Memoirs of Madame la Marquise de Montespan Part 12

As he uttered these words, he looked hard at my pew, and soon made me understand by his egordium how interesting his discourse would be to me.

Written with rare grace of style, it was merely a piece of satire from beginning to end,--of satire so audacious that it was constantly levelled at the King.

The orator brought before us in succession lifelike portraits of the Queen, of her august spouse, of my children, of M. de Montespan, and of myself. Upon some he lavished praise; others he vehemently rebuked; while to others he gave tender pity. Anon he caused the lips of his hearers to curl in irony, and again, roused their indignation or touched them to tears.

Any one else would have been bored by such a rigmarole; it rather amused me.

That evening, and for a week afterwards, nothing else but this sermon was talked of at Versailles. The Queen had received complete satisfaction.

Before me she was at pains not to laugh, and I was pleased to see that her resentment had almost disappeared.

Upon his return, the King was for punis.h.i.+ng such an offence as this.

Things are not easily hidden from him; his Majesty desired to know the name and rank of the ecclesiastic. The entire Court replied that he was a good-looking young Franciscan.

The chief almoner, being forced to state the monastery from which the preacher came, mentioned the Cordeliers of Paris. There it transpired that the monk told off by the prior for this enterprise had been too frightened to execute it, and had sent, as his deputy, a young actor from Orleans,--a brother of his, who thus could not say no.

So, as it happened, Queen Maria Theresa and her chief almoner (an exemplary person) had caused virtue to be preached to me by a young play-actor! The King dared not take further proceedings in so strange a matter, for fear lest one scandal might beget a far greater one. It was this that caused Madame Cornuel to remark, "The pulpit is in want of comedians; they work wonders there!"

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

The King Alters His Opinion about Madame Scarron.--He Wants Her to a.s.sume Another Name.--He Gives Her the Maintenon Estates.--She and Madame de Montespan Visit These.--A Strange Story.

At first the King used to feel afraid of Madame Scarron, and seemingly laughed at me when I endeavoured to persuade him that there was nothing affected or singular about her. The Marquis de Beringhen, for some reason or other, had prejudiced his Majesty against her, so that very often, when the King heard that she was visiting me, he never got beyond the vestibule, but at once withdrew. One day she was telling me, in her pleasant, original way, a funny tale about the famous Brancas, and I laughed till I cried again,--in fact, until I nearly made myself quite ill.

The King, who was listening at the door, was greatly tickled by the story. He came in smiling and thoroughly self-possessed. Then, addressing the governess, he said, "Madame, allow me to compliment you and to thank you at the same time. I thought you were of a serious, melancholy disposition, but as I listened to you through the keyhole, I am no longer surprised that you have such long talks with the Marquise.

Will you do me the favour of being as amusing some other time, if I venture to make one of the party?"

The governess, courtesying, blushed somewhat; and the King continued, "Madame, I am aware of your affection for my children; that is a great recommendation to me; banish all restraint; I take the greatest pleasure in your company."

She replied, "It was the fear of displeasing you which, despite myself, caused me to incur your displeasure."

The King continued, "Madame, I know that the late M. de Scarron was a man of much wit and also of agreeable manners. My cousin, De Beaufort, used to rave about him, but on account of his somewhat free poems, his name lacks weight and dignity. In fact, his name in no way fits so charming a personality as yours; would it grieve you to change it?"

The governess cleverly replied that all that she owed to the memory of her defunct husband was grat.i.tude and esteem.

"Allow me, then, to arrange matters," added the King. "I am fond of sonorous names; in this I agree with Boileau."

A few days afterwards we heard that the splendid Maintenon estates were for sale. The King himself came to inform the widow of this, and, giving her in advance the fee for education, he counted out a hundred thousand crowns wherewith instantly to purchase the property.

Forthwith the King compelled her to discard this truly ridiculous author's name, and styled her before everybody Madame de Maintenon.

I must do her the justice to state that her grat.i.tude for the King's liberality was well-nigh exaggerated, while no change was perceptible in her manners and bearing. She had, naturally, a grand, dignified air, which was in strange contrast to the grotesque buffoonery of her poet-husband. Now she is exactly in her proper place, representing to perfection the governess of a king's children.

Spiteful persons were wont to say that I appeared jealous on seeing her made a marquise like myself. Good gracious, no! On the contrary, I was delighted; her parentage was well known to me. The d.u.c.h.esse de Navailles, my protectress, was a near relative of hers, and M. d'Aubigne, her grandfather, was one of King Henri's two Chief Gentlemen of the Chamber.

Madame de Maintenon's father was, in many respects, greatly to blame.

Without being actually dishonest, he squandered a good deal of his fortune, the greater part being pounced upon by his family; and had the King forced these harpies to disgorge, Madame de Maintenon could have lived in opulence, eclipsing several of the personages at Court.

I am glad to be able to do her justice in these Memoirs, to the satisfaction of my own self-respect. I look upon her as my own handiwork, and everything a.s.sures me that this is her conviction also, and that she will always bear it in mind.

The King said to us, "Go and see the Chateau de Maintenon, and then you can tell me all about it. According to an old book, I find that it was built in the reign of Henri II. by Nicolas de Cointerot, the King's minister of finance; a 'surintendant's' castle ought to form a noteworthy feature of the landscape."

Madame de Maintenon hereupon told us a most extraordinary story. The lady who sold this marquisate had retired two years previously to the island of Martinique, where she, at the present moment, owned the residence of Constant d'Aubigne, the same house where the new Marquise de Maintenon had spent her childhood with her parents, so that while one of these ladies had quitted the Chateau de Maintenon in order to live in Martinique, the other had come from Martinique in order to reside at the Chateau de Maintenon. Truly, the destinies of some are strange in this world.

The chateau appeared to be large, of solid proportions, and built in a grandly simple style, befitting a minister of dignity and position. The governess shed tears of emotion when setting foot there for the first time. The six priests, whom the surintendant had appointed, officiated in the large chapel or little church attached to the castle.

They approached us in regular procession, presenting holy water, baskets of flowers and fruit, an old man, a child, and two little lambs to the Marquise. The villagers, dressed out with flowers and ribbons, also came to pay, their respects to her. They danced in the castle courtyard, under our balcony, to the sound of hautbois and bagpipes.

We gave them money, said pleasant things to everybody, and invited all the six clerics to sup with us. These gentry spoke with great respect of the other Madame de Maintenon, who had become disgusted with her property, and with France generally, because, for two winters running, her orange-groves and fig-trees had been frost-bitten. She herself, being a most chilly, person, never left off her furs until August, and in order to avoid looking at or walking upon snow and ice, she fled to the other end of the world.

"The other extreme will bring her back to us," observed Madame de Maintenon to the priests. "Though his Majesty were to give me Martinique or Saint Domingo, I certainly would never go and live there myself."

When we returned, all these little details greatly amused the King. He, too, wanted to go and see the castle of another Fouquet, but, as we complained of the bad roads, he ordered these to be mended along the entire route.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

The Second Comte de Vexin.--He is made Abbe of Saint Denis.--Priests or Devils?--The Coronation Diadem.--Royalty Jokes with the Monks.

My poor little Comte de Vegin died. We all mourned for him as he deserved; his pretty face would have made every one love him; his extreme gentleness had nothing of the savage warrior about it, but at any rate, he was the best-looking cardinal in Christendom. He made such funny speeches that one could not help recollecting them. He was more of a Mortemart than a Bourbon, but that did not prevent the King from idolising him.

The King thought of conferring the Abbey of Saint Germain des Pres upon his younger brother; to this I was opposed, imagining, perhaps without reason, that such succession would bring bad luck. So the King presented him to the Abbey of Saint Denis, the revenue of which was equally considerable, and he conferred upon him the t.i.tle of Comte de Vexin, caring nothing for the remarks I made concerning the similarities of such names and distinctions.

The second Comte de Vegin bid fair to be a man of reflection and of genius. He obviously disliked his little abbe's dress, and we always kept saying, "It's only for the time being, my little fellow."

When, after his nomination, the monks of Saint Denis came to make their obeisance to him, he asked if they were devils, and continually covered his face so as not to see them.

The King arrived, and with a few flattering words managed to soothe the priests' outraged dignity, and when they asked the little prince if he would honour them by a visit of inspection to Suger's room, which had just been restored, he replied with a sulky smile, "I'll come and see you, but with my eyes shut."

[Suger was Abbe of Saint Denis, and a famous minister of Queen Blanche.

Editor's Note.]

Then the priests mildly remonstrated because the coronation diadem had not been brought back to their store of treasures, but was still missing.

"So, in your treasure-house at Saint Denis you keep all the crowns of all the reigns?" asked the prince.

"Yes, Sire, and where could they be better guarded than with us? Who has most may have least."

"With all their rubies, diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds?"

"Yes, Sire; and hence the name treasure."

The King replied, "If this be the case, I will send you my coronation crown. At that time my brow was not so big; you will find the crown small, I tell you."