Chapter XII: Part 12

By the side of the son of Balafré, Charles, the fourth duke, there stood the last cardinal-brother who was able to serve his house, and whose character presents any circumstance of note. This cardinal, if he loved anything more than the bottle, was fondest of a battle. He characteristically lost his life by both. He was present at the siege of St. Jean d’Angely, held by the Protestants in the year 1621. It was on the 20th of May; and the sun was shining with a power not known to our severe springs. The cardinal fought like a fiend, and swore with more than fiendish capacity. The time was high noon, and he himself was in the noontide of his wondrous vigor, some thirty years of age. He was laying about him in the bloody _mêlée_ which occurred in the suburb, when he paused for awhile, panting for breath and streaming with perspiration. He called for a flask of red wine, which he had scarcely quaffed when he was seized with raging fever, which carried him off within a fortnight. He was so much more addicted to knightly than to priestly pursuits, that, at the time of his death, a negotiation was being carried on to procure from the pope permission for the cardinal to give up to his lay-brother, the Duc de Chevreuse, all his benefices, and to receive in return the duke’s governorship of Auvergne. He was for ever in the saddle, and never more happy than when he saw another before him with a resolute foe firmly seated therein. He lived the life of a soldier of fortune, or knight-errant; and when peace temporarily reigned, he rode over the country with a band of followers, in search of adventures, and always found them at the point of their swords. He left the altar to draw on his boots, gird his sword to his hip, and provoke his cousin De Nevers to a duel, by striking him in the face. The indignant young noble regretted that the profession of his insulter covered the latter with impunity, and recommended him, at the same time, to abandon it, and to give De Nevers satisfaction. “To the devil I have sent it already!” said the exemplary cardinal, “when I flung off my frock, and belted on my sword:” and the two kinsmen would have had their weapons in each other’s throat, but for the royal officers, who checked their Christian amusement.

This roystering cardinal, who was interred with more pomp than if he had been a great saint, or a merely honest man, left five children. Their mother was Charlotte des Escar. They were recognised as legitimate, on allegation that their parents had been duly married, on papal dispensation. He was the last of the cardinals, and was as good a soldier as any of the knights.

Neither the pride nor the pretensions of the house expired with either Dukes or Cardinals. There were members of the family whose arrogance was all the greater because they were not of the direct line of succession. Their great ambition in little things was satisfied with the privilege granted to the ladies of Guise, namely, the one which they held in common with royal princesses, at being presented at court previous to their marriage. This ambition gained for them, however, the hatred of the nobles and the princes of the Church, and at length caused a miniature insurrection in the palace at Versailles.

The occasion was the grand ball given in honor of the nuptials of Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin. Louis XV. had announced that he would open the brilliant scene by dancing a _minuet_ with Mlle. de Lorraine, sister of the Prince de Lambesc. The uproar that ensued was terrific. The entire body of nobility protested against such marked precedence being allowed to the lady in question. The Archbishop of Rheims placed himself at the head of the opposing movement; and, assembling the indignant peerage, this successor of the Apostles, in company with his episcopal brother from Noyon, came to the solemnly important resolution, that between the princes of the blood-royal and _haute noblesse_ there could be no intermediate rank; and that Mlle. de Lorraine, consequently, could not take precedence of the female members of the aristocracy, who had been presented. A memorial was drawn up. The entire nobility, old and new, signed it eagerly; and the King was informed that if he did not rescind his determination, no lady would dance at the ball after the _minuet_ in question had been performed. The King exerted himself to overcome the opposition: but neither bishops nor baronesses would give way. The latter, on the evening of the ball, walked about the grand apartments in undress, expressed loudly their resolution not to dance, and received archiepiscopal benison for their pious obstinacy. The matter was finally arranged by compromise, whereby the Dauphin and the Count d’Artois were to select partners among the nobility, and not, as was _de rigueur_, according to the law of _minuets_, among princesses of their own rank. The hour for opening the famous ball was retarded in order to give the female insurrectionists time to dress, and ultimately all went off _à merveille!_

With the Prince de Lambesc above-named, the race of Guise disappeared altogether from the soil of France. He was colonel of the cavalry regiment, _Royal Allemand_, which in 1789 came into collision with the people. The Prince was engaged, with his men, in dispersing a seditious mob. He struck one of the most conspicuous of the rioters with the flat of his sword. This blow, dealt by a Guise, was the first given in the great Revolution, and it helped to deprive Louis XVI. of his crown. The Prince de Lambesc was compelled to fly from the country, to escape the indignation of the people. Nearly three centuries before, his great ancestor, the boy of the mule, had entered the kingdom, and founded a family which increased in numbers and power against the throne, and against civil and religious liberty. And now, the sole survivor of the many who had sprung from this branch of Lorraine, as proud, too, as the greatest of his house, having raised his finger against the freedom of the mob, was driven into exile, to seek refuge for a time, and a grave for age, on the banks of the distant Danube.

When Cardinal Fleury annexed the Duchy of Lorraine to France, it was by arrangement with Austria; according to which, Francis, Duke of Lorraine, received in exchange for his Duchy, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the hand of Maria Theresa. Their heirs form the imperial house of Hapsburgh-Lorraine. Such of my readers as have visited Nancy, the capital of old Lorraine, will remember there the round chapel near what is left of the old palace of the old Dukes. This chapel contains the tombs of the principal of the twenty-nine Dukes who ruled sovereignly in Lorraine. The expense of supporting the service and fabric, altar and priests, connected with this chapel, is sustained entirely by Austria. It is the only remnant preserved of the Lorraine sovereignty of the olden time. The priests and _employes_ in the edifice speak of Hapsburgh-Lorraine as _their_ house, to which they owe exclusive homage. When I heard expression given to this sentiment, I was standing in front of the tomb of that famous etcher, old Jean Callot. The latter was a native of Nancy; and I could almost fancy that his merry-looking lip curled with scorn at the display of this rag of pride in behalf of the house of Lorraine.

With the story of part of that house I fear I may have detained the reader too long. I will tell more briefly the shifting fortunes of a material house, the knightly edifice of Rambouillet.

THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET.

“Imagine that this castle were your court,
And that you lay, for pleasure, here a space,
Not of compulsion or necessity.”--KIT MARLOWE.

Rambouillet is an old château where feudal knights once lived like little kings. In its gardens Euphuism reigned supreme. It is a palace, in whose chambers monarchs have feasted, and at whose gates they have asked, when fugitives, for water and a crust of bread. It commenced its career as a cradle of knights; it is finishing it as an asylum for the orphan children of warriors. The commencement and finale are not unworthy of one another; but, between the two, there have been some less appropriate disposals of this old chevalier’s residence. For a short period it was something between Hampton Court and Rosherville. In the very place where the canons of the Sainte Chapelle were privileged to kiss the cheeks of the Duchess of Burgundy, the denizens of the Faubourg St. Antoine could revel, if they could only pay for their sport. Where the knightly D’Amaurys held their feudal state, where King Francis followed the chase, and the Chevalier Florian sang, and Penthièvre earned immortality by the practice of heavenly virtues; where Louis enthroned Du Barry, and Napoleon presided over councils, holding the destiny of thrones in the balance of his will, there the sorriest mechanic had, with a few francs in his hand, the right of entrance. The gayest _lorettes_ of the capital smoked their _cigarettes_ where Julie D’Angennes fenced with love; and the bower of queens and the refuge of an empress rang with echoes, born of light-heartedness and lighter wine. Louis Napoleon has, however, established a better order of things.

To a Norman chief, of knightly character, if not of knightly title, and to the Norman tongue, _Rabouillet_, as it used to be written, or the “Rabbit warren,” owes the name given to the palace, about thirteen leagues from Paris, and to the village which clusters around it. The former is now a quaint and confused pile, the chief tower of which alone is now older than the days of Hugues Capet. Some authors describe the range of buildings as taking the form of a horseshoe; but the hoof would be indescribable to which a shoe so shaped could be fittingly applied. The changes and additions have been as much without end as without taste. In its present architectural entirety it wears as motley an aspect as Cœur de Lion might, were he to walk-down Pall Mall with a modern _paletót_ over his suit of complete steel.

The early masters of Rambouillet were a knightly, powerful but uninteresting race. It is sufficient to record of the chivalric D’Amaurys that they held it, to the satisfaction of few people but themselves, from 1003 to 1317. Further record these sainted proprietors require not. We will let them sleep on undisturbedly, their arms crossed on their breast, in the peace of a well-merited oblivion. _Requiescat!_

One relic of the knightly days, however, survived to the period of the first French Revolution. In the domain of Rambouillet was the fief of Montorgueil. It was held by the prior of St. Thomas d’Epernon, on the following service: the good prior was bound to present himself yearly at the gate of Rambouillet, bareheaded, with a garland on his brow, and mounted on a piebald horse, touching whom it was bad service if the animal had not four white feet.

The prior, fully armed like a knight, save that his white gloves were of a delicate texture, carried a flask of wine at his saddle-bow. In one hand he held a cake, to the making of which had gone a bushel of flour--an equal measure of wheat was also the fee of the lord. The officers of the latter examined narrowly into the completeness of the service. If they pronounced it imperfect the prior of Epernon was mulcted of the revenues of his fief for the year ensuing.

In later days the ceremony lost much of its meaning; but down to the period of its extinction, the wine, the cake, and the garland, were never wanting; and the maidens of Rambouillet were said to be more exacting than the baronial knights themselves, from whom many of them were descended. The festival was ever a joyous one, as became a feudal lord, whose kitchen fireplace was of such dimensions that a horseman might ride into it, and skim the pot as he stood in his stirrups.

It is a singular thing that scarcely a monarch has had anything to do with the knightly residence of Rambouillet, but mischance has befallen him. The kings were unjust to the knights, and the latter found for the former a Nemesis. Francis I. was hunting in the woods of Rambouillet when he received the news of the death of Henry VIII. that knight-sovereign, with whom he had struggled on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. With the news, he received a shock, which the decay sprung from various excesses could not resist. He entered the chateau as the guest of the Chevalier d’Angennes, in whose family the proprietorship then resided. The chamber is still shown wherein he died, roaring in agony, and leaving proof of its power over him, in the pillow, which, in mingled rage and pain, he tore into strips with his teeth.

The French author, Leon Gozlau, has given a full account of the extraordinary ceremonies which took place in honor of Francis after his death. In front of the bed on which lay the body of the king, says M. Gozlau, “was erected an altar covered with embroidered cloth; on this stood two gold candlesticks, bearing two lights from candles of the whitest wax. The cardinals, prelates, knights, gentlemen, and officers, whose duty it was to keep watch, were stationed around the _catafalque_, seated on chairs of cloth of gold. During the eleven days that the ceremony lasted, the strictest etiquette of service was observed about the king, as if he had been a living monarch in presence of his court. His table was regularly laid out for dinner, by the side of his bed. A cardinal blessed the food. A gentleman in waiting presented the ewer to the figure of the dead king. A knight offered him the cup mantling with wine: and another wiped his lips and fingers. These functions, with many others, took place by the solemn and subdued light of the funeral torches.”

The after ceremonies were quite as curious and extraordinarily magnificent; but it is unnecessary to rest upon them. A king, in not much better circumstances than Francis, just before his death, slept in the castle for one night in the year 1588. It was a night in May, and the knight proprietor Jean d’Angennes, was celebrating the marriage of his daughter. The ceremony was interrupted by a loud knocking at the castle gates. The wary Jean looked first at the clamorous visitors through the wicket, whence he descried Henri III. flurried, yet laughing, seated in an old carriage, around which mustered dusty horsemen, grave cavaliers, and courtiers scantily attired. Some had their points untrussed, and many a knight was without his boots. An illustrious company, in fact; but there were not two nobles in their united purses. Jean threw open his portals to a king and his knights flying from De Guise. The latter had got possession of Paris, and Henri and his friends had escaped in order to establish the regal authority at Chartres. The two great adversaries met at Blois: and after the assassination of Guise, the king, with his knights and courtiers, gallopped gayly past Rambouillet on his return to Paris, to profit by his own wickedness, and the folly of his trusty and well-beloved cousin, the duke.

Not long before this murder was committed, in 1588, the Hotel Pisani in Paris was made jubilant by the birth of that Catherine de Vivonnes, who was at once both lovely and learned. She lived to found that school of lingual purists whose doings are so pleasantly caricatured in the _Précieuses Ridicules_ of Molière. Catherine espoused that noble chevalier, Charles d’Angennes, Lord of Rambouillet, who was made a marquis for her sake. The chevalier’s lady looked upon marriage rather as a closing act of life than otherwise; but then _hers_ had been a busy youth. In her second lustre she knew as many languages as a _lustrum_ has years. Ere her fourth had expired, her refined spirit and her active intellect were disgusted and weary with the continual sameness and the golden emptiness of the court. She cared little to render homage to a most Christian king who disregarded the precepts of Christianity; or to be sullied by homage from a monarch, which could not be rendered without insult to a virtuous woman. Young Catherine preferred, in the summer eve, to lie under the shadow of her father’s trees, which once reared a world of leafy splendor on the spot now occupied by the Palais Royal. There she read works coined by great minds. During the long winter evenings she lay in stately ceremony upon her bed, an unseemly custom of the period, and there, surrounded by chevaliers, wits, and philosophers, enjoyed and encouraged the “cudgelling of brains.” At her suggestion the old hotel was destroyed, and after her designs a new one built; and when, in place of the old dark panelling, obscurely seen by casements that kept out the light, she covered the walls of her reception-rooms with sky-blue velvet, and welcomed the sun to shine upon them, universal France admiringly pronounced her mad, incontinently caught the infection, and broke out into an incurable disease of fancy and good taste.

The fruit of the union above spoken of was abundant, but the very jewel in that crown of children, the goodliest arrow in the family quiver, was that Julie d’Angennes who shattered the hearts of all the amorous chevaliers of France, and whose fame has, perhaps, eclipsed that of her mother. Her childhood was passed at the feet of the most eminent men in France; not merely aristocratic knights, but as eminent wits and philosophers. By the side of her cradle, Balzac enunciated his polished periods, and Marot his tuneful rhymes, Voiture his conceits, and Vaugelas his learning. She lay in the arms of Armand Duplessis, _then_ almost as innocent as the little angel who unconsciously smiled on that future ruthless Cardinal de Richelieu; and her young ear heard the elevated measure of Corneille’s “Melite.” To enumerate the circles which was wont to assemble within the Hôtel Rambouillet in Paris, or to loiter in the gardens and hills of the country château, whose history I am sketching, would occupy more space than can be devoted to such purpose. The circle comprised parties who were hitherto respectively exclusive. Knights met citizen wits, to the great edification of the former; and Rambouillet afforded an asylum to the persecuted of all parties. They who resisted Henry IV. found refuge within its hospitable walls, and many nobles and chevaliers who survived the bloody oppression of Richelieu, sought therein solace, and balm for their lacerated souls.

Above all, Madame de Rambouillet effected the social congregation of the two sexes. Women were brought to encounter male wits, sometimes to conquer, always to improve them. The title to enter was, worth joined with ability. The etiquette was pedantically strict, as may be imagined by the case of Voiture, who, on one occasion, after conducting Julie through a suite of rooms, kissed her hand on parting from her, and was very near being expelled for ever from Rambouillet, as the reward of his temerity. Voiture subsequently went to Africa. On his return, he was not admitted to the illustrious circle, but on condition that he narrated his adventures, and to these the delighted assembly listened, all attired as gods and goddesses, and gravely addressing each other as such. Madame de Rambouillet presided over all as Diana, and the company did her abundant homage. This, it is true, was for the nonce; but there was a permanent travesty notwithstanding. It was the weak point of this assembly that not only was every member of it called by a feigned, generally a Greek, name, but the same rule was applied to most men and things beyond it; nay, the very oaths, for there were little expletives occasionally fired off in ecstatic moments, were all by the heathen gods. Thus, as a sample, France was _Greece_. Paris was _Athens_; and the Place Royale was only known at Rambouillet as the _Place Dorique_. The name of Madame de Rambouillet was _Arthemise_; that of Mademoiselle de Scudery was _Aganippe_; and _Thessalonica_ was the purified cognomen of the Duchess de Tremouille. But out of such childishness resulted great good, notwithstanding that Molière laughed, and that the Academie derided Corneille and all others of the innovating coterie. The times were coarse; things, whatever they might be, were called by their names; ears polite experienced offence, and at Rambouillet periphrasis was called upon to express what the language otherwise conveyed offensively by the medium of a single word. The idea was good, although it was abused. Of its quality some conjecture may be formed by one or two brief examples; and I may add, by the way, that the French Academy ended by adopting many of the terms which it at first refused to acknowledge. Popularity had been given to much of the remainder, and thus a great portion of the vocabulary of Rambouillet has become idiomatic French. “Modeste,” “friponne,” and “secrète,” were names given to the under-garments of ladies, which we now should not be afraid to specify. The sun was the “amiable illuminator;” to “fulfil the desire which the chair had to embrace you,” was simply to “sit down.” Horses were “plushed coursers;” a carriage was “four cornices,” and chairmen were “baptized mules.” A bed was the “old dreamer;” a hat, the “buckler against weather;” to laugh was to “lose your gravity;” dinner was the “meridional necessity;” the ear was the “organ, or the gate of hearing;” and the “throne of modesty” was the polished phrase for a fair young cheek. There is nothing very edifying in all this, it is true; but the fashion set people thinking, and good ensued. Old indelicacies disappeared, and the general, spoken language was refined. If any greater mental purity ensued from the change, I can scarcely give the credit of it to the party at Rambouillet, for, with all their proclaimed refinement, their nicety was of the kind described in the well-known maxim of the Dean of St. Patrick.

One of the most remarkable men in the circle of Rambouillet, was the Marquis de Salles, Knight of St. Louis. He was the second son of the Duke de Montausier, and subsequently inherited the title. At the period of his father’s death, his mother found herself with little dower but her title. She exerted herself, however, courageously. She instructed her children herself, brought them up in strict Huguenot principles, and afterward sent them to the Calvinistic college at Sedan, where the young students were famous for the arguments which they maintained against all comers--and they were many--who sought to convert them to popery. At an early age he acquired the profession of arms, the only vocation for a young and portionless noble; and he shed his blood liberally for a king who had no thanks to offer to a protestant. His wit, refinement, and gallant bearing, made him a welcome guest at Rambouillet, where his famous attachment to Julie, who was three years his senior, gave matter for conversation to the whole of France. Courageous himself, he loved courage in others, and his love for Julie d’Angennes, was fired by the rare bravery exhibited by her in tending a dying brother, the infectious nature of whose disorder had made even his hired nurses desert him. In the season of mourning, the whole court, led by royalty, went and did homage to this pearl of sisters. But no admiration fell so sweetly upon her ear as that whispered to her by the young Montausier. One evidence of his chivalrous gallantry is yet extant. It is in that renowned volume called the “Guirlande de Julie,” of which he was the projector, and in the accomplishing of which, knights, artists, and poets, lent their willing aid. It is superb vellum tome. The frontispiece is the garland or wreath, from which the volume takes its name. Each subsequent page presents one single flower from this wreath (there are eighteen of them) with verses in honor of Julie, composed by a dozen and a half of very insipid poets. This volume was sold some years ago to Madame D’Uzes, a descendant of the family, when its cost amounted to nearly one thousand francs per page.

As everything was singular at Rambouillet, so of course was the wooing of Julie and her knight. It was very “long a-doing,” and we doubt if in the years of restrained ardor, of fabulous constancy, of reserve, and sad yet pleasing anguish, the lover ever dared to kiss the hand of his mistress, or even to speak of marriage, but by a diplomatic paraphrase.

The goddesses of Rambouillet entertained an eloquent horror of the gross indelicacy of such unions, for which Molière has whipped them with a light but cutting scourge. The lover, moreover, was a Huguenot. What was he to do? Like a true knight he rushed to the field, was the hero of two brilliant campaigns, and then wooed her as knight of half-a-dozen new orders, marechal-du-camp, and Governor of Alsatia. The nymph was still coy. The knight again buckled on his armor, and in the mêlée at Dettingen was captured by the foe. After a two months’ detention, he was ransomed by his mother, for two thousand crowns. He re-entered Rambouillet lieutenant-general of the armies of France, and he asked for the recompense of his fourteen years of constancy and patience. Julie was shocked, for she only thought how brief had been the period of their acquaintance. At length the marquis made profession of Romanism, and thereby purchased the double aid of the church and the throne. The king, the queen, Cardinal Mazarin, and a host of less influential members, besought her to relent, and the shy beauty at length reluctantly surrendered. The marriage took place in 1645, and Julie was then within sight of forty years of age. The young chevaliers and wits had, you may be sure, much to say thereupon. The elder _beaux esprit_ looked admiringly; but a world of whispered wickedness went on among them, nevertheless.

Montausier, for he now was duke and knight of the Holy Ghost, became the reigning sovereign over the literary circle at Rambouillet, during the declining years of Julie’s mother. Catherine died in 1665, after a long retirement, and almost forgotten by the sons of those whom she once delighted to honor. The most delicate and the most difficult public employment ever held by the duke, was that of governor to the dauphin. This office he filled with singular ability. He selected Bossuet and Huet to instruct the young prince in the theoretical wisdom of books, but the practical teaching was imparted by himself. Many a morning saw the governor and his pupil issue from the gilded gates of Versailles to take a course of popular study among the cottages and peasantry of the environs.

The heart of the true knight was shattered by the death of Julie in 1671, at the age of sixty-four. He survived her nineteen years. They were passed in sorrow, but also in continual active usefulness; and when, at length, in 1690, the grave of his beloved wife opened to receive him, Flechier pronounced a fitting funeral oration over both.

The daughter and only surviving child of this distinguished pair gave, with her hand, the lordship of Rambouillet to the Duc d’Uzes, “Chevalier de l’ordre du Saint Esprit.” The knightly family of D’Angennes had held it for three centuries. It was in 1706 destined to become royal. Louis XIV. then purchased it for the Count of Toulouse, legitimatized son of himself and Madame de Montespan. This count was knight and Grand Admiral of France, at the age of five years. In 1704, he had just completed his twenty-fifth year. He is famous for having encountered the fleet commanded by Rook and Shovel, after the capture of Gibraltar, and for having what the cautious Russian generals call, “withdrawn out of range,” when he found himself on the point of being utterly beaten. He behaved himself as bravely as any knight could have done; but the government was not satisfied with him. Pontchartrain, the Minister of Marine, recalled him, sent him to Rambouillet, and left him there to shoot rabbits, and like Diocletian, raise cabbages.

His son and successor, who was the great Duke de Penthièvre, commenced his knighthood early. He was even made Grand Admiral of France before he knew salt water from fresh. He studied naval tactics as Uncle Toby and the corporal fought their old battles--namely, with toy batteries. In the duke’s case, it was, moreover, with little vessels and small sailors all afloat in a miniature fish-pond, made to represent, for the nonce, the mighty and boundless deep. This grand admiral never ventured on the ocean, but he bore himself chivalrously on the bloody field of Dettingen, and he won imperishable laurels by his valor at Fontenoy. For such scenes and their glories, however, the _preux chevalier_ cared but little. Ere the French _Te Deum_ was sung upon the last-named field, he hastened back to his happy hearth at home. Rambouillet was then the abiding-place of all the virtues. There the home-loving knight read the Scriptures while the duchess sat at his side making garments for the poor. There, the Chevalier Florian, his secretary and friend, meditated those graceful rhymes and that harmonious prose, in which human nature is in pretty masquerade, walking about like Watteau’s figures, in vizors, brocades, high heels, and farthingales. When the duchess died in child-birth, of her sixth child, her husband withdrew to La Trappe where, among other ex-soldiers, he for weeks prayed and slept upon the bare ground. Five out of his children died early. Among them was the chivalrous but intemperate Prince de Lamballe, who died soon after his union with the unhappy princess who fell a victim to those fierce French revolutionists--who were ordinarily so amiable, according to M. Louis Blanc, that they were never so delighted as when they could rescue a human being from death.

It was by permission of the duke, who refused to sell his house, that Louis XV. built in the adjacent forest the hunting-lodge of St. Hubert. An assemblage of kings, courtiers, knights and ladies there met, at whose doings the good saint would have blushed, could he have witnessed them. One night the glittering crowd had galloped there for a carouse, when discovery was made that the materials for supper had been forgotten, or left behind at Versailles. “Let us go to Penthièvre!” was the universal cry; but the king looked grave at the proposition. Hunger and the universal opposition, however, overcame him. Forth the famished revellers issued, and played a _reveillée_ on the gates of Rambouillet loud enough to have startled the seven sleepers. “Penthièvre is in bed!” said one. “He is conning his breviary!” sneered another. “Gentlemen, he _is_, probably, at prayers,” said the king, who, like an Athenian, could applaud the virtue which he failed to practise. “Let us withdraw,” added the exemplary royal head of the order of the Holy Ghost. “If we do,” remarked Madame du Barry, “I shall die of hunger; let us knock again.” To the storm which now beset the gates, the latter yielded; and as they swung open, they disclosed the duke, who, girt in a white apron, and with a ladle in his hand, received his visiters with the announcement that he was engaged in helping to make soup for the poor. The monarch and his followers declared that no poor could be more in need of soup than they were. They accordingly seized the welcome supply, devoured it with the appetite of those for whom it was intended, and paid the grave knight who was their host, in the false coin of pointless jokes. How that host contrasted with his royal guest, may be seen in the fact told of him, when a poor woman kissed his hand, and asked a favor as he was passing in a religious procession. “In order of religion before God,” said he, “I am your brother. In all other cases, for ever your friend.” The Order of the Holy Ghost never had a more enlightened member than he.

In 1785 Louis XVI. in some sort compelled him to part with Rambouillet for sixteen million of francs. He retired to Eu, taking with him the bodies of the dead he had loved when living. There were nine of that silent company; and as the Duke passed with them on his sad and silent way, the clouds wept over them, and the people crowded the long line of road, paying their homage in honest tears.

Then came that revolutionary deluge which swept from Rambouillet the head of the order of the Holy Ghost, and the entire chapter with him; and which dragged from the mead and the dairy the queen and princesses, whose pastime it was to milk the cows in fancy dresses. The Duke de Penthièvre died of the Revolution, yet not through personal violence offered to himself. The murder of his daughter-in-law, the Princess de Lamballe, was the last fatal stroke; and he died forgiving her assassins and his own.

During the first Republic there was nothing more warlike at Rambouillet than the merino flocks which had been introduced by Louis XVI. for the great benefit of his successors. A scene of some interest occurred there in the last days of the empire.

On the 27th of March, 1814, the empress Maria Louisa with the King of Rome in her arms, his silver-gray jacket bearing those ribboned emblems of chivalry which may still be seen upon it at the Louvre, sought shelter there, while she awaited the issue of the bloody struggle which her own father was maintaining against her husband. The empress passed three days at Rambouillet, solacing her majestic anguish by angling for carp. Ultimately, the Emperor of Austria entered the hall where his imperial son-in-law had made so many Knights of the Legion of Honor, to carry off his daughter and the disinherited heir. As the three sat that night together before the wood-fire, the Arch-Duchess Maria-Louisa talked about the teeth of the ex-king of Rome, while two thousand Austrian soldiers kept watch about the palace.

The gates had again to be open to a fugitive. On the last of the “three glorious days” of July a poor, pale, palsied fugitive rushed into the chateau, obtained, not easily, a glass of water and a crust, and forthwith hurried on to meet captivity at last. This was the Prince de Polignac. Two hours after he had left came the old monarch Charles X., covered with dust, dropping tears like rain, bewildered with past memories and present realities, and loudly begging for food for the two “children of France,” the offspring of his favorite son, the Duke de Berri. In his own palace a king of France was compelled to surrender his own service of plate, before the village would sell him bread in return. When refreshed therewith, he had strength to abdicate in favor of his son, the Duke d’Angoulême, who at once resigned in favor of his nephew the Duke de Bordeaux; and this done, the whole party passed by easy stages into an inglorious exile. With them was extinguished the Order of the Holy Ghost; and never since that day have the emblematic dove and star been seen on the breast of any knight in France.

Louis Philippe would fain have appropriated Rambouillet to himself; but the government assigned it to the nation, and let it to a phlegmatic German, who had an ambition to sleep on the bed of kings, and could afford to pay for the gratification of his fancy. It was on the expiration of his lease that the house and grounds were made over to a company of speculators, who sadly desecrated fair Julie’s throne. The present sovereign of France has given it a worthy occupation. It is now an asylum and a school for the children of the brave. It began as the cradle of knights; and the orphans of those who were as brave as any of the chevaliers of old now find a refuge at the old hearth of the Knights of Amaury.

I can well conclude, that, by this time, my readers may be weary of foreign scenes and incidents, as we are of real personages. May I venture then, for the sake of variety, to ask them to accompany me “to the well-trod stage, anon?” There I will treat, to the best of my poor ability, of Stage Knights generally; and first, of the greatest of them all--Sir John Falstaff.

SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.

“I accept that heart
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase.”--HEYWOOD.

Henry, Earl of Richmond, always creates a favorable impression on young people who see him, for the first time, without knowing much about him, previously, at the end of Shakespeare’s tragedy of Richard the Third. This is a far higher degree of favor than he merited, for Henry was a very indifferent personage indeed. On the other hand Sir John Falstaff has had injustice done him by the actors; and of Shakespeare’s jolly old _gentleman_ they have made what, down to Macklin’s times, they made of Shylock, a mere mountebank.

In the very first scene, in the first part of Henry IV., when the Prince and Sir John appear in company, the knight is, by far, a more accomplished gentleman than the heir-apparent, for he speaks more refinedly of phrase, and indeed seldom indulges in scurrilous epithets, until provoked. Strong language is the result of his infirmity of nature, not of vicious inclination. Lord Castlereagh was not accounted the less a gentleman for using, as he _could_ do, very unsavory phrases occasionally.

The Prince is the first to rail, while Sir John shows his breeding and, I will add, his reading, by quoting poetry. But, if he is poetical, still more is he philosophical. How gravely does he beseech Hal to trouble him no more with vanity! And what a censure does the heavy philosopher fling at the King’s son, when he tells the latter that he was hurt to hear the wise remarks of a lord of the council touching that son’s conduct! The fault of the knight is, that he is easily led away into evil; a common weakness with good-natured people. It is only since he held fellowship with the Prince, that the fat follower of the latter had become knowing in evil, and Heaven help him, little better, as he says, than one of the wicked. Nay, he has enough of orthodoxy left to elicit praise, even from the editor of the _Record_. “O, if a man were to be saved by merit,” he exclaims, “what hole in hell were hot enough to hold him!”

He robs on the highway, it will be said. Well, let us not be too ready to doubt his gentility on that account. There was many a noble cut-purse in the grand gallery at Versailles, when it was most crowded; and George Prince of Wales once nearly lost the diamond-hilt of his sword, at one of his royal mother’s “drawing-rooms.” The offenders here were but petty-larceny rascals, compared with Falstaff on the highway. That he defrauded the King’s exchequer is, certainly, not to be denied. But again, let us not be too hasty to condemn good men with little foibles. Recollect that St. Francis de Sales very often cheated at cards.

Robbery on the highway was, after all, only, as I may call it, a rag of knighthood. Falstaff robbed in good company. It was his vocation. It was the fashion. It was an aristocratic pastime. Young blood would have it so; and Sir John was a boy with the boys. In more recent times, your young noble, of small wit and too ample leisure, flings stale eggs at unsuspecting citizens, makes a hell of his quarters, if he be military, and breaks the necks of stage-managers.

Sir John was, doubtless, one of those of whom Gadshill speaks as doing the robbing profession some grace for mere sport’s sake. “I am joined,” says Gadshill, “with no foot land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny strikers, none of those mad mustachio, purple-hued, malt-worms, but with nobility, and sanguinity; burgomasters, and great mongers.” Indeed, it is matter of fact that, there were graver, if not greater men than these among the noble thieves, “who would, if matters were looked into, for their own credit-sake, make all whole.” There was one at least who, for being a highway robber, made none the worse justice, charged to administer halters to poorer thieves.

But let us return to our old friend. Poor Sir John, I doubt if he would have gone robbing, even in the Prince’s company, only that he was bewitched by his Royal Highness’s social qualities. But even then, while patiently enduring all sorts of hard jokes, he is really the Mentor of the party, and does not go to rob the travellers without first seriously reminding the gentlemen of the road, that it was a hanging matter. He would keep them from wrong, but as they are resolved on evil commission he accompanies them. He has explained the law, and he is not too proud to share the profits.

He is brave, too, despite all his detractors! When the Prince and Poins, in disguise, set upon the gentle robbers, as they are sharing their booty, Falstaff is the only one who is described as giving “a blow or two,” before he imitates “the rest,” and runs away. When he attacked the travellers he was content to fight his man; there were four to four. And as to the imaginative description of the assault given by Falstaff, I believe it to have been uttered in joke and gayety of heart. I have implicit faith in the assertion, that he knew the disguised parties as well as their mothers did. See how readily he detects the Prince and Poins, when they are disguised as “drawers” at the inn in Eastcheap. If Falstaff was right in the latter case, when he told the Prince that he, Falstaff, was a gentleman, I think, too, he had as sufficient authority for saying to Hal, “Thou _knowest_ I am as valiant as Hercules.” I can not believe otherwise of a man whose taste was so little vitiated that he could at once detect when there was “lime” in his sack, and who no sooner hears that the state is in danger, than he suggests to the young Prince that he _must_ to court. His obesity may be suspected as not being the fruit of much temperance, but there is a Cardinal Archbishop in England who is the fattest man in the fifty-two counties, and why may we not conclude in both cases, that it is as Falstaff says, and that sighing and grief blow up a man like a bladder?

Then, only consider the reproof which Falstaff addresses to the Prince, speaking in the character of King to that illustrious scapegrace. Wisdom more austere, or graver condemnation of excess, could hardly be uttered by the whole college of cardinals, at any time. The prince is a mere plagiarist from the knight, and when he accuses the latter of being given to licentious ways, with what respectful humility does the old man plead guilty to his years, but “saving your reverence,” not to the vices which are said to accompany them?

Not that he is perfect, or would boast of being so. “He _has had_,” he says touchingly, “a true faith and a good conscience, but their date is out.” How ill is he requited by the Prince, in whose service he has lost these jewels, when his Highness remarks, before setting out to the field, “I’ll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot, and I know his death will be a charge of fourscore.” And this is said of one who has forgotten what the inside of a church is like through keeping this Prince’s villanous company; till when, he had been “as virtuously given as a gentleman need be.” What he considers as the requisite practice of a gentleman, is explained by Falstaff in his low estate, and not in the spirit which moved him when he “lived well and in good compass.”

But there is a Nemesis at every man’s shoulder, and if Falstaff was cavalierly careless enough to run up a score at the Boar’s Head, and to accept even a present of Holland shirts, which he ungratefully designates as “filthy dowlas,” the way in which he was _dunned_ must have been harsh to the feelings of a knight and a gentleman. In reviewing his gallantries and his extravagances, we must not, in justice to him, forget that he was a bachelor. If he degraded himself, he inflicted misery on no Lady Falstaff at home. Heroes have been buried, with whole nations for mourners, whose offences in this worse respect have been forgotten. Not that I would apologise for the knight’s familiarity with either the Hostess or that remarkably nice young lady, Miss Dorothea Tearsheet. I do not know what the private life of that Lord Chief Justice may have been who was so very merciless in his censure upon the knight; but I do know that there have been luminaries as brilliant who have hidden their lights in very noisome places and who had not Falstaff’s excuse.

I am as little embarrassed touching Sir John’s character as a soldier, as I am about his morals. I do not indeed like to hear him acknowledge that he has “misused the King’s press most damnably,” or that he has pocketed “three hundred and odd pounds” by illegally releasing a hundred and fifty men. But at this very day practices much worse than this are of constant observance in the Russian service, where officers and officials, whose high-sounding names “exeunt in off,” rob the Czar daily, and are decorated with the Order of St. Catherine.

In the field, I maintain that Falstaff is a hero. As for his catechism on honor, so far from detracting from his reputation, it seems to me to place him on an equality with that modern English hero who said that his body trembled at the thought of the perils into which his spirited soul was about to plunge him. Falstaff did not _court_ death. “God keep lead out of me,” is his reasonable remark; “I need no more weight than mine own bowels!” But the man who makes this prayer and comment was not afraid to encounter death. “_I have led_ my ragamuffins where they are peppered.” He went then at their head. That there was hot work in front of him is proved by what follows. “There’s but three of my hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town’s end, to beg during life!” A hundred and forty-seven men killed out of a hundred and fifty-one; of the four who survived, three are illustriously mutilated; while the bold soul who led them on is alone unscathed! Why, it reminds us of Windham and the Redan. It is Thermopylæ, with Leonidas surviving to tell his own story.

His discretion is not to be taken as disproving his valor. He fought Douglas, remember, and did not run away from him. He found the Scot too much for him, it is true; and quietly dropped down, as if dead. What then? When the Muscovite general fell back so hurriedly from Eupatoria, how did he describe the movement? “Having accomplished,” he said, “all that was expected, the Russians _withdrew out of range_.” So, Sir John, with respect to Douglas.

Nor would _some_ Muscovite officers and gentlemen object to another action of Falstaff’s. The knight it will be remembered with regret, stabs the body of Hotspur, as the gallant Northumbrian lies dead, or wounded, upon the field. Now, by this we may see that Russia is not only some four centuries behind us in civilization. The barbarous act of Falstaff was committed a score of times over on the field of Inkerman. Many a gallant, breathing, but helpless English soldier, received the mortal thrust which they could not parry, from the hands of the Chevalier Ivan Falstaff, who fought under the doubtful inspiration of St. Sergius. And, moreover, there were men in authority there who virtually remarked to these heroes what Prince Henry does to Sir John,

“If a lie may do thee grace,
I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.”

That _our_ Falstaff bore himself with credit on the field, is made clear in spite of the incident of Hotspur. I do not pause to point out the bearing of Morton’s answer, when Northumberland asks him, “Didst thou come from Shrewsbury?”--“I _ran_ from Shrewsbury, my noble lord,” is the reply; confessing that he ran from a foe, among whom Falstaff was a leader: I am more content to rest on the verdict of so dignified yet unwilling a witness as the Lord Chief Justice. It is quite conclusive. “Your day’s service at Shrewsbury,” says my lord, “hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit at Gadshill.” Nothing can be more satisfactory. The bravery of Falstaff was the talk of the town.

When peace has come, or that Sir John has received permission to return home, on urgent private affairs, he enters a little into dissipation, it is true. He is not, however, guilty of such excess as to materially injure his health; otherwise his page would not have brought him so satisfactory a message from his doctor. He may, perhaps, be also open to the charge of being too easily taken by such white bait as he might find in the muslin of Eastcheap. Heroes, however, have usually very inflammable hearts. When Nelson was ashore, he immediately fell in love.

In spite of a trifle of rioting, the overflowing of animal spirits, Falstaff is governed by the laws of good society. Jokes are fired at him incessantly, but he takes them with good-humor, and repays them with interest. “I am not only witty in myself,” he says, “but the cause that wit is in other men.” Gregoire and La Bruyere expressly define the great rule of conversation to be that, while you exhibit your own powers, you should endeavor to elicit and encourage those of your companions. What they put down as a canon, Sir John had already, and long before, put in excellent practice. He had wit enough to foil the Chief Justice, but he left to his lordship ample opportunity to exhibit his own ability; and then the compliment to the great judicial dignitary, that he was not yet clean past his youth, although he had in him some relish of the saltness of time--this, combined with the benevolent recommendation that his lordship would have a reverend care of his health, robs the latter personage of any prejudice he might have entertained against the knight. Indeed, it would be difficult to conceive how the religiously-minded Lord Chief Justice could have entertained prejudice against a gallant old gentleman who had lost his voice with “hollaing” (his men to the charge), “and singing of anthems.”