La Grande Mademoiselle. Barine Arvède
does not appear that Madame Saint Georges, that person of so much merit, had done anything to neutralise evil influences.
Throughout the seventeenth century, opinions on the education of girls were very vacillating because little importance was attached to them. In 1687, after all the progress accomplished through the double influence of Port Royal and Madame de Maintenon, Fénelon wrote:
Nothing is more neglected than the education of girls. Fashion and the caprices of the mothers often decide nearly everything. The education of boys is considered of eminent importance because of its bearing upon the public welfare; and while as many errors are committed in the education of boys as in the education of girls, at least it is an accepted idea that a great deal of enlightenment is required for the successful education of a boy.
It was supposed that contact with society would be sufficient to form the mind and to polish the wit of woman. In this fact lay the cause of the inequality then noticeable in women of the same class. They were more or less superior from various points of view, as they had been more or less advantageously placed to profit by their worldly lessons, by the spectacle of life, and by the conversation of honest people.
The privileged ones were women who, like Mademoiselle and her associates, had been accustomed to the social circles where the history of their times was made by the daily acts of life. Their best teachers were the men of their own class, who intrigued, conspired, fought, and died before their eyes, – often for their pleasure. The agitated and peril-fraught lives of those men, their chimeras, and their romanticism put into daily practice, were admirable lessons for the future heroines of the Fronde. To understand the pupils, we must know something of their teachers. What was the process of formation of those professors of energy; in what mould was run that race of venturesome and restless cavaliers who evoked a whole generation of Amazons made in their own image? The system of the education of France of that epoch is in question, and it is worthy of a close and detailed examination.
From their infancy, boys were prepared for the ardent life of their times. They were raised according to a clearly defined and fixed idea common to rich and poor, to noble and to plebeian. The object of a boy's education was to make him a man while he was still very young. The only difference in the opinions of the gentleman and of the bourgeois was this:
The gentleman believed that action was the best stimulant to action. The bourgeois thought that the finer human sentiments, the so-called "humanities," were the only sound foundations for a virile and practical education. But whatever the method used, in that day, a man entered upon life at the age when our sons are but just beginning interminable studies preliminary to their "examinations." At the age of eighteen, sixteen – even fifteen years, – the De Gassions, the La Rochefoucaulds, the Omer Talons, and the Arnauld d'Andillys had become officers, lawyers, or men of business, and in their day affairs bore little resemblance to modern affairs. In our day men do not enter active life until they have been aged and fatigued by the march of years. The time of entrance upon the career of life ought not to be a matter of indifference to a people. At the age of thirty years a man no longer thinks and feels as he thought and felt at the age of twenty. His manner of making war is different; and there is even more difference in his political action. He has different ambitions. 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