The Wits and Beaux of Society Part 22

FRANcOIS DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT AND THE DUC DE SAINT-SIMON.

Rank and Good Breeding.--The Hotel de Rochefoucault.--Racine and his Plays.--La Rochefoucault's Wit and Sensibility.--Saint Simon's Youth.--Looking out for a Wife.--Saint-Simon's Court Life.--The History of Louise de la Valliere.--A mean Act of Louis Quatorze.--All has pa.s.sed away.--Saint-Simon's Memoirs of His Own Time.

The precursor of Saint-Simon, the model of Lord Chesterfield, this ornament of his age, belonged, as well as Saint-Simon, to that state of society in France which was characterised--as Lord John Russell, in his 'Memoirs of the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans,' tells us--by an idolatry of power and station. 'G.o.d would not condemn a person of that rank,' was the exclamation of a lady of the old _regime_, on hearing, that a notorious sinner, 'Pair de France,' and one knows not what else, had gone to his account impenitent and unabsolved; and though the sentiment may strike us as profane, it was, doubtless, genuine.

Rank, however was often adorned by accomplishments which, like an exemption from rules of conduct, it almost claimed as a privilege.

Good-breeding was a science in France; natural to a peasant, even, it was studied as an epitome of all the social virtues. '_N'etre pas poli_'

was the sum total of all dispraise: a man could only recover from it by splendid valour or rare gifts; a woman could not hope to rise out of that Slough of Despond to which good-breeding never came. We were behind all the arts of civilization in England, as Francois de Rochefoucault (we give the orthography of the present day) was in his cradle. This brilliant personage, who combined the wit and the moralist, the courtier and the soldier, the man of literary tastes and the sentimentalist _par excellence_, was born in 1613. In addition to his hereditary t.i.tle of duc, he had the empty honour, as Saint-Simon calls it, of being Prince de Marsillac, a designation which was lost in that of _De la Rochefoucault_--so famous even to the present day. As he presented himself at the court of the regency, over which Anne of Austria nominally presided, no youth there was more distinguished for his elegance or for the fame of his exploits during the wars of the Fronde than this youthful scion of an ill.u.s.trious house. Endowed by nature with a pleasing countenance, and, what was far more important in that fastidious region, an air of dignity, he displayed wonderful contradictions in his character and bearing. He had, says Madame de Maintenon, '_beaucoup d'esprit, et peu de savoir_;' an expressive phrase. 'He was,' she adds, 'pliant in nature, intriguing, and cautious;' nevertheless she never, she declares, possessed a more steady friend, nor one more confiding and better adapted to advise. Brave as he was, he held personal valour, or affected to do so, in light estimation.

His ambition was to rule others. Lively in conversation, though naturally pensive, he a.s.sembled around him all that Paris or Versailles could present of wit and intellect.

The old Hotel de Rochefoucault, in the Rue de Seine, in the Faubourg St.

Germain, in Paris, still grandly recalls the a.s.semblies in which Racine, Boileau, Madame de Sevigne, the La Fayettes, and the famous d.u.c.h.esse de Longueville, used to a.s.semble. The time honoured family of De la Rochefoucault still preside there; though one of its fairest ornaments, the young, lovely, and pious d.u.c.h.esse de la Rochefoucault of our time, died in 1852--one of the first known victims to diphtheria in France, in that unchanged old locality. There, when the De Longuevilles, the Mazarins, and those who had formed the famous council of state of Anne of Austria had disappeared, the poets and wits who gave to the age of Louis XIV. its true brilliancy, collected around the Duc de la Rochefoucault. What a scene it must have been in those days, as Buffon said of the earth in spring '_tout four-mille de vie!_' Let us people the salon of the Hotel de Rochefoucault with visions of the past; see the host there, in his chair, a martyr to the gout, which he bore with all the cheerfulness of a Frenchman, and picture to ourselves the great men who were handing him his cushion, or standing near his _fauteuil_.

Racine's joyous face may be imagined as he comes in fresh from the College of Harcourt. Since he was born in 1639, he had not arrived at his zenith till La Rochefoucault was almost past his prime. For a man at thirty-six in France can no longer talk prospectively of the departure of youth; it is gone. A single man of thirty, even in Paris, is '_un vieux garcon_:' life begins too soon and ends too soon with those pleasant sinners, the French. And Racine, when he was first routed out of Port Royal, where he was educated, and presented to the whole Faubourg St. Germain, beheld his patron, La Rochefoucault, in the position of a disappointed man. An early adventure of his youth had humbled, perhaps, the host of the Hotel de Rochefoucault. At the battle of St. Antoine, where he had distinguished himself, 'a musket-ball had nearly deprived him of sight. On this occasion he had quoted these lines, taken from the tragedy of '_Alcyonnee_.' It must, however, be premised that the famous d.u.c.h.ess de Longueville had urged him to engage in the wars of the Fronde. To her these lines were addressed:--

'Pour meriter son coeur, pour plaire a ses beaux yeux, J'ai fait la guerre aux Rois, je l'aurais faite aux dieux.'

But now he had broken off his intimacy with the d.u.c.h.esse, and he therefore parodied these lines:--

'Pour ce coeur inconstant, qu'enfin je connais mieux, J'ai fait la guerre aux Rois, j'en ai perdue les yeux.'

Nevertheless, La Rochefoucault was still the gay, charming, witty host and courtier. Racine composed, in 1660, his '_Nymphe de Seine_,' in honour of the marriage of Louis XIV., and was then brought into notice of those whose notice was no empty compliment, such as, in our day, ill.u.s.trious dukes pay to more ill.u.s.trious authors, by asking them to be jumbled in a crowd at a time when the rooks are beginning to caw. We catch, as they may, the shadow of a dissolving water-ice, or see the exit of an unattainable tray of negus. No; in the days of Racine, as in those of Halifax and Swift in England, solid fruits grew out of fulsome praise; and Colbert, then minister, settled a pension of six hundred livres, as francs were called in those days (twenty-four pounds), on the poet. And with this the former pupil of Port Royal was fain to be content. Still he was so poor that he _almost_ went into the church, an uncle offering to resign him a priory of his order if he would become a regular. He was a candidate for orders, and wore a sacerdotal dress when he wrote the tragedy of 'Theagenes,' and that of the 'Freres Ennemis,'

the subject of which was given him by Moliere.

He continued, in spite of a quarrel with the saints of Port Royal, to produce n.o.ble dramas from time to time, but quitted theatrical pursuits after bringing out (in 1677) 'Phedre,' that _chef-d'oeuvre_ not only of its author, but, as a performance, of the unhappy but gifted Rachel.

Corneille was old, and Paris looked to Racine to supply his place, yet he left the theatrical world for ever. Racine had been brought up with deep religious convictions; they could not, however, preserve him from a mad, unlawful attachment. He loved the actress Champmesle: but repentance came. He resolved not only to write no more plays, but to do penance for those already given to the world. He was on the eve of becoming, in his penitence, a Carthusian friar, when his religious director advised marriage instead. He humbly did as he was told, and united himself to the daughter of a treasurer for France, of Amiens, by whom he had seven children. It was only at the request of Madame de Maintenon that he wrote 'Esther' for the convent of St. Cyr, where it was first acted.

His death was the result of his benevolent, sensitive nature. Having drawn up an excellent paper on the miseries of the people, he gave it to Madame de Maintenon to read it to the king. Louis, in a transport of ill-humour, said, 'What! does he suppose because he is a poet that he ought to be minister of state?' Racine is said to have been so wounded by this speech that he was attacked by a fever and died. His decease took place in 1699, nineteen years after that of La Rochefoucault, who died in 1680.

Amongst the circle whom La Rochefoucault loved to a.s.semble were Boileau--Despreaux, and Madame de Sevigne--the one whose wit and the other whose grace completed the delights of that salon. A life so prosperous as La Rochefoucault's had but one cloud--the death of his son who was killed during the pa.s.sage of the French troops over the Rhine.

We attach to the character of this accomplished man the charms of wit; we may also add the higher attractions of sensibility. Notwithstanding the worldly and selfish character which is breathed forth in his 'Maxims and Reflections,' there lay at the bottom of his heart true piety.

Struck by the death of a neighbour, this sentiment seems even on the point of being expressed; but, adds Madame de Sevigne, and her phrase is untranslatable, '_il n'est pas effleure_.'

All has pa.s.sed away! the _Fronde_ has become a memory, not a realized idea. Old people shake their heads, and talk of Richelieu; of his gorgeous palace at Rueil, with its lake and its prison thereon, and its mysterious dungeons, and its avenues of chestnuts, and its fine statues; and of its cardinal, smiling, whilst the worm that never dieth is eating into his very heart; a seared conscience, and playing the fine gentleman to fine ladies in a rich stole, and with much garniture of costly lace: whilst beneath all is the hair shirt, that type of penitence and sanct.i.ty which he ever wore as a salvo against all that pa.s.sion and ambition that almost burst the beating heart beneath that hair shirt.

Richelieu has gone to his fathers. Mazarin comes on the scene; the wily, grasping Italian. He too vanishes; and forth, radiant in youth, and strong in power, comes Louis, and the reign of politeness and periwigs begins.

The Duc de Saint-Simon, perhaps the greatest portrait-painter of any time, has familiarized us with the greatness, the littleness, the graces, the defects of that royal actor on the stage of Europe, whom his own age ent.i.tled Louis the Great. A wit, in his writings, of the first order--if we comprise under the head of wit the deepest discernment, the most penetrating satire--Saint-Simon was also a soldier, philosopher, a reformer, a Trappist, and, eventually, a devotee. Like all young men who wished for court favour, he began by fighting: Louis cared little for carpet knights. He entered, however, into a scene which he has chronicled with as much fidelity as our journalists do a police report, and sat quietly down to gather observations--not for his own fame, not even for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his children or grandchildren--but for the edification of posterity yet a century afar off his own time. The treasures were buried until 1829.

A word or two about Saint-Simon and his youth. At nineteen he was destined by his mother to be married. Now every one knows how marriages are managed in France, not only in the time of Saint-Simon, but even to the present day. A mother or an aunt, or a grandmother, or an experienced friend, looks out; be it for son, be it for daughter, it is the business of her life. She looks and she finds: family, suitable; fortune, convenient; person, _pas mal_; principles, Catholic, with a due abhorrence of heretics, especially English ones. After a time, the lady is to be looked at by the unhappy _pretendu_; a church, a ma.s.s, or vespers, being very often the opportunity agreed. The victim thinks she will do. The proposal is discussed by the two mammas; relatives are called in; all goes well; the contract is signed; then, a measured acquaintance is allowed: but no _tete-a-tetes;_ no idea of love. 'What!

so indelicate a sentiment before marriage! Let me not hear of it,' cries mamma, in a sanctimonious panic. 'Love! _Quelle betise!_' adds _mon pere_.

But Saint-Simon, it seems, had the folly to wish to make a marriage of inclination. Rich, _pair de France_, his father--an old _roue_, who had been page to Louis XIII.--dead, he felt extremely alone in the world. He cast about to see whom he could select. The Duc de Beauvilliers had eight daughters; a misfortune, it may be thought, in France or anywhere else. Not at all: three of the young ladies were kept at home, to be married; the other five were at once disposed of, as they pa.s.sed the unconscious age of infancy, in convents. Saint-Simon was, however, disappointed. He offered, indeed; first for the eldest, who was not then fifteen years old; and finding that she had a vocation for a conventual life, went on to the third, and was going through the whole family, when he was convinced that his suit was impossible. The eldest daughter happened to be a disciple of Fenelon's, and was on the very eve of being vowed to heaven.

Saint-Simon went off to La Trappe, to console himself for his disappointment. There had been an old intimacy between Monsieur La Trappe and the father of Saint-Simon; and this friendship had induced him to buy an estate close to the ancient abbey where La Trappe still existed. The friendship became hereditary; and Saint-Simon, though still a youth, revered and loved the penitent recluse of _Ferte au Vidame_, of which Lamartine has written so grand and so poetical a description.

Let us hasten over his marriage with Mademoiselle de Lorges, who proved a good wife. It was this time a grandmother, the Marechale de Lorges, who managed the treaty; and Saint-Simon became the happy husband of an innocent blonde, with a majestic air, though only fifteen years of age.

Let us hasten on, pa.s.sing over his presents; his six hundred louis, given in a corbeille full of what he styles 'gallantries;' his mother's donation of jewellery; the midnight ma.s.s, by which he was linked to the child who scarcely knew him; let us lay all that aside, and turn to his court life.

At this juncture Louis XIV., who had hitherto dressed with great simplicity, indicated that he desired his court should appear in all possible magnificence. Instantly the shops were emptied. Even gold and silver appeared scarcely rich enough. Louis himself planned many of the dresses for any public occasion. Afterwards he repented of the extent to which he had permitted magnificence to go, but it was then impossible to check the excess.

Versailles, henceforth in all its grandeur, contains an apartment which is called, from its situation, and the opportunities it presents of looking down upon the actors of the scene around, _L'OEil de Boeuf_.

The revelations of the OEil de Boeuf, during the reign of Louis XV., form one of the most amazing pictures of wickedness, venality, power misapplied, genius polluted, that was ever drawn. No one that reads that infamous book can wonder at the revolution of 1789. Let us conceive Saint-Simon to have taken his stand here, in this region, pure in the time of Louis XIV., comparatively, and note we down his comments on men and women.

He has journeyed up to court from La Trappe, which has fallen into confusion and quarrels, to which the most saintly precincts are peculiarly liable.

The history of Mademoiselle de la Valliere was not, as he tells us, of his time. He hears of her death, and so indeed does the king, with emotion. She expired in 1710, in the Rue St. Jacques, at the Carmelite convent, where, though she was in the heart of Paris, her seclusion from the world had long been complete. Amongst the nuns of the convent none was so humble, so penitent, so chastened as this once lovely Louise de la Valliere, now, during a weary term of thirty-five years, 'Marie de la Misericorde.' She had fled from the scene of her fall at one-and-thirty years of age. Twice had she taken refuge among the 'blameless vestals,'

whom she envied as the broken-spirited envy the pa.s.sive. First, she escaped from the torture of witnessing the king's pa.s.sion for Madame de Montespan, by hiding herself among the Benedictine sisters at St. Cloud.

Thence the king fetched her in person, threatening to order the cloister to be burnt. Next, Lauzun, by the command of Louis, sought her, and brought her _avec main forte_. The next time she fled no more; but took a public farewell of all she had too fondly loved, and throwing herself at the feet of the queen, humbly entreated her pardon. Never since that voluntary sepulture had she ceased, during those long and weary years, to lament--as the heart-stricken can alone lament--her sins. In deep contrition she learned the death of her son by the king, and bent her head meekly beneath the chastis.e.m.e.nt.

Three years before her death the triumphant Athenee de Montespan had breathed her last at Bourbon. If Louis XIV. had nothing else to repent of, the remorse of these two women ought to have wrung his heart.

Athenee de Montespan was a youthful, innocent beauty, fresh from the seclusion of provincial life, when she attracted the blighting regards of royalty. A _fete_ was to be given; she saw, she heard that she was its object. She entreated her husband to take her back to his estate in Guyenne, and to leave her there till the king had forgotten her. Her husband, in fatal confidence, trusted her resistance, and refused her pet.i.tion. It was a life-long sorrow; and he soon found his mistake. He lived and died pa.s.sionately attached to his wife, but never saw her after her fall.

When she retired from court, to make room for the empire of the subtle De Maintenon, it was her son, the Duc de Maine, who induced her, not from love, but from ambition, to withdraw. She preserved, even in her seclusion in the country, the style of a queen, which she had a.s.sumed.

Even her natural children by the king were never allowed to sit in her presence, on a _fauteuil_, but were only permitted to have small chairs.

Every one went to pay her court, and she spoke to them as if doing them an honour; neither did she ever return a visit, even from the royal family. Her fatal beauty endured to the last: nothing could exceed her grace, her tact, her good sense in conversation, her kindness to every one.

But it was long before her restless spirit could find real peace. She threw herself on the guidance of the Abbe de la Tour; for the dread of death was ever upon her. He suggested a terrible test of her penitence.

It was, that she should entreat her husband's pardon, and return to him.

It was a fearful struggle with herself, for she was naturally haughty and high spirited; but she consented. After long agonies of hesitation, she wrote to the injured man. Her letter was couched in the most humble language; but it received no reply. The Marquis de Montespan, through a third person, intimated to her that he would neither receive her, nor see her, nor hear her name p.r.o.nounced. At his death she wore widow's weeds; but never a.s.sumed his arms, nor adopted his liveries.

Henceforth, all she had was given to the poor. When Louis meanly cut down her pension, she sent word that she was sorry for the poor, not for herself; they would be the losers. She then humbled herself to the very dust: wore the hardest cloth next her fair skin; had iron bracelets; and an iron girdle, which made wounds on her body. Moreover, she punished the most unruly members of her frame: she kept her tongue in bounds; she ceased to slander; she learned to bless. The fear of death still haunted her; she lay in bed with every curtain drawn, the room lighted up with wax candles; whilst she hired watchers to sit up all night, and insisted that they should never cease talking or laughing, lest, when she woke, the fear of _death_ might come over her affrighted spirit.

She died at last after a few hours' illness, having just time to order all her household to be summoned, and before them to make a public confession of her sins. As she lay expiring, blessing G.o.d that she died far away from the children of her adulterous connection, the Comte d'Antin, her only child by the Marquis de Montespan, arrived. Peace and trust had then come at last to the agonized woman. She spoke to him about her state of mind, and expired.

To Madame de Maintenon the event would, it was thought, be a relief: yet she wept bitterly on hearing of it. The king showed, on the contrary, the utmost indifference, on learning that one whom he had once loved so much was gone for ever.

All has pa.s.sed away! The _OEil de Boeuf_ is now important only as being pointed out to strangers; Versailles is a show-place, not a habitation. Saint-Simon, who lived until 1775, was truly said to have turned his back on the new age, and to live in the memories of a former world of wit and fashion. He survived until the era of the 'Encyclopedie' of Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He lived, indeed, to hear that Montesquieu was no more. How the spirit of Louis XIV. spoke in his contemptuous remarks on Voltaire, whom he would only call Arouet; 'The son of my father's and my own notary.'

At length, after attaining his eightieth year, the chronicler, who knew the weaknesses, the vices, the peculiarities of mankind, even to a hair's breadth, expired; having long given up the court and occupied himself, whilst secluded in his country seat, solely with the revising and amplification of his wonderful Memoirs.

No works, it has been remarked, since those of Sir Walter Scott, have excited so much sensation as the Memoirs of his own time, by the soldier, amba.s.sador, and _Trappist_, Duc de Saint-Simon.