La Grande Mademoiselle

She was then the Queen of Paris. Her palace was the political centre as well as the social centre of France. Of those days she said:

"I was honoured to the last point. I was held in great consideration." Yes, she was "honoured," but the honour was in name only; the ceremonial was all that there was of it and – worst of all for her proud heart – she knew that it was so. It was the affair of Orleans over again. In Orleans, when she had issued orders, the city government had sent her bonbons, paid her compliments, and followed their own counsel. They had answered blandly, "As Mademoiselle pleases"; but, in point of fact, Mademoiselle was of no practical importance. To her, flattery and fine words; to others, confidence and influence. The statesmen thought that she was neither discreet nor capable of wise counsel. She was too frank and too upright to be useful as a politician. Monsieur hid his secrets from her. Condé's manner told her everything, but he never gave her the assurance which would have established her on firm ground; and, looking practically upon that matter, what assurance could he have given her? What, in honour, was he free to say?

The Prince de Condé, who was continually spoken of as Mademoiselle's possible husband, paid hypothetical court to Mademoiselle, but when he had serious subjects to discuss he carried them to the salon of the beautiful Duchesse de Chatillon, who was then the rising star of the political world of Paris. Mesdames de Longueville and de Chevreuse were setting suns, and very close to the horizon. Ignoring Mademoiselle, they had made an independent attempt to reconcile the princes and restore them to the good graces of the Court; their attempt had failed. The Duchesse de Montpensier was the only one at Court who had maintained friendly relations with the princes.

One night, in the Cours la Reine, Mademoiselle found herself close to a marching army. Condé's troops, pressed by Turenne, were hurrying into Paris close to the ramparts (which then stood where we now see the Place de la Concorde and the great boulevards).

Mademoiselle was mounted; she was talking with an officer. She watched the winding line of the troops thoughtfully, and when the Cours hid it from view she went into Renard's garden, where she could watch it out of sight. Her heart ached with forebodings; the army had marched in disorder at the pace of utter rout and with flank exposed. She wrote in her memoirs:

All the troops passed the night beside the moat¹⁶⁰, and as there were no buildings between them and my lodgings, I could hear their trumpets distinctly. As I could distinguish the different calls, I could see the order in which they were moving. I remained at my window two hours after the bells rang midnight, hearing them pass, – and with grief enough I listened! because I was thinking of all that might happen. But in all my grief I had, I know not what strange presentiment, – I knew that I should help to draw them out of their trouble.

Mademoiselle had intended to take a medicine which she considered necessary, but as she thought that it might interfere with her usefulness, she countermanded the doctor's orders. On what a slender thread hangs glory!

July 2d, at six o'clock in the morning, some one knocked at Mademoiselle's door, and Mademoiselle sprang from her bed but half awake. Condé had sent to ask for help. He was with his army held at bay against the closed gates of Paris attacked by the army of de Turenne. The messenger had been sent to Monsieur, but Monsieur, declaring that he was in agony, had refused to see him. On that answer the messenger sped to the palace of the Tuileries. Mademoiselle dressed and hurried to the Luxembourg. As she entered the palace Monsieur came down the stairs, and Mademoiselle attacked him angrily; she accused him of disloyalty, and reproached him for his pretence of sickness. Gaston assured her calmly: "I am sick; I am not sick enough to be in bed, but I am too sick to leave this house."

"Either mount your horse or go to bed!" cried Mademoiselle. She stormed, she wept, all in a breath (as she always did when she could not force her father to do his duty), but Monsieur was a coward and nature was too strong to be controlled; she could not move him. Retz had worked upon Gaston's cowardice as a means of furthering his own plans; his plans included the death of Condé and the failure of the Fronde; therefore tortures would not have drawn Gaston from his house upon that occasion, even had he favoured intervention in behalf of Condé.

Long before the messenger of Monsieur le Prince had knocked at the door of the Tuileries, the army of the Fronde, at bay against the wall of the city, had awaited the word required to open the gates of Paris. Still another hour had passed and Mademoiselle's endeavour had been vain. Years after she recorded the fact with sorrow: "I had begged an hour, and I knew that in that time all my friends might have been killed – Condé as well as the others! … and no one cared; that seemed to me hard to bear!"

While Mademoiselle was imploring her father to help her Condé's friends arrived; they beset Gaston and commanded him to send help at once to the Faubourg Saint Antoine. Condé and his men were fighting for their lives; the people of the Faubourg had mounted the heights to see the battle.

Gaston was exasperated, and to rid himself of the importunities of his party he ordered his daughter to go to the Hôtel de Ville and tell the authorities that he commanded them to issue an order to open the gates. As Mademoiselle ran through the streets the bourgeois, who had gathered in groups to give each other countenance, begged her for passports; they were ready to leave the city.

A half-starved, ragged mob filled the Place de Grève; the canaille blocked the adjoining streets. The palace was like an abandoned barrack. The sunlight fell upon the polished locks of the old muskets of the League, and not a head dared approach the windows. Mademoiselle ran through the mob and entered the Hôtel de Ville. Let her tell her errand in her own way:

They were all there; the provost of the merchants, the aldermen, the Maréchal de l'Hôpital, the Governor … and I cried to them: "Monsieur le Prince is in peril of death in our faubourgs! What grief, what eternal shame it would be to us were he to perish for lack of our assistance! You have it in your power to help him! Do it then, and quickly!"

They went into the council-room. Mademoiselle fell upon her knees at the open window, and, in silence, the people watched her; they were on guard, waiting for her orders. In the church of Saint Gervais priests were offering the Mass; she could hear them and she tried to pray. Minutes had passed and nothing had been done. She arose from her knees and, entering the council-room, urged the men to act; she implored, she threatened; then, hurrying back to the window, she fell upon her knees. Rising for the last time, pale and resolute, she entered the council-room; she pointed to the Grève where the people stood with eyes fixed upon the windows, then, stretching her arm high above her head, she cried violently: "Sign that order! or —I swear it by my Exalted Name! I will call in my people and let them teach you what to do!"

They fell upon the paper like wolves upon a lamb, and an instant later Mademoiselle, grasping the order, hurried up the rue Saint Antoine to open the city's gates.

Not far from the Hôtel de Ville a cavalier in a blood-stained doublet, blinded by blood from a wound in his forehead, passed her, led like a child between two soldiers; both of the soldiers were weeping: it was La Rochefoucauld.

Mademoiselle called his name, but he did not answer. At the entrance to the rue Saint Antoine another wounded man appeared, bareheaded, with blood-stained raiment; a man walking beside him held him on his horse. Mademoiselle asked him: "Shalt thou die of thy wounds?" he tried to move his head as he passed on. He was "little Guiteau," Mademoiselle's friend who had carried the "olive branch" to Condé's prison. But they were coming so fast that it was hard to count them – another – then another! Mademoiselle said: "I found them in the rue Saint Antoine at every step! and they were wounded everywhere … head … arms … legs! … they were on horse – on foot – on biers – on ladders – on litters! Some of them were dead."

An aristocratic procession! The quality of France, sacrificed in the supreme attempt against man's symbol of God's omnipotence: the Royalty of the King!

By the favour of the leader of the tradesmen the gates of Paris had opened to let pass the high nobility. Paris enjoyed the spectacle. The ramparts swarmed with sightseers; and Louis XIV., guarded by Mazarin, looked down upon them all from the heights of Charonne.

The soldiers of the Fronde had had enough! Crying, "Let the chiefs march!" they broke ranks. So it came to pass that all who fought that day were nobles. The faubourg saw battalions formed of princes and seigniors, and the infantry who manned the barricades bore the mighty names of ancient France. Condé was their leader and, culpable though he had been, that day he purged his crimes against the country by giving France one of the visions of heroism which exalt the soul.

Condé was everywhere! "A demon!" said the soldiers of the King; "superhuman" his own men called him. Like the preux chevaliers of the legends, he plunged into the fray, went down and rose with cuirass dented and red with blood, to plunge and to come forth again.

The friends dearest to his heart fell at his feet, and still he bore his part. He fought with all-mastering courage; he inspired his men; and the stolid bourgeois and the common people upon the ramparts, moved to great pity, cried out with indignation that it was a shame to France to leave such a man to perish. That combat was like a dream to the survivors. Condé's orders were so sharp and clear that they rang like the notes of a trumpet; his action was miraculous, and in after years, when his officers talked of Roland or of Rodrigue, they asserted, to the astonishment of their hearers, that they had known both those redoubtable warriors and fought in their company on many a hard won, or a hard lost, field. To their minds there was neither Rodrigue nor Roland; they knew but one hero, and he was "Condé."

That day in the Faubourg Saint Antoine, at the gates of Paris, bathed with the blood and the sweat of the combat, when he had all but swooned in his cuirass, he rushed from the field, stripped, and rolled in the grass as a horse rolls; then slipped into his war harness and took his place at the head of his army, as fresh as he had been before the battle.

But neither his courage nor his strength could have saved him, and he, and all his men, would have perished by the city ditch if Mademoiselle had not forced Paris to open the gates.

Some one living in the rue Saint Antoine offered Mademoiselle shelter, and she retired an instant from the field. Soon after she entered her refuge Condé visited her and she thus recorded her impressions of the day:

As soon as I entered the house M. le Prince came in to see me. He was in piteous case. His face was covered with dust two inches deep; his hair was tangled, and although he had not been wounded, his collar and shirt were full of blood. His cuirass was dented; he held his bare sword in his hand; he had lost the scabbard. He gave his sword to my equerry and said to me: "You see before you a despairing man! I have lost all my friends!" … Then he fell weeping upon a chair and begged me to forgive him for showing his sorrow, – and to think that people say that Condé cannot love! I have always known that he can love, and that when he loves he is fond and gentle.

Mademoiselle spoke to Condé of the battle. They agreed upon a plan for ending it, and Condé returned to the field to lead the retreat. Mademoiselle went to the window to watch the men take out the baggage and make ready for the march. She could see the guns. The people of the faubourgs carried drink to the men in the ranks and tried to help the wounded; and she who had been taught to ignore the emotions and the actions of inferiors wept when she saw the famished people of the lower orders depriving themselves to comfort the men who had laid waste the suburbs; Condé and his troops were well known to them all.

Disgust for the prevailing disorder had turned the thoughts of the bourgeois toward Mazarin, whose earlier rule had given the nation a taste of peace. Mademoiselle, who knew nothing of the bourgeois, was aghast at their indifference to the sufferings of the wounded. The men of peace looked with curiosity upon the battle; some laughed aloud; others stood upon the ramparts and fired upon the retreating Frondeurs. Mademoiselle left her window but once; then she ran through the rue Saint Antoine to the Bastille, and, climbing to the summit of the tower, looked through the glass. The battle was raging; she saw the order given to cut off Condé, and, commanding the gunners to train their guns on the King's army, she returned to her post, veiled by smoke and choked by powder, to enjoy her glory; and it was glory enough. Twice in the same day she had saved M. le Prince. As one man the retreating army of the Fronde turned to salute her, and all cried: "You have delivered us!" Condé was so grateful that his voice failed him.

That evening at the Luxembourg, and the evening following, at the Tuileries, after a night robbed of sleep by thoughts of the dead and the wounded of her army, Mademoiselle heard praise which called her back to the demands of life.

Her father did not address her, and his manner repelled her advances. Toward evening, when he supposed that all danger had passed, he went to congratulate Condé. His bearing was gay and pleasant and his face was roguish and smiling. In the evening his expression changed, and Mademoiselle noted the change and explained it to his credit; she said: "I attributed that change to his repentance. He was thinking that he had let me do what he ought to have done." We know that Gaston was not given to repentance; all that he regretted was that he had permitted his daughter to take an important place among the active agents of the Fronde; he was envious and spiteful; but neither envy nor spite could have been called his ruling failing; his prevailing emotion was fear.

The 4th July the bourgeois of Paris met in the Hôtel de Ville to decide upon future action. The city was without a government. The princes, Monsieur, and Condé attended the meeting; they supposed that the Assembly would appoint them Directors of Public Affairs. The supposition was natural enough. However, the Assembly ignored them and discussed plans for a reconciliation with the Regency, and they, the princes, retired from the meeting furiously angry. When they went out the Grève was full of people; in the crowd were officers of the army, soldiers, and priests.¹⁶¹

Several historians have said that the princes, or their following, incited the people to punish the bourgeois for the slight offered by them to their natural directors. No one knew how it began. As Monsieur and Condé left the Grève and crossed the river, shots were fired behind them. They went their way without looking back. Mademoiselle was awaiting them at the Luxembourg. Her account of the night's work follows:

As it was very warm, Monsieur entered his room to change his shirt. The rest of the company were talking quietly when a bourgeois came in all out of breath; he could hardly speak, he had come so fast and in such fear. He said to us: "The Hôtel de Ville is burning and they are firing guns; they are killing each other." Condé went to call Monsieur, and Monsieur, forgetting the disorder in which he was, came into the room in his shirt, before all the ladies. Monsieur said to Condé: "Cousin, do you go over to the Hôtel de Ville." But Condé refused to go, and when he would not go to quiet the disturbance people had reason to say that he had planned the whole affair and paid the assassins.

That was what was unanimously declared. It was the most barbarous action known since the beginning of the Monarchy.¹⁶² Outraged in his pride and in his will because the bourgeois had dared to offer him resistance, the splendid hero of the Faubourg Saint Antoine, at the fatal moment, fell to the level of Septembrist; and as Monsieur must have known all about it, and as he did nothing to prevent it, he was Condé's accomplice.

As de Beaufort was on excellent terms with the mob, the princes sent him to the Hôtel de Ville; he set out upon his mission and Mademoiselle, who had followed close upon his heels, loitered and listened to the comments of the people. When she returned and told her father what she had heard Gaston was terrified; he ordered her to go back to the Hôtel de Ville and reconnoitre.

It was long past midnight, and the streets were deserted. The Hôtel de Ville was a ruin; the doors and windows were gone, and the flames were still licking the charred beams; the interior had been pillaged. "I picked my way," said Mademoiselle, "among the planks; they were still flaming. I had never seen such a desolate place; we looked everywhere, but we could see no one." They were about to leave the ruins when the provost of the merchants emerged from his hiding-place (probably in the cellar) with the men who had been with him.

Mademoiselle found them a safe lodging and went back to her palace. Day had dawned; people were gathering in the Place de Grève; some were trying to identify the dead. Among the dead were priests, members of Parliament, and between thirty and forty bourgeois. Many had been wounded.

The people blessed Mademoiselle, but she turned sorrowfully away. She thought that nothing could atone for such a murder. She said of the event:

People spoke of that affair in different ways; but however they spoke, they all agreed in blaming his Royal Highness and M. le Prince. I never mentioned it to either of them, and I am very glad not to know anything about it, because if they did wrong I should be sorry to know it; and that action displeased me so that I could not bear to think that any one so closely connected with me could not only tolerate the thought of such a thing, but do it. That blow was the blow with the club; it felled the party.

Immediately after the fire, when the city was panic-stricken, M. le Prince's future promised success; he had every reason to hope. Many of the political leaders had left Paris, and taking advantage of that fact, and of the general fear, Condé marshalled the débris of the Parliament, and they nominated a cabinet. Gaston was the nominal head; Condé was generalissimo. The Hôtel de Ville had been repaired, the cabinet was installed there, and Broussel was provost of merchants, but the knock-down "blow with the club" had made his power illusory. Generally the public conscience was callous enough where murders were concerned, but it rebelled against the murder of 4th July. The common saying in Paris was that the affair was a cowardly trap, deliberately set. Public opinion was firm, and the Condé party fell. Before the massacre the country had been tired of civil war. After the massacre it abhorred it. The people saw the Fronde in its true light. With the exception of a few members of Parliament, – patriots and would-be humanitarians, – who had thought of France? The two junior branches, or the nobility? They had called the Spaniards to an alliance against Frenchmen, and, to further their selfish interests, they had led their own brothers into a pitfall.

Who had cared for the sufferings of the people? The Fronde had been a deception practised upon the country; a systematic scheme fostered by men and women for personal benefit. To the labourer hunted from his home to die in the woods, to the bourgeois whose business had been tied up four years, what mattered it that the wife of La Rochefoucauld was seated before the Queen? Was it pleasure to the people dying of famine to know that M. de Longueville was drawing a salary as Governor of Pont de l'Arche? A fine consolation, truly! it clothed and fed the children, it brought back the dead, to maintain a camp of tinselled merry-makers, "among whom nothing could be seen but collations of gallantry to women."

Those were not new reflections, but they had acquired a force which acted directly upon the currents established by Mazarin; and just at the moment when the people awoke to their meaning, the Queen's clairvoyant counsellor removed the last scruple from the public conscience by voluntarily returning to his exile (19th August).

Then came the general break-up. Every man of any importance in Paris raised his voice; deputies were sent to ask the King to recall Mazarin. Retz, whose manners had accommodated themselves to his hat, was among the first to demand the recall, and his demand was echoed by his clergy. Monsieur (and that was a true sign) judged that the time had come to part company with his associates; he engaged in private negotiations with the Court. The soldiers vanished; Condé, feeling that his cause was lost, essayed to make peace, and failed, as he always failed, because no one could accept such terms as he offered. As his situation was critical, his friends shunned him. Mademoiselle still clung to him, and she was loved and honoured; but, as it was known that she lacked judgment, her fondness for him did not prove anything in his favour.

Mademoiselle was convinced of her own ability; she knew that she was a great general. She formed insensate projects. One of her plans was to raise, to equip, and to maintain an army at her own expense: "The Army of Mademoiselle." Such an army would naturally conquer difficulties. Some foreign Power would surrender a strong city, – or even two strong cities; and then the King of France would recognise his true interests, and capitulate to the tall cousin who had twice saved Condé and taken Orleans single-handed, – and at last, after all her trials, having done her whole duty, she would drain the last drops of her bitter draught, and find the closed crown lying at the bottom of her cup, – unless – . There was a very powerful alternative. Mademoiselle's mind vacillated between the King of France and the great French hero: M. le Prince de Condé. An alliance with Condé was among the possibilities. The physical condition of Condé's wife permitted a hope, – twice within a period of two weeks she had been at death's door. On the last occasion Paris had been informed of her condition in the evening.

I was at Renard's Garden [wrote Mademoiselle]. M. le Prince was with me. We strolled twice through the alleys without speaking one word. I thought that probably he was thinking that every one was watching him, – and I believed that I was thinking of just what he was thinking, – so we were both very much embarrassed.

That night the courtiers paid court to Mademoiselle, – they spoke freely of the re-marriage of M. le Prince, – in short, they did everything but congratulate her in plain words.

Though Mademoiselle knew that her fairy tales were false, she half believed in them. In her heart she felt that her heroinate – if I may use the term – was drawing to a close, and she desired to enjoy all that remained to her to the full. In her ardour she made a spectacle of herself. She appeared with her troops before Paris, playing with her army as a child plays with leaden soldiers. She loved to listen to the drums and trumpets, and to look upon the brilliant uniforms. One night M. le Prince invited her to dine at his headquarters, and she arrived, followed by her staff. She never forgot that evening. "The dirtiest man in the world" had had his hair and his beard trimmed, and put on white linen in her honour, – "which made great talk." Condé and his staff drank to her health kneeling, while the trumpets blared and the cannon thundered. She reviewed the army and pressed forward as far as the line of the royal pickets. Of that occasion she said: "I spoke to the royal troops some time, then I urged my horse forward, for I had great longing to enter the camp of the enemy. M. le Prince dashed on ahead of me, seized my horse's bridle, and turned me back."

That evening she published the orders of the day, did anything and everything devolving upon any and all of the officers on duty, and proved by look and by word that she was a true soldier. When it was all over she rode back to Paris in the moonlight, followed by her staff and escorted by Condé and his general officers. The evening ended with a gay supper at the Tuileries.

That visit went to her head, and a few days later she besought her father to hang the chiefs of the Reaction. "Monsieur lacked vigour." That was the construction which Mademoiselle put upon his refusal to hang her enemies, and it was well for her that he did, for the hour of the accounting was at hand. The 13th October she was intoxicated for the last time with the sound of clanking arms and the glitter of uniforms. M. le Prince with all his army visited her to say "farewell." The Prince was to lead his army to the East; no one knew to what fortune. She wrote mournfully:

It was so beautiful to see the great alley of the Tuileries full of people all finely dressed! M. le Prince wore a very handsome habit of the colour of iron, of gold, of silver, and of black over grey, and a blue scarf, which he wore as the Germans wear theirs, – under a close-coat, which was not buttoned. I felt great regret to see them go, and I avow that I wept when I bade them adieu … it was so lonely … it was so strange … not to see them any more … it hurt me so! And all the rumours gave as reason for thinking that the King was coming and that we all should be turned out.

The princes left Paris on Sunday. The following Saturday, in the morning, when Mademoiselle was in the hands of her hair-dresser, she received a letter from the King notifying her that, as he should arrive in Paris to remain permanently, and as he had no palace but the Tuileries in which to lodge his brother, he should require her to vacate the Tuileries before noon on the day following. Mademoiselle was literally turned out of the house, and on notice so short that anything like orderly retreat was impossible. Borne down by the weight of her chagrin, she sought shelter where best she could. We are told that she "hid her face at the house of one of her friends," and it is probable that to say that she hid her face but feebly expresses the bitterness of the grief with which she turned from the only home that she had ever known, in which she had lived with her princely retinue, and which she had thought to leave only to enter the King's palace as Queen of France. She was brave; she talked proudly of her power to overthrow royalty, and to carry revolution to the gates of the Palais Royal, and until the people saw their young King her boasts were not vain; but her better nature triumphed, and in the end her wrath was drowned in tears. The day after she received notice to vacate the palace she was informed that her father had been exiled. She went to the Luxembourg to condole with him. On the way she saw the King. She passed him unseen by him. He had grown tall; he saluted the people gracefully and with the air of a king; he was a bright, handsome boy. The people applauded him with frenzy.

Mademoiselle found her father bristling with fury; his staring eyes transfixed her. At sight of her he cried angrily that he had no account to render to her; then, to quote Mademoiselle's words, "Each told the other his truths." Monsieur reminded her that she had "put herself forward with unseemly boldness," and that she had compromised the name of d'Orléans by her anxiety to "play the heroine." She answered as she thought it just and in accordance with the rights of her quality to answer. She demonstrated to her father that there were "characters" upon earth who refused to give written orders because they feared to be confronted by their signatures when personal safety required a denial of the truth. She explained the principle of physical timidity and incidentally rehearsed all the grievances of her life. Gaston answered her. The quarrel ended, Mademoiselle piteously begged her father to let her live under his protection. She recorded his answer word for word, with all the incidents of the interview:

He answered me: "I have no vacant lodging." I said that there was no one in that house who was not indebted to me, and that I thought that no one had a better right to live there than I had. He answered me tartly: "All who live under my roof are necessary to me, and they will not be dislodged." I said to him: "As your Royal Highness will not let me live with you, I shall go to the Hôtel Condé, which is vacant; no one is living there at present." He answered: "That I will not permit!" I asked: "Where, then, do you wish me to go, sir?" He answered: "Where you please!" and he turned away.

The day after that interview, at a word from the King, all the Frondeurs left Paris. The highways were crowded with great lords in penance and with heroines "retired." Poor broken idols! the people of Paris were still chanting their glory! Monsieur departed, bag and baggage, at break of day,

 
Avec une extreme vitesse.
 

* * * * *

 
Mademoiselle son ainée
Disparut la même journée.¹⁶³
 

The daughter of the victim of degeneracy had developed her father's weakness. Although Mademoiselle was in safety, she trembled. She who had challenged death in the last combat of the Fronde, laughing merrily as she trained the guns on the King of France, thrilled with terror when letter followed letter warning her to leave Paris, and giving her the names of people destined for the Bastille. All the letters, were anonymous, and all were in different and unknown hands.

She did not wait to ask who wrote the letters; she did not listen to her faithful Préfontaine, who assured her that there was no danger and begged her to be calm.