Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle Part 4

Nevertheless the news of the letter from her father to Mazarin put her in a great agitation. The Court of France was then in the east of France where Turenne made his annual campaign against M. le Prince and the Spaniards. Mademoiselle resolved to approach in order to sooner receive the response of the Cardinal.

She quitted Blois as she had arrived there, a stranger. One single thing could have touched her: the recall of Prefontaine and of her other servitors struck down for having been faithful. This Monsieur had absolutely refused; his exaggerated politeness and his grimaces of tenderness had only the result of alienating his daughter. She felt that he detested her and she no longer loved him.

Upon the route to Paris she doubled the length between her stopping-places. Impatience gained as she neared the end and the "barrier of grief" permitted itself gradually to be penetrated by joy.

She again saw, in pa.s.sing, etampes[31] and its ruins, which already dated back five years and were found untouched by La Fontaine in 1663.

So long and difficult in certain regions was the uplifting of France, after the wars of the Fronde, never taken very seriously by historians, doubtless because too many women were concerned in them.

"We looked with pity at the environs of etampes," wrote La Fontaine.[32]

"Imagine rows of houses without roofs, without windows, pierced on all sides; nothing could be more desolate and hideous." He talked of it during an entire evening, not having the soul of a heroine of the Fronde, but Mademoiselle had traversed with indifference these same ruins in which the gra.s.s flourished in default of inhabitants to wear it away. No remorse, no regret, however light, for her share in the responsibility for the ruin of this innocent people, had touched her mind, and yet she was considered to possess a tender heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =JEAN DE LA FONTAINE= From an engraving by Grevedon]

She learned at Saint-Cloud that she had been invited to rejoin the Court at Sedan. Mademoiselle took a route through Reims. She thus traversed Champagne, which had been a battle-field during the more than twenty years of the wars with Spain[33]; and which appeared the picture of desolation. The country was depopulated, numbers of villages burned, and the cities ruined by pillage and forced contributions of war.

More curious in regard to things which interest _la canaille_, Mademoiselle might have heard from the mouths of the survivors that of all the enemies who had trampled upon and oppressed this unfortunate people, the most cruel and barbarous had been her ally, the Prince de Conde, with whom were always found her own companies. She would not the less have written in her _Memoires_, entirely unconsciously, apropos of her trouble in obtaining pardon from the Court: "I had really no difference with the Court, and I was criminal only because I was the daughter of his Royal Highness."

We have hardly the right to reproach her with this monstrous phrase. To betray one's country was a thing of too frequent occurrence to cause much embarra.s.sment. The only men of this epoch who reached the point of considering the common people[34] and attaching the least importance to their sufferings were revolutionary spirits or disciples of St. Vincent de Paul.

Mademoiselle had no leaning towards extremes. Neither her birth nor the slightly superficial cast of her mind fostered free opinions. During her journey in Champagne, she was delighted to hear again the clink of arms and the sound of trumpets. Mazarin had sent a large escort. The skirmishers of the enemy swept the country even to the environs of Reims. A number of the people of the Court, seizing the occasion, joined themselves to her, in order to profit by her gens d'armes and light riders.

Colbert also placed himself under her protection with chariots loaded with money which he was taking to Sedan, and this important convoy was surrounded by the same "military pomp, as if it had guarded the person of the King."

The great precautions were, perhaps, on account of the chariots of money; the honours, however, were for Mademoiselle, and they much flattered her vanity. The commandant of the escort demanded the order from her. When she appeared the troops gave the military salute. A regiment which she met on her route solicited the honour of being presented to her. She examined it closely, as a warlike Princess who understood military affairs, and of whom the grand Conde had said one day, apropos of a movement of troops, that "Gustavus Adolphus could not have done better." A certain halt upon the gra.s.s in a meadow through which flowed a stream left an indelible impression. Mademoiselle offered dinner this day to all the escort and almost all the convoy. The sight of the meadow crowded with uniformed men and horses recalled to her the campaigns of her fine heroic times. "The trumpets sounded during dinner; this gave completely the air of a true army march." She arrived at Sedan intoxicated by the military spectacle of her route, and her entry showed this. Considering her late exile the lack of modesty might well be criticised. The Queen, Anne of Austria, driving for pleasure in the environs of Sedan, saw a chariot appear with horses at full gallop surrounded by a ma.s.s of cavalry: "I arrived in this field at full speed with gens d'armes and light riders, their trumpets sounding in a manner sufficiently triumphant."

The entire Court of France recognised the Grande Mademoiselle before actually seeing her. Exile had not changed her, and this entrance truly indicated her weaknesses.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Letter of January 19, 1689.]

[Footnote 2: _Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier._ Edited by Cheruel.]

[Footnote 3: _Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier._ Edited by Cheruel.]

[Footnote 4: The Chateau of Saint-Fargeau still exists, but the interior has been transformed since a great fire which occurred in 1752; the apartments of Mademoiselle no longer remain. Cf. _Les Chateaux d'Ancy-le-Franc, de Saint-Fargeau_, etc., by the Baron Chaillou des Barres.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. _Les Sports et jeux d'exercice dans l'ancienne France_, by J. J. Jusserand.]

[Footnote 6: LES NOUVELLES FRANcAISES, ou _Les divertiss.e.m.e.nts de la princesse Aurelie_, by Segrais, Paris, 2 vols., 1656-1657. The last of the "Nouvelles francaises," _Floridon, ou l'amour imprudent_, is the history of the intrigues in the harem which led to the death of Bajazet.

Racine had certainly read it when he wrote his tragedy.]

[Footnote 7: See _Bernardin de Saint-Pierre_, in the Collection of Grands ecrivains. Paris, Hochette.]

[Footnote 8: His _Polexandre_ had appeared, 1629-1637; his last romance, _La Jeune Alcidiane_, in 1651; _Ca.s.sandre_ and _Cleopatre_, by La Calprenede, in 1642-1647. _Arlamene, ou le Grand Cyrus_, by Mlle. de Scudery, was published 1649-1653.]

[Footnote 9: Letters of the 12th and 15th of July, 1671, to Mme. de Grignan.]

[Footnote 10: See _Le dictionnaire des Precieuses_, by Somaize.]

[Footnote 11: _Eugenie, ou la force du destin._]

[Footnote 12: Mademoiselle commenced her _Memoires_ shortly after her arrival at Saint-Fargeau. She interrupted them in 1660, resumed them in 1677, and definitely abandoned them in 1688, five years before her death.]

[Footnote 13: Oriane was the mistress of Amadis.]

[Footnote 14: _La relation de l'Isle imaginaire_, printed in 1659, also _L'histoire de la Princesse de Paphlagonie_. We shall again refer to them.]

[Footnote 15: These representations took place in the grand hall of the Pet.i.t Bourbon, near the Louvre. (Cf. _L'Histoire de Paris_, by Delaure.)]

[Footnote 16: Letter of October 12th, to the Abbe Foucquet.]

[Footnote 17: _Memoires de Montglat._]

[Footnote 18: _Memoires du Marquis de Sourches._ Cf. _L'Histoire du chateau de Blois_, by La Saussaye.]

[Footnote 19: Letter of September 3, 1663.]

[Footnote 20: Nicolas Goulas, _Memoires_.]

[Footnote 21: Gazette of August 22, 1654.]

[Footnote 22: Four, but the last died at an early age.]

[Footnote 23: _Memoires de Bussy-Rabutin._]

[Footnote 24: _Voyage de Chapelle et de Bachaumont._]

[Footnote 25: _Memoires de Nicolas Goulas._]

[Footnote 26: Saint-Simon, _ecrits inedits_.]

[Footnote 27: Henriette-Catherine, d.u.c.h.esse de Joyeuse, first married to Henri de Bourbon, Duc de Montpensier, by whom she had Marie de Bourbon, mother of Mademoiselle; married for the second time to Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Guise, by whom she had several children.]

[Footnote 28: Henri de Lorraine reigned from 1608 to 1624.]

[Footnote 29: Letter of August 10, 1657, to the Comte d'Auteuil.]

[Footnote 30: Andre d'Ormesson died in 1665, dean of the Council of State. Some fragments of his memoirs have been published by Cheruel, in the course of the Journal of his son, Olivier d'Ormesson.]

[Footnote 31: Turenne had conquered the troops of the Prince at etampes (May, 1652), upon the occasion of a review in honour of Mademoiselle and of the disorder which resulted. See _The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle_. Some weeks later, he besieged the town.]

[Footnote 32: Letter to his wife, August 3, 1663.]

[Footnote 33: Richelieu had declared war with Spain March 26, 1635.]

[Footnote 34: The phrase is by Bussy-Rabutin.]