Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle Part 18

"A journey was made to Mouchy," wrote Mademoiselle, "where three days were pa.s.sed in reviews. The King ordered a quant.i.ty of troops to be a.s.sembled; he also invited many ladies. All these were in mourning.

There was much diversion; the King was in gay spirits; he sang and made verses during the progress." Although these were not the only ones, Louis did not compose many songs during his life.

He enjoyed feeling free from those wearisome persons who had abused the patronage of his mother in creating themselves censors of their sovereign. No one except his confessor and his preachers concerned themselves further with his sins. When Bossuet and Bourdaloue were appointed Court preachers they restrained themselves but little; but Louis XIV. bore their reproaches with equanimity. It was their duty, and Christians of that date, even bad ones, recognised what they owed to the Church, and bent their heads before the pulpit. Bossuet cried out in the presence of the entire Court that "immoral manners are always bad manners," and that "there is a G.o.d in heaven who avenges the sins of the people, and who, above all, avenges the sins of Kings."[178] He launched apostrophies at Mlle. de La Valliere: "O creatures, shameful idols, withdraw from this Court. Shadows, phantoms, dissipate yourselves in the presence of the truth; false love, deceitful love, canst thou stand before it?"

Bourdaloue, who found Mme. de Montespan in the place of Mlle. de La Valliere, reproached the King for his "debauches," and openly demanded of him in his sermon if he had kept his promise of rupture: "Have you not again seen this person fatal to your firmness and constancy? Have you no more sought occasions so _dangerous_ for you?"

Mme. de Sevigne went one day to hear him at Saint-Germain, where he preached a Lenten sermon before the King and Queen. She returned confounded and angry at his boldness: "We heard after dinner the sermon of Bourdaloue, who speaks with all his force, launching truths with lowered bridle, attacking adultery on every side; regardless of all, he rides straight on."[179] Louis XIV. accepted these public reproaches without protest; there was, however, but little result.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =MADAME DE MONTESPAN= From the engraving by Flameng after the painting by Mignard]

One effect of the death of the Queen Mother was that rivals to Mlle. de La Valliere were free to appear; also there was a great increase in the number of charlatans and alchemists, who found more easily an aristocratic clientele. Diviners and sorcerers also played an important role in the love life of this society--the most polished in the world.

The practice of the magic arts was at that date considered one of the most flourishing Parisian industries. The inhabitants of the streets little frequented, or of the suburbs, were accustomed to the movement which took place in the early morning, or in the evening at dusk, around certain isolated houses.[180] People of all ranks, on foot, in carriages or in chairs, women masked or m.u.f.fled, succeeded each other before a closed door, which only opened at a particular sign.

The state of mind which led this crowd to the clairvoyant was to be found in all cla.s.ses of society, from the highest to the lowest. Public credulity was pa.s.sing through a period of expansion, apparently very much at odds with the splendid intellect of France at that date, at which, however, those who believe the simple formulas of history will not be astonished. Two of our grand cla.s.sic writers have left pages which bear witness to the extent of the evil, existing at the very moment in which France became the actual head of Europe.

Moliere mocks at occult science and its adepts, through a long play, or rather a libretto for a ballet,[181] which he wrote for the King in 1670, named as we already know, _Les Amants Magnifiques_. The _dramatis personae_ are divided into two camps according to a rule of his own, in a fashion very unpleasant for the grandees of this world, Moliere allowing them the precedence in folly. It was sufficient for his heroes to be ill.u.s.trious through rank, to endow them with a blind faith in all conjurers. "The truth of astrology," says the Prince Iphicrate, "is an incontestable fact, and no one can dispute against the cert.i.tude of its predictions." This is also the opinion of the Prince Timocles: "I am sufficiently incredulous in regard to many things, but as for astrology, there is nothing more certain and more constant than the success with which horoscopes may be drawn." The Princess Aristione also agrees, and is anxious in finding that her daughter is less convinced.

This is a commencement of a freedom of thought, and one cannot know to what it may lead: "My daughter," says the mother, "you have a little incredulity which never leaves you."

Disbelief in astrology and sorcery is represented in the play of Moliere, figuring in the name of "c.l.i.tidas, court jester," and of another person of obscure birth, "Sostrate, general of the army," who takes the part of c.l.i.tidas against the calmer prophets and other exploiters of human folly.

There is nothing more agreeable [says he] than all the great promises of this sublime knowledge. To transform everything into gold; to find immortal life; to heal by words; to make oneself beloved by the person of one's desires; to know all the secrets of the future; to call down from the sky at will impressions upon metals which bear happiness to mortals[182]; to command demons; to render armies invisible and soldiers invulnerable--all this is doubtless charming, and there are people who have no trouble in believing in the possibility; it is the easiest thing in the world for some men to be convinced, but for me, I avow that my grosser mind has some difficulty in comprehending and in believing.

La Fontaine has treated the same subject in three of his fables. It is in one of these, _Les Devineresses_, published in 1678, consequently before the famous drama _Les Poisons_, in which he shows himself very well acquainted with what the police had not yet been sufficiently clever to discover. He knew marvellously well the existence of the _poudre de succession_ and of the _poudre pour l'amour_:

Une femme, a Paris, faisait la pythonisse.

On l'allait consulter sur chaque evenement; Perdait-on un chiffon, avait-on un amant, Un mari vivant trop, au gre de son epouse, Une mere facheuse, une femme jalouse, Chez la Devineuse on courait, Pour se faire annoncer ce que l'on desirait.

The warning was not heeded, and it needed the "burning chamber" of 1680 to make honest people comprehend that "clairvoyant" was too often another name for "seller of poisons." La Fontaine had, however, given no new information about the confidence inspired. This fact was already too well known.

This dangerous agency, of which we have already had a glimpse on the occasion of the first search for Lesage and Mariette, merits some descriptive details. In Paris, during a period of twenty years, it was so mixed up with intrigues and crimes that it exercised a real influence over the morals of the Parisian world and through it over the affairs at Court.

Like a wave of madness it swept over the heads especially of the women.

Many of these, even those not directly mingling in political life, were in a state of revolt, inconsolable for having lost the importance acquired during the civil troubles.

Women had been emanc.i.p.ated by the force of affairs. During the actual fighting and the general disorders which ensued, the habit of remaining in the shade of obedience was lost; also the considering themselves only as objects of luxury.

Louis XIV. had undertaken the task of bringing the s.e.x back to the playing of a decorative or utilitarian role. It was almost as if to-day we should demand of our daughters, so free, so mingled with the general movement, to return suddenly to the self-effacement and the thousand restraints of our own youth. They would be transported with rage.

In 1666, the larger portion of the clients of the necromancer sought above everything else a secret by the aid of which they might shake off the yoke that had again fallen upon their shoulders. The husband was the natural incarnation of this yoke. It was therefore against him that the revolt was habitually directed. The wives addressed themselves to a clairvoyant. The first consultation was generally innocent enough.

The clairvoyant counselled new-comers to go to the good Saint Denis, always a succour for women unhappy in their domestic life, and to the indefatigable Saint Antoine de Padua. She reserved until later the giving of certain powders, only hinting at their existence, the secret of which had been brought from Italy and which were sought at Paris by both provincials and strangers.

It is now known through contemporaneous doc.u.ments that a.r.s.enic was an element in these powders, and that so many persons accused themselves in confession of having "poisoned some one" that the priests of Notre-Dame at length gave warning to the authorities (1673). Did the penitents, especially the women, always speak the truth? Popular imagination is so quickly fired when poisoning is suggested, that it may well be queried whether a portion of the unfortunates were not rather hysterical and victims of hallucinations. It is probable that the true answer will never be known. Physicians at that time were the doctors of Moliere, and the science of chemistry did not exist.

With the husband softened or suppressed, the women demanded love to replace emotion in their contracted and faded existence. The task of the necromancer thus consisted in interesting G.o.d or the devil in the heart pangs of her client and of arousing an affection in the breast of the man she designated. This was the beginning for the new clients; the end was the black ma.s.s with its obscene rites or the b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s, for which a small infant was strangled.

All the forms of conjuration were used between the two, every charm, every talisman and many "kinds of powders," not always inoffensive. The consultations were paid for according to the rank or fortune of the clients. In default of money, a jewel was given or even a signed note, the imprudence of which last proceeding it is hardly needful to point out.

In the year of the death of Anne of Austria, one of the clairvoyants most frequented was the wife of a hosier named Antoine Montvoisin, whose shop was situated upon the Pont Marie, which to-day still unites the right bank of the Seine with the isle Saint-Louis. The Pont Marie, as almost all the bridges of Paris at that date, had a double row of houses, with shops beneath, which formed a very animated street. The affairs of Montvoisin, however, had not prospered. He had tried several commercial undertakings without success. He had been dry-goods merchant and jeweller, and had always "lost his shops," according to the expression of his wife, Catherine Montvoisin, familiarly called "the neighbour."

[Ill.u.s.tration: =LA VOISIN= From a print in the Bibliotheque Nationale]

It is under this latter name that she became celebrated in the annals of crime. La Voisin the fortune-teller is the same as La Voisin the poisoner. At the date of the hosiery shop, she had not yet attracted the attention of justice, in spite of her installation, but ill-a.s.sured, on the Pont Marie, which obliged her to have a double domicile, or to give rendezvous at the house of her confrere. She gained large sums of money.

The price for consultation varied from a single piece to several thousand francs, or from an old rag to a necklace of precious stones, and again she drew something from the acolytes of both s.e.xes who a.s.sisted in her wicked works. It was known from herself that her property was held in her own right, her husband having been always unfortunate in business. In spite of this precaution, the money slipped through her fingers. It is true that she had expenses, children to bring up and relatives to support. She said: "I have ten persons to feed," but she was economical for others. La Voisin gave a crown a week to her mother and brought up her daughter as a small shop-keeper. It was she herself who, in company with other miserables of her own kind, spent madly. The position of husband of a poisoner seems to have been a precarious one. Antoine Montvoisin was familiar with the nature of his wife's industry, but his conscience did not forbid his profiting by it for his own comfort. His conscience also permitted him to appropriate to himself money entrusted to him by his wife to execute the orders for the _neuvaines_. He was as much a free-thinker as any of the Vardes or Guiches, and convinced that the _neuvaines_ were absolutely useless. As to going further, to putting his own "paw in the dish," he was successfully prudent. He was never anxious; but he was actually daily in danger of being poisoned, for La Voisin could not suffer this coward.

She would have liked to replace him by a veritable a.s.sociate, and between the pair, there were perpetual fights for pre-eminence in deceit.

The good man Antoine would certainly have died through poisoning in spite of all his care, if he had not conceived the ingenious idea of uniting himself with an executioner, to whom he confided the situation.

It was agreed between the two that, if Montvoisin should die before his wife, the hangman should speak and demand an autopsy. La Voisin became afraid. She tried to poison her husband on a journey, but did not succeed, and finally considered it safer to keep him with her.

She had benefited, as had also the entire corporation, by the hopes awakened in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of many of the pretty women among the aristocracy by the death of the Queen Mother.

Anne of Austria had taken so ill the first digression of her son from the paths of virtue that the aspirants for the succession to Mlle. de La Valliere had preserved a certain discretion. When the rebuffs of the old Queen were no longer to be feared, the pa.s.sions were unchained and a flock of youthful, ambitious women addressed themselves to the "duties of fashion" in order to arrive at the good graces of the King.[183] The boldest demanded at the same time "something against Mlle. de La Valliere." Amongst these young women was found the Marquise de Montespan, who loved neither her husband nor the King, but who was harra.s.sed by her creditors, was very conscious of her own value, and determined to be "recognised mistress," since this was now a position admitted and cla.s.sified.

She was as "beautiful as the day," says Saint-Simon, without being "perfectly agreeable";--the correction is by Mme. de La Fayette. She had all the wit possible, was delicious in eccentricities and courtesies. In spite of so much brilliancy, the King rather avoided her and she was reduced to amusing Marie-Therese, who admitted her freely, having full confidence in her virtue. The Queen had been deceived by the pious austerities of the young Marquise, by her frequent communions, and by a ma.s.s of religious practices which were really actuated by a sincere sentiment, and which Mme. de Montespan preserved as far as she could, notwithstanding the scandals of her after life. Understood in this manner, a sense of duty towards religion did not prevent resorting to sorceresses. It rather led in this direction in giving to the perverse soul "the vague consciousness of something beyond."[184]

Mme. de Montespan became one of the best clients of La Voisin, regarding neither the expense nor the decency of the ceremonies, provided that the devil would make her the beloved of Louis XIV. Faring better than her rivals, she received the value of her money. She began her campaign in the course of the year 1666. The _Memoires_ of Mademoiselle, very full on this subject, and elsewhere confirmed, inform us that in the spring of 1667, Mme. de Montespan had supplanted La Valliere; it was the young Queen alone who was ignorant of this fact.

Less than two years after, La Voisin had the imprudence to make a disturbance because two of her aids had not acted honestly toward her.

One of these was a priest, called Mariette, attached to the Church of Saint Severin. La Voisin made use of him in sacrilegious practices. The other, Lesage, was a sort of Jack of all trades, who recoiled before no abomination. La Voisin accused them of having a.s.saulted one of her clients, Mme. de Montespan, a fact true enough, but useless to proclaim from the housetops.

"The quarrel having made some noise," reports La Reynie, "and the King, having learned that these people were practising impieties and sacrileges, had them watched." Mariette and Lesage were arrested. The examinations have been preserved for us. Here is an essential pa.s.sage: Mariette avowed without hesitation to having spoken the Gospels "over the heads of various persons," a form of conjuration relatively innocent. The names were demanded. "Over the heads of the Lady de Bougy, Mme. de Montespan, la Duverger, M. de Ravetot, all of which persons Lesage had led to him."[185]

With this information secured, Louis XIV. ordered prosecution:

SAINT-GERMAIN, August 16, 1668.

I write this letter to tell you that it is my intention to have the said Mariette and Dubuisson[186] conducted from my chateau to the Chatelet of the City of Paris, for the continuation of their prosecution.

One may be sure that the King did not lose this inquest from view. Louis XIV. was most eager for police details and this affair touched him too nearly to be forgotten.

At the beginning of the investigation, it was discovered that Mariette was first cousin to the wife of the judge. On account of this connection, the Chatelet estimated that it was for the honour of the magistracy to stifle the affair. He brought every effort to accomplish this and evidently met with practical approbation from the powerful of this world, for history permits us to see numerous irregularities.

La Voisin, returning to her senses, heartily seconded the Justice in his efforts to obtain succour from those in high positions. Mariette and Lesage, after a period of trials and difficulties, were left in peace to occupy themselves with their ambiguous trade. Both of these men figured again in the monster process of 1680, in which they were among those who spread details concerning the abominable practices with which the Mme. de Montespan had been connected during long years. It does not matter here whether these details are additions to the truth or not, for it is only Louis XIV. who interests us, not Mme. de Montespan.

The letter cited above proves all that is necessary, that the King knew, from the year 1668, that his new mistress had connection with the criminal world, and that she had intimate interviews with ign.o.ble persons, submitted to degrading contact, and had practised in their company sacrilegious rites. This monarch who pa.s.sed for being so delicately keen in matters of punishment showed himself singularly little moved.

Surrounded by free-thinkers without prejudices, himself more or less of a free-thinker, he resembles so little, either morally or physically, the bewigged figure of the end of the reign, and of the _Memoires_ of Saint-Simon, that he appears as another individual. How easily both proprieties and punishments are put on one side when pa.s.sion reigns, but how much more alive, how much more of a natural human being, compared to the wooden figure of the portraits of Versailles, is the King as now seen; Louis XIV. is decidedly an enigmatical quant.i.ty.

It would be inexact to state that pa.s.sions had become more lively than they were during the wars of the Fronde, an epoch especially ardent; but they had certainly changed their character, as had the tastes, ideas, literature, and fashions in general. This is the usual course of events, and, as we have seen, the movement was precipitated under the influence of a monarch all-powerful, determined to efface the past.

An artistic event which should not be overlooked had favoured the designs of Louis XIV., in opening unknown perspectives to the curious after new sensations, already numerous in the seventeenth century.

Dramatic music made its entry into the modern world. It brought with it, according to the phrase of one of its historians, M. Romain Rolland,[187] an "unlimited power for expressing pa.s.sion, and with pa.s.sionate emotion all that remains incommunicable through the medium of language alone." We may or may not love music, but it must be admitted that a creation of this nature will certainly exercise a strong influence over the refined portion of a nation.

French society could not escape. The new art was in train to modify the nervous system, if I dare thus speak, of the world in which flourished, under the royal protection, those rather perilous ideas upon the rights of nature and the fatality of pa.s.sion. Day by day, new chords were struck upon impressionable hearts. Dramatic music was born in Italy; as might well be. In the year 1597, upon a carnival evening, a rich Florentine entertained a choice audience with a musical tragedy called _Dafne_, of which the score is lost. According to one of the guests, "the pleasure and astonishment which seized the soul of the auditors before so novel a spectacle could hardly be expressed."

M. Romain Rolland confirms this testimony: "It was like a thunderbolt.