Invalids in the rue des Tournelles—On the Battlements—“La Grande Mademoiselle”—Casting Lots—The Sacrifice—The Bag of Gold—“Get Thee to a Convent”—The Battle of the Sonnets—A Curl-paper—The Triumph and Defeat of Bacchus—A Secret Door—Cross Questions and Crooked Answers—The Youthful Autocrat.
Several of the severely wounded, under the firing of the Bastille cannon, were carried by Ninon’s desire into her house in the rue des Tournelles. Among these were the Comte de Fiesque and the Abbé d’Effiat. Both of these gentlemen were so cruelly weakened by loss of blood, that it was long before either of them was able to be removed. Fiesque had the misfortune to be married to an exceedingly disagreeable woman, cross and ill-tempered with everybody, herself included. There was no longer any affection between her and her husband, and as he made no pretence of being true to her, it was little less than a matter of course that he should find himself fascinated by the charms of his kind nurse and hostess, while the abbé was no less enthralled; and Ninon, weary of the Fronde—as in fact who was not?—resumed the old society ways of the rue des Tournelles.
It was Gondi, the bishop’s coadjutor, who laid to his singular half-devout, half-profligate soul the flattering unction that he was the author of the restored peace; and on the strength of it, heobtained the red hat he so ardently coveted, and became the Cardinal de Retz, so renowned for his romantic and adventurous career; but he did not escape the vengeance of his mortal foe Mazarin, who arrested him and confined him in the castle of Vincennes. Thence de Retz obtained removal to the Château of Nantes, a stronghold safely walled and moated round about, which appertained to his family. Some chroniclers credit it with being the scene of the crimes of the terrible Bluebeard, Gilles de Retz, Marquis de Laval. It is almost as stern and forbidding-looking as “Black Angers,” and with as long a record of interest. Its massive walls were first built into the bed of the deep-flowing Loire in the fourteenth century, and its frowning towers vividly conjure to the mind’s eye the picture of Sister Anne watching from their summits for “anybody coming.”
Its bastions and walls, and slate and granite round-towers bear the cross of Lorraine, carved on them during the wars of the League. Anne of Brittany, born within its walls, is said to have been married for the second time in its chapel—now a powder-magazine—and here, too, Henri IV. signed the Edict of Nantes, which gave to the Huguenots their religious freedom, to be so shamefully withdrawn at the instigation of the amiable Françoise d’Aubigné.
One night, while de Retz was languishing in an upper chamber of the Mercœur tower of this prison of his, a boat lay moored beneath in the shadow, and de Retz contrived that the guard andsentry of the castle should all be furnished with ample means for a carouse. It was tempting, and not one declined the generosity of his good-natured Eminence. The revellers grew sleepy and dazed; too entirely so to do more than gaze lacklustrely up at their prisoner’s red cloak and hat, blowing about in the evening breeze upon the upper walls of the battlements which he was permitted to pace for exercise. De Retz, meanwhile, who had slipped out of his vesture, and hung it there, was dropping rapidly down by a rope moored fast to the stanchions of his loophole casement in the Tour de Mercœur, into the boat which was then sped away to the shore by the oars of one of his trusty waiting friends, of whom he had scores; and in this way gained the spot upon the banks where a horse was waiting ready saddled. Springing up, de Retz bounded away on his steed, which in very short time flung him, and his shoulder was dislocated; but, the pain notwithstanding, he mounted again, and then reaching the shelter of the Château de Beaupréau, he made his way through Spain to Rome and perfect safety, until by resigning his archbishopric, which through the death of his uncle had become his, he was reconciled to the governing powers of France and returned to Paris.
Of the two most prominent leaders in the long civil contention, Condé retired to Spain, and Mademoiselle de Montpensier wandered about from château to château in Normandy, forbidden to come to Paris for several years. All idea of her marriage with Louis XIV. was extinguished on theday she fired upon the royal troops. “Very good!” exclaimed Mazarin then, “she has killed her husband.”