THE most charming part of the gardens of Chantilly lies behind the Chateau d'Enghien and is called the Park of Sylvie, in memory of Marie Félice Orsini, the wife of Henri II de Montmorency, the "Sylvie" of Théophile. On the site of the little house where the Duchess had received and sheltered the proscribed poet, the great Condé built a pavilion, and pierced the neighboring woods with "superb alleys"; his son, Henri Jules, added to it the amusement of a labyrinth.
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The park and the house of Sylvie have been reconstructed in our day at the order of the Duc d'Aumale. Overarching avenues lead to the pavilion, which we perceive through a curtain of verdure as soon as we pass the gate of honor of the chateau. Behind the little structure, an elegant trellis encloses regular parterres, and the picture thus composed almost reproduced the picture of the house of Sylvie as it is shown to us by an engraving of Pérelle.
The Due d'Aumale has enlarged the pavilion of the seventeenth century by a lovely round hall, decorated by beautiful carved wainscotings, removed from one of the hunting lodges of the forest of Dreux. The other rooms are ornamented with Chinese silks and lacquers, with Beauvais and Gobelins tapestries, with precious furniture and various hunting pictures. We see there also two modern paintings by Olivier Merson, one representing Théophile and Sylvie, the other Mlle, de Clermont and M. de Melun; they recall two famous chapters of the chronicles of Chantilly. The first belongs to history, for nothing is more certain than the misadventure of the unfortunate Théophile. The second is known to us only from a novel of Madame de Genlis in which, for lack of documents, it is difficult to decide which parts are due to the imagination of the author; we might even inquire if this moving and tragic anecdote is anything more than simple romantic fiction.
Of these two stories, let us call up first the most distant, that which gave to the charming wood of Chantilly the adornment of a delightful name and of some elegant verses.
In 1623, when Théophile composed his odes on theMaison de Sylvie, Chantilly belonged to Henri II de Montmorency, grandson of the grand constable Anne de Montmorency, and to his wife Marie Felice Orsini. Their tragic destiny is well known, how the Duke, involved by Gaston d'Orléans in a foolish prank, lost his head in 1632 and how the Duchess went to hide her tears and her mourning with the Visitandines de Moulins. But at this time they lived happy and powerful in the most beautiful of the residences of France and everything smiled on their youth; he was twenty-nine years old; she was twenty-four. Louis XIII continued toward Henri II the great friendship which Henri IV had always witnessed toward his "crony," Henri I de Montmorency. Like his father he often came to Chantilly.
The chateau, built by Pierre Chambiges for the constable Anne de Montmorency, on the foundations of the old feudal fortress, decorated by the greatest artists of the Renaissance, was still being embellished day by day: the original gardens, laid out to the west of the château and consisting of a few flower beds, had been enlarged. In this magnificent house the Duke held a most brilliant court: he was, says Tallemant, "brave, rich, gallant, liberal, danced well, sat well on horseback and always had men of brains in his employ, who made verses for him, who conversed with him about a million things, and who told him what decisions it was necessary to make on the matters which happened in those times."
Among these "men of brains," who ate the bread of the Duc de Montmorency, the most celebrated was the poet Théophile de Viau, a native of Clairac sur le Lot, a Huguenot and a "cadet of Gascony."
Under Henri IV, men of his religion and of his country were well received at court: it was under "the Béarnais" that Paris commenced to dislike them. The young man from the region of Agen had therefore left his little paternal manor and settled in the capital to seek his fortune when he was twenty years old, in 1610. The assassination of the King must have shaken his hopes for a moment. But Théophile was soon assured of the protection of the Duc de Montmorency; he found means to retain it in the midst of the frightful catastrophes of his existence. In any case, this sort of domesticity did not weigh too heavily on his shoulders, for he said to his master:
Now, I am very happy in your obedience.
In my captivity I have much license,
And any other than you would end by tiring
Of giving so much freedom to a serf so libertine.
The fame of the poet Théophile has suffered much from two lines by Boileau:
... To prefer Théophile to Malherbe or to Raoan
And the false money of Tasso to the pure gold of Virgil.
So, when the Romanticists began to revive the classics and to discover far-distant ancestors in old French literature, they thought of Théophile: Boileau himself pointed him out to them. In Les Grotesques, Gautier rehabilitated him and called him a "truly great poet," esteeming that one cannot make bad verses when one bears the glorious Christian name of Théophile. To completely demonstrate this to us, he quoted several pieces by his namesake which he abridged and even tastefully corrected—a stratagem which revolted the scrupulous Sainte-Beuve. To tell the truth, now that we are free from romantic prejudices, it is difficult for us not to think that on this occasion, as on many others, Boileau was right. Among the poets of the time of Louis XIII, Théophile is perhaps the one whom we now read with the least pleasure. We find in him neither the beauty, the force and the style of Malherbe, nor that so lively sentiment for nature which gives so much value to various bits by Racan, nor the vigorous local color of Saint Amant. He shows a facile and sometimes brilliant imagination; but he lacks taste and restraint in a continuous and desolating fashion. La Bruyère has finely expressed this in comparing Théophile with Malherbe: "The other (Théophile), without choice, without exactness, with a free and unequal pen, overloads his descriptions too much, emphasises the details; he makes a dissection; sometimes he paints, he exaggerates, he overpasses the truth of nature; he makes a romance of it."
Théophile, who had a brilliant mind, rendered justice to Malherbe; but he decorated with the name of originality his distaste for labor, his scorn of rules:
Let him who will imitate the marvels of others.
Malherbe has done very well, but he did it for himself.
I love his fame and not his lesson.
I know some who make verses only in the modern fashion,
Who seek Phobus at mid-day with a lantern,
Who scratch their French so much that they tear it all to tatters,
Blaming everything which is easy only to their own taste.= *****
Rules displease me, I write confusedly;
A good mind never does anything except easily.
I wish to make verses which shall not be constrained,
To send forth my mind beyond petty designs,
To seek out secret places where nothing displeases me,
To meditate at leisure, to dream quite at my ease,
To waste a whole hour in admiring myself in the water,
To hear, as if in a dream, the flowing of a brook,
To write within a wood, to interrupt myself, to be silent by myself,
To compose a quatrain without thinking of doing it.
Here are eight lines which make us think of La Fontaine, in accent and in sentiment. But we would be embarrassed if we had to find twenty others as well turned in all the works of Théophile. What emphatic odes! What fastidious elegies! What feeble sonnets! Without the divine gift, this kind of nonchalance leads the poet either to platitudes or to disorder. Théophile is not lyrical. Here and there, by fits and starts, a few striking images appear, but the strophes come forth without grace, with terrible monotony. His love poems are frozen: gallantry mingled with sensuality takes the place of passion with him, and while it sometimes inspires a few lines which are happy by reason of gentleness or voluptuousness, most often they are poor nonsense. His best odes, like Matin or Solitude, whence we may select a few delicately shaded lines, repel us as a whole because of his fashion of painting too minutely, too dryly, too exactly....
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So, what caused the great fame of Théophile in the seventeenth century and later gave him the indulgence of the Romanticists, was much less his poetic talent than the renown of his adventures. As Gautier took care to inform us, this poor devil was bor "under a mad star"; he knew exile and prison, he just escaped being burned alive for atheism and libertinage.
In a page of charming prose (Théophile's prose is better than his verse) the poet has told us his taste and his philosophy: "One must have a passion not only for men of virtue, for beautiful women, but also for all sorts of beautiful things. I love a fine day, clear fountains, the sight of mountains, the spread of a wide plain, beautiful forests; the ocean, its calms, its swells, its rocky shores; I love also all which more particularly touches the senses: music, flowers, fine clothes, hunting, blooded horses, sweet smells, good cheer; but my desires cling to all these only as a pleasure and not as a labor; when one or another of these diversions entirely occupies a soul, it passes from affection to madness and brutality; the strongest passion which I can have never holds me so strongly that I cannot quit it in a day. If I love, it is as much as I am loved, and, as neither nature nor fortune has given me much power to please, this passion with me has never continued very long either its pleasure or its pain. I cling more closely to study and to good cheer than to all the rest. Books have sometimes tired me, but they have never worn me out, and wine has often rejoiced me, but never intoxicated...." [Once more the memory of La Fontaine crosses our minds and we recallThe Hymn of Passionat the end ofPsyche.] Théophile is thus a perfect Epicurean by birth and by principle, an Epicurean in the diversity and the brevity of his enjoyments, an Epicurean in the prudent and wise administration of his pleasures.
Did he carry further than he admits the practice of doctrine, and freedom of manners? Did he use the free and obscene speech which has been ascribed to him? Had he still other passions of which he says nothing in this public confession?
It is only necessary to read Tallemant to be instructed as to the way of living common to libertines at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and to judge that, even if Théophile practiced all the vices which his enemies have ascribed to him, fate was nevertheless very cruel in inflicting on him a punishment which so many others might then have merited.
The poet's misfortune was to unloose against himself the ire of some Jesuits who—for reasons which have remained obscure—sought for his destruction with frenzied zeal. Imprudence in writing and speaking had already compromised him: when exiled for the first time, he had had to seek a refuge in Gascony, in Languedoc, even to take refuge in England for several months. But he had been recalled and, following an august example, and thinking that Paris was well worth a mass, he had abjured Calvinism: he could thenceforth believe himself in safety. Then burst the storm. A collection of licentious and sacrilegious poetry appeared at Paris in 1622 under the title ofParnasse Satyrique; certain pieces were attributed to Théophile, who endeavored, but in vain, to disavow the publication. A year after, he was accused before Parliament and condemned, in contumacy, to be burned alive. On the eve of his sentence, Father Garasse had published a formidable quarto entitledLa Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps,in which were heaped up calumnies, insults and invectives against Théophile and his disciples, whom the Jesuit called "the school of young calves." While he was being executed in effigy upon the Place de Grève, and while the Jesuits aroused the court and the magistrates against him, Théophile prudently escaped to Chantilly and from there set out for the frontier of the kingdom. But he was arrested near Saint-Quentin, brought back to Paris, thrown into the prison of Ravaillac. He remained there two years waiting for a new trial. The Jesuits were in charge of the proceedings and the investigation. The poet was again found guilty. But this time the sentence was less rigorous: it was banishment. He died two years later, at the age of thirty-six.
During these trials, the Duke and Duchess de Montmorency had not ceased to interest themselves in their protégé. More than once the Duke had intervened in his favor, but without success. After the first sentence he gave him asylum at Chantilly in a "cool hall" built in the woods at the end of the pool. It was the memories of this retreat that the poet later evoked in his prison, to make them the subject of the ten little odes which he entitled,La Maison de Sylvie.
I doubt that the odes of the Maison de Sylvie are superior to the other works of Théophile. However, if any one asked me: "What must I read by Théophile?" I would reply to him: "La Maison de Sylvie, on condition that you read it at Chantilly beside the pool." The great poets have sometimes added a special grace or nobility to the landscapes which they have described. But it is also true that ancient verses, whose attractiveness seems lost today, réassumé an indescribable savor in the very places which have formerly inspired them. The poet sometimes makes us better feel the beauty of nature; but by a mysterious sorcery, nature can return a breath of life to dead poems.
To leave, before dying,
The living features of a painting
Which can never perish
Except by the loss of nature,
I pass golden pencils
Over the most revered spots
Where virtue takes refuge,
Whose door was open to me
To put my head in shelter,
When they burned my effigy.
Poor rhymer, they are indeed effaced, the lines of your "golden pencils"! You promised yourself immortality, you promised it to Sylvie:
Thus, under modest vows
My verses promise Sylvie
That charming fame which posterity
Calls a second life;
But you added with more reason:
What if my writings, scorned,
Cannot be authorized
As witnesses of her glory,
These streams, these woods,
Will assume souls and voices,
To preserve its memory.
Such has been fate: it is the soul and the voices of the waters, the woods and the rocks which preserve today the memory of the beautiful Italian princess and her poor devil of a poet!
It is not for the pure beauty of the verses (which, however, do not lack grace), it is for the elegance of the picture which they evoke from far away, from very far away, that we love today to read once more these lines:
One evening when the salty waves
Lent their soft bed
To the four red coursers
Which are yoked by the sun,
I bent my eyes upon the edge
Of a bed where the Naiad sleeps,
And, watching Sylvie fish,
I saw the fishes fight
To see which would soonest lose its life
In honor of her fishhooks.
Warning against noise with one hand
And throwing her fine with the other,
She causes that, at the onset of night,
The day should decline more sweetly.
The sun feared to light her
And feared to go away;
The stars did not dare to appear,
The waves did not dare to ripple,
The zephyr did not dare to pass,
The very grass restrained its growing.
(This is the scene which M. Oliver Merson desired to represent upon one of the walls of Sylvie's pavilion; I do not dare to affirm that he rendered all its charm.)
Despite a very obscure and very pretentious mythological machinery, we may still enjoy the Tritons transformed into a troop of white deer by a single glance of Sylvie, and gamboling timidly among the thickets of the wood:
Their hearts, deprived of blood by fear,
Can only with timidity
Behold the sky or trample on the earth.
(Here is one of those pictures which abound in Théophile and disconcert the reader, even when the coolness of the charming grove disposes him to every indulgence.)
We will also discover an Albanesque grace in a combat of Loves and Nereids in the waters of the
Now together, now scattered,
They shine in this dark veil
And beneath the waves which they have pierced
Allow their shadow to disappear;
Sometimes in a clear night,
Which shines with the fire of their eyes,
Without any shadow of clouds,
Diana quits her swain
And goes down below to swim
With her naked stars.
But the plays of the Naiads are not the only visions which present themselves to the memory of the prisoner in the inky dungeon where the hatred of Father Garasse has condemned him to rhyme his idyls. He remembers that one day Thyrsis, whom he loves with a "chaste and faithful friendship," came to visit him at Chantilly and to tell him a frightful and interminable nightmare in which were announced all his future misfortunes. This episode might appear superfluous if it did not give Théophile the opportunity to establish in eleven lines the innocence of his manners, an opportune apology after the defamations of the Jesuit.... Soon, casting aside these unpleasant images, he returns to the marvels of the "enchanted park"; he sings the perfume of the flowers, the glances of his mistress, the coolness of the waters, the graces of the spring, the fecundity of nature and the concert of birds which salutes Sylvie in the woods.... And the ode terminates by an abrupt flattery addressed to the King. But he has not yet exhausted the whole chaplet of lovable remembrances; he diverts himself by imagining the song of the nightingales, and in the darkness of his prison, it is always Chantilly that he sees. How sad that a better poet might not have treated this charming thought!
Forth from my dark tower
My soul sends out its rays which pierce
To this park which the eyes of day
Traverse with so much difficulty.
My senses have the whole picture of it:
I feel the flowers at the edge of the water.
I sense the coolness which endews them.
The princess comes to sit there.
I see, as she goes there in the evening,
How the day flees and respects her.
The last ode is a promenade about the pool, and, while lacking in poetic beauty, it contains some topographical indications which it would be amusing to verify with the aid of the plans and the documents of the archives. There is a question there of a "lodge today deserted" where Alcandre once came to enjoy solitude. Alcandre is Henri IV, and we thus know the place of the "King's Garden," a retreat where Henri IV loved to pass his time, when he came to Chantilly. Then Théophile leaves on the left a thick wood favorable for lovers' meetings, a "quarter for the Faun and for the Satyr," and stops at a chapel, probably the little chapel of Saint Paul, which still exists today; he remains there a long time and prays the Lord, with the fervor of a poor poet persecuted by the Jesuits and accused of atheism; but words, already sufficiently undisciplined when he wishes to employ them to sing the sport of the nymphs, refuse to obey him when he seizes the harp of David: his prayer is a miracle of platitude....
And if, following my advice, you shall one day read La Maison de Sylvie under the trees of Chantilly, perhaps, despite its poverty of style and monotony of rhymes, you may still find some pleasure there, in spite of the disdain of Boileau, in spite of the enthusiasms of Gautier.
We are in 1724. A century has elapsed since the day when the proscribed poet found asylum in a little house built at the extremity of the pool, and now there remains hardly a remnant of the Chantilly of the Montmorencies. Le Nôtre and Mansart have been here. Immense regular gardens, traversed by canals, decorated with statues and fountains, have replaced the modest garden plots of the Renaissance. The swelling woods which neighbored the château are transformed to a majestically clipped park. Of the ancient buildings, the great Condé has allowed only the little château to remain, and he has arranged the apartments of even this in a new fashion. For the old manor house which the architects of the sixteenth century had transformed into a luxurious, elegant and picturesque residence, he has substituted a veritable palace, with grand though monotonous façades, flanked with sufficiently disgraceful pepper boxes. He has built the orangery and the theater, and created a mass of cascades, basins and fountains which rival Versailles. Henri Jules has continued the work of his father, built a house for his gentlemen in place of the farm of Bucan, established a magnificent menagerie at Vineuil, designed the labyrinth of Sylvie's grove and dispersed throughout the park a multitude of marbles copied from the antique. Now the master of Chantilly is the Duc de Bourbon, Monsieur le Duc, Prime Minister of the King; he also is a great lover of gardens and the buildings; he transforms the chapel, he demolishes and reconstructs the three faces of the interior court of the chateau, and he confides to Jean Aubert the task of finishing the construction of the Great Stables, commenced by Mansart.29
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Chantilly is then, after Versailles and Marly, the most beautiful of the residences of France. It is also the theater of the most sumptuous festivals. M. le Duc there spends royally an immense fortune, which is still growing from operations in the funds. His mistress, Agnes de Pléneuf, Marquise de Prie, holds a veritable court there.
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The King comes to pass two months at Chantilly and, every day, he is offered "the diversion of stag hunting or wild boar hunting." The evenings are reserved for the opera, for the comedy and for the dance. The gazettes of Paris describe with a thousand details the hecatombs of wild boars, the lansquenet parties and the suppers at which shine the three sisters of M. le Duc, Mlles, de Charolais, de Clermont and de Sens. The peddlers offer in the streets the list of expert beauties whom chance, added by Madame de Prie, has put in the path of the young King, and for whom the young King has not lusted.
On August 30, 1724, one of the friends of the Duc de Bourbon, the Duc de Melun, is killed in one of the hunts given in honor of the King. Here is the story from the gazettes: "Towards seven o'clock in the evening, half a league from the château, the Duc de Melun, riding at a gallop in one of the forest ways, was wounded by the stag which was being tracked and which was almost at bay. The blow which he gave in passing was so hard that horse and horseman were thrown. The Duc de Melun was aided at first by the Due de Bourbon and the Comte de Clermont. Sieur Flandin du Montblanc, surgeon to the King, gave him first aid and had him carried to the château where he died today, the 31st, at five o'clock in the morning, in the thirtieth year of his age, after having received all the sacraments and made his will."
This tragic event moves the guests of the château, for the Duc de Melun is related to all the great families of the kingdom. The King sheds a few tears and talks of leaving the same evening. But he is made to understand that so sudden a departure will be interpreted in a fashion not very complimentary to the Prime Minister. He consents to remain two days longer at Chantilly and returns to Versailles.
Madame de Genlis is the author of a historical novel entitledMademoiselle de Clermont. In it she relates that this princess had secretly married the Duc de Melun eight days before the accident which led to his death. Of the history of the amours of Mlle, de Clermont and M. de Melun, she had composed a touching and dramatic little story.
At the bottom of the first page of this work she puts the following note: "The substance of this history, and almost all the details which it contains, are true; the author received them from a person (the late Marquise de Puisieulx-Sillery) who was as noteworthy for the sincerity of her character as for the superiority of her mind, and whom Mlle, de Clermont honored for twenty years, up to the day of her death, with her most intimate friendship. It was at Chantilly itself and in the fatal alley, which still bears the name of Melun, that this story was told for the first time to the author, who then wrote down its principal features and afterward forgot this little manuscript for thirty years. It was neither finished, nor written for the public, but no historic detail has been excised."
Is not this merely one of those subterfuges which romancers use to persuade us that they have "invented nothing" and to give us the illusion that it "really happened"? Or did Madame de Genlis really receive the confidences of a well-informed old lady?
First, we must note that if the author wished to mystify her readers, she succeeded on this occasion. When the Due d'Aumale had Mile, de Clermont and M. de Melun painted as a pendant to Théophile and Sylvie, he accepted the truth of the story told by Madame de Genlis. It may possibly be said that the Due d'Aumale could not refuse such a species of posthumous homage to the tutor of Louis Philippe. But all the historians who have written of Chantilly have in turn told the story of the adventure of Mlle, de Clermont, without even discussing its probability.... And now let us read the novel of Madame de Genlis.
It is a short and very agreeable task. The contemporaries of Madame de Genlis united in considering Mademoiselle de Clermont as her masterpiece and as a masterpiece. On the first point, I am ready to believe them; I cannot compare Mademoiselle de Clermont with the innumerable romances, tales and novels of the same author: I do not know them. As a child, I read Les Veillées du Chateau, and I cannot say today if it is necessary to set them above the similar works of Boüilly and of Berquin. As to the Souvenirs de Félicie, it has always seemed to me a sufficiently diverting book, full of doubtful anecdotes and of untruthful portraits, but in which the author shows her true self, with all her vanities of a woman and all her ridiculous traits as a writer. Is Mademoiselle de Clermont a masterpiece? Perhaps it was, but it is no longer. It remains a delightful book. It has great merits: marvelous rapidity, perfect skill and ease in the knitting together of the different episodes, a facile, supple and natural way of telling. If we confine ourselves to the composition of the work, it is a model: neither Mérimée nor Maupassant has written anything more concise or more polished. Without doubt, the style of Madame de Genlis seems terribly out of date today; her simple, limpid, perfectly correct language entirely lacks accent; her somewhat vague expressions have today a trace of age and colorlessness; in the tragic passages she exasperates us a little by the abuse of points of suspense; finally we are sometimes tired out by the lazy sensibility of the writer, the simplicity of the maxims which she inserts in her narration, her childish efforts to give a moral appearance to the most passionate of adventures; we discover too often the author of Les Veillées du Château in a story which we would have preferred to have told by the author of La Chartreuse de Parme. But the pleasure of a well-written story is so vivid that even in spite of the affectations, the artifices and the childishness, we still feel the emotion of the drama.
The two principals of the story are Mademoiselle de Clermont, sister of the Duc de Bourbon, and the Duc de Melun.
"Mlle, de Clermont received from nature and from fortune all the gifts and all the goods which can be envied: royal birth, perfect beauty, a fine and delicate mind, a sensitive soul and that sweetness, that equality of character which are so precious and so rare, especially in persons of her rank. Simple, natural, chary of words, she always expressed herself delightfully and wisely; there was as much reason as charm in her conversation. The sound of her voice penetrated to the bottom of the heart, and an air of sentiment, spread over her whole person, gave interest to her least important actions; such was Mlle, de Clermont at the age of twenty." She appears at Chantilly and, immediately, the beauty of the place, which offers "all that a sensitive soul can love in the way of rural and solitary delights," the splendor of "the most ingenious and the most sumptuous feasts," the pleasure of her first homage and her first praise, intoxicate her youthful heart.
Portrait of M. de Melun: "His character, his virtues, entitle him to personal consideration, independently of his fortune and of his birth. Although his figure was noble and his features mild and intellectual, his outer man showed no brilliancy; he was cold and distracted in society; though gifted with a superior mind, he was not at all what is called an amiable man, because he felt no desire to please, not from disdain or pride, but from an indifference which he had constantly preserved up to this period.... Finally the Duc de Melun, though endowed with the most noble politeness, had no gallantry; his very sensitiveness and extreme delicacy had preserved him till then from any engagement formed in caprice; aged scarcely thirty years, he was still only too capable of experiencing a grand passion, but, because of his character and his morals, he was safe from all the seductions of coquetry."
One of the favorite diversions of Mlle, de Clermont was to read romances aloud before a few friends, and on these occasions, they never failed to praise her reading and her sensitiveness. "The women wept, the men listened with the appearance of admiration and sentiment; they talked quite low among themselves; it was easy to guess what they said; sometimes they were overheard (vanity has so fine an ear!), and the hearer gathered the words ravishing, enchanting..." We will soon see if this story is true. But let us emphasize in passing the improbability of this little picture. Is it credible that people wept so abundantly at Chantilly in 1724?
A single man, always present at these lectures, preserves an obstinate silence: it is M. de Melun. The attitude of this motionless and silent auditor pricks the curiosity of Mlle, de Clermont. She questions. The Duke lets her understand that the reading of romances seems futile and frivolous to him. On the morrow she inflicts on her auditors the reading of a book of history. And the intrigue is begun.
Mlle, de Clermont seeks the company of the Marquise de G..., a tiresome and loquacious person, but the cousin of M. de Melun: her presence takes the curse off the promenades and conversations in the gardens of Chantilly. During one of these promenades, a petition is presented to the princess. She promises to hand it to her brother. But, in the hurry of dressing for the ball, she forgets her promise. M. de Melun, without saying anything about it, picks up the petition which was forgotten upon a table, and obtains from M. le Duc the favor which was asked, pretending that he is fulfilling the wishes of Mlle, de Clermont. Confusion of the forgetful young girl, who makes a vow not to appear at a ball for a year.... I will not say that this sentimental catastrophe is the most happy episode of the novel of Madame de Genlis.
More delicate, more truthful, more touching—with an agreeable dash of romance—is the story of the incidents which lead up to the inevitable declaration. Mlle, de Clermont is the first to avow her passion. Her birth and rank forbid M. de Melun to seek the hand of a princess of the blood royal. He goes away, he returns. Oaths are exchanged, and it is finally Mlle, de Clermont who proposes a secret marriage.
The two lovers appoint a meeting in a cottage. M. de Melun throws himself at the feet of Mile, de Clermont and abandons himself to all the transports of passion. Suddenly he rises and in a stifled voice begs her for the last time to abandon him.
"No, no," returns Mlle, de Clermont, "I will not flee from him whom I can love without shame, without reserve and without remorse, if he dares, as well as myself, to brave the most odious prejudices." At these words the Duke regarded Mlle, de Clermont with surprise and shock. "I am twenty-two years old," she continued; "the authors of my being no longer exist; the age and the rank of my brother give him only a fictitious authority over me, for nature has made me his equal."
"Great God!" cried the Duke, "what are you trying to make me think?"
"What! would I then be doing such an extraordinary thing? Did not Mlle, de Montpensier marry the Duc de Lauzun?"
"What do you say? Oh, heavens!"
"Did not the proudest of our kings at first approve this union? Later a court intrigue made him revoke his permission; but he had given it. Your birth is not inferior to that of the Duc de Lauzun. Mlle, de Montpensier was blamed by nobody, and she would not have failed to appear interesting in all eyes, because she was young and especially because she was loved."
"Who? Me? By such an excess I would abuse your sentiments and your inexperience!"
"There is no longer time for us to flee.... There is no longer time for us to deceive ourselves by discussing impossible sacrifices.... As we cannot break the tie which binds us, we must render it legitimate and sanctify it."
The next night, at two o'clock in the morning, clothed in a simple white muslin dress, she leaves the chateau. As she crosses the courtyard, her skirt catches on one of the ornaments of the pedestal of Condé's statue. She turns around in terror and believes that she must relate to her great ancestor the reasons for her attire. This nocturnal discourse is not one of the most ingenious inventions of Madame de Genlis.
In the same hut where the supreme explanation had occurred a chaplain secretly unites the new Lauzun to the new Montpensier.
Eight days later the King arrives at Chantilly. Festivals and hunts. M. de Melun is thrown off his horse and wounded by a stag: we have seen the true story of the accident.
Mlle, de Clermont is a few steps from the place where her husband is wounded; her carriage serves to transport the wounded man to the chateau. Passion is stronger than convention: she confesses all to M. le Duc. He, to avoid a scandal, feigns a trifle of indulgence and persuades the unfortunate lady to conceal her grief until the King's departure. She is buoyed up by false news, is told that the wound is not mortal and is not informed of the death of M. de Melun until Louis XV has left Chantilly.
Let us first remark that, whether history or romance, there is nothing to localize this story at the House of Sylvie. Madame de Genlis simply says to us that she thought it out in Sylvie's wood, that is all. In the great gallery of the Musée Condé, a painting by Nattier shows us the delicate countenance and the ardent eyes of Mlle, de Clermont. The princess is there represented in the guise of a nymph; her elbow rests on an overturned urn whence flows a limpid stream; a Love smiles at her feet; near her a servant holds a ewer bound with gold and from it fills a cup. In the background a pretty garden pavilion is outlined against a winter sky. This pavilion is that of the "Mineral Springs," and thus explains the allegories of the portrait. This little structure disappeared more than a century ago: it was situated in a part of the gardens which formerly extended over the hill of La Nonette, between the little stream and the main street of Chantilly: this land was separated from the domain during the Revolution and is now occupied by private owners. Possibly, at some time, some one has taken the pavilion in Nattier's picture for the House of Sylvie and perhaps this confusion explains why the souvenir of Mlle, de Clermont and M. de Melun has been placed beside the souvenir of Théophile and the Duchess of Montmorency.
But do we find here only an error of topography? Did Mlle, de Clermont secretly marry the Duc de Melun?