Chapter I (1)

Exile--Provincial Life--Conversation at
Saint-Fargeau--Sentiment towards Nature in the Seventeenth
Century--Differences between Mademoiselle and her
Father--Mademoiselle Returns to Court.

The Fronde was an abortive revolution. It was condemned in advance, the leaders having never clearly known what ends they were seeking. The consequences of its failure proved to be of profound importance to France. The civil disorders existing between 1648 and 1652 were the last efforts of the French against the establishing of absolute monarchy, to the strengthening of which the entire regency of Anne of Austria had tended. The end of these disorders signified that the nation, wearied and discouraged, had accepted the new regime. The result was a great transformation, political and moral, so great that the Fronde may be considered as clearly marking a separation between two periods of French history--a deep abyss as it were between the times which precede and those which follow.

The leaders of the Fronde had been dispersed by the return of the King to his capital on October 21, 1652. When the exiles returned, some sooner, some later, the last after the Peace of the Pyrenees (November 7, 1659), so great a change had taken place in ideas and customs that more than one exile felt himself in a strange land.

It was necessary to adjust oneself to the new atmosphere. It was very much the same situation--though the Frondeurs were under much lighter accusations--as that experienced by the _emigres_ returning under the Consulate. The Princess, the events of whose heroic years have been related, offers an excellent example of this condition.

When the Grande Mademoiselle, who had urged on the civil war in order to force Louis XIV. into marriage with herself, obtained at the end of five years, permission to return to Court, she brought with her the old undisciplined habits which were no longer in fashion, and in the end incurred much that was disagreeable. Exile had not weakened her pride. According to a celebrated formula, she had learned nothing, she had forgotten nothing; she remained that person of impulse of whom Mme. de Sevigne said, "I do not care to mix myself with her impetuosities."[1]

Far be it from me to reproach Mademoiselle! All honour be to her who stood firm in the age of servility which succeeded the Fronde! In other respects exile had been most healthful for her. She had been obliged to seek in herself resources the finding of which surprised her. Mademoiselle naively admires herself in her _Memoires_[2] for never having experienced a single moment of ennui "in the greatest desert in the world," and surely she deserves praise, as her first experiences at Saint-Fargeau would have crushed most women.

The reader will be convinced of this if he imagines himself in her company the night of arrival in the early days of November, 1652. At the end of _The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle_ we left her weeping without shame before her entire suite. Her dream of glory had evaporated. Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orleans would never be queen of France. She would take no more cities; pass no more troops at review to the sound of trumpet and cannon. Three weeks previous, the great Conde had treated her as a companion in arms. She rejoiced the soldiers by her martial carriage, and any one of them would have been not only surprised but very indignant if it had been suggested that she was capable of being almost as cowardly as her father, the "_triste_ Gaston."

Now all that was finished, even the romantic flight. While playing hide-and-seek with imaginary pursuers, the Grande Mademoiselle had fallen into a state of physical and moral prostration. The heroine of Orleans and of Porte Saint-Antoine sobbed like a little child because she "had too much grief" and was "too afraid"[3]; the aspect of her future home had taken away the last remnants of courage.

The Chateau of Saint-Fargeau, begun under Hugh Capet and often repaired, particularly during the fifteenth century, seemed more like a fortress than a peaceful dwelling. Its heavy mass dominated the valley of the Loing, a region of great and dense forests, with few clearings. Itself enveloped with brushwood and protected by deep moats, the chateau harmonised well with the surroundings. Its windows opened at a great height above the ground, and its towers were strong. The body of the building was massive and bare, united by strong ramparts forming an _enceinte_ irregular with severe appearance.

The _ensemble_ was imposing, never smiling. Saint-Fargeau, long uninhabited, was almost a ruin filled with rats at the time when Mademoiselle presented herself as a fugitive. She was shown into a room with a prop in the centre. Coming from the palace of the Tuileries, this sight overwhelmed her, and made her realise the depth of her fall. She had an access of despair: "I am most unfortunate to be absent from Court, to have only a dwelling as ugly as this, and to realise that this is the best of my chateaux." Her fear became terror when she discovered that doors and windows were lacking. A report came from a valet that she was sought for imprisonment, and she was too confused to reflect that if the King had ordered her arrest locks would have been useless.

She continued her journey to reach a little chateau, situated two leagues from Saint-Fargeau, which was reported safer. "Imagine," says she, "with what pleasure I made the extra journey. I had risen two hours before daylight; I had ridden twenty-two miles upon a horse already worn out with previous travel. We arrived at our destination at three in the morning; I went to bed in haste." The crisis was short. The next day it was explained to Mademoiselle that Saint-Fargeau had two exits in case of alarm. She returned in consequence on the fourth day, and there was no more question of grief, nor even ill-temper; from that moment the place was "good and strong."

The Princess adapted herself to the glassless windows, the broken ceilings, the absence of doors, and all the rest. The great ladies of the seventeenth century were fortunately not too particular. Mademoiselle encamped in a cellar while the apartment above was being repaired, and was forced to borrow a bed. She recovered all her gaiety before the comicality of the situation: "for the first cousin of the King of France." "Happily for me," wrote she, "the bailiff of the chateau had been recently married; therefore he possessed a new bed." The bed of Madame the Bailiff was the great resource of the chateau. It was returned as soon as the Princess received her own from Paris, but it was again used to give a resting-place to the Christmas guests, many of whom appeared--a fact to the credit of the French nobility--as soon as it was known where the illustrious unfortunate was passing her period of banishment.

Mademoiselle did not know how to provide for these guests and the most important were lodged with the bailiff. The Duchess of Sully and her sister, the Marquise of Laval, came together for a prolonged sojourn and performed the office of shuttle between the cellar in which the Grande Mademoiselle held her court and "the new bed of the city of Saint-Fargeau." Ladies of quality arriving at this time lodged where they could with small regard to comfort, and this condition lasted until the chateau was put in order. Every one suffered but nobody complained. There was a certain elegance in this haughty fashion of ignoring comfort, the importance of which in our own days seems in comparison rather bourgeois, in the worst sense of the word.

Gradually all was arranged. The chateau was restored, the apartments enlarged.[4] The overgrowth of the approaches gave place to a terrace from which to the surprise of all a charming view was discovered. The Saint-Fargeau of the Capets and of the first Valois, "a place so wild," says Mademoiselle, "that when I arrived, only herbs fit for soup were to be found," became a beautiful residence, hospitable and animated.

The mistress of the place loved open air and movement, as did all the French nobility before an absolute monarchy, in the interest of order and peace, had trained them to rest tranquilly in the salons of Versailles. Muscular decadence commenced with the French at the epoch when it became the fashion to pass the days in silk stockings and practising bows, under punishment of being excluded from all society. Violent exercises were abandoned or made more gentle.[5] Attention was paid only to what gave majestic grace to the body in harmony with the Versailles "Galerie of Mirrors."

The bourgeoisie were eager to imitate the people of quality, and the higher classes paid for their fine manners or their attempts at fine manners with the headaches and nervous disorders of the eighteenth century. The taste for sport has only reappeared in France during our own times. We are now witnessing its resurrection.

This taste, however, was still lively immediately after the Fronde, and Mademoiselle abandoned herself to it with passion. She ordered from England a pack of hounds and hunters. She possessed many equipages. With a game of marl before the chateau, indoor games for rainy days, violins from the Tuileries to play for dancing, it would be difficult to find a court more brisk, more constantly in joyous movement.

Mademoiselle, whom nothing tired, set an example, and seasoned these "games of action" with _causeries_, some of which happily have been preserved for us by Segrais,[6] her Secretary of the Commandments. Thanks to him, we know, even admitting that he may have slightly rearranged his reports, what they talked about at the court of Saint-Fargeau, and one cannot fail to be somewhat surprised. He tells us all sorts of things of which we never should have dreamed, things that we have never imagined as subjects of interest in the seventeenth century. In this age which believed itself entirely indifferent towards nature, conversation nevertheless fell ceaselessly upon the beauties of landscape. People paused to admire "points of view," sought them, and endeavoured to explain why they were beautiful. The reasons given were, that those who knew how to enjoy a large forest and "the beautiful carpet of moss at the feet," actually preferred landscapes made more intelligible through the intervention of man. A desert pleased them less than an inhabited country, a wild landscape less than sunny collections of cultivated fields and orchards symmetrically planted, recalling "the agreeable variety of parterres made by the ingenuity of man."

Mademoiselle praises in her _Memoires_ the view from the end of the terrace. She attempts to describe it and fails. Segrais also tries in vain. It was impossible at that epoch. The vocabulary did not exist which could furnish words to describe a landscape. The creation of our descriptive vocabulary is one of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's[7] greatest glories. In compensation, Segrais knew very well how to explain why the beauty of the view, about which he had so ineffectively written, pleased him and his companions. He said that, arranged by chance, it conformed to the rules of classic pictures and in no way appeared the sole work of nature. Neither the valley of the Loing nor the immense marsh which closed this side of the chateau, nor the island in the midst of this marsh, with clumps of trees, nor the church and small height which could be perceived, seemed placed without human intervention. "And this," writes Segrais, "is so well represented in those excellent landscapes of the great artists, that all who look upon it believe that they have seen the marsh, church, and little island in a thousand pictures."

Literature, imaginative literature at least, also held a considerable place in the conversation. Mademoiselle, who had read nothing before her sojourn at Saint-Fargeau, was anxious to make up for lost time. "I am a very ignorant creature," writes she, at the beginning of her exile, "detesting reading and having seen only the gazettes. Henceforth I am going to apply myself and see if it be possible to like a thing from deliberate determination."

Success surpassed her hopes; she conceived a passion for reading. In the winter of 1652-1653, during which there were few distractions, and the chateau was given over to workmen; when the bad weather and the rough roads rendered Saint-Fargeau unapproachable, and left the castle solitary, she read, or listened to reading while plying her needle, without being bored.

I laboured from morning till night at my work and descended
from my chamber only to dine or to be present at mass. The
winter weather was so bad that walking was impossible. If there
ever was a moment of fine weather I rode, or if the ground was
too frozen I walked a little to watch my workmen. While I sewed
some one read to me, and it was at this period that I began to
love reading as I have done ever since.

At the end of some years of banishment her "erudition" struck Dr. Huet, who met her at the baths of Forges. "She loves history passionately," says he in his _Memoires_, "but above all, romances, so-called. While her women were dressing her hair, she desired me to read aloud, and no matter what the subject, it provoked a thousand questions on her part. In this I well recognised the acuteness of her mind."

The fashionable romances easily pleased a Princess who had a grandeur of soul and loved to meet it in others. They were the works of Gomberville,[8] of La Calprenede, and of Mlle. de Scudery, in which the sheepfolds and dove-cotes of l'Astree had yielded to the heroic adventures and grand sentiments of princes warlike and proud, who, notwithstanding their exotic names, were the same who resisted under Richelieu, and lead the Fronde under Mazarin. The generations born in the first third of the century were charmed with the resemblance to their own heroes which these tales offered them. They went wild with delight over Scythe, Oroondate, or the Grand Cyrus, as they were fascinated with Saint-Preux and Lelia, and many readers remained faithful till death to these writers who had so well expressed the ideals of their youth.

At sixty, La Rochefoucauld re-read La Calprenede. Mme. de Sevigne was a grandmother when she found herself "glued" to _Cleopatre_. "The beauty of the sentiments," writes she, "and the violence of the passions, the grandeur of the events, and the marvellous successes of the redoubtable swords, all enchain me as if I were still a little child. The sentiments are of a perfection which satisfy my conception of beautiful souls."[9]

Realism and Naturalism have in the present day destroyed the capacity for enthusiasm for heroes of romance. One's imagination can hardly be kindled by a Coupeau or a Nana, nor even by a Madame Bovary, whatever may be the literary value of the works in which they figure. For the little court of Saint-Fargeau it was hardly possible to speak calmly of the favourite heroes. One day, followed by a numerous assemblage, Mademoiselle drove in the fresh valley of the Loing and descended from her chariot under the tall willows which bordered the little river. It was spring and the sun was radiant. The new grass and the growing leaves offered a picture so "laughing" that nothing else could at first be spoken of. While walking, the conversation finally turned upon romance, and each fought for the favourite hero. The discussion was waxing warm when the Princess, who had hardly spoken, intervened to moderate its ardour. After avowing that she had read but little, she gave an eulogium upon Roman history, or rather what it might become, better comprehended in the hands of a learned writer, and criticised the custom of giving French manners to Greeks, Persians, or Indians.

Mademoiselle desired greater "historic truth" and what might be designated as more local colour. Why not frankly take characters from French contemporaries? "I am astonished," she said in ending, "that so many people of intelligence who have created for us such worthy Scythians and such generous Parthians have not taken the same pleasure in imagining as accomplished French cavaliers or princes: whose adventures would not have been less pleasing." After a moment's silence, objections were advanced. The idea of writing a romance upon the "war of Paris" seemed very daring. One young lady very naively urged that the author would not know how to name his characters. "The French," said she, "naturally love foreign names. Arabaze, Iphidamante, Crosmane, are beautiful names; Rohan, Lorraine, Montmorency, are nothing of the kind."

The old Mme. de Choissy, with the authority given by her noted intelligence, tried to prove that in an imaginative recital both time and space must be distant. One Marquise appeared wearied of the kings and emperors of romance, and desired heroes taken from the middle class. Another, Mme. de Mauny, who was supposed[10] to have invented the expression "_s'encanailler_" asserted that it was forbidden to heroes of romance to do or say anything derogatory to pure sentiment, which was possible to those of "high birth only." Mademoiselle maintained the necessity of observation and truth for the tale, but she admitted that the author of a great romance, writing as a "poet," had the right to imagine events, instead of servilely copying them. "The tale," said she, "relates things as they are, the romance as they should be."

This distinction neither lacks acuteness nor a certain justice, and we should like to know how much Segrais had contributed to it. No one having replied to this last remark, the Princess remounted her carriage, and gave the order to follow the pack of hounds, which had just started a hare a few steps off. She was obeyed, in spite of the obstacles which the country presented, and she returned to the chateau, very well satisfied with her afternoon.

At Saint-Fargeau they talked more frequently of love than of either literature or the beauties of nature. Love is a subject of which women never weary, and about which they always have something to say. Mademoiselle lent herself completely to such conversation; it was she who one day posed a question the subtlety of which the Hotel Rambouillet might have enjoyed. "Whose absence causes the greater anguish, a lover who should be loved or one who should not be?"

She consented to admit the ideas of l'Astree upon the fatality of passion, on the condition that the effects should be limited to personages of romance, or in real life to those of humble birth. Segrais makes her say without protest in a tale[11] ascribed to her "Man is not free to love or not to love as he pleases." In the depths of her soul, in her most intimate thoughts, Mademoiselle had never been further from comprehending love, never had she more energetically refused for it any beauty, any grandeur. One of her ladies, the gracious Frontenac, with her eyes "filled with light," had made a marriage of inclination, an act absurd, base, and shameful in the judgment of Mademoiselle, her mistress. The marriage turned out badly. M. de Frontenac was eccentric. His young wife at first feared, then hated him, and at Saint-Fargeau there passed between the couple tragi-comic scenes, of which no one could be ignorant.

Mademoiselle had just commenced her _Memoires_.[12] She eagerly relates the conjugal quarrels of M. and Mme. de Frontenac with more details than it would be suitable to repeat, and this was the opportunity for an outburst against the folly of trying to found marriage upon the most fickle of human feelings. She writes:

I have always had a strong aversion for even legitimate love.
This passion appears to me unworthy of a noble soul; but I am
now confirmed in this opinion, and I comprehend well that
reason has but little to do with affairs of passion. Passion
passes quickly, is never, in fact, of long duration. One may be
unhappy for life in entering upon marriage for so transient a
feeling, but on the other hand, happy if one marries for reason
and other imaginable considerations, even if physical aversion
exists; for I believe that one often loves more with this
aversion conquered.

The principle may be sage, but the Grande Mademoiselle is too sure of her fact. This "even if aversion exists" is difficult to digest. The Princess was nearing her thirtieth year, when she treated love with contempt, and nothing had yet warned her of the imprudence of defying nature; so she believed herself well protected.

In the spring of 1683, the rumour had spread that she and M. le Prince de Conde had promised to marry, in the expectation and hope of being soon relieved of the Princess de Conde, now a hopeless invalid, and that the imagination of Mademoiselle, for lack of heart, pressed her "furiously" in this affair. The Parisian salons had discovered no other explanation for the hostile attitude which she persisted in maintaining towards the Court of France, which she had so much interest in conciliating. It was inconceivable that without some reason of this kind she should compromise herself as she did, for a Prince who had become an alien and whom she might never again see. Why betray news through letters which always fell into the hands of Mazarin? Why leave to Conde, now a Spanish General, the companies raised under the Fronde with the funds of Mademoiselle and bearing her name? Either she had lost her senses or one might expect some romantic prank, which could only be unravelled by marriage.

"Have you told everything?" demanded Mademoiselle of the old Countess de Fiesque, her former governess, one morning, when this last poured out the comments of the world. "No," said the good woman. Her mistress let her proceed, then expressed herself as indignant that she should have been believed capable of marrying on account of a sudden passion; the other reproaches had not touched her.

She declared that M. le Prince had never spoken of marriage, that it would be time to think of this if Madame la Princesse should die, when M. le Prince should be pardoned, when he should formally demand her hand, and the King should approve the affair.

I believe [continued she] that I should marry him finding in
his personality only what is grand, heroic, and worthy of the
name I bear. But that I should marry like a young lady of
romance, that he should come to seek me upon a palfrey
destroying all barriers in the road; and on the other hand that
I should mount another palfrey like Mme. Oriane[13]; I assure
you this would not suit my temper, and I am very indignant
against those people who have thought it possible.

At this point the Princess was silent. It would have been the moment to confess the true key to her conduct; but one must avow that, in spite of her fine words and her expressed contempt for lovers, she was after all a true Princess of romance, led by her imagination.

The idea of making war upon the King from the bottom of a cellar had amused her, and still more the thinking of herself as the price of peace between her cousin and Conde, and she had not wished to look further.

While the tempest gathered over her head, the great preoccupation of Mademoiselle was the installation of a theatre in her dilapidated chateau, in which the country workmen had not yet succeeded in arranging a suitable bedroom for her. She could no longer live without the comedy; the theatre must come first. It was ready in February, 1653, and inaugurated immediately by a wandering troop, engaged for the season. The hall was commodious, but very cold. The court of Saint-Fargeau descended from its garrets entirely muffled, the ladies in fur hoods. The country people, only too delighted to be invited to shiver in such good company, hastened from distances of ten leagues. Mademoiselle was perfectly contented: "I listened to the play with more pleasure than ever before."

We no longer understand what it means to love truly the theatre. According to the gazette of Loret, the opening piece was a pastoral, "half gay, half moral." Mademoiselle loved this sort, slightly out of fashion; Segrais has preserved an agreeable reminiscence of a summer's evening passed in the forest, with the natural background of high trees, listening to an ancient "Amaryllis" repolished and arranged for the stage by some penny-a-liner.

Mademoiselle loved, what is more, everything pertaining to the theatre from tragedy to trained dogs. One reads in a little squib written by her as a pastime,[14] and printed for the diversion of her friends, "Comedians are essentials--at least for the French and Italians. Jugglers, rope dancers, _buveurs d'eau_, without forgetting marionettes and bell players, dogs trained to leap, and monkeys as examples to our own; violins and merry-andrews and good dancers." This skit should not be taken too seriously, but it well accords with the account left us by an eye-witness of one of the representations at Saint-Fargeau. The piece was called _Country Pleasures_, an operetta. The greatest applause fell neither to the Goddess Flora, nor to the "melancholy lover," but to two children disguised as monkeys, and executing songs with the "cadence which belongs to those animals."

Twice a week, the pleasures and cares of Saint-Fargeau were varied by the arrival of messengers bringing letters and gazettes. News not to be trusted to the post was received through guests from Paris or by special messengers. The news consisted mainly of political events, but it fell to the exiles to discover the springs and to draw the morals from the facts. This talent of divining, possessed in a high degree by the Parisians, has never passed the _banlieue_. It cannot be carried away.

Mademoiselle herself had never attained the art. Even at the Tuileries she used to say: "I can never guess anything." Once in her place of refuge, she comprehended nothing of the real significance of passing events. For those who were not Provincials there was nothing clearer than the conduct of the Court of France, after its return to the capital. Mademoiselle had fled from the Tuileries October 21, 1652. The next day the young King held a _Lit de Justice_, in which the Parliament was forbidden to occupy itself with the general affairs of the kingdom. Banishments and pursuits immediately commenced, but the gazettes hardly referred to them. From their pages one might have gathered that Paris was entirely absorbed in its pleasures.

The post of November brought to Saint-Fargeau description of the first Court ball and some lines on a new _Lit de Justice_ (November 13th), in which the Prince de Conde and his adherents had been declared criminals "de lese majeste." The December number of the _Gazette_ gave news of the arrest of Retz, who had rallied before the end of the Fronde, and the account of a great marriage with enumeration of gifts and names of donors, exactly as in our modern journals. The January number was made interesting by the accounts of the several successes of Turenne over Conde and the Spanish troops, and by the news of the death of an ancient aunt of Mademoiselle who had been in retreat for seven or eight years. The necrological article took a larger space in the gazette of Loret than that absorbed by the warlike and political news together.

The third of the following month the revolutionary era was closed by the triumphal return of Mazarin. Louis XIV. travelled three leagues to meet him,

_Encor qu'il fait un temps etrange
Temps de vent, de pluie et de fange_,

and took him back in his own carriage to the Louvre, where a sumptuous festival, fireworks, and homage, more or less sincere, from the crowds of courtiers, awaited him.

The attention of the Parisians was at once directed to a grand ballet with mechanical devices and changes of scene, danced three times by the King and the flower of his nobility,[15] before a public analogous to that of the free representations of July 14th in Paris. Places were reserved for the Court and its guests, who really made part of the spectacle, but otherwise all entered who desired. The crowd besieged the doors to see what will probably never again be witnessed: a monarch sufficiently sure of his prestige to dare to pirouet, costumed as a mythological divinity, or stagger as a thief who had drunk too much, before the _canaille_ of his capital.

The following day, a journalist bitterly bewails in his paper having seen nothing at all, although he had stood in line three hours and waited eight hours in the hall. This journalist exacted and obtained consideration; at the second representation, the chronicler before carelessly treated was lead in ceremony to the "reserved places." He was not yet content, not being in front. He showed himself, however, a good fellow and wrote an article admiring all, even a scene in which the joke to-day seems somewhat inhuman. It was a dance of cripples, the contortions of these miserable beings causing much laughter.

Of the abuses which gave rise to the Fronde, no living soul breathed a word. Not one of these abuses had disappeared. For the most part they had been aggravated by the general disorder; but France resembled an invalid who had so far found only charlatans for physicians; it was weary of remedies. "The people of Paris," wrote Andre d'Ormesson, "were disgusted with Princes and did not longer wish to feed upon war."

One might say the same of the Provinces. They remained for the most part troubled and miserable, their hate now turning against the nobility, with whom the four years of anarchy had brought back the manners of the feudal brigands. Deceived on all sides, betrayed by all its pretended saviours, the country began again to put its faith in the central power. It was only necessary that this last should regain its strength day by day, and it was clear to the Parisians as well as to the Provinces that the first use royalty would make of convalescence would be to cripple the nobility so that a revival of the Fronde would be impossible.

The period had passed in which the King could be aided by the nobles according to their own methods not his, as at the time in which they had fought against him, to deliver him from his first minister. Louis XIV. wished now to be served in his own way, which was to be obeyed, and he felt the strength to impose obedience. It required all the naivete of Mademoiselle to be able to imagine that she could make the King as an old Frondeur admit the distinctions between M. le Prince whose success one had the right to desire, and the Spanish soldiers led by this same Prince in whom one must not be interested. She had so little realisation of the change which had taken place in sentiments, from the date of her exile, that she did not even attempt to conceal her grief at the news of the victory at Arras brought back by Turenne, August 27, 1654.

The Grande Mademoiselle believed herself in accord with her King and country when she wrote in her _Memoires_: "I have not desired the Spaniards to gain advantage over the French, but I do wish that M. le Prince might do so and I cannot persuade myself that this is against the service of the King." It was then four months since the young monarch had entered, whip in hand, into his Parliament and forbade it to mix itself with his affairs; but his cousin had no more comprehended this warning than the others which had preceded it. It had not once occurred to her that the cadet branches of the royal family were amongst the vanquished and that the relations of the King of France, very far from being in a position to dictate to him, would henceforth be the most strictly held in leash of all his subjects. Only the approach of the great revolution gave them an opportunity to regain their importance and we know how much Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were able to congratulate themselves over this fact.

Monsieur Gaston undertook to bring his daughter to a realisation of the truth. It had been said that as long as he lived bitter experiences would come to Mademoiselle through this dangerous Prince.

Gaston d'Orleans had disappeared from the stage at the end of the Fronde, like a true hero of comedy. His wife said, half weeping, half laughing, that he seemed to her a Tewlin, a celebrated comic actor who filled the role designated to-day as the "king of operetta."

The return of the Court to Paris had been announced to the Luxembourg by a letter from Louis XIV. This news had entirely upset Monsieur and he blustered with so much appearance of truth that Mademoiselle had once more been convinced. "He was so completely beside himself," relates de Retz, "that one would judge from his manner of speaking, that he was already on horseback, completely armed and ready to cover with blood the plains of St. Denis and Grenelle."

Madame was terrified; she endeavoured to pacify him, but the more she tried the more vigorously he threatened to annihilate everything. His martial ardour vanished when he received a decree of banishment (October 21, 1652). It was at the date the King was entering Paris, and cannon were heard on all sides, the populace, according to the custom of the times, firing in the air as a sign of joy. Nothing, however, could persuade Monsieur, old Parisian as he was, that these charges did not come from the King's guards, and that the palace was not being besieged.

He was overcome with terror; moved to and fro with agitation; sent constantly to inquire what was going on, and finally hastened his departure, which should not have taken place till the next day before dawn. He drew a free breath only upon arriving at the valley of Chevreuse. No one dreamed of retaining him--on the contrary, Mazarin, who governed France from the depths of his exile, was resolved to have no more trouble with him. "Let his Royal Highness depart with his appanage,"[16] wrote he. His Royal Highness having arrived at the Chateau of Limours, Michel Le Tellier, Secretary of State and War, hastened to find him, and it was a repetition of the former scenes with Richelieu.

In his final adieus to public life, Gaston d'Orleans denounced Retz as before he had denounced Chalais, Montmorency, Cinq-Mars, and many others. When he had said all that he wished, thus preparing the arrest of the Cardinal, who was to astonish Mademoiselle by arriving at Saint-Fargeau, the King permitted him to retire to Blois.[17] Monsieur obeyed with ill-grace; he felt that they were burying him alive.

This was not the first time that he had dwelt at Blois in spite of himself. The forced sojourn made at that place under Louis XIII. had not been disagreeable, constraint aside, because he was not definitely limited, and he succeeded, being young and gay, in living like "a little king of Yvetot." He had rebuilt according to his own taste (1635-1638) a portion of the chateau after the plans of Francois Mansard, "the cleverest architect of his times,"[18] the uncle of the builder of the Palace of Versailles.

Chambord served him for a country-seat, near at hand, and fruitful for the kitchen garden, with forests teeming with game for hunting-grounds, and amiable people for subjects, who had guarded a monarchical faith and considered themselves much honoured when the brother of the King deigned to flatter them and their daughters.

Saint-Fargeau was steep and gloomy; Blois, on the contrary, with its sky full of caresses, showed itself the worthy forerunner of the Angevine gentleness:

Coteaux riants y sont des deux cotes,
Coteaux non pas si voisins de la nue,
Qu'en Limousin, mais coteaux enchantes,
Belles maisons, beaux parcs et bien plantes,
Pres verdoyants donc ce pays abonde,
Vignes et bois, tant de diversites
Qu'on croit d'abord etre en un autre monde.[19]

It is a tourist of the time who so speaks, La Fontaine, who visited Blois in 1663, and described it to his wife in a letter half prose, half verse. The city had charmed him on account of its beautiful situation and the amiable manners of its inhabitants: "Life is very polished here, possibly has always been so, the climate and the beauty of the country contributing to its charm; probably the sojourn of Monsieur or the number of pretty women has caused this politeness."

As a man of taste, La Fontaine had admired the portion of the chateau of Francis I., without regularity and order; as a good liver he had appreciated the excellent breakfast at the inn. As a good traveller, he had gossiped sufficiently with the people of the place to realise how happy they were under the gentle reign of Gaston.

The traces of the civil wars had been quickly effaced in these fertile and populous provinces. La Fontaine gaily retook his route towards Amboise; he saw the smile of France, and he was made to enjoy it.

In this first time of peaceful enjoyment one of the great pleasures of Monsieur was to pass through his domains as an idle prince; descending here from his carriage to chase a stag, stopping there his boat to dine upon the grass, inviting himself into any dwellings belonging to either nobles or bourgeoisie in which he found pretty women.

He embarked one day on one of those covered boats which the pictures of the seventeenth century show us. They were called "galiotes," and were used in voyaging upon rivers and canals. "Monsieur," relates an eye-witness, "had commanded a second boat in which he put a quantity of provisions, and the officers of his _menage_, those of the kitchen as well as the wardrobe; the horses were led along the bank."

He took ten or twelve of his suite with himself, and when he reached some beautiful and agreeable island, he disembarked and ordered dinner and supper to be served under the shade.

"Certainly one might say that all cares were banished from our society, that life went on without restraint, playing, drinking, eating, sleeping at will, that time meant nothing; at last the master, although son and brother of great kings, had put himself in the rank of his servants."[20]

Thus they drifted down the stream as far as Brittany. The weather was perfect. The chateaux of the Loire defiled before the galiote. These people travelled as if they were poets.

As soon, however, as Richelieu permitted, Gaston rushed to Paris and again plunged into politics; which meant to him only cowardice and betrayals, but which nevertheless fascinated him. This was his favourite vice which nothing would have induced him to correct, for politics gave him a round of new sensations. To hold the life of a friend in one's hand, knowing in advance that he will be delivered to the executioner, and at the same time bitterly to bewail his loss; to realise also that the present grief will surely vanish and that one can joyously take another life in the hand,--such events evidently make days most interesting, when neither conscience nor heart are tender. These excitements had filled the public career of Gaston, and when he found himself again in his chateau of Blois, almost twenty years after the radiant voyage down the Loire, for ever deprived, according to all probabilities, of the strong emotions whose savour Le Tellier had permitted him to taste for the last time in the interview at Limours, existence appeared to him intolerably pale and empty.

The good which he could do and actually was doing, did not interest him; he bitterly regretted the evil no longer in his power.

No one, even amongst his enemies, has ever accused him of being wicked. Only physicians can analyse such morbid natures. Monsieur had commenced by struggling against ennui. He had collected a fine library and had attracted literary people to his court, in the hopes of refinding the taste for literature which had animated his youth. He recalled his collections of objects of art and curiosities, continued them and began new. Nothing, however, really interested him, except a botanical garden with which he occupied himself with pleasure.

Everything seemed infinitely puerile to a man who had contributed so long to the making of history; it had become impossible for him to attach any importance to the little verses of his "beaux esprits," or to become impassioned over impaled birds or even an antique medal.

Weary of war, he threw himself into devotion. The gazette of Loret made this fact part of the official news of France and kept the country informed of his progress in the path of piety. The first sign which he gave of his conversion was to correct himself of a fault which had formerly brought from Richelieu useless remonstrances. This Prince with so refined a taste, cursed and swore abominably. The habit had been caught by those near him; we know that Mademoiselle herself used lively words in moments of irritation. In December, 1652, oaths and blasphemies were severely forbidden at the court of Blois, and Monsieur insisted upon obedience.

To-day, reports the gazette[21]:

Aucun de ceux qui sont a lui,
Quelque malheur qui lui survienne,
N'oserait jurer la mordienne.

One learns, afterwards, that these fine beginnings were not belied, and that Monsieur was now "less often at home than in the church." The Parisians and the Court of France had much difficulty in believing that repentance should have come to a spirit so free and so skeptical. His piety would have been entirely estimable "if his laziness had not in some portion aided his virtue." But however this may be, the devotion of Gaston was not the less sincere. He reformed his life, and succeeded in finding, at the foot of the altar, not perhaps contentment, but some patience and resignation.

This did not come, however, for a long time; the beginning of his definite exile was filled with miserable agitations and complaints without dignity. Madame rejoined him with their little flock of daughters.[22] This Princess did not add to the animation of the chateau. Entirely occupied with her own health, she lived shut up, without any other distraction than that of eating from morning till night, "in order to cure her melancholies," relates the Grande Mademoiselle, "but which really increases her ills." She gave no orders, only sent for her daughters ten minutes in the morning and evening, never spoke to them except to say "Hold yourselves erect, raise your head"; this was her sole instruction. She never saw them again during the day and never inquired what they were doing.

The governess in her turn neglected her pupils, who were abandoned to the care of inferiors. Their father found nothing to criticise in these educational methods; Anne of Austria had not brought up her sons very differently. Besides, Monsieur was a submissive husband. He considered his wife's judgment good, and that she possessed much more intelligence than was indicated by her large, frightened eyes.

"This one," said Tallemant, "is a poor idiot, who nevertheless has intelligence." Mme. de Motteville judged her exactly the same. Madame was not loved because she was not amiable, but no one was astonished at her ascendancy over her husband.

Gaston's court, contrary to that of his daughter, was almost deserted. Disgrace for this couple had been the signal for general abandonment. During the first years, Gaston took the trouble to entertain his guests; he became again, for some hours, the incomparable talker, who knew a thousand beautiful tales and found charming methods of telling them.[23] Chapelle and Bachaumont were received at the chateau on their passage to Blois in 1656, and brought back the pleasantest remembrances of the dinners of the Duc d'Orleans.

La d'une obligeante maniere,
D'un visage ouvert et riant,
Il nous fit bonne et grande chere,
Nous donnant a son ordinaire
Tout ce que Blois a de friand.

"The table arrangements were the neatest possible, not even a crumb of bread was allowed on the table. Well polished glasses of all sorts stood upon the buffet, and ice was abundant. The hall was prepared for the evening dance, all the beauties of the neighbouring cities invited, all the violins from the provinces collected."[24] After a short time, however, the effort of entertaining became a burden upon Monsieur. He cared for nothing but repose, and he would have passed the remainder of his days in sleeping with open eyes, if it had not been for his daughter of Saint-Fargeau, the terrible Mademoiselle, from whom he had separated at Paris after a painful explanation, and who had never left him in peace since that time.

She had commenced by coming to seek him in spite of frequent commands, to which she paid not the least attention. The Grande Mademoiselle, openly allied to Conde, was a compromising guest for a Prince possessed at this epoch with the desire to retake his place near the throne. In vain she declared that she had recalled her troops from the army of the Prince, her father knew very well that she was mocking him, and received her coldly on the evening of her first arrival (December, 1652). "He came to meet me at the door of his room, and said, 'I do not dare to come out because I have a swollen cheek.'" A moment after Monsieur heard from afar a joyous voice; it was Mademoiselle relating the adventures during her flight to Saint-Fargeau. Monsieur could hold out no longer. He approached, made her recommence, and laughed with the others. The ice was broken. The fourth day, however, he said to Prefontaine, the man of confidence of Mademoiselle, while walking in the park of Chambord, "I love my daughter very much, but I have many obligations, and shall be easier if she stays here but little."

Mademoiselle departed the next day. The following month (January, 1653), Monsieur and Madame made a sojourn at Orleans. In spite of new orders, Mademoiselle came to pass a day with them. "I did not wait for escort," wrote she, "I departed suddenly from Saint-Fargeau and went to Orleans."

This determination to impose herself upon people whom she saw with but little pleasure, is difficult to explain. Monsieur and Madame, who feared her, welcomed her, and her father said in bidding her farewell, "The affairs of your minority have never been settled. I wish to close this business. Give orders for this to your people."

Mademoiselle did not wait for a second request. "In consequence I wrote to Paris, then to Blois, a host of writings which were somewhat wearisome." Monsieur had his own projects. It was the single opportunity to extract a little money for the daughters by his second wife.

These young princesses had nothing to expect from their own mother, and very little from their father, whose pensions and appointments were destined to disappear with him. Madame was preoccupied with this situation.

For a long time [reports one of their intimates][25] Madame has
skilfully urged Monsieur to think of his affairs, and to put
some solid property aside for her children, telling him that he
possessed nothing in the world not reversible to the crown in
case he had no male children, and that their daughters would be
left to the mercy of the court and the ministers for their
subsistence.

Until Gaston's disgrace, Madame had obtained nothing, and for cause. Her husband ruined himself at play; he had been seen to lose a half-million francs to the famous Chevalier de Gramont. He reformed only at Blois, too late to begin to save; his debts crushed him, and his pensions were paid most irregularly. The fortune of Mademoiselle presented itself as the sole means of floating the House of Orleans, and the accounts of her minority were the troubled waters in which it was proposed to fish. Monsieur did not suspect how much the exile and the influence of Prefontaine had changed his daughter.

The Prefontaine type has disappeared with the ancient regime. There is no place in our democratic society for these men at once servants and friends; friends however who remained in the background. Persons of this kind were frequently met with in the great families of former times, and nothing appeared more natural than the dog-like devotion to their masters, always exacting and often ungrateful. The Grande Mademoiselle was not ungrateful but she was violent, and it was always upon the patient Prefontaine that she vented her anger. He was the counsellor, the factotum shrewd and firm, to whom all affairs came, the confidant who knew her most secret projects of marriage without ceasing to be the domestic of no account.

His mistress could do nothing without him, and she does not even tell us--she who loses herself in the smallest details when they concerned people of quality in her suite--at what date this precious man entered her service. She mentions him for the first time in 1651, without saying who he is or where he comes from. From that date she never ceased to speak of him as long as the troubled times lasted, but left him in the shadow nevertheless in her _Memoires_. When we have said that he was a gentleman, that there was no reason for his devotion to Mademoiselle but his own choice, we have told all we know about him. He had found the affairs of his mistress in a very bad condition, and so he warned her; Monsieur, her father, had been a negligent guardian and what is more an untrustworthy one. At first Mademoiselle would not listen to Prefontaine. It was at Paris in the midst of the fire of the Fronde, and she had other things to think of.

Prefontaine returned to the charge at Saint-Fargeau, where time abounded, and was better received. A new sentiment had awakened in Mademoiselle. She commenced to love money. She took interest in her affairs, and skilfully applied herself to economising with so much success that she would have soon risen to be a Countess Pimbesche.

Ideas of order and economy, rarely found with princesses of this epoch, occurred to her. "It is not sufficient," said she one day to Prefontaine, "to have an eye upon my legal affairs and the increase of my revenues; but it is also necessary to supervise the expenses of my house. I am convinced that I am robbed, and to prevent this, I wish to be accounted to as if I were a private person."

This was not beneath a great Princess. Examination proved that she _was_ robbed by her people. After being assured of this, she took upon herself the duty of supervising all the accounts twice a week, "even to the smallest."

She knew the price of everything; "who could have predicted when I lived at Court, that I should ever know how much bricks, lime, plaster, carriages cost, what are the daily wages of the workmen, in fine all the details of a building, and that every Saturday I should myself settle the accounts: every one would have been skeptical." And still more the people at large; it was really almost incredible. She quickly perceived that Monsieur had not taken his duties as guardian very seriously. It was in his belief both the right and duty of the chief of the Orleans family to advance the general interests of the House, even at the expense of individual members. The daughter by the first marriage was enormously rich. What could be more just than to use her fortune for the common good? What more natural than to throw upon her the burden of debts contracted to add to the eclat of the family? or to give a little of her superfluity to her young sisters in view of their establishment?

Gaston sent to his daughter for signature an act conceived in this spirit, and received the clearest refusal. Very respectfully but with firmness Mademoiselle assured him that henceforth she intended to hold to her legal rights, which guaranteed the integrity of her fortune. Monsieur threw himself into a great rage, but knew not what more to do. Politics gave him unexpected aid. A gentleman sent as courier by Conde into France had just been arrested. Among other letters was found one without address, but evidently destined for Mademoiselle and most compromising for her.

Mazarin charged the Archbishop of Embrun to take a copy of this to Gaston. The dispatch in which the prelate renders account of his mission has been preserved. Here is one of the significant passages:

BLOIS, March 31, 1653.

MONSEIGNEUR: