she scolded Bossuet for it as a sort of sacrilege, and the latter, who
was only difficult and particular with simple folk, quoted historical
examples in which soldiers, on the eve of battle, had confessed to their
general.
"Yes," said the King, on hearing these quotations from the imperturbable
man; "that must have been to the Bishop of Puy or the Bishop of Orange,
who, in effect, donned the shield and cuirass at the time of the crusades
against the Saracens; or perhaps, again, to the Cardinal de la Valette
d'Epernon, who commanded our armies under Richelieu successfully."
"No, Sire," replied the Bishop; "to generals who were simply soldiers."
"But," said the King, "were the confessions, then, null?"
"Sire," added the Bishop of Meaux, "circumstances decide everything. Of
old, in the time of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and much later still,
confessions of Christians were public, - made in a loud voice; sometimes a
number together, and always in the open air. Those of soldiers that I
have quoted to madame were somewhat of the kind of these confessions of
the primitive Church; and to-day, still, at the moment when battle is
announced, a military almoner gives the signal for confession. The
regiments confess on their knees before the Most High, who hears them;
and the almoner, raised aloft on a pile of drums, holds the crucifix in
one hand, and with the other gives the general absolution to eighty
thousand soldiers at once."
This clear and precise explanation somewhat calmed Madame de Maintenon,
and Madame la Dauphine, - displeased at what she had done on arriving, - in
order to be regular, learned to confess in French.
CHAPTER XV.
Pere de la Chaise. - The Jesuits. - The Pavilion of Belleville. - The
Handkerchief.
Pere de la Chaise has never done me good or ill; I have no motives for
conciliating him, no reason to slander him. I am ignorant if he were the
least in the world concerned, at the epoch of the Grand Jubilee, with
those ecclesiastical attempts of which Bossuet had constituted himself
spokesman. Pere de la Chaise has in his favour a great evenness of
temper and character; an excellent tone, which comes to him from his
birth; a conciliatory philosophy, which renders him always master of his
condition and of his metier. He is, in a single individual, the happy
combination of several men, that is to say, he is by turns, and as it may
be needful, a man indulgent or severe in his preaching; a man of
abstinence, or a good feeder; a man of the world, or a cenobite; a man of
his breviary, or a courtier. He knows that the sins of woodcutters and
the sins of kings are not of the same family, and that copper and gold
are not weighed in the same scales.
He is a Jesuit by his garb; he is much more so than they are by his
'savoir-vivre'. His companions love the King because he is the King; he
loves him, and pities him because he sees his weakness. He shows for his
penitent the circumspection and tenderness of a father, and in the long
run he has made of him a spoiled child.
This Pere de la Chaise fell suddenly ill, and with symptoms so alarming
that the cabals each wished to appropriate this essential post of
confessor.
The Jansenists would have been quite willing to lay hold of it. The
Jesuits, and principally the cordons bleus, did not quit the pillow of
the sick man for an instant.
The King had himself informed of his condition every half-hour. There
was a bulletin, as there is for potentates. One evening, when the
doctors were grave on his account, I saw anxiety and affliction painted
on the visage of his Majesty.
"Where shall I find his like?" said he to me. "Where shall I find such
knowledge, such indulgence, such kindness? The Pere de la Chaise knew
the bottom of my heart; he knew, as an intelligent man, how to reconcile
religion with nature; and when duty brings me to the foot of his
tribunal, as a humble Christian, he never forgets that royalty, cannot be
long on its knees, and he accompanies with his attentions and with
deference the religious commands which he is bound to impose on me."
"I hope that God will preserve him to you," I replied to his Majesty;
"but let us suppose the case in which this useful and precious man should
see his career come to an end; will you grant still this mark of
confidence and favour to the Jesuits? All the French being your
subjects, would it not be fitting to grant this distinction sometimes to
the one and sometimes to the other? You would, perhaps, extinguish by
this that hate or animosity by which the Jesuits see themselves assailed,
which your preference draws upon them."
"I do not love the Jesuits with that affection that you seem to suggest,"
replied the monarch. "I look upon them as men of instruction, as a
learned and well-governed corporation; but as for their attachment for
me, I know how to estimate it. This kind of people, strangers to the
soft emotions of nature, have no affection or love for anything. Before
the triumph of the King my grandfather, they intrigued and exerted
themselves to bring about his fall; he opened the gates of Paris, and the
Jesuits, like the Capuchins, at once recognised him and bowed down before
him. King Henri, who knew what men are, pretended to forget the past; he
pronounced himself decidedly in favour of the Jesuits because this body
of teachers, numerous, rich, and of good credit, had just pronounced
itself in favour of him.
"It was, then, a reconciliation between power and power, and the politics
of my grandfather were to survive him and become mine, since the same
elements exist and I am encamped on the same ground. If God takes away
from me my poor Pere de la Chaise, I shall feel this misfortune deeply,
because I shall lose in him, not a Jesuit, not a priest, but a good
companion, a trusty and proved friend. If I lose him, I shall assuredly
be inconsolable for him; but it will be very necessary for me to take his
successor from the Grand Monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine. This
community knows me by heart, and I do not like innovations."
The successor of the Pere de la Chaise was already settled with the
Jesuit Fathers; but this man of the vanguard was spared marching and
meeting danger. The Court was not condemned to see and salute a new
face; the old confessor recovered his health. His Majesty experienced a
veritable joy at it, a joy as real as if the Prince of Orange had died.
Wishing to prove to the good convalescent how dear his preservation was
to him, the King released him from his function for the rest of the year,
and begged him to watch over his health, the most important of his duties
and his possessions.
Having learnt that they had neither terraces nor gardens at the grand
monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine, his Majesty made a present to his
confessor of a very agreeable house in the district of Belleville, and
caused to be transported thither all kinds of orange-trees, rare shrubs,
and flowers from Versailles. These tasteful attentions, these filial
cares, diverted the capital somewhat; but Paris is a rich soil, where the
strangest things are easily received and naturalised without an effort.
The Pare de la Chaise had his chariot with his arms on it, and his family
livery; and as the income from his benefices remained to him, joined to
his office of confessor, he continued to have every day a numerous court
of young abbes, priests well on in years, barons, countesses, marquises,
magistrates and colonels, who came to Belleville in anxiety about his
health, to congratulate themselves upon his convalescence, to ask of him,
with submission and reverence, a bishopric, an archbishopric, a
cardinal's hat, an important priory, a canonry, or an abbey.
Having myself to place the three daughters of one of my relatives, I went
to see the noble confessor at his pavilion of Belleville. He received me
with the most marked distinction, and was lavish in acts of gratitude for
all the benefits of the King.
As he crossed his salon, in order to accompany me and escort me out, he
let his white handkerchief fall; three bishops at once flung themselves
upon it, and there was a struggle as to who should pick it up to give it
back to him.
I related to the King what I had seen. He said to me: "These prelates
honour my confessor, looking upon him as a second me." In fact, the sins
of the King could only throw his confessor into relief and add to his
merit.
CHAPTER XVI.
Mademoiselle de Fontanges. - The Pavilions of the Garden of Flora. - Rapid
Triumph of the Favourite. - Her Retreat to Val-de-grace. - Her Death.
Madame de Maintenon was already forty-four years old, and appeared to be
only thirty. This freshness, that she owed either to painstaking care or
to her happy and quite peculiar constitution, gave her that air of youth
which fascinated the eyes of the courtiers and those of the monarch
himself. I wished one day to annoy her by bringing the conversation on
this subject, which could not be diverting to her. I began by putting
the question generally, and I then named several of our superannuated
beauties who still fluttered in the smiling gardens of Flora without
having the youth of butterflies.
"There are butterflies of every age and colour in the gardens of Flora,"
said she, catching the ball on the rebound. "There are presumptuous
ones, whom the first breath of the zephyr despoils of their plumage and
discolours; others, more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour
and prestige for a much longer time. For the rest, the latter seem to me
to rejoice without being vain in their advantages. And at bottom, what
should any insect gain by being proud?"
"Very little," I answered her, "since being dressed as a butterfly does
not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation
lasts at most till the day after to-morrow."
The King entered. I started speaking of a young person, extremely
beautiful, who had just appeared at Court, and would eclipse, in my
opinion, all who had shone there before her.
"What do you call her?" asked his Majesty. "To what family does she
belong?"
"She comes from the provinces," I continued, "just like silk, silver, and
gold. Her parents desire to place her among the maids of honour of the
Queen. Her name is Fontanges, and God has never made anything so
beautiful."
As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise. She listened
to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such
is her power of suppressing her natural feeling. The King only added
these words:
"This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de
Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity. However,
we shall see."
Two days afterwards, Mademoiselle de Fontanges was seen in the salon of
the grand table. The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and
attentions for no one else.
This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the
blandishments of the young coquette and the King's response, guessed the
whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it,
seeing that my turn had come.
Mademoiselle de Fontanges, given to the King by her shameless family,
feigned love and passion for the monarch, as though he had returned by
enchantment to his twentieth year.
As for him, he too appeared to us to forget all dates. I know that he
was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest man in the
world, he could not but preserve agreeable vestiges of a once striking
beauty. But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth
year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the most
inattentive, or most indulgent eyes.
The King, with a sort of anticipatory resignation, had for six or seven
years greatly simplified his appearance. We had seen him, little by
little, reform that Spanish and chivalric costume with which he once
embellished his first loves. The flowing plumes no longer floated over
his forehead, which had become pensive and quite serious. The diagonal,
scarf was suppressed, and the long boots, with gold and silver
embroidery, were no longer seen. To please his new divinity, the monarch
suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire. The most elegant stuffs became
the substance of his garments; feathers reappeared. He joined to them
emeralds and diamonds.
Allegorical comedies, concerts on the waters recommenced. Triumphant
horse-races set the whole Court abob and in movement. There was a fresh
carousal; there was all that resembles the enthusiasms of youthful
affection, and the deliriums of youth. The youth alone was not there, at
least in proportion, assortment, and similarity.
All that I was soliciting for twelve years, Mademoiselle de Fontanges had
only to desire for a week. She was created duchess at her debut; and the
lozenge of her escutcheon was of a sudden adorned with a ducal coronet,
and a peer's mantle.
I did not deign to pay attention to this outrage; at least, I made a
formal resolution never to say a single word on it.
The King came no less from time to time, to pay me a visit, and to talk
to me, as of old, of operas and his hunting. I endured his conversation
with a philosophical phlegm. He scarcely suspected the change in me.
At the chase, one day, his nymph, whom nothing could stop, had her knot
of riband caught and held by a branch; the royal lover compelled the
branch to restore the knot, and went and offered it to his Amazon.
Singular and sparkling, although lacking in intelligence, she carried
herself this knot of riband to the top of her hair, and fixed it there
with a long pin.
Fortune willed it that this coiffure, without order or arrangement,
suited her face, and suited it greatly. The King was the first to
congratulate her on it; all the courtiers applauded it, and this coiffure
of the chase became the fashion of the day.
All the ladies, and the Queen herself, found themselves obliged to adopt
it. Madame de Maintenon submitted herself to it, like the others. I
alone refused to sacrifice to the idol, and my knee, being once more
painful, would not bend before Baal.
With the exception of the general duties of the sovereignty, the prince
appeared to have forgotten everything for his flame. The Pere de la
Chaise, who had returned to his post, regarded this fresh incident with
his philosophic calm, and congratulated himself on seeing the monarch
healed of at least one of his passions.
I had always taken the greatest care to respect the Queen; and since my
star condemned me to stand in her shoes, I did not spare myself the
general attentions which two well-born people owe one another, and which,
at least, prove a lofty education.
The Duchesse de Fontanges, doubtless, believed herself Queen, because she
had the public homage and the King. This imprudent and conceited
schoolgirl had the face to pass before her sovereign without stopping,
and without troubling to courtesy.
The Infanta reddened with disapproval, and persuaded herself, by way of
consolation, that Fontanges had lost her senses or was on the road to
madness.
Beautiful and brilliant as the flowers, the Duchess, like them, passed
swiftly away. Her pregnancy, by reason of toilsome rides, hunting
parties, and other agitations, became complicated. From the eighth month
she fell into a fever, into exhaustion and languor. The terror that took
possession of her imagination caused her to desire a sojourn in a convent
as a refuge of health, where God would see her nearer and, perhaps, come
to her aid.
She had herself transported during the night to the House of the Ladies
of Val-de-Grace, and desired that they should place in her chamber
several relics from their altars.
Her confinement was not less laboured and sinister. When she saw that
all the assistance of art could not stop the bleeding, with which her
deep bed was flooded, she caused the King to be summoned, embraced him
tenderly, in the midst of sobs and tears, and died in the night,
pronouncing the name of God and the name of the King, the objects of her
love and of fears.
CHAPTER XVII.
Madame de Sevigne. - Madame de Grignan. - Madame de Montespan at the
Carmelites. - Madame de la Valliere. - These Two Great Ruins Console One
Another. - An Angel of Sweetness, Goodness, and Kindness.
Fifteen or twenty days before the death of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, my
sister and I were taking a walk in the new woods of Versailles. We met
the Marquise de Sevigne near the canal; she was showing these marvellous
constructions to her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan. They greeted us
with their charming amiability, and, after having spoken of several
indifferent matters, the Marquise said to me: "We saw, five or six days
ago, a person, madame, of whom you were formerly very fond, and who
charged us to recall her to the memory of her friends. You are still of
that number, - I like to think so, and our commission holds good where you
are concerned, if you will allow it."
Then she mentioned to me that poor Duchesse de la Valliere, to whom I was
once compelled by my unhappy star to give umbrage, and whom, in my fatal
thoughtlessness, I had afflicted without desiring it.
Tears came into my eyes; Madame de Sevigne saw them, and expressed her
regret at having caused me pain. Madame de Thianges and I asked her if
my old friend was much changed. She and Madame de Grignan assured us
that she was fresh, in good health, and that her face appeared more
beautiful. On the next day I wished absolutely to see her, and drove to
the Carmelites.
On seeing my pretty cripple, who hobbled among us with so great a charm,
I uttered a cry, which for a moment troubled her. She sank down to
salute the crucifix, as custom demands, and, after her short prayer, she
came to me. "I did not mention your name to Mesdames de Sevigne," said
she; "but, however, I am obliged to them, since they have been able to
procure me the pleasure of seeing you once more."
"The general opinion of the Court, and in the world, my dear Duchess,"
answered I, "is that I brought about your disgrace myself; and the
public, that loved you, has not ceased to reproach me with your
misfortune."
"The public is very kind still to occupy itself with me," she answered;
"but it is wrong in that, as in so many other matters. My retirement
from the world is not a misfortune, and I never suspected that the soul
could find such peace and satisfaction in these silent solitudes.
"The first days were painful to me, I admit it, owing to the
inexpressible difference which struck me between what I found here and
what I had left elsewhere. But just as the eye accustoms itself, little
by little, to the feeble glimmer of a vault, in the same way my body has
accustomed itself to the roughness of my new existence, and my heart to
all its great privations.
"If life had not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and
inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at
length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy. But all that
will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end. I left you young,
beautiful, adored, and triumphant in the land of enchantments. But six
years have passed, and they assure me that your own afflictions have
come, and that you, yourself, have been forced to drink the bitter cup of
deprivation."
At these words, pronounced in a melancholy and celestial voice, I felt as
though my heart were broken, and burst into tears.
"I pity you, Athenais," she resumed. "Is, then, what I have been told
lightly, and almost in haste, only too certain for you? How is it you
did not expect it? How could you believe him constant and immutable,
after what happened to me?
"To-day, I make no secret to you of it, and I say it with the peaceful
indifference which God has generously granted me, after such dolorous
tribulations. I make no secret of it to you, Athenais; a thousand times
you plunged the sword and dagger into my heart, when, profiting by my
confidence in you, by my sense of entire security, you permitted your own
inclination to substitute itself for mine, and a young man seething with
desires to be attracted by your charms. These unlimited sufferings
exhausted, I must believe, all the sensibility of my soul. And when this
corrosive flame had completely devoured my grief, a new existence grew up
in me; I no longer saw in the father of my children other than a young
prince, accustomed to see his dominating will fulfilled in everything.
Knowing how little in this matter he is master of himself, he who knows
so well how to be master of himself in everything to do with his numerous
inferiors, I deplored the facility he enjoys from his attractions, from
his wealth, from his power to dazzle the hearts which he desires to move
and subdue.
"Recognise these truths, my dear Marquise," she added, "and gain, for it
is time, a just idea of your position. After the unhappiness I felt at
being loved no longer, I should have quitted the Court that very instant,
if I had been permitted to bring up and tend my poor children. They were
too young to abandon! I stayed still in the midst of you, as the swallow
hovers and flits among the smoke of the fire, in order to watch over and
save her little ones. Do not wait till disdain or authority mingles in
the matter. Do not come to the sad necessity of resisting a monarch, and
of detesting to the point of scandal that which you have so publicly
loved; pity him, but depart. This kind of intimacy, once broken, cannot
be renewed. However skilfully it may be patched up, the rent always
reappears."
"My good Louise," I replied to the amiable Carmelite, "your wise counsels
touch me, persuade me, and are nothing but the truth. But in listening
to you I feel overwhelmed; and that strength which you knew how to gain,
and show to the world, your former companion will never possess.
"I see with astonished eyes the supernatural calm which reigns in your
countenance; your health seems to me a prodigy, your beauty was never so
ravishing; but this barbarous garb pierces me to the heart.
"The King does not yet hate me; he shows me even a remnant of respect,
with which he would colour his indifference. Permit me to ask from him
for you an abbey like that of Fontevrault, where the felicities of
sanctuary and of the world are all in the power of my sister. He will
ask nothing better than to take you out, be assured."
"Speak to him of me," answered Louise; "I do not oppose that; but leave
me until the end the role of obedience and humility that his fault and
mine impose on me. Why should he wish that I should command others, - I
who did not know how to command myself at an epoch when my innocence was
so dear to me, and when I knew that, in losing that, one is lost?"
As she said these words two nuns came to announce her Serene Highness,
that is to say, her daughter, the Princesse de Conti. I prayed Madame de
la Valliere to keep between ourselves the communications that had just
taken place in the intimacy of confidence. She promised me with her
usual candour. I made a profound reverence to the daughter, embraced the
mother weeping, and regained my carriage, which the Princess must have
remarked on entering.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Reflections. - The Future. - The Refuge of Foresight. - Community of Saint
Joseph. - Wicked Saying of Bossuet.
I wept much during the journey; and to save the spectacle of my grief
from the passers-by, I was at the pains to lower the curtains. I passed
over in my mind all that the Duchess had said to me. It was very easy
for me to understand that the monarch's heart had escaped me, and that,
owing to his character, all resistance, all contradiction would be vain.
The figure, as it had been supernumerary and on sufferance, which the
Duchess had made in the midst of the Court when she ceased to be loved,
returned to my memory completely, and I felt I had not the courage to
drink a similar cup of humiliation.
I reminded myself of what the prince had told me several times in those
days when his keen affection for me led him to wish for my happiness,
even in the future, - even after his death, if I were destined to survive
him.
"You ought," he said to me, at those moments, "you ought to choose and
assure yourself beforehand of an honourable retreat; for it is rarely
that a king accords his respect or his good-will to the beloved
confidante of his predecessor."
Not wishing to ask a refuge of any one, but, on the contrary, being
greatly set upon ruling in my own house, I resolved to build myself, not
a formal convent like Val-de-Grace or Fontevrault, but a pretty little
community, whose nuns, few in number, would owe me their entire
existence, which would necessarily attach them to all my interests. I
held to this idea. I charged my intendant to seek for me a site spacious
enough for my enterprise; and when he had found it, had showed it to me,
and had satisfied me with it, I had what rambling buildings there were
pulled down, and began, with a sort of joy, the excavations and
foundations.
The first blow of the hammer was struck, by some inconceivable fortuity,
at the moment when the Duchesse de Fontanges expired. Her death did not
weaken my resolutions nor slacken my ardour. I got away quite often to
cast an eye over the work, and ordered my architect to second my
impatience and spur on the numerous workmen.
The rumour was current in Paris that the example of "Soeur Louise" had
touched me, and that I was going to take the veil in my convent. I took
no notice of this fickle public, and persisted wisely in my plan.
The unexpected and almost sudden decease of Mademoiselle de Fontanges had
singularly moved the King. Extraordinary and almost incredible to
relate, he was for a whole week absent from the Council. His eyes had
shed so many tears that they were swollen and unrecognisable. He shunned
the occasions when there was an assembly, buried himself in his private
apartments or in his groves, and resembled, in every trait, Orpheus
weeping for his fair Eurydice, and refusing to be consoled.
I should be false to others and to myself if I were to say that his
extreme grief excited my compassion; but I should equally belie the truth
if I gave it to be understood that his "widowhood" gave me pleasure, and
that I congratulated myself on his sorrow and bitterness.
He came to see me when he found himself presentable, and, for the first
few days, I abstained from all reprisal and any allusion. The
innumerable labours of his State soon threw him, in spite of himself,
into those manifold distractions which, in their nature, despise or
absorb the sensibilities of the soul. He resumed, little by little, his
accustomed serenity, and, at the end of the month, appeared to have got
over it.
"What," he asked me, "are those buildings with which you are busy in
Paris, opposite the Ladies of Belle-Chasse? I hear of a convent; is it
your intention to retire?"
"It is a 'refuge of foresight,'" I answered him. "Who can count upon the
morrow? And after what has befallen Mademoiselle de Fontanges, we must
consider ourselves as persons already numbered, who wait only for the
call."
He sighed, and soon spoke of something else.
I reminded myself that, to speak correctly, I had in Paris no habitation
worthy of my children and of my quality. That little hotel in the Rue
Saint Andre-des-Arcs I could count for no more than a little box. I
sought amongst my papers for a design of a magnificent hotel which I had
obtained from the famous Blondel. I found it without difficulty, with
full elevations and sections. The artist had adroitly imitated in it the
beautiful architecture of the Louvre; this fair palace would suit me in
every respect.
My architect, at a cursory glance, judged that the construction and
completion of this edifice would easily cost as much as eighteen hundred
thousand livres. This expense being no more than I could afford, I
commissioned him to choose me a spacious site for the buildings and
gardens over by Roule and La Pepiniere.
Not caring to superintend several undertakings at once, I desired, before
everything, that my house in the Faubourg Saint Germain should be
complete and when the building and the chapel were in a condition to
receive the little colony, I dedicated my "refuge of foresight" to Saint
Joseph, the respectful spouse of the Holy Virgin and foster-father of the
Child Jesus. This agreeable mansion lacked a large garden. I felt a
sensible regret for this, especially for the sake of my inmates; but
there was a little open space furnished with vines and fruit-walls, and
one of the largest courtyards in the whole of the Faubourg Saint Germain.
Having always loved society, I had multiplied in the two principal blocks
of the sleeping-rooms and the entrance-hall complete apartments for the
lady inmates. And a proof that I was neither detested by the world nor
unconsidered is that all these apartments were sought after and occupied
as soon as the windows were put in and the painting done. My own
apartment was simple, but of a majestic dignity. It communicated with
the chapel, where my tribune, closed with a handsome window, was in face
of the altar.
I decided, once for all, that the Superior should be my nomination whilst
God should leave me in this world, but that this right should not pass on
to my heirs. The bell of honour rang for twenty minutes every time I
paid a visit to these ladies; and I only had incense at high mass, and at
the Magnificat, in my quality of foundress.
I went from time to time to make retreats, or, to be more accurate,
vacations, in my House of Saint Joseph. M. Bossuet solicited the favour
of being allowed to preach there on the day of the solemn consecration. I
begged him to preserve himself for my funeral oration. He answered
cruelly that there was nothing he could refuse me.
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