La Grande Mademoiselle. Barine Arvède
girl, and I was very glad of it, for she pleased me much – so I saw her often.
Mademoiselle did not suspect that there was anything comical in this passage; had she done so she would not have written it, because she was not one of those who admit that it is sometimes permissible to smile at the great.
On her return from her journey she resumed her ordinary life.
I passed the winter in Paris as I had passed my other winters. Twice a week I went to the assemblies given by Mme. the Countess de Soissons at the Hôtel de Brissac. At these assemblies the usual diversions were comedies [plays] and dancing. I was very fond of dancing and, for love of me, they danced there very often…
There were also assemblies with comedies at the Queen's, at Richelieu's, and at a number of personages', and Mademoiselle herself received at the Tuileries.
The night of the 23d-24th January (1636) [reports the Gazette] Mademoiselle in her lodgings at the Tuileries, gave a comedy and a ball to the Queen, where the Good Grace of this princess in the dawn of her life, gave proof of what her noontide is to be. The 24th February, Monsieur gave a comedy and a collation to His Royal Highness of Parma at Mademoiselle his daughter's, in her apartments at the Tuileries.
Mademoiselle passed the days and the nights in fêtes. Her studies did not suffer by it because she never studied and never knew anything of study outside of reading and writing, making a courtesy, and carefully observing the rules of a minute etiquette.
It is probable that she owed the little that she knew to several months of forced retreat in a convent, when she was nine years old. She made herself so intolerable to every one, – it is she who tells it, – she was so vexatious, with her "grimaces" and her "mockeries," that they put her in a cloister to try to discipline her and to correct her faults; the plan succeeded: "They saw me return … wiser, and better than I had been." Yes, more sober, better behaved, and a little less ignorant, but not much less. The following letter, bearing the date of her maturity, shows more clearly than all the descriptions in the world, the degree of instructions which satisfied the seventeenth century's ideas of the education of a princess. The letter is addressed to Colbert ("a Choisy ce 5 Août 1665"):
Monsieur, le sieur Segrais qui est de la cademy et qui a bocoup travalie pour la gloire du Roy et pour le public, aiant este oublie lannee passée dans les gratifications que le Roy a faicts aux baus essprit ma prie de vous faire souvenir de luy set un aussi homme de mérite et qui est a moi il ya long tams jespere que cela ne nuira pas a vous obliger a avoir de la consideration pour luy set se que je vous demande et de une croire, monsieur Colbert, etc.
This orthography did not hinder Mademoiselle when, under the name of "Princess Cassandane" she figured in the Grand Dictionnaire des Précieuses; and according to the distinctions established between the "true précieuse" and the "Savante" by Mademoiselle de Scudéry, she had a right to figure there, as had many of her noble contemporaries, who would have been the shame of the humblest of the schools.
The "true précieuse," she who left comets and the Greek language to the "Savantes," applied herself to the task of penetrating the mysteries of the heart. That was her science, and from certain points of view it was worth as much as any other.
La Grande Mademoiselle devoted her talents and her life to the perfection of her particular art. Keeping well within the limits that she herself had set, she made a special study of the hearts of princesses and of everything concerning them; and she professed that she had established, definitely, the only proper methods by which persons of her quality should, bound in duty to themselves, look upon love, and upon glory.
The wells from which she drew her spiritual draughts were not exclusively her own; she shared their benefits with all honest people, of either sex, engaged in completing the sentimental education by the essential principle of life.
CHAPTER II
I. Anne of Austria and Richelieu – Birth of Louis XIV. – II. L'Astrée and its Influence – III. Transformation of the Public Manners – The Creation of the Salon – The Hôtel de Rambouillet and Men of Letters.
But little information concerning the affairs of the day previous to the last months of the reign of Louis XIII. can be gleaned from the Mémoires of La Grande Mademoiselle. It is hardly credible that a young girl raised at the Court of France, not at all stupid, and because of her birth so situated as to see and to hear everything, could have gone through some of the most thrilling catastrophes of that tragic time without seeing or hearing anything. At a later day Mademoiselle was the first to wonder at it; she furnishes an example surpassing imagination.
In 1637, before starting on her journey into the province, she went to bid adieu to "their Majesties," who were at Chantilly. Mademoiselle fell upon a drama. Richelieu had just disgraced the Queen of France, who had been declared guilty of abusing her religious retreat at the Convent of Val-de-Grâce by holding secret correspondence with Spain. Val-de-Grâce had been ransacked, and one of Anne of Austria's servants had been arrested. Anne herself had been questioned like a criminal, and she had had a very bitter tête-à-tête in her chamber with such a Richelieu as she had never met before.
It was then ten years since Louis XIII., abruptly entering his wife's private apartments, had interrupted a declaration of love made by his Minister. After Marie de Médicis, Anne of Austria! Evidently it was a system of policy in which pride of personal power played its part. Possibly the heart also played some small rôle when Anne of Austria was young and beautiful; but it was the heart of a Richelieu, and unless we know what such a thing is like it is difficult to explain the Minister's attitude at Chantilly. Historians have not taken the trouble to tell us, because there were things more important to them and to the history of Europe than the exploits of so high-flying a Cardinal. Nevertheless, even an historian could have made an interesting chapter out of the sentimental life of Richelieu. It was a violent and cruel life; as violent and as pitiless as the passions that haunted his harrowed soul. Michelet compared the Duke's life to "a lodging that had been ransacked." In him love was a cloak thickly lined with hatred. Mme. de Motteville, who witnessed Richelieu's courtship of the Queen, was astonished by his way of making love. "The first marks of his affection," she writes, "were his persecutions of her. They burst out before everybody, and we shall see that this new way of loving will last as long as the Cardinal lives."
Anne of Austria felt only his persecutions. Richelieu was not pleasing to women. He was the earthly All-powerful. He possessed riches and genius, but they knew that he was cruel – even pitiless – in anger; and he could not persuade them to pretend to love him; all, even Marion de Lorme, mocked and laughed at him, and Retz gave a reason for their conduct:
Not being a pedant in anything else, he was a thorough pedant in gallantry, and this is the fault that women never pardon. The Queen detested Richelieu, and she made him feel it; but he took his revenge at Val-de-Grâce. After the outburst – after the word treason had been spoken – it rested with him to have mercy, or to send into shameless banishment the barren Queen. It gave him pleasure to see her cowering before him, frightened and deprived of all her pride. He exulted in disdaining her with an exaggerated and insulting affectation of respect, and fearing lest the scene should not be known to posterity, he painted it with all the zest of the reaction of his wounded dignity.27 He listened complacently while she drove the nails into her coffin, rendering more proofs of her docility "than he should have dared to expect"; incriminating herself, as she explained in her own way, by palpable untruths, all her treasonable letters to her brothers and to her friends in Spain. When she had told a great deal more than she knew, Richelieu put a few sharp questions, and the Queen completely lost her head.
Then [wrote Richelieu, in his chronicle] she confessed to the Cardinal everything which is in the paper signed by her afterwards. She confessed with much displeasure and confusion, because she had taken oaths contrary to what she was confessing. While she made the said confession to the Cardinal her shame was such that she cried out several times, "Oh, how kind you must be, Monsieur the Cardinal!" protesting that all her life she should be grateful and recognise the obligation she was under to those who drew her out