Читать книгу Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle, 1652-1693 - Barine Arvède - Страница 9

Table of Contents

The Education of Louis XIV.—Manners—Poverty—Charity—Vincent de Paul, a Secret Society—Marriage of Louis XIV.—His Arrival at Power, on the Death of Mazarin—He Re-educates himself.

THE remembrance of the Fronde was destined to remain a heavy weight during the remainder of the reign of Louis XIV. Its shadow dominated for more than half a century interior politics and decided the fate, good and bad, of the great families.

The word "Liberty" had become synonymous with "Licence, Confusion, Disorder,"[35] and the ancient Frondeurs passed the remainder of their lives in disgrace, or at least in disfavour. The Grande Mademoiselle was never pardoned, although she did not wish to avow this, even to herself. She might have realised the fact at once upon her return to Court, if she had not decided to believe the contrary. Warnings were not wanting. The first was her encounter with the Queen Mother in the field of Sedan.

When Anne of Austria saw arrive to sound of trumpets, with manner at ease and triumphant, this insolent Princess who had drawn her cannon upon the King, hardly embracing her niece, the Queen Mother burst into reproaches, and declared that after the battle of Saint-Antoine, "if she had held her, she would have strangled her."[36] Mademoiselle wept; the Court looked on. "I have forgotten everything," said the Queen at length, and her niece was eager to believe her. The meeting with the King was still more significant. He arrived on horseback, soaked and muddy, from the city of Montmédy, taken that same day from the Spaniards (August 7, 1657).

His mother said to him, "Behold a young lady, whom I present to you and who is very sorry to have been so naughty; she will be 'very good' in future." The young King only laughed and replied by talking of the siege of Montmédy.

Mademoiselle nevertheless departed from Sedan filled with joyous thoughts. She imagined reading in all eyes the news of marriage with the brother of the King, the little Monsieur. He was seventeen, she thirty, with hair already partially white.

Some months ensued, passed in a half retreat, and the Grande Mademoiselle remained with the Court during the years of transition in which the personal government of Louis XIV. was maturing. A new régime was being born and a new world with it.

One could gradually see this new formation relegating to the shadow of the past the old spirit of independence, and stifling the confused aspirations of the country towards any legal liberties. Mazarin incarnated this great political movement. On the eve of disappearance, this unpopular minister had become all France.

He was master; no one thought any longer of resisting him; but he was always detested, never admired. France having at this date neither journals nor parliamentary debates, the foreign policy of Mazarin, which in our eyes did him so much honour, remained very little known even at Paris. This explains why his glory has been in large part posthumous. It has increased in measure as it has been possible to judge of his entire policy, from documents contained in our national archives or in those of other countries. His correspondence displays so fine a diplomatic genius, that the historians have turned aside from the evil side of the man, his littlenesses, in order to give full weight to his services as minister. Precisely a contrary course had been taken in the seventeenth century. Little besides the Cardinal's defects, open to all eyes, were realised. Bad fortune had redoubled his rapacity. Mazarin had guarded in his heart the experience of poverty at the time in which he was expelled from the kingdom. He had sworn to himself that he would not again be taken without "ammunition." He had worked industriously since his return in putting aside millions in safe keeping. Everything aided him in raising this kind of war treasure. He sold high functions of State, and also those belonging to low degree, even to that of laundress to the Queen. He shared the benefits with the corsairs to whom he gave letters of marque. He undertook contracts for public service, pocketed the money, left our ambassadors without salaries, our vessels and fortifications without means of subsistence. The army was crying with hunger and thirst as soon as he made himself its sutler and its commissariat. He furnished bread of diminished purity and even found means, said the courtiers, to make the soldiers, so rarely paid themselves, pay for the water they drank. Turenne once broke up his plate to distribute the pieces to his troops, who were perishing from want.

Comical scenes mingled with these tragic ones. Bussy-Rabutin, who served in the army of Turenne, had been fortunate at play. The Cardinal had learned of this, and ordered it to be represented to Bussy that his pay which had been pledged in the game would be guarded by the Cardinal as his portion of the gain. He had extended his traffic into the royal palace. It was he who furnished furniture and utensils. He undertook to provide the Court mourning, and costumes for the fêtes: when the King danced a ballet, his first minister gained by the decorations and accessories. The housekeeping accounts passed through his hands. During the campaign of 1658, he suppressed the King's cook, in order to appropriate to himself what the table would have cost. Louis XIV. was forced to invite himself to dine with this one and that one. Mazarin touched even his pocket money and the young King permitted it with a patience which was a constant source of astonishment to the courtiers. His mother was neither better treated nor less submissive.

The Cardinal was as jealous of his authority as of his money. The King had no voice in his council; when he accorded a pardon, however trivial, his first minister revoked it, "scolding him like a schoolboy."[37]

It was said of the Queen Mother that her influence was only worth a hundred crowns, and she agreed. Still more, she was scolded from morning till night. Age had rendered Mazarin insupportable. He had no delicacy with the King, still less with the King's mother: the courtiers shrugged their shoulders in hearing him speak to Anne of Austria "as to a chambermaid."[38]

The Queen was not insensible to this rudeness. She confessed to the faithful Motteville "that the Cardinal had become so bad tempered and so avaricious that she did not know how in the future it was going to be possible to live with him." But it did not seem to occur to her that it might be possible to live without the Cardinal. Can it be believed that Anne of Austria and Mazarin were married, as La Palatine,[39] mother of the Regent, asserted? As they gradually grew old, one is tempted to believe it, so strongly the spectacle offered by these illustrious persons, he so disagreeable, she so submissive, gives the impression of two destinies "united together," according to the expression of the Cardinal himself,[40] "by bonds which could not be broken." The question to be solved is, could Mazarin marry? According to tradition he was not a priest. According to the Euridite that point is open to discussion.[41] Until this matter is fixed, the marriage of Anne of Austria with her minister will remain among historical enigmas, for everything said will be words in the air.

PRIÈRE DU ROY.

Jesus-Christ Roy du Ciel et de la Terre, ie vous adore et reconnois pour le Roy des Roys. C'est de vostre Majesté Diuine que ie tiens ma Couronne: mon Dieu ie vous l'offre, pour la Gloire de la trés Saincte Trinité, et pour l'honneur de la Reine des Agnes la Sacrée Vierge Marie que iay choisy pour ma Protectrice, et des Estats que vous m'auez donné; Seigneur baillez moy vostre crainte et une si grande Sagesse et humilité, que ie puisse deuenir un homme selon vostre coeur; en sorte que ie merite efficacement le tiltre aimable de Louis Dieu donné le Pacifique pour maintenir vostre Peuple en Paix, afin qu'il vous serve avec tranquilité, et l'acomplissement de toutes les Vertus.

VŒU ET PRIÈRE DES PEUPLES POUR LE ROY.

Adorable Redempteur Jesus-Christ, qui estes le distributeur des Couronnes, receuez la pieté du Roy tres-Crestien, et exaucez ses Prieres respectueses faites par l'entremise de vostre Saincte Mere Vierge, que linfluence des Graces du St. Esprit luy soit donnée, afin croissant en aage, it croisse aussi en telle Sagesse, qu'il puisse maintenir vostre peuple in Paix, pour mieux obseruer vos saincts commandemens.

(Translation of the above.)

PRAYER OF THE KING.

Jesus Christ, King of the Heavens and the Earth, I adore Thee and recognize Thee for the King of Kings, the divine majesty from whom I receive my crown, which I offer to Thee for the Glory of the Most Holy Trinity, and for the honor of the Queen of Angels, the blessed Virgin Mary, whom I have chosen as my Protector, and also of the States which Thou hast given me. Lord grant me due reverence and that I may possess so much wisdom and humility that I may become a man after Thine own heart, so that I may truly merit the title of the Beloved Louis, the God-given and peaceful, and be able to maintain Thy people in peace that they may live in tranquillity and virtuously serve Thee.

VOW AND PRAYER OF THE PEOPLE.

Adorable Redeemer Jesus Christ; who art the giver of crowns; regard the piety of the most Christian King and listen to his prayers for the intervention of the most blessed Mother Virgin; and grant that the influence of the Holy Spirit may so be poured out upon him that as he increases in years he may also grow in wisdom; and that he may keep Thy people in peace that they may better be able to preserve Thy commands.

LOUIS XIV. AS A BOY, DEDICATING HIS CROWN After the painting by Greg Huret

The patience of Louis XIV. can only be explained by his entire bringing up and by the state of mind which had been its fruit.

Louis's cradle had been surrounded by a crowd of servitors charged to watch over his least movement. His mother adored him and, for a queen, occupied herself much with him. Nevertheless, there could hardly a child be found throughout the entire kingdom so badly cared for as the son of the King.

Louis XIV. had never forgotten this neglect and spoke of it all his life with bitterness.

"The King always surprises me," relates Mme. de Maintenon at Saint Cyr, "when he speaks to me of his education. His governesses gossiped the entire day, and left him in the hands of their maids without paying any attention to the young Prince." The maids abandoned him to his own devices and he was once found in the basin of the fountain in the Palais Royal. One of his greatest pleasures was to prowl in the kitchens with his brother, the little Monsieur. "He ate everything he could lay his hands on without paying attention to its healthfulness. If they were frying an omelette, he would break off a piece, which he and Monsieur devoured in some corner."[42] One day when the two little Princes thus put their fingers into the prepared dishes, the cooks impatiently drove them away with blows from dishcloths. He played with any one. "His most frequent companion," again relates Mme. de Maintenon, "was the daughter of the Queen's own maid." When he was withdrawn from such surroundings, to be led to his mother, or to figure in some ceremony, he appeared a bashful boy who looked at people with embarrassment without knowing what to say, and who cruelly suffered from this shyness.

One day after they had given him a lesson, his timidity prevented him from remembering the right words and he burst into tears with rage and anger. The King of France to make a fool of himself!

At five and a half years, they gave him a tutor and many masters,[43] but he learned nothing. Mazarin for reasons known to himself would not force him to work; and circumstances favoured the views of the first minister. The Fronde came, and rendered any study impossible on account of the complete upsetting of the daily life of the Court of France, which was only encamped when it was not actually on the move. Louis XIV. was fourteen at the date of the reinstallation of the Court at the Louvre and there was no question of making him recover the lost time; he thenceforth passed his days in hunting, in studying steps for the ballet, and in amusing himself with the nieces of the Cardinal. The political world believed that it divined the reason for this limited education and severely expressed its opinion about it. "The King," wrote the Ambassador from Venice,[44] "applies himself the entire day to learning the ballet. … Games, dances, and comedies are the only subjects of conversation with the King, the intention being to turn him aside from affairs more solid and important." The Ambassador returns to the same subject upon the occasion of an Italian opera,[45] in which the King exhibited himself as Apollo surrounded by beautiful persons representing the nine muses:

Certain people blame this affair, but these do not understand the politics of the Cardinal, who keeps the King expressly occupied with pastimes, in order to turn his attention from solid and important pursuits, and whilst the King is concerned in rolling machines of wood upon the stage, the Cardinal moves and rolls at his good pleasure, upon the theatre of France, all the machines of state.

Some few observers, of whom Mazarin himself was one, divined that this youth, with his air of being absorbed in tomfooleries, secretly reflected upon his profession of King, and upon the means of rendering himself capable of sustaining it. Nature had endowed him with the instinct of command, joined to a very lively sentiment of the duties of his rank. Louis says in his Mémoires, "even from infancy the names alone of the kings fainéants and mayors of the palace gave me pain if pronounced in my presence."[46]

His preceptor, the Abbé of Péréfixe, had encouraged this sentiment, at the same time, however, permitting his pupil, by a contradiction for which perhaps he was not responsible, to take the road which leads in the direction of idleness, and thus making it possible for Louis to become a true King fainéant himself.

Péréfixe had written for the young King a history of King Henry the Great in which one reads

that royalty is not the trade of a do-nothing, that it consists almost entirely of action, that a King should make a pleasure of his duty, that his enjoyment should be in reigning and he only should know how to reign, that is, he should himself hold the helm of the state. His glory is interested in this. In truth, who does not know that there can be no honour in bearing a title whose functions one does not fulfil—

a doctrine which would suppress the first ministers and by which Louis XIV. profited later.

Chance came to the aid of the preceptor. On June 19, 1651, the ancient governess of the King, Mme. de Lansac, disturbed him in the midst of a lesson, in order to make a gift of "three letters written by Catherine de Médicis to Henry III.,[47] her son, for his edification." Péréfixe took the letters and read them aloud, the King listening "with much attention." One of them was almost a memorial.[48] In it, Catherine gave to her son the same precept as Péréfixe to his pupil: "a king must reign," that is to say, carry out the functions belonging to his title. In order to "reign," one must begin to work at once upon awakening, read all the dispatches and afterwards the replies, speak personally to the agents, receive every morning accounts of receipts and expenditures; pursue this course from morning till night, and every day of one's life. It was the programme for a slave to power. Louis XIV. made it his own, in the bottom of his soul; he was not yet thirteen.

Such beautiful resolutions however, were destined to remain dead so long as Mazarin lived. They could only be executed to the detriment of his authority, and the idea of entering into a struggle with the Cardinal was repugnant to the young King, partially on account of old affection, partially on account of timidity and the habit of obedience.

The mind of Louis XIV. had however been awakened and the fruits of this awakening were later visible, but for a time he was content to find good excuses for leaving affairs alone. He explains in his Mémoires that he was arrested by political reasons; as he had too much experience also (however strange this word may appear when applied to a child so foolishly brought up) not to realise the danger of a revolution in the royal palace in the present condition of France after the devastations of the civil wars.

In default of the science which one draws from books, Louis XIV. had received lessons in realities from the Fronde: The riots and barricades, the vehement discourse of the Parliament to his mother, the humiliating flights with the Court, the periods of poverty in which his servants had no dinner and he himself slept with his sheets full of holes, and wore clothes too short, the battles in which his subjects fired upon him, the treasons of his relations and of his nobility and their shameful bargains; nothing of all this had been lost upon the young King.

With a surface order re-established, he perceived how troubled the situation remained at bottom, how precarious, and he judged it prudent to defer what he both "wished" and "feared," says very clearly his Mémoires. He queries if this were an error:

It is necessary [says he] to represent to one's self the state of affairs: Agitations throughout the entire kingdom were at their height; a foreign war continued in which a thousand advantages had been lost to France owing to these domestic troubles; a Prince of my own blood and a very great name at the head of my enemies; many cabals in the state; the Parliaments still in possession of usurped authority; in my own Court very little of either fidelity or interest, and above all my subjects, apparently the most submissive, were as great a care and as much to be suspected as those most openly rebellious.

Was this the moment in which to expose the country to new shocks?

Louis XIV. had remained convinced[49] to the contrary, avowing, however, that he had much to criticise in the fashions of Mazarin,

a minister [pursued he] re-established in spite of so many factions, very able, very adroit, who loved me and whom I loved, and who had rendered me great services, but whose thoughts and manners were naturally very different from mine, and whom I could not always contradict nor discredit without anew exciting, by that image, however erroneous, of disgrace, the same tempests which had been so difficult to calm.

The King had also to take into consideration his own extreme youth, and his ignorance of affairs. He relates in regard to this point his ardent desire for glory, his fear of beginning ill, "for one can never retrieve one's self"; his attention to the course of events "in secret and without a confidant"; his joy when he discovered that people both able and consummate shared his fashion of thinking.

Considering everything, had there ever been a being urged forward and retarded so equally, in his design to take upon himself "the guidance of the state"?

This curious page has no other defect than that of having been dictated by a man matured, in whose thoughts things have taken a clearness not existing in the mind of the youth, and who believes himself to recollect "determinations" when there existed in reality only "desires."

Louis XIV. would be unpardonable if full credit were given to his Mémoires. Why, if he saw so clearly, did he grumble at any kind of work? When Louis was sixteen, Mazarin had arranged with him some days in which he might be present at a council. The King was bored and retired to talk of the next ballet and to play the guitar with his intimates. Mazarin was obliged to scold him to force him to return and remain at the council.

With a capacity for trifling, he cared for nothing serious, and there was much laziness contained in his resolution to leave all to his minister. The Court had formed its own opinion: it considered the young King incapable of application. It was also said that he lacked intelligence, and in this belief there was no error. Louis himself alluded to this and said with simplicity, "I am very stupid."

The libertine youth who surrounded him, and whom his solemn air restrained, did not conceal the fact that they found him a great bore, as probably did also Madame de Maintenon a half-century later. The Guiche and the Vardes believed him doomed to insignificance and did not trouble themselves much about him. The city was less convinced that he was a cipher, perhaps because otherwise it could not so easily have taken his part. Paris was commencing to fear those princes with whom, for one reason or another, first ministers were necessary, and the Parisian bourgeoisie was on the watch for some proof of intelligence in the young monarch. "It is said that the mind of the King is awakening," wrote Guy Patin in 1654; "God be thanked!"

This first light not having an apparent development, Paris, whilst waiting for something better, admired the looks of the sovereign. "I have to-day seen the King on his way to the chase," again wrote Guy Patin four years later. "A fine Prince, strong and healthy; he is tall and graceful; it is a pity that he does not better understand his duties."[50] His serious air was also lauded, his dislike to debauchery in any form, and the modesty which made him bravely reply before the entire Court, to a question about a new play: "I never judge a subject about which I know nothing."[51]

This was not the response of a fool.

In fine, as he was very cold, very capable of dissimulation, as he spoke little, through calculation as much as through instinct, and generally confined his conversation to trifles, this youth upon whom all France had its eyes fixed remained an unknown quantity to his subjects.

In September, 1657, two strangers crossing the Pont Neuf found themselves in the midst of a pressure of people. The crowd precipitated itself with cries of joy towards a carriage whose livery had been recognised.

It was the Grande Mademoiselle returning from exile, and coming to take possession of the palace of the Luxembourg, in which her father permitted her to lodge, feeling certain that he himself should never return to it. The two strangers noted in their Journal de Voyage[52] that the Parisians bore a "particular affection" for this Princess, because she had behaved like a "true amazon" during the civil war.

The Court had resigned itself to the inevitable. Mademoiselle had remained popular in Paris, and her exploits during the Fronde and her fine bearing at the head of her regiment were remembered with enthusiasm. She only passed through the city at this time, having affairs to regulate in the Provinces. Upon her definite return on December 31st, the Court and the city crowded to see her. The Luxembourg overflowed during several days, after which, when society had convinced itself that Mademoiselle had no longer a face "fresh as a fully blown rose,"[53] its curiosity was satisfied and it occupied itself with something else.

LOUIS XIV. AS A YOUNG MAN From a chalk drawing in the British Museum Print Room

Mademoiselle herself had much to do. The idea of marrying the little Monsieur had not left her mind since the meeting at Sedan. She was assured that the Prince was dying of desire for her, and Mademoiselle naïvely responded that she very well perceived this. "This does not displease me," adds she; "a young Prince, handsome, well-made, brother of the King, appears a good match."

In expectation of the betrothal, she stopped her pursuits of the happy interval at Saint-Fargeau in which she had loved intellectual pleasures, in order to make herself the comrade of a child only absorbed in pastimes belonging to his age, and passed the winter in dancing, in masquerading, in rushing through the promenades and the booths of the fair of Saint-Germain.[54]

The public remarked that the little Monsieur appeared "not very gay" with his tall cousin, and troubled himself but little to entertain her,[55] and that he would have preferred other companions better suited to his seventeen years.

Mademoiselle did not perceive this. Philip, Duke of Anjou, had a face of insipid beauty posed upon a little round body. He did not lack esprit, had not an evil disposition, and would have made an amiable prince if reasons of state had not tended to reduce him to the condition of a marionette.

His mother and Mazarin had brought him up as a girl, for fear of his later troubling his elder brother, and this education had only too well succeeded. By means of sending him to play with the future Abbé de Choisy, who put on a robe and patches to receive him; by means of having him dressed and barbered by the Queen's maids of honour and putting him in petticoats and occupying him with dolls, he had been made an ambiguous being, a species of defective girl having only the weaknesses of his own sex. Monsieur had a new coat every day and it worried him to spot it, and to be seen with his hair undressed or in profile when he believed himself handsomer in full face. Paris possessed no greater gossip; he babbled, he meddled, he embroiled people by repeating everything, and this amused him.

Mademoiselle considered it her duty to "preach" to him of "noble deeds," but she wasted her time. He was laziness and weakness itself. The two cousins were ill-adapted to each other in every way.

When they entered a salon together, Monsieur short and full, attired in the costume of a hunter, his garments sewed from head to foot with precious stones, Mademoiselle a little masculine of figure and manner and negligent in her dress, they were a singular couple. Those who did not know them opened their eyes wide, and they were often seen together in the winter at least, for the society was at this date most mixed, even in the most élite circles.

From Epiphany to Ash-Wednesday, the Parisians had no greater pleasure than to promenade masked at night, and to enter without invitation into any house where an entertainment was taking place. Louis XIV. gladly joined in these gaieties. Upon one evening of Mardi-Gras, when he was thus running the streets with Mademoiselle, they met Monsieur dressed as a girl with blond hair.[56] Keepers of inns sent their guests to profit by this chance of free entry. A young Dutchman related that he went the same night "with those of his inn" to five great balls, the first at the house of Mme. de Villeroy, the last with the Duchess of Valentinois, and that he had seen at each place more than two hundred masks.[57]

The crowd would not permit that entrance should be refused on any pretext.

The same Dutchman reports with a note of bitterness that on another evening it had been impossible to penetrate into the house of the Maréchal de l'Hôpital, because the King being there, measures had been taken to avoid too great a crowd. Custom obliged every one to submit to receiving society, choice or not. At a grand fête given by the Duc de Lesdiguières, which in the bottom of his heart he was offering to Mme. de Sévigné, "The King had hardly departed when the crowd commenced to scuffle and to pillage every thing, until, as it was stated, it became necessary to replace the candles of the chandeliers four or five times and this single article cost M. de Lesdiguières more than a hundred pistoles."[58]

Such domestic manners had the encouragement of the King, who also left his doors open upon the evenings on which he danced a ballet. He did better still. He went officially to sup "with the Sieur de la Bazinière," ancient lackey become financier and millionaire, and having the bearing, the manners, and the ribbon cascades of the Marquis de Mascarille. He desired that Mademoiselle should invite to the Luxembourg, Mme. de l'Hôpital, ancient laundress married twice for her beautiful eyes; the first time by a partisan, the second by a Marshal of France. These lessons were not lost upon the nobility. Mésalliances were no more discredited, even the lowest, the most shameful, provided that the dot was sufficient. A Duke and Peer had married the daughter of an old charioteer. The Maréchal d'Estrées was the son-in-law of a partisan known under the name of Morin the Jew. Many others could be cited, for the tendency increased from year to year.

In 1665, the King having entered Parliament,[59] in order to confirm an edict, a group of men amongst whom was Olivier d'Ormesson were regarding the Tribune in which were seated the ladies of the Court. Some one thought of counting how many of these were daughters of parvenues or of business men; he found three out of six. Two others were nieces of Mazarin, married to French nobles.[60] The single one of aristocratic descent was Mlle. d'Alençon, a half-sister of the Grande Mademoiselle. One could hardly have anticipated such figures, even allowing for chance.

The King, however, approved of this state of affairs and the nobility was ruined; every one seized on what support he could. The general course of affairs was favourable to this confusion of rank. From the triumphal re-entry of Mazarin in 1653, until his death in 1661, a kind of universal freedom continued at the Court which surprised the ancient Frondeurs on their return from exile. The young monarch himself encouraged familiarities and lack of etiquette.

It was the nieces of the Cardinal who were largely responsible for these changes in manners and who gained their own profit through the additional freedom, since Marie, the third of the Mancini, was soon to almost touch the crown with the tip of her finger. Mademoiselle had some trouble in accustoming herself to the new manners towards the King.

For me [says she], brought up to have great respect, this is most astonishing, and I have remained long time without habituating myself to this new freedom. But when I saw how others acted, when the Queen told me one day that the King hated ceremony, then I yielded; for without this high authority the faults of manner could not be possible with others.

The pompous Louis XIV. wearing the great wig of the portraits did not yet exist, and the Louvre of 1658 but little resembled the particular and formal Versailles of the time of Saint-Simon.[61]

The licence extended to morals. Numbers of women of rank behaved badly, some incurred the suspicion of venality, and no faults were novelties; but vice keeps low company and it was this result which proud people like Mademoiselle could not suffer.

When it was related to her that the Duchesse de Châtillon, daughter of Montmorency-Boutteville, had received money from the Abbé Foucquet[62] and wiped out the debt by permitting such lackey-like jokes as breaking her mirrors with blows of the foot, she was revolted. "It is a strange thing," wrote she, "this difference of time; who would have said to the Admiral Coligny, 'The wife of your grandson will be maltreated by the Abbé Foucquet'?—he would not have believed it, and there was no mention at all of this name of Foucquet in his time."

In the mind of Mademoiselle, who had lived through so many periods, it was the low birth of the Abbé which would have affected the Admiral. "Whatever may be said," added she, "I can never believe that persons of quality abandon themselves to the point which their slanderers say. For even if they did not consider their own safety, worldly honour is in my opinion so beautiful a thing that I do not comprehend how any one can despise it."

Mademoiselle did not transgress upon the respect due to the hierarchy of rank; for the rest, she contented herself with what are called the morals of respectable people, which have always been sufficiently lenient. She understood, however, all the difference between this morality and Christian principles.

The Provinciales (1656) had made it clear to the blindest that it was necessary to choose between the two. Mademoiselle had under this influence made a visit to Port Royal des Champs[63] and had been entirely won by these "admirable people" who lived like saints and who spoke and wrote "the finest eloquence," while the Jesuits would have done better to remain silent, "having nothing good to say and saying it very badly," "for assuredly there were never fewer preachers amongst them than at present nor fewer good writers, as appears by their letters. This is why for all sorts of reasons they would have done better not to write."

Seeing Mademoiselle so favourably impressed, one of the Monsieurs of Port Royal, Arnauld d'Andilly, said upon her departure, "You are going to the Court; you can give to the Queen account of what you have seen."—"I assure you that I will willingly do this."

Knowing her disposition, there is but little doubt that she kept her word; but this was all. The worthy Mademoiselle, incapable of anything low or base, did not dream for a second of allowing the austere morality, ill fitted for the needs of a court, to intervene in influencing her judgments upon others, or in the choice of her friends. She blamed the Duchesse de Châtillon for reasons with which virtue, properly named, had nothing to do. We see her soon after meeting Mme. de Montespan, because common morality has nothing to blame in a King's mistress.

Mme. de Sévigné agreed with Mademoiselle and they were not alone. This attitude gave a kind of revenge to the Jesuits.

Tastes became as common as sentiments; those of the King were not yet formed, and the pleasure taken in the ballet in the theatre of the Louvre injured the taste for what was, in fact, no longer tragedy. Corneille had given up writing for the first time in 1652, after the failure of his Pertharite. The following year, Quinault made his debut and pleased. He taught in his tragi-comedies, flowery and tender, that "Love makes everything permissible," which had been said by Honoré d'Urfé in l'Astrée, a half-century previous, and he retied, without difficulty, after the Corneillian parenthesis, the thread of a doctrine which has been transmitted without interruption to our own days.

Love justifies everything, for the right of passion is sacred, nothing subsists before it.