La Grande Mademoiselle

I have before me one of these volumes, dated 1639, without name of editor or publisher. It bears the title: Recueil de divers pièces pour servir a l'histoire. Two thirds of its space are consecrated to the King's quarrels with his family. Mademoiselle must have learned from it many things which she has not the air of suspecting. Perhaps she found it convenient or agreeable to be ignorant of them. In the pages of this instructive volume none of her immediate relations appear to any advantage. Louis XIII. is invariably dry and bombastic, or constrained and affected; he shows no trace of emotion when, in his letter of 23 February, 1631, he informs the people that

being placed in the extremity of choosing between our mother and our minister we did not even hesitate, because they have embittered the Queen our very honoured lady and mother against our very dear and very beloved cousin, Cardinal de Richelieu; there being no entreaty, no prayer or supplication, nor any consideration, public or private, that we have not put forward to soften her spirit; our said cousin recognising what he owes her, by reason of all sorts of considerations, having done all that he could do for her satisfaction; the reverence that he bears her having carried him to the point of urging us and supplicating us, divers times, to find it good that he should retire from the management of our affairs; a request which the utility of his past services and the interests of our authority have not permitted us to think of granting… And recognising the fact that none of the authors of these differences continue to maintain their disposition to diverge from our royal justice, we have not found a way to avoid removing certain persons from our Court, nor even to avoid separating ourselves, though with unutterable pain, from the Queen, our very honoured lady and mother, during such time as may be required for the softening of her heart…

Another letter, from the King to his mother, is revolting in its harshness. After her departure from France, Marie de Médicis addressed to him some very tart pages in which she accused Richelieu of having had designs on her life. In the same letter she represented herself as flying from her son's soldiers:

I will leave you to imagine my affliction when I saw myself in flight, pursued by the cavalry with which they had threatened me! so that I would be frightened and run the faster out of your kingdom; by that means constraining me to press on thirty leagues without either eating or drinking, to the end that I might escape from their hands. (Avesnes, 28 July, 1631.)

Instead of feeling pity for the plaints of the old woman who realised that she had been conquered, Louis XIII. replied:

Madame, I am the more annoyed by your resolution to retire from my state because I know that you have no real reason for doing so. The imaginary prison, the supposititious persecutions of which you complain, and the fears that you profess to have felt at Compiègne during your life there, were as lacking in foundation as the pursuit that you pretend my cavalry made when you made your retreat.

After these words, the King delivered a pompous eulogy on the Cardinal and ended it thus:

You will permit me, an it please you, to tell you, Madame, that the act that you have just committed, and all that has passed during a period more or less recent, make it impossible for me to be ignorant of your intentions in the past, and the action that I have to expect from you in the future. The respect that I owe to you hinders me from saying any more.

It is true that Marie de Médicis received nothing that she did not deserve; but it may be possible that it was not for her son to speak to her with brutality.

In their way Gaston's letters are chefs-d'œuvre. They do honour to the psychological sensibility of the intelligent névrosé. Monsieur knew both the strength and the weakness of his brother. He knew him to be jealous, ulcerated by the consciousness of his own insignificance – an insignificance brought into full relief by the importance of the superior Being then hard at work making "of a France languishing a France triumphant"24; and with marvellous art he found the words best qualified to irritate secret wounds.

His letters open with insinuations to the effect that Richelieu had a personal interest in maintaining the enmity between "the King and his own brother," so that the King, "having no one to defend him," could be held more closely in his, Richelieu's, grasp.

I beseech … your Majesty … to have the gracious prudence to reflect upon what has passed, and to examine more seriously the designs of those who have been the architects of these plans; if you will graciously examine into this matter you will see that there are interests at stake which are not yours, – interests of a nature opposed to your interests, and which aim at something further, and something far in advance of anything that you have thought of up to the present time (March 23, 1631).

In the following letter Monsieur addresses himself directly to Louis XIII.'s worst sentiments and to his kingly conscience. He feigns to be deeply grieved by the deplorable condition of his brother, who, as he says, is reduced, notwithstanding

"the very great enlightenment of his mind" to the plight of a puppet … nothing but the shadow of a king, a being deprived of his authority, lacking in power as in will, counted as nothing in his own kingdom, devoid even of the external lustre ordinarily attached to the rank of a sovereign.

Monsieur declares that Richelieu has left the King

"nothing but the name and the figure of a king," and that for a time only; for as soon as he has ridded himself of you … and of me! … he means to take the helm and steer the Ship of State in his own name.

Monsieur depicted the new "Mayor of the Palace" actually reigning in overburdened, crushed, and oppressed France,

whom he has ruined and whose blood he has sucked pitilessly and without shame. In his own person he has consumed more than two hundred millions since he took the rule of your affairs … and he expends daily, in his own house, ten times more than you do in yours… Let me tell you what I have seen! In your kingdom not one third of your subjects eat bread made of wheat flour; another third eats bread made of oats; and another third not only is reduced to beggary, but it is languishing in need so crying that some are actually starving to death; those who are not dying of hunger are prolonging their lives with acorns, herbs, and like substances, like the lower animals. And they who are least to be pitied among these last are living on bran and on blood which they pick up in the gutters in front of the butchers' shops. I have seen these things with my own eyes, and in different parts of the country, since I left Paris.

In this Monsieur told the truth. The peasant had come to that point of physical degradation. But his sufferings could not be diminished by provoking a civil war, and Richelieu did not fail to make the fact plain in the polemics of the Recueil, written under his supervision – when it was not written in his own hand. He (Richelieu) defended his policy tooth and nail, he justified his millions, his accumulated official honours.

One of Monsieur's letters bears copious notes made throughout its length and breadth in the Cardinal's own hand. Without any of the scruples of false shame, he inspired long factums to the glory of the Prime Minister of France.

In the pages inspired by him there are passages of peculiar inhumanity. In one place, justifying the King for the treatment inflicted upon his mother, he says that "the pain of the nine months that she carried him would have been sold by her at too high a price, had the King, because of it, been forced to let her set fire to his kingdom."25

Other passages are equally heartless: "Do they blame the Prime Minister for his riches? – and if the King had seen fit to give him more? The King is free to give or to take away. Can he not act his pleasure; who has the right to say him nay?"

The Recueil shows passages teeming with cynical and pampered pride. In favour of himself Richelieu wrote:

The production of these great geniuses is not an ordinary bissextile work. Sometimes the revolution of four of Nature's centuries are required for the formation of a mind of such phenomenal proportions, in which are united all the excellencies, any one of which would be enough to set far above the ordinary character of man the being endowed with them. I speak not only of the virtues that are in some sort the essence of the profession made by their united representative types, – Pity, Wisdom, Prudence, Moderation, Eloquence, Erudition, and like attributes, – I speak of other virtues, the characteristic qualities of another and separate order, like those composing the perfections of a chief of war … etc.

Among the official documents in the volume just quoted are instruments whose publication would have put any man but Gaston d'Orléans under ground for the rest of his days, among other things, his treaty of peace (1632), signed at Béziers (20th September) after the battle of Castelnaudary, where the Duc de Montmorency had been beaten and taken before his eyes. In that treaty Monsieur had pledged himself to abandon his friends, – not to take any interest in those who had been allied with him "on these occasions," and "not to pretend that he had any cause for complaint when the King made them submit to what they deserved." He promised "to love, especially, his cousin Richelieu." In recompense for this promise and the other articles of the treaty the King re-established his brother "in all his rights." As we know, the treaty of Béziers ended nothing. Gaston saw all his partisans beheaded as he recrossed the frontier. He did not enter France to remain there until October, 1634. Then he went home "on the faith" of the King's declaration, which closes the volume. By this declaration Monsieur was again re-established in the enjoyment of all his rights, appanages, pensions, and appointments. For him this was the important article. As Richelieu took the trouble to have all his monuments of egotism and barrenness of heart re-imprinted, it is probable that he did not intend to let the country forget them. In that case he attained his ends.

The public had formed its opinion, and in consequence it took no further interest in the royal family, always excepting Anne of Austria, who had retired among the shadows.

Marie de Médicis was now free to cry aloud in her paroxysms of fury. Gaston could henceforth pose as a martyr, and Louis XIII., withered by melancholy, dried remnant of his former pompous dignity, might be blown into a corner or be borne away by the wind like a dead leaf in autumn, and not a soul in France would hail it by the quiver of an eyelash. If Richelieu had hoped that profit would accrue to him from the royal unpopularity he had counted without the great French host. Despite the fact that his importance and the terror he inspired had increased tenfold, he also had become tainted by the insignificance of the royal family. But to all the people he seemed the ogre dreaded by Mademoiselle in her infancy, though indisputedly an unnatural ogre, possessing genius far beyond the reach of the normal man. He was universally looked upon as a leader of priceless value to a country in its hour of crisis, and as a companion everything but desirable. He appalled the people. His first interviews with Gaston after the young Prince's return to France were terrible. Monsieur was defenceless; the Cardinal was pitiless.

"Mademoiselle had run ahead to meet her father. In her innocence she had rejoiced to find him unchanged." Richelieu also believed that Monsieur had not changed, and he was all the more anxious to get him out to his (Richelieu's) château at Rueil. He pretended that there was to be a fête at the château. Monsieur did not leave Rueil until he had opened his heart to the Cardinal, just as he had done in regard to the affair Chalais.

Turned, and re-turned, by his terrible cousin, the unhappy wretch denounced mother and friends, – absent or present, – those who had plotted to overthrow the prime ministry and those who had (according to Gaston's story) tried to assassinate the Cardinal on such a day and in such a place. "Not," said Richelieu in his Mémoires, – "not that Monsieur recounted these things of his own accord. He did not do that; but the Cardinal asked him if it was not true that such a person had said such and such things, and he confessed, very ingenuously, that it was."

Truly the fête at Rueil had sinister results for the friends of Monsieur.

Monsieur retired to Blois, but he often returned to Paris, and whenever he returned he fulfilled his fatherly duties in his own fashion, romping and chattering with Mademoiselle. He amused himself by listening to her songs against Richelieu, and for her pleasure he organised a corps-de-ballet of children. All the people of the Court flocked to the palace to witness the ballet.

On the occasion of another ballet danced at the Louvre he displayed himself to Mademoiselle in all his glory (18th February, 1635). The King, the Queen, and the principal courtiers of their suite were among the dancers.

This last solemnity left mingled memories, both good and bad, in Mademoiselle's mind. One of her father's most faithful companions in exile was to have danced in the ballet. During a rehearsal, Richelieu had him arrested and conducted to the Wood of Vincennes, "where he died very suddenly."26 The rôle in which he should have acted was danced by one of the other courtiers, and therefore Gaston did not appear to be affected.

The Gazette informed the public that the fête had "succeeded admirably"; that every one had carried away from the place so teeming with marvels the same idea that Jacob had entertained when, having looked upon the angels all the night, he believed that the earth touched the confines of heaven! But, at least, there was one person for whom the sudden disappearance of Puylaurens had spoiled everything. Mademoiselle had "liked him and wished him well." He had won her heart by giving her bonbons, and she felt that the ugly history reflected upon her father. "I leave it," she said, "to people better instructed and more enlightened than I am to speak of what Monsieur did afterward to Puylaurens' prison."

The following year she had to swallow an insult on her own account. The lines which appeared in one of the gazettes of July, 1636, must have seemed insupportable to a child full of unchecked pride.

"The 17th, Mademoiselle, aged nine years and three months, was baptised in the Louvre, in the Queen's chamber, by the Bishop of Auxerre, First Almoner to the King, having for godmother and godfather the Queen and the Cardinal Duke (Richelieu), and was named Anne Marie."

Mention of this little event is made in Retz's Mémoires. "M. le Cardinal was to hold at the font Mademoiselle, who, as you may judge, had been baptised long before; but the ceremonies of the baptism had been deferred."

This godfather, who was not a prince, was a humiliation to Mademoiselle, and to crown her distress he thought that he ought to make himself agreeable to his god-daughter.

By his intention to be amiable he "made her beside herself" because he treated her – at nine years! – as if she had been a little girl. "Every time that he saw me he told me that that spiritual alliance obliged him to take care of me, and that he would arrange a marriage for me (a discourse that he addressed to me, talking just as they do to children to whom they incessantly repeat the same thing)."

A journey through France, which she made in 1637, "put balm on the wounds of her pride." They chanted the Te Deum, the Army Corps saluted her, a city was illuminated, and the nobility offered her fêtes. She "swam in joy"; for thus she had always thought that the appearance of a person of her quality should be hailed. She ended her tour in Blois where Monsieur, the ever good father, desired that he, in person, should be the one to initiate his child in the morality of princes, which virtue in those aristocratic times had nothing in common with the bourgeois's morality. For the moment he was possessed of an insignificant mistress, a young girl of Tours called "Louison." Monsieur took his daughter to Tours so that he might present his mistress to her. Mademoiselle declared herself satisfied with her father's choice. She thought that Louison had "a very agreeable face, and a great deal of wit for a girl of that quality who had never been to Court." But Mme. de Saint Georges saw the new relations with an anxious eye; she submitted her scruples to Monsieur:

Madame de Saint Georges … asked him if the girl was good, because, otherwise, though she had been honoured by his good graces, she should be glad if she would not come to my house. Monsieur gave her every assurance and told her that he would not have wished for the girl himself without that condition. In those days I had such a horror of vice that I said to her: "Maman (I called her thus), if Louison is not virtuous, even though my Papa loves her I will not see her at all; or if he wishes me to see her I will not receive her well." She answered that she was really a very good girl, and I was very glad of it, for she pleased me much – so I saw her often.

Mademoiselle did not suspect that there was anything comical in this passage; had she done so she would not have written it, because she was not one of those who admit that it is sometimes permissible to smile at the great.

On her return from her journey she resumed her ordinary life.

I passed the winter in Paris as I had passed my other winters. Twice a week I went to the assemblies given by Mme. the Countess de Soissons at the Hôtel de Brissac. At these assemblies the usual diversions were comedies [plays] and dancing. I was very fond of dancing and, for love of me, they danced there very often…

There were also assemblies with comedies at the Queen's, at Richelieu's, and at a number of personages', and Mademoiselle herself received at the Tuileries.

The night of the 23d-24th January (1636) [reports the Gazette] Mademoiselle in her lodgings at the Tuileries, gave a comedy and a ball to the Queen, where the Good Grace of this princess in the dawn of her life, gave proof of what her noontide is to be. The 24th February, Monsieur gave a comedy and a collation to His Royal Highness of Parma at Mademoiselle his daughter's, in her apartments at the Tuileries.

Mademoiselle passed the days and the nights in fêtes. Her studies did not suffer by it because she never studied and never knew anything of study outside of reading and writing, making a courtesy, and carefully observing the rules of a minute etiquette.

It is probable that she owed the little that she knew to several months of forced retreat in a convent, when she was nine years old. She made herself so intolerable to every one, – it is she who tells it, – she was so vexatious, with her "grimaces" and her "mockeries," that they put her in a cloister to try to discipline her and to correct her faults; the plan succeeded: "They saw me return … wiser, and better than I had been." Yes, more sober, better behaved, and a little less ignorant, but not much less. The following letter, bearing the date of her maturity, shows more clearly than all the descriptions in the world, the degree of instructions which satisfied the seventeenth century's ideas of the education of a princess. The letter is addressed to Colbert ("a Choisy ce 5 Août 1665"):

Monsieur, le sieur Segrais qui est de la cademy et qui a bocoup travalie pour la gloire du Roy et pour le public, aiant este oublie lannee passée dans les gratifications que le Roy a faicts aux baus essprit ma prie de vous faire souvenir de luy set un aussi homme de mérite et qui est a moi il ya long tams jespere que cela ne nuira pas a vous obliger a avoir de la consideration pour luy set se que je vous demande et de une croire, monsieur Colbert, etc.

This orthography did not hinder Mademoiselle when, under the name of "Princess Cassandane" she figured in the Grand Dictionnaire des Précieuses; and according to the distinctions established between the "true précieuse" and the "Savante" by Mademoiselle de Scudéry, she had a right to figure there, as had many of her noble contemporaries, who would have been the shame of the humblest of the schools.

The "true précieuse," she who left comets and the Greek language to the "Savantes," applied herself to the task of penetrating the mysteries of the heart. That was her science, and from certain points of view it was worth as much as any other.

La Grande Mademoiselle devoted her talents and her life to the perfection of her particular art. Keeping well within the limits that she herself had set, she made a special study of the hearts of princesses and of everything concerning them; and she professed that she had established, definitely, the only proper methods by which persons of her quality should, bound in duty to themselves, look upon love, and upon glory.

The wells from which she drew her spiritual draughts were not exclusively her own; she shared their benefits with all honest people, of either sex, engaged in completing the sentimental education by the essential principle of life.

CHAPTER II

I. Anne of Austria and Richelieu – Birth of Louis XIV. – II. L'Astrée and its Influence – III. Transformation of the Public Manners – The Creation of the Salon – The Hôtel de Rambouillet and Men of Letters.

I

But little information concerning the affairs of the day previous to the last months of the reign of Louis XIII. can be gleaned from the Mémoires of La Grande Mademoiselle. It is hardly credible that a young girl raised at the Court of France, not at all stupid, and because of her birth so situated as to see and to hear everything, could have gone through some of the most thrilling catastrophes of that tragic time without seeing or hearing anything. At a later day Mademoiselle was the first to wonder at it; she furnishes an example surpassing imagination.

In 1637, before starting on her journey into the province, she went to bid adieu to "their Majesties," who were at Chantilly. Mademoiselle fell upon a drama. Richelieu had just disgraced the Queen of France, who had been declared guilty of abusing her religious retreat at the Convent of Val-de-Grâce by holding secret correspondence with Spain. Val-de-Grâce had been ransacked, and one of Anne of Austria's servants had been arrested. Anne herself had been questioned like a criminal, and she had had a very bitter tête-à-tête in her chamber with such a Richelieu as she had never met before.

It was then ten years since Louis XIII., abruptly entering his wife's private apartments, had interrupted a declaration of love made by his Minister. After Marie de Médicis, Anne of Austria! Evidently it was a system of policy in which pride of personal power played its part. Possibly the heart also played some small rôle when Anne of Austria was young and beautiful; but it was the heart of a Richelieu, and unless we know what such a thing is like it is difficult to explain the Minister's attitude at Chantilly. Historians have not taken the trouble to tell us, because there were things more important to them and to the history of Europe than the exploits of so high-flying a Cardinal. Nevertheless, even an historian could have made an interesting chapter out of the sentimental life of Richelieu. It was a violent and cruel life; as violent and as pitiless as the passions that haunted his harrowed soul. Michelet compared the Duke's life to "a lodging that had been ransacked." In him love was a cloak thickly lined with hatred. Mme. de Motteville, who witnessed Richelieu's courtship of the Queen, was astonished by his way of making love. "The first marks of his affection," she writes, "were his persecutions of her. They burst out before everybody, and we shall see that this new way of loving will last as long as the Cardinal lives."

Anne of Austria felt only his persecutions. Richelieu was not pleasing to women. He was the earthly All-powerful. He possessed riches and genius, but they knew that he was cruel – even pitiless – in anger; and he could not persuade them to pretend to love him; all, even Marion de Lorme, mocked and laughed at him, and Retz gave a reason for their conduct: