree the gift of governing. It was to
her that so many persons of highest birth, wounded or repentant hearts,
intrusted themselves, seeking refuge among the Carmelites.
Marie-Madeleine, born in 1598, lived a long time, and died in 1679,
the same year with Madame de Longueville. She had found an admirable
assistant in Mademoiselle de Bellefonds.
Judith de Bellefonds was born in 1611. Her father, governor of Caen, was
the grandfather of the marshal of that name. Her mother was the sister
of the wife of Marshal de Saint-Géran, and she herself was sister to the
Marchioness de Villars, mother of the vanquisher of Denain, celebrated
for graces of mind.[96] She was as handsome[97] as her mother, as
spirituelle as her sister, and she possessed all the requisites for
pleasing. She had the greatest success at the court of Queen Marie de
Médicis. Going with her to the Carmelites, she met Madame de Bréauté,
Marie de Jésus, who, like her, had known all the attractions of the
world, and by her entreaties and her example persuaded her to renounce
it, and to give herself to God alone. Mademoiselle de Bellefonds joined
the Carmelites in 1629, at seventeen years of age, choosing Saint Agnès
as her patron saint, from whom she took the name of Agnès de Jésus-Maria.
Her first years at the convent being spent with Mother Madeleine de
Saint-Joseph, who had become very infirm, she was penetrated with
the spirit of that great servant of God, and promptly showed all the
qualities requisite for a great prioress. She was elected sub-prioress at
thirty years of age, prioress three years afterwards, and she discharged
the duties of one or the other of these offices for thirty-two years,
her life being prolonged until near the close of the century. She found
the French Carmel established by the eminent virtues of those who had
preceded her—she had simply to sustain it. Her dominant qualities were
firmness and moderation. With equal facility she dealt with great and
small things; always mistress of herself, even-tempered, sensible,
and enlightened, speaking of every thing with justice and simplicity,
and removing difficulties with an astonishing precision. She who, by
the elevation and charms of her mind, seemed born only for the people
of the world and important things, was still more admirable with the
simple and the poor. She used their ills, to which she was sensible, to
elevate them to God, yet ceased not in her endeavors to console them.
The happy also found near her protection against the dangers of fortune.
The Queen of England, in the midst of her terrible trials, often went to
the Carmelites to find consolation with Mother Agnès. The chancellor,
Le Tellier, often consulted her. Courted on all sides for the charm of
her conversation, she sought solitude, and endeavored to make it loved
by her companions. Mademoiselle de Guise having offered 100,000 livres
to obtain the privilege of often entering the convent, Mother Agnès
refused that sum, saying that 100,000 livres could not repair the injury
thereby certain to be done to the spirit of the institution, which can be
preserved only by seclusion and separation from the world. Her charity
was such that after her death the mother who succeeded her, being blamed
for bestowing alms a little too freely, replied: “You are very fortunate
that Mother Agnès is no more; she would have left on this occasion
neither communion-cup nor vessel of silver in our church.” It must be
perceived in Madame de Sévigné, how much she made of Mother Agnès:
“I was ravished,” wrote she to her daughter,[98] “with the spirit of
Mother Agnès.” Elsewhere she speaks of the vivacity and the charm of her
speech.[99] But all eulogies pale before that touching letter of Bossuet,
written to the prioress who succeeded her:[100] “We shall then see her
no more, that dear mother; we shall no longer hear from her mouth those
words that charity, that gentleness, that faith, that prudence dictated
and rendered worthy of being listened to.[101] This was the sensible
person who believed in the law of God, and faithfully kept it. Prudence
was her companion, Wisdom her sister. The joy of the Holy Spirit did
not leave her. Her balance was always just; her judgments were always
right. Her counsels never led astray; they were preceded by her example.
Her death was tranquil as her life, and she rejoiced in the last day. I
thank you for remembering me upon this sad occasion. My spirit unites
with yours in the prayers and sacrifices that are offered for that soul
blessed of God and men. I join you in the pious tears that you shed upon
her tomb, and take part in the consolations with which faith inspires
you.”
Such was the convent where Mademoiselle de Bourbon received those
impressions that decided her whole life; such were the women whom she
saw and heard, when she accompanied the princess her mother to the
sacred house. She perceived, moreover, the venerable looks, the already
transfigured face of Mother Madeleine de Saint-Joseph, and listened
to her powerful speech, for Mother de Saint-Joseph was the friend and
counsellor of Madame the Princess. She felt, too, the penetrating
sweetness of the conversation of Marie de Jésus. She knew that
Marie-Madeleine, who was so dangerous in the world by her beauty, so
edifying and powerful in the cloister. With her she formed a connection
which ceased only with life. But it was, above all, Mademoiselle de
Bellefonds, the Mother Agnès, who attracted and charmed her. They were
almost of the same age, and the free and joyous temper of the young and
spiritual nun established between them, at an early period, an intimacy
whose traces are found even in the letters subsequently addressed by the
unfortunate and repentant princess to the great prioress, wholly occupied
with her difficult duties. The following note,[102] written during their
youth, will give an idea of the intimacy of their relation, and show the
natural graces of Mademoiselle de Bourbon’s mind. It bears the date of
1637. She was then seventeen years of age. These are the earliest lines
of hers that we have been able to find. Did Marie de Rabutin write in a
more amiable manner at the same age?
“TO MY SISTER AGNÈS DE JÉSUS-MARIA.
“MY VERY DEAR SISTER:
“I write this to you to give you a severe reprimand. I
think you will be much astonished at it; but it seems to me
that I am not wrong. I must tell you, in order not to leave
you any longer in suspense, that, since the death[103] of
our blessed mother (Madeleine de Saint-Joseph), our mother
(Marie-Madeleine) has promised me her picture. It is three
or four days since I reminded her of this promise, and she
has sent me word that it was not her fault, but that you had
prevented her from giving me what she had promised, and that I
must tease you for it. I am therefore resolved to give you no
peace until you put me in possession of the portrait. If you
wish, I will allow you to have it copied, but if you are not
quick about it, you will see that we shall be on bad terms.
You know that it would not take much to embroil us, since we
are very much inclined to hate each other. It seems to me that
I have gone bravely through my reprimand, and that it is very
severe. I think it will put you in great alarm, and you will
consequently be in much fear of losing my good graces.[104]...
When the picture is finished, send to me for whatever it costs.
(Take care), if you please, to have it made very near the size
of that of my Sister Catherine[105] de Jésus, or a little
larger.
“Your very affectionate sister and servant,
“ANNE DE BOURBON.”
And observe that I have here spoken only of the most eminent prioresses,
without saying a word of so many other nuns of the highest rank and the
most amiable character, who were in the convent of the Rue Saint-Jacques
during the youth of Madame de Longueville: Madame Séguier d’Autry, mother
of Chancellor Séguier, the Mother Marie de Jésus-Christ; Madame La
Rochefoucauld de Chandenier, Sister Marie de Saint-Joseph; Mademoiselle
Le Bouthillier, Sister Philippe de Saint-Paul; Mademoiselle d’Anglure
de Bourlemont, niece of Pope Urban VIII., Sister Geneviève des Anges;
Madame de Brienne, the Mother Anne de Saint-Joseph; the Countess de
Bury, left a widow at nineteen years of age, Sister Madeleine de Jésus;
Mademoiselle de Lenoncourt, the Mother Charlotte de Jésus; Mademoiselle
de Fieubet, Mesdemoiselles de Marillac, and somewhat later, names still
more illustrious, hearts still nearer that of Mademoiselle de Bourbon,
who, at the first impressions of passion or unhappiness, sought an asylum
in the holy solitude.
Among those noble penitents, we must distinguish a particular friend of
Madame de Longueville, whose rank was nearly equal to her own, who was,
like her, sensitive and proud, who, wounded early in her affections,
retired from the world before her, and heard the noise of the Fronde only
through the walls of the convent of the Rue Saint-Jacques, where, several
years before, she had fled the threat of a throne and the perils of her
own heart. That friend to whom Madame de Longueville wrote more than one
letter, was Sister Anne-Marie de Jésus, that is, Anne Louise-Christine
de Foix de La Valette d’Epernon, sister of the Duke de Candale, daughter
of Bernard, Duke de La Valette d’Epernon, and of Gabrielle de Bourbon,
legitimate daughter of the Duchess de Verneuil and Henri IV.
We have a sufficiently full life of Mademoiselle d’Epernon, from the
hand of the Abbé de Montis.[106] But edifying lives must be distrusted
almost as much as the histories of Tallemant des Réaux. This person looks
for scandal only, and nowhere sees any thing but the evil. The pious
panegyrists are quite as credulous in regard to the good. Evidently the
Abbé de Montis did not know every thing, or was unwilling to tell every
thing. He seems to have read neither the Memoirs of Mademoiselle nor
those of Madame de Motteville. He paints with truth the person and the
character of Mademoiselle d’Epernon. He is deceived when he imagines that
the instinct of Christian perfection alone led her to the Carmelites.
This instinct was nourished and supported by the experience of the vanity
of human affections; it shone forth, and suddenly threw Mademoiselle
d’Epernon among the Carmelites, in consequence of a cruel loss, the
death of a person to whom she had given her heart. This death, with the
great error that preceded it, induced her to quit the world; and neither
the long resistance of her family, nor even the hope of a crown could
change her resolution.
For the sake of brevity, we shall confine ourselves to the collection of
a limited amount of testimony. That of the veracious Madame de Motteville
is decisive: “The Chevalier de Fiesque, who was killed at the siege of
Mardyck, in 1646, had, according to the opinion of his friends, great
spirit and valor. He was regretted by a young lady of high birth, who
honored him with a tender and virtuous friendship. I know nothing of it
in particular; but, according to the general opinion, it was founded upon
piety and virtue, and consequently somewhat unusual. This virtuous lady
began, soon after the death of De Fiesque, to despise the pleasures of
the world, and finally forsook them all, as unworthy to occupy a place
in her soul; she gave herself to God, entering the great convent of the
Carmelites, where her pious life is an example to all.”[107]
Mademoiselle,[108] who knew Mademoiselle d’Epernon well, and loved
her tenderly, takes up matters farther back: “It was principally at
these balls (during the winter of 1644), that the Chevalier de Guise
(afterwards the Duke de Joyeuse) testified, without any reserve, his
passion for Mademoiselle d’Epernon.... The malady[109] of Mademoiselle
d’Epernon gave me much pain. The Chevalier de Guise took every care of
her imaginable. The danger to be apprehended in approaching those who
have the small-pox, did not hinder him from visiting her every day.
He manifested for her an incredible passion, which lasted during the
whole of the following winter.” The marriage failed; not at all, as the
Abbé Montis says, through the refusal or the indecision of Mademoiselle
d’Epernon, but through the intrigues of Mademoiselle de Guise, who tried
to marry her brother to Mademoiselle d’Angoulême.
After the death of Chevalier de Fiesque, killed at the siege of Mardyck,
Mademoiselle d’Epernon appeared wholly changed. She, so recently given
up to display, so carried away with pleasures, no longer thought of any
thing but her own salvation, “which displeased and surprised me,” says
Mademoiselle.[110] “I had seen her very far from the austerity which she
was continually preaching; she no longer spoke of any thing but death,
contempt for the world, and the happiness of the religious life....
The morning of her departure for Bordeaux (whither she was called by
her father, Governor of Guyenne), which was the day of Saint Theresa,
she came to bid me adieu. She found me in bed; fell upon her knees by
my side, and told me that the goodness which I had always shown towards
her, and the reciprocal confidence which had existed between us, obliged
her to reveal to me the resolution which she had taken of joining the
Carmelites, and the hope she entertained of carrying this resolution
into execution. Such was my tenderness for her, that I could not help
being moved. Touched by her design, I could not speak of it without
weeping. I used every reason that I could to dissuade her from it....
She had already taken her resolution too firmly to listen to any thing
that might change it.... The cardinal had been consulted[111] concerning
the marriage of Prince Casimir, brother of the King of Poland,[112] and
now himself king, with Mademoiselle d’Epernon.... I confess, that when
I heard this news, I had the greatest joy. Although the emperor was
married, he had a son, who was King of Hungary, of an age proportionate
to mine, and a prince of good promise. Thus the proximity of Germany
and Poland made me believe that my good friend and myself might pass our
days together. She would be amply avenged of Mademoiselle de Guise and
M. de Joyeuse. In this affair there was nothing to displease me; and it
may be seen from the manner in which I wrote to her concerning it, that
I strove to hinder her from becoming a Carmelite. The conjuncture was
most favorable.... The devotion of Mademoiselle d’Epernon defeated this
design, and she preferred the crown of thorns to that of Poland. Although
she seemed to receive this proposition as a high honor, she feigned
sickness, and caused the waters of Bourbon to be prescribed for her,
in order to enter the first convent of the Carmelites that she should
find on the way.... Madame d’Epernon[113] took her on this journey in
utter ignorance of her design. They proceeded to Bourges, where the next
day she joined the Carmelites. Here she took the habit with one of the
domestics of Madame d’Epernon.... She wrote me from Bourges, informing
me that she was coming to the great convent at Paris.... Mademoiselle
d’Epernon could not be better situated. It is a great house, well
located, and filled with young ladies of quality and spirit, who have
left the world which they knew and despised. Now, it is this that makes
great nuns.... When she had arrived, she requested me to pay her a visit.
I went angry enough, grieved indeed to the very heart. When, however, I
saw her, I was touched with the utmost tenderness, and all other feelings
yielded so thoroughly thereto, that it was impossible for me to conceal
it from her, my tears and my extreme grief not even leaving me power to
speak; these tears did not cease during the two hours that I was with
her, though I was unable to say a single word.... Time has taught me in
turn the happiness which she enjoyed.”
Mademoiselle d’Epernon, born in 1624, entered among the Carmelites at
twenty-four years of age, in 1648; took the veil in 1649; spent many
years in penitence and religious training, and died in 1701, at the age
of seventy-seven years, having passed fifty-three in the monastery of the
Rue Saint-Jacques. She desired to live the most obscure life, and was not
even sub-prioress.[114]
Like Mademoiselle d’Epernon, Mademoiselle de Bourbon thought of laying
the storms that awaited her, in the peaceful retreat where she had so
many friends. There she enjoyed herself, and passed the greater part
of her life; for her mother, the Princess de Condé, always made her a
companion in her frequent visits to this convent. This princess, as was
not rare in those times, possessed at once great ambition, with a piety
that bordered upon superstition. Contrasts abounded in her character. She
never loved her husband very much, and at twenty-one years of age had
imprisoned herself with him at the Bastile and Vincennes, for three long
years. She was vain enough of her great beauty, taking great pleasure
in making conquests; that of Henry IV. had at least flattered her; she
had been very much sought after, much praised, and her life had always
been free from scandal. She had a pride that passed all bounds when
any want of proper respect was shown towards her; but when this pride
was undisturbed, she was amiable and at ease. She was not destitute of
greatness of soul or spirit. She destined her daughter for the highest
position; but, observing her great beauty, and knowing, by her own
experience, the perils thereof, she took care to arm her against them, by
planting in her heart a serious piety, and by surrounding her with the
most edifying examples. Not content with going often to the convent of
the Carmelites, she wished to be able to go there at any hour; to remain
there—she and her daughter—as long as she liked; to have an apartment
there like the queen herself; and, to that end, she took upon her burdens
onerous enough, as appears from an authentic act, passed November 18,
1637, in her own name, and in the name of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, from
which we give the following extract:
“We, present in person, the reverend Mothers Marie-Madeleine de Jésus
(Mademoiselle de Bains), humble prioress; Sister Marie de la Passion
(Mademoiselle de Machault), sub-prioress; Sister Philippe de Saint-Paul
(Mademoiselle de Bouthillier), and Sister Marie de Saint-Barthélemy
(Mademoiselle Guichard), depositaries, representing the community, ...
who, advertised of the great desire that the high and powerful princess,
Dame Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, spouse of the high and powerful
Prince Henri de Bourbon, first prince of the blood, and Demoiselle Anne
de Bourbon, their daughter, have shown to be received as founders of
the new house which the said reverends are at present constructing,
and which they expect to join to their ancient cloister; after having
proposed the business in full chapter, and with the permission of their
superiors, ... in consideration of the great piety professed by the said
dame princesses, ... and of the very charitable affection which they
have always borne towards the order of the Carmelites, and particularly
towards this monastery, have voluntarily admitted the said princesses as
founders, granting them the enjoyment of all the privileges accorded to
founders, ... to wit, freely to enter the monastery whenever they wish;
to drink, to eat, to sleep there; to be present at divine service and
other spiritual exercises; to take part in all the prayers, vigils, and
other pious works that are performed daily; we have moreover consented
that the same dame princess may enjoy the privilege, which she has
obtained from the Holy Father, of bringing two persons with her three
times a month, as she has done thus far, ... always on the condition
that the said two persons shall not remain in the monastery after six
o’clock in the evening during the winter, and after seven o’clock during
the summer.... This being accepted, ... the said dames are obligated to
continue the honor of their benevolence to the reverends, and also to
defray the costs and expenses of the building.”
In consequence of this act, Madame the Princess gave more than 120,000
livres at different times, a quantity of precious stones, ornaments
for the church, relics which she caused to be set with a magnificence
corresponding with her piety and her position. At the same time, she was
anxious to enjoy her rights, and, while awaiting the completion of the
new building, she took an apartment at the convent, which she furnished
somewhat like a Carmelite. Her bed and all her furniture were of brown
serge. In this desert she sometimes spent a whole week or a fortnight;
finding herself more happy, she said, than in the midst of the pleasures
of the court. A simple nun could never have shown more respect for the
regulations of the house. She subjected herself to long silence through
fear of meddling with that which was prescribed. Sometimes finding
herself alone in her chamber with the two nuns who kept her company,
she declared that she was afraid, and that at evening she took them
for phantoms, because they spoke to her only by signs, and for things
absolutely necessary. Subsequently, she wished to have a cell in the
dormitory, as simple as that of all the others. “She would,” says the
manuscript history[115] which has been confided to us, “have willingly
employed all her goods for the use or the embellishment of the convent,
if address had not been employed to conceal from her the knowledge of its
most legitimate wants. Sometimes she complained with infinite grace: If
your mothers were willing, I would do here a thousand things; but they
cannot do this thing, they will not do that, and I can do nothing. This
great princess, whom a natural pride sometimes rendered so formidable,
here became the friend, the companion, the mother of whomsoever applied
to her. Her power was never felt except through her benefits. The will
of the mother prioress was her law: she called her our mother; rose up
whenever she perceived her; submitted herself to her commands with a
charming sweetness, and was seen in the choir, at morning prayers, at
every service, in the refectory, practising ordinary mortifications,
laying her natural greatness at the feet of the spouses of Jesus Christ,
with a humility that rendered her to them still more noble.”
Admitted with her mother into the interior of the monastery,
Anne-Geneviève filled her soul with the most edifying conversations,
the gravest and most touching spectacles. Everywhere she met none but
the living already dead and kneeling upon the grave. Here was the
tomb of Michel de Marillac, keeper of the seals, who died in exile,
at Châteaudun, in that same year, 1632, when Richelieu beheaded his
brother, Marshal de Marillac, uncle of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, Duke de
Montmorency; here were the funeral monuments of the two women of the
house of Longueville, Marguerite and Catherine d’Orleans. She doubted
not that she should one day see buried in this same place her brilliant
friend, the famous Julie, Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, now Duchess de
Montausier; that she should see carried to this place the heart of
Turenne—that heart which, for a moment, she was destined to trouble and
dispute with duty and the king; that here several of her own children
should also have their tombs, and that here she herself should repose by
the side of her mother, Madame the Princess, and of her sister-in-law,
the sweet, pure, and graceful Anne-Marie Martinozzi, Princess de
Conti.[116]
Mademoiselle de Bourbon wished, in her turn, to be one of the
benefactresses of the Carmelites, and to make such presents as would
please them. She obtained from Pope Urban VII. the relics of seven martyr
virgins, with a brief of the Holy Father attesting their authenticity,
and that the names of each of these victims of faith had been found
entire, or abbreviated on the stone that held their bodies inclosed in
the catacombs. Let us transport ourselves to those times; let us place
ourselves in a convent of the Carmelites, and we shall form some idea
of the holy joy which filled the house on witnessing the arrival of
this magnificent and august present. Queen Anne, touched with a pious
emulation, placed with them some relics of Saint Paule, a Roman dame,
and an illustrious friend of Saint Jerome. The body of Saint Rosalie,
a grandchild of France, had just been found at Palermo. M. d’Alincourt
obtained it, and sent it as an offering. Mademoiselle de Bourbon placed
all these relics in a silver shrine, made in the form of a dome,
surmounted by a lantern, and surrounded by four figures, representing the
Evangelists.
The Duke d’Enghien seeing his sister, whom he adored, and whose spirit
he knew, thus occupied with embellishing and enriching the convent of
the Carmelites, where he was sometimes taken, felt his honor piqued,
and wished to make his offering also. In order to divert him during
his recovery from a severe illness, various curiosities of the day
were brought and shown to him in his chamber, and among other things a
reliquary, admirable for its design and richness. The Duke d’Enghien
asked the purpose of this masterpiece. The goldsmith replied that it was
for the Carmelites of the Rue Saint-Jacques, but that, not being in a
condition to pay for such a piece of workmanship, they had left it on his
hands. The young duke exclaimed that he wished the Carmelites could have
this beautiful reliquary, and he found a very good way of realizing his
wish. He took a purse in hand, and, extolling the curiosity, which he
kept concealed, refused to show it to those who came to visit him, unless
some pieces of gold or silver were put in his purse; and he succeeded in
procuring the sum demanded, which was 2,000 louis.[117]
Thus passed the infancy and the youth of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, in the
midst of the spectacles and practice of a true and profound piety. We
must not be surprised, then, that this piety should at length induce her
to renounce the world and become a Carmelite. She who was one day to be
the ardent disciple and the intrepid protector of Port-Royal, was then
in the hands of a Jesuit, Father Le Jeune. He encouraged her design;
but in vain she addressed the most earnest supplications to her father,
the Prince de Condé. Having other views in regard to his daughter, he
complained to Madame the Princess; and in order to break the charm that
attached Anne-Geneviève to the Carmelites, it was decided that she should
be taken oftener into society. Mademoiselle de Bourbon obeyed; but, her
mind being still filled with the images and the discourses of the Rue
Saint-Jacques, she took no pleasure in these brilliant assemblages.
When her mother found fault with her poor success, Mademoiselle de
Bourbon is said to have replied to her:[118] “You have, madame, such
touching graces, that, as I simply attend you, and appear after you, I
am not noticed.” This manner of justifying herself appeased Madame the
Princess, who, in spite of her devotion, willingly suffered herself to be
reminded that she had been and was still very beautiful.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon, during several years, followed her inclination;
and, in order to make her renounce it, it was necessary to do her a sort
of violence. Thus far she had found means of escaping the ball. Madame
the Princess was obliged to employ her authority to make her go; and
three days before its occurrence, she was commanded to prepare herself
for it.
“Her first movement,” says Villefore,[119] “was to go and tell this news
to her good friends the Carmelites, who were very much afflicted at it,
and embarrassed in replying to her, for she asked their advice as to her
conduct at so difficult a conjuncture. A council was held in due form,
over which presided, in religious habit, two excellent virtues, Penitence
and Prudence; and it was resolved that Mademoiselle de Bourbon, before
going to the assault, should arm her self, under her clothing, with a
small cuirass, vulgarly called a hair-cloth, and that she should then
lend herself, in good faith, to all the finery that was designed for
her. As soon as her consent was obtained, every thing was resorted to
that could most enliven her natural graces, and nothing was forgotten
to ornament a beauty more brilliant by its own splendor than by all the
jewels with which it was loaded. The Carmelites had strongly recommended
her to be on her guard, but her self-confidence misled her. From the
moment she entered the ball-room, and as long as she remained there, the
eyes of the whole assembly were fixed upon her. Admirers flocked about
her, lavishing those subtle praises that easily lay hold of a newly
enkindled self-love, which is suspicious of nothing.... On retiring from
the ball, she felt her heart agitated by new emotions: she was no longer
the same person.”
It would not be without interest to know something about that ball where
Mademoiselle de Bourbon was carried away as a victim, where she appeared
to conquer, and which she left intoxicated; but Villefore gives us no
information respecting it. We are therefore reduced to conjecture. Here
is one which we give for what it is worth. We read in the manuscript
memoirs of André d’Ormesson, and in the _Gazette de France_, of
Renaudot,[120] that, February 18, 1635, there was given at the Louvre,
under King Louis XIII., a grand ball, in which figured all the beauties
of the day, and among the rest Mademoiselle de Bourbon. Observe that it
is the first court-ball in which the name of Mademoiselle de Bourbon
is found, both in d’Ormesson and the _Gazette_. Again, that the great
violence, an account of which has been preserved for us by Villefore,
could have been shown to the princess only on an occasion that demanded
the infliction, and for a royal ball. If this conjecture were admitted,
we should have the precise date of the conversion of Mademoiselle de
Bourbon to worldly life, as we have of the date of her conversion to
the religious life, which is certainly August 2, 1654, when she was
thirty-five years of age: the first would be February 18, 1635, when
Mademoiselle de Bourbon was sixteen.
It is to very near this age of Madame de Longueville that these words of
Madame de Motteville refer: “Mademoiselle de Bourbon began, although very
young, to exhibit the first charms of that angelic face which has since
had such renown.” In order to judge how faithful this slight sketch is,
one must go to Versailles and see a portrait, by an old and excellent
master, named Ducayer, representing Mademoiselle de Bourbon, at the age
of fifteen years, by the side of her father and her mother, in 1634. She
is here seen in all the freshness of her virgin beauty, but in court
attire, and as if going to that ball which she so much dreaded, and which
changed her soul and her life.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon did not, however, forget her friends of the
convent of the Carmelites, and continued to visit them. Thus far she had
experienced but one sentiment; from that time she had two,—love of God
and of the Carmelites, with a taste for worldly success. She preserved
the same piety, but that piety was henceforth combated by the desire of
pleasure, the need of loving and being loved, the wish for applause upon
that stage where she witnessed the success of so many persons who had
neither her mirth, nor her spirit, nor her face. This combat continued
a long time. We have letters addressed by her to the Carmelites, and in
a tone of the most lively piety, even when she was allowing herself
to be most carried away by her passions. Accuse neither her sincerity,
nor the inefficacy of the best principles. We are really sincere when
we express sentiments that are really in the heart, although we may not
have strength to follow them; and these noble sentiments have also the
precious advantage of mingling with our faults a remnant of virtue that
hinders us from sinking to the bottom of the abyss, of uniting therewith
a beneficent remorse that sustains the moral life, and of almost always
achieving a triumphant restoration to well-doing. Let them sleep for a
season in the soul of Madame de Longueville. There they will never be
extinguished. At some future day they will be awakened, and we shall
return to the convent of the Carmelites, in the Rue Saint-Jacques.
But it is necessary to quit it, in order to follow Mademoiselle de
Bourbon to the court, to Chantilly, to Ruel, to Liancourt, among
beautiful companions, amid agreeable promenades, taking part in gallant
conversations. We shall follow her first to Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre,
to the hôtel de Rambouillet.