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.
It is an error too general, and recently fortified by M. Rœderer in his
ingenious and learned memoir on _Polite Society in France_,[121] that the
hôtel de Rambouillet was the first, and for a long time the only _salon_
in Paris where good company ever assembled. No: the Marchioness de
Rambouillet did not create, she simply followed up the happy revolution
which caused a taste for intellectual things, delicate pleasures, elegant
occupations to succeed, in France, the barbarity of the civil wars, and
the license of manners too much allowed by Henry IV. This taste is the
distinctive characteristic of the seventeenth century; it is the pure
and noble source whence issued all the wonders of this great period.
Louis XIV., in 1661, received it wholly formed, illustrious on all sides
by reason of the most brilliant military and political success, rich in
masterpieces of every kind, when already the finest geniuses had finished
or commenced their career; when Malherbe and Balzac, the founders of the
new prose and of the new poesy, when Descartes, the founder of the new
philosophy, had long been buried; when Le Sueur and Sarrazin were dead;
when Pascal and Poussin were about to close their eyes; when Corneille
was no longer but a shadow of himself; when Madame de Sévigné, La
Fontaine, and Molière, were forty, and Bossuet thirty-six years of age.
All these great minds have, in their style as well as in their thought,
something artless and masculine, which betrays another epoch; an art and
a literature developed under other auspices. The seventeenth century
does not commence with Louis XIV., who crowns it, but with Richelieu,
who inspired it. No one felt better than Richelieu the growing taste for
politeness and letters. The foundation of this great soul was ambition:
his true genius was for politics; but, eager for every kind of glory,
he desired also to be, or to appear, one of the first wits of his time,
and even an accomplished cavalier. Like all great men from Cæsar to
Napoleon, he was very amiable when he wished to be so. It pleased him
for a while to affect to be a discontented man of ambition, who was
abiding his time under the appearance of a man of the world, seeking and
obtaining the most brilliant success in society. As soon as he acquired
power, he gave vogue to his own tastes; and in 1630 there was in Paris
more than one hôtel where there were assembled, for agreeable pastime,
people of wit, of lofty and of low descent, military personages, lawyers
and theologians, with their amiable wives, who naturally gave the ton.
The hôtel de Rambouillet was the most considerable of all the rendezvous
of the new spirit, and it continued to be the most celebrated, by reason
rather of the defects than of the good qualities there encountered.
In fact, what idea is presented to the mind as soon as we hear mentioned
the hôtel de Rambouillet? That of a choice reunion where the most
exquisite politeness is cultivated, but where, little by little, the
_genre précieux_ enters and acquires full control.
And what was this _genre précieux_?
It was at first simply what is now called the style _distingué_.
Distinction was what was sought above all things at the hôtel de
Rambouillet: whoever possessed it, or aspired to it, from princes and
princesses of the blood to lettered persons of the most humble fortune,
was well received, attracted to, retained in the amiable and illustrious
company.
But what must we understand by distinction? It cannot be defined in
an absolute manner. Each epoch makes an ideal of distinction for its
own use. Two things, however, almost always enter it, two things in
appearance contrary, and which are combined only in choice spirits
happily cultivated: a certain elevation in ideas and sentiments, with
an extreme simplicity in manners and language. I suppose that with
Aspasia, at Athens, Pericles, Anaxagoras, and Phidias talked of art,
of philosophy, of politics, with no more effort and declamation, than
workmen and merchants would have used in conversing about their ordinary
occupations. Socrates was an accomplished model in this style, and the
_Banquet_ of Plato, wherein, after supper, discourse is held upon the
most elevated topics in the most charming and most natural manner, gives
us a perfect idea of what was then the _ton_ of that particular atticism
at Athens, and which, even at Athens, was the mark of distinction. It
was the same at Rome with the Scipios, where an amiable badinage was
often mingled with the gravest matters, a little less, perhaps, at the
suppers of Cicero, when Cæsar was not present, the master of the house
not being a sufficiently great lord to be always perfectly simple, and
the new man,—I do not say the parvenu—especially the orator and the man
of letters, being a little too perceptible, even when he strove most
to imitate Plato. It was this Roman urbanity, the somewhat degenerated
daughter of Athenian atticism, that the hôtel de Rambouillet aimed at and
contributed to spread.[122]
Grandeur was in some sort in the air from the very commencement of
the seventeenth century. The policy of the government was grand, and
great men sprang up in crowds to carry it out in the councils and on
the battle-field. A mighty spirit pervaded French society. Everywhere
were great designs in the arts, in letters, in sciences, in philosophy.
Descartes, Poussin, and Corneille were advancing towards their future
glory, full of bold thoughts, under the eyes of Richelieu. Every thing
was turned to grandeur. Every thing was rude, even somewhat gross, mind
as well as heart. Force abounded; grace was absent. In this excessive
vigor, good taste was unknown. Politeness was necessary to lead the
century to perfection. Of this the hôtel de Rambouillet was particularly
the school.
The days of its greatest lustre begin in 1630, and extend to 1648, when
the idol of the house, Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, married in 1645 to
M. de Montausier, follows him into his government of Saintonge and of
Angoumois, at the commencement of the Fronde. The palmy days of the
illustrious hôtel were then under Richelieu, and during the first years
of the regency. For a score of years it rendered incontestable services
to the national taste; but the good which it was able to do, was achieved
in 1648. Already its defects had begun to appear and to encroach upon
its good qualities. The inferior circles which had been formed in Paris
and in the provinces, at first useful because they promoted politeness,
had terminated in being dangerous by degenerating loftiness of ideas and
sentiments into a false grandeur, extravagant and affected, especially
by carrying affectation into simplicity. It was then that the _genre
précieux_, becoming corrupted, the great master in fact of nature and
truth, declared against it that pitiless war, opened by his comedy of
_Les Précieuses Ridicules_, printed in 1660, and closed by that of _Les
Femmes Savantes_, printed in 1673. But let us return to 1630.
In 1630 there was much originality in France, but it was an originality
which showed the necessity of foreign models. At a later period, Molière,
La Fontaine, Boileau, and Racine, those geniuses so eminently French,
proposed the study of models; they sought them in antiquity, which they
imitated without ceasing to be original, giving the French character
to every thing that they touched. Their predecessors had addressed
themselves to Italy and to Spain, in their eyes the two nations most
advanced. The Médicis had introduced among us a taste for Italian
literature. Queen Anne brought, or rather strengthened, a taste for
Spanish literature. The hôtel de Rambouillet endeavored to unite them.
The Spanish style was, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, made
up of high gallantry, languishing and Platonic; of a heroism somewhat
romantic; a knightly courage; a lively sentiment of the beauties of
nature, which developed itself in eclogues and idyls, both prose and
verse; a passion for music and serenades, as well as for carousals,
elegant conversations, and magnificent diversions. The Italian style was
precisely the contrary of Spanish grandeur, or, if you please, bombast,
wit, carried to refinement, raillery and jesting, which threatened to
abase every thing. From the mixture of these two styles sprang the
alliance, ardently pursued, rarely accomplished in a perfect proportion,
of the grand and the familiar, of the grave and the pleasant, of the
sprightly and the sublime.
At the hôtel de Rambouillet, it was not sufficient to be a hero; it
was also necessary to be a gallant man, an _honnête_ man, as was the
appellation in 1630, and as it continued to be during the seventeenth
century; an _honnête_ man, new and piquant expression, mysterious
type which it is difficult to define, and whose sentiment spread with
inconceivable rapidity. The _honnête_ man had elevated sentiments: he was
necessarily brave, gallant, liberal; he had wit and fine manners, but
all this without the least appearance of pedantry, and with an easy and
familiar air. Such was the ideal which the hôtel de Rambouillet proposed
for public admiration, and for the imitation of people who prided
themselves on being _comme il faut_.
The women were naturally called upon to play the principal rôle in an
enterprise like this, and the Marchioness de Rambouillet seemed formed
expressly to preside over it. She was almost Italian: her father was
Vivonne Pisani, and her mother, Savelli. Her husband was a very high
lord, and had been ambassador extraordinary to Spain. They had already
withdrawn from business, with a considerable fortune, to a beautiful
hôtel near Paris, a magnificent country residence:[123] they were there
in the way of no one, and drew about them a large circle. To finish the
portrait of an accomplished hostess, add that Madame de Rambouillet,
though very beautiful, had never been engaged in any intrigue, and
that she was passionately fond of people of wit, though without any
pretension thereto herself: in fact, only a few letters and two stanzas
are all that can be found from her pen.[124]
She was also an object of admiration to all those who knew her. Tallemant
des Réaux himself passes upon her the highest eulogy. He says that she
was beautiful, virtuous, and sensible. “She has,”[125] observes he,
“always loved beautiful things; and for the sake of reading Virgil,
she applied herself to the study of Latin, but was prevented from
accomplishing her design by sickness: she contented herself afterwards
with learning Spanish.... She was in every thing a very clever person....
No one in the world was less selfish; she went farther than those who
say that giving is a pleasure worthy of a king, for she said that it was
a pleasure worthy of God.... There never was a mind more upright....
Never was there a truer friend.” Her only defect which M. Rœderer has
intentionally suppressed, and which Tallemant does not fail to notice,
was an excessive delicacy in language. There were words which frightened
her, and which found no favor with her,[126] so that there was already
in Arthénice (the _nom de précieuse_ of Madame de Rambouillet) something
of Philaminte. Segrais speaks of her in terms similar to those of
Tallemant:[127] “Madame de Rambouillet was admirable; she was good,
gentle, beneficent, and warm-hearted, and she possessed a correct mind.
It was she who corrected the bad manners then prevalent. She had formed
her mind by reading good Italian and Spanish books; and she taught
politeness to all those who frequented her company. Princes visited her,
though she was not a duchess. She was also an excellent friend, obliging
to every one. The Cardinal Richelieu held her in the highest esteem....
Madame de La Fayette learned much from her.” One of her daughters, the
celebrated Julie, possessed a most remarkable mind, and, in default of
great beauty, a very fine form and noble air. She understood how to make
agreeable the house of her mother, and she was ably seconded by her
brother, the Marquis de Pisani, as intellectual as he was brave; also
by her numerous sisters, especially by her who was the first Madame de
Grignan.[128]
We may find anywhere a description of the hôtel de Rambouillet, and
of that famous blue chamber, which was in some sort the sanctuary of
the temple of the goddess of Athens, to speak like Mademoiselle in _La
Princesse de Paphlagonie_.[129] It was a large _salon_, the decorations
of which were all of blue velvet, set off with gold and silver, and
whose large windows, opening from the ceiling to the floor, admitted
abundance of light and air, and gave the prospect of a very beautiful
and well-cultivated garden, which extended as far as the eye could
reach. The hôtel had been built upon a new plan, designed by Madame de
Rambouillet herself. It was not very vast, but of a beautiful appearance.
It was the last hôtel but one of the Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, on the
side of the Place du Palais Cardinal, between the Quinze-Vingts, which
occupied the corner of the street, and the hôtel de Chevreuse, afterwards
the hôtel d’Epernon, and a little later, towards 1663 or 1664, the hôtel
de Longueville.[130]
M. Rœderer has left hardly any thing to be done in cataloguing the great
lords and ladies who frequented the hôtel de Rambouillet during the
last half of its long and brilliant existence. I will limit myself to
selecting, from the group of amiable women ever found there, one whom M.
Rœderer has too much neglected, and who is, in my eyes, the model of a
true and perfect _précieuse_, Madeleine de Souvre, Marchioness de Sablé,
whose life is connected with that of Madame de Longueville, and of whom
Madame de Motteville has left us the following portrait:
“The Marchioness de Sablé[131] was one of those whose beauty was creating
the most sensation when the queen (Queen Anne) arrived in France (in
1615); but if she was lovely, she was still more desirous of appearing
so. The love which this lady had for herself rendered her a little too
sensible to that testified to her by the other sex. There were in France
some relics of the politeness that Catherine de Médicis had introduced
from Italy; and so much delicacy was found in the new comedies and in
all other works, both prose and verse, which came from Madrid, that she
conceived a very high opinion of the gallantry which the Spaniards had
caught from the Moors. She was persuaded that men might, without crime,
entertain the most tender sentiments for females; that the desire of
pleasing impelled them to the greatest and handsomest acts, gave them
spirit and inspired them with liberality and every virtue; but that, on
the other hand, women, who were the ornament of the world, and made to
be served and adored, ought to tolerate their respect alone. This lady,
supporting her sentiments with fine wit and great beauty, gave them much
authority in her time; and the number and consideration of those who
continued to see her, perpetuated in our time what the Spaniards call,
_fucezas_.”[132]
Madame de Sablé had been passionately loved by the brave, handsome, and
unfortunate Duke de Montmorency, uncle of Madame de Longueville, who
was decapitated at Toulouse in 1632. She responded to his passion; but
Montmorency having raised his eyes upon the queen, Madame de Sablé, like
a true Spaniard, broke connection with him. “I heard her say,” says
Madame de Motteville again, “that her own pride was so great, that, on
the first demonstration made by the Duke de Montmorency of his change
of affection, she wished to see him no more, being unable to receive
agreeably devotion which she was obliged to share even with the greatest
princess in the world.”
The Marchioness de Sablé continued faithful to the manners of her youth,
and, when the hôtel de Rambouillet was almost closed, she maintained
something akin to it in her hôtel of the Place-Royale, with her
intellectual friend, the Countess de Maure, and even in her retreat of
Port-Royal, at the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. She kept up for a long time
a school of _bon ton_, of _morale_, and of refined literature, whence
originated the _Maximes_ of La Rochefoucauld.
Among the people of letters who came often to the hôtel de Rambouillet,
the two most celebrated are without contradiction Corneille and Voiture.
Corneille, with Descartes, is the highest expression of the literature
of the first half of the seventeenth century. His qualities, like his
defects, were in the most perfect harmony with his times. Hence a success
which no one has since equalled. Under Louis XIV., what piece of Racine
produced the impression made by the _Cid_, in 1636? It is necessary
to read the writers of the times in order to obtain an idea of the
enthusiasm which seized Paris and all France. They were true transports:
All Paris for Chimène hath the eyes of Rodrigue.
Nothing more true. Because at this time there was not a gentleman in
Paris who did not pretend to be a Rodrigue; not a woman of _bon ton_ who
had not at heart, or who did not affect the sentiments of Chimène. The
more we study this admirable piece, which _Polyeucte_ alone surpassed
a few years after, the more we discover in it the traits of that great
epoch forever gone, heroism and great gallantry; that point of honor
which doubtless shed much blood, but promoted the warlike spirit; in ripe
men and in chieftains, serious interests and energetic passions clashing
with each other; in youth, the generous struggle of love and duty, which
will one day be carried to the utmost degree of the pathetic in Pauline
and in Sévère, throughout it a language somewhat rude, but artless and
strong, ever familiar; at the same time, it is true, an ill-founded taste
straying sometimes in the pursuit of grandeur, of delicacies infinite
and full of grace, but somewhat critical, and of subtile analyses of
passion reasoning upon itself. Such was the hôtel de Rambouillet. It
recognized itself in and defended the _Cid_ against the all-powerful
minister.[133] It was in the noble _salon_ that Corneille encountered
Balzac, and conversed with him concerning Rome and the Romans. Let the
discourses upon the Romans addressed by Balzac to the Marchioness de
Rambouillet[134] be read, and it will be seen whether the conversations
of this period were useless. I dare say that France never witnessed a
time when politics were more the order of the day. Every one was then
occupied with public affairs. It was neither Lucan nor Tacitus who taught
Corneille the language of _Cinna_ and of the first scene of _La Mort de
Pompée_. The true school of Corneille was the spectacle of what passed
around him, the story of great contemporaneous events, the conversations
of Richelieu and of his familiars, Father Joseph, Mazarin, Lyonne, and
those who were every day in the companies which he frequented, where
ambassadors, warriors, bishops, councillors of state mingled with men
of letters. Corneille read all his pieces at the hôtel de Rambouillet.
It was in all its glory, and it declined with him; his masterpiece, the
masterpiece also of the French stage, _Polyeucte_, appeared in 1643, that
is, during the most brilliant days of the hôtel de Rambouillet, and I
may add of France, for it was in this same year, 1643, that one of the
youngest disciples of the illustrious hôtel, the most passionate admirer
of Corneille, the brother of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, the Duke d’Enghien,
gained at the age of twenty-two years, in a manner worthy of Alexander
and of Cæsar, one of those battles of which history records but five
or six—that battle of Rocroy, in which the designs of Henri IV. and of
Richelieu were justified by victory, and by which France succeeded Spain
in the moral and military supremacy of Europe.
Voiture was admired by his most intellectual and fastidious
contemporaries. La Fontaine places him in the number of his masters.[135]
Madame de Sévigné characterizes his mind as “free, playful,
charming.”[136] Boileau says that Voiture is, in his eyes, a sort of
clown, asking what there is in him to be so much admired.[137] Let us
confess it: we all more or less resemble this clown: we are scarcely able
at the present day to account for the fame of Voiture. Many reasons may
be assigned for it which militate neither against Voiture nor ourselves.
Of all our faculties, wit is that which has most to do with social
intercourse, but which leaves the least trace. A sally, a repartee,
cannot be separated from the manner in which they are expressed.
Sprightly sayings have not all their grace except in the mouth of a man
of wit. It is not thus with words proceeding from the heart, and with
great thoughts. As they come from the depths of human nature, which
changes not, they have infinite perspectives, and they endure as long as
the heart and the reason. But wit plays upon the surface; it sparkles
and becomes extinguished in an instant. Wit is the offspring of the
moment. The effect of an impromptu depends upon a thousand things, which,
in disappearing, carry with them what had most charmed us. What, I pray
you, is the present value of a pleasantry perpetrated two centuries ago?
Madame de Sévigné, in her enthusiasm for him who had been one of the
masters of her youth, exclaims: “So much the worse for those who do not
understand him!” But it is easy for the amiable marchioness to speak
concerning him; she had an intimate knowledge of the manners, of the
things, of the men, of the women, of the adventures, of the little
accidents to which the verses and prose of Voiture related. His nephew,
Martin Pinchesne, who, a year or two after the death of his uncle,
published his works, was foolish or kind enough to suppress the dates
of the jokes and the names of most of the persons who had called them
forth, so that even in the seventeenth century those who had not been of
Voiture’s society, had need of a commentator to understand him. Tallemant
confesses that there are in his writings many things, the point of which
he has not been able to discover. “At some future day,” says he, “if it
can be done without offending too many people, I will have them printed
with notes, and I will add to them such other pieces as I shall be able
to find of the society of the hôtel de Rambouillet.”[138]
In fact, to relish Voiture, he should have been seen upon the theatre
of his success from 1630 to 1648, with those pretty women who sought to
be amused, among those young gentlemen who, in the interval of battles,
were partaking of the most refined pleasures of the mind. Voiture reigned
at the hôtel de Rambouillet. Corneille, timid and proud, neglected and
full of himself, was but ill at ease in this great society: he listened
almost always in silence, and seldom conversed except with Balzac, his
fellow-citizen in the Roman republic. But Voiture was the gayety, the
life, the soul of the house. He was always in the proper mood; his
inexhaustible flow of spirits mingled in every thing, animated every
thing, and, while Corneille was grave in the midst of trifles, and
introducing, involuntarily, into the very comedies which he wished to
make most diverting, tragic movements, Voiture, in the most serious
matters, was lavishing his witticisms. He represents the playful side of
the hôtel de Rambouillet, as Corneille did its severe side.
Let us not forget that Voiture wrote only as he was inspired by the
occasion—that circumstance was his favorite muse, and that she dictated
to him most of those little things, produced in haste, and which he did
not even take the trouble to collect. It is then ridiculous to criticise
them. They were for the most part songs, intended to be sung, and which
were sung. The editor has sometimes indicated the airs, and we have found
nearly all of them in a curious collection, belonging to the library of
the Arsenal, entitled _Chansons notées_.
But Voiture has not merely a facility full of charm; it seems to me
that in his somewhat more studied efforts, he has ideas, philosophy,
sensibility, sometimes even passion. I feel obliged to shelter myself
behind the authority of Boileau, who, in his letter to Perrault,[139]
eulogizes Voiture, and particularly his elegies. For my part, I prefer
them to all those which appeared before 1648, the year of the death
of Voiture, and of the end, or at least of the decay of the hôtel de
Rambouillet, excepting, indeed, the elegies of Corneille, now too much
forgotten, and which contain passages vieing with the most touching of
his tragedies.[140]
I would call attention to the elegy to a coquette, whom Voiture names
Bélise. Is there, indeed, no elevation, no force in the following verses?
Your charms which but the face adorn,
Can ne’er control a soul well born,
Your sway’s too harsh to be secure;
If any one can it endure,
With so much scorn, ingratitude,
He must be born for servitude,
Or else some wretch whom gods pursue
In wrath by giving him to you.
For praise and honor vainly moved,
You cannot love, yet would be loved,[141] etc.
We must give almost in full the elegy to a lady whom he had quitted for
another, and to whom he returned:
Leaving for me her native pride,
Sweet Iris could no more deride;
Approved my flame, my hopes allow’d,
Received my love, heard what I vow’d,
Bestow’d those tokens, one by one,
Which lovers hang their hopes upon.
Treatment so mild, ’t must be averr’d,
Some feeling in my bosom stirr’d,—
Of love? This perjured soul ’gainst you
Such injury could never do;
Of friendship only, yet so strong,
I thought to love ’twould turn ere long.
In her I daily hoped to meet
The traits which render you so sweet,
Those charms divine, by which, at will,
You either make alive or kill;
Your graces perfectly refined,
The native grandeur of your mind,
That discourse sweet, to nature true,
But these I find alone in you.
Of beauty, sooth, she had enough
To move the heart of sternest stuff;
A hundred charms in her I found,
But greater charms in you abound;
None of those looks with which, as darts,
Your eyes transfix the hardest hearts.
How, oft, when by your beauty smit,
Or by your grace or sparkling wit,
I’ve said, and I can quickly prove,
That Philis merits truest love?
We cannot mistake a true sensibility, the accent of passion, or, if you
please, of pleasure, in these _stanzas_, addressed to an Aminte who is
unknown to us:
When simply with two words you chose
To make my pains forever cease;
When I had felt a martyr’s woes,
You oped the skies and gave me peace.
Your charms, which nothing can eclipse,
Conceal’d the rigor of your part,
Love’s lures were all upon your lips,
And all his shafts went to my heart.
You took at once a beauty new,
A radiance vieing that above.
Ah! how mine eyes were then on you,
And how your eyes saw me in love!
Here, in a very different style, are some verses, which, twenty years
later, Saint-Evremond would not have disavowed. Voiture is writing to the
Duke d’Enghien on his recovery from a disease by which it was thought he
would be carried off, after the campaign in Germany, in 1645:
I much rejoice, my lord, to know
Your safe return from Allemagne,
From sickness, too, that laid you low,
Just at the close of the campaign;
Spreading a hope throughout all Spain,
That Heaven at last would show it grace
By cutting short your fearful race,
And that undoubted valor stay
Which it so dreads to face.
But, seignior, let me know, I pray,
Does Death, who, on the battle-fields,—
’Mid cries and terrible alarms,
’Mid flames, and swords, and spears, and shields,
The noise and rage of clashing arms,—
Appears for you to have some charms,
And seem’d so very fine before
To you array’d in garb of war:
Does he appear the same, I pray,
When leisurely he takes his way
Towards one too sick to hold his head;
And has he not an ugly grin,
When cold and stiff he saunters in,
To take a man from out his bed? etc.
In justice to Voiture, it must be acknowledged: he is the creator of a
particular literature—the literature of society, if the expression may
be allowed. He excelled in playful and light poetry; in that kind of
trifling verse in which he has since had so many insipid imitators; which
Voltaire carried so far, and which forms the best part, the truest title,
to his poetic glory. Voiture was indeed the miniature Voltaire of the
hôtel de Rambouillet.
I leave him, after saying to his honor that, though an attendant at the
court, he had not the manners of a courtier. Voiture is the first example
of a man of letters who preserved his independence among the greatest
lords: he had rather the saucy tone and manners of his successors of
the end of the eighteenth century. He was very caustic, and therefore
much dreaded. Great care was taken not to incur one of his epigrams, for
they were sharp swift arrows that flew all over Paris, tearing their
poor victim to pieces in a thousand different places at the same time.
The Duke d’Enghien, who loved to laugh, and who could appreciate a
joke, because he himself had great wit, agreed perfectly with Voiture,
saying, however, “He would be insupportable, if he was one of ourselves.”
Besides, Voiture, still surpassing his disciples of the eighteenth
century, had procured an excellent post through his success in society.
He was appointed introducer of ambassadors to his Royal Highness, Gaston,
Duke of Orleans. He was also appointed an officer of finance, in which
capacity he seldom served, although he thence derived a handsome income.
He had been intrusted with more than one important mission, principally
to the Count Duke d’Olivares. In person he was well made, and he dressed
himself in the best taste. It was his office to be the chevalier, the
lover, and, as they then said, the _mourant_ (dying man) of all the
belles, especially of the pretty Mademoiselle Paulet, whose somewhat bold
manners and blond hair had won for her the name of the lioness of the
hôtel de Rambouillet.
Such was the society into which, about the year 1635 or 1636—after the
great ball which bore off Mademoiselle de Bourbon from the Carmelites—the
Princess de Condé introduced her daughter, with her son, the young Duke
d’Enghien. They did not enter it unprepared. The hôtel de Condé was
also the rendezvous of the best company. Situated in the vast space at
present occupied by the Rue de Condé, the street, place, and theatre de
l’Odéon, as far as the Rue des Fossés-Monsieur-le-Prince, it was, says
Sauval,[142] magnificently built, and Madame the Princess did its honors
with a dignity almost royal, tempered with grace and wit. Lenet, to whom
we must always refer in regard to every thing connected with the Condés,
informs us that Madame the Princess had bestowed great pains upon the
manners of her children. “Marguerite de Montmorency,[143] who had been
the beauty, grace, and majesty of her times, and who was proportionably
so in advanced age, even till her death, had always around her a circle
of the most agreeable and intellectual ladies of the court. Near her were
found all the most gallant, the most _honnête_, and most elevated, both
by birth and merit. The young prince became pleased with this society.
He frequented it continually, and from it received the first tincture of
that noble and gallant civility which he has ever possessed, which he
still preserves towards ladies ... Mademoiselle de Bourbon, his sister,
who was afterwards the Duchess de Longueville, possessed great spirit
and extraordinary beauty.” We can then easily conceive how the two young
people were received at the hôtel de Rambouillet. From the first moment,
they gave it the greatest lustre.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon, the person whom we have described, with
beautiful blue eyes, light hair, fine form, careless and languishing
air, was formed exactly, by the bent of her mind and character, to
become an accomplished pupil of the hôtel de Rambouillet. There was in
her an innate depth of pride, which slumbered in ordinary life, but, at
intervals, was promptly aroused. Her mind was of the finest stamp, but
its delicacy often turned to subtilty. Especially the tender, Platonic
gallantry, which was the order of the day, was calculated to charm
without causing her fear, for her rank protected her; and, besides, she
says in the most humble of confessions, the pleasures of sense never
attracted her. What touched her, and ended in misleading her, was a
desire to be loved, and also the wish to appear, to show, as they then
said, the power of her mind and of her eyes.
Her brother, the Duke d’Enghien, had her hauteur, but nothing whatever of
her delicacy. In spite of all the efforts of his mother, and the example
of his sister, the easy manner of the warrior always marked him; and he
often carried freedom of thought and language even to license. Though not
handsome, he was well made; and, when elegantly dressed, he presented
a fine appearance. His keen eyes, very aqueline nose, somewhat decayed
teeth, abundant and usually disordered hair, gave him an eagle-like look
when animated.[144] He possessed an agreeable mind, a gayety which was
most freely exhibited in the midst of dangers, and which did not abandon
him in prison. Whatever may be said of him, he was full of heart. He
loved his friends, and he never betrayed one of them. He exacted much
from them, but he also gave them much. He lavished their blood, as well
as his own, upon the battle-field; but he promoted their interests, and
demanded for them more than for himself. Any other person, after the
battle of Rocroy, would have been jealous of Gassion, who was said to
have advised the manœuvre which decided the day; he himself, from the
field of battle, demanded for Gassion the baton of Marshal of France,
and the office of Lieutenant-General for Sirot, who, at the head of
the reserve, had completed the victory. When, in the fight of the Rue
Saint-Antoine, escaping with difficulty from the carnage, harassed with
fatigue, defeated, covered with blood, he arrived, sword in hand, at the
house of Mademoiselle, his first exclamation, accompanied with a torrent
of tears, was, “Ah! madame, you see a man who has lost all his friends!”
At Brussels, when negotiating his return to France, he stipulated also
for a similar grace to those who had followed him. He wrote very spirited
verses, but they were satirical and somewhat soldierlike.[145] He once
loved, in the Spanish fashion, according to all the rules of the hôtel de
Rambouillet. We shall presently make known the object of this touching
passion, which does lasting honor to the great Condé; but we may here say
that she was a heroine worthy of the hero.
Represent to yourself these two young persons at the hôtel de
Rambouillet. There Condé amused himself and laughed freely with Voiture
and the wits around him; but his favorite was Corneille. The latter, who
was poor, and somewhat fond of money, complained to Segrais, a Normand
like himself,[146] that the Prince de Condé, who professed so much
admiration for his works, had never made him large presents. Segrais
did not then know, that until the death of his father in 1646, the Duke
d’Enghien had nothing but his glory, that he was unable to give the least
pension; and what pension, I ask, would have been worth so much as the
presence of Condé at the first representation of _Cinna_, and the sobs
which escaped him at those memorable words:
Let us be friends, _Cinna_; ’tis I who ask thee, etc.
We should remark in passing that this same Condé, who was the
enthusiastic admirer of Corneille, became the friend of Bossuet, and
the faithful defender of Molière. He had seen Bossuet almost a child
beginning his career as a preacher at the hôtel de Rambouillet; he
had been present at, and had thought of taking part in the brilliant
struggles of his doctorship: near the close of his life he sought his
conversation, and found in him not only the most eloquent, but the most
exact historian, the most faithful painter of Rocroy, especially the
most worthy interpreter of that great heart, immortal dwelling of the
beautiful and good.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon soon became one of the most brilliant ornaments
of the hôtel de Rambouillet. She there met the Marchioness de Sablé,
still beautiful, and celebrated for her admiration of Spanish manners,
and for her loves with Montmorency. Madame de Sablé guided the first
steps of her youth, and twenty-five years after, received her at that
common rendezvous of noble disabused hearts, religion. But Mademoiselle
de Bourbon was then in the morning of life; and, little thinking of the
storms that awaited her, she yielded herself, on leaving the Carmelites,
to all the pleasures which came before her.
Like her brother, she admired Corneille; but she had a particular taste
for Voiture, and this taste never forsook her. She thought, she spoke
continually of Voiture, like Madame de Sévigné. It was not the charm
of his wit alone that pleased her; she was, doubtless, touched with the
sensibility which we have shown that he possessed, and which places
Voiture above all his rivals. In the famous quarrel concerning the two
sonnets upon Job, and upon Uranie, which divided the court and the city,
the _salons_ and the Academy, when every one was for Benserade, Madame
de Longueville, then the arbiter of taste and of elegance, took in hand
the cause of Voiture, and brought all to her opinion. A whole volume has
been written on this quarrel: it is not exhausted, and we shall hereafter
take it up by aid of new pieces, which, in showing for the first time the
motives of Madame de Longueville, will reveal to us the delicacy of her
mind, which belongs to that of her heart.[147]
Mademoiselle de Bourbon became acquainted, also, at the hôtel de
Rambouillet, with the cultivated, moderate, discreet Chapelain, the
sincere friend of good literature, and who might have become a writer
of the third, perhaps, even of the second rank, as well as his friend,
Pélisson, if, as was said by Boileau, whose shafts of wit are all serious
judgments, he had been contented to write in prose. Mademoiselle de
Bourbon conceived a great esteem for Chapelain, and, when she married,
she made Monsieur de Longueville give him a pension sufficient to enable
him to labor in security upon that famous _Pucelle_, which was to be the
Iliad of France, which was applauded in advance in the _salons_ of the
Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, and of which the young admirer of Corneille
and Voiture was already beginning to grow weary.
Among the mediocre wits whom she met in the illustrious hôtel, was
Godeau, the little abbé, who was called in the house the dwarf of
Julie, and who during all his life, by turns bishop of Grasse and of
Vence, kept up a written correspondence, half devotional, half gallant,
with Mademoiselle de Bourbon and Madame de Longueville.[148] There was
Esprit, too, of the French Academy, who played all sorts of parts; at
first, a man of letters and messmate of the chancellor, who placed him
in the Academy, then suddenly a priest of l’Oratoire, then a man of the
world again, and father of a family, who could not have been devoid of
merit, for he had the esteem of the best judges of his times: attached
afterwards to the embassy of Munster, one of the pensioners of M. and
Madame de Longueville, preceptor of their nephews, the young princes
de Conti, holding a prominent place in the _salon_ of Madame de Sablé,
consulted by La Rochefoucauld, and even passing for one of the authors of
the _Maximes_, a reputation which he might have preserved if he had not
been so imprudent as to print a work in 1678.[149]
I should be scrupulous, were I to forget Madame Scudéry as one of the
frequenters of the hôtel de Rambouillet. She was certainly very homely,
yet a person of true talent, writing perhaps too rapidly, but with
a correctness and polish which were not common in 1640. She enjoyed
and merited great consideration. Leibnitz sought the honor of her
correspondence. She wrote verses which were relished in their time, and
which still seem to us very agreeable. Her romances are so long, and the
episodes in them so embarrassing to one another, that it is absolutely
impossible to read them at the present day. But those who dare to enter
this labyrinth will meet here and there portraits well drawn, and
resembling, though somewhat flattered, the illustrious originals, poorly
disguised under Greek, Persian, and Roman names; exact descriptions of
the finest places, and most magnificent palaces of France and of Paris,
transported to Rome or to Armenia; great sentiments then in vogue;
tendernesses of a refined Platonism; conversations sometimes a little
insipid, sometimes a little refined, but which give a very agreeable
idea of the real conversations which Madame Scudéry tried to imitate.
Madame de Lafayette will, some day, abridge these pictures and these
discourses; she will take from them these insipidities and weaknesses;
she will soften these subtilties; but she will preserve the charm of
these heroic and gallant manners, and the delicate minds, whose delights
are in _Zaïdé_, and _The Princesses de Clèves_, in the _Bérénice_ of
Racine, the _Psyché_ of Molière, and of Corneille, will not read without
pleasure, certain chapters of the _Grand Cyrus_. Georges Scudéry himself,
insupportable on account of his self-love and bravado style, was a man of
honor, reliable as a friend, and who, in the most trying moments, before
Mazarin, on whom he depended, preserved proudly his fidelity to Condé
and his sister.
It is proper to mention these different persons, because they reappear
in the life of Madame de Longueville. At the hôtel de Rambouillet, they
attached themselves to Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and began her reputation,
which grew rapidly from year to year.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon passed the winters in Paris, at the hôtel de
Condé, at the Louvre, at the Palais Cardinal, in some hôtels of the
Place-Royale, especially at the hôtel de Rambouillet, amid balls,
concerts, comedies, gallant conversations; and everywhere she was
brilliant by the graces of her mind and person. In summer she was
occupied with other pleasures: she went to Fontainebleau with the court,
or to visit her mother at Chantilly, or to see Cardinal Richelieu and
the duchess d’Aiguillon at Ruel, or perhaps to Liancourt, to visit the
Duchess of Liancourt, Jeanne de Schomberg; or perhaps again, to Labarre,
near Paris, to pass some time with the Baroness Du Vigean, who, though of
inferior rank, but of great fortune, had the most amiable family,—a son,
the Marquis de Fors, one of the bravest comrades of the Duke d’Enghien,
and two charming daughters, who were greatly sought by all the young and
gallant nobility. Before as well as after her marriage, Mademoiselle
de Bourbon divided her time among these different residences, which
rivalled each other in magnificence and charms. Naturally, it was to her
mother, at Chantilly, that she went most frequently.
We must look in Du Cerceau[150] and in Perelle[151] to know what
Chantilly was at the beginning and at the end of the seventeenth century.
This vast and beautiful domain had long belonged to the family of
Montmorency, and it came into that of Condé, in 1632, through Madame
the Princess, on the death of her brother, decapitated at Toulouse. It
assembles then the souvenirs of the two greatest military families of
ancient France. Anne and Louis de Bourbon pervade it, and their spirits
will cover and protect Chantilly so long as there shall remain among us
any patriotic piety, any national pride. The Montmorencys transferred
the charming château to the Condés a little before the _renaissance_,
which Du Cerceau has described in all its details. It was the great
Condé, during the last fifteen years of his life, who, finding in the
vicinity the most beautiful woods, a true forest, with a canal resembling
a river, abundant waters and vast gardens, drew from them the wonders
which the graver of Perelle has preserved for us, and which Bossuet
could not help praising,—those fountains, those cascades, those grottoes,
those pavilions, “those superb avenues, those water jets which ceased
neither day nor night.”[152] They have ceased now. The bad taste of the
seventeenth century and revolutions have destroyed Chantilly. A prince
worthy of his name had undertaken to restore it to its first beauty.
He had wished to expend upon it the fortune which the mishaps of the
house of Condé had brought to him, and that which he held from his own
house. The young captain had dreamed of returning at a future day, after
having extended and secured French dominion in Africa, to repose with
his lieutenants in the sacred home of the Montmorencys and the Condés,
restored and embellished by his own hand. Providence ordered otherwise,
and Chantilly still awaits a repairing hand. But let us return to the
Chantilly of the middle of the seventeenth century, before the epoch of
its great magnificence, between the periods described respectively by Du
Cerceau and Perelle.
It was already a delicious abode. Madame the Princess delighted in it,
and there passed, with her children, almost every summer. She brought
with her a little court, composed of the friends of her son and
daughter, with some of the choicest wits, and particularly Voiture, with
whom they could not dispense. In default of Voiture, they had his small
change, Montreuil or Sarrazin, attachés of the house of Condé, and who
were successively secretaries of Condé, of the Prince de Conti, and of
Madame de Longueville. They were men of fine spirit; and Boileau, in his
letter to Perrault, names Sarrazin after Voiture. M. the Prince, for
whom the country possessed but little charm, remained usually in Paris,
to prosecute his designs and his fortune. Madame the Princess did not
dislike diversion, and young people devoted themselves to her with ardor.
Court was paid to the ladies. During the heat of the day, they amused
themselves in reading romances or poetry; in the evening they took long
promenades and held long conversations. They lived after the manner of
Astrea, in awaiting the adventures of the great Cyrus. Even in 1650,
after the death of her husband, during the captivity of her two sons and
of her son-in-law and the exile of her daughter, the troubles of the
civil war and the noise of arms, Lenet relates to us how the Princess
de Condé, passed the time at Chantilly:[153] “The promenades were the
most agreeable in the world.... The evenings were not less diverting.
The company repaired to the apartment of the princess, where they
played at different games. There were often fine voices, and especially
agreeable conversations and stories of intrigues, which made life pass
as pleasantly as possible.... These diversions were interrupted by bad
news, occasionally brought or written. It was a very great pleasure to
see all the young ladies sad or gay, according to the rare or frequent
visits made to them, and according to the nature of the letters which
they received; and as the affairs of each were pretty well known, it was
easy to enter into them enough in advance to be amused. Every moment some
visitors or some messages arrived, which caused great jealousy among
those who did not receive them; and all this occasioned songs, sonnets,
and elegies, which were not less diverting to the indifferent than to the
interested. They made rhymes and enigmas, which occupied spare hours.
Some might be seen walking along the banks of the ponds, in the avenues
of the garden or park, on the terrace or on the downs, alone or in
troops, according to the humor of the moment; while others were singing
an air or reciting verses, or reading romances on a balcony, or walking
or reclining upon the grass. Never did any one see so beautiful a place,
in so beautiful a season, filled with better or more amiable company.”
But before 1650, before the Fronde, which divided all French society,
Chantilly was a still more agreeable abode. Judge of it by this letter,
which Sarrazin wrote from thence, at the commencement of 1648, to
Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, at that time Madame de Montausier, who had
just set out, with her husband, for their government of Saintonge and
d’Angoumois:[154]
Whate’er of that beautiful land they may say,
Where homage devout was paid to Astrée;
However superbly or brightly they may
That mansion enchanted portray,
Where am’rous Armida and am’rous Aleine
Then captives enamor’d consign’d;
Those gardens, abounding with pleasures refined,
Which boasted, despite Falerine,
Of holding the proudest Paladins confined:
How charming soever one might
The tale of their glories relate,
They match not in beauty the spot whence I date,
The spot whence to you I now write
A truth whose resemblance to fiction is great.
The hum which the zephyr excites among the leaves of the grove when
night is about to cover the earth, was gently agitating the forest of
Chantilly, when, upon the principal road, three nymphs appeared to the
solitary Tircis. They were not those poor wood-nymphs, more worthy of
pity than envy, who, for lodging and clothing, have nothing but the bark
of the trees. Their equipage was superb, and their clothing brilliant....
The majestic air of the oldest impressed all who approached her with
profound respect. The one by her side displayed a beauty which neither
painting, sculpture, nor poetry have ever realized. The third had that
easy air that is given to the Graces.
Slowly two demigods beside her stroll’d,
The one of aspect sweet, the other bold;
The one walk’d like a conq’ror in his might,
And even Mars would have appall’d;
The other could with truth enough be call’d
The earth’s delight.
That is to say, Madame, yesterday evening, at twilight, I met, on the
great road to Chantilly, Madame the Princess, who was never in better
health, accompanied by Madame de Longueville, who never looked more
beautiful, and Madame de Saint-Loup,[155] who was never more gay, all
three in deshabille and in a calash, followed by the Princes de Condé and
de Conti.... Madame the Princess, perceiving me, exclaimed: Sarrazin,
I wish you to sit down this moment, and write to Madame de Montausier,
that Chantilly was never more beautiful, that time there never passed
more pleasantly, that her society was never more desired, and that she is
making a fool of herself by staying at Saintonge, while we are here:
Tell her what we do each day,
Tell her every thing we say.
In obedience to command,
Lo! I take my pen in hand.
When gay Aurora, on her endless race
In far-off India, shows her smiling face,
And flocks of little birds, roused from their rest,
Sing sweetly ’mong the trees so gayly dress’d,
And tardy serfs go forth to sow or reap,
At Chantilly we’re fast asleep.
So, when the night her sombre vestment spreads,
And Cynthia ’mid the stars her radiance sheds,
When now past midnight’s goal she onward speeds,
When calm the noise of day succeeds,
When all throughout the world to sleep betake,
At Chantilly we’re wide awake.
And oh! between these two extremes,
What careless, happy lives lead we!
And oh! this mansion of Silvie[156]
Gives joys by night, by day sweet dreams!
...
Music we have of every sort,
Of lutes, and violins, and voice;
And in the woods we oft rejoice,
With dogs and horns, to take the hunter’s sport.
Sometimes on horseback off we fly,
And at the swiftest speed we try
To catch the ring suspended high.
In tilting, too, we pleasure take,
And many handsome tourneys make, etc.
...
And shall I here, too, make you find
The list of good things furnish’d for our mind?
Say Ablancourt, Calprenède, and Corneille,
Or rather, vulgarly to speak,
Say verse, and hist’ry, and romance,
Divert us daily without fail,
And that our joys are never marr’d perchance? etc.
We may by this judge what Chantilly must have been eight or ten years
before, when all there were young; when the great Condé was still the
Duke d’Enghien; Madame de Longueville, Mademoiselle de Bourbon; Madame
de Montausier, Mademoiselle de Rambouillet; when, instead of the civil
war, a flourishing peace or glorious victories filled every heart with
gladness. The Duke d’Enghien was never there except amid a crowd of
brave and gallant gentlemen, who afterwards fought with him at Rocroy,
at Fribourg, at Dunkirk, at Lens, but who then shared his pleasures at
the hôtel de Condé and at Chantilly—devoted confidants of his designs
and of his loves. Among these were the Duke de Nemours, so suddenly
slain, and whose brother—inheritor of his title, of his beauty, and his
bravery—perished also in a frightful duel in the midst of the Fronde;
Coligny, killed also, at an early age, in a duel of another character;
his brother, Dandelot, afterwards Duke de Châtillon, one of the heroes of
Lens, who promised to be a great warrior, and who perished at the attack
of Charenton, during the first days of the Fronde; Laval, the son of the
Marquis de Sablé, handsome, brave, and witty, who distinguished himself,
and was slain at the siege of Dunkirk; La Moussaye, his aid-de-camp and
principal officer in every battle, who, too, died young at Sténay, in
1650; Chabot, who married the beautiful and rich heiress of the Rohans;
Pisani, the son of the Marchioness de Rambouillet, who fell sword in
hand; the Marquis de Fors Du Vigean, Nangis, Tavannes, Seneçay, and many
others, among whom arose the young Montmorency-Boutteville, afterwards
Duke Maréchal-de-Luxembourg; all this school of Condé, entirely different
from that of Turenne, into which the Duke d’Enghien early breathed his
genius and the divine part of art, as Napoleon so well expressed it,
the instinct of war, the glance which seized the strategic point of an
affair, with audacity and obstinacy in execution; that admirable school,
which began at Rocroy, and from which arose twelve marshals, without
counting those generals who sustained the honor of France to the very end
of the century. These were the youth who amused themselves at Chantilly,
preluding glory by gallantry.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon, in selecting companions, was equal to her
brother. She formed a connection with the Marchioness de Sablé, who
became the friend of her whole life; but she had younger friends, if not
more dear, at least with whom she was more familiar; she had formed a
little private society, composed chiefly of Mademoiselle de Rambouillet,
of Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean, and of her two cousins, Mesdemoiselles de
Boutteville. It must be confessed that it was a circle of charming and
redoubtable beauties, harmonious in their graceful youth, but destined
soon to be separated, and to become rivals or enemies.
Voiture, we may conceive, took great care of these beautiful ladies, and
especially of Mademoiselle de Bourbon: he celebrated her in verse and
in prose, in every tune, and upon every occasion. Even in his letters
written to others, he cannot cease speaking of her mind and beauty: “The
mind of Mademoiselle de Bourbon,” says he, “is all that can cause one to
doubt whether her beauty is the most perfect thing in the world.” He is
continually comparing her to an angel:
“of pearls and stars and flowers of finest shade,
Bourbon, the heaven hath thy complexion made,
And ’mid thy charms it hath enshrined
An angel’s mind.”
In another place he says:
“The Bourbon, you might safely swear,
Seeing her skin so fresh, so fair,
Had from a lily sprung.”
It is to her again that he addresses this agreeable song, intended,
doubtless, to be chanted in a low tone by the side of Mademoiselle de
Bourbon, as she lay dozing in one of the groves of Chantilly:
“Our Aurora ’mid roses
Now gently reposes;
Let each keep silence once more,
And let no one disturb her,
Unless it be life to restore.”[157]
And if these ladies staid too long in the country, when Voiture was not
with them, he called them back to Paris, in his burlesque, sentimental
complaints.[158]
But they did not spend the whole summer at Chantilly. Madame the Princess
possessed several other country-seats in the vicinity: Marlou, La
Versine, Méru, l’Isle-Adam, charming places to which she often went. She
was also obliged to visit the cardinal and Madame d’Aiguillon in their
beautiful summer residence at Ruel, on the borders of the Seine, between
Saint-Germain and Paris.[159] The pleasures of these places were very
different from those of Chantilly. Art reigned at Ruel. Like Paris, it
had a theatre, where the cardinal caused the representation of pieces
with machinery brought from Italy. He gave great mythological ballets,
like those of the Louvre, and feasts of a magnificence almost royal;
whilst at Chantilly, much more removed from Paris, there was doubtless
grandeur and opulence, but a grandeur full of quiet, and an opulence
which placed especially at its service the beauties of nature. Ruel was
also quite as lively as the Palais-Cardinal. Richelieu labored there with
his ministers: there he received the court, France, Europe. Business
was there mingled with diversion. The Duchess d’Aiguillon was worthy of
her uncle, ambitious and prudent, devoted to him to whom she owed every
thing, sharing his cares as well as his fortune, and governing admirably
his house. She was still young enough, of a regular beauty, and not
implicated in any affair of gallantry. Calumny or slander had attacked
her relations with Richelieu, and even with Madame Du Vigean. She had
more sense than wit, and was by no means a _précieuse_, although she
frequented the hôtel de Rambouillet. Madame the Princess did not like
Richelieu; she could not pardon the death of her brother, Montmorency,
whom all her prayers and tears had not been able to save; but she
subscribed to the political opinions of her husband. She had been obliged
to agree to the marriage of the Duke d’Enghien with Mademoiselle de
Brézé, and she was continually with his children at the Palais-Cardinal
and at Ruel. She was received there in a manner that was unavoidable,
and the poets of the cardinal chanted the praises of both the mother and
daughter. Richelieu, as is well known, had five poets whom he employed
to labor for his theatre: Bois-Robert, Colletet, l’Etoile, Corneille,
and Retrou. They were called the five authors, and as such, produced in
common several pieces: _l’Aveugle de Smyrne_, _La Comédie des Tuileries_,
etc. This did not prevent the presence of other poets at the palace
of his Eminence: Georges Scudéry, Voiture himself, who paid court to
Richelieu and celebrated the Duchess d’Aiguillon. It was at Ruel that,
meeting in an avenue Queen Anne, and challenged by her to make some
verses on the spot, Voiture improvised that little piece, remarkable
especially for the ease and boldness with which he ventured to speak to
her of Buckingham. But the two favorites of the cardinal were Desmarets
and Bois-Robert; he employed their pens upon every occasion, in what was
light as well as in what was serious. It seems that Desmarets had been
instructed to do the poetic honors of Ruel to Madame the Princess and to
her daughter. We find in fact, in the collection, now rare enough and
very little read, of the works of the king’s counsellor and minister of
war, Desmarets, dedicated to Richelieu, and handsomely printed,[160] a
multitude of very agreeable verses, which were sung in the mythological
ballets of Ruel, and of which several are addressed to Mademoiselle de
Bourbon, and to Madame the Princess. In a _Mascarade of the Graces and
the Loves, addressing themselves to Madame the Duchess d’Aiguillon in
presence of Madame the Princess and of Mademoiselle de Bourbon_, the
Graces say to the latter:
Wonderful beauty! offspring too of royalty,
Whose charms to own the gods have e’en repined,
We truly thought we were but three,
Yet now a thousand graces in thee find.
These are but insipid affairs, while the two following pieces have at
least the advantage of describing the person of Mademoiselle de Bourbon,
as she then was before her marriage, a few years after the portrait of
Ducayer. We here see Mademoiselle de Bourbon beginning to fulfil the
promise of her youth, and the angelic face described to us by Madame de
Motteville, already accompanied by other attractions of true beauty:
_To Mademoiselle de Bourbon._
Thou with whose charms naught can compare,
Pride of a nation’s heart,
Whose beauteous tints, whose graces rare
The strongest love impart,
To win thee, ah! why should I aim,
Since e’en the purest flame,
Though nurtured in the skies,
Could not deserve a glance from thy bright eyes! etc.
_To the same._
Complexion where the rose and lily wed,
Beauty of magic powers,
Charming these souls of ours;
Tresses so lustrous, lips so ruby red;
Who ever could resist, who could resign
Attractions so divine? etc.
A few leagues from Chantilly were the beautiful lands of Liancourt,
which Jeanne de Schomberg, at first Duchess de Brissac, then Duchess de
Liancourt, had converted into a magnificent abode. She was a person of
the greatest merit, and we have received from her pen a very remarkable
work,[161] destined for the education of her granddaughter, Mademoiselle
de La Roche-Guyon, who, in 1659, married the son of La Rochefoucauld.
She took pleasure in planning and carrying out the arrangements of a
sumptuous establishment. She bought Rue de Seine, the ancient hôtel de
Bouillon, and erected in its place the hôtel de Liancourt, afterwards
called the hôtel de La Rochefoucauld, which extended from the Rue de
Seine to the Rue des Augustins, in the space now occupied by the Rue
des Beaux Arts. “At Liancourt,” says Tallemant,[162] “the duchess had
done all that any one could do for avenues and meadows. Every year
she added some new beauty.” In 1656, Silvestre designed and engraved
the _different views of the castle and gardens, fountains, cascades,
canals, and parterres of Liancourt_.[163] Madame the Princess often
made a visit to this beautiful place. At one time when the small-pox
was making fearful ravages in the neighborhood of Chantilly, and in
the domains of the princess, Marlou, La Versine, Méru, she sent her
children, with all their young friends, to pass some time at Liancourt.
The Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean alone were wanting, having been called
to Paris by their mother. The only son of the house, La Roche-Guyon,
was one of the friends of the Duke d’Enghien; he was slain in 1646,
while serving under him at the bloody siege of Mardyck. It was autumn.
On All-Saints’ Day, these young ladies performed their devotions with
accustomed exactitude. They then gave themselves up to quiet diversions,
and, for want of better, and sharing the dominant taste for wit, also in
the company perhaps of Montreuil or Sarrazin, they employed themselves in
making rhymes; so that even on All-Saints’ Day they addressed to Marlou,
where Madame the Princess was then staying, _The Life and Miracles of
Saint Marguerite Charlotte de Montmorency, Princess de Condé, versified
at Liancourt_. These verses, says the manuscript from which we borrow
these details,[164] were made upon the spot, and the authors appear to
have been Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and Mesdemoiselles de Rambouillet, de
Boutteville, and de Brienne.
Yet to a living saint, on this Saints’ Day,
A charming saint, we ought to pray.
...
As soon as she was born, her matchless eyes
Beam’d like two suns in summer skies:
Her cheeks of lilies made—her lips, when closed,
Were beds whereon the rose reposed;
And then in partly opening them to smile,
Pearls of the East she showed the while, etc.
It was impossible for them to forget the two amiable absentees,
Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean, who were fatiguing themselves at Paris, while
they were passing the time so agreeably at Liancourt. They wrote to
them a very long letter in verse, wherein they regretted their absence,
and enumerated their consolations. These unpublished verses, like the
preceding, are also very mediocre; but it must not be forgotten that they
are the impromptus of young girls and noble-born ladies.[165]
_Letter of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and of Mesdemoiselles de Rambouillet,
de Boutteville, and de Brienne, sent from Liancourt to Mesdemoiselles Du
Vigean at Paris._
Four clever nymphs, perhaps more free
Than even those of wood and sea,
To two who with their hearts in pain
Curse bitterly the prisoner’s chain;
We who pretended every wise
That praise for us was always stored,
That by an arrow from our eyes
We might be everywhere adored.
...
Of empire we have been deprived;
We’ve been forsaken, frown’d upon:
At Méru, scarce had we arrived,
Than to Versine we’re forced to run.
...
There, too, that foe to female grace,
That death to all of woman’s charms,
Our vanity still to abase,
O’erwhelm’d us with the worst alarms.
At noise of this disease so fell,
Each hurries off with looks forlorn;
For, sooth, to lovers all farewell,
If, of our beauty we are shorn!
Of Love’s keen weapons to make sure,
In some place fit for his domains,
We came at last to Liancourt,
Where Flora with sweet Zephyr reigns,
Where full a hundred walks are found,
A hundred fountains and cascades—
A hundred meads where streams abound,
Made for the pleasures of the Naiads.
A place, like which, there are so few,
We hoped some length of time to own,
But here now comes that Richelieu,[166]
And hence, at last, we must be gone.
See us, whom lovers all agreed
The brightest stars of France to call;
But we are wand’ring stars indeed,
Who now possess no power at all.
What was most curious and unexpected was, that the mania for rhyming took
possession of Condé himself. As we have said, he had much wit and gayety,
and he entered willingly into the society with which he was surrounded.
In the midst of the Fronde, when war was also carried on by means of
songs, he made more than one, bearing his own peculiar stamp. During the
first war of Paris, in which Condé, still faithful to the true interests
of his house, sided with the court, one of the most ardent chieftains
of the opposing party was the Count de Maure, a cadet of the Duke de
Mortemart, uncle of Madame de Montespan, husband of the witty Anne Doni
d’Attichy, intimate friend of Madame de Sablé. In the councils of the
Fronde, the count always favored the most rash resolutions. The Mazarins
turned him into ridicule, and overwhelmed him with a shower of epigrams.
Bachaumont, one of the authors of the celebrated _Voyage de Chapelle
et Bachaumont_, had written against him some little verses, which
terminated thus:[167]
Oh! a buff-jacket, with black velvet sleeves,
Is worn by the great Count de Maure;
And over this hero, whom well it relieves,
There is a buff-jacket, with black velvet sleeves:
Look out, Sir Condé, one easy perceives
You are destined for food to this hero in war.
Oh! a buff-jacket, with black velvet sleeves,
Is worn by the great Count de Maure.
Condé, according to the testimony of Tallemant, whom we have no reason to
discredit, added the following lines:
He’s a blood-thirsty tiger, the worst of his kind,
This very same brave Count de Maure;
When to be ’mong the foremost in fight he’s a mind,
He’s a blood-thirsty tiger, the worst of his kind.
But he’s not very oft with the foremost we find,
Thus is it that Condé was not kill’d before.
He’s a blood-thirsty tiger, the worst of his kind,
This very same brave Count de Maure.
Among his best lieutenants was the Count de Marsin, father of the
marshal, indeed much superior to him, and a veritable warrior. Condé
esteemed him highly, but for all that he did not spare him. One day at
table, in drinking his health, he improvised to a tune, then very common,
this little song,[168] which has never been published, and which seems
to us very piquant:
My dear Marsin, I drink to thee,
Mars truly must thy cousin be,
Bellona sure thy ma,
But who may be thy pa
Is more than I can see.
Tin, tin, trelin, tin, tin, tin.
At Liancourt, having nothing to do, and vexed because his sister and
her beautiful friends stayed so long at church on All-Saints’ Day, he
addressed to them the following epigram:[169]
Impose on others, if you may,
A hundred pater-nosters say,
And mumble o’er to day your prayers.
You’re very artful, we believe,
For, if a beau his love declares,
You’re ready then your prayers to leave.
Among other friends whom he had with him at Liancourt, was the Marquis
de Roussillon, an excellent officer and man of spirit, together with
the intrepid La Moussaye, who was faithful to him to the last, and who,
during the captivity of Condé, shut himself up with Madame de Longueville
in the citadel of Sténay, where he died. Roussillon and La Moussaye,
having been compelled to leave Liancourt for Lyons, Condé, in imitation
of his sister’s letter to the Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean, wrote, or caused
to be written, one of the same kind to his two absent friends. We give
this piece almost entire, because it is written by Condé, or because
Condé, at least, had a hand in it, and especially because it describes
so naturally the life lead at Liancourt, at Chantilly, and in all the
grand abodes of that aristocracy of the seventeenth century, so badly
appreciated, and which, during peace, honored and cultivated the arts,
which gave to letters a Rochefoucauld, a Retz, a Saint-Evremond, a
Saint-Simond, without speaking of Madame de Sévigné and Madame de La
Fayette, and which, when war broke out, flew to the battle-field, and
lavished its blood in the cause of France. These are the verses of the
future hero of Rocroy:
_Letter[170] of Monseigneur the Duke d’Enghien, written from Liancourt to
MM. de Roussillon, and de La Moussaye at Lyons._
Since you’ve been gone, a hundred dear delights
Have e’er consumed our days and nights;
And to recount these pastimes so diverse,
We are compell’d to write in verse.
Upon the spot most beautiful of earth,
To pleasures ever giving birth,
Where Art, with Nature, every charm employs,
We daily find a thousand joys;
A troop of young and peerless maids,
More beautiful by virtue’s aids,
In sports commingle with a hundred youth,
Sage, gallant, handsome too forsooth.
Each, in a way to envy, e’er displays
His person and his winning ways;
At every moment, too, he tries his best
To please the one who rules his breast:
Talks of his love ’mid groves and promenades,
While leaning o’er the bright cascades,
And really seems the utmost bliss to gain
When sadly he recounts his pain.
A dozen gallants, blest with stoutest lungs,
In comedies employ their tongues;
Display their forms in garments rich and rare,
And strut with a majestic air.
At night, we list to charming serenades,
Or please ourselves with mascarades;
But still, among the pastimes most in quest,
The _Ballet du Printemps_ seems best.
...
The ladies oft, when favor’d by the sky,
Love on their well-train’d nags to fly;
To scare the partridge, give the wolf a chase,
And o’er to Marlou have a race.
And lovers meantime whisper in their ear,
Oh! beauty, to the gods so dear!
Leave birds and beasts, since from your eyes fly darts
That daily pierce the bravest hearts.
These are our pastimes, these the sports we take,
And happiness enough they make.
Did you imagine that you hence could bear
A portion of the joys we share?[171]
A very natural feeling leads us to inquire into the destiny of this court
of young and brave gentlemen, of gay and charming young women, then
surrounding Mademoiselle de Bourbon and her brother. We have told that
of the gentlemen: all of them became illustrious warriors; most of them
died upon the battle-field. But what became of their amiable companions,
that swarm of youthful beauties whom we followed upon the steps of
Mademoiselle de Bourbon to Chantilly, to Ruel, to Liancourt,—those five
inseparable friends, whose verses, less pleasing than their faces, we
have published, Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, Mademoiselle de Brienne,
Mademoiselle de Montmorency-Boutteville, Mademoiselle Du Vigean? They had
the most dissimilar fortunes, as we shall rapidly indicate.
Marie-Antoinette de Lomélie, daughter of the Count de Brienne, one of
the ministers of Queen Anne, married, in 1642, the Marquis de Gamache,
who became lieutenant-general. Her portraits, traced by herself, may be
seen among the _Portraits_ of Mademoiselle, with those of her father and
mother. She made no noise; all her life passed on quietly and piously.
She died at the age of eighty years, in 1704. She kept up continually,
with Madame de Longueville, the most friendly intercourse. She was the
least brilliant of the five friends, but she was the most fortunate.
What became of Mademoiselle de Rambouillet is well known. Spirituelle
but ambitious, after having married Montausier, in 1645, she sought, as
well as her husband, the favors of the court, and obtained them by paying
the ransom. It is sad to begin in youth with harshness to one’s lovers,
as they said at the hôtel de Rambouillet, and to be married only as a
sort of favor, like the Armande of the _Femmes Savantes_, in order to
become one of the most obliging of duennas. At first appointed a maid of
honor of Queen Marie-Thérèse, she had, in 1664, the courage to take the
place of the virtuous Duchess de Navailles, who would not countenance
the love of the young king, Louis XIV., and Mademoiselle de La Vallière.
Hence the well-founded accusations entertained by the benevolent Madame
de Motteville herself, and which, at a later period, were confirmed by
her weakness, when the king abandoned Mademoiselle de La Vallière for
Madame de Montespan.[172] It was in the midst of all these rumors that
her husband was named Governor of the Dauphin. Montausier was certainly
a man of merit, and, like his wife, he had great qualities, which he
spoiled by great defects. He made a great show of virtue, under which
was hidden much that was pitiful. He was very free in censuring every
one, and suffered no one to fail in rendering him his due. He was abrupt,
headstrong, of an insupportable haughtiness and pride.[173] Charged
provisionally and by commission with the government of Normandy, at
the death of M. de Longueville, in 1663, he assumed the dignity of a
prince of the blood, and exacted all the honor that was rendered to M.
de Longueville himself. Hard towards his inferiors, difficult with his
equals, he knew perfectly how to manage his credit and push his fortune.
Born a Protestant, he became converted for the sake of his wife, as well
as for political purposes.[174] Madame de Montausier was more amiable,
but quite as careful of her own interests. She was of that same school of
which Madame de Maintenon was the consummate mistress,—that school which
seeks the appearance of good rather than good itself, which accommodates
itself to meanness, skilfully concealed, and bestows all its care, all
its study upon not compromising itself; whilst proud and truly honest
souls, whom passion misleads, take no pains to hide their faults, being
careless of reputation when virtue is lost. Madame de Montausier was
especially occupied with herself. She had the confidence of the king. She
became a duchess. Her career was brilliant, but was she happy? She became
embroiled and reconciled more than once with Madame de Longueville. She
died in 1671, after her mother, the noble marchioness, who died in 1665,
and, like her, she was buried in that convent of the Carmelites of the
Rue Saint-Jacques, which most of the friends of Mademoiselle de Bourbon
seem to have made a place of rendezvous during life and after death.
Mademoiselle de Montmorency-Boutteville, Isabelle Angélique,[175]
possessed at an early age a beauty which she preserved to the end. Her
younger sister, Marie Louise, yielded to her, says Lenet,[176] not as
to the more beautiful, but as to the elder. She married the Marquis de
Valency, and disappeared ten years before her sister, in 1684. Isabelle
de Montmorency had much mind, and to the brilliancy of her charms united
at first great coquetry, and afterwards the most shameful artifices.
The first pages of her life are a romance—the last, a vulgar story.
Protected, as well as her sister and brother, by Madame the Princess,
and placed almost upon an equality with Mademoiselle de Bourbon and the
Duke d’Enghien, she made, or seemed to make, some impression upon the
latter; but she inflamed especially the handsome and the brave Dandelot.
Madame de Boutteville refused to give him her daughter, because he was
a Protestant and simply a younger brother, his elder brother, Coligny,
being heir to the fortune and title of the Châtillons. But, after the
death of Coligny, Dandelot who took his name, feeling himself upheld
by the Duke d’Enghien and by his sister, carried off Mademoiselle de
Boutteville, with her own consent of course, and after that it became
necessary to marry the two fugitives.[177] Voiture wrote some very
lively verses upon this elopement,[178] and Sarrazin made a ballad upon
the method of conducting such matters.[179] It would be supposed that a
marriage so passionately desired on both sides would result in continued
happiness to both parties. It was not, however, so. Coligny having
become Duke de Châtillon, thought much more of war than of his wife: he
covered himself with glory at Lens; but, as we have said, he perished in
a miserable combat at Charenton in 1649. It must be confessed that he
was the first to do wrong, and in dying he asked pardon of her whose
pride he had especially wounded.[180] The young and beautiful widow soon
found consolation; she got possession of the heart of Condé, which had
been for some time unoccupied, and exerted herself to keep it without
bestowing her own, or even giving it to another, skilful in the art of
promoting her interests and her pleasures. The memoirs of the times,
and particularly those of La Rochefoucauld, describe her as managing at
once the imperious Condé, from whom she drew great advantages, and the
suspicious Nemours, whom she preferred, striving to conciliate them,
and to win them both to the court with which she had a secret treaty.
A little while after she plunges into the most diverse intrigues,
connecting herself with the Marshal d’Hoquincourt and with the Abbé
Fouquet, retaining over the absent Condé the power of her charms, trying
this power upon the young king Louis XIV., marrying in 1664 the Duke de
Meklembourg in the hope of a crown in Germany, and leaving after her the
reputation of having been as beautiful and as selfish as the Duchess de
Montbazon. The latter doubtless possessed beauty of a superior style, but
the other, less imposing, was a thousand times more agreeable. They were
by turns the two most dangerous rivals and mortal enemies of Madame de
Longueville.[181]
But we now present a very different person, whose destiny, like her
character, forms a perfect contrast with that of Madame de Châtillon;
very beautiful also, but less dazzling and more touching; a person who
had not perhaps the mind and the finesse of the seductive friend of
her childhood, but who knew none of her artifices and intrigues; who
glittered a moment only to be quickly extinguished, but who has left a
virtuous and sweet memory; a person superior perhaps to Mademoiselle
de La Vallière herself, for she also loved and was able to resist her
heart, and, without falling, deceived in her affections, she determined
to finish her life like the sister Louise de la Miséricorde. Let us not
pity her too much: she tasted in this world an inexpressible happiness;
she felt beating for her the heart of a hero, that of the conqueror of
Rocroy and of Fribourg, of the ardent and impetuous Duke d’Enghien, who
could not quit her without shedding tears and without fainting. Sensible
to a passion so true, and which promised to be so durable, but disarmed
in some measure by the charm of a modest and sincere virtue, she made
Condé know, at least once in his life, what was true love. After that
he knew nothing but the transient intoxication of the senses, especially
the passion of war, for which he was born—his true passion indeed, his
mistress, his part, his country, his king, the true object of all his
life, and by turns his shame and his glory.
This charming creature, who for several years was the idol of Condé,
was the young Mademoiselle Du Vigean. Her destiny was so touching, and
it was so intimately connected with that of Mademoiselle de Bourbon and
of Madame de Longueville, that we shall be pardoned for dwelling a few
moments upon it.
Mademoiselle Du Vigean was the youngest daughter of François Poussart
de Fors, at first Baron, then Marquis Du Vigean, a man of little
importance,[182] and of Anne de Neubourg, who was a very great character
under Louis XIII., thanks to the friendship of the Duchess d’Aiguillon,
niece of Richelieu. Admitted into the first society, the letters and
poesy of Voiture show that Madame Du Vigean held well her place.[183]
This success, and the connection which was the occasion of it, could
not fail to make her the subject of envy, and various rumors were spread
concerning her and Madame d’Aiguillon, equally injurious to both, and of
which we find no feeble echo in the scandalous chronicle of Tallemant
and in the songs of the times.[184] She possessed at La Barre, near
Paris, above Saint-Denis and d’Enghien, and quite near to Montmorency, a
charming residence which Voiture has described, and where she received
magnificently the best and choicest society, even to Madame the Princess
and Mademoiselle de Bourbon.[185]
Madame Du Vigean had two sons and two daughters. The eldest of the sons,
the Marquis de Fors, was an officer of the greatest promise, who was
killed at the age of twenty years at the siege of Arras, where the Duke
d’Enghien served as a volunteer. He had been made a prisoner twice,
but he perished finally, after prodigies of valor. He was wept by the
Duke d’Enghien and by all his comrades. Magnificent funeral ceremonies
were performed over him, and Desmarets, one of the poets of Richelieu,
consecrated to him a long elegy.[186] His young brother, who also
served, finished his career still more sadly: he was assassinated under
circumstances which could never be discovered.
As to the two sisters, their eulogy is found in all the gallant poems of
this epoch. They are praised equally with Mademoiselle de Boutteville
and Mademoiselle de Bourbon, in a piece in the manuscript collection of
Maurepas,[187] and Voiture places them in a review of the beauties of the
court of Chantilly, addressed to Madame the Princess.[188] He is pleased
to celebrate the mother and the two daughters, and particularly the young
Du Vigean:
Baroness so sweet, so fair too,
The mother, or the sister, are you
Of these two gentle belles whom all
Your daughters call?
...
Upon her face, (De Fors, Du Vigean’s eldest sister) beneath her feet,
Spring flowers beautiful and sweet,
Which elsewhere no one sees, etc.
A rising sun this Vigean (the younger) glows,
A bud just ready to unclose, etc.
Of love though ignorant indeed,
Yet in her eyes one may love read,
And everywhere she sets it free
Unconsciously.[189]
Here again are a few words of Voiture, hitherto unintelligible, and which
now have a certain application:
Our Aurora, de La Barre,
Is now a glowing sun.
...
These matchless charms, in truth,
Revive my long lost youth.
Evidently the poet speaks of Mademoiselle Du Vigean the younger, who,
after having been a rising sun, an aurora, became, in a few years, a sun
in full splendor. She was called the Aurora of La Barre, from the name of
the house of which she was the most amiable ornament.
In writing all these verses in honor of Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean, Voiture
had doubtless under his eyes the devices which had been made for them and
for their mother, and which are preserved in the papers of Conrart:[190]
“For Madame Du Vigean, who had lost her eldest son, an orange-tree,
having at its foot its topmost branch cut off, covered with flowers and
fruit: _Quis dolor_.” “For Mademoiselle de Fors, her eldest daughter,
a rose among several flowers: _Dat decor imperium_.” “For Mademoiselle
Du Vigean, her second daughter, a lighted taper, surrounded with moths:
_Oblecto sed uro_.” Let us add these two devices, which describe so well
the character, and already the reputation of those who were the subject
of them: “For Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, a crown with this inscription:
_Me quieren todos_.” “For Mademoiselle de Bourbon, an ermine: _Intus
candidior_.”
In 1635, at the great ball given at the Louvre by Louis XIII., to which
Mademoiselle de Bourbon consented to go with so much difficulty, and
which proved the ruin of her religious ardor, among the ladies who danced
with her, André d’Ormesson[191] mentions Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean. The
eldest, Anne Fors Du Vigean, was pretty, sweet, insinuating,[192] and,
says Madame de Motteville, ambitious and prone to flattery. She was
married to M. de Pons, who had not much property, but who pretended to
be connected with the illustrious house d’Albredt. Becoming a widow in
1648, and the confidant of the Duchess d’Aiguillon, intimate friend
of her mother, she succeeded in obtaining the love of the nephew, the
young Duke de Richelieu, and in marrying him, notwithstanding the
duchess and notwithstanding the queen, thanks to the protection of Condé
and of Madame de Longueville. For this fortunate protection she was
indebted to the remembrances of childhood, especially to the tender and
profound sentiment which Condé and his sister had early felt and ever
preserved for her younger sister, the young, beautiful, virtuous, and
unfortunate—Mademoiselle Du Vigean.
Contemporaneous memoirs give neither the particular name, nor the precise
date of the birth of this amiable person. But, thanks to the unpublished
documents which have been placed in our hands, we know that the young Du
Vigean was born in 1622, and that she was called Martha,[193] a modest
name, and answering well to her character and destiny. She was then
almost of the same age as Mademoiselle de Bourbon. She had been brought
up with her, and, when they appeared together, it was almost with the
same éclat. It is impossible to find any portrait or engraving of her
which can be relied upon. Her charms were greatly heightened by a modesty
full of grace, and the verses which we have quoted from Voiture, show her
still young, in the innocence of a beauty of which she was ignorant, and
which excited passions which she herself did not share.
Let us say, in the first place, in order to justify Condé and her who
received his first homage, that the inclination of the Duke d’Enghien for
the young Du Vigean, preceded his marriage with Mademoiselle de Brézé,
niece of the cardinal, and continued till the year 1640, when the young
duke was leading, at Paris, at the hôtel de Condé, at Chantilly, and
elsewhere, the innocent life which we have described, surrounded by his
comrades in arms, and among the charming and dangerous companions of
Mademoiselle de Bourbon. It was then that he met Madame Du Vigean and her
two daughters, and that he began, says Lenet, “to feel for Mademoiselle
Du Vigean an esteem and a friendship which became, by degrees, a strong
and tender love.”[194]
Indeed, the Duke d’Enghien might have imagined that it would not
be impossible for him to obtain from his father and from the king,
that is, from the Cardinal de Richelieu, their consent to a marriage,
disproportionate, without doubt, but in no wise degrading to him.
Mademoiselle Du Vigean was very rich, and her family was in great credit;
Richelieu favored her; and it would not have been displeasing to him to
see a prince of the blood descending somewhat from his own rank. The
marriage which was imposed upon Condé some time after, was not much above
what this might have been. A little delusion was permitted to the age and
impetuosity of the young duke, and, once the affections engaged, they
yielded only to time and necessity.
With such a sentiment in the heart, one can imagine how much the Duke
d’Enghien must have suffered from the marriage to which he was condemned
in 1641. It is to his chagrin upon this occasion, that the sickness
with which he was then attacked is attributed. Although his young wife,
Claire-Clémence Maillé de Brézé, was very agreeable, he did not live
with her, and formed, from the moment of his marriage, the design of
repudiating her as soon as he could. He protested against the violence
which had been done to him. He made this protestation in the shape of a
national deed, clothed with all legal forms, and signed by himself, by
the president of Vernon, superintendent of his house, and by Perrault,
at that time his secretary.[195]
We have related how, notwithstanding his disorder, as soon as he learned
that the campaign was about to open, nothing could retain him, neither
the prayers of his family, nor the tears of his mistress; he set out
hardly convalescent, and returned covered with glory. On his return, he
“continued to give to Mademoiselle Du Vigean all the marks of a tender
and respectful passion.”[196]
In 1642, being at the waters of Bourbon with the Cardinal de Richelieu,
the Duke d’Enghien, at a most critical period, seized a pretext for going
to Paris, “where the passion which he felt for Mademoiselle Du Vigean
called him.”[197]
It was especially after the death of the cardinal, in the years 1643 and
1644, that the amours of Condé were chiefly observable. Gallantry being
then fashionable, these amours were neither a mystery nor a scandal.
The National Library possesses more than one manuscript history of the
regency of Anne of Austria, the author of which declares that he was the
witness of every thing that he relates, and, in a letter addressed to
the Prince de Condé, dedicates these memoirs to him.[198] The tenderness
of the two young people is here several times alluded to. After the
campaign of Flanders, in which the Duke d’Orleans had taken Gravelines,
and in which Condé had taken Fribourg, “these illustrious conquerors,”
says our manuscript, “having carried their laurels to the feet of the
regent, who was then at Fontainebleau, retired, the first to Paris, and
the other to Chantilly. If the court of Fontainebleau surpassed that of
Chantilly in number, the latter did not yield to it in gallantry and
in pleasures. The Princess de Condé, the Duchesses d’Anguyen and de
Longueville, were there, accompanied by a dozen of the most agreeable
persons of quality in France. In addition to the beauty of the place,
games and promenades, music and the chase, and every thing generally
that can make a place agreeable, were to be found here. The young Du
Vigean was there, for whom the Duke d’Anguyen had then much esteem and
friendship. She, on her side, responded to it, and every one favored
them.”
It is necessary to look into the memoirs of the times for the details
of this curious episode of the youth of Condé, the vicissitudes of
this connection, as tender as it was pure, the hopes, the fears, the
jealousies, all the troubles which accompany love. Mademoiselle Du
Vigean had besought[199] Condé to conceal his sentiments in public;
she had engaged him, in joke, perhaps, to make believe that he loved
Mademoiselle de Boutteville; but the latter was so beautiful, and
the game was so dangerous, that Mademoiselle Du Vigean hastened to
countermand her order, and to forbid the duke to see Mademoiselle de
Boutteville and to speak to her. Condé again obeyed her; he discontinued
all intercourse with his cousin, and yielded his place to Dandelot,
whose projects he was the more eager to favor, as he felt some anxiety
in regard to his own; for Mademoiselle Du Vigean had warned him that her
father was thinking of marrying her to this same Dandelot, and that he
had offered the Marshal de Châtillon a very considerable dower to have
his son as a son-in-law.[200] “This news,” says Madame de Motteville,
“gave the prince the utmost alarm: he often faced the enemies of
the State, but his heart was not so valiant against love as against
them.”[201] He took fright therefore, and, to parry the blow, he entered
so earnestly into the cause of Dandelot, that he counselled him to elope
with Mademoiselle de Boutteville.
In the mean time he continued all his efforts to break his own marriage;
he labored for it with ardor and perseverance. The Duchess d’Enghien
falling sick, he anticipated the accomplishment of his wishes; but she
recovered; it was therefore necessary to obtain a judicial dissolution of
his marriage. The thing was almost impossible, for the Duchess d’Enghien
was then, at least, perfectly irreproachable, and moreover he had by her
a son. Such, however, was the passion of Condé, that he addressed himself
to Cardinal Mazarin,[202] who, not being very scrupulous, would have
permitted the rupture, if he had not feared that Condé, once at liberty,
might aspire to Mademoiselle, and become much too powerful.
Thus we are enabled to judge of the depth of Condé’s feelings. These
feelings were inspired not only by the beauty of Mademoiselle Du Vigean,
but by her candor and her modesty, by that tenderness at once devoted
and virtuous, which led her far enough to be compromised somewhat in the
eyes of the world, while it suffered her to do nothing which might mar
in the mind of Condé the ideal of angelic purity which she represented
to him. Hence that passion mingled with respect and ardor which he
burned to satisfy in despite of all obstacles, and which was never
gratified. Madame de Motteville, who was informed of the least details
of this amorous intrigue by Madame de Montausier, its witness and almost
confidant, says expressly, as “a thing to be believed by every one,”[203]
that Mademoiselle Du Vigean “is the only one whom Condé truly loved.”
Mademoiselle, who from different motives did not love those whom Condé
loved, and who was very severe upon Madame de Châtillon, expresses
herself thus in regard to the loves of Condé and of Mademoiselle Du
Vigean: “She was very beautiful; this illustrious lover was also deeply
moved. When he set out for the army, the desire of glory did not prevent
him from feeling the grief of separation, and he could not bid adieu
without shedding tears; and when he departed on his last journey to
Germany (where he achieved the victory of Nortlingen), he fainted when he
left her.”
Such a passion was too violent to continue for a great length of time; it
was prolonged even beyond ordinary bounds. Mademoiselle Du Vigean would
consent to be the wife alone of Condé, and the marriage of the latter
could not be broken: things advanced on neither side, and every one grew
weary.
It may be imagined that the interest which Condé manifested for
Mademoiselle Du Vigean intimidated those who would have aspired to her
hand. Two marriages were proposed to her. Among her admirers was the
Marquis d’Huxelles, who afterwards married Marie de Bailleul, daughter
of the Superintendent of Finances. D’Huxelles was a very distinguished
military man, who expected to become Marshal of France, and whose
services and premature death in consequence of his wounds,[204] enabled
his son to obtain that honor. He thought very seriously of marrying
Mademoiselle Du Vigean.[205] He hesitated on account of the reports which
did not fail to find circulation. “Although,” says Lenet, from whom we
obtain these facts, “I know with all the certainty that one can have in
regard to matters of this kind, that love was never more passionate than
that on the part of the prince, nor listened to with more discretion and
modesty, than was exhibited on the part of Mademoiselle Du Vigean.” And
in this Madame de Motteville and Mademoiselle agree perfectly with Lenet.
Mademoiselle Du Vigean had been also sought by another amiable and
brave gentleman, the Marquis Jacques Stuart de Saint-Mégrin, brother
of the beautiful Saint-Mégrin of whom the Duke d’Orleans was so fond.
Saint-Mégrin continued for a long time his affection for Mademoiselle Du
Vigean;[206] but he dared not come in competition with Condé. At a later
period he learned with extreme joy that his suit might be heard; and he
addressed himself at once to the parents of Mademoiselle Du Vigean. The
marriage did not take place: a passion such as that which we have just
described was destined to have a very different dénouement.
It is known that after the German campaign of 1645, and the disputed
victory of Nortlingen, Condé was seized with a violent sickness. It
was then that, despairing of a dissolution of his marriage, and of
conquering the virtuous scruples of Mademoiselle Du Vigean, he resolved
to turn his thoughts in another direction. Mademoiselle Du Vigean did
not complain; she closed her ears to all propositions, resisted the
counsels and even the orders of her family, and in the full splendor of
her beauty and her youth she cast herself among the Carmelites of the Rue
Saint-Jacques.[207] Condé did not attempt to see her again, but he always
preserved for her, says Lenet, a remembrance full of respect.[208] The
love of Condé was not, then, a transient caprice. It began before his
marriage; it continued four long years; it remained ardent and pure in
the midst of camps, and was extinguished only in the despair of bringing
it to a happy conclusion, and after a long and critical disorder, from
which the hero of Nortlingen arose ever to renounce love for glory and
ambition.
It would be gratifying to follow Mademoiselle Du Vigean to the convent
of the Carmelites, to know at what time precisely she entered it, what
occupied her there, and when she died. These are points upon which no
contemporaries enlighten us, and all that we are now able to assert with
certainty is, that Mademoiselle Du Vigean made a profession in 1649.
Thus, she must have joined the Carmelites in 1647, since the vows can
be taken only after a service of one or two years as a candidate and a
novice. She took the name of sister Marthe de Jésus;[209] she died in
1665; she was never prioress; she was sub-prioress in 1659, and ceased
to be so in 1662. According to custom, she must have held this situation
six years, and consequently her term of service was between the years
1656 and 1662; whence it follows that all the letters of Madame de
Longueville, addressed to sister Marthe and to the Mother Sub-prioress,
between 1656 and 1662, are to the same nun, and that this nun was
Mademoiselle Du Vigean, which accounts for the particularly affectionate
tone of these letters. In fact, we have found in the National Library,
in the collection of Doctor Vallant[210] and in those of Gaignières,[211]
two billets from Mademoiselle Du Vigean, then sister Marthe, to Madame
de Sablé, and another to that very Marchioness d’Huxelles whose place
she might have occupied. These billets are the only relics which remain
to us of this interesting person, who, because she was too pleasing to a
prince, was compelled to bury her beauty and her virtue in a cloister.
Such is often the end of the pleasures of youth, the inclinations of
the most generous, the feasts of the heart and of life. Mademoiselle de
Bourbon witnessed the birth, growth, and death of the loves of Condé and
of Mademoiselle Du Vigean. Villefore says that she thwarted them, but he
produces no proof of this. It is at least very certain that she strove
to repair, as much as she could, the injury which her brother had done
to her young and charming friend. For her sake, she loaded her sister
with benefits, and, when the poor forlorn creature sought an asylum among
the Carmelites, she maintained with her an affectionate intercourse; she
visited her, wrote to her often, and, even to the end of life, retained
for her a place in her heart by the side of Madame de Sablé.
But let us not anticipate the future. We are still amid the illusions
of youth, still in the season of pleasures and love. Whilst around her,
at the hôtel de Rambouillet and at the hôtel de Condé, at Chantilly, at
Ruel, at Liancourt, all was heroism and gallantry, whilst surrounded
by young and brilliant cavaliers, destined to become great captains;
with agreeable female friends who drew after them all hearts, what
did Mademoiselle de Bourbon do with her own? Did she bestow it as did
Mademoiselle Du Vigean and Mademoiselle de Boutteville? Among so many
adorers who crowded around her, did she distinguish none? Tender and
somewhat coquettish, with the soul and the eyes of Chimène, what Rodrigue
among the heroes of her brother’s court found her sensible? At the age of
nineteen, she had been promised to the Prince de Joinville, son of Henri
de Lorraine, Duke de Guise. A powerful alliance would this have been,
which had united the Montmorencys, the Condés, and the Guises; but the
Prince de Joinville died in Italy, where he went to meet his father, in
the violent and obstinate persecution which the implacable avenger and
indefatigable promoter of royal authority, Cardinal de Richelieu, did not
cease to exercise against the Guises in remembrance of the League. It
is said that a marriage was also contemplated between her and d’Armand,
Marquis de Brézé, nephew of Cardinal Richelieu, brother of her who was
forced upon the Duke d’Enghien, the intrepid sailor who twice beat the
fleets of Spain, and perished at the age of twenty-seven, from a cannon
shot, at the siege of Orbitello, in 1646. This marriage would have
placed in the hands of the house of Condé, by means of the two heroic
brothers-in-law, all the forces of France, both by sea and land; but this
marriage was defeated, for reasons in regard to which there are various
opinions.[212]
Mademoiselle de Bourbon attracted whilst she discouraged. There was not
a gentleman who would not have given his life for her favor; but no one
was rash enough to aspire to her hand. Many then sighed for her, and some
even paid her the most marked homage. Mention is made, among others,
of the Duke de Beaufort, more brave than witty, loyal and chivalrous
enough, who, being politely rejected, fell at the feet of Madame de
Montbazon, and served her till death. Especial notice is taken of Maurice
de Coligny, the son of Marshal de Châtillon. In 1642 M. the Prince and
Madame the Princess, not finding a single young lord in all the kingdom
to whom policy permitted them to give Mademoiselle de Bourbon, proposed
to her the greatest lord of France, after the princes of the blood, the
Duke de Longueville. He was the widower of Louise de Bourbon, daughter
of the Count de Soissons, by whom he had Marie d’Orleans, who was already
seventeen or eighteen years of age: he was forty-seven, and even at this
age was said to be still attached to Madame de Montbazon. Mademoiselle
de Bourbon resisted, or at least testified at first a great repugnance;
it was, however, necessary to yield; herein she displayed the resolution
which she testified on all great occasions. She married then on the 2d of
June, 1642, at the age of twenty-three years, her heart and mind filled
with poetry and gallantry, a man much older than herself, and who was not
even sufficiently touched with her charms to renounce his old mistress.
The fêtes on the occasion of this marriage were still more brilliant
than those which took place at the marriage of the Duke d’Enghien.
Mademoiselle de Bourbon walked to the altar with a sort of intrepidity,
and she seemed almost gay at the hôtel de Longueville, occupying the
spectators so much with her dazzling beauty that they did not remark
the violence which she did to her feelings. It is her historian, the
Jansenist Villefore, who has preserved for us this tradition. Scarcely a
year had flown by, when, without even giving her heart, for a long time
yet unoccupied, she was the involuntary cause of a most tragic quarrel,
in which Coligny, who had sighed for her, perished in the flower of
youth, and perhaps under her own eyes, by the hand of one of those Guises
to whom she had been for a moment destined. Sinister prelude of the
storms that awaited her first adventure, which consecrated her beauty in
so sad a manner, and which won for her, at the age of twenty-four years,
in the world of gallantry, a renown, a popularity even, almost equal to
that which victory had achieved for her brother, the Duke d’Enghien.