La Grande Mademoiselle

Meanwhile the price of bread had tripled; the Revolution had reached the provinces, and the generals had signed a treaty of alliance with Spain. This was paying dear for the violins of the heroines of the Hôtel de Ville!

In Parliament the magistrates, the solid men of France, revolted against the seigniors as they had revolted against the barricades. They knew what influences had been brought to bear upon individuals, they had seen the royal power exercised to the ruin of the country, they knew the strength of the mobility, and their own honour had been called in question; but their action was the result of an unselfish impulse. National affection, a natural patriotism, had raised them above fear and above rancour. They were determined to rescue the country, and they had lost faith in all intentions save their own.

Acting on their own counsel and on their own responsibility, they hastened to conclude the peace negotiations of Rueil (11th March, 1649). Their action irritated the generals. Peace thus arranged was not in their plan; it brought them no profit: they argued and bargained.

To quote Mme. de Motteville, they "demanded all France" in payment for their part in the treaty. They made it plain that if they should give their signatures it would be because they had been paid for them. Shameless haggling marked this period of the Fronde. After all those who had influence or signatures to dispose of had plucked the many-membered monarchy even to its pin-feathers, and after each of the assistants had taken a leg or a wing for himself, the generals consented to lay down their arms, and peace was proclaimed to the sound of trumpets.

The day after the proclamation was issued, Mademoiselle asked her father and the Queen for permission to return to Paris.

She wished to see how the Parisians regarded her and how they would receive her. She set out from Saint Germain across the devastated country. The soldiers of both parties had burned the houses, cut down the trees, and massacred or put to flight the inhabitants. It was April, the time when all the orchards are in flower, but the suburbs within six miles of Paris were bare and black; the ground was as lifeless as a naked rock.

III

"Monday, 8th April," noted a contemporary, "Mlle. d'Orléans arrived at her lodgings in the Tuileries, amidst the great applause of the Parisians. Tuesday, the 9th, every one called on Mademoiselle."

Mademoiselle wrote: "As soon as I was in my lodgings every one came to see me; all Paris came, the highest and the lowest of the party. During my three days' stay in Paris my house was never empty." A second visit to the Tuileries was equally triumphant, and Mademoiselle was confirmed in her determination to accomplish her destiny by marrying the King of France. The project was public property; the capital of the kingdom approved it, and the people were ready to barricade the streets in case the King, the Queen, or the Italian objected to it.

Mademoiselle should sit upon the throne! the People willed it!

At that time a comedy equal to any presented upon the stages of the theatres was played at Saint Germain, and the Queen was leading lady. The chiefs of the Fronde, generals, members of Parliament, representatives of all the corporate bodies and of all the classes – even the humblest – visited the château and assured the Queen of their allegiance. As Mademoiselle said: "No one would confess that he had ever harboured an intention against the King; it was always some one else whom he or she had opposed." The Queen received every one. She was as gracious to the shop-keeper as to the duke and peer. Anne of Austria appeared to believe all the professions that the courtiers made; and all alike, high and low, went away with protestations of joy and love.¹⁴¹ The only one who lost her cue in this courtly comedy was Mme. de Longueville. Her position was so false that though she was artful she quailed; she was embarrassed, she blushed, stammered, and left the royal presence furiously angry at the Queen, although, to quote an ingenuous chronicler,¹⁴² "the Queen had done nothing to intimidate her."

Saint Germain returned the visits made by the city, and each courtier was received in a manner appropriate to his deserts. Condé was saluted with hoots and hisses. The Parisians had not forgotten the part that he had played in the suburbs. The other members of the Court were well received, and when the Queen, seated in her coach, appeared, holding the little King by her hand, the people's enthusiasm resembled an attack of hysteria. The city had ordered a salute, and the gunners were hard at work, but the public clamour was so great that it drowned the booming of the cannon, and the aldermen fumed because, as they supposed, their orders to fire the salute had been ignored.¹⁴³ Exclamations and plaudits hailed the procession at every step. The canaille thrust their heads through the doors of the royal carriage and smiled upon the King; they voiced their praises with vehemence. Mazarin was the success of the day; the women thought him beautiful, and they told him so; the men clasped his hands. Mazarin eclipsed Mademoiselle, and Mademoiselle, neglected by the people, found the time very long.

Speaking of that hour she said, "Never was I bored as I was that day!"

The beauty of the Queen's favourite won the hearts of the people of the Halles, and the royal party entered the palace in triumph. When Anne of Austria first left her palace, after her return from exile, the women who peddled herrings fell upon her in a mass and with streaming eyes begged her to forgive them for opposing her. Anne of Austria was bewildered by the transports of their admiration. They approved of her choice of a lover; they sympathised with her in her love, and they were determined to make her understand it. The Queen's delicacy was wounded by the latitude of their protestations.

Paris had made the first advances and royalty had accepted them. As there were no public "journals," to speak to the country, a ball was given to proclaim that peace had been made, and the ball and the fireworks which followed – and which depicted a few essential ideas upon the sky by means of symbolical figures – acted as official notices. The fête took place with great magnificence the 5th September.

Louis XIV. was much admired, and his tall cousin almost as much so. "In the first figure the King led Mademoiselle," said the Chronicle "and he did it so lightly and with such delicacy that he might have been taken for a cupid dancing with one of the graces." The guests of the Hôtel de Ville, the little and the large Bourgeoisie, men, wives, and daughters, contemplated the spectacle from the tribunes; they were not permitted to mingle with the Court. Anne of Austria watched them intently; she was unable to conceal her surprise at their appearance. The wives of the bourgeois displayed a luxury equal to that of the wives of the nobles. Apparently their costumes were the work of a Court dressmaker. Their diamonds were superb. Anne of Austria had assisted at all the official fêtes of thirty years, and she had never seen such a thing.

The French Bourgeoisie was to be counted; not ignored. The appearance of the bourgeoises was a warning, but the quality either could not, or would not seize it.

When Paris had wept all the tears of its tenderness it returned to its former state of discontent. The whole country was restless; news of revolts came from the provinces. Condé was hated; he was imperious and exacting; he was in bad odour at Court; he had offended the Queen. As Mazarin was in the way of his plans, he had attempted to present the Queen with another favourite. Jarzé, a witless popinjay, was the man chosen by Condé to supplant the accomplished successor of de Richelieu. Jarzé was a human starling; he was giddy, stupid, and in every way ill-fitted to enter the lists with a rival armed with the gravity, the personal beauty, and the subtlety of Mazarin. Jarzé had full confidence in his own powers; he believed that to win his amorous battles he had only to have his hair frizzed and storm the fort. Anne of Austria was sedate and modest and she was deep in love. Jarzé had hardly opened the attack when she ordered him from her presence. Condé, stunned by the effect of his diplomacy, wavered an instant upon the field, but a sharp order from the Queen sent him after his protégé. Anne of Austria felt the outrage, and she vowed eternal anger to Condé.

Condé's lack of tact, coupled with his determination to work miracles, led him into many false positions. He had no political wit, and nothing could have been less like the great Condé of the battle-field than the awkward and insignificant Condé of civil life. In battle he acted as by inspiration. He surged before his armies like the god of war; he was calm, indifferent to danger, impetuous, and terrible; face to face with death, his mind developed and he could give a hundred orders to a hundred persons at once.¹⁴⁴ In Parliament, or with the chiefs of his political party, he was as nervous as a woman; he stood trembling, with face paling or reddening, laughing when he ought to weep, and bursting into fits of anger when the occasion called for joy. There was nothing fixed, or stable, in his whole make-up, except his overweening pride and an "invincible immoderation,"¹⁴⁵ which eventually precipitated him into the abyss. No one had as much natural wit, yet no one was as fantastic in tastes and in behaviour. He adored literature: sobbed over Cinna and thought Gomberville's Polexandre admirable. He swooned when he parted with Mlle. de Vigean, a few days later he – as Mademoiselle termed it – "forgot her all at one blow." He was a great genius but a crackbrain; a complicated being, full of contrasts and contradictions, but singularly interesting. He has been described as a "lank prince, with unkempt, dusty hair, a face like a bird-of-prey, and a flaming eye whose look tried men's souls."

The summer was barely over when Condé forced the Cardinal to sign a promise not to do any thing without his (Condé's) permission. Condé's imperious nature had driven him head long, and at that moment Monsieur's position depended upon his own activity. He had it in his power to sell support to the Crown; the Queen was on Change as a buyer. One step more and it would be d'Orléans against Condé with the Throne of France at his back! Monsieur's wife and Mademoiselle seldom agreed upon any subject, but they united in urging Monsieur to seize his opportunity. As usual, the household spies informed the people of the family discussions, and the popular balladists celebrated the aspirations of the ladies d'Orléans by a song which was sung all over Paris. France was represented as imploring Monsieur to save her from Condé, and Gaston was represented as answering:

 
… "I am sleepy! I would pass my life in sleep,
Never have I a wish to be awakened:
My wife, my daughter, you plead in vain,
I sleep."¹⁴⁶
 

Monsieur trembled with fear [wrote Retz]; at times it was impossible to persuade him to go to Parliament; he would not go even with Condé for an escort; the bare thought of it terrified him. When a paroxysm of fear seized him it was said that his Royal Highness was suffering from another attack of colic.

One day when several of his friends had, by their united efforts succeeded in getting him as far as the Saint Chapelle, he turned and ran back to his palace with the precipitation and the grimaces of a client of M. Purgon.¹⁴⁷

Nothing could be done with Gaston; his conduct made Mademoiselle heart-sick. When the second or new Fronde took shape she had no part in it. She looked, on as a listless spectator, while Mazarin spun his web around his enemies and worked his way toward the old Fronde. Condé was marching on to a species of dictatorship when the King's minions brought him to a halt. He was arrested and cast into prison and the Parisians celebrated his disgrace by building bonfires (18th January). A great political party composed of women from all parts of France arose to champion Condé, and still the bravest of all women, La Grande Mademoiselle, sat with head bowed, deep in grief; her father's cowardice had drained life of its joy.

Having aroused the wrath of France by adventures which were the scandal of their hour, Mme. de Longueville had taken refuge in a foreign land and formed an alliance with Spain. France looked on bewildered by the turn of events; Mme. de Chevreuse and the Princess Palatine were in active life regarded as equals of men of State, consulted, and obeyed. Mme. de Montbazon had her own sphere of action; Mme. de Chatillon had hers¹⁴⁸; both ladies were powerful and dangerous politicians. Others, by the dozen, and from one end of the kingdom to the other, were engaged in directing affairs of State.

Even the insignificant wife of Condé whom no one – not even her husband – had counted as worthy of notice, had reached the front rank at a bound by the upheaval of Bordeaux; yet La Grande Mademoiselle, who possessed the spirit and the energy of a man, was peremptorily ordered by her father and forced to follow Anne of Austria from province to province suppressing insurrections.

In the many months which Mademoiselle considered as unworthy of note in her memoirs, the only period of time well employed by her was passed in an attack of smallpox, which she received so kindly that it embellished her; she said of it: "Before then my face was all spotted; the smallpox took that all away."

Mme. de Longueville's alliance with Spain had cost France the invasion of the Archduke Leopold and de Turenne. In 1650 the Court went to the siege of Bordeaux and Mademoiselle was compelled to accompany the Queen and to appear as an adherent of the King's party; but before she set out upon her distasteful journey she wrote a letter to the invader (the Archduke Leopold) which she was not ashamed to record and which contained a frank statement of her opinion:

Your troops are more capable of causing joy than fear. The whole Court takes your arrival in good part, and your enterprises will never be regarded as suspicious. Do all that it pleases you to do; the victories that you are to win will be victories of benevolence and affection.¹⁴⁹

Let us remember the nature of those victories of "benevolence and affection" before we form an opinion. Time has veiled with romance the manœuvres which the amazons of the Fronde made to excite the masses to rebellion, but the legend loses its glamour when we consider the brutal ferocity of the armies of the seventeenth century and the abominations practised in the name of glory. The women who shared the life of the generals of the Fronde were travesties of heroines, devoid of the gentler instincts of woman; there was nothing good in them; their imaginations were perverted, they incited their followers to cruelty, and playing with tigerish grace with the love of men, they babbled musically, in artful and well-turned sentences, of the questions of the day, and mocked and wreathed their arms above their heads when their victims were dying.

The Court arrived at Libourne 1st August and remained there thirty days. The weather was very warm, and the Queen secluded herself in her apartment and forced Mademoiselle to sit at her side working on her tapestry. Mademoiselle fumed; she was imprisoned like a child while all the ladies of France were engaged in military service. To add to her mortification, she felt that the Queen had taken a false step and that all Paris was laughing at the Court. Sitting in the Queen's close rooms, Mademoiselle reflected bitterly on her position. She had again entered into collusion with Saujon. The Emperor was for the second time a widower, and Mademoiselle had re-employed the services of her old ambassador. She had sent Saujon to the Emperor to make a second attempt to arrange a marriage. But she had not renounced the King of France, and one of her confidential friends had opened her eyes to the real character of her enterprise. Until then it had seemed natural enough that she should make efforts to establish herself in life; but through the officious indelicacy of her friend she had learned that she was pursuing two husbands at once. One of the objects of her pursuit was a man of ripe age, doubly widowed, the husband of two dead wives; the other a child of tender years, – and neither one nor the other would consent to marry her. She was glad to be far from Paris, where every one knew and pitied her. She burned incense to all her gods and prayed that civil war might keep the Parisians too busy to remember her. Her grief and shame were at their height when the scene changed. Monsieur awoke; Retz had worked a miracle. By means of his peculiar method, acting upon the principle of humanity's susceptibility to intelligent suggestion, Retz had persuaded Monsieur that he, Monsieur, was the only man in France fit to mediate between the parties; after long-continued series of efforts his clerical insinuations had aroused Gaston from his torpor, and one evening when the Queen, flushed and irritable, and Mademoiselle, dejected but defiant, sat at their needlework Gaston entered the dim salon and announced his importance. The trickster of the pulpit and of the slums had managed to infuse a little of his own spirit into the royal poltroon, and for the first time in his political career Gaston displayed some of the characteristics of a man. In an hour Bordeaux knew that the Prince d'Orléans had arrived in Libourne as the accredited mediator of the parties. The politicians fawned at his feet, and Anne of Austria rose effusively to do honour to Monsieur le Prince d'Orléans. By order of the Regent all despatches were submitted to Gaston, who passed upon them as best he could.

Mazarin rose to meet the situation; he was not bewildered by Retz's tactics; he affected to believe that Monsieur must be consulted upon all matters, and by his orders Monsieur's tables were littered with documents. Mazarin multiplied occasions for displaying his allegiance to the royal arbiter. Mademoiselle met the change in her situation joyfully, but calmly. It was the long-expected first smile of fortune; it was the natural consequence of her birth; things were entering their natural order; but she was observant and her mémoirs show us that she valued her incense at its real worth. While the political world bent the knee before Monsieur Mazarin fortified his own position. He sat with the ladies in the Queen's salon, he betrayed a fatherly solicitude in Mademoiselle's future and, as he acted his part, his enthusiasm increased. One day when he was alone with Mademoiselle he assured her that he had prayed long and earnestly for her establishment upon one of the thrones of the world. Sitting at her tapestry, Mademoiselle listened and averted her head to hide her anger. Mazarin, supposing that he had aroused her gratitude, exposed all his anxiety. Mademoiselle did not answer. At last, astonished by her silence, he cut short his declamation. Mademoiselle counted her stitches and snipped her threads; Mazarin watched her impassive face. After a long silence she arose, pushed aside her embroidery frame, and turning to enter her own apartment, she said calmly: "There is nothing upon earth so base that you have not thought of it this morning." Mazarin was alone; he sat with eyes fixed upon the floor, smiling indulgently, wrapt in thought; he was not angry, – he was never visibly excited to anger; but he did not return to the subject. Mademoiselle had resented his overtures because she had made known her projects freely and he had promised her a king, not an emperor. She reported the Cardinal's conduct to Lenet: "The Cardinal has promised me, a hundred times, that he would arrange to have me marry the King¹⁵⁰– but the Cardinal is a knave!" The Queen said with truth that Mademoiselle was becoming a rabid Frondeuse. Mademoiselle had her own corps of couriers, who carried her the latest news from Paris; her court was larger than the Regent's. When Bordeaux was taken the people saw nothing and talked of nothing but Monsieur's daughter. Mademoiselle exultantly recorded her triumph:

"No one went to the Queen's, and when she passed in the streets no one cared at all for her. I do not know that it was very agreeable to her to hear that my court was large and that no one was willing to leave my house, when so few cared to go to her house."

While the Regent languished in solitude waiting for visitors who did not arrive her Minister received the rebuffs of the people of Bordeaux. The Queen was sick from chagrin, and as soon as arrangements could be made she returned to Paris. On the way to Paris the Court stopped at Fontainebleau. Gaston descended brusquely from his coach and as his foot touched the ground gave way to a violent outburst of nervous anger. Mazarin was the object of his fury; in some occult way the Cardinal had wounded his feelings. He fled to his room and locked his door, refusing to see either Mazarin or the Queen. As he stood his ground, and as no one could approach him, the Queen implored Mademoiselle to pacify him; and Mademoiselle, carrying her olive branch with a very bad grace, set out to play the part of dove in the ark. After many goings and comings, Monsieur consented to receive the Queen; but the Queen acidulated rather than sweetened the royal broth, and Monsieur broke away from her in a passion of fury. From that time all that Anne of Austria attempted to do failed; her evil hour was approaching. Mazarin had thought of two alternatives: he believed that he might buy Retz by making him a cardinal; or that he might win the good-will of Mademoiselle by marrying her to the King. But could he do either one thing or the other? Could he mortify his own soul by doing anything to give Retz pleasure? Retz was hateful to him.

Despite his powerful diplomatic capacity, Mazarin was not a politician, and some of his instincts bore a curious family resemblance to the characteristic instincts of the average woman; so although he believed that it would be possible to buy Retz with a red hat the thought of giving him the hat distressed him. So much for one of his alternatives!

As to marrying Mademoiselle to the King of France, – that would be difficult, if not impossible; the thought of such a marriage was repugnant to the King. Louis XIV. was wilful and the Queen was an indulgent mother. She pampered her children; she excused the King's failings. Mazarin was patient, but he had often considered Anne of Austria adverse to reason when the King was in question. The Cardinal was master of the Queen, but he was not, he never had been, he never could be, master of the Queen-mother.

In his extremity he resorted to his usual means, – intrigue; but he found that his power had waned. There were people who might have helped him, and who would have helped him in former times, but they had ceased to fear him; they demanded pay and refused to work without it. Mazarin was too normally natural a man to act against nature; he clung to his economies and as his supposititious agents refused to take their pay in "blessed water," his plans failed. His attempts were reported to his intended victims and before the sun set Mademoiselle of the Court and of the people, and the Abbé Retz of the Archbishopric and of the slums had arisen in their might against "the foreigner." Both of the leaders of the masses were implacable; each was powerful in his own way; both believed that they had been duped by the Archbishop's coadjutor; Retz had expected a hat; Mademoiselle had expected a husband; both, vowing vengeance to the death, turned their backs upon Mazarin. Mademoiselle had acquired the habit of suspicion; politics had given her new ideas; Retz had always been suspicious and he had prepared for every emergency. Mazarin, sitting in his perfumed bower, felt that the end was near. What was he? What had they always called him? "The stranger." … The whole world was against him … the nobles, the Parliaments … the old Fronde, the Fronde of the Princes! … Retz with his adjutants of the mobility! To crown his imprudence and to prove that he was more powerful as a lover than as a politician, Mazarin took the field at Rethel (15th December, 1650) and won the day; Turenne and his foreigners were beaten, and fear seized the people of France. An intriguer of that species could do anything! France was not safe in his presence; he must be driven out! During the Fronde it was common for women to dictate the terms of treaties. Anne de Gonzague, the Palatine Princess, whose only mandate lay in her eyes, her wit, and her bold spirit, drew up the treaty which followed Rethel, and the principal articles were liberty for the princes and exile for Mazarin.

Mademoiselle approved both articles before the treaty was signed. The times were full of possibilities for her; her visions of a marriage with Louis XIV. had been blurred by a sudden apparition. Condé had arisen in her dreams with a promise of something better. Might it not be wiser policy to unite the junior branches of the House of France? Might it not be more practical, more fruitful in results, to marry M. le Prince de Condé than to wage war against him? That he was a married man was of small importance. His wife, the heroine of Bordeaux, was in delicate health and as liable to die as any mortal; in the event of her death the dissent of the Opposition would be the only serious obstacle. Mademoiselle confided all her perplexities to her memoirs; she foresaw that the dissent of the Opposition would be ominous for the royal authority, and therefore ominous for the public peace. She reflected; Condé was a strong man; and who was stronger than the Granddaughter of France? She decided that they two, she and Condé, made one by marriage, might defy the obstacle. Mazarin knew all her thoughts, and he felt that the earth was crumbling under his feet; to quote Mademoiselle's own words: "He was quasi-on-his-knees" before her, offering her the King of France; but he made one condition: she must prevent her father's adhesion to the cause of M. le Prince.¹⁵¹ Anne of Austria, with eyes swimming in tears, presented herself humbly, imploring Mademoiselle, in the name of their ancient friendship, to soften Monsieur's heart to "Monsieur le Cardinal." The Queen begged Mademoiselle to make her father understand that she, the Queen, "could not refuse Monsieur anything should he render her such service." Mademoiselle was ready to burst with pride when she repeated the Queen's promise. A future as bright as the stars lay before her; for the first time and for the last time she had a reason for her dreams.

Monsieur was the recognised chief of the coalition against Mazarin, but he was afraid to act; he did not like to leave compromising traces; he resisted when it was necessary to sign his name. Knowing that the treaty uniting the two Frondes must be signed and that he must sign it, his political friends went in a body to the Luxembourg treaty in hand. Gaston saw them coming and tried to escape, but they caught him in the opening of a double door, and closing the two sides of the door upon his body, squeezing him as in a vise, they thrust a pen between his fingers; then holding a hat before him for the treaty to rest on, they compelled him to sign his name. An eye-witness said that "he signed it as he would have signed a compact with the devil had he feared to be interrupted by his good angel." A few weeks later Parliament demanded the release of the princes and the exile of Mazarin. Then Mademoiselle was given a vision which filled her cup of joy to overflowing.

I had intended [she wrote in her memoirs] to go to bed very early, because I had arisen very early that morning; but I did not do it, because just as I was undressing they came to tell me of a rumour in the city. My curiosity led me out upon the terrace of the Tuileries. The terrace looked out upon several sides. It was a very beautiful moonlight night and I could see to the end of the street.¹⁵² On the side toward the water was a barrier; some cavaliers were guarding the barrier to favour the departure of M. le Cardinal, who was leaving by way of La Conférence; the boatmen were crying out against his getting away; there were many valets and my violin players, who are soldiers, although that is not their profession. They were all trying to drive away the cavaliers, who were helping Mazarin to escape. Some pretty hot shots were fired.

At that same hour the Palais Royal was the scene of a drama. Mazarin was taking leave, and the Queen thought that she was looking upon him for the last time. The lovers who shared so many memories, and who must have had so many things to say before they parted, dared not, even for a moment, evade the hundreds of eyes fixed upon them. Mazarin could not conceal his grief; the Queen, though calm, was very grave. To the last moment the unhappy pair were forced to speak in such a way that the courtiers could not judge of their sorrow by their looks. At last it was over; the door closed upon Mazarin, and the wretched Queen was left among her courtiers. Mazarin hurried to his rooms, disguised himself as a cavalier, and went on foot out of the Palais Royal. Finding that the cavaliers and river-men were fighting on the quay, he turned into the rue de Richelieu and went away unmolested. It is known that before going to Germany he went to the prison of Havre and set the princes free. Eleven days after Mazarin took leave of the Queen Paris learned that Condé was en route and that he was to sup at the Luxembourg the following day. Mademoiselle knew that her new projects depended upon her first meeting with M. le Prince. She had sent the olive branch to his prison, but she did not know how he had received it. She awaited his coming at the Luxembourg. She said of that first interview:

Messieurs the Princes came into Madame's salon, where I was, and after they saluted they came to me and paid me a thousand compliments. M. le Prince bore witness in particular that he had been very much pleased when Guiteau assured him of my repentance for the great repugnance that I had felt for him. The compliments ended, we avowed the aversion that we had felt for one another. He confessed that he had been delighted when I fell sick of the smallpox, that he had passionately wished that I might be disfigured by it, and that I might be left with some deformity, – in short, he said that nothing could have added to the hatred that he felt for me. I avowed to him that I had never felt such joy as I felt when he was put in prison, that I had strongly wished that he might be kept there, and that I had thought of him only to wish him evil. This reciprocal enlightenment lasted a long time, and it cheered and amused the company and ended in mutual assurances of friendship.

During the interview the tumult of a great public fête was heard. At sight of Condé Paris had been seized by one of her sudden infatuations.