La Grande Mademoiselle. Barine Arvède

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ but the Fronde proved the justice of the Cardinal's action. La Grande Mademoiselle made civil war to constrain Mazarin to marry her to Louis XIV., who was eleven years her junior. Her godfather had guessed well: the idea of being Queen had germinated rapidly in the little head in which the influence of Astrée– still active despite its age – was busily forming romantic visions far in advance of its generation. D'Urfé died in 1620; to his glory be it said that we are obliged to go back to him and to his work when we would explain the moral state of the later days.

II

      Few books in any country or in any time have equalled the fortune of Astrée,28 a pastoral romance in ten volumes, in which the different effects of honest friendship are deduced from the lives of shepherds and others, under a long title in the style of the century. Honoré d'Urfé's work immediately became the "code of polite society" and of all who aspired to appear polite. Everything was à l'Astrée– fashions, sentiments, language, the games of society, and the conversation of love. The infatuation extended to classes of society who read but little. In a comedy familiar to the lesser bourgeoisie,29 some one reproached marriageable girls for permitting themselves to be captured by the insipid flattery of the first coxcomb who addresses them thus:

      – Bien poli, bien frisé

      Pourvu qu' il sache un mot des livres d'Astrée.

      Success had crossed the frontiers of France. People in foreign lands found material for their instruction in Astrée. The work was a novel with a key; a story with a meaning. "Celadon" was the author; "Astrée" was his wife (the beautiful Diane de Chateaumorand, with whom he had not been happy). The Court of le grand Enric was the Court of Henry IV. "Galatée" was the Queen (Marguerite) and so on. "All the stories in Astrée were founded on truth," wrote Patru, who had gathered his information from the lips of d'Urfé. But "the author has romanced everything – if I dare use the word." The charm found in the scandalous reality of the scenes and in the truth of the characters crowned the work's success; the book was translated in most languages, and devoured with the same avidity by all countries. In Germany there was an Académie des Vrais Amants copied from the "Academy" of Lignon. In Poland, in the last half of the century, John Sobieski, who was not by any means one of the be-musked knights of the carpet, played at Astrée and Celadon, with Marie d'Arquien. "To grass with the matrimonial love which turns to friendship at the end of three months! … Celadon am I, now as in the past; the ardent lover of those first glad days!"30 he wrote after marriage.

      When the people's infatuation had passed, the book still remained the standard of all delicate minds, and it continued to wield its literary influence.

      Through two centuries [said Montégut] Astrée lost nothing of its renown. The most diverse and the most opposite minds alike loved the book; Pellisson and Huet the Bishop of Avranches were enthusiastic admirers of its qualities. La Fontaine and Mme. de Sévigné delighted in it. Racine, in his own silent and discreet way, read it with fond pleasure and profit, but did not say so.

      Marivaux had read it and drawn even more benefit from it than Racine… Last of all, Jean Jacques Rousseau admired it so much that he avowed that he had re-read it once a year the greater part of his life. Now as Jean Jacques exerted a dominant influence upon the destinies of our modern imaginative literature, it follows that the success of Astrée has been indirectly prolonged even to our own day. Madame George Sand, for example, derived some little benefit from d'Urfé, though she was not too well aware of it.

      Montégut had forgotten the Abbé Prévost; but M. Brunetière repairs the omission, and adds: "One may say that Astrée's success shaped the channel for the chief current of our modern literature."

      Its social influence was equal to its influence upon literature. And yet, to-day, not one of all the books that had their time of glory and of popularity is more neglected. No one reads Astrée now, and no one can read it; with the best will in the world, the most indulgent must throw the book down, bored by its dulness. It has become impossible to endure the five thousand pages of the amorous dissertations of the shepherds of Lignon. At the best such a debauch of subtlety would be only tolerable, even had it emanated from a writer of genius. And d'Urfé had no genius; he had nothing but talent.

      D'Urfé was a little gentleman of Forez, whom his epoch (he was born in 1568) had permitted to examine the society of the Valois. We know that no social body was ever more corrupt; nevertheless those who saw it were dazzled by it; and because they had looked upon it they were considered – in the time of Louis XIII. – exquisitely elegant and polite; they were regarded as the survivors of a superior civilisation.

      The ladies of the Court of Anne of Austria were proud of their power to attract the notice of the elderly noblemen "thanks to whom," in the words of a contemporary writer, "remnants of the polite manners brought by Catherine de Médicis from Italy were still seen in France." The homage of the antique gentlemen was insistent, of a kind which refuses to be repelled. Even the Queen accepted it. Anne of Austria, whose habitually correct attitude was notable, felt that she was constrained to receive the attentions of the old Duc de Bellegarde, though the Duke's character and customs were notorious. Duc de Bellegarde had been one of the deplorable favourites of Henri III.

      Anne of Austria was hypercritical in regard to forms of conversation; her own language was fastidiously delicate; she exacted minute attention to the superficial details of civility; yet the notorious de Bellegarde sat at ease before the Court, displaying all the peculiar gallantry of his epoch, "and," said the Queen's friend, Mme. de Motteville, "it was the more noticeable and the fame of it was the more scandalous because the Queen did not hesitate to accept from him incense whose smoke might well blacken her reputation. The Queen permitted the Duke to treat her as he had treated the women of his own day, a day when gallantry and women reigned."

      The civil wars swept away the splendid but rotten world, but the prestige of the Valois still asserted its power.

      In 1646, a posthumous romantic tale appeared in Paris, entitled Orasie. It was generally attributed to the pen of Mlle. de Senterre, a maid-of-honour of the Court of Catherine de Médicis. "This book," said the editorial preface, "is a true history, full of very choice events; there is nothing fictitious in it but the names given to its heroes and its heroines. Orasie is a mirror reflecting the most magnificent and the most pompous of kingly Courts, the Court where reigned the truest civility and the purest politeness, where false gallantry, like base action, was unknown."

      The Court thus eulogised had been the centre of delicate mannerism and the incubating cell of the refinement of vice. Though the civil wars had annihilated the splendid rottenness of the Court, the memory of the delicacy of the Valois survived. When peace was declared, when men had leisure to look about them, they were confronted by the rude Court of Henry IV. They felt the need of a re-establishment of polite society, but where could they find the elements of such society? Foreign influences had enervated the national imagination, Spanish literature with its romances of cruel chivalry, its pastorals, and its theatrical dramas had imbued the Romanticism of France with its poison, and symptoms of moral debility were generally evident. A period of fermentation and expectancy follows war. When the civil wars were over, the men of France sat waiting; their need was pressing, but they could form no idea of its nature. At such a time the eager watchmen on the towers acclaim the bearer of tidings, be they tidings of good or of evil.

      Honoré d'Urfé's chief merit lay in the fact that he was the man of the hour, he came when he was most needed, holding the mirror up to nature, and clearly reflecting the common feeling. If I may use the term, he presented his countrymen with an intelligent mirror reflecting their confused and agitated aspirations. Nature and occasion had fitted him for his work: he had all the accessories and all the requirements of his art; best of all, he had the imperious vocation which is the first and the essential qualification of authorship, СКАЧАТЬ