La Grande Mademoiselle

La Grande Mademoiselle had faith in the old traditions. She had always been used to the idea that life would be full enough when she had accomplished her high destiny and perpetuated the noble name borne by her ancestors and she was fully satisfied with the idea that her husband should see in her nothing but the "granddaughter of France," and accept her and her princely estates as he would accept any of the other gifts directly bestowed on noblemen by Divine Providence. Her husband had been ordained her husband from all time; and she was prepared to yield her all to him without a murmur. What though he should be ugly, gouty, doddering – or a babe in arms, "brutal," or an "honest man"? Such details were for the lower orders, they were puerile; unworthy of the attention of a great Princess. He would be the husband of Mlle. de Montpensier, niece of Louis XIII., and that would be enough. But in spite of herself she felt a lurking curiosity as to who he should be. What was to be his name… His Majesty, was he to be a king, "His Highness," or simply "Monseigneur?" there lay the root of the whole matter.

Of what rank were the wives whose right it was to remain seated in the King's presence, … and on what did they sit, arm-chairs or armless seats?

That was the question, the only consideration of any importance.

We should prefer to think that Mademoiselle mourned because she was reduced by her condition to forget that however princely a marriage may be it must entail a husband, but we are the slaves of truth, we must take our history as we find it, and be the fact pleasing or painful, – here it is: Mademoiselle knew that she should marry the first princely aspirant to her hand, and she was well content to let it be so.

The first to arouse her imagination was one of her mother's ancient lovers, Comte de Soissons, a brilliant soldier, but a man of very ordinary intellect. "M. le Comte" had not only aspired to the favour of Anne-Marie's mother, but he had also addressed her cousin Marie, Duchesse de Montpensier, and so lively had been the wooing that there had been some talk of an abduction. Then Gaston had entered the field and carried off the Duchess, and, gnawed by spite and jealous fury, Soissons had quarrelled with him.

Less than a year later the unexpected death of Madame brought about a reconciliation between the rivals. Monsieur, wifeless, charged with an infant daughter, who was the sole heiress to almost incalculable wealth, clasped hands with Soissons, under circumstances favourable to the brightest dreams. Madame's timely death had restored intact a flattering prospect. M. le Comte again and for the third time announced pretensions to the hand of a Montpensier, and Gaston smiled approval. He considered it all very natural; given a like occasion, he would have followed a like course.

So, as far back as her youthful memory could travel, Mlle. Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans found along her route traces of the assiduous attentions of the even-then ripe cousin, who had regaled her with sugared almonds through the medium of a gentleman named Campion, accredited and charged with the mission of rendering his master pleasing to Mademoiselle, the infant Princess of the Tuileries. M. le Comte sent Campion to Court with sugared almonds, because he, the Comte de Soissons, rarely set foot in Paris at any time, and at the time which we are now considering a private matter of business (an assassination which he and Gaston had planned together), had definitely retired him from Court.

All this happened about the year 1636. Gaston was living in an obscure way, not to say in hiding; for it would have been difficult to hide so notable a personage, – nor would there have been any logic in hiding him, after all that had passed, – but he was living a sheltered, and, so to speak, a harmless life. He was supposed to be in Blois, but he was constantly seen gliding about the Louvre, tolerated by the King, who practised his dancing steps with him, and treated by Richelieu with all the contempt due to his character. The Cardinal made free with Gaston's rights; he changed and dismissed his servants without consulting their master; and more than one of the fine friends of Monsieur learned the way to the Bastille.

At times Richelieu gave Gaston presents, hoping to tempt the light-minded Prince to reflect upon the advantages attending friendly relations with the Court. Richelieu had tried in vain to force Gaston to consent to the dissolution of his marriage with Marguerite de Lorraine. He had never permitted Gaston to present his wife at Court, but Gaston had always hoped to obtain the permission and the anxious lady had remained just outside of France awaiting the signal to enter. She was generally supposed to be within call of her husband.

The time has come when justice of a new kind must be done to Monsieur, and probably it is the only time when a creditable fact will be recorded in his history. He stood firm in his determination to maintain his marriage. Try as the Cardinal might, and by all the means familiar to him from habitual use, he could not force Monsieur to relax his fidelity to his consort. D'Orléans was virtuous on this one point, but his manner of virtue was the manner of Gaston; there are different ways of sustaining the marriage vows, and Monsieur's way was not praiseworthy. His experience had passed as a veil blown away by the wind. His passion for intrigue still held sway, he always had at least one plot in process of infusion, and his results were fatal to his assistants. In the heat of his desire to rid himself of the Cardinal, he simulated change of heart so well that the Cardinal was deceived. Suspicious at first of the sincerity of Gaston's professions, after long and close observation he became convinced that the Prince was, in truth, repentant. It was at that epoch, when free exercise of an undisciplined will was made possible by Richelieu's conviction of his own security, that Monsieur laid his plan of assassination with de Soissons; at that time there was but opinion in France – de Richelieu was a tyrant, there could be no hope of pleasure while he lived. Let him die, let France hear that he was dead, and all the world could be happy and free to act, not according to the dogmas of an egotist by the grace of God, but by the rule of the greatest good to the greatest number.

The conspirators had found a time and a place favourable to their enterprise. It was during the siege of Corbie. The King was there attended by his Minister. Monsieur and the Count were there; so were the men whom they had engaged to kill the Cardinal. Culpable as the two scoundrels had always been, when the whole country was in arms it was impossible to find a reasonable excuse for refusing them commands, so they were at the front with all the representative men of the country, and they had good reason for supposing that one murder – a movement calculated to relieve the nation – might pass unnoticed in the general noise and motion of the siege. The time was ripe; Monsieur and Soissons had put their heads together and decided that the moment had come to strike the blow and rid the country of the Cardinal.

Their plans were well laid. A council of war had been called. De Richelieu was to pass a certain staircase on his way to it; de Soissons was to accompany Richelieu and distract his attention; Gaston was to be waiting at the foot of the stairs to give the signal to the assassins. But Monsieur had not changed since the days of Chalais, and he could not control his nerves. He was a slave to ungovernable panics. According to his plans the part which he had to play was easy. He had nothing to do but to give the signal; all the accomplices were ready; the assassins were awaiting the word; he himself was at his post; but when the Cardinal passed, haughty and calm, to take his place in his carriage, terror seized Monsieur and he turned and sprang up the stairway. As he fled one of his accomplices, thinking to hold him back, seized him by his cloak, and Gaston, rushing forward, dragged him after him.

The affrighted Prince and his astonished follower reached the first landing with the speed of lightning; and then, carried away by emotion, Monsieur, still dragging his companion, fled into an inner room, where he stopped, dazed; he did not know where he was, nor what he was doing, and when he tried to speak he babbled incoherent words which died in his throat. De Soissons was waiting in the courtyard; he had spoken so calmly that Richelieu had passed on unconscious of the unusual excitement among the courtiers.

Though the plot had failed, there had been no exposure; but the fact that the accomplices held the secret and that they had much to gain from the Cardinal by a denunciation of their principals made it unsafe for the conspirators to remain in Paris; before the Cardinal's policemen were warned they fled, Monsieur to Blois and de Soissons to Sedan. Not long after their flight the story was in the mouths of the gossips, and Mademoiselle knew that she could not hope for the Cardinal's assistance in the accomplishment of her marriage; so the child of the Tuileries advanced to maidenhood while her ambitious cousin (Soissons) turned grey at Sedan. When Anne-Marie-Louise reached her fourteenth year the Comte thought that the time had come to bring matters to a crisis. He was not a coward, and as there was no reason for hypocrisy or secrecy, he boldly joined the enemies of his country and invaded France with the armies of de Bouillon and de Guise. Arrived in France, he charged one of his former mistresses, Mme. de Montbazon, to finish the work begun by Campion. Mme. de Montbazon lent her best energies to the work, and right heartily.

I took great interest in M. le Comte de Soissons, [wrote Mademoiselle]; his health was failing. The King went to Champagne to make war upon him; and while he was on the journey, Mme. de Montbazon – who loved the Count dearly and who was dearly loved by him – used to come to see me every day, and she spoke of him with much affection; she told me that she should feel extreme joy if I would marry him, that they would never be lonely or bored at the Hôtel de Soissons were I there; that they would not think of anything but to amuse me, that they would give balls in my honour, that we should take fine walks, and that the Count would have unparalleled tenderness and respect for me. She told me everything that would be done to render my condition happy, and of all that could be done to make things pleasant for a personage of my age. I listened to her with pleasure and I felt no aversion for the person of M. le Comte… Aside from the difference between my age and his my marriage with him would have been feasible. He was a very honest man, endowed with grand qualities; and although he was the youngest of his house he had been accorded76 with the Queen of England.

Having been unable to acquire the mother, de Soissons turned his attention to the daughter. Mademoiselle recorded:

M. le Comte sent M. le Comte de Fiesque to Monsieur to remind him of the promise that he had made concerning me, and to remind him that affairs were then in such a condition that they might be terminated. M. le Comte de Fiesque very humbly begged Monsieur to find it good that de Soissons should abduct me, because in that way only could the marriage be accomplished. Monsieur would not consent to that expedient at all, and so the answer that M. le Comte de Fiesque carried back touched M. le Comte very deeply.

Not long after this episode the Comte de Soissons was killed at Marfée (6th July, 1641), and Mademoiselle's eyes were opened to the fact that she and M. le Comte "had not been created for each other." She wrote of his death as follows:

"I could not keep from weeping when he died, and when I went to see Madame his mother at Bagnolet, M. and Mlle. de Longueville and the whole household did nothing but manifest their grief by their continual cries."

Mademoiselle had desired with earnest sincerity to become the Comtesse de Soissons; it is difficult to imagine why, – unless, perhaps, because at her age girls build air-castles with all sorts of materials.

M. le Comte had been wept over and buried and sentiment had nothing more to do with Mademoiselle's dreams of establishment. Her fancy hovered over Europe and swooped down upon the princes who were bachelors or widowers, and upon the married nobles who were in a fair way to become widowers; more than once she was seen closely following the current reports when some princess was taken by sickness; and she abandoned or developed her projects, according to the turn taken by the diseases of the unfortunate ladies. The greater number of the hypothetical postulants upon whom she successively fixed her mind were strangers whom she had never seen, and among them were several who had never thought of her, and who never did think of her at any time; but she pursued her way with unflagging zeal, permitting indiscreet advances when she did not encourage them; she considered herself more or less the Queen or the Empress of France, of Spain, or of Hungary, as the prospect of the speedy bereavement of the incumbents of the different thrones brightened. La Grande Mademoiselle had not entered the world as the daughter of a degenerate with impunity; there were subjects upon which she was incapable of reasoning; in the ardour of her faith in the mystical virtues of the Blood she surpassed Corneille. She believed that the designs of princes ranked with the designs of God, and that they should be regarded as the devout regard the mysteries of religion. To quote her own words: "The intuitions of the great are like the mysteries of the Faith; it is not for men to fathom them! they ought to revere them; they ought to know that the thoughts of the great are given to their possessors for the well-being and for the salvation of the country."

Mademoiselle surpassed the Corneille of Tragedy in her disdainful rejection of love; Corneille was content to station love in the rear rank, and he placed it far below the manly passions in his classification of "the humanities." It will be remembered that by his listings the "manly passions" were Ambition, Vengeance, Pride of Blood, and "Glory." Mademoiselle believed that love could not exist between married people of rank; she considered it one of the passions of the inferior classes.

Le trône met une âme au dessus des tendresses.Pulcherie.

When we examine the subject we see that it was not remarkable that Mademoiselle recognised illegitimate love, although her own virtue was unquestionable. She liked lovers, and accepted the idea of love in the abstract; she repudiated the idea of love legalised because she was logical; she thought that married love proclaimed false ideas and gave a bad example. If married people loved each other and were happy together because of their common love, young noble girls would long to marry for love and to be happy in marriage because of love, and the time would come when there would be no true quality, because the nobles would have followed their desires or their weaker sentiments and formed haphazard unions brought about by natural selection. Man or maid would "silence the voice of glory in order to listen to the voice of love," should the dignity of hierarchical customs be brought down to the level of the lower passions. So Mademoiselle reasoned, and from her mental point of view her reasoning was sound. She was strong-minded; she realised the danger of permitting the heart to interfere in the marriage of the Elect.

The year 1641 was not ended when Mademoiselle appeared in spiritual mourning for a suitor who seems to us to have been nothing but a vision, the first vision of a series. Anne of Austria had never forgotten the Cardinal's cruel rebuke when he found Mademoiselle playing at man and wife with a child in long clothes. She had tried to console the little girl, and her manner had always been motherly and gentle. "It is true," she had said, "the Cardinal told the truth; my son is too small; you shall marry my brother!" When she had spoken thus she had referred to the Cardinal Infant,77 who was in Flanders acting as Captain-General of the country and commanding the armies of the King of Spain.

The Prince was Archbishop of Toledo. He had not received Holy Orders. In that day it was not considered necessary to take orders before entering the Episcopate. "They taxed revenues, they delegated vicars-general for judicial action, and when the power of the Church was needed they delegated bishops. There were many prelates who were not priests." Henri de Lorraine II., Duc de Guise (born in 1614), was only fifteen years old when he received the Archbishopric of Rheims; he never received Holy Orders. In priestly vestments he presented every appearance of the most pronounced type of the ecclesiastical hybrid; he was an excellent Catholic, and a gallant and dashing pontiff-cavalier. His life as layman was far from religious. When he was twenty-seven years old he met a handsome widow, Mme. de Bossut. He married her on the spot without drum or cannon; and then, because some formality had been omitted, the marriage was confirmed by the Archbishop of Malines. The Church saw no obstacle to the marriage. Nicolas-François de Lorraine, Bishop of Toul, and Cardinal, was another example; "without being engaged in orders" he became "Duc de Lorraine" (1634) by the abdication of his brother Charles. He had political reasons for marrying his cousin "Claude" without delay, but he was stopped by an obstacle which did not emanate from his bishopric. Claude was his own cousin, and the prohibitions of the Church made it necessary for him to get a dispensation from Rome.

François visited his cousin and made his proposals. As a layman he needed a publication of his bans, and as a Catholic, in order to marry his cousin, he needed a dispensation from the Pope. Therefore he re-assumed the character of Bishop and issued a dispensation eliminating his bans, then, in the name of the Pope, he issued a dispensation making it spiritually lawful for him to marry his cousin to himself; that accomplished, he cast off the character of Bishop and was married by a regularly ordained priest like an ordinary mortal. In those days there was no abyss between the Church and the world. At most there was only a narrow ditch which the great lords crossed and recrossed at will, as caprice or interest moved them. In their portraits this species of oscillation, which was one of their distinguishing movements, is distinctly recorded and made evident even to the people of this century.

In the gallery of the Louvre we see a picture due to the brush of the Le Nain brothers, entitled, Procession in a Church. That part of the procession which is directly in front of the spectator is composed of members of the clergy, vested with all their churchly ornaments. The superb costumes are superbly worn by men of proud and knightly bearing. The portraits betray the true characters of their originals. These men are courtiers, utterly devoid of the collected and meditative tranquillity found in the legions of the Church. In the Le Nain brothers' picture the most notable figures are two warlike priests, who stand, like Norse kings, at the head of the procession, transfixing us with their look of bold assurance. No priests in ordinary, these, but natural soldiers, ready to die for a word or an idea! Their curled moustachios are light as foam; their beards are trimmed to a point, and under the embroidered dalmatica the gallant mien of the worldling frets as visibly as a lion in its cage. It is impossible to doubt it: these are soldiers; cavaliers who have but assumed the habit; who will take back the doublet and the sword, and with them the customs and the thoughts of men of war. Whatever their rank in the Church, hazard and birth alone have placed them there; and thus are they working out the sentence imposed by the ambition of their families; giving the lie to a calling for which they have neither taste nor capacity. The will of a strong man can defeat even pre-natal influences, and, knowing it, they make no hypocritical attempt to hide their character. They were not meant for priests, and every look and every action shows it.

The Cardinal-Infant, Archbishop of Toledo, was only a deacon, so there was nothing extraordinary in the thought that he might marry. I cannot say that he ever thought of marrying Mademoiselle; I have never found any proof that he entertained such a thought; the only thing absolutely certain in the whole affair is that Mademoiselle never doubted that he intended, or had intended, to marry her. Here is her own account of it, somewhat abridged and notably incoherent:

The Cardinal-Infant died of a tertian fever (9th November 1641), which had not hindered his remaining in the army all through the campaign… His malady had not appeared very dangerous; nevertheless he died a few days after he came back from Brussels; which made them say that the Spaniards had poisoned him because they were afraid that by forming an alliance with France he would render himself master of Flanders,78 and, in fact, that was his design. The Queen told me that after the King died she found in his strong-box memoranda showing that my marriage with that Prince had been decided upon. She told me nothing but that … when this loss came upon them the King said to the Queen … and he said it very rudely – "Your brother is dead." That news, so coarsely announced, added to her grief … and for my own part, when I reflected upon my interests I was very deeply grieved; because that would have been the most agreeable establishment in the world for me, because of the beauty of the country, lying as it does so near this country, and because of the way in which they live there. As for the qualities of his person, though I esteemed him much, that was the least that I thought of.

The disappearance of the Cardinal-Infant was followed by events so tragic and so closely connected with Mademoiselle's life that her mind was distracted from her hunt for a husband. Despite her extreme youth, the affair Cinq-Mars constrained her to judge her father, and to the child to whom nothing was as dear as honour the revelation of his treachery was crushing.

IV

The death of Cinq-Mars was the dénouement of a great and tragic passion. Henry d'Effiat, Marquis de Cinq-Mars, was described as a handsome youth with soft, caressing eyes, marvellously graceful in all his movements.79

His mother was ambitious; she knew that men had risen to power by the friendship of kings. Richelieu's schemes required a thousand complicated accessories. So it was decided by the Cardinal and by Cinq-Mars's mother to present the child to the King and to place him in the royal presence to minister to the King's pleasure for an hour, as a beautiful flower is given to be cherished for a time, then cast away. The King was capricious and childish and, as Richelieu said, "he must always have his toy"; but elderly children, like very young children, soon tire of their toys and when they tire of them they destroy them; Louis XIII. had broken everything that he had played with, and his admiration inspired terror. Cinq-Mars was determined that he would not be a victim. Though very young, he knew the ways of the world and he had formed plans for his future. He was fond of the world and fond of pleasure. He was a natural lover, always sighing at the feet of women. He was brave and he had counted upon a military career. The thought of imprisonment in the Château of Saint Germain with a grumbling invalid whose ennui no one could vanquish was appalling; but after two years of resistance he yielded and entered the royal apartment as officer nearest to the King. It has been said that he lacked energy, but as he resisted two whole years before he gave up the struggle, and as the will which he opposed was the will of Richelieu, it is difficult to believe that he was not energetic.

History tells us that he was very nervous and that, although his will was feeble, he was subject to fits of anger. In 1638 he was in the King's household as Master of the Robes. He was eighteen years old. It was his business to select and order the King's garments, and the King was wont to reject whatever the boy selected because it was "too elegant." When Cinq-Mars was first seen in the King's apartment he was silent and very sad; the King's displeasure cowed him; the beautiful and gentle face and the appealing glance of the soft eyes irritated the sickly fancies of the monarch and he never noticed or addressed Cinq-Mars when he could avoid it. Cinq-Mars hated Saint Germain, and, truth to tell, even to an older and graver person, the lugubrious château would have seemed a prison. Sick at heart, weak in mind, tortured by fleshly ills, Louis XIII., sinking deeper into insignificance as the resplendent star of his Prime Minister rose, was but sorry company for any one.