A Grave Question—The Troublesome Brother-in-Law—“No Vocation”—The Duke’s Choice—Peace for la Grande Mademoiselle—An Invitation to Versailles—Behind the Arras—Between the Alternatives—D’Aubigné’s Shadow—A Broken Friendship.
While the persecution of His Majesty’s Protestant subjects was being ruthlessly carried on by fire and sword, anddragonnadinggenerally, a matter of the gravest moment was under consideration at Versailles, and there was wide division of opinion in high places. It was on the question of theFontangeshead-gear, and for once the king openly set his face against that of Madame de Maintenon, which, he declared, now appeared in the middle of her body, and, he added, by no means enhanced its charm; for the height of the ugly head-dress had risen to two feet. Eloquence, mild argument, raillery and angry words from the Grand Monarque, however, simply fell on stony ground. Two gauze horns had been added to the abominable structure of whalebone, ribbon, horsehair, etc., etc. These projections were fixed behind the ears, and carried upward, crowning the work. The Sun-King’s defeat was complete, “Vires acquirit eundo. Nec pluribus impar”: his mottoes were ever mocking him, and lest theFontangesshould mount higher still, he said no more.
He had better success on the frontiers, whereCatinat in Piedmont, and Luxembourg in Flanders, brilliant pupil of Condé, routed the enemy. In this expedition Madame de Maintenon secured the advancement of de Villars, the lover who had consoled her days of widowhood; and the first step to glory made, he mounted rapidly, proving himself one of the bravest of the campaign.
Another thorn in the side of Louis, or rather more absolutely of Madame, was her brother. Years had not mended d’Aubigné’s ways; he was just the samevaurienof abon viveurand gourmet, he had been in his bouts with Scarron.
De Santeuil, the poet-canon who had been one of the party when Ninon travelled to Rome, was now d’Aubigné’sFidus Achates, and they were fairly evenly matched in their modes of life. Santeuil was invited one morning by Ninon to breakfast with her. D’Aubigné naturally came too, expressing himself delighted, he said, to kiss Ninon’s hand once more after such an interval of years. He inquired whether she still kept up her acquaintance with hisbégueuleof a sister.
“Is it so you speak of a person who has made the glory of your family?” demanded Ninon.
D’Aubigné did not regard the case at all in this light. It was a good joke to call her that, he said, and added that he was furious against his brother-in-law. “Don’t you know why?” he went on, planting his hands on his hips in truculent fashion. “Are you not aware of the persecutions and insults Françoise treats me to? Well, we’llhave breakfast first, and then I’ll tell you.” And having fortified himself with a bumper or two of Burgundy, he went on. “Only imagine, that this infernal bigot—Oh well,” he continued, when Ninon reminded him that she and Françoise were still on terms of friendship, “you can tell her what I say. It is all the same to me, and if my brother-in-law has anything to grumble at in it, let him out with it. Prison? flames and fury! I’ll pin my dagger into any of them who dare to lay hand on me, and there you have it. They won’t silence me! Head of the family indeed! That’s me!—and so much the worse for Louis Dieudonné! taking it into his head to marry my sister! Prudence?” he went on, when his hostess suggested its adoption, “it is the mother of all the vices—a watchword only for cowards. Françoise is my sister, and I’ll have them pay me proper respect.” Then d’Aubigné, having mercilessly criticised the mature attractions of Françoise, went on to say that he loved her, and if need were, would protect her at the sword’s point; but that because she was saintly and surrounded herself with Jesuits, it was no reason why he should be made a monk. Yes, that was her plan. She and the brother-in-law greatly desired that he should shut himself up in St Sulpice, where the livelong day was spent in reading litanies. “B-r-r-r-r-t!”shivered d’Aubigné. “Me!” he added, when Santeuil said if he did such a thing, he would excommunicate him—“I would sooner be chopped to mincemeat by thedragonnades.”
Santeuil suggested that he might prefer entering St Cyr to St Sulpice.
But d’Aubigné replied that the inmates of St Cyr would be too much of his sister’s mould for his fancy. Ninon was disturbed at this forcible language, which she had very good reason to believe was not reserved for her ear alone; but that d’Aubigné exploded in much the same fashion in the taverns and the avenues and public gardens, and possibly also even in the galleries of Versailles, where he had access. She took Santeuil aside, and begged him to use his influence in restraining his friend’s ebullitions. But Santeuil was in no mind to do anything of the kind; he said it was only just and proper that the widow Scarron, who had not always been a saint, should meet with those little contrarieties, and the matter must settle itself in its own way. Soon after this, Santeuil, who was a great favourite with all the family of the Condés, on account of his wit and gaiety of disposition, was invited to spend the summer at Dijon; and Madame de Maintenon, finding her brother thus unprotected, used every endeavour to persuade him to enter St Sulpice. In any case, however, d’Aubigné said he saw no reason to hurry over the step.
That same year the marriage took place of the Duc du Maine, the eldest son of Madame de Montespan. The bride was neither intelligent or beautiful, but she was huge of frame, and the duke, entertaining a passion for gigantic women, selected her from a trio of ladies, one of whom was adorablybeautiful, and the other rejected one brilliantly gifted and accomplished.
And almost within the days of those marriage festivities at Versailles, la Grande Mademoiselle lay dying in the Luxembourg, and she sent for Mademoiselle de L’Enclos, very much to the surprise of that lady; for the two had not met after the misunderstanding created by the machinations of Madame de Fiesque. Only that morning, it appeared, Madame de Fiesque had made clean acknowledgment to the dying woman of the real facts of the rupture; and now, sorely distressed, she begged Ninon’s forgiveness, and to extend it to the far greater offender, Madame de Fiesque herself. Ninon replied that this was freely accorded. Her child was happy in the love of a good man. It was enough; and she turned and held out her hand to Madame de Fiesque, who sat sobbing in a corner of the room. Just at that moment a lady of honour entered, to say that Monsieur de Lauzun was at the door, desiring an interview; but the dying woman refused, entreating that he should not be admitted. “If you but knew, Ninon, how wretched he has made my life,” she gasped out. “Oh, I have cruelly expiated all my folly. There was never any bond blessed by Heaven between us. It was no more than aliaison. May God forgive me, since my suffering has been so great.” And so, two hours later, she died.
The noble traits in the disposition of the daughter of Gaston d’Orléans deserved a happierfate than to be the tool of a selfish coxcomb like Lauzun, who was, however, himself not destitute of good qualities; but whose best memory stands recorded by the patience and fortitude with which he endured the terrible suffering of a cancer in the mouth, of which he died at the age of more than ninety. The woman whose infatuation for him was so great as to sacrifice the natural dignity which distinguished her, was no ordinary character. Dignified she was, but without pride, and a pleasant and clever conversationalist. True in friendship, gentle and sensible, and incapable of any mean or base action. If sometimes her susceptible, sensitive temperament betrayed her into anger, she would quickly pour balm on the wound she had caused, by gracious and tender words and caresses. She had the courage of a soldier, and would endure fatigue, and face danger as one of the bravest. It is only the fate of ardent, generous souls like hers, if sometimes she was betrayed into the many nets which greed, jealousy and base cunning are always at hand to spread, for rendering nobler natures wretched. Mademoiselle de Montpensier was, in one word, a true descendant of her grandfather, Henri IV.
Lauzun, exiled as he had been, from Versailles, soon after passed over to England, where he contrived to make himself useful by conducting the queen and infant prince of James II. safely to France, during the revolution of ’88. Louis, who received the dethroned English king with great demonstration of sympathy and magnificence, andgave the exiles his palace of St Germains for their home, was thus again brought into direct communication with Lauzun, who, being readmitted to royal favour, was created a duke; but he never really regained the confidence of Louis.
On the occasion of the death of Mademoiselle, he presented himself at the palace, attired in a magnificent mourning cloak. This so angered Louis, that Lauzun ran a parlous risk of once more taking the road to Pignerol.
All that remained of la Grande Mademoiselle’s possessions was now proposed to be given to the illegitimate and legitimatized children of the king; but precisely how to deal with Lauzun and his wealth, acquired from Mademoiselle de Montpensier, was not so apparent, since the question still remained open, whether Mademoiselle had been his lawful wife. No one knew for certain, and Madame de Maintenon conceived the ingenious idea of trying to worm the true state of the case from Ninon, whom she knew had been summoned to Mademoiselle’s dying bed, feeling persuaded that Mademoiselle de L’Enclos was acquainted with it. She accordingly begged her, in a little note very affectionately worded, to come to Versailles.
Ninon was greatly tempted to reply that if Françoise desired to speak to her, she might be at the trouble of coming to the rue des Tournelles. All circumstances taken into account, and the generosity with which she had treated Françoise’s little ways, it did not appear to her that she was bound to wait upon the woman, merely because shehad lighted upon the lucky number in life’s lottery. Ninon, however, was but a daughter of Eve. Curiosity was strong to see how Madame Louis Quatorze lived in the lordly pleasure-house, and forthwith she obeyed the summons.
Queen Maria Théresa’s surroundings and retinue had been modest enough even to parsimony. Madame Louis Quatorze was attended by a numerous guard, a train of pages, Swiss door-keepers, and the rest; while her Court and receptions were as magnificent as those of the king. Madame took herself very seriously, and her deportment had become most majestic. To Ninon, however, she unbent, and was simply the Françoise of old times. She led her into her own richly furnished private boudoir, adorned with a curious conglomerate of pictures and statuary, Christian and pagan, where an enormous, life-sized figure of Christ, in carved ivory, was neighboured by painted Jupiters and other Olympian deities, in curiously heterogeneous fashion. There Françoise embraced Ninon with quite a prodigality of affection. Suddenly, however, her manner changed; she congealed into gravity and tones of great solemnity, and Ninon saw the tapestry folds along the wall quiver slightly. It occurred to her that one only, His Majesty Louis XIV., could have any possible right to be present in that most private apartment, and even then she felt the need of putting a strong restraint upon herself and her foot, to prevent it from bestowing a kick upon the tapestry. Then the truth began to come out, the lamentable truth thatMadame and the king were greatly perplexed as to the best mode of dealing with the Duc de Lauzan, whose possessions, made over to him by the Grande Mademoiselle, those, that is to say, which he still held, were much wanted for the king’s children. He had so many, as Madame de Maintenon pointed out. That, admitted Ninon, was true enough, “but I will engage, you will not be increasing the number,” she added. “What is the point of the question?” It was whether Mademoiselle had really married Monsieur de Lauzun.
The full significance of it all now dawned upon Ninon. Had Mademoiselle not been his wife, it would be a comparatively simple matter to compel a revocation of the gifts which the princess had made him in the course of her life, in order that these should enrich the children of de Montespan. No consideration was yielded to the fact that, be Lauzun what he might, the gifts had been tokens of Mademoiselle’s affection for him. Ninon preferred complete inability to afford any trustworthy sort of information on this head, and suggested applying for it to Madame de Fiesque, who might be better instructed: “but,” continued Ninon, “supposing Mademoiselle was not his wife, surely to publish the fact, would create a scandal which His Majesty would consider paying too dear a price for the estates of Auvergne and St Fargeau. Either she was Lauzun’s wedded wife or—”
Here the chronicle goes on to relate: Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ words were interrupted by a tremendous disturbance at the door, occasioned byan altercation with the guards, of some person endeavouring to force his way in. The voice was d’Aubigné’s, and the next instant he reeled in, far gone in a state of intoxication, and staggering to his sister, he gripped her by the arm and thrust her back into the chair from which she had risen.
This chronicle goes on to relate a terrible scene, over which, for the honour of human nature, some kind of veil may be allowed to hang, lest veracious history has been embroidered by the ample material fact has afforded. The family differences of private domestic relations are frequently unedifying; but when it comes to the base humiliating of a great monarch, one in whose very vices and mistakes grace and virtue had been apparent, until the widow Scarron crossed his path, pen may well refrain from detail, and explain only that the intruder, d’Aubigné, had burst in upon his sister, to reproach her for her treachery in the matter of inducing him to enter St Sulpice. Taking advantage of the absence of his mentor andalter ego, Santeuil, she had contrived to trap him by false promises and misrepresentation into the hated place. His liberty for one thing, and of all things prized by d’Aubigné, would not, she had said, be curtailed; it had, however, been so entirely denied him, that when he had attempted to leave, he had been unceremoniously “clapped,” as he phrased it, “into a cellar,” and he had only escaped by wriggling through an air-grating. To any one possessed of the faintest sense of humour, the notion of making a monk of any sort of this wild harum-scarum would have seemed too preposterous; butthe sense, always so lacking in Françoise d’Aubigné, allowed her to indulge in only too many absurdities whose ending was disastrous; and in any case, the notion of removing the incommoding one from the taverns and cafés and other public resorts where he freely gave utterance to his estimate of Madame Louis Quatorze, and notably of her newly acquired saintliness, was dominant in her, and to be achieved at any cost. She earnestly desired his conversion, possibly if only to silence the hideous music of the ditty, whose refrain he was for ever chanting in the streets, echoed by so many ribald tongues—
“Tu n’as que les restes,Toi!Tu n’as que nos restes!”
“Tu n’as que les restes,Toi!Tu n’as que nos restes!”
“Tu n’as que les restes,
Toi!
Tu n’as que nos restes!”
Since the chronicle goes on to tell that Louis the king was concealed behind the tapestry during the interview of Madame and her old friend Ninon, the appearance of d’Aubigné, with his string of furious reproach, was of course singularly inopportune; and at last the king, unable any longer to restrain his wrath, dashed aside the concealing Gobelins, and white with anger, and his eyes blazing with indignation, ordered the culprit’s arrest by the guards, and carrying off to the Bastille. Confounded by the unexpected apparition, d’Aubigné’s sober sense returned, and he promised everything required of him with the humblest contrition, adding that if he might suggest the homely proverb in that august presence, there was nothing like washing one’s soiled linen at home.
The king’s silence yielded consent, and d’Aubigné was permitted to depart from his brother-in-law’s presence a free man, on condition of making St Sulpice his headquarters. It was at least preferable to a lodging in one of the Bastille towers, he said, but any restraint or treachery on the part of Françoise, or of Louis, in the way of his coming and going into what he called that black-beetle trap of St Sulpice, would be at once signalised. And thus the difficulty was adjusted, a compromise being effected by appointing a certain Abbé Madot to shadow the ways of d’Aubigné when he took his walks abroad.
But for Ninon the malice of her old friend took on virulence, and it was found later that Françoise charged her with having planned the scandalous scene, in so far as bringing d’Aubigné into it; that she had connived at his coming just at that moment. Yet exactly, except for the king’s concealed presence, what overwhelming harm would have ensued, is not apparent, and certainly for that situation, Ninon could not have been responsible. Henceforth all shadow of friendship between the two women died out, and enmity and bitterness were to supervene when opportunity should be ripe.