La Grande Mademoiselle, 1627-1652. Barine Arvède

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СКАЧАТЬ His inclinations lead him into different adventures. The moments of history, when the agitators of the nation were young men, glow with the light of no other epoch. There was then an indefinable quality in life—an active principle, more ardent and more vital. Under Louis XIII. there were scholars to make the unhappy students of our own emasculated times die of envy. Certain examples of our modern school become bald before they rise from the benches of their college.

      Jean de Gassion, Marshal of France at the age of thirty years, who "killed men" at the age of thirty-eight years (1647), was the fourth son, but not the last, of a President of Parliament at Navarre, who had raised his offspring with great care (having destined him for the career of "Letters"). The child took such advantage of his opportunities that before he was sixteen years old he was a consummate scholar. He knew several of the living languages—German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish. Thus prepared for active life, he set out from Pau astride of his father's old horse. When he had gone four or five leagues, the old horse gave out. Jean de Gassion continued his journey on foot. When he reached Savoy, they made war on him. He enlisted as common soldier, and fought so well that he was promoted cornet. When peace was declared, he was in France. He determined to go to the King of Sweden—Gustavus Adolphus—who was said to be somewhere in Germany. De Gassion had resolved to offer the King the service of his sword, and to ask to be allowed to lead the Swedish armies. But as he had no idea of presenting himself to the King single-handed, he persuaded some fifteen or twenty cavaliers of his own regiment to go with him, and embarked with them on the Baltic Sea. And—so runs the story—he just happened to land where Gustavus Adolphus was walking along the shore.

      (Such coincidences are possible only when youths are in their teens; after the age of twenty, no man need hope for similar experience.) Jean saluted the King, and addressed him in excellent Latin. He expressed his desire to be of service. The King was amused; he received the strange offer amiably, and consented to put the learned stripling to the test. And so it was that Gassion was enabled to attain to a colonelcy when he was but twenty-two years old. His early studies had stood him in good stead; had he not known his Latin, he would have missed his career. His Ciceronian harangue, poured out fluently just as the occasion demanded it, attracted the favour of a King who was, by his own might, a prince of letters.

      

      After the King of Sweden died, Gassion returned to France. With Condé he won the battle of Rocroy, and, during the siege, died of a bullet in his head, leaving behind him the reputation of a brilliant soldier and accomplished man of letters, as virtuous as he was brave. He never wished to marry. When they spoke to him of marriage, he answered that he did not think enough of his life to offer a share of it to any one. This was an expression of pessimism far in advance of his epoch.

      La Rochefoucauld, who will never be accused of having been naturally romantic, offered another example of the miracles performed by youths. Only once in his life did he play the part of Paladin. He launched himself in politics before he had a beard. When he was sixteen years old, he entered upon his grand campaign, bearing the title of "Master of the Camp."

      The following year he was at Court, elbowing his way among all the parties, busily engaged in opposition to Richelieu. But his politics did not add anything to his age; he was still an adolescent, far removed from the enlightened theorist of the Maximes.

      The peculiarly special savour of the springtime of life was communicated to his soul at the hour appointed by nature. In him it was impregnated by a faint perfume of heroism and of poetry. He never forgot the happiness with which for a week or more he played the fool. He was then twenty-three years old. Queen Anne of Austria was in the depths of her disgrace, maltreated and persecuted by her husband and by Richelieu.

      In this extremity [said Rochefoucauld], abandoned by all the world, devoid of aid, daring to confide in no one but Mademoiselle de Hautefort—and in me—she proposed to me to abduct them both and take them to Brussels. Whatever difficulty I may have seen in such a project, I can say that it gave me more joy than I had ever had in my life. I was at an age when a man loves to do extraordinary things, and I could not think of anything that would give me more satisfaction than that: to strike the King and the Cardinal with one blow, to take the Queen from her husband and from the jealous Richelieu, and to snatch Mademoiselle de Hautefort from the King who was in love with her!

      In truth the adventure would not have been an ordinary one; La Rochefoucauld assumed its duties with enthusiasm, renouncing them only when the Queen changed her mind.

      Like all his fellows, La Rochefoucauld had his outburst of youth; but he fell short of its folly. Recalling his extravagant project, he said: "Youth is a continuous intoxication; it is the fever of Reason."

      The memoirs of Arnauld d' Andilly tell us how the sons of the higher nobility were educated in the year 1600 and thereabout. Arnauld d' Andilly began to study Greek and Latin at home, under the supervision of a very learned father. Toward his tenth year his family thought that the moment had come to introduce into his little head the meanings and the realities of speculation. The child was destined for "civil employment." His day was divided into two parts; one half was devoted to "disinterested study"; the other half to the study of things practical. So he served his apprenticeship for business by such a system that his themes and his versions lost none of their rights. His mornings were consecrated to lessons and tasks. They were long mornings; the family rose at four o'clock. The little student became a good Latinist, and even a good Hellenist. He wrote very well in French, and he was a good reader.

      Ten or twelve volumes which belonged to him are still in existence, and they attest that he knew a great deal more than the graduates of our modern colleges—though he knew nothing of the things they aim at. At eleven o'clock he closed his lexicons, bade adieu to his preceptor and to the pedagogy, bestrode his horse, and rode to Paris, to the house of one of his uncles, who had taken it upon himself to teach the boy everything that he could not learn from his books. Our forefathers carefully watched their sons' first contact with reality. They tried not to leave to chance the duties of so important an initiation; and as a general thing their supervision left ineffaceable traces. Uncle Claude de la Mothe-Arnauld, Treasurer-General of France, installed his nephew in his private cabinet and gave him various bundles of endorsed papers to decipher. The child was obliged to pick out their meaning and then render a clear analysis of it in a distinct voice. When he was fifteen years old another uncle, a Supervisor of the National Finances, caused the student to "put his fist into the dough" in his own office. At sixteen years of age, "little Arnauld" was "M. Arnauld d' Andilly"; vested with office under the State, received at Court, and permitted to assist behind the chair of the King, at the Councils of Finance, so that he might hear financial arguments, and learn from the Nation's statesmen how to decide great questions. His education was not an exceptional one. The sons of the bourgeoisie were raised in like manner. Attempts to educate boys were more or less successful, according to the natural gifts of the postulants. Omer Talon, Advocate-General of the Parliament of Paris, and one of the great Parliamentary orators of the century, had pursued extensive classical studies, and "as he spoke, Latin and Greek rushed to his lips." He had "vast attainments in law," a science much more complicated in the sixteenth century than in our day. But, learned though he was, he had not lingered on the benches of his school. He was admitted to the Bar when he was eighteen years old, and "immediately began to plead and to be celebrated."

      Antoine Le Maïtre, the first "Solitaire" of Port Royal, began his career by appearing in public as the best known and most important and influential lawyer in Paris when he was twenty-one years old.

      Generally, the nobility sacrificed learning, which it despised, to an impatient desire to see its sons "in active life." The nobles made pages of their sons as soon as they were thirteen or fourteen years old, or else sent them to the "Academy" to learn how to make proper use of a horse, to fence, to vault, and to dance.[11]

      In the eyes of people of quality books and writings were the tools of plebeians; good enough for professional fine wits, or lawyers' clerks, but СКАЧАТЬ