Mélusine—Cinq-Mars—An Ill-advised Marriage—The Conspiracy—The Revenge—The Scaffold—A Cry from the Bastille—The Lady’s Man—“The Cardinal’s Hangman”—Finis—Louis’s Evensong—A Little Oversight—The King’s Nightcap—Mazarin—Ninon’s Hero.
Some few miles from Tours, along the banks of the Loire, at one of its most beautiful parts above Saumur, stands the little town of St Médard, better known as Cinq-Mars. A ruined castle crowns the heights above. It was the ancestral home of the d’Effiats, a noble family of long lineage; and before their coming, tradition told of its being the dwelling of Mélusine thefée, the beautiful snake-woman, who was the wife of Raymond, Count de Lusignan, placed under the terrible spell of transformation into a snake, from the waist downwards, every seventh night, for having immured her father in a rock-bound cavern, for cruelty to her mother. Disobeying Mélusine’s command, never to intrude upon her on those fatal Saturday nights, Raymond discovered the appalling reason for it, and in his rage cast her forth. The despairing cry that broke from her then, is still to be heard of stormy nights above the river; and it may be, mingles with the lamentations of the mourners over the deed of blood which was enacted in after centuries when Louis the Just was king.
The young lord of the castle then, was theson of the Maréchal Cinq-Mars. He was scarcely more than a youth; for he was but nineteen when Richelieu introduced him at Court, loading him with favours, causing him to be made the royal master of the horse, and otherwise specially recommending him to the notice of Louis, who conceived so vast a liking for him, that it was even touched with some real warmth; and Cinq-Mars, handsome, gallant, distinguished, brave, and not a little spoiled by the splendour of his existence, but amiable and generous-hearted, beloved by his friends—of whom a dear one was de Thou, the son of the great historian—basked in all the full sunshine of his young life. The pale, stern cardinal, attenuated by bodily suffering, and more than ever soured by care, was hardly likely to win much love from a gay butterfly of a creature like the young marquis, and before long Cinq-Mars came to know from Louis’s own lips, that he privately hated Richelieu, a hate nourished by his deadly fear of him.
Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars had cast amorous eyes upon Marion Delorme, the cardinal’s protégée. Marion, still beautiful, though no longer young—being in fact double the age of this her latest admirer—returned his passionate affection, and, dazzled by the prospect of being his wife—for his infatuation impelled him to seek her as such—she braved the consequences of her protector’s wrath, and the two were secretly married. Richelieu, from whom nothing could long be hidden, was furious; he had planned a brilliant alliance forthe king’s young favourite, who had shortly before leagued himself with the queen’s party; Gaston d’Orléans, the Duc de Bouillon—burning to supplant the cardinal-minister—and others—and they entered into correspondence with Olivarez, the Spanish prime-minister, which resulted in a treaty of alliance between him and the conspiring enemies of the cardinal. Louis had for some time past treated Richelieu with coldness; and Richelieu, suspecting the cause of it, left Paris, and went to Tarascon, to lie in wait till his spies were able to place him in full possession of every detail of the plot, and of a copy of the treaty. Then, disabled by illness and infirmity, he desired to see the king, who travelled for the interview from Perpignan, where he was then staying, and all the thunder of the cardinal’s reproaches and wrath was flung upon him. Apparently with justice, Louis succeeded in justifying himself, on the plea of ignorance, and the king departed again, enjoining everybody to obedience to Richelieu as if he were himself.
After their marriage, Marion and Cinq-Mars went to the castle on the Loire, where they spent a brief period of delight. Only the servants of the household were there, and Cinq-Mars was their lord. They showed willing, even delighted, obedience to all his behests; but the marquise his mother returned home somewhat unexpectedly, and her anger at the stolen marriage equalled in its way that of Richelieu himself. Doubtless this fomented the affair to a yet speedier issue, andCinq-Mars was arrested, and along with him, his friend de Thou, who was entirely innocent of complicity in the plot. The two were taken into the presence of Richelieu at Tarascon (a place old stories tell named after one Tarasque, “a fearful dragon who infested the borders of the Rhone, preying upon human flesh, to the universal terror and disturbance”), and hence his dying Eminence—for death was very near—commanded them to be placed, tied and bound, in a boat fastened behind his own, in which he was returning to Paris by the waterway of the Rhone, as far as Lyons. There, being disembarked, the two young victims were led immediately to a hastily-erected scaffold, and there bravely they met their fate by the headsman’s axe—de Thou guilty of refusing to betray his friend, and Cinq-Mars’ crime not proved, suffering mainly from the cowardly depositions laid against him by the Duke of Orléans. Then Richelieu continued his triumphal way to Paris, where in his magnificent palace he died; and during his last agonies, the king was seen to smile at what he called “Death’s master-stroke of policy.”
There was a letter, written three days before the cardinal’s death, found among his papers. It was dated from the Bastille, and it consisted of one bitter reproach of his injustice to the writer, in keeping him immured in the terrible place for eleven years. It was a letter of some length, and an eloquently written appeal for release. “There is a time, my lord,” it began, “when man ceasesto be barbarous and unjust; it is when his approaching dissolution compels him to descend into the gloom of his conscience, and to deplore the cares, griefs, pains and misfortunes which he has caused to his fellow-creatures. Had I,” the unhappy man, whose name was Dessault, goes on to say, “performed your order, it would have condemned my soul to eternal torment, and made me pass into eternity with blood-stained hands.... I implore you, my lord, order my chains to be broken before your death-hour comes,—permit yourself to be moved by the most humble prayer of a man who has ever been a loyal subject to the king.”
This letter bore date of December 1st; on December 4th, the cardinal died. It is not known whether he ever saw it. After his death, it came into the hands of those on whom the power now devolved, and Dessault, far from gaining his release, was kept in the Bastille till the year of 1692, after being a prisoner for sixty-one years. Such remnant of life as may have remained to him, is one too forlorn and dreary to contemplate.
And to this piteous appeal were added the sobs and frenzied reproaches of Marion Delorme, who found access to the death-chamber, just as the cardinal was about to receive the Viaticum.
A gentleman named de Saucourt was a slave to Ninon’s charms at this time, causing a vast amount of envy among her friends. He was a man of refinement and brilliant wit, so ravedabout by the ladies, that Benserade composed this quatrain upon him—
“Contre se fier demon voyez vous aujourd’huiFemme qui tienne?Et toutes cependant sont contentes de lui,Jusqu’ à la sienne.”
“Contre se fier demon voyez vous aujourd’huiFemme qui tienne?Et toutes cependant sont contentes de lui,Jusqu’ à la sienne.”
“Contre se fier demon voyez vous aujourd’hui
Femme qui tienne?
Et toutes cependant sont contentes de lui,
Jusqu’ à la sienne.”
Ninon, however, was then suffering great distress of mind at the terrible fate of Cinq-Mars, reproaching herself not a little for the light, thoughtless way in which she had half encouraged Marion Delorme, half warned her off from accepting the young man’s rash proposition to make her his wife; for Marion had seriously consulted her in the matter. It came to light after Cinq-Mars’ death that it was Gaston d’Orléans himself who had in his possession the original of the treaty with Olivarez, and he had had the baseness to hand this to Laffemas, the infamous procureur-general and chief tool of Richelieu, when the cardinal was bent on a man’s destruction. Laffemas earned the distinction of being called the cardinal’s hangman-in-chief. No one stretched out a finger to help the Chevalier de Jars, whom Richelieu kept in the Bastille for two years, on the charge of being in the secrets of Anne of Austria’s connections with Spain. It was in vain that de Jars produced absolute proof of his innocence, and Laffemas added insults and threats to the interrogatory he subjected him to. Under a strong guard, de Jars one Sunday obtained leave to attend Mass at St Gervais, where he knew the wretched creature would be, and as he was about to kneel at thealtar to receive the communion, de Jars, with a bound, sprang at him, seized him by hispourpoint, and dragging him down the nave of the church, flung him outside the door. “Away with thee!—away from here, cowardly hypocrite!” he cried. “Do not soil this holy place with thy foul presence,” and the poisonous reptile crawled away, while de Jars, turning to the officiating priest, said—“And you, my father, did you not know to whom you were about to give the Body of our Lord? To an iniquitous judge—another Judas—an abomination!”
Finally de Jars obtained his release, and spent his later life in peace and happiness, but not before he had been made to mount the scaffold itself. As he was about to lay his head upon the block, calmly defiant, Laffemas, who had got up the scene to terrify de Jars into a confession, approached and besought him, in consideration of the pardon he had brought him, to disclose all he knew; but he received scant satisfaction on the point, since de Jars, according to some authorities, persisted in his refusal and defiance of the monster. According to another account, the suffering and tension of mind he had endured temporarily deprived him of consciousness, and for some days he lay in a state of exhaustion, from which he only gradually recovered.
And those were but instances of the cardinal’s tyranny, and there was so little his red robe had not covered, sufficiently at all events for him to die in his bed. And the magnificent tomb, joint work of two great artists, that covers the spot where he was laid in the church of the Sorbonne, bearsthe recumbent statue of the cardinal, sustained by Religion and weeping angels.
Whether Louis, the king, shed any tears, is not specially recorded. They could hardly, in any case, have been more than of the crocodile kind; since he was so very visibly seen to smile more than once during the passing away of his great minister. In the days when Vitry relieved him of Concini by assassination, Louis thanked him warmly for the service. “Now I am king, Vitry,” he said. But it had not been for long, except in name; for he had only been free to become the slave of Richelieu, and now his own life was ebbing fast away, not, apparently, to his very great regret. Those last days were sorely troubled at the thought of his mother, who had died in exile at Cologne. He put the blame of this on Richelieu, and made all the reparation now possible, by ordering prayers throughout the kingdom for the repose of her soul. This seemed to bring him some tranquillity, of mind. He loved music, and he composed for himself aDe Profundisto be chanted when his last hour should arrive. Seated one day at the window of the Château of St Germains, he pointed out the route which was best for the funeral cortège to follow, to reach St Denis, and reminded of a turn of the road which was awkward to pass, bidding care be taken to keep the hearse well in hand.
The death of Richelieu in no way softened the strained relations and conjugal coldness between the king and queen. On the day of the child’s birth, Louis was about to leave the queen withoutbestowing the embrace customary on such occasions, until he was reminded of his omission, which only a stretch of courtesy might call forgetfulness.
The little Louis, who was in his fifth year at the time of the king’s death, does not seem greatly to have interested him or afforded him any satisfaction; while the child rather shrank from him, notably when he saw him in his night-cap. Then he broke into piercing screams of terror. This the king laid, with all her other misdeeds, at the queen’s door. He declared that she prompted the little boy to his objections.
It was a pitiable ending to a melancholy existence—inexpressibly lonely, for in those last months, Anne left him entirely to himself. Less desolate than the king, finding distraction for ennui in the society of her ladies, and the gentlemen of her own little Court, among whom Monsignor Giulio Mazarini figured ever more and more prominently.
Previously to Richelieu’s death, the handsome, fascinating Mazarin had been a constant frequenter of Ninon’sréunions; but from these he soon withdrew almost entirely, in favour of the dazzling metal to be found in the Louvre, for there it rang of ambitions, which there was every chance of finding fully satisfied. His first master-stroke was to set aside the late king’s will—which constituted a counsel of regency, himself being chief of the counsel, which he had himself recommended to Louis—making Anne regent, with himself for prime-minister. The king was dead, Louis XIV. but a small child, and for Mazarin it was“Long live the Queen!” while Ninon found ample consolation in the devotion of her splendid hero, Louis de Bourbon, the great Condé, Duc d’Enghien.
Hitherto love had been a fragile toy for her, hanging about her by the lightest of chains made to be broken. For Condé, the sentiment lay deeper, nourished by the breath of adulation surrounding him when he returned, victorious over the Spaniards, from the field of Rocroi; and she was fired to flames of admiration and of delight in his distinguished presence. Handsome, amiable, gallant, to Ninon and to France he was as a demigod.