Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld.LOLA MONTEZ, COUNTESS OF LANDSFELD.
More than fifty years have gone since the penitent soul of Lola Montez took flight to its Creator; but there must be some still living whose pulses quicken at the very mention of a name which recalls so much mystery and romance and bewildering fascination of the days when, for them, as for her, "all the world was young."
Who was she, this woman whose beauty dazzled the eyes and whose witchery turned the heads of men in the forties and fifties of last century? A dozen countries, from Spain to India, were credited with her birth. Some said she was the daughter of a noble house, kidnapped by gipsies in her infancy; others were equally confident that she had for father the coroneted rake, Lord Byron, and for mother a charwoman.
Her early years were wrapped in a mystery which she mischievously helped to intensify by declaring that her father was a famous Spanish toreador. Her origin, however, was prosaic enough. She was the daughter of an obscure army captain, Gilbert, who hailed from Limerick; her mother was an Oliver,from whom she received her strain of Spanish blood; and the names given to her at a Limerick font, one day in 1818, two months after her parents had made their runaway match, were Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna.
When Captain Gilbert returned, after his furlough-romance, to India, he took his wife and child with him. Seven years later cholera removed him; his widow found speedy solace in the arms of a second husband, one Captain Craigie; and Dolores was packed off to Scotland to the care of her stepfather's people until her schooldays were ended.
In the next few years she alternated between the Scottish household, with its chilly atmosphere of Calvinism, and schools in Paris and London, until, her education completed, she escaped the husband, a mummified Indian judge, whom her mother had chosen for her, by eloping with a young army officer, a Captain James, and with him made the return voyage to India.
A few months later her romance came to a tragic end, when her Lothario husband fell under the spell of a brother-officer's wife and ran away with her to the seclusion of the Neilgherry Hills, leaving his wife stranded and desolate. And thus it was that Dolores Gilbert wiped the dust of India finally off her feet, and with a cheque for a thousand pounds, which her good-hearted stepfather slipped into her hand, started once more for England, to commence that career of adventure which has scarcely a parallel even in fiction. She had had more than enough of wedded life, of Scottish Calvinism, and of a mother's selfishindifference. She would be henceforth the mistress of her own fate. She had beauty such as few women could boast—she had talents and a stout heart; and these should be her fortune.
Her first ambition was to be a great actress; and when she found that acting was not her forte she determined to dance her way to fame and fortune, and after a year's training in London and Spain she was ready to conquer the world with her twinkling feet and supple body.
Of her first appearance as a danseuse, before a private gathering of Pressmen, we have the following account by one who was there: "Her figure was even more attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was. Lithe and graceful as a young fawn, every movement that she made seemed instinct with melody. Her dark eyes were blazing and flashing with excitement. In her pose grace seemed involuntarily to preside over her limbs and dispose their attitude. Her foot and ankle were almost faultless."
Such was the enthusiastic description of Lola Montez (as she now chose to call herself) on the eve of her bid for fame as a dancer who should perhaps rival the glories of a Taglioni. A few days later the world of rank and fashion flocked to see the début of the danseuse whose fame had been trumpeted abroad; and as Lola pirouetted on to the stage—the focus of a thousand pairs of eyes—she felt that the crowning moment of her life had come.
Almost before her twinkling feet had carried her to the centre of the stage an ominous sound broke the silence of expectation. A hiss came from one ofthe boxes; it was repeated from another, and another. The sibilant sound spread round the house; it swelled into a sinister storm of hisses and boos. The light faded out of the dancer's eyes, the smile from her lips; and as the tumult of disapprobation rose to a deafening climax the curtain was rung down, and Lola rushed weeping from the stage. Her career as a dancer, in England, had ended at its birth.
But Lola Montez was not the woman to sit down calmly under defeat. A few weeks later we find her tripping it on the stage at Dresden, and at Berlin, where the King of Prussia himself was among her applauders. But such success as the Continent brought her was too small to keep her now deplenished purse supplied. She fell on evil days, and for two years led a precarious life—now, we are told, singing in Brussels streets to keep starvation from her side, now playing the political spy in Russia, and again, by a capricious turn of fortune's wheel, being fêted and courted in the exalted circles of Vienna and Paris.
From the French capital she made her way to Warsaw, where stirring adventures awaited her, for before she had been there many days the Polish Viceroy, General Paskevitch, cast his aged but lascivious eyes on her young beauty and sent an equerry to desire her presence at the palace. "He offered her" (so runs the story as told by her own lips) "the gift of a splendid country estate, and would load her with diamonds besides. The poor old man was a comic sight to look upon—unusually short in stature; and every time he spoke he threw his head back andopened his mouth so wide as to expose the artificial gold roof of his palate. A death's head making love to a lady could not have been a more horrible or disgusting sight. These generous gifts were most respectfully and very decidedly declined."
But General Paskevitch was not disposed to be spurned with impunity. The contemptuous beauty must be punished for her scorn of his wooing; and, when she made her appearance on the stage the same night it was to a greeting of hisses by the Viceroy's hirelings. The next night brought the same experience; but when on the third night the storm arose, "Lola, in a rage, rushed down to the footlights and declared that those hisses had been set at her by the director, because she had refused certain gifts from the old Prince, his master. Then came a tremendous shower of applause from the audience, and the old Princess, who was present, both nodded her head and clapped her hands to the enraged and fiery little Lola."
A tumultuous crowd of Poles escorted her to her lodgings that night. She was the heroine of the hour, who had dared to give open defiance to the hated Viceroy. The next morning Warsaw was "bubbling and raging with the signs of an incipient revolution. When Lola Montez was apprised of the fact that her arrest was ordered she barricaded her door; and when the police arrived she sat behind it with a pistol in her hand, declaring that she would certainly shoot the first man who should dare to break in." Fortunately for Lola, her pistol was not used. The French Consul came to her rescue, claiming her as a subject of France, and thus protecting her fromarrest. But the order that she should quit Warsaw was peremptory, and Warsaw saw her no more.
Back again in Paris, Lola found that even her new halo of romance was powerless to win favour for her dancing. Again she was to hear the storm of hisses; and this time in her rage "she retaliated by making faces at her audience," and flinging parts of her clothing in their faces. But if Paris was not to be charmed by her dainty feet it was ready to yield an unstinted homage to her rare beauty and charm. She found a flattering welcome in the most exclusive ofsalons; the cleverest men in the capital confessed the charm of her wit and surrounded her with their flatteries.
M. Dujarrier, the most brilliant of them all, young, rich, and handsome, fell head over ears in love with her and asked her to be his wife. But the cup of happiness was scarcely at her lips before it was dashed away. Dujarrier was challenged to a duel by Beauvallon, a political enemy; and when Lola was on her way to stop the meeting she met a mournful procession bringing back her dead lover's body, on which she flung herself in an agony of grief and covered it with kisses. At the subsequent trial of Beauvallon she electrified the Court by declaring with streaming eyes, "If Beauvallon wanted satisfaction I would have fought him myself, for I am a better shot than poor Dujarrier ever was." And she was probably only speaking the truth, for her courage was as great as the love she bore for the victim of the duel.
As a child Lola had shocked her puritanical Scottish hosts by declaring that "she meant to marry aPrince," and unkindly as fate had treated her, she had by no means relinquished this childish ambition. It may be that it was in her mind when, a year and a half after the tragedy that had so clouded her life in Paris, she drifted to Munich in search of more conquests.
Now in the full bloom of her radiant loveliness—"the most beautiful woman in Europe" many declared—mingling the vivacity of an Irish beauty with the voluptuous charms of a Spaniard—she was splendidly equipped for the conquest of any man, be he King or subject; and Ludwig I., King of Bavaria, had as keen an eye for female beauty as for the objects of art on which he squandered his millions.
It was this Ludwig who made Munich the fairest city in all Germany, and who enriched his palace with the finest private collection of pictures and statues that Europe can boast. But among all his treasures of art he valued none more than his gallery of portraits of fair women, each of whom had, at one time or another, visited his capital.
Such was Ludwig, Bavaria's King, to whom Lola Montez now brought a new revelation of female loveliness, to which his gallery could furnish no rival. At first sight of her, as she danced in the opera ballet, he was undone. The next day and the next his eyes were feasting on her charms and her supple grace; and within a week she was installed at the Court and was being introduced by His Majesty as "my best friend."
And not only the King, but all Munich was at the feet of the lovely "Spaniard"; her drives throughthe streets were Royal progresses; her receptions in the palace which Ludwig presented to her were thronged by all the greatest in Bavaria; on Prince and peasant alike she cast the spell of her witchery. As for Ludwig, connoisseur of the beautiful, he was her shadow and her slave, showering on her gifts an Empress might well have envied. Fortune had relented at last and was now smiling her sweetest on the adventuress; and if Lola had been content with such triumphs as these the story of her later life might have been very different. But she craved power to add to her trophies, and aspired to take the sceptre from the weak hand of her Royal lover.
Never did woman make a more fatal mistake. On the one hand was arrayed the might of Austria and of Rome, whose puppet Ludwig was; on the other hand was a nation clamouring for reforms. Revolution was already in the air, and it was reserved to this too daring woman to precipitate the storm.
Her first ambition was to persuade Ludwig to dismiss his Ministry, to shake himself free from foreign influence, and to inaugurate the era of reform for which his subjects were clamouring. In vain did Austria try to win her to its side by bribes of gold (no less than a million florins) and the offer of a noble husband. To all its seductions Lola turned as deaf an ear as to the offers of Poland's Viceroy. And so strenuous was her championship of the people that the Cabinet was compelled to resign in favour of the "Lola Ministry" of reformers.
So far she had succeeded, but the price was still to pay. The reactionaries, supported by Austria andthe Romish Church, were quick to retaliate by waging remorseless war against the King's mistress; and, among their most powerful weapons, used the students' clubs of Munich, who, from being Lola's most enthusiastic admirers, became her bitterest enemies.
To counteract this move Lola enrolled a students' corps of her own—a small army of young stalwarts, whose cry was "Lola and Liberty," and who were sworn to fight her battles, if need be, to the death. Thus was the fire of revolution kindled by a woman's vanity and lust of power. Students' fights became everyday incidents in the streets of Munich, and on one occasion when Lola, pistol in hand, intervened to prevent bloodshed, she was rescued with difficulty by Ludwig himself and a detachment of soldiers.
The climax came when she induced the King to close the University for a year—an autocratic step which aroused the anger not only of every student but of the whole country. The streets were paraded by mobs crying, "Down with the concubine!" and "Long live the Republic!" Barricades were erected and an influential deputation waited on the King to demand the expulsion of the worker of so much mischief.
In vain did Ludwig declare that he would part with his crown rather than with the Countess of Landsfeld—for this was one of the titles he had conferred on his favourite. The forces arrayed against him were too strong, and the order of expulsion was at last conceded. It was only, however, when her palace was in flames and surrounded by a howling mob that the dauntless woman deigned to seek refugein flight, and, disguised as a boy, suffered herself to be escorted to the frontier. Two weeks later Ludwig lost his crown.
The remainder of this strange story may be told in a few words. Thrown once more on the world, with a few hastily rescued jewels for all her fortune, Lola Montez resumed her stage life, appearing in London in a drama entitled "Lola Montez: or a Countess for an Hour." Here she made a conquest of a young Life Guardsman, called Heald, who had recently succeeded to an estate worth £5000 a year; and with him she spent a few years, made wretched by continual quarrels, in one of which she stabbed him. When he was "found drowned" at Lisbon she drifted to Paris, and later to the United States, which she toured with a drama entitled "Lola Montez in Bavaria." There she made her third appearance at the altar, with a bridegroom named Hull, whom she divorced as soon as the honeymoon had waned.
Thus she carried her restless spirit through a few more years of wandering and growing poverty, until a chance visit to Spurgeon's Tabernacle revolutionised her life. She decided to abandon the stage and to devote the remainder of her days to penitence and good works. But the end was already near. In New York, where she had gone to lecture, she was struck down by paralysis, and a few weeks before she had seen her forty-second birthday she died in a charitable institution, joining fervently in the prayers of the clergyman who was summoned to her death-bed.
"When she was near the end, and could not speak," the clergyman says, "I asked her to let me know by a sign whether she was at peace. She fixed her eyes on mine and nodded affirmatively. I do not think I ever saw deeper penitence and humility than in this poor woman."
Ludwig I., King of Bavaria.
Catherine the Second of Russia.
CATHERINE THE SECOND OF RUSSIA.
When Sophie Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst was romping on the ramparts or in the streets of Stettin with burghers' children for playmates, he would have been a bold prophet who would have predicted that one day she would be the most splendid figure among Europe's sovereigns, "the only great man in Europe," according to Voltaire, "an angel before whom all men should be silent"; and that, while dazzling Europe by her statesmanship and learning, she would afford more material for scandal than any woman, except perhaps Christina of Sweden, who ever wore a crown.
There is much, it is true, to be said in extenuation of the weakness that has left such a stain on the memory of Catherine II. of Russia. Equipped far beyond most women with the beauty and charms that fascinate men, and craving more than most of her sex the love of man, she was mated when little more than a child to the most degenerate Prince in all Europe.
The Grand Duke Peter, heir to the Russian throne, who at sixteen took to wife the girl-Princessof Anhalt-Zerbst, was already an expert in almost every vice. Imbecile in mind, he found his chief pleasure in the company of the most degraded. He rarely went to bed sober—in fact, his bride's first sight of him was when he was drunk, at the age of ten. He was, too, "a liar and a coward, vicious and violent; pale, sickly, and uncomely—a crooked soul in a prematurely ravaged body."
Such was the Grand Duke Peter, to whom the high-spirited, beautiful Princess Sophie (thenceforth to be known as "Catherine") was tied for life one day in the year 1744—a youth the very sight of whom repelled her, while his vices filled her with loathing. Add to this revolting union the fact that she found herself under the despotic rule of the Empress Elizabeth, who made no concealment of her hatred and jealousy of the fair young Princess, surrounded her with spies, and treated her as a rebellious child, to be checked and bullied at every turn—and it is not difficult to understand the spirit of recklessness and defiance that was soon roused in Catherine's breast.
There was at the Russian Court no lack of temptation to indulge this spirit of revolt to the full. The young German beauty, mated to worse than a clown, soon had her Court of admirers to pour flatteries into her dainty ears, and she would perhaps have been less than a woman if she had not eagerly drunk them in. She had no need of anyone to tell her that she was fair. "I know I am beautiful as the day," she once exclaimed, as she looked at her mirrored reflection in her first ball finery at St Petersburg, with ared rose in her glorious hair; and the mirror told no flattering tale.
See the picture Poniatowski, one of her earliest and most ardent slaves, paints of the young Grand Duchess. "With her black hair she had a dazzling whiteness of skin, a vivid colour, large blue eyes prominent and eloquent, black and long eyebrows, a Greek nose, a mouth that looked made for kissing, a slight, rather tall figure, a carriage that was lively, yet full of nobility, a pleasing voice, and a laugh as merry as the humour through which she could pass with ease from the most playful and childish amusements to the most fatiguing mathematical calculations."
With the brain, even in those early years, of a clever man, she was essentially a woman, with all a woman's passion for the admiration and love of men; and one cannot wonder, however much one may deplore, that while her imbecile husband was guzzling with common soldiers, or playing with his toys and tin cannon in bed, vacuous smiles on his face, his beautiful bride should find her own pleasures in the homage of a Soltykoff, a Poniatowski, an Orloff, or any other of the legion of lovers who in quick succession took her fancy.
The first among her admirers to capture her fancy was Sergius Soltykoff, her chamberlain, high-born, "beautiful as the day," polished courtier, supple-tongued wooer, to whom the Grand Duchess gave the heart her husband spurned. But Soltykoff's reign was short; the fickle Princess, ever seeking fresh conquests, wearied of him as of all her loversin turn, and his place was taken within a year by Stanislas Poniatowski, a fascinating young Pole, who returned to St Petersburg with a reputation of gallantry won in almost every Court of Europe.
Poniatowski had not perhaps the physical perfections of his dethroned predecessor, but he had the well-stored brain that made an even more potent appeal to Catherine. He could talk "like an angel" on every subject that appealed to her, from art to philosophy; and he had, moreover, a magnetic charm of manner which few women could resist.
Such a lover was, indeed, after her heart, for he brought romance and adventure to his wooing; and whether he found his way to her boudoir disguised as a ladies' tailor or as one of the Grand Duke's musicians, or made open love to her under the very nose of her courtiers, he played his rôle of lover to admiration. Once Peter, in jealous mood, threatened to run his rival through with his sword, and, in his rage, "went into his wife's bedroom and pulled her out of bed without leaving her time to dress." An hour later his anger had changed to an amused complaisance, and he was supping with the culprits, and with boisterous laughter was drinking their healths.
When at last a political storm drove Poniatowski from Russia, Catherine, who never forgot a banished lover, secured for him the crown of Poland.
Thus the favourites come and go, each supreme for a time, each inevitably packed off to give place to a successor. With Poniatowski away in Poland, Catherine cast her eyes round her Court to find athird favourite, and her choice was soon made, for of all her army of admirers there was one who fully satisfied her ideal of handsome manhood.
Of the five Orloff brothers, each a Goliath in stature and a Hercules in strength, the handsomest was Gregory, "the giant with the face of an angel." Towering head and shoulders over most of his fellow-courtiers, with knotted muscles which could fell an ox or crush a horse-shoe with the closing of a hand, Gregory Orloff was reputed the bravest man in Russia, as he was the idol of his soldiers. He was also a notorious gambler and drinker and the hero of countless love adventures.
No greater contrast could be possible than between this dare-devil son of Anak and the cultured, almost feminine Poniatowski; but Catherine loved, above all things, variety, and here it was in startling abundance. Nor was her new lover any the less desirable because he was some years younger than herself, or that his grandfather had been a common soldier in the army of Peter the Great.
And Gregory Orloff proved himself as bold in wooing as he was brave in war. For him there was no stealing up back stairs, no masquerading in disguises. He was the elect favourite of the future Empress of Russia, and all the world should know it. He was inseparable from his mistress, and paid his court to her under the eyes of her husband; while Catherine, thus emboldened, made as little concealment of her partiality.
But troublous days were coming to break the idyll of their love. The Empress Elizabeth, as wasinevitable, at last drank herself to death, and her nephew Peter, now a besotted imbecile of thirty-four, put on the Imperial robes, and was free to indulge his madness without restraint. The first use he made of his freedom was to subject his wife to every insult and humiliation his debased brain could suggest. He flaunted his amours and vices before her, taunted her in public with her own indiscretions, and shouted in his cups that he would divorce her.
Not content with these outrages on his Empress, he lost no opportunity of disgusting his subjects and driving his soldiers to the verge of mutiny. Such an intolerable state of things could only have one issue. The Emperor was undoubtedly mad; the Emperor must go.
Over thecoup d'étatwhich followed we must pass hurriedly—the conspiracy of Catherine and the Orloffs, the eager response of the army which flocked to the Empress, "kissing me, embracing my hands, my feet, my dress, and calling me their saviour"; the marching of the insurgent troops to Oranienbaum, with Catherine, astride on horseback, at their head; and Peter's craven submission, when he crawled on his knees to his wife, with whimpering and tears, begging her to allow him to keep "his mistress, his dog, his negro, and his violin."
The Emperor was safe behind barred doors at Mopsa; Catherine was now Empress in fact as well as name. Three weeks later Peter was dead; was he done to death by Catherine's orders? To thisday none can say with certainty. The story of this tragedy as told by Castèra makes gruesome reading.
One day Alexis Orloff and Teplof appeared at Mopsa to announce to the deposed sovereign his approaching deliverance and to ask a dinner of him. Glasses and brandy were ordered, and while Teplof was amusing the Tsar, Orloff filled the glasses, adding poison to one of them.
"The Tsar, suspecting no harm, took the poison and swallowed it. He was soon seized with agonising pains. He screamed aloud for milk, but the two monsters again presented poison to him and forced him to take it. When the Tsar's valet bravely interposed he was hurled from the room. In the midst of the tumult there entered Prince Baratinski, who commanded the Guard. Orloff, who had already thrown down the Tsar, pressed upon his chest with his own knees, holding him fast at the same time by the throat. Baratinski and Teplof then passed a table-napkin with a sliding knot round his neck, and the murderers accomplished the work of death by strangling him."
Such is the story as it has come down to us, and as it was believed in Russia at the time. That Gregory Orloff was innocent of a crime in which his own brother played a leading part is as little to be credited as that Catherine herself was in ignorance of the design on her husband's life. But, however this may be, we are told that when the news of her husband's death was brought to the Empress at a banquet, she was to all appearance overcome with horror and grief. She left the table with streamingeyes and spent the next few days in unapproachable solitude in her rooms.
Thus at last Catherine was free both from the tyranny of Elizabeth and from the brutality of her bestial husband. She was sole sovereign of all the Russias, at liberty to indulge any caprice that entered her versatile brain. That her subjects, almost to a man, regarded her with horror as her husband's murderer, that this detestation was shared by the army that had put her on the throne, and by the nobles who had been her slaves, troubled her little. She was mistress of her fate, and strong enough (as indeed she proved) to hold, with a firm grasp, the sceptre she had won.
High as Gregory Orloff had stood in her favour before she came to her crown, his position was now more splendid and secure. She showered her favours on him with prodigal hand. Lands and jewels and gold were squandered on her "First Favourite"—the official designation she invented for him; and he wore on his broad chest her miniature in a blazing oval of diamonds, the crowning mark of her approval. And to his brothers she was almost equally generous, for in a few years of her ascendancy the Orloffs were enriched by vast estates on which forty-five thousand serfs toiled, by palaces, and by gold to the amount of seventeen million roubles. Such it was to be in the good books of Catherine II., Empress of Russia.
With riches and power, Gregory's ambition grew until he dreamt of sitting on the throne itself by Catherine's side; and in her foolish infatuation eventhis prize might have been his, had not wiser counsels come to her rescue. "The Empress," said Panine to her, "can do what she likes; but Madame Orloff can never be Empress of Russia." And thus Gregory's greatest ambition was happily nipped in the bud.
The man who had played his cards with such skill and discretion in the early days of his love-making had now, his head swollen by pride and power, grown reckless. If he could not be Emperor in name, he would at least wield the sceptre. The woman to whom he owed all was, he thought, but a puppet in his hands, as ready to do his bidding as any of his minions. But through all her dallying Catherine's smiles masked an iron will. In heart she was a woman; in brain and will-power, a man. And Orloff, like many another favourite, was to learn the lesson to his cost.
The time came when she could no longer tolerate his airs and assumptions. There was only one Empress, but lovers were plentiful, and she already had an eye on his successor. And thus it was that one day the swollen Orloff was sent on a diplomatic mission to arrange peace between Russia and Turkey. When she bade him good-bye she called him her "angel of peace," but she knew that it was her angel's farewell to his paradise.
How the Ambassador, instead of making peace, stirred up the embers of war into fresh flame is a matter of history. But he was not long left to work such mad mischief. While he was swaggering at a Jassy fête, in a costume ablaze with diamonds wortha million roubles, news came to him of a good-looking young lieutenant who was not only installed in his place by Catherine's side, but was actually occupying his own apartments. Within an hour he was racing back to St Petersburg, resting neither night nor day until he had covered the thousand leagues that separated him from the capital.
Before, however, his sweating horses could enter it, he was stopped by Catherine's emissaries and ordered to repair to the Imperial Palace at Gatshina. And then he realised that his sun had indeed come to its setting. His honours were soon stripped from him, and although he was allowed to keep his lands, his gold and jewels, the spoils of Cupid, the diamond-framed miniature, was taken away to adorn the breast of his successor, the lieutenant.
Under this cloud of disfavour Orloff conducted himself with such resignation—none knew better than he how futile it was to fight—that Catherine, before many months had passed, not only recalled him to Court, but secured for him a Princedom of the Holy Empire. "As for Prince Gregory," she said amiably, "he is free to go or stay, to hunt, to drink, or to gamble. I intend to live according to my own pleasure, and in entire independence."
After a tragically brief wedded life with a beautiful girl-cousin, who died of consumption, Orloff returned to St Petersburg to spend the last few months of his life, "broken-hearted and mad." And to his last hour his clouded brain was tortured with visions of the "avenging shade of the murdered Peter."
It was to all seeming a strange whim that caused Cardinal Mazarin, one day in the year 1653, to summon his nieces, daughters of his sister, Hieronyme Mancini, from their obscurity in Italy to bask in the sunshine of his splendours in Paris.
At the time of this odd caprice, Richelieu's crafty successor had reached the zenith of his power. His was the most potent and splendid figure in all Europe that did not wear a crown. He was the avowed favourite and lover of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, to whose vanity he had paid such skilful court—indeed it was common rumour that she had actually given him her hand in secret marriage. The boy-King, Louis XIV., was a puppet in his strong hands. He was, in fact, the dictator of France, whose smiles the greatest courtiers tried to win, and before whose frowns they trembled.
In contrast to such magnificence, his sister, Madame Mancini, was the wife of a petty Italian baron, who was struggling to bring up her five daughters on a pathetically scanty purse—as far removed from her magnificent brother as a moth from a star. There was, on the face of things, everyreason why the great and all-powerful Cardinal should leave his nieces to their genteel poverty; and we can imagine both the astonishment and delight with which Madame Mancini received the summons to Paris which meant such a revolution in life for her and her daughters.
If the Mancini girls had no heritage of money, they had at least the dower of beauty. Each of the five gave promise of a rare loveliness—with the solitary exception of Marie, Madame's third daughter, who at fourteen was singularly unattractive even for that awkward age. Tall, thin, and angular, without a vestige of grace either of figure or movement, she had a sallow face out of which two great black eyes looked gloomily, and a mouth wide and thin-lipped. She was, in addition, shy and slow-witted to the verge of stupidity. Marie, in fact, was quite hopeless, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, and for this reason an object of dislike and resentment to her mother.
Certainly, said Madame, Marie must be left behind. Her other daughters would be a source of pride to their uncle; he could secure great matches for them, but Marie—pah! she would bring discredit on the whole family. And so it was decided in conclave that the "ugly duckling" should be left in a nunnery—the only fit place for her. But Marie happily had a spirit of her own. She would not be left behind, she declared; and if she must go to a nunnery, why there were nunneries in plenty in France to which they could send her. And Marie had her way.
She was not, however, to escape the cloister after all, for to a Paris nunnery she was consigned when her Cardinal uncle had set eyes on her. "Let her have a year or two there," was his verdict, "and, who knows, she may blossom into a beauty yet. At any rate she can put on flesh and not be the scarecrow she is." And thus, while her more favoured sisters were revelling in the gaieties of Court life, Marie was sent to tell her beads and to spend Spartan days among the nuns.
Nearly two years passed before Mazarin expressed a wish to see his ugly niece again; and it was indeed a very different Marie who now made her curtsy to him. Gone were the angular figure, the awkward movements, the sallow face, the slow wits. Time and the healthy life of the cloisters had done their work well. What the Cardinal now saw was a girl of seventeen, of exquisitely modelled figure, graceful and self-possessed; a face piquant and full of animation, illuminated by a pair of glorious dark eyes, and with a dazzling smile which revealed the prettiest teeth in France. Above all, and what delighted the Cardinal most, she had now a sprightly wit, and a quite brilliant gift of conversation. It was thus a smiling and gratified Cardinal who gave greeting to his niece, now as fair as her sisters and more fascinating than any of them. There was no doubt that he could find a high-placed husband for her, and thus—for this was, in fact, his motive for rescuing his pretty nieces from their obscurity—make his position secure by powerful family alliances.
It was not long before Mazarin fixed on a suitorin the person of Armande de la Porte, son of the Marquis de la Meilleraye, one of the most powerful nobles in France. But alas for his scheming! Armande's heart had already been caught while Marie was reciting her matins and vespers: He had lost it utterly to her beautiful sister, Hortense; he vowed that he would marry no other, and that if Hortense could not be his wife he would prefer to die. Thus Marie was rescued from a union which brought her sister so much misery in later years, and for a time she was condemned to spend unhappy months with her mother at the Louvre.
To this period of her life Marie Mancini could never look back without a shudder. "My mother," she says, "who, I think, had always hated me, was more unbearable than ever. She treated me, although I was no longer ugly, with the utmost aversion and cruelty. My sisters went to Court and were fussed and fêted. I was kept always at home, in our miserable lodgings, an unhappy Cinderella."
But Fortune did not long hide his face from Cinderella. Her "Prince Charming" was coming—in the guise of the handsome young King, Louis XIV. himself. It was one day while visiting Madame Mancini in her lodgings at the Louvre that Louis first saw the girl who was to play such havoc with his heart; and at the first sight of those melting dark eyes and that intoxicating smile he was undone. He came again and again—always under the pretext of visiting Madame, and happy beyond expression if he could exchange a few words with her daughter, Marie; until he soon counted a day worse than lostthat did not bring him the stolen sweetness of a meeting.
When, a few weeks later, Madame Mancini died, and Marie was recalled to Court by her uncle, her life was completely changed for her. Louis had now abundant opportunities of seeking her side; and excellent use he made of them. The two young people were inseparable, much to the alarm of the Cardinal and Madame Mère, the Queen. The young King was never happy out of her sight; he danced with her (and none could dance more divinely than Marie); he listened as she sang to him with a voice whose sweetness thrilled him; they read the same books together in blissful solitude; she taught him her native Italian, and entranced him by the brilliance of her wit; and when, after a slight illness, he heard of her anxious inquiries and her tears of sympathy, his conquest was complete. He vowed that she and no other should be his wife and Queen of France.
But these halcyon days were not to last long. It was no part of Mazarin's scheming that a niece of his should sit on the throne. The prospect was dazzling, it is true, but it would inevitably mean his own downfall, so strongly would such an alliance be resented by friends as well as enemies; and Anne of Austria was as little in the mood to be deposed by such an obscure person as the "Mancini girl." Thus it was that Queen and Cardinal joined hands to nip the young romance in the bud.
A Royal bride must be found for Louis, and that quickly; and negotiations were soon on foot tosecure as his wife Margaret, Princess of Savoy. In vain did the boy-King storm and protest; equally futile were Marie's tearful pleadings to her uncle. The fiat had gone forth. Louis must have a Royal bride; and she was already about to leave Italy on her bridal progress to France.
It was, we may be sure, with a heavy heart that Marie joined the cavalcade which, with its gorgeous procession of equipages, its gaily mounted courtiers, and its brave escort of soldiery, swept out of Paris on its stately progress to Lyons, to meet the Queen-to-be. But there was no escape from the humiliation, for she must accompany Anne of Austria, as one of her retinue of maids-of-honour. Arrived too soon at Lyons, Louis rides on to give first greeting to his bride, who is now within a day's journey; and returns with a smiling face to announce to his mother that he finds the Princess pleasing to his eye, and to describe, with boyish enthusiasm, her grace and graciousness, her magnificent eyes, her beautiful hair, and the delicate olive of her complexion, while Marie's heart sinks at the recital. Could this be the lover who, but a few days ago, had been at her feet, vowing that she was the only bride in all the world for him?
When he seeks her side and shamefacedly makes excuses for his seeming recreancy, she bids him marry his "ugly bride" in accents of scorn, and then bursts into tears, which she only consents to wipe away when he declares that his heart will always be hers and that he will never marry the Italian Princess.
But Margaret of Savoy was not after all to be Queen of France. She was, as it proved, merely a pawn in the Cardinal's deep game. It was a Spanish alliance that he sought for his young King; and when, at the eleventh hour, an ambassador came hurriedly to Lyons to offer the Infanta's hand, the Savoy Duke and his sister, the Princess, had perforce to return to Italy "empty-handed."
There was at least a time of respite now for Louis and Marie, and as they rode back to Paris, side by side, chatting gaily and exchanging sweet confidences, the sun once more shone on the happiest young people in all France. Then followed a period of blissful days, of dances and fêtes, in brilliant succession, in which the lovers were inseparable; above all, of long rambles together, when, "the world forgetting," they could live in the happy present, whatever the future might have in store for them.
Meanwhile the negotiations for the Spanish marriage were ripening fast. Louis and Marie again appeal, first to the Cardinal, then to the Queen, to sanction their union, but to no purpose; both are inflexible. Their foolish romance must come to an end. As a last resource Marie flies to the King, with tender pleadings and tears, begging him not to desert her; to which he answers that no power on earth shall make him wed the Infanta. "You alone," he swears, "shall wear the crown of Queen"; and in token of his love he buys for her the pearls that were the most treasured belongings of the exiled Stuart Queen, Henrietta Maria. The lovers partin tears, and the following day Marie receives orders to leave Paris and to retire to La Rochelle.
At every stage of her journey she was overtaken by messengers bearing letters from Louis, full of love and protestations of unflinching loyalty; and when Louis moved with his Court to Bayonne, the lovers met once more to mingle their tears. But Louis, ever fickle, was already wavering again. "If I must marry the Infanta," he said, "I suppose I must. But I shall never love any but you."
Marie now realised that this was to be the end. In face of a lover so weak, and a fate so inflexible, what could she do but submit? And it was with a proud but breaking heart that she wrote a few days later to tell Louis that she wished him not to write to her again and that she would not answer his letters. One June day news came to her that her lover was married and that "he was very much in love with the Infanta"; and even her pride, crushed as it was, could not restrain her from writing to her sister, Hortense, "Say everything you can that is horrid about him. Point out all his faults to me, that I may find relief for my aching heart." When, a few months later, Marie saw the King again, he received her almost as a stranger, and had the bad taste to sing the praises of his Queen.
But Marie Mancini was the last girl in all France to wed herself long to grief or an outraged vanity. There were other lovers by the score among whom she could pick and choose. She was more lovely now than when the recreant Louis first succumbed to her charms—with a ripened witchery of black eyes,red lips, the flash of pearly teeth revealed by every dazzling smile, with glorious black hair, the grace of a fawn, and a "voluptuous fascination" which no man could resist.
Prince Charles of Lorraine was her veriest slave, but Mazarin would have none of him. Prince Colonna, Grand Constable of Naples, was more fortunate when he in turn came a-wooing. He bore the proudest name in Italy, and he had wealth, good-looks, and high connections to lend a glamour to his birth. The Cardinal smiled on his suit, and Marie, since she had no heart to give, willingly gave her hand.
Louis himself graced the wedding with his presence; and we are told, as the white-faced bride "said the 'yes' which was to bind her to a stranger, her eyes, with an indescribable expression, sought those of the King, who turned pale as he met them."
Over the rest of Marie Mancini's chequered life we must hasten. After a few years of wedded life with her Italian Prince, "Colonna's early passion for his beautiful wife was succeeded by a distaste amounting to hatred. He disgusted her with his amours; and when she ventured to protest against his infidelity, he tried to poison her." This crowning outrage determined Marie to fly, and, in company with her sister, Hortense, who had fled to her from the brutality of her own husband, she made her escape one dark night to Civita Vecchia, where a boat was awaiting the runaways.
Hotly pursued on land and sea, narrowly escaping shipwreck, braving hardships, hunger, and hourlydanger of capture, the fugitives at last reached Marseilles where Marie (Hortense now seeking a refuge in Savoy) began those years of wandering and adventure, the story of which outstrips fiction.
Now we find her seeking asylum at convents from Aix to Madrid; now queening it at the Court of Savoy, with Duke Charles Emmanuel for lover; now she is dazzling Madrid with the Almirante of Castille and many another high-placed worshipper dancing attendance on her; and now she is in Rome, turning the heads of grave cardinals with her witcheries. Sometimes penniless and friendless, at others lapped in luxury; but carrying everywhere in her bosom the English pearls, the last gift of her false and frail Louis.
Thus, through the long, troubled years, until old-age crept on her, the Cardinal's niece wandered, a fugitive, over the face of Europe, alternately caressed and buffeted by fortune, until "at long last" the end came and brought peace with it. As she lay dying in the house of a good Samaritan at Pisa, with no other hand to minister to her, she called for pen and paper, and with failing hand wrote her own epitaph, surely the most tragic ever penned—"Marie Mancini Colonna—Dust and Ashes."