Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle, 1652-1693. Barine Arvède

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СКАЧАТЬ with despair to the departure for Blois.

      She was going to visit her father, after having the thought flash through her mind that he could order her assassination. It is said there had been some question of this at Blois. "Immersed in melancholy reveries, I dreamed that his Royal Highness was a son of the Médicis, and I even reflected that the poison of the Médicis must have already entered my veins and caused such thoughts."

      Her father, on the other hand, was going to overwhelm her with tenderness after having permitted it to be said without protest that Mademoiselle was preparing a trap, with the purpose of poisoning one of his gentlemen.

      Considering the times and the family, this was a situation only a little "strained"; but Mademoiselle was so little a "Médicis" that she made her journey a prey to a poignant grief, which was plainly to be read upon her countenance by the attendants at her arrival at Blois.

      "Upon my arrival I felt a sudden chill. I went directly to the chamber of Monsieur; he saluted me and told me he was glad to see me. I replied that I was delighted to have this honour. He was much embarrassed." Neither the one nor the other knew what more to say. Mademoiselle silently forced back her tears. Monsieur, to give himself composure, caressed the greyhounds of his daughter, La Reine and Madame Souris. Finally he said: "Let us go to seek Madame."

      "She received me very civilly and made many friendly remarks. As soon as I was in my own chamber, Monsieur came to see me and talked as if nothing disagreeable had passed between us." A single quarter of an hour had sufficed to bring back to him his freedom of spirit, and he made an effort to regain the affections of his daughter.

      She had never known him to continue to be severe; Monsieur counted upon this fact. He was attentive, flattered her weaknesses great and small, amused her with projects of marriage, and treated her greyhounds as personages of importance; he could be seen at midnight in the lower court in the midst of the dunghill, inquiring about Madame Souris, who had met with an accident. He did still better; he wrote to Mazarin asking for an accommodation with Mademoiselle.

      After the rupture with Condé, it was evident from signs not to be mistaken that the hour was approaching in which the all-powerful minister would pardon the heroine of Orléans and of Porte Saint-Antoine. In the month of July, 1656, Mademoiselle went to the baths of Forges, in Normandy. She had passed in sight of Paris; had sojourned in the suburbs without anxiety, and her name this time had not made "every one ill."

      Visitors had flocked. Mademoiselle had entertained at dinner all the princesses and duchesses then in Paris; and she drew the conclusion, knowing the Court and the courtiers, that her exile was nearing an end. "In truth," says she, "I do not feel as much joy at the thought as I should have believed. When one reaches the end of a misery like mine, its remembrance lasts so long and the grief forms such a barrier against joy that it is long before the wall is sufficiently melted to permit happiness to be again enjoyed."

      Nevertheless the news of the letter from her father to Mazarin put her in a great agitation. The Court of France was then in the east of France where Turenne made his annual campaign against M. le Prince and the Spaniards. Mademoiselle resolved to approach in order to sooner receive the response of the Cardinal.

      She quitted Blois as she had arrived there, a stranger. One single thing could have touched her: the recall of Préfontaine and of her other servitors struck down for having been faithful. This Monsieur had absolutely refused; his exaggerated politeness and his grimaces of tenderness had only the result of alienating his daughter. She felt that he detested her and she no longer loved him.

      Upon the route to Paris she doubled the length between her stopping-places. Impatience gained as she neared the end and the "barrier of grief" permitted itself gradually to be penetrated by joy.

      She again saw, in passing, Étampes[31] and its ruins, which already dated back five years and were found untouched by La Fontaine in 1663. So long and difficult in certain regions was the uplifting of France, after the wars of the Fronde, never taken very seriously by historians, doubtless because too many women were concerned in them.

      "We looked with pity at the environs of Étampes," wrote La Fontaine.[32] "Imagine rows of houses without roofs, without windows, pierced on all sides; nothing could be more desolate and hideous." He talked of it during an entire evening, not having the soul of a heroine of the Fronde, but Mademoiselle had traversed with indifference these same ruins in which the grass flourished in default of inhabitants to wear it away. No remorse, no regret, however light, for her share in the responsibility for the ruin of this innocent people, had touched her mind, and yet she was considered to possess a tender heart.

       JEAN DE LA FONTAINE From an engraving by Grevedon.

      She learned at Saint-Cloud that she had been invited to rejoin the Court at Sedan. Mademoiselle took a route through Reims. She thus traversed Champagne, which had been a battle-field during the more than twenty years of the wars with Spain[33]; and which appeared the picture of desolation. The country was depopulated, numbers of villages burned, and the cities ruined by pillage and forced contributions of war.

      More curious in regard to things which interest la canaille, Mademoiselle might have heard from the mouths of the survivors that of all the enemies who had trampled upon and oppressed this unfortunate people, the most cruel and barbarous had been her ally, the Prince de Condé, with whom were always found her own companies. She would not the less have written in her Mémoires, entirely unconsciously, apropos of her trouble in obtaining pardon from the Court: "I had really no difference with the Court, and I was criminal only because I was the daughter of his Royal Highness."

      We have hardly the right to reproach her with this monstrous phrase. To betray one's country was a thing of too frequent occurrence to cause much embarrassment. The only men of this epoch who reached the point of considering the common people[34] and attaching the least importance to their sufferings were revolutionary spirits or disciples of St. Vincent de Paul.

      Mademoiselle had no leaning towards extremes. Neither her birth nor the slightly superficial cast of her mind fostered free opinions. During her journey in Champagne, she was delighted to hear again the clink of arms and the sound of trumpets. Mazarin had sent a large escort. The skirmishers of the enemy swept the country even to the environs of Reims. A number of the people of the Court, seizing the occasion, joined themselves to her, in order to profit by her gens d'armes and light riders.

      Colbert also placed himself under her protection with chariots loaded with money which he was taking to Sedan, and this important convoy was surrounded by the same "military pomp, as if it had guarded the person of the King."

      The great precautions were, perhaps, on account of the chariots of money; the honours, however, were for Mademoiselle, and they much flattered her vanity. The commandant of the escort demanded the order from her. When she appeared the troops gave the military salute. A regiment which she met on her route solicited the honour of being presented to her. She examined it closely, as a warlike Princess who understood military affairs, and of whom the grand Condé had said one day, apropos of a movement of troops, that "Gustavus Adolphus could not have done better." A certain halt upon the grass in a meadow through which flowed a stream left an indelible impression. Mademoiselle offered dinner this day to all the escort and almost all the convoy. The sight of the meadow crowded with uniformed men and horses recalled to her the campaigns of her fine heroic times. "The trumpets sounded during dinner; this gave completely the air of a true army march." She arrived at Sedan intoxicated by the military spectacle of her route, and her entry showed this. Considering her late exile the lack of modesty might well be criticised. The Queen, Anne of Austria, driving for pleasure in the environs of Sedan, saw a chariot СКАЧАТЬ