La Grande Mademoiselle

So many cases of private and individual happiness gave the impression of public and general happiness. Paris expressed its satisfaction by entering heart and soul into its amusements. It played by day and it played by night, exhibiting the extraordinary appetite for pleasure which has always distinguished it.

"All, both the little and the great, are happy," said Saint Evremond; "the very air they breathe is charged with amusement and with love." Mademoiselle preserved a grateful memory of that period of joyous intoxication. "The first months of the Regency," she said in her memoirs, "were the most beautiful that one could have wished. It was nothing but perpetual rejoicing everywhere. Hardly a day passed that there were not serenades at the Tuileries or in the place Royale."

The mourning for the late King hindered no one, not even the King's widow, who passed her evenings in Renard's garden,⁸⁹ where she frequently supped with her friends. Though the return of winter drove the people from the public walks, the universal amusements went on. "They danced everywhere," said Mademoiselle, "and especially at my house, although it was not at all according to decorum to hear violins in a room draped with mourning." We note here that at the time Mademoiselle wrote thus she was regarded as a victim. It was rumoured in Paris that her liberty and her pleasures were restricted, and the indignation of the people seethed at thought of it. Mademoiselle had lost her indulgent friend and governess, Mme. de Saint Georges. Her new governess, Mme. de Fiésque, a woman of firm will who looked with disfavour upon her pupil's untrammelled ways, made attempts to discipline her. When Mme. de Fiésque exerted her authority the canaille formed groups and threatened the palace of the Tuileries. Mademoiselle was sixteen years old and the whole world knew it. The people thought, as she thought, that she was too old to be imprisoned like a child. She was quick to avenge her outraged dignity; the governess was headstrong. Slap answered slap and, after the combat, Mademoiselle was under lock and key six days.

But all that was forgotten.

Mademoiselle had in mind something more important than her childish punishment. The death of Louis XIII. had enabled Gaston to send for his wife. The Regency made but one condition, – the married pair were to be remarried in France. The Princess Gaston was on the way, travelling openly, entering France with the reputation of a heroine of romance. Mademoiselle revelled in the thought of a step-mother as young and as beautiful as an houri. They would dance together; they would run about like sisters!

Twelve years previous to the death of Louis XIII., when Marguerite de Lorraine committed the so-called "crime" which Richelieu's jurisconsults qualified by a name for which we shall substitute the less discouraging term "abduction," events separated the wedded pair at the church door. The sacrament of marriage had just been administered.

Madame fled before the minions of the law reached Nancy and found her way cut off by the French army. She donned the wig and garments of a man, besmirched her face with suet, crossed the French line in a cardinal's coach, covered twenty leagues on horseback, and joined Monsieur in Flanders. The world called her courageous, and when she exercised her impeccancy during a nine years' separation from her husband, conjugal fidelity rare enough at any time, and especially rare at that time, definitely ranged her among spectacular examples of virtue.

Handsome, brave, free from restraint, and virtuous! Paris was curious to see her.

At Meudon (27th May, 1643) the people made haste to reach the spot before she alighted from her carriage. They were eager to witness her meeting with the light-minded husband with whom France was at last to permit her to cast her lot and from whom she had been separated so long. Mademoiselle wrote:

I ran on ahead of them all so that I might be at Gonesse when she arrived. From Gonesse she proceeded to Meudon without passing through Paris. She did not wish to stop in Paris because she was not in a condition to salute their Majesties. In fact, she could not salute them, because she was not dressed in mourning. We arrived at Meudon late, where Monsieur – having gone there to be on the spot when she arrived – found her waiting in the courtyard. Their first meeting took place in the presence of all who had accompanied them. Every one was astonished to see the coldness with which they met. It seemed strange! Monsieur had endured so much persecution from the King, and from Richelieu, solely on account of his marriage; and all his suffering had only seemed to confirm his constancy to Madame, therefore coldness seemed unexpected.

Both Monsieur and Madame were much embarrassed; it was a trying thing to meet after a separation of nine years.

Monsieur had not materially changed, although he had acquired a habit of the gout which hindered him when he attempted to pirouette. Madame appeared faded and ill-attired, but that was but a natural consequence of the separation; it was to be expected.

When their marriage had been duly regulated and recorded in the Parish Register, the couple established themselves in Gaston's palace, and the Court found that it had acquired an hypochondriac. The romantic type of constancy habitually hung upon the gate of Death. Mme. de Motteville said:

She rarely left her home; she affirmed that the least excitement brought on a swoon. Several times I saw Monsieur mock her; he told the Queen that Madame would receive the sacrament in bed rather than to go into her chapel, although the chapel was close by, – and all that "though she had no ailment of any importance."

When Madame visited the Queen, as she did once in twenty-four months, she was carried in a sedan chair, as other ladies of her quality were carried, but her movements were attended by such distress and by so much bustle that her arrival conveyed the impression of a miracle. Frequently, when she had started upon a journey, or to pay a visit to the Queen, before she had gone three yards she declared that she had been suddenly seized by faintness, or by some other ill; then her bearers were forced to make haste to return her to the house. She lived in Gaston's palace in the Luxembourg. Mademoiselle's palace was in the Tuileries, and the royal family lived either in the palace of the Louvre, in the Palais Royal, or in the Château of Saint Germain.

Madame declared that her life had been one continuous agony. She announced her evils not singly but in clusters, and although none of them were evident to the disinterested observer, her diagnoses displayed so thorough a knowledge of their essential character that to harbour a doubt of their reality would be to confess a consciousness of uncertainty akin to the skepticism of the ignorant.

At the advent of Madame the spiritual atmosphere of the Luxembourg changed. The Princess was a moralist, and either because of her nervous anxiety for his welfare, or for some other reason, she harangued her husband day and night. The irresponsible Gaston was a signal example of marital patience; he carried his burden bravely, listened attentively to his wife's rebukes, sang and laughed, whistled and cut capers, pulled his elf-locks in mock despair, and, clumsily whirling upon his gouty heels, "made faces" behind Madame's drooping shoulders; but he bore her plaintive polemics without a murmur, and although he freely ridiculed her, he never left her side. "Madame loved Monsieur ardently," and Monsieur returned Madame's love in the disorderly manner in which he did everything. "One may say that he loved her, but that he did not love her often," wrote Mme. de Motteville. The public soon lost its interest in the spectacular household; Madame was less heroic than her reputation. Mademoiselle despaired when Madame urged Monsieur to be prudent; to her mind her father's prudence had invariably exceeded the proportions of virtue. Generally speaking, Madame's first relations with her step-daughter were cordial, but they were limited to a purely conventional exchange of civilities. Speaking of that epoch, Mademoiselle said: "I did all that I possibly could to preserve her good graces, which I should not have lost had she not given me reason to neglect them." Mademoiselle could not have loved her step-mother, nor could she have been loved by her; Madame and Mademoiselle were of different and distinct orders.

II

The routine requirements of Mademoiselle's periods of mourning diverted her mind from her marriage projects, but she soon resumed her efforts. She had no adviser, and no one cared for her establishment; Gaston was too well employed in spending her money to concern himself with her future, and, as the duties of daily life fatigued Madame, Mademoiselle could not hope for assistance from her step-mother; the Queen was her only hope, and the Queen's executor was jealously guarding her fine principalities and keeping close watch over her person. In 1644 the King of Spain, Philippe IV., the brother of Anne of Austria, became a widower. He was the enemy of France, and it would have been folly to give him a right to any portion of French territory; but Mademoiselle did not consider that fact; her political intuitions were not keen. All that she could see was that the King had a crown, and that it was such a crown as would adorn the title of her own nobility. For some occult reason which, as no one has ever located it, will probably remain enigmatical, Mademoiselle imagined that Philippe IV. desired to espouse her; and she passed her time forming plans and waiting for the Spanish envoy who was to come to France to ask her father for her hand. As it is difficult to believe that she ever could have dreamed the story that she tells in her memoirs, we must suppose that there was some foundation for her hopes. Possibly the expectations upon which she artlessly dilated sprang from the intriguing designs of her subalterns.⁹⁰

The Queen bore witness to me that she passionately wished for the marriage, and Cardinal Mazarin spoke of it in the same way; more than that, he told me that he had received news from Spain which had shown him that the affair was desired in that country. Both the Queen and the Cardinal spoke of it repeatedly, not only to me but to Monsieur. By feigned earnestness they impressed us with the idea that they wished for the marriage. They lured us with that honour, though they had no intention of obliging us; and our good faith was such that we did not perceive their lack of sincerity. As we had full belief in them, it was easy for them to elude the obligations incurred by them when they aroused our expectations, and, in fact, that was just what they did; having talked freely of it to us during a certain period, they suddenly ceased to speak of it, and everything thereafter was as it would have been had there been no question of the marriage.

Mademoiselle's anxieties and hopes were fed alternately. To add to her distress, a Spaniard was caught on French soil and cast into the Bastille. Mademoiselle grieved bitterly over his fate; she supposed that the prisoner had been sent by the Spanish King to negotiate the marriage; it was her belief that Mazarin's spies had warned him (Mazarin) of the arrival of the envoy, and that the Cardinal had ordered the arrest to prevent the envoy from delivering his despatches; the interpretation was chimerical. Our knowledge is confined to the fact that nothing more was said of Mademoiselle's marriage, and that when the King was ready to marry he married an Austrian.

The troubles of England provided Mademoiselle with a more serious suitor. Queen Henriette, the daughter of Henry of Navarre, had fled to France, and France, in the person of the Regent, had installed her in the Louvre. Before that time Anne of Austria had moved from the Louvre to the Palais Royal, which was a more commodious residence, well fitted to the prevailing taste. Queen Henriette was ambitious, and she began to form projects for an alliance with France before she recovered from the fatigue of her journey.

Mademoiselle was a spirited Princess, very handsome, witty, and an ardent partisan. Such a wife would be a credit to any king, and the Montpensier estates were needed by the throne of England. Queen Henriette was sanguine; she ignored the fact that her son's future was dark and threatening. She made proposals to Mademoiselle and Mademoiselle received them coldly. Her ideas of propriety were shocked by the thought of such an alliance. The Queen of England was a refugee, dependent upon the bounty of France. There could be no honour or profit in marriage to her son!

Queen Henriette was the first of a series of exiled monarchs to whom France gave hospitality, and it must be said that her manner of opening a series was not a happy one. The sovereigns of former times were not familiar with revolutions, and their ignorance made them fearless; they despised precautions; they were improvident, they saved nothing for a rainy day; they scorned foreign stocks; they avoided business, and looked with contempt upon foreign bankers. If they lost their thrones they fled to foreign countries and sought refuge in the kingdoms of their friends, and there their comfort and their respectability were matters of chance; their friends might be in easy circumstances, and they might be on the verge of bankruptcy; a king's crown was not always accompanied by a full purse.

When Queen Henriette arrived in Paris she was received with honours and with promises. The courtiers donned their festive robes "broidered with gold and with silver,"⁹¹ and went to Montrouge to meet her and escort her into Paris. Anne of Austria received her affectionately and seated her at her right hand at banquets. Mazarin announced that she was to draw a salary of twelve hundred francs per diem; in short, everything was done to flatter the English guest. The credulous Henriette accepted the flattery and the promises literally and she was dazed, when, awaking to the truth, she found that she was a beggar. Recording the history of that epoch, Mademoiselle said:

"The Queen of England had appeared everywhere in Paris attended like a Queen, and with a Queen's equipage. With her we had always seen her many ladies of quality, chariots, guards, and footmen. Little by little all that disappeared and the time came when nothing was more lacking to her dignity than her retinue and all the pomps to which she had been accustomed."

Queen Henriette was obliged to sell her jewels and her silver dishes; debts followed debts, and the penniless sovereign had no way to meet them. The little court of the Louvre owed the baker and could not pay its domestic servants. Mme. de Motteville visited the Louvre and found Queen Henriette practically alone. She was sitting, dejectedly meditating, in one of the great empty salles; her unpaid servitors had abandoned her and her suite had gone where they could find nourishment.

In her account of her visit Mme. de Motteville said:

She showed us a little golden cup, from which she habitually drank, and she swore to us that that was all the gold of any kind that had been left in her possession. She said that, more than that, all her servants had demanded their wages and said that they would leave her service if she refused to satisfy their demands; and she said she had not been able to pay them.

The spectacle of royal poverty and the tragical turn taken by English affairs gave Mademoiselle cause for serious thought. She saw that whatever the Prince might be in the future, he was not a desirable suitor at the epoch existent; and she spoke freely:

Were I to marry that boy I should have to sell everything that I might possess and go to war! I should not be able to help it. I could not rest until I had staked my all on the chance of reconquering his kingdom! But as I had always lived in luxury, and as I had been free from care, the thought of such an uncertain condition troubled me.

Had the Prince of Wales been a hero of the type of the Cid, Mademoiselle would have thrown prudence to the winds. Personal attraction, the magnetism of love, the arguments used by Lauzun would have called her from her dreams of the pomp becoming her rank, and she would have confronted poverty gaily; her whole career proved that she was not of a calculating mind. The Prince of Wales was by three years her junior; he was awkward and bashful, and so ignorant that he had no conception of his own affairs. He lounged distractedly through the vast, empty Louvre, absorbed in purposeless thought, and, goaded by his mother, he frequented the Tuileries and besieged the heart of his cousin, whom he amazed by the sluggish obstinacy of his attentions. He paid his court with the inconsequent air of a trained parrot; the details of his love-making were ordered by his mother, and when, tormented by personal anxieties, the Queen of England forgot to dictate his discourse, he sat before Mademoiselle with lips closed. He talked so little that it was said he "opened his teeth only to devour fat meat." At one of the banquets of the Queen of France he refused to touch the ortolans, and falling upon an enormous piece of beef and upon a shoulder of mutton he "ate as if there had been nothing else in the world, and as if he had never eaten before."

"His taste," mused Mademoiselle, "appeared to me to be somewhat indelicate; I was ashamed because he was not as good in other respects as he bore witness that he was in his feeling for me."

After the banquet at which the Prince refused the ortolans, the cousins were left alone, and, commenting upon the fact later, Anne-Marie-Louise said: "It pleases me to believe that on that occasion his silence resulted from an excess of respect for me rather than from lack of tenderness; but I will avow the truth; I would have been better pleased had he shown less stolidity and less deficiency in the transports of the love-passion." It is but fair to say in behalf of the timid suitor that, according to his feeble light, he acquitted himself conscientiously; he gazed steadfastly in his cousin's pretty face, he held the candle when her hair-dresser coiffed her hair; but as he was only a great boy, just at the age of dumb stupidity, he had few thoughts which were not personal, and few words to express even those. He was neither Chérubin, Fortunio, nor Rodrigue. "He had not an iota of sweetness," declared Mademoiselle. Worse than that, he had none of the exalted sentiments by means of which the heroes of Corneille manifested their identity, and to Mademoiselle that was a serious matter. As the awkward suitor became more insistent Mademoiselle was seized by a determination to be rid of him. Her records fix the date of her adverse inspiration. "In 1647 toward the end of winter⁹² a play followed by a ball was given at the Palais Royal [the trago-comedy, Orpheus, in music and Italian verse]." Anne of Austria, who had no confidence in her niece's taste, insisted that the young lady should be coiffed and dressed under her own eye. Mademoiselle said:

They were engaged three whole days arranging my coiffure; my robe was all trimmed with diamonds and with white and black carnation tufts. I had upon me all the stones of the Crown, and all the jewels owned by the Queen of England [at that time she still possessed a few]. No one could have been more magnificently bedight than I was for that occasion, and I did not fail to find many people to tell me of my splendour and to talk about my pretty figure, my graceful and agreeable bearing, my whiteness, and the sheen of my blonde hair, which they said adorned me more than all the riches which glittered upon my person.

After the play a ball was given on a great, well-lighted stage. At the end of the stage was a throne raised three steps high and covered by a dais; according to Mademoiselle's account:

Neither the King nor the Prince of Wales would sit upon the throne, and as I, alone, remained upon it, I saw the two Princes and all the Princesses of the Court at my feet. I did not feel awkward or ill at ease, and no one of all those who saw me failed to tell me that I had never seemed less constrained than then, that I was of a race to occupy the throne, and that I should occupy my own throne still more freely and more naturally when the time came for me to remain upon it.

Seen from the height of the throne, the Prince of Wales seemed less of a man than he had ever seemed before, and from that day Mademoiselle spoke of him as "that poor fellow." She said: "I pitied him. My heart as well as my eyes looked down upon him, and the thought entered my mind that I should marry an emperor." The thought of an emperor entered her mind the previous year when Ferdinand III. became a widower. Monsieur's favourite, the Abbé Rivière, – with a view to his own interests, and possibly with some hope of adding to his income, – announced the welcome tidings of the Empress's death as soon as he received them; and Mademoiselle said:

"M. de la Rivière told me that I must marry either the Emperor or his brother. I told him that I should prefer the Emperor."

Paris heard of the project that same evening. Mademoiselle did not receive proposals from the Emperor at that time or at any other time, but the idea that she was to be an Empress haunted her mind, and as she was very frank, she told her hopes freely. La Rivière and others like him, taking advantage of her public position and of her accessibility, told her flattering tales and suggested alliances; she was informed that the Court of Vienna, the Court of Germany, and in fact all the Courts, desired alliance with her, and she believed all that was said. The evening of the ball, Anne of Austria declared, by Mademoiselle's own account, that she "wished passionately that the marriage with the Emperor might be arranged, and that she should do all that lay in her power to bring it about." Mademoiselle did not believe in the Regent's promises, but she listened to them and shaped her course by them. Gaston told her (in one of the rare moments when he remembered that she was his daughter) that the Emperor was "too old," and that she would not be happy in his country. Mademoiselle answered that she cared more for her establishment than for the person of her suitor. Gaston reflected upon the statement and promised to do everything possible for the furtherance of her schemes. Mademoiselle recorded his promise with the comment: "So after that I thought of the marriage continually and my dream of the Empire so filled my mind that I considered the Prince of Wales only as an object of pity." This folly, while it gave free play to other and similar follies, clung to her mind with strange tenacity, and long after the Emperor married the Austrian Mademoiselle said archly: "The Empress is enceinte; she will die when she is delivered, and then – ." The Empress did die, either at the moment of her deliverance or at some other moment, and Mademoiselle took the field, determined to march on to victory. One of her gentlemen (of the name of Saujon) whom she fancied "because he was half crazy," secretly placed in her hand a regularly organised correspondence treating of her marriage. Mademoiselle received all the letters, read them, approved of them, and appointed Saujon chargé of her affairs. By her order Saujon travelled to Germany to bring about the marriage. No one had ever heard of a royal or a quasi-royal alliance negotiated by a private individual, but Saujon boldly entered upon his mission. Incidentally he revised Mademoiselle's despatches; adding and eliminating sentences according to his own idea of the exigencies of the case. One of his letters was intercepted and he was arrested and cast into prison. It was rumoured that he had made an attempt to abduct the Princess so that she might marry the Archduke Leopold.

At first Mademoiselle laughed at the rumours. She declared that people knew her too well to think that she could do anything so ridiculous.

Mazarin cross-questioned Saujon, – and no one knew better than he how to conduct an inquest, – but turn his victim as he might the Cardinal could not wring from Saujon anything but the truth. Saujon insisted that Mademoiselle had not known anything concerning the intercepted letter.

Anne of Austria, seconded by Monsieur, feigned to take the affair seriously, and a violent scene ensued.

One evening (May 6, 1648, according to d'Ormesson) the Abbé de la Rivière met Mademoiselle in the corridor of the Palais Royal, and casually informed her that the Queen and Monsieur were angry. Almost at the same instant Monsieur issued from the room adjoining the corridor and ordered his daughter to enter the Queen's room.

Then [said Mademoiselle] I went into the Queen's gallery. Mlle. de Guise, who was with me, would have followed me, but Monsieur furiously shut the door in her face. Had not my mind been free from all remorse I should have been frightened, but I knew that I was innocent, and I advanced toward the Queen, who greeted me angrily. She said to the Cardinal: "We must wait until her father comes; he must hear it!" I went to the window, which was higher than the rest of the gallery, and I listened with all the pride possible to one who feels that her cause is just. When Monsieur arrived the Queen said to me sharply: "Your father and I know all about your dealings with Saujon. We know all your plans!" I answered that I did not know to what plans she had reference, and that I was somewhat curious to know what her Majesty meant.

Anne of Austria was angry, and her shrill falsetto conveyed an impression of vulgarity. Mademoiselle, calmly contemptuous, on foot and very erect, stood in the embrasure of the long window; Monsieur, who dreaded his daughter's anger, had drawn close to the Queen; directly behind Monsieur was Mazarin, visibly amused.

Mademoiselle listened to her accusers, and answered with a sneer that she had nothing to do with it, that she was not interested in it, that such a scheme was worthy of low people.

"This concerns my honour," she said coldly; "it is not a question of the head of Cinq-Mars, nor of Chalais, whom Monsieur delivered to death. No; nor is it an affair to be classed with the examinations to which Richelieu subjected your Majesty!"

"It is a fine thing," screamed Anne of Austria, "to recompense a man for his attachment to your service by putting his head upon the block!"

"It would not be the first head that had visited the block, but it would be the first one that I had put there," retorted Mademoiselle.

"Will you answer what you are asked?" demanded the Queen. I obeyed [said Mademoiselle]. I told her that as I had never been questioned, I should be embarrassed to answer. Cardinal Mazarin listened to all that I said, and he laughed… The discussion seemed long to me. Repetitions which are not agreeable always produce that effect. The conversation had lasted an hour and a half. It bored me, and as I saw that it would never end if I did not go away, I said to the Queen: "I believe that your Majesty has nothing more to say to me." She replied that she had not. I curtsied and went out from the combat, victorious, but very angry. As I abandoned the field, the Abbé de la Rivière tried to address me. I halted, and discharged my anger at him; then I went to my room, where I was seized by fever.

Before she "abandoned the field" Mademoiselle rated Monsieur, who had imprudently attempted to interpose a word in favour of the Queen. Mme. de Motteville, to whom Anne of Austria told the story, reported that Mademoiselle reproached her father bitterly because he had not married her to the Emperor, when he "might easily have done so." She told him that it was shameful for a man not to defend his daughter "when her glory appeared to be attacked." The courtiers assembled in the adjoining room, though unable to distinguish the words of the discussion, had listened with curiosity. Mme. de Motteville said:

We could not hear what they were saying, but we heard the noise of the accusations and we heard Mademoiselle's calm defence. The Queen's Minister avoided showing that he was interested in it in any way. Although there were but three voices there was so great a clamour that we were anxious to know the result and the meaning of the quarrel. Mademoiselle came out of the gallery looking more haughty than ashamed, and her eyes shone with anger rather than with repentance. That evening the Queen did me the honour to tell me that had she been possessed of a daughter who had treated her as Mademoiselle had treated Monsieur, she would have banished her and never permitted her to return, – and that she should have shut her up in a convent.

The day after the discussion guards were mounted at the door of Mademoiselle's apartments. The Abbé de la Rivière visited Mademoiselle to tell her that her father forbade her to receive any one —no matter whom– until she was ready to confess what she knew of the intercepted letter. Mademoiselle remained firm in her denial of any knowledge of it.

Though sick from grief, she held her ground ten days. Murmurs were heard among the canaille, and little groups approached the palace, looked threateningly into the courtyard, and gazed at Mademoiselle's closed windows. It was known that Mademoiselle was in prison and the people resented it. How long could she hold out? How would it end? "It was known," wrote Olivier d'Ormesson, "that the Queen had called her 'an insolent girl' in the presence of her own father, and it was known that she had indignantly repudiated all knowledge of the intercepted letter; it was known that she had defended herself bravely." As the hours passed the people's murmurs increased, the aspect of the canaille became so menacing that the terrified Gaston sought counsel of Mazarin. Mazarin favoured clemency; he believed that Mademoiselle had been disciplined enough. By the advice of the angry Queen, Monsieur waited one day longer; then word was sent to Mademoiselle that she was free and that she might receive visits, and in an hour all the people of the under-world of Paris were hurrying to the palace, laughing, shouting, crying to each other in broken voices. They surged past the sentinel and entered the courtyard; men wept, women, holding their children above their heads, pointed to the open window where Mademoiselle, emaciated by her ten days' trial, but still haughty and determined, looking down into the upturned faces, smiled a welcome. Public sympathy and the sympathy of both the Court and the city endorsed Mademoiselle's conduct and condemned the conduct of Monsieur. According to contemporary judgment Monsieur had betrayed his own flesh and blood: he had been given an opportunity to prove himself a man and he had refused it. Innocent or culpable, the custom of the day commanded the father to defend his child.