La Grande Mademoiselle. Barine Arvède
infinitely pleasing… Clarinte dearly loves to read; and what is better, without playing the wit, she is admirably quick to seize the hidden meaning of fine ideas. She has so much judgment that, though she is neither severe, nor shy, she has found the means to preserve the best reputation in the world… What is most marvellous in this person is that, young as she is, she cares for her household as prudently as if she had had all the experience that time can give to a very enlightened mind; and what I admire still more, is that whenever it is necessary she can do without the world, and without the Court; she is as happy in the country, she can amuse herself as well there, as if she had been born in the woods… I had nearly forgotten to tell you that she writes as she speaks; that is to say, most agreeably and as gallantly as possible.
The programme used for the distribution of studies by means of which the De Sévignés were fabricated is not revealed. Nature herself must have furnished a portion of the plan. As far as we can judge the part played by education was restricted to the adoption of some of the suggestions of very rich moral endowments.
Mlle. de Chantal had been admirably directed by her uncle, the Abbé de Coulanges, and, aside from the cares of the profession which now presides over the education of woman, it is probable that more efficient means could not be found for the proper formation of the character of a girl than it was Mademoiselle de Chantal's good fortune to enjoy.
Ménage and Chapelain had been her guides in rhetoric. She had read Tacitus and Virgil in the original all her life. She was familiar with Italian and with Spanish, and had ancient and modern history at her tongue's end, – also the moralists and the religious writers.
These serious and well-grounded foundations, which she continually strengthened and renewed until death, did not prevent her from "adoring" poetry, the drama, and the superior novels, – in short, all things of enlightenment and worth wherever she found them and under whatever form. She was graceful in the dance; she sang well, – her contemporaries said that her manner of singing was "impassioned."
The Abbé Coulanges had raised her so carefully that she was orderly; and, unlike the majority, she liked to pay her debts. She was a perfect type of woman. She even made a few mistakes in orthography, taking one, or more, letter, or letters, for another, or for others. In short, she made just the number of errors sufficient to permit her to be a writer of genius without detracting from her air of distinguished elegance, or from the obligations and the quality of her birth.
There were others at Court and in the city who confirmed their right to enlightenment, thereby justifying the theses of Mademoiselle de Scudéry. But a large number of women gave the lie to her theories by their resemblance to Damophile. Of these latter was "the worthy Gournay," Montaigne's "daughter by alliance," who, from the exalted heights of her Greek and Latin, and in a loud, insistent voice, discoursed like a doctor of medicine on the most ticklish of subjects, – subjects far from pleasing when rolled out of the mouth of a woman, even when so displaced in the name of antiquity and all that is venerable! (For in these names "the good Gournay" evoked them.) There was another pedant, the Viscountess d'Auchy, who had "founded conferences" in her own house; the people of the fine world flocked there to smother as they listened while it was proved, for their edification, that the Holy Trinity had natural reasons for its existence. On those "foundations" the Innate Idea also was proved by demonstrative reason by collecting and by analysing the ideas of young children concerning philosophy and theology. The lady who founded the conferences had bought some manuscript Homilies on the Epistles of St. Paul, of a doctor of theology. She had had them imprinted and attached to portraits of herself. Thus accoutred for their mission, they were circulated with great success, and their proceeds formed the endowment fund of the Conférence Library.
"The novelty of seeing a great lady of the Court commenting on the most obscure of the apostles caused every one to buy the book."21 It ended by the Archbishop of Paris intimating to the "Order of the Conferences" that they "would better leave Theology to the Sorbonne."
Mlle. Des Jardins declaimed her verses in the salons with great "contortions" and with eyes rolling as if in death; and she was not at all pleased when people preferred Corneille's writings to her own.
Mlle. Diodée frightened her hearers so that they took to their heels when she began to read her fine thoughts on Zoroaster or on Hermes Trismegistus. Another learned lady would speak of nothing but solar or lunar eclipses and of comets.
The pedantry of this high order of representative woman transported the "honest man" with horror. The higher the birth of the man the greater his fear lest by some occult means he might be led to slip his neck into the noose of a "Savante." But there was one counter-irritant for this virulent form of literary eruption. The young girls of the highest nobility were all extremely ignorant. Mlle. de Maillé-Brézé, niece of Cardinal de Richelieu, had not an idea of the most limited degree of the knowledge of books when she married the great Condé (1641). She knew nothing whatever. It was considered that ignorance carried to such length proved that neglect of instruction had gone too far, and when the great Condé went on his first campaign, friends seized the opportunity to add a few facets to the uncut jewel. She was turned and turned about, viewed in different lights, and polished so that her qualities could be seen to the best advantage. "The year after her marriage," says Mlle. de Scudéry, "she was sent to the Convent of the Carmelite Nuns of Saint Denis, to be taught to learn to read and write, during the absence of Monsieur her husband."
The Contes de Perrault– faithful mirror of the habits of those days – teaches us what an accomplished princess ought to be like. All the fairies to be found in the country had acted as godmothers to the Belle-au-Bois-dormant,
so that each one of them could bring her a gift … consequently the princess had acquired every imaginable perfection… The youngest fairy gave her the gift of being the most beautiful woman in the world; the one who came next gave her the spirit of an angel; the third endowed her with power to be graceful in everything that she did; the fourth gave her the art of dancing like a fairy; the fifth the art of singing like a nightingale; and the sixth endowed her with the power to play all kinds of instruments to perfection.
Perrault had traced his portraits over the strongly defined lines of real life. La Grande Mademoiselle was trained after the manner of the Belle-au-Bois-dormant. Her governess had had too much experience to burden her with a science that would have made her redoubtable in the eyes of men; so she had transferred to the fairies the task of providing her young charge with a suitable investiture. Unhappily for her eternal fame, when she distributed her powers of attorney some of the fairies were absent; so Mademoiselle neither sang like a nightingale, nor displayed classic grace in all her actions. But her resemblance to Perrault's heroines was striking. The fairies empowered to invest her with mind and delicacy of feeling had been present at her baptism, and they had left indisputable proof of the origin of her ideas. Like their predecessors, the elves of the Contes, they had never planned for anything less than the marriage of their god-daughter to the King's son. By all that she saw and heard, Mademoiselle knew that Providence had not closed an eye at the moment of her creation. She knew that her quality was essential. She knew that it was written on high that she should marry the son of a great King.
Her life was a conscientious struggle to "accomplish the oracle"; and the marriages that she missed form the weft of her history.
The first of the Mémoires show us the Court of Louis XIII. and the affairs of the day as seen by a little girl. This is an aspect to which historians have not accustomed us; and as a natural result of the infantine point of view the horizons are considerably narrowed. The little Princess did not know that anything important was taking place in Germany. She could not be ignorant of the fact that Richelieu was engaged in a struggle with the high powers of France; she read the general distress in the clouded faces surrounding her. But in her mind she decided that it was nothing but one of her father's quarrels with the Cardinal. The judgments she rendered against the high personages whose houses she frequented were dictated by purely sentimental considerations. "Some she liked; some she did not like"; consequently the former gained, and the latter lost. Many contestants were struggling before her young eyes; Louis XIII. was among the winners.
He was a good uncle, very
Tallemant.