Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’Cercle—Madeleine de Scudéri—The Abbé Dubois—“The French Calliope,” and the Romance of her Life—“Revenons à nos Moutons”—A Resurrection?—Racine and his Detractors—“Esther”—Athalieand St Cyr—Madame Guyon and the Quietists.
Among the ladies of distinction forming thecercleof Mademoiselle de L’Enclos at this time, were the Countesses de la Sablière, de la Fayette, and de Sévigné, de Souvré, de la Suza, d’Olonne, de Sandwich, the Marquises de Wardes, de Créquy, de St Lambert; the Duchesses de Sully and de Bouillon, and the Maréchales de Castelnau and de la Ferté. The old antagonism between Ninon and Mademoiselle de Scudéri was smoothed away also by the amiable intervention of Madame de Sévigné, and the autumn of the lives of these two women was cheered by the sunshine of a genuine friendship, which, however, Boileau did his best to dull, by asserting that the famous romanticist of her day did not merit her popularity. Ninon succeeded however, in bringing him to soften his severe criticisms on Madeleine’s works, until they became gentler even than her own views of the voluminous tales which she regarded as far too wordy, and almost destitute of the passion which should be the motive power of romance.
Mademoiselle de Scudéri in everyday lifewas, however, amiable and charming in manner and conversation—so that her personal appearance, which was far from prepossessing, hardly detracted from her fascination. She was plain of feature, and of masculine build, but this had not come in the way of the idolatrous admiration, in former days, of Conrard, the Secretary of the Académie Française; and Pelisson, the advocate and faithful friend of the ill-fated Fouquet, remained true as ever to his ardent worship of her. The years of Madeleine de Scudéri ran even to a length beyond those of her friend Ninon. She died in her ninety-fourth year.
Among the brilliant company assembling almost nightly in the salon of the rue des Tournelles, one day came, unbidden and unwelcomed, the Abbé Dubois, he who at a later time was to acquire such a prominent position at the Court of the Regency, and die a cardinal. For this man, more notorious than celebrated, Ninon conceived an instinctive dislike. The ferret face repelled her, but she did not refuse him the letter of introduction he sought of her to Monsieur de St Evrémond in London, whither he was bound.
The “French Calliope,” Madame Deshoulières, was an intimate friend of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos. Her career was romantic and even heroic. Her maiden name was Anne Antoinette Ligier de la Garde, she was a goddaughter of Anne of Austria, who held her at the font when she was christened. She was the daughter of the queen’smaître d’hôtel, and was born in one of the little apartments of theLouvre. Beauty and grace and high talent distinguished her as she grew up. Her father caused her to be very strictly reared, and no books were permitted her except philosophical and religious works. One day, however, she detected her maid reading one of the pastoral romances of d’Urfé. She was immediately fired with desire, as a true daughter of Eve, to taste of the delightful fruit of the vice of romantic fiction, and said she would ask her father’s permission for it. This frightened thebonneso much, that, to purchase her charge’s silence, she offered to lend her the interesting history ofThe Shepherds of Lignon, in which she had been so surreptitiously absorbed; and upon these followed the novels of Calprenède and of Madeleine de Scudéri. But if these books sufficed for all the intellectual needs of the run of the young ladies of the period, Antoinette was a girl of brains, and soon returned to her first love of more healthy and solid literature, and of poetry; and she studied for some time the art of versification under Hesnaut, whose fame is best remembered by the gifts of his pupil.
At eighteen she became the wife of Monsieur de Boisguerry, Seigneur Deshoulières, a gentleman of Poitou, in the service of the Prince de Condé. The queen had been displeased at this marriage, whereat Monsieur de la Garde explained that his child had to be provided for, and his emolument in Her Majesty’s service had not been so great that it could be forthcoming from that source. This offended the queen, and the offence was aggravated by the suspicion of Frondeur leanings hangingabout him, so that Antoinette’s dowry from her royal godmother was but a small one.
Three months after their marriage, Monsieur Deshoulières was summoned to follow Condé to Spain, and his wife returned to her old home, which was, however, no longer at the Louvre, but in a small house at Auteuil.
Here she spent the time in study, finding her chief delight in the philosophical works of Gassendi, now for some years a professor of the College of France. On the return of her husband to the frontier, she hastened to meet him, and the two repaired to Brussels, where the Court received her with high distinction; but in addition to her acquirements, her grace and beauty won her admiration so marked, that it became aggressive, and she was forced to repulse the unwelcome attentions thrust upon her. This turned friends into enemies, who satisfied their revenge by representing her as a spy of Mazarin and of the queen—a far-fetched accusation enough, which, however, obtained wide credence.
The State payments to her husband were now withheld, and on seeking redress from the minister she was decreed an arrest, and sent for imprisonment to Vilvorde, where she was doomed to spend fourteen months in complete solitude, and kept from all means of communication with her friends. But Antoinette’s girlhood had been passed in the days when natural feminine weakness had been fortified by stirring public events, and Madame Deshoulières consoled herself with theologicalstudy during the time of her imprisonment, mainly of the Fathers, from Origen to St Augustine.
Only after a length of time Monsieur Deshoulières discovered the prison in which his wife was immured. Having ascertained this, he formed the bold project of carrying her off. To this end he engaged forty men, armed them to the teeth, and in the dead of a dark night, he led them to the edge of the moat of the Castle of Vilvorde, at its narrowest and shallowest part, stationing his men in the water, which they had previously filled with branches and mud, so as to form a human bridge. Arrived at the base of the wall, he fixed a ladder to the ramparts, and mounting, followed by his guard with stealthy caution, overpowered the two sentinels and gagged them. Then they hastened on to the governor’s bedroom, and putting a cord round his neck while he was in profound sleep, and a musket to his face, they detained him in durance till he had yielded up the keys of his captive’s apartments, and of the doors of the fortress. The garrison was then forced to lay down arms, and entering a waiting berline, Monsieur Deshoulières and his rescued wife gained in a few hours the ground of France.
The tidings of this intrepid act travelled as fast as they did, and Le Tellier, the Secretary of State, presented the pair to the queen and Mazarin. Anne of Austria embraced her goddaughter warmly, a general amnesty was proclaimed, and all was forgotten—so much forgotten, that Mazarin and the queen omitted to award Deshoulières the promised arrears of pay, and the pension which was to reward the two. Thedebts and liabilities of Deshoulières became formidable, and he had no alternative but to obtain a division of maintenance, pay up from his own small resources all he could, and retire with his wife to live on the slender dowry Anne had bestowed on her goddaughter. It did not nearly suffice for their rank and position. In order to meet their requirements, Madame Deshoulières devoted herself to her pen, and her verses, first published in theMercure Galant, won universal admiration, but no money reward. Left to itself, the nature of the editor ever inclines to the view thatkudosis enough for the author, and this particular editor gave his contributor to understand that she ought to consider herself only too fortunate to have made an appearance in his pages.
Once again the admirers looked askance and grew scornful and sarcastic, and the humour of Madame Deshoulières’ pen acquiring the sombre tints of her cruel fortunes, she was nicknamed the “Mendicant Muse.” So, with the addition of three children to maintain, the poor woman remained until the death of Monsieur Deshoulières, forsaken by her old troops of friends and admirers. Then she penned the immortal trifle beginning—
“Dans ces près fleurisQu’arrose la Seine,Cherchez qui vous mêne,Mes chères brébis.”
“Dans ces près fleurisQu’arrose la Seine,Cherchez qui vous mêne,Mes chères brébis.”
“Dans ces près fleuris
Qu’arrose la Seine,
Cherchez qui vous mêne,
Mes chères brébis.”
It was her charming device for winning the attention and generosity of Louis XIV., and attained its end.
The king awarded her a pension of two thousand livres, and the editor of theMercure Galant, laying the credit of this good fortune to his own account, straightened out things by continuing to publish Madame Deshoulières’ versesgratisin his columns.
Once more the fine-weather friends flocked about her, and belauded her attractions, personal and intellectual. In these lay no exaggeration, for Antoinette Deshoulières was exceptionally gifted. Her conversation was brilliant, delicate, and sparkling with originality. The poets chanted her praises, and Benserade changed his sobriquet of the “Mendicant Muse” to the “Calliope Française.” Among other well-remembered trifles from her pen, the pretty poem ofLes Oiseauxis to be recorded. It is by these charming productions that the memory of Antoinette Deshoulières lives. Her aims in graver poetry and drama fell below their mark. For her, these were the unattainable, and possibly it was failure in this direction which impelled her to a jealousy unworthy of her excellent judgment and native good taste, when she rendered high praise to thePhèdreof Pradon, and criticised in a satirical poem the grand tragedy of Racine on the same subject.
From every point of view it was a lamentable mistake, and laid her open to storms of sarcastic abuse—
“Dans un fauteuil doré Phèdre tremblanteEt blêmeDit des vers ou d’abord personne n’entend rien.”
“Dans un fauteuil doré Phèdre tremblanteEt blêmeDit des vers ou d’abord personne n’entend rien.”
“Dans un fauteuil doré Phèdre tremblante
Et blême
Dit des vers ou d’abord personne n’entend rien.”
So wrote Madame Deshoulières, and the flippancy on the tremendous theme evoked general disgust. “What is this tumbled from the clouds?” cried Madame de la Sablière. “This sweet and interesting shepherdess, who talked so tenderly to her sheep and flowers and birds, has suddenly changed her crook into a serpent!”
Madame de Sévigné preferred to be entirely of the opinion of Madame Deshoulières, but if envy of the great tragic poet was in the heart of the one, personal animosity was beyond question in that of the other; for Madame de Sévigné had never forgiven either Boileau or Racine for favouring the intrigue of her grandson, de Grignan with the Champmeslé.
Madame Deshoulières burned with desire for dramatic honours, and she wrote a tragedy calledGenséric. It was a feeble, ill-constructed piece of work, and was ill-received; but it was not to be forgotten, for it perpetuated the immortal figure of speech, as familiar in England as in France, of the advice to her—“Return to your sheep” (anglicé—“Let us go back to our muttons”).[8]
Once again she wooed the drama in the guise of comedy and opera; but her efforts were signal failures. She died at the age of sixty-two, of the same malady as her godmother, and, like her, she bore the cruel suffering with patience and resignation, writing in the intervals of pain a paraphrase of the Psalms, and herReflections Morales, one of her best works. Bossuet, who administered to her the last consolations of religion, spoke in warm eulogy of those last days of hers.
A singular circumstance disturbed the smooth flow of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ life at this time. It was the sudden appearance of an aged woman who declared herself to be Marion Delorme, and claiming a fifty-seven years’ friendship with Ninon.
She declared that the report of her death had been false; that the doctor, Guy Patin, had not attended her funeral; but had saved her life, and then she had left Paris and lived out of France.
Convinced as Ninon was, that the poor woman was demented, or attempting to impose on her, she sent to the Street of the Dry Tree, where Guy Patin lived; but the doctor was absent in Prussia, sharing the exile of his son, who had been condemned for being in possession of six copies of one of the libellous pamphlets that made life hideous for the king and Madame Louis Quatorze, and no other testimony, for or against, was to be found. The magistrate to whom the unhappy creature had applied to verify her identity, hastened a little later to assure Ninon that to communicate with Guy Patin would be troubling him to no purpose; since the Marion Delorme, as she called herself, had given unmistakable proof of madness, and she had been placed in the Hôtel Dieu. So the matter ended.
The shafts, impotent as they were, of Madame Deshoulières had an evil effect on Racine. Ninon, warmly seconded by St Evrémond especially, endeavoured to win the great tragic poet from his exclusive associations with the Court; but he turned a deaf ear to every argument. It is possible that the atmosphere of Versailles, as itprevailed under the ordering of Madame de Maintenon, tainted and unhealthy as it was with pharisaical “piety,” assorted with the sentiments of gloom ill-health had fostered, for Racine suffered cruelly, long before his death, from an abscess on the liver. Moreover, by education and rearing he was a Port Royalist, and the tenets of Jansenism could but have run in his blood. In her earlier time Madame de Maintenon had looked favourably on these Calvinistic sectaries of the Catholic Church; only at a later date it was that the rupture occurred with the Abbé Fénelon and Madame Guyon, the notable advocate of the doctrines of the Quietest, Michael Molinos the Spanish monk. Madame Guyon, whose maiden name was de la Motte, evinced mystic tendencies even as a child. As she grew up, it was her wish to enter a convent; but her parents prevented this, and she was married at sixteen. At eight-and-twenty she became a widow, and then the old mystic sentiments began to rule her more dominantly than ever. This was further fostered in her by her confessor and other ecclesiastics about her, who persuaded her that she was destined by Heaven to be a powerful agent for the advancement of religion.
“Still young,” says Voltaire, “with beauty, riches, and a mind fitted for society, she became infatuated with what is calledspiritualism. Her confessor whose name was Lacombe, a man of a nature at once passionate and devout, and who died mad, plunged the mind of his penitent deeper into the mystic reveries by which it wasalready affected. Her doctrine,” Voltaire goes on to say, “was a complete renunciation of self, the silence of the soul, the annihilation of all its faculties, internal worship, and the pure and disinterested love of God, which is neither degraded by fear nor animated by the hope of reward.”
“Still young,” says Voltaire, “with beauty, riches, and a mind fitted for society, she became infatuated with what is calledspiritualism. Her confessor whose name was Lacombe, a man of a nature at once passionate and devout, and who died mad, plunged the mind of his penitent deeper into the mystic reveries by which it wasalready affected. Her doctrine,” Voltaire goes on to say, “was a complete renunciation of self, the silence of the soul, the annihilation of all its faculties, internal worship, and the pure and disinterested love of God, which is neither degraded by fear nor animated by the hope of reward.”
There were times, however, that religious enthusiasm, following its customary tendency, betrayed her into extravagance, and absurdities of speech in her efforts to explain her views.
By her written treatises, and by her orations, Madame Guyon made many proselytes. For five years she travelled from place to place in Piedmont and Dauphiné; then returning to Paris, she continued her labours for two years, uninterfered with. Suddenly the Archbishop of Paris, one of the most infamously profligate of priests on record, Harlayde Champvallon, found himself horrified at discovering that Madame Guyon’s teaching was neither more nor less than that of Molinos, whose Jansenist theories of grace and free-will were in direct opposition to the Jesuitical tenets, then, of course, all-dominant at Versailles. He pretended to hold Father Lacombe as a seducer, and sent him to the Bastille; while Madame Guyon was put under arrest into the convent of the Visitandines, where she won universal love, and many believers in her mild faith. From here Madame de Maintenon, who had made her acquaintance at Ninon’s house, and bore her considerable affection and esteem, freed her, and gave her a home in St Cyr. There she was introduced to Fénelon, and they formed their firm and life-long friendship.
Madame de Maintenon, however, instigated by the bigoted Bishop of Chartres, who was director of the consciences of the young ladies of St Cyr and their teachers, ere long withdrew her favour, falling in also with the prejudices the king had against her. Among other persecutions to which she was now subjected, was the production of a letter from Lacombe, or purporting to be from him, exhorting her to repent of her criminal intimacy with him. The unhappy man, always of a highly nervous, excitable nature, had now long been insane, and the accusation was believed by no one. Later, she was again imprisoned at Vincennes, and in the Bastille, whence she was delivered by de Noailles, the successor of the infamous Harlay. But here her sufferings did not end. Once more she was imprisoned in the Bastille, and finally she was exiled to Blois, where she spent the last fifteen years of her life, in acts of charity and piety, graced ever by unswerving patience; but while occasionally betrayed into extravagance of expression on religious points, her common sense and excellent judgment in everyday matters were remarkable.