She had had, indeed, some very unfortunate experiences. Men of rank had
loved her and had then cast her off. An actor, one Clavel, would have
married her, but she would not accept his offer. A magistrate in
Strasburg promised marriage; and then, when she was about to accept
him, he wrote to her that he was going to yield to the wishes of his
family and make a more advantageous alliance. And so she was
alternately caressed and repulsed--a mere plaything; and yet this was
probably all that she really needed at the time--something to stir her,
something to make her mournful or indignant or ashamed.
It was inevitable that at last Adrienne Lecouvreur should appear in
Paris. She had won such renown throughout the provinces that even those
who were intensely jealous of her were obliged to give her due
consideration. In 1717, when she was in her twenty-fifth year, she
became a member of the Comedie Franchise. There she made an immediate
and most brilliant impression. She easily took the leading place. She
was one of the glories of Paris, for she became the fashion outside the
theater. For the first time the great classic plays were given, not in
the monotonous singsong which had become a sort of theatrical
convention, but with all the fire and naturalness of life.
Being the fashion, Mlle. Lecouvreur elevated the social rank of actors
and of actresses. Her salon was thronged by men and women of rank.
Voltaire wrote poems in her honor. To be invited to her dinners was
almost like receiving a decoration from the king. She ought to have
been happy, for she had reached the summit of her profession and
something more.
Yet still she was unhappy. In all her letters one finds a plaintive
tone, a little moaning sound that shows how slightly her nature had
been changed. No longer, however, did she throw herself away upon
dullards or brutes. An English peer--Lord Peterborough--not realizing
that she was different from other actresses of that loose-lived age,
said to her coarsely at his first introduction:
"Come now! Show me lots of wit and lots of love."
The remark was characteristic of the time. Yet Adrienne had learned at
least one thing, and that was the discontent which came from light
affairs. She had thrown herself away too often. If she could not love
with her entire being, if she could not give all that was in her to be
given, whether of her heart or mind or soul, then she would love no
more at all.
At this time there came to Paris a man remarkable in his own century,
and one who afterward became almost a hero of romance. This was
Maurice, Comte de Saxe, as the French called him, his German name and
title being Moritz, Graf von Sachsen, while we usually term him, in
English, Marshal Saxe. Maurice de Saxe was now, in 1721, entering his
twenty-fifth year. Already, though so young, his career had been a
strange one; and it was destined to be still more remarkable. He was
the natural son of Duke Augustus II. of Saxony, who later became King
of Poland, and who is known in history as Augustus the Strong.
Augustus was a giant in stature and in strength, handsome, daring,
unscrupulous, and yet extremely fascinating. His life was one of
revelry and fighting and display. When in his cups he would often call
for a horseshoe and twist it into a knot with his powerful fingers.
Many were his mistresses; but the one for whom he cared the most was a
beautiful and high-spirited Swedish girl of rank, Aurora von
Konigsmarck. She was descended from a rough old field-marshal who in
the Thirty Years' War had slashed and sacked and pillaged and plundered
to his heart's content. From him Aurora von Konigsmarck seemed to have
inherited a high spirit and a sort of lawlessness which charmed the
stalwart Augustus of Poland.
Their son, Maurice de Saxe, inherited everything that was good in his
parents, and a great deal that was less commendable. As a mere child of
twelve he had insisted on joining the army of Prince Eugene, and had
seen rough service in a very strenuous campaign. Two years later he
showed such daring on the battle-field that Prince Eugene summoned him
and paid him a compliment under the form of a rebuke.
"Young man," he said, "you must not mistake mere recklessness for
valor."
Before he was twenty he had attained the stature and strength of his
royal father; and, to prove it, he in his turn called for a horseshoe,
which he twisted and broke in his fingers. He fought on the side of the
Russians and Poles, and again against the Turks, everywhere displaying
high courage and also genius as a commander; for he never lost his
self-possession amid the very blackest danger, but possessed, as
Carlyle says, "vigilance, foresight, and sagacious precaution."
Exceedingly handsome, Maurice was a master of all the arts that
pleased, with just a touch of roughness, which seemed not unfitting in
so gallant a soldier. His troops adored him and would follow wherever
he might choose to lead them; for he exercised over these rude men a
magnetic power resembling that of Napoleon in after years. In private
life he was a hard drinker and fond of every form of pleasure. Having
no fortune of his own, a marriage was arranged for him with the
Countess von Loben, who was immensely wealthy; but in three years he
had squandered all her money upon his pleasures, and had, moreover, got
himself heavily in debt.
It was at this time that he first came to Paris to study military
tactics. He had fought hard against the French in the wars that were
now ended; but his chivalrous bearing, his handsome person, and his
reckless joviality made him at once a universal favorite in Paris. To
the perfumed courtiers, with their laces and lovelocks and mincing
ways, Maurice de Saxe came as a sort of knight of old--jovial, daring,
pleasure-loving. Even his broken French was held to be quite charming;
and to see him break a horseshoe with his fingers threw every one into
raptures.
No wonder, then, that he was welcomed in the very highest circles.
Almost at once he attracted the notice of the Princesse de Conti, a
beautiful woman of the blood royal. Of her it has been said that she
was "the personification of a kiss, the incarnation of an embrace, the
ideal of a dream of love." Her chestnut hair was tinted with little
gleams of gold. Her eyes were violet black. Her complexion was
dazzling. But by the king's orders she had been forced to marry a
hunchback--a man whose very limbs were so weakened by disease and evil
living that they would often fail to support him, and he would fall to
the ground, a writhing, screaming mass of ill-looking flesh.
It is not surprising that his lovely wife should have shuddered much at
his abuse of her and still more at his grotesque endearments. When her
eyes fell on Maurice de Saxe she saw in him one who could free her from
her bondage. By a skilful trick he led the Prince de Conti to invade
the sleeping-room of the princess, with servants, declaring that she
was not alone. The charge proved quite untrue, and so she left her
husband, having won the sympathy of her own world, which held that she
had been insulted. But it was not she who was destined to win and hold
the love of Maurice de Saxe.
Not long after his appearance in the French capital he was invited to
dine with the "Queen of Paris," Adrienne Lecouvreur. Saxe had seen her
on the stage. He knew her previous history. He knew that she was very
much of a soiled dove; but when he met her these two natures, so
utterly dissimilar, leaped together, as it were, through the
indescribable attraction of opposites. He was big and powerful; she was
small and fragile. He was merry, and full of quips and jests; she was
reserved and melancholy. Each felt in the other a need supplied.
At one of their earliest meetings the climax came. Saxe was not the man
to hesitate; while she already, in her thoughts, had made a full
surrender. In one great sweep he gathered her into his arms. It
appeared to her as if no man had ever laid his hand upon her until that
moment. She cried out:
"Now, for the first time in my life, I seem to live!"
It was, indeed, the very first love which in her checkered career was
really worthy of the name. She had supposed that all such things were
passed and gone, that her heart was closed for ever, that she was
invulnerable; and yet here she found herself clinging about the neck of
this impetuous soldier and showing him all the shy fondness and the
unselfish devotion of a young girl. From this instant Adrienne
Lecouvreur never loved another man and never even looked at any other
man with the slightest interest. For nine long years the two were bound
together, though there were strange events to ruffle the surface of
their love.
Maurice de Saxe had been sired by a king. He had the lofty ambition to
be a king himself, and he felt the stirrings of that genius which in
after years was to make him a great soldier, and to win the brilliant
victory of Fontenoy, which to this very day the French are never tired
of recalling. Already Louis XV. had made him a marshal of France; and a
certain restlessness came over him. He loved Adrienne; yet he felt that
to remain in the enjoyment of her witcheries ought not to be the whole
of a man's career.
Then the Grand Duchy of Courland--at that time a vassal state of
Poland, now part of Russia--sought a ruler. Maurice de Saxe was eager
to secure its throne, which would make him at least semi-royal and the
chief of a principality. He hastened thither and found that money was
needed to carry out his plans. The widow of the late duke--the Grand
Duchess Anna, niece of Peter the Great, and later Empress of Russia--as
soon as she had met this dazzling genius, offered to help him to
acquire the duchy if he would only marry her. He did not utterly
refuse. Still another woman of high rank, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth
of Russia, Peter the Great's daughter, made him very much the same
proposal.
Both of these imperial women might well have attracted a man like
Maurice de Saxe, had he been wholly fancy-free, for the second of them
inherited the high spirit and the genius of the great Peter, while the
first was a pleasure-seeking princess, resembling some of those Roman
empresses who loved to stoop that they might conquer. She is described
as indolent and sensual, and she once declared that the chief good in
the world was love. Yet, though she neglected affairs of state and gave
them over to favorites, she won and kept the affections of her people.
She was unquestionably endowed with the magnetic gift of winning hearts.
Adrienne, who was left behind in Paris, knew very little of what was
going on. Only two things were absolutely clear to her. One was that if
her lover secured the duchy he must be parted from her. The other was
that without money his ambition must be thwarted, and that he would
then return to her. Here was a test to try the soul of any woman. It
proved the height and the depth of her devotion. Come what might,
Maurice should be Duke of Courland, even though she lost him. She
gathered together her whole fortune, sold every jewel that she
possessed, and sent her lover the sum of nearly a million francs.
This incident shows how absolutely she was his. But in fact, because of
various intrigues, he failed of election to the ducal throne of
Courland, and he returned to Adrienne with all her money spent, and
without even the grace, at first, to show his gratitude. He stormed and
raged over his ill luck. She merely soothed and petted him, though she
had heard that he had thought of marrying another woman to secure the
dukedom. In one of her letters she bursts out with the pitiful
exclamation:
I am distracted with rage and anguish. Is it not natural to cry out
against such treachery? This man surely ought to know me--he ought to
love me. Oh, my God! What are we--what ARE we?
But still she could not give him up, nor could he give her up, though
there were frightful scenes between them--times when he cruelly
reproached her and when her native melancholy deepened into outbursts
of despair. Finally there occurred an incident which is more or less
obscure in parts. The Duchesse de Bouillon, a great lady of the
court--facile, feline, licentious, and eager for delights--resolved
that she would win the love of Maurice de Saxe. She set herself to win
it openly and without any sense of shame. Maurice himself at times,
when the tears of Adrienne proved wearisome, flirted with the duchess.
Yet, even so, Adrienne held the first place in his heart, and her rival
knew it. Therefore she resolved to humiliate Adrienne, and to do so in
the place where the actress had always reigned supreme. There was to be
a gala performance of Racine's great tragedy, "Phedre," with Adrienne,
of course, in the title-role. The Duchesse de Bouillon sent a large
number of her lackeys with orders to hiss and jeer, and, if possible,
to break off the play. Malignantly delighted with her plan, the duchess
arrayed herself in jewels and took her seat in a conspicuous stage-box,
where she could watch the coming storm and gloat over the discomfiture
of her rival.
When the curtain rose, and when Adrienne appeared as Phedre, an uproar
began. It was clear to the great actress that a plot had been devised
against her. In an instant her whole soul was afire. The queen-like
majesty of her bearing compelled silence throughout the house. Even the
hired lackeys were overawed by it. Then Adrienne moved swiftly across
the stage and fronted her enemy, speaking into her very face the three
insulting lines which came to her at that moment of the play:
I am not of those women void of shame,
Who, savoring in crime the joys of peace,
Harden their faces till they cannot blush!
The whole house rose and burst forth into tremendous applause. Adrienne
had won, for the woman who had tried to shame her rose in trepidation
and hurried from the theater.
But the end was not yet. Those were evil times, when dark deeds were
committed by the great almost with impunity. Secret poisoning was a
common trade. To remove a rival was as usual a thing in the eighteenth
century as to snub a rival is usual in the twentieth.
Not long afterward, on the night of March 15, 1730, Adrienne Lecouvreur
was acting in one of Voltaire's plays with all her power and
instinctive art when suddenly she was seized with the most frightful
pains. Her anguish was obvious to every one who saw her, and yet she
had the courage to go through her part. Then she fainted and was
carried home.
Four days later she died, and her death was no less dramatic than her
life had been. Her lover and two friends of his were with her, and also
a Jesuit priest. He declined to administer extreme unction unless she
would declare that she repented of her theatrical career. She
stubbornly refused, since she believed that to be the greatest actress
of her time was not a sin. Yet still the priest insisted.
Then came the final moment.
"Weary and revolting against this death, this destiny, she stretched
her arms with one of the old lovely gestures toward a bust which stood
near by and cried--her last cry of passion:
"'There is my world, my hope--yes, and my God!'"
The bust was one of Maurice de Saxe.