La Grande Mademoiselle

That evening she published the orders of the day, did anything and everything devolving upon any and all of the officers on duty, and proved by look and by word that she was a true soldier. When it was all over she rode back to Paris in the moonlight, followed by her staff and escorted by Condé and his general officers. The evening ended with a gay supper at the Tuileries.

That visit went to her head, and a few days later she besought her father to hang the chiefs of the Reaction. "Monsieur lacked vigour." That was the construction which Mademoiselle put upon his refusal to hang her enemies, and it was well for her that he did, for the hour of the accounting was at hand. The 13th October she was intoxicated for the last time with the sound of clanking arms and the glitter of uniforms. M. le Prince with all his army visited her to say "farewell." The Prince was to lead his army to the East; no one knew to what fortune. She wrote mournfully:

It was so beautiful to see the great alley of the Tuileries full of people all finely dressed! M. le Prince wore a very handsome habit of the colour of iron, of gold, of silver, and of black over grey, and a blue scarf, which he wore as the Germans wear theirs, – under a close-coat, which was not buttoned. I felt great regret to see them go, and I avow that I wept when I bade them adieu … it was so lonely … it was so strange … not to see them any more … it hurt me so! And all the rumours gave as reason for thinking that the King was coming and that we all should be turned out.

The princes left Paris on Sunday. The following Saturday, in the morning, when Mademoiselle was in the hands of her hair-dresser, she received a letter from the King notifying her that, as he should arrive in Paris to remain permanently, and as he had no palace but the Tuileries in which to lodge his brother, he should require her to vacate the Tuileries before noon on the day following. Mademoiselle was literally turned out of the house, and on notice so short that anything like orderly retreat was impossible. Borne down by the weight of her chagrin, she sought shelter where best she could. We are told that she "hid her face at the house of one of her friends," and it is probable that to say that she hid her face but feebly expresses the bitterness of the grief with which she turned from the only home that she had ever known, in which she had lived with her princely retinue, and which she had thought to leave only to enter the King's palace as Queen of France. She was brave; she talked proudly of her power to overthrow royalty, and to carry revolution to the gates of the Palais Royal, and until the people saw their young King her boasts were not vain; but her better nature triumphed, and in the end her wrath was drowned in tears. The day after she received notice to vacate the palace she was informed that her father had been exiled. She went to the Luxembourg to condole with him. On the way she saw the King. She passed him unseen by him. He had grown tall; he saluted the people gracefully and with the air of a king; he was a bright, handsome boy. The people applauded him with frenzy.

Mademoiselle found her father bristling with fury; his staring eyes transfixed her. At sight of her he cried angrily that he had no account to render to her; then, to quote Mademoiselle's words, "Each told the other his truths." Monsieur reminded her that she had "put herself forward with unseemly boldness," and that she had compromised the name of d'Orléans by her anxiety to "play the heroine." She answered as she thought it just and in accordance with the rights of her quality to answer. She demonstrated to her father that there were "characters" upon earth who refused to give written orders because they feared to be confronted by their signatures when personal safety required a denial of the truth. She explained the principle of physical timidity and incidentally rehearsed all the grievances of her life. Gaston answered her. The quarrel ended, Mademoiselle piteously begged her father to let her live under his protection. She recorded his answer word for word, with all the incidents of the interview:

He answered me: "I have no vacant lodging." I said that there was no one in that house who was not indebted to me, and that I thought that no one had a better right to live there than I had. He answered me tartly: "All who live under my roof are necessary to me, and they will not be dislodged." I said to him: "As your Royal Highness will not let me live with you, I shall go to the Hôtel Condé, which is vacant; no one is living there at present." He answered: "That I will not permit!" I asked: "Where, then, do you wish me to go, sir?" He answered: "Where you please!" and he turned away.

The day after that interview, at a word from the King, all the Frondeurs left Paris. The highways were crowded with great lords in penance and with heroines "retired." Poor broken idols! the people of Paris were still chanting their glory! Monsieur departed, bag and baggage, at break of day,

Avec une extreme vitesse.* * * * *Mademoiselle son ainéeDisparut la même journée.163

The daughter of the victim of degeneracy had developed her father's weakness. Although Mademoiselle was in safety, she trembled. She who had challenged death in the last combat of the Fronde, laughing merrily as she trained the guns on the King of France, thrilled with terror when letter followed letter warning her to leave Paris, and giving her the names of people destined for the Bastille. All the letters, were anonymous, and all were in different and unknown hands.

She did not wait to ask who wrote the letters; she did not listen to her faithful Préfontaine, who assured her that there was no danger and begged her to be calm.

La Grande Mademoiselle, appalled, beside herself, unmindful of her glory and her dignity, crying out wild orders to the people who blocked her way, fled from Paris in a hired coach driven by a common coachman. She did not breathe freely until the scene of her triumphs lay far behind her, and even then, the appearance of a cavalier, however peaceable, caused her new terror; she prayed, she trembled; a more piteous retreat was never made!

But the adventures of the route distracted her thoughts. She was masked, travelling as "Mme. Dupré," a woman of an inferior order. She dined with her fellow-travellers in public rooms, talked freely with common people, and faced life on an equality with the canaille. For a royal personage such experience had savour. One day in the kitchen of an inn a monk talked to her long and earnestly of the events of the day and of Mademoiselle, the niece of Louis XIII., and her high feats. "Yes!" said the priest, "she is a brave girl; a brave girl indeed! She is a girl who could carry a spear as easily as she could wear a mask!"

Mademoiselle's journey ended at the château of a friend, who welcomed her and concealed her with romantic satisfaction; being as sentimental as the shepherdesses of Astrée, it pleased the chatelaine to fancy that her guest was in peril of death and that a price was set upon her head. She surrounded Mademoiselle with impenetrable mystery. A few tried friends fetched and carried the heroine's correspondence with Condé. Condé implored her to join the legion on the frontier; he wrote to her: "I offer you my places and my army. M. de Lorraine offers you his quarters and his army, and Fuensaldagne164 offers you the same."

Mademoiselle was wise enough to refuse their offers; but she was homeless; she knew that she must make some decisive move; she could not remain in hiding, like the princess of a romance. Monsieur was at Blois, but he was fully determined that she should not live with him.

When Préfontaine begged him not to refuse his daughter a father's protection, he answered furiously: "I will not receive her! If she comes here I will drive her back!"

Mademoiselle determined to face her destiny. She was alone; they who loved her had no right to protect her. She had a château at Saint Fargeau, and she looked upon it as a refuge.

Again the heroine took the road, and she had hardly set foot upon the highway when the King's messenger halted her and delivered a letter from his royal master.

Louis XIV. guaranteed her "all surety and freedom in any place in which she might elect to live." Mademoiselle, who had trembled with fear when the King's messenger appeared, read her letter with vexation; she had revelled in the thought that the Court was languishing in ignorance of her whereabouts.

She had gone fast and far and accomplished twenty leagues without a halt, when such a fit of terror seized her that she hid her head. Had she been in Paris, the courtiers would have called her seizure "one of the attacks of Monsieur." It was an ungovernable panic; despite the King's warrant she thought that the royal army was at her heels, and that the walls of a dungeon confronted her. Her attendants could not calm her. The heroine was dead and a despairing, half-distracted woman entered the Château of Saint Fargeau. She said of her arrival:

"The bridge was broken and the coach could not cross it, so I was forced to go on foot. It was two o'clock in the morning. I entered an old house – my home – without doors or windows; and in the court the weeds were knee-high… Fear, horror, and grief seized me, and I wept."

Let her weep. It was no more than she deserved to do as penalty for all the evil that she had brought about by the Fronde. Four years of a flagitious war, begun as the effort of conscientious patriots, under pressure of the general interest, then turned to a perambulating exhibition of selfish vanities and a hunt for écus which wrecked the peace and the prosperity of France!

In one single diocese (Laon) more than twenty curés were forced to desert their villages because they had neither parishioners nor means of living. Throughout the kingdom men had been made servile by physical and moral suffering and by the need of rest; borne down by the imperious demands of worn-out nature, they loathed action. The heroes of Corneille (of the ideal "superhuman" type of the heroes of Nietzsche) had had their day and the hour of the natural man – human, not superhuman – had come.

Five years later, when Mademoiselle returned to Paris, she found a new world, with manners in sharp contrast with her own. It was her fate to yield to the influence of the new ideal, when, forgetting that a certain degree of quality "lifts the soul above tenderness," she yielded up her soul to Lauzun in romantic love. Some day, not far distant, we shall meet her in her new sphere.

1

Mémoires de Gaston.

2

Mémoires de Gaston.

3

Mémoires de Gaston.

4

Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier.

5

Sauval (1620-1670), Histoire et recherches sur les antiquités de Paris.

6

The gate of the "Conférence" was built at the time the great improvements were begun, in 1633. It was built after the grand plans of Cardinal de Richelieu and according to his own instructions (Gamboust).

7

Piganiol de la Force (1673-1753), Description of the City of Paris, etc.

8

Estat de la France (Collection Danjou).

9

Extraits des comptes et dépenses du roi pour l'année 1616 (Collection Danjou).

10

Mémoires de Mathieu Molé.

11

Letter written by Pontis.

12

Richelieu et la monarchie absolue.

13

Mémoires of Lenet.

14

See his Mémoires.

15

A few years before his death, which occurred in 1670.

16

Beheaded in 1632, aged thirty-seven years.

17

Tallemant.

18

The first volume of Le Grand Cyrus appeared in 1649; the last in 1653.

19

Mademoiselle de Scudéry uses the word propre, meaning "elegant," etc.

20

In Clélie.

21

Tallemant.

22

The first number bears date 1605.

23

The first number appeared May 1, 1631.

24

Recueil, etc. Discours sur plusieurs points importants de l'état present des affaires de France.

25

Recueil, etc. Avertissement aux provinces sur les nouveaux mouvements du royaume, by the Sieur de Cléonville (1631).

26

Mémoires of Mademoiselle.

27

Relation de ce que c'est passé en l'affaire de la reyne au mois d'août, 1637, sui le sujet de la Porte et de l'Abbesse du Val-de-Grâce. See document in the Bibliothèque National.

28

The first part appeared in 1610, or perhaps [says M. Brunetière], in 1618. The rest followed at long intervals. The four last volumes bear date 1627 and consequently are posthumous. The part written by d'Urfé cannot be distinguished from the part written by Baro, who continued the work begun by d'Urfé.

29

Manuel de l'histoire de la littérature française, by M. Ferdinand Brunetière. Cf. En Bourbonnais et en Forez, by Emile Montégut, and Le roman (XVII. Century) by Paul Morillot in L'histoire de la langue et de la littérature française, published under the direction of M. Petit de Julleville. Les vendanges de Suresnes, by Pierre du Ryer.

30

Waliszeffski: Marysienka.

31

Paul Morillot, loc. cit.

32

In the Dedication of Place Royale.

33

In the Dedication of Place Royale.

34

M. Lemaître's address, delivered at Port Royal. (Racine's Centennial.)

35

Histoire de l'art, pendant la renaissance.

36

Sauval, Les antiquités de Paris.

37

Dulaure, Environs de Paris.

38

Astrée.

39

Montégut, loc. cit.

40

Somaize's Dictionnaire des Précieuses.

41

Mémoires, Conrart.

42

Gazette de Loret. (Letter bearing date August 13, 1651.)

43

Tallemant.

44

Mémoires, de Richelieu.

45

Young Louvigny was killed in a duel in 1629; he was entering his twenty-first year.

46

Vicomte d'Avenel, Richelieu et la Monarchie absolue.

47

See Gamboust's map, Paris en 1652.

48

Tallemant.

49

In one of the angles at the end of the courtyard (Tallemant).

50

M. Bourciez loc. cit.

51

Ibid.

52

Bussy-Rabutin, Histoire amoreuse des Gaules.

53

Oh, no! not such a good boy as all that! – Arvède Barine.

54

Mme. de Sévigné.

55

Valentin Conrart, Réné Kerviler and Ed. de Barthélemy.

56

Mme. de Kerviler and Ed. de Barthélemy, loc. cit.

57

Tallemant.

58

Cardinal La Valette.

59

Near Enghien.

60

Mademoiselle was ten years old at that time.

61

The Palais-Royal of to-day.

62

>Alex. Hardy et le théâtre français, Eugène Rigal.

63

Sorel, La maison des jeux. The book was published in 1642, but M. E. Rigal supposes that the disorders and the complaints cited in it date from a previous epoch.

64

La pratique du théâtre.

65

Certainly the desire was not lacking. – Author.

66

Le théâtre au temps du Corneille, Gustave Reynier. The first representation of the Cid took place either in December, 1636, or in January, 1637.

67

See dedicatory letter accompanying a comedy played in 1632 and published in 1636. Galanteries du duc d'Ossonne. Mairet.

68

Aminta was played in 1573, but it was not imprinted until 1581, when it was first known outside of Italy.

69

Pierre Corneille, Petit de Julleville.

70

Pierre Corneille, Petit de Julleville.

71

Jules Lemaître.

72

Manual de l'histoire de la littérature française. F. Brunetière.

73

Corneille, Lanson.

74

Cyrano de Bergerac, E. Rostand.

75

"There are agreeable things in Bejazet, but there is nothing perfectly beautiful in it, nothing to carry you away in spite of yourself, none of the tirades which make you shiver when you read Corneille. My daughter, take good care not to compare Racine to him. Distinguish the difference between them" (16th March, 1672).

76

Henriette, third daughter of Henry IV., was "accorded with" or promised in betrothal to Comte de Soissons a few months after her birth; the Comte was between five and six years old. Marie de Médicis did not consider the infantile betrothal binding; when she saw fit to marry her daughter she bestowed her hand upon Charles I., the King of England (1625).

77

Ferdinand, third son of Philip III.

78

The Cardinal-Infant had been forced to leave his camp and go to Brussels to recover his health. He died in Brussels soon after his arrival, more beloved by the French people – so it was said – than was becoming to a King of Spain. (See l'Histoire de la France sous Louis XIII. A. Bazin.)

79

Mémoires de Michel de Marolles (Abbé de Villeloin); La Conspiration Cinq-Mars (Mlle. J. P. Basserie).

80

Dulaure's Histoire de Paris.

81

Mémoires, Montglat.

82

Fontenelle's Vie de Pierre Corneille.

83

Cinq-Mars had been promoted to the position of Grand Equerry.

84

Motteville.

85

Motteville.

86

Montglat.

87

Registres de l'Hôtel de Ville (Collection Danjou).

88

Mémoire du roi au plénipotentiaires (6th January, 1644). ("Il ne faut pas s'étonner de tout ce que disent nos enemies; C' est à nous de tenir: il est indubitable qu'ils se rangeront peu à peu.")

89

The first of our casinos.

90

Mémoires of Mademoiselle.

91

Olivier d'Ormesson.

92

Mademoiselle erred as to the date; the Gazette de France fixes it March 8th.

93

About six millions of francs.

94

Mademoiselle errs in supposing (in her memoirs) that it was but one year. Such errors are frequent in her writings.

95

Père de Bérulle et l'Oratoire de Jésus, M. l'Abbé Houssaye.

96

Saint François de Sales, Fortunat Strowski.

97

The Abbé Houssaye, loc cit.

98

Saint Vincent de Paul et les Gondis, Chantelauze.

99

Le Cardinal de Bérulle et Richelieu, the Abbé Houssaye.

100

Les Libertins en France au XVII. Siècle, F. T. Perrens.

101

Oraison funèbre d'Anne de Gonzague, Bossuet.

102

Port Royal, Sainte Beuve.

103

Bérulle et l'Oratoire, the Abbé Houssaye.

104

Fortunat Strowski.

105

Their uselessness, their ignorance have made us despise them. – Bossuet.

106

Manuel de l'histoire de la littérature française, F. Brunetière.

107

The address delivered on the occasion of Racine's Centennial, 26th April 1899.

108

Motteville.

109

Mémoires.

110

Declaration pour la Régence (21st April, 1643).

111

Born in 1616.

112

Édouard, Prince Palatine, a younger son of the Elector Palatine, Frédéric V.

113

Motteville.

114

Duc d'Aumale's Histoire des princes de Condé.

115

Among other emoluments he had 800,000 livres.

116

Mémoires of Lenet.

117

Manuscript Mémoires published in fragments with Olivier d'Ormesson's Journal, by M. Chervel (who appears to have been a member of the House of Condé).

118

Mazarin lived in a palace which became the Bibliothèque Nationale.

119

In Mazarin's letters the words in italics are either in cipher or in words which he had agreed upon with the Queen when arranging the details of his absence; in this instance we have used the translation given by M. Ravenel in his Lettres du Cardinal Mazarin à la Reine, etc.

120

La Porte.

121

Mémoires of La Porte.

122

Mémoires of de Brienne, junior.

123

See the journal of Olivier d'Ormesson. This scene took place March 19, 1645.

124

Motteville.

125

La misère au temps de la Fronde (quoted from the records of the Council).

126

La Galerie des portraits de Mlle. de Montpensier. (New edition.) Édouard de Barthélemy.

127

May, 1648.

128

Gamboust.

129

André d'Ormesson. (See note accompanying Olivier d'Ormesson's journal.)

130

Lenet's Mémoires.

131

See official documents. (Paris, 31st October, 1648.)

132

Forty sole. (See Olivier de Ormesson's journal.)

133

Monsieur's second marriage had endowed him with five heirs, three of whom (daughters) had lived.

134

Journal des guerres civiles, Dubuisson-Aubenay.

135

Retz.

136

Unpublished and anonymous memoirs cited by Chévruel.

137

La jeunesse de Mme. de Longueville, Cousin.

138

La Rochefoucauld, J. Bourdeau.

139

Demandes des princes et Seigneurs qui ont pris les armes avec le Parlement et Peuple de Paris (15th March, 1649.) See Choix de Mazarinades, M. C. Moreau.

140

For a study of the complicated causes of the fall of the nobility see Richelieu et la Monarchie absolue, G. d'Avenel.

141

d'Ormesson.

142

Registres de l'Hôtel de Ville pendant la Fronde.

143

Registres de l'Hôtel de Ville pendant la Fronde.