Réunions—The Scarrons—The Fête at Vaux—The Little Old Man in the Dressing-gown—Louise de la Vallière—How the Mice Play when the Cat’s Away—“Pauvre Scarron”—An Atrocious Crime.
The return of St Evrémond brought about the restoration of the old pleasant Monday and Fridayréunionsof the rue des Tournelles—whose regularity so many untoward events had greatly and for so long interfered with.
Ninon could afford to dispense with the less interesting society of the Louvre, where, except for Madame de Choisy’s friendship, no very cordial hand had ever been extended to her; while the cultured, refined Bohemianism of her salon was probably more acceptable to many of her distinguished friends. They at all events gathered there numerously. Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld, ever faithful to the beautiful Duchesse de Longueville; Condé; the brilliant society doctor of his day and memoir writer, Guy Patin; Monsieur de la Châtre, also a chronicler of his period; Monsieur de Villarceaux, Corneille, whose tragedy ofŒdipusbrought him back in high-heaped measure the success which had waned since the production ofThe Cid, so greatly that he had nearly lost heart for dramatic work; Molière—these two the brightest and best-beloved stars of Ninon’s firmament. Monsieur Voiture was now no more. His empty niche was filled by Boileau, who introducedto her his young friend, Racine. Occasionally, by kind permission only of Madame de la Sablière, came la Fontaine. Among the ladies of her company were Madame de la Fayette, the authoress ofZaïdeand of thePrincesse de Clèves; Madame Deshoulières, called “the French Calliope”; and, as healing Time’s wings now and again bring, it was Molière himself who effected pleasant relations once more with Julie de Rambouillet, now Duchesse de Montausier; Madeleine de Scudéri, the distinguishedprécieuse, held aloof.
On Wednesdays the Scarrons received their friends, most of those the same as Ninon’s. Françoise had now long been the wife of Scarron, and his wit and her beauty attracted a numerous company. The brother of Françoise had not mended his ways. He was still the ne’er-do-well result of his miserable bringing up; yet there was something not to dislike, even something of a soul of good in d’Aubigné’s evil. The poor crippled poet and his wife were happy in their union. Scarron had indeed but two faults to find in his Françoise—one of them to wit, that she devoted herself too closely to him, at the sacrifice of health and spirits. She had copied all hisRoman Comiquefor him in her beautiful handwriting, and Scarron, noting that she looked pale and fatigued, begged Ninon to take her about a little with her into the gaieties of life.
Scarron’s chronic ailments had not affected his appetite; possibly amusement being necessarily very restricted for him, his naturally gourmand proclivities had increased. This was to such anextent, that his wife went ever in fear of his indigestions, and when he suggested that she would be so much better for occasional absences from home, Ninon did not ascribe it to pure and simple anxiety for Françoise, but also to his seizing a better chance for eating three times as much as was good for him. Her vigilance in this particular was the other defect he perceived in her. The desired opportunity, however, soon presented itself.
Monsieur Fouquet, the powerful superintendent of finance, was a friend of Ninon—that and nothing more—and one day he confided to her that he had fallen in love with the daughter of themaître d’hôtelof the Duc d’Orléans, and desired to ask her hand in marriage. He hoped, in fact believed, that she was not indifferent to him; but to make certain, he asked Ninon, such an adept in the tender passion, as he said, to watch her at the great fête he was about to give at his magnificent estate at Vaux. It was to be on a superb scale. All the Court, with all the Upper Ten, were invited guests. They were to appear in masquerade costume. Ninon, holding that the good turn Monsieur Fouquet sought of her, merited his ever generous consideration, asked him to allow her to bring a lady friend with her to the fête; this favour he accorded with great pleasure, and Ninon delightedly informed Madame Scarron that she was the chosen friend. Equally delighted, Madame Scarron selected her fancy costume; it was that of a Normandy shepherdess, and confectioned with all the good taste of Françoise. The tunic was of yellow cloth, withVenice point undersleeves, her collarette was of Flemish lace, and Ninon lent her some of her diamonds wherewith to adorn her ribbon-tied crook. Ninon’s costume was composed of pearl-grey satin, trimmed with silver lace stitched with rose-coloured silk, an apron of black velvet, and a cap plumed with crimson feathers.
With many instructions to Nanon Balbien, the maid-servant, to take good care of her master, and to keep a close eye on him at meal-time, Madame Scarron drove away in the coach with Ninon to Vaux, where they duly arrived.
Le Nôtre, the royal gardener, had received orders to construct a splendid ballroom in the middle of the park, and, in the depths of winter though it was, he achieved a triumph of gorgeous magnificence. Orange trees were massed within the huge tent, and flowers of every hue were brought together from every hothouse and possible quarter, to render the scene a veritable fairyland, glowing in the thousand lamps depending from the gilded chains winding amid the sheeny foliage.
But who has not heard of that fête, the ill-omened thing that brought its lavish giver disaster? Among the guests—named indeed first on the list of the invited—was she whom Fouquet sought to honour, perhaps even for whom he organised the entertainment—Louise de la Vallière; and among the male masquers dancingvis-à-visto her, murmuring low as they met, was one habited as an old man in a dressing-gown, domino sort of cloak, who was, in sooth, but a young man, the king, Louis XIV.It was not the first dawning of their love that night at Vaux. Already, at a ball at the Louvre, Louis had given her a rose, one that was incomparable for sweet perfume and loveliness. Innocent or politically guilty, it was all one for the great superintendent of finance. He had dared to love the woman Louis loved, and the doom of Fouquet was sealed.
And the merry going out of Ninon and her friend also found a mournful coming in; for when they arrived in Paris next morning and Françoise alighted from the coach, Nanon hurried to the door to meet her. “Ah, mademoiselle—madame!” she cried, with a face wild with distress and terror, “he is dying! he is dying!—my poor master!”
“Bonte divine!how did it come about?” asked the two ladies in a breath.
Nothing more simple. The master, to begin with, immediately on the departure of Ninon and his wife for Vaux, had despatched Nanon with a note to his good-for-nothing brother-in-law. D’Aubigné, having read the note, said that it was all right, and he would come and pass the evening with Monsieur Scarron. Nanon, thus feeling herself free also to enjoy an evening out like the rest, spent it with Jean Claude, a young man cousin of hers; but when at a fairly decent hour she returned home, an appalling picture met her eyes. On the table prepared for supper, lay, or stood as might be, seven empty bottles, the bones of a capon on the empty plates, with the crumbs of two Chartres pasties, and an empty Strasburg goose pot, also well cleared, madame’s brother under the table, and MonsieurScarron lying back in his wheel-chair, waxen-white, speechless, but convulsed with a hiccough, a terrible hiccough that had never ceased all night, Nanon said.
“Fly for a doctor!” cried Ninon.
And one of grave and profoundly calm aspect appeared, and proceeded to examine his unconscious patient’s condition; then he shook his head. “He is a dead man,” he said.
“Ah, quick, Nanon! Quick to the rue de l’Arbre Sec, for Doctor Guy Patin.”
“What!” cried the doctor, with almost a yell of horror, “the foe to antimony! I would sooner see the devil himself!” and he fled; for the battle of antimony was at fierce pitch just then. As a medicinal agent it was opposed by the medical profession to such an extent, that the Parliament of Paris forbade its use; although already many of the profession were as strongly in its favour. Meanwhile Ninon sprinkled the face and hands of the sick man with cold water. He opened his eyes and recognised the two.
“Ah!” murmured he, “what a delicious supper. In this world, I fear, I shall never have another like it.”
“We have sent for Guy Patin. He will cure you.”
“Guy Patin?—yes, he is a grand creature; but, ah!”—and the hiccough, which had momentarily ceased, recommenced. “Well, people don’t die of a hiccough, I suppose,” went on Scarron—alas! for the mistake!—“but that goose, and the pasty, howexcellent they were! Take your pen, dearest Françoise—it is indigestion—yes, but one of rhymes—till Guy Patin comes. I will see what rhyming will do for me—some good, surely, for my rhymes shall be of Ninon. Take your pen, Françoise, and write.”
And as well as she could for her tears, the poor wife wrote Scarron’s swan’s-song in praise of Ninon. “Well, are they detestable?” he asked then, between the never-ceasing convulsion of hiccoughs. “No matter. I have rhymed—on my deathbed—for it is useless to deceive myself—I—I die.” One last convulsion, that shook his whole distorted frame, seized him, and he fell back dead.
Then from the depths of the room loomed a dishevelled figure. It was d’Aubigné. “Dead!” he murmured, leaning over the corpse of his boon companion. “Well, he ate—all—and I—drank all.De profundis”—and he shuffled out.
Guy Patin entered, but all was of no avail now for “le pauvreScarron,” as he called himself.
No ordinary character of a man was the first husband of Françoise d’Aubigné, the woman he so sincerely loved and admired, so disinterestedly loved, that he would, had she desired, have denied himself the happiness of living in her society—for he had offered her the choice of placing heren pensionin a convent at the expense of his own scanty incomings. Driven from his rights as a child, gifted with great wit and talent, and a generous kindliness, he was beloved by a large circle of friends. First the victim of cruel, iniquitous neglect,oftentimes his own enemy, the crosses of life never blighted the gifts of his intellect, or, it may be added, of his industry. In straitened conditions touching on absolute poverty, thegaieté du cœurof Paul Scarron never forsook him, and if he could have lived a while longer, for his own sake, as he certainly would for hers for whose future he was ever anxious—he said with that labouring dying breath, that he could not have supposed it so easy to make a joke of death.
He had composed his own epitaph long before—
“He who lies sleeping here beneath,Scant envy but great pity won,A thousand times he suffered death,Or ere his life was lost and done.Oh, Stranger, as you pass, tread light,Awaken not his slumbers deep,For this, bethink you’s the first nightThat poor Scarron is getting sleep.”
“He who lies sleeping here beneath,Scant envy but great pity won,A thousand times he suffered death,Or ere his life was lost and done.Oh, Stranger, as you pass, tread light,Awaken not his slumbers deep,For this, bethink you’s the first nightThat poor Scarron is getting sleep.”
“He who lies sleeping here beneath,
Scant envy but great pity won,
A thousand times he suffered death,
Or ere his life was lost and done.
Oh, Stranger, as you pass, tread light,
Awaken not his slumbers deep,
For this, bethink you’s the first night
That poor Scarron is getting sleep.”
A terrible event—that thrilled society, and indeed everyone, with horror—occurred in the South of France about this time. To the Court at Paris it struck especially home; inasmuch as the victim of the fiendish perpetrators of the crime was the Marquise de Castellana, at the time of her presentation at Versailles. She was then very young. She brought her husband, a grandson of the Duc de Villars, an immense fortune, and her beauty was so remarkable as to distinguish her amid the many beautiful women of the young kings Court. Louis, indeed, showed her marked attentions, and she was known as the beautiful Provençale. Very soon,however, the marquis, who was in the naval service, perished in a shipwreck; and a crowd of young and titled men flocked around the lovely young widow as suitors for her hand. Her choice fell on young Lanède, Marquis de Ganges, and for the first year or so of their married life they were very happy in their home at Avignon. Then slight disagreements arose between them. He began to yield to dissipation, while he accused her of coquetry. More than that he could not apparently bring against her. He had two brothers, the Abbé and the Chevalier de Ganges, and both these men fell deeply in love with their beautiful sister-in-law. In his capacity of a churchman, the young wife confided many of her thoughts and her affairs to the abbé. This he used as a tool to influence his brother, the marquis, as it better suited his own designs, either to ruffle his anger against her, or to smooth it. Then one day he pleaded his own passion to her. She repulsed him. The chevalier made a similar attempt, and was similarly rejected. Furious at this, they made common cause, and vowed to be revenged on her. First they attempted to poison her by putting some deadly stuff in her chocolate, but for some reason the attempt failed. It is thought that the deadly properties of the poison they used, were nullified by the milk, and she experienced no more than a passing uneasiness. Rumours of the attempt began, however, to circulate in Avignon and the neighbourhood; and the marquis proposed to his wife that they should go to his castle at Ganges to spend the autumn. She consented; though with some misgiving. TheCastle of Ganges was a gloomy place surrounded on all sides by sombre avenues and densely-growing trees. After a short time spent with his wife at Ganges, the marquis returned to Avignon, leaving her in the care of his two brothers. A little while previously, a further large inheritance had fallen in to her, and she had begun to have such suspicions of the integrity of the family to which she had allied herself, that she made a will, confiding, in the event of her death, all her property to her mother, in trust, till her children, of which she had two or three, should be of age. The abbé and the chevalier, discovering what she had done, never ceased their endeavours to persuade her to revoke this will. What successful arguments they could have used to effect this, it is difficult to conceive—unless they employed threats—and these possibly they did use; since, after another abortive attempt to poison her, they one day entered her bedchamber, where she lay slightly indisposed with some passing ailment. The abbé approached her with a pistol in one hand and a cup of poison in the other, the chevalier following with a drawn sword in his hand. “You must die, madame,” said the abbé, pointing to the three fearful means for accomplishing the purpose. “The choice of the manner of it is to you.” The unfortunate woman sprang from her bed, and fell at the feet of the two men, asking what crime she had committed. “Choose!” was all the answer.
Resistance was hopeless, and the unhappy lady took the cup of poison and drank its contents, while the abbé held the pistol at her breast. Then thetwo assassins departed from the room, and locking her in, promised to send her the confessor she begged for.
Directly she was alone she tried to choke back the poison, by forcing a lock of her hair down her throat; then, clad only in her nightdress, she clambered to the window and let herself drop to the ground, lying nearly eight yards below. That the exits and doors were all watched she had little enough doubt; but by the aid of a servant, who let her out by a stable door, she gained the fields. The two men caught sight of her, and pursuing her to a farmhouse where she had sought refuge, they represented her as a mad-woman, and the chevalier hunted her from room to room of the house, till he trapped her in a remote chamber, where he stabbed her with his sword, dealing two thrusts in the breast, and five in the back, as she turned in the last endeavour to escape. Part of the sword-blade had remained in her shoulder, so violent was the blow. The piercing cries of the unhappy lady now brought a crowd of the people of the neighbourhood round the place; and among them the abbé, who had remained without to prevent any effort on her part to escape. Anxious to see whether she was dead, he presented his pistol at her, but it missed fire. This drew upon him the attention of the crowd, and they rushed to capture him; but with a desperate struggle he got away.
The marquise lived for nineteen days after this fearful scene; but all hope of life was gone. The corroding poison had done its fell work. Herhusband was with her in her last moments, and she strove in her dying agonies to clear him of complicity in the foul murder; but the evidence against him was too strong, and the Parliament of Toulouse condemned him to confiscation of his property, degradation from his rank of nobility, and perpetual banishment. The chevalier escaped to Malta, where he soon after died, fighting against the Turks. The abbé fled to Holland, and assuming another name, his identity was lost. It is said that this horrible crime was but the prologue to many subsequent iniquitous adventures in which he was the prime mover. The sentence of being broken on the wheel which was passed on these two criminals, and was too good for them, they thus contrived to evade. Their execrable record lives among the long list of Causes Celébres of the time.[5]