“In Durance Vile”—Molière’sMot—Le Malade Imaginaire—“Rogues and Vagabonds”—The passing of Molière—The narrowing Circle—Fontenelle—Lulli—Racine—The little Marquis—A tardy Pardon—The charming Widow Scarron—A Journey to the Vosges, and the Haunted Chamber.
“One story is good till another is told.” The tangle of petty vanities, lust of gold and mutual jealousies disgracing the Court of Versailles at this time, might well have dragged Ninon de L’Enclos into the hated durance ofLes Filles Répenties, at the instigation of the woman who at least was not the one to cast a stone. One fact alone was indisputable: that there she was, and as certainly more than one powerful friend at Court was sparing no endeavour to obtain her release. Among these was Molière, the man of the generous, kindly heart, who was not likely to forget the many bounteous acts and the warm sympathy Ninon had extended to him throughout his career.
And to him it mainly was that she owed her release from the convent. A representation by Molière and his company had been given at Versailles of his new play,Le Malade Imaginaire, and the king, on its conclusion, had sent for Molière in some anxiety; for it had been evident to him that the actor was himself no imaginary invalid, but suffering and exhausted with the exertion of his arduousrôleof Argan. More than once of late his understudy,Croisy, had been required to take his place; and the king expressed his sympathy and his regret that Molière should have over-fatigued himself to afford him gratification, for that his health was too precious to be trifled with.
Molière replied that he would have striven to leave his very deathbed to plead the cause he sought to win of His Majesty; and then he went on to tell of Ninon’s captivity, of which the king appeared to be ignorant. “It is, moreover, very absurd, Sire,” added Molière, “for I assure your Majesty, that Ninon is neitherfillenorrépentie.”
The king laughed at this view of the case, as did his minister Colbert, who was seated near, and Molière, not losing sight of the royal proclivity of promise-breaking, wasted not a moment in causing the order vouchsafed for Ninon’s release, to be delivered in to the Superior of theRépenties. Then a coach was sent for, the gates were opened, and Ninon was free.
Full of gratitude for the favour which she had not so much as sought of Molière, she hastened to his house. He was seated wearily in a chair, but for the moment, in her joyful excitement, she did not notice his appearance, more especially as he sprang up briskly to meet her and to take her in his arms, while her tears fell fast, assuring her that she had done him a world of good. Before she came in he owned that he had been feeling unusually ill, and was about to ask Croisy to take his place on the stage that evening; but now—“No, I will play myself,” added Molière, and his palecheeks flushed, and his eyes gathered their wonted brightness and animation. “I will beLe Malade Imaginaireonce more!”
Alas! once more. And a little while before the curtain fell for the last time on the closing interlude, the word “juro,” several times reiterated through the dialogue, came faintly on a stream of blood from his lips, and the dying Molière was borne from the stage.
It was but the fulfilment of the apprehensions of his friends. His lungs had been for some time affected, and he had broken a blood-vessel. Already half-unconscious, they conveyed him homeward to his house in the rue de Richelieu; but he fainted on the way, and he was carried into the convent of St Vincent de Paul and laid on a couch in the parlour, where, in sore distress, the good sisters tended him, for he had frequently shown them much hospitality and generous kindness, and in the arms of the two supporting him he passed away. His half-inaudible dying request was for religious consolation; but ere that came he was dead. The priest of St Eustache did not hurry to attend a stage-player—the “rogue and vagabond”—for what else in the sight of the law was this fine literary genius, great philosopher and noble-hearted man? Neither was it the fault of Monseigneur Harlayde Champvallon, Archbishop of Paris (“so notorious,” writes the poet’s great biographer, “for his gallant intrigues”) thathe was deniedChristian burial.
Molière’s young wife had not been a pattern of conjugal propriety; but she revered her husband; andin her indignation at the archbishop’s refusal, she cried—“They refuse to bury a man to whom in Greece, altars would have been erected!” and asking the Curé of Auteuil, whose views differed from the archiepiscopal ones, to accompany her to Versailles, she found her way into the king’s presence and demanded justice. “If my husband was a criminal, his crimes were sanctioned by your Majesty in person,” she said. Louis’s response was elusive, as it was apt to be in the face of difficult questions. It was, he said, an affair of the archbishop’s; but he sent secret commands to Monseigneur, which resulted in a compromise, and the body of the dead poet was interred in the cemetery of St Joseph, rue Montmartre, accompanied by two priests. But it was not first admitted into the church, for he had died, as Monseigneur said, “without the consolations of religion.”
“A ministering angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling.” Irresistibly the words of that other great dramatic genius force themselves into the record of Molière’s laying to his long rest. It was still only to be secured amid the riot of a rabble which, having got wind of the dispute in high places, assembled outside the house in the rue de Richelieu. The disgraceful uproar was quelled only by Madame Molière throwing money, to a large amount, out of window. Then the mob silenced down, and followed the simple cortège respectfully.
The widow of Molière subsequently married again; but his memory must have remained warm in her heart; for some years later, during a bitter coldwinter, she had a hundred loads of wood conveyed to the cemetery, and burned on the tomb of her husband, to warm all the poor people of the quarter. “The great heat split in two the stone, which was still to be seen cracked across the middle in the early part of the eighteenth century.”[6]The Fontaine Molière, in the rue de Richelieu, now commemorates the poet, and in the green-room of the Comédie Française are the bust, and the portrait, by the painter Coypel, of him who was practically the founder of the world-famous institution. There were countless epitaphs on Molière, generated for the most part, by the injustices done him in life as in death. The following is accounted the most noteworthy:—
“Tu réformas et la ville et la cour;Mais quelle en fut la récompense?Les Français rougiront un jourDe leur peu de reconnaissance,Il leur fallut un comédienQui mit à les polir, sa gloire et son étude.Mais Molière, a ta gloire il ne manquerait rien,Si, parmi les défauts que tu peignis si bien,Tu les avais repris de leur ingratitude.”P. Bonhours.
“Tu réformas et la ville et la cour;Mais quelle en fut la récompense?Les Français rougiront un jourDe leur peu de reconnaissance,Il leur fallut un comédienQui mit à les polir, sa gloire et son étude.Mais Molière, a ta gloire il ne manquerait rien,Si, parmi les défauts que tu peignis si bien,Tu les avais repris de leur ingratitude.”P. Bonhours.
“Tu réformas et la ville et la cour;
Mais quelle en fut la récompense?
Les Français rougiront un jour
De leur peu de reconnaissance,
Il leur fallut un comédien
Qui mit à les polir, sa gloire et son étude.
Mais Molière, a ta gloire il ne manquerait rien,
Si, parmi les défauts que tu peignis si bien,
Tu les avais repris de leur ingratitude.”
P. Bonhours.
And so the journey of her life, shadowed more and more by the dropping away into the mists of death of so many of the well-loved ones, Ninon’s own years fled on, still finding content in the society of the many friends, young and old, not gone before. Among these was Madame de la Sablière,with la Fontaine ever in attendance; Marsillac, the comrade of Ninon’s youth—now the Duc de la Rochefoucauld—with hisMaxims, which she keenly criticised, as based on the philosophy of self-love: that self only was the motive power of human thought and action; Corneille, growing old, and preferring his latest tragedy ofSurèneto the immortalCid, a preference shared by few; with him came his nephew, Fontenelle, the brilliant scholar and centenarian to be, short of a few weeks, who on his deathbed said—“My friends, I do not suffer; only I find existence a little difficult,” and who followed theviâ mediaphilosophy so closely, that he was wont to boast he never either laughed or wept. Then Ninon would tune her lute, and play the airs of the new musical conductor of the king’s orchestra, Lulli, the miller’s son, a scullion once, risen to be master of French dramatic music, who met his death so disastrously from the bungling treatment of a quack doctor. The priest who attended his last hours refused to give him the consolations of religion until he had consented to have the score of his latest opera destroyed. He consented, to the indignation of a friend who was with him. “Hush, hush!” said Lulli; “there is a fair copy of it in my drawer.”
Sometimes Racine, a neighbour now of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, would declaim passages from hisIphigénie, or Madame de la Fayette would read from her history of Henrietta of England, just then on point of completion. She and Madame Montausier were Ninon’s sincerest and best-belovedfriends. One day Madame de la Fayette asked her the cause of the coolness existing between herself and Madame de Sévigné. It was a coolness all on one side, shrugged Ninon. To be sure, she had the young Marquis de Grignan, Madame’s grandson, at her feet—as in times gone by, the Marquispère, and the Marquisgrandpèrehad sighed there. She inclined, however, to his marrying as his mother desired, all the more that, besides entertaining no overwhelming admiration for the little marquis, she was jealous of his worshipping also at the shrine of the great tragic actress, la Champmeslé, who had rendered herself so famous in theAndromaqueof Racine. The poet had introduced de Sévigné to thetragédienne, to whom Ninon conceded talent, but no beauty. The affair came to an amiable conclusion, and while a reconciliation was effected between Ninon and la Champmeslé, she concluded a peace with Madame de Sévigné, esteeming her friendship above the folly and trifling of her grandson.
To effect this treaty of peace, she was conducted to the house of Madame de Sévigné by their mutual friend, Madame de la Fayette. The physical personal attraction of the queen of epistolary correspondence has been many times recorded; but the critical Mademoiselle de L’Enclos does not allow her any great claims to it. Her nose was long and sharp, with wide nostrils, and her countenance generally had something of a pedantic stamp. Still, Ninon’s opinion, while Madame de Sévigné’s portrait of her by Mignard exists at Les Rochers, needs not to be accepted as final, and she hastensto speak of her manner, at once so dignified and courteous. She went so far, in discussing Ninon’sliaisonwith young de Sévigné, as to say that her objection was mainly rooted in the fear that her son’s attachment to her would endure and hinder his desire for marriage, for which Madame de Sévigné herself was so anxious. As things went, de Sévigné soon after took to himself a wife, and Ninon gained a friend, who became a frequent guest at theréunionsof the rue des Tournelles.
Profiting by Madame Scarron’s favour at Court, Ninon sought to obtain the king’s pardon for her old friend, St Evrémond; this was accorded. St Evrémond, however, did not return to France. He found the land of his exile a pleasant Patmos, and the Court of Whitehall, where he had won troops of friends, more congenial than Versailles, and he never crossed the Channel again, but lived his span of life, lengthy as Ninon’s; and his resting-place is among the great in Westminster Abbey.
“Carolus de Saint Denis, Duc de St Evrémond.Viro ClarissimoInter PræstantioresAloi Sui ScriptoresSemper MemorandoAmici Marantes.P. P.”
The golden link of their correspondence henceforth was alone to hold together the names of Ninon de L’Enclos and Henri de St Evrémond.
Madame Arnoul was regarded by Ninon with scant favour. She held her for a sort ofâmedamnéeof Madame Scarron, an adventuress, who played her cards well, so skilfully indeed, that her prognostications seemed more and more surely finding realisation. The Montespan’s temper did not improve with time, and the placid demeanour of the royal governess was a great attraction to Louis, who would come oftener, and stay longer in his visits to the children. Moreover, he found great charm in her conversation. Ninon, who could not remain blind to these indications, and was ready to go great lengths to bring about de Montespan’s disgrace, disliking Madame Arnoul as she did, was not above lending herself to forward any scheme to that end, even though it originated in Madame Arnoul’s fertile brain; and one sufficiently daring did presently find birth there. For the service she had rendered Ninon conjointly with Molière, in freeing her from the durance of theRépenties, Madame Arnoul had claimed of her aquid pro quoat some future time. That time, she said, when she called upon her some few weeks later, was now, for putting the finishing strokes to the downfall of the favourite—if that de Montespan could still be designated—and Ninon was to be the instrument for this. She was, in the first place, to disguise herself as a man. So far, nothing easier, said Ninon—was it not to do what she had done so many a time?—and that small matter arranged, she and Madame Arnoul set out for the frontiers, where the king was about to go with all his Court to meet Turenne, who had been waging victorious war against the combined forces of Spain andAustria, waxing ever more alarmed at, and jealous of, the successes of Louis XIV.
Arrived in Lorraine, the two ladies travelled to Nancy, reaching the town a day or so before the royal cortège arrived, Madame Arnoul having acquired the knowledge of the exact route it was to take. From Nancy, the two women proceeded to Luneville, and thence onward into Alsace, and far into the very heart of the Vosges, where they slept on the first night, in a little hamlet called Raon l’Étape. The next day they reached St Dié, a pretty little town, one day, said the terrible tradition, to be crushed by the falling of the huge precipice of l’Ormont; and to avert this catastrophe annual processions were made; but l’Ormont stands somewhat back from the area of St Dié, and if it fell, it would probably be short of the town. Moreover, what is St Dié but the gift of God?—Dieudonnéhedged about by the memory of its founder, the assassinated Childéric II.
Faring on by narrow, half-impassable roads, winding on the verge of rugged precipices, through dense pine-forests, whose close network of branches almost hid the sky, they reached St Marie-aux-Mines, a town forming part of the appanage of the Prince Palatine of Birkenfeld. It lies cradled between two pine-clad mountains, watered by innumerable limpid rivulets, meandering in all directions. There Ninon and Madame Arnoul halted for dinner, whose excellence was much below par of the natural attractions of the place; but Madame Arnoul consoled her companionwith the information that some few leagues more would bring them to their journey’s end, and the place where the mysterious proceedings indicated were to be carried out. And next day they arrived in the neighbourhood of Ribeauvillé, and Ninon found herself in a magnificent château belonging to the brother-in-law of the Prince Palatine. This personage was, however, absent, and in his place the two ladies were received by the high steward, who, Madame Arnoul afterwards explained, was the cousin of the king’svalet-de-chambre, whom she had enlisted into her project, and she handed the steward a letter from this relative.
Having perused the letter, he redoubled his courtesies; but evidently under the influence of extreme perturbation, which he strove to cover by silence. The letter he thrust into his pocket without any reference to its contents; unless a slight shrug of his shoulders meant anything.
At supper, of which he did the honours, Madame Arnoul asked him why he had not spoken of the famous Chamber of Phantoms the château contained. The steward started like a guilty thing half off his chair, and asked Madame Arnoul if indeed she entertained the dangerous fancy to—to sleep, save the mark!—in that terrible room, as his cousin, had written him. He knew his cousin, of course, to be an idiot, but—but no, the idea was not to be contemplated. Anyone insane enough to spend a night in that awful apartment would be found a strangled corpse in the morning.
Madame laughed, and replied that she did notbelieve in ghosts; that she and her husband had laid a heavy bet on the point of sleeping in the haunted chamber, and surely Monsieur would not be the cause of their losing it.
With a pale face and slow steps, the major-domo went out to order a bed, and other preparations to be made in the room, for Madame and her husband—Ninon enacting thatrôlein her masculine attire; and shortly after the two retired for the night, conducted to the door of the apartment by the pale-faced, agitated steward. No sooner were they alone than Madame Arnoul proceeded to make a close inspection of the wainscotted walls. Presently an exclamation of delight escaped her. “See here,” she cried, and slipping her hand inside the gaping jaws of a hideous, reptile-like monster, carved in the woodwork of a panel just beside the bed, she pressed a knob in its throat, and the panel slid aside into a groove, disclosing beyond a much larger chamber, luxuriously furnished, and bearing evidence of being ready prepared for an occupant—“No less a person than His Majesty, Louis XIV.,” explained Madame Arnoul, as she crossed the room towards the splendid Carrara marble chimneypiece supported at the corners by cherubim. Into the ear of one of them Madame put her finger, with the result of again sending open the panel, which, not a little to the nervous terror of Ninon, had closed behind them. The walls of this great State chamber were covered with gilded russia leather, which entirely concealed the movable panel between the rooms. Madame Arnoul laughingly began toreassure her disturbed companion. “It was quite true,” she said, “that a great many persons had been found dead from strangulation in that smaller chamber, some century earlier; but the ghosts were not responsible.” The guilt lay with the then lord of the manor, the Comte de Ribeauvillé, who, ruined by debauch and gambling, enticed rich passing travellers to spend the night in his castle, lodged them in this bedchamber, and stealing in by the secret ways during the night, strangled and robbed his unfortunate guests. While Madame Arnoul told her tale, there was a knock at the door of the apartment, and the baggage of the two travellers was brought in and deposited on the floor. When they were alone again, Madame Arnoul, opening one of the trunks, drew forth a magnificent robe of brocade, acordon bleu, and a small medallion locket, containing the portrait of Anne of Austria. Leading Ninon to a mirror, she placed the locket in her hands, and bade her compare her own countenance with that of the dead queen. A few touches here and there, a little filling out with stuffing, and Ninon would be the very double of the queen: Louis himself could not know them apart.
Some sort of light broke in upon Ninon. Was she to be the ghost of Anne of Austria? Just that; but Ninon shook her head. It would be simply profanation. “Not in such a good cause,” smiled Madame Arnoul. “Not if it had the effect of terrifying the king into dismissing Madame de Montespan. It would be a most meritorious act, that.”
Ninon’s heart rose. “But if we should be found out?” she said.
“Trust me,” smiled Madame Arnoul, and in a few moments she was sleeping the sleep that only the innocent and travel-tired know, in the great terrible bed of the haunted chamber.
At five o’clock in the morning there was a tap at the door. The steward had sent to inquire whether the night had been passed undisturbed. Madame Arnoul replied that nothing could have been more comfortable.
The Court arrived next day, and Louis XIV., greatly fatigued with the long journey, retired to bed at nine o’clock. Then began the royal toilette of Ninon. It was a work of time, for Ninon’s figure called for considerable expansion, and her brown hair needed golden tints. These details achieved with consummate art, she donned the brocade gown and embroidered satins, and crowned the work with thecordon bleu. All being ready, Madame pressed the knob in the griffin’s throat. The panel fell apart, and the deceased queen, Anne of Austria, appeared in the king’s chamber.
His Majesty was in a deep sleep, and Ninon glided majestically to the bedside, lighted by the brilliant but somewhat quivering brilliancy of a phosphorescent torch which Madame Arnoul waved through the open panel.
Then Ninon laid her cold hand, half congealed by immersion for a length of time in iced water, upon the arm of Louis, and he awoke with a start,and sitting up, stared with haggard, terrified gaze at the apparition.
“My mother!—my mother!” he gasped, in fear-suffocated tones.
Laying her finger on her lips, Ninon placed on the table, beside the bed, a paper, and pointing down on it, with a terrible frown on her brows, she glided backwards till she reached the panel, where she was lost in the gloom of the night, as Madame Arnoul extinguished the torch.
It was a hazardous game, and Ninon was half-dead with terror at its conclusion. Louis was, if possible, still more terrified; and as the two women stood listening in the Chamber of the Phantoms, they heard through the not quite closed panel the voice of their accomplice, Louis’svalet-de-chambre, inquiring in agitated tones what ailed him.
The king could only articulate a command for a light, and by it he read the terrible warning against his courses of life, written by Madame Arnoul, who had feared that Louis would detect the fraud if Ninon had spoken her message. The forgery was perfect in its imitation of the queen’s handwriting, a piece of which Madame Arnoul had contrived to procure, and it ran as follows:—
“Sire,—Heaven is wrath at your disorderly life. Two mistresses, publicly acknowledged, shed on your kingdom a scandal which must be put an end to; above all, that one which violates the vows of marriage, and renders you guilty of twofold adultery. Heaven has permitted me to communicate this to you myself. This paper, which Ileave in your hands, I beg you to read, my son; weigh well each word; it will prove to you, when I have disappeared, that you have not been the victim of an illusion. Repent, Sire, and do not force the dead to leave their tombs any more.Anne of Austria.”
“Sire,—Heaven is wrath at your disorderly life. Two mistresses, publicly acknowledged, shed on your kingdom a scandal which must be put an end to; above all, that one which violates the vows of marriage, and renders you guilty of twofold adultery. Heaven has permitted me to communicate this to you myself. This paper, which Ileave in your hands, I beg you to read, my son; weigh well each word; it will prove to you, when I have disappeared, that you have not been the victim of an illusion. Repent, Sire, and do not force the dead to leave their tombs any more.
Anne of Austria.”
Ninon did not close an eye all night. What if returning sense brought any suspicion of the deception into Louis’s mind? He would order the adjoining rooms to be searched, and those lodged in them; and if the deceased queen’s attire should be found in the valises of Madame Arnoul—Ah! it was terrible to think of! And no sooner day broke, than the two packed up their baggage, and cleared away from the Château of Ribeauvillé, not very easy in their minds till they were safe again in Paris, where they had not been especially missed during the few days’ absence, and they preserved a golden silence upon their romantic adventure in the far-off Vosges.