Original
What might make us doubt the truth of the anecdote is primarily the character of the author who related it to us. Madame de Genlis made a travesty of everything: the past, the present and even the future. She put romanticism and romance into her own existence as well as that of others; whether it is a question of events of which she was witness or of those which she relates from hearsay, it is never prudent to accept her word without confirmation.
Let us apply the test. Neither in the memoirs nor in the letters of the first half of the eighteenth century have I discovered an allusion to the intrigue of one of the sisters of M. le Due with the gentleman whom a stag mortally wounded in the forest of Chantilly on August 30, 1724. I have questioned the man who today best knows the history of Chantilly, M. Gustav Macon: he told me that he has never met a mention of the adventure of Mlle, de Clermont before 1802, the date at which Madame de Genlis published her novel.
We do not know much about the pretty naiad painted by Nattier. We know the charm of her features and we know that Montesquieu wrote for her the Temple de Guide, "with no other aim than to make a poetic picture of voluptuousness." But an anecdote told by Duclos will show us a person somewhat different from the heroine of Madame de Genlis. When the marriage of Louis XV with Marie Leczinska was decided upon, the Due d'Antin was sent to Strasbourg as an envoy to the Polish princess. He pronounced in these circumstances a discourse in which, with singular lack of tact, he found it necessary to make an allusion to the project which M. le Duc had recently conceived of marrying the King to the youngest of his sisters, Mlle, de Sens: the King, he said, having to choose between the Graces and Virtues, had taken the latter. Mile, de Clermont, superintendent of the future household of the Queen, heard this remark: "Apparently," she said, "d'Antin takes us, my sisters and myself, for prostitutes." This is not the tone of the romance of Madame de Genlis.
Original
Madame de Tracy relates that one day she read Mademoiselle de Clermont and wept for a solid hour. Madame de Coigny then said to her: "But all that is not true." Madame de Tracy answered: "What has that to do with it, if it seems true?" And Madame de Tracy was right.... Today it seems a little less true, and I do not promise my female readers, if they take the fancy of reading Mademoiselle de Clermont, that they will weep for an hour. It is even possible that in certain places they might have more desire to laugh than to weep. Nevertheless, it is a pleasant bit to read under the trees of Chantilly, this tiny romance printed by Didot, and which Desenne illustrated with fine and childish little designs, where we see gentlemen in wigs and ladies in curls in surroundings of Empire style; a lovable and opportune anachronism, for it has marvelously translated the character of this sentimental novel, which never had any history back of it.
XV. THE CHÂTEAU OF WIDEVILLE.
IN a little valley, between Versailles and Maule, at the end of an immense green carpet where a few old garden statues still stand, the château of Wideville deploys its beautiful façade of red brick framed in white stone. The harmonious lines of the uneven roofs show up against the background of the wooded hillside. Around the building, wide moats filled with running water form a square, and at each angle of the platform projects a square bastion topped by a watch tower. This parade-armor harmonizes well with the robust elegance of the construction. On beholding the admirable mixture here produced by the reminiscences of the feudal manor, the graces of the Renaissance and the majesty of classic architecture, we immediately think of that magical line of Victor Hugo:
It was a grand château of the day of Louis Treize.
To tell the truth, we know no other architectural work in France which expresses with more delicacy and seduction the noble and chivalrous charm of the period when order and discipline had not effaced all traces of fancy. And as, by rare good fortune, Wideville still belongs to descendants of him who built it, and as its possessors have preserved it and repaired it with jealous care and perfect taste, it is a living image of French art of the time of Louis XIII which we have before our eyes.
At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the manor of Wideville was a square fortress, flanked with towers and rising upon a mound; it was doubtless restored at the time of the Renaissance, for magnificent mantels of this period were moved into the new château which Claude de Bullion built in 1632 at the bottom of the valley, after he had bought the estate of Wideville from René de Longueil, Marquis de Maisons.
This little Claude de Bullion was a very great personage, though the tininess of his stature provoked all kinds of jeers. He was the son of a Burgundian magistrate, and his mother was one of the twenty children of Charles de Lamoignon. Tallemant des Réaux has related that a certain Countess de Sault had contributed to the advancement of the little Claude, and had succeeded in getting him nominated as President of the Inquests. "Ah! Madame!" she said one day to Marie de Médicis, "if you only knew Monsieur de Bullion as well as I do!"
"Gawd preserve me from it, Madame la Comtesse!" replied the Italian. Henri IV had charged him with various embassies. Louis XIII made him guardian of the seals of his orders, and then superintendent of the finances. Whatever may have been the origin of the good luck of Bullion, he showed himself worthy of his position by his talent and probity. When he became superintendent of the finances, he had the prudence to make an inventory of his property, in order to be able to defend himself against any future accusation of peculation. It became necessary for him to provide for the financial demands of Richelieu, which were terrible. So he laid new taxes and became very unpopular, but it did not displease him to oppose the multitude. In 1636, when the Spanish army had invaded the kingdom, Richelieu did not dare to face the discontent of the people, exasperated by defeat. "And I," said Bullion to him, "whom they hate more than your Eminence, I will go through the whole city on horseback, followed by two lackeys only, and no one will say a word to me." He did it as he had promised, and the next day the Cardinal, emboldened, repaired in a carriage with doors open from his palace to the Porte Saint Antoine.
The King and his minister backed up Bullion.
He groaned incessantly about the state of the finances and forecast bankruptcy. His complaints did not trouble Richelieu: "As to the humors of M. de Bullion," wrote the Cardinal, "we must overlook them without worrying about them, when they are bad."
He was extremely rich, for he was a good manager and received each year from the King a present of one hundred thousand livres in addition to his salary. His manner of life never exceeded his income. Later, in the time of the great prodigality of the superintendent Nicolas Fouquet, people recalled the economy of M. de Bullion and the modest appearance of his hotel in the Rue Plâtrière. As for his morals, they were scandalous, also on the authority of Tallemant. The superintendent often repaired to the Faubourg Saint Victor, to the home of his friend Doctor de Brosse, who had there founded a botanical garden, and there he indulged in gross debauchery at his ease. But we possess a very curious letter from Richelieu to Madame de Bullion, where we read: "I would like to be able to witness more usefully than I have the affection with which I shall always be at your service. Aside from the fact that the consideration of your merit would cause this, the frequent solicitations which M. de Bullion makes to me in regard to what can concern your contentment, renders me not a little agreeable to this. I have seen the day when I believed that he was one of those husbands who love their wives only because of the money they have brought; but now I perceive that he loves his skin better than his shirt, the interest of his wife more than those of another, and that he is, as concerns marriage, like those who do not think that they have done a good work unless they do it in secret...." Harmonize the testimony of Tallemant with that of Richelieu.
Original
The story of Bullion's death is rather tragic. On December 21, 1640, in the new château of Saint Germain, as the King, who was already very ill, seemed to sleep before the fire, stretched out in his great Roman chair, some courtiers who were talking in a window embrasure asked one another in a low voice who would succeed Cardinal de Richelieu, whose life was known to be in danger. The King heard their words and turned around: "Gentlemen," he said, "you forget M. de Bullion." On the next day the words of Louis XIII were reported to the minister, who became furious at the thought that his place was being thus disposed of. He harshly criticized Bullion, who had come to see him as ordinarily, for having forgotten a detail of administration, and wished to make him sign an acknowledgment of it. As the superintendent refused, he seized the tongs from the fireplace "to give them to him on the head." Bullion signed, but was stricken with apoplexy as the result. He was bled twice in the arm. The Cardinal came to see him, and found him without speech or knowledge. "Having seen which,"—it is Guy Patin who relates it,—"dissolved in tears, the Cardinal Prince returned. The sick man died from congestion of the brain."
Such was the man who built the Château de Wideville. The neighborhood of Saint Germain, and the nearness of the forests where the King usually hunted, doubtless decided him to choose for his residence this melancholy and solitary valley surrounded by woods.
We do not know what architect drew the plan and superintended the construction of Wideville. We do not know to whom to attribute this building, so well seated upon the fortified platform, these façades so pleasingly designed, cut by a central projection and flanked by two pavilions, these roofs where dormers of charming style alternate with projecting bull's-eyes, these rounded platforms which unite the mansion to the court of honor and to the gardens, and that delightful coloring which is given to the whole construction by the happy union of stone and brick.
Two great artists collaborated in the decoration of Wideville, the sculptor Sarazin and the painter Vouet, for whom Bullion seems to have felt especial esteem, for he commissioned the pair of them with the ornamentation of his Parisian hotel also. Sarazin executed the four statues in niches which beautify the façade towards the gardens; he also carved the two hounds which guard the door of the house on the same side.
Original
Behind the château are gardens in the French style. The flower-beds have been restored in the antique taste. In Bullion's time a wide avenue started from the platform, bordered with mythological statues, works of Buyster, but nothing remains of it today. The grotto, situated at the end of this alley, still exists, and this grotto is the marvel of Wideville. Of all the edifices of this species with which fashion ornamented so many French gardens in imitation of Italy, this is, I believe, the best preserved. It is a pavilion whose façade presents four columns of the Tuscan order, cut by rustic drums and charged with carved mosses. The three bays between these columns are closed by hammered iron gratings, masterpieces of the locksmith's art. Male and female figures, representing rivers, lying on a bed of roses, enframe the arched pediment which surmounts the grotto. The interior is lined with shells. The nymphæum has lost its statues, but we still see the vase from which water flowed through three lions' heads. Stucco figures of satyrs frame the great cartouches of the ceiling, where Youet executed admirable mythological paintings. These are now very much damaged, but what time has spared of them shows a marvelous decorator, a worthy disciple of the great Venetians.
Near the chateau, a pleasant little house which is called the "Hermitage," and which was slightly modified in the eighteenth century, contains some delicate wood carvings. Farther away stands the chapel, a simple oratory with an arched ceiling. There, before the altar, a stone sarcophagus bears the words Respect and Obedience; this is the sepulcher of the Duchesse de La Vallière, niece of the Carmelite Louis de la Miséricorde. Of all the phantoms which people Wideville, there is none more charming than that of Julie de Crussol, Duchesse de La Vallière. The whole eighteenth century celebrated her grace, her charity, her sharp and brilliant wit, her beauty which defied years. Voltaire versified for her his finest compliments. During the whole Revolution she remained in her château, and her presence preserved Wideville from the fate which then overtook so many old seigniorial domains. The thought of being buried under the earth had always horrified her; so her remains were placed in this sarcophagus standing above ground.
Like the exterior and the gardens, the apartments of the château have preserved their aspect of earlier years. Some changes which dated from the eighteenth century have been removed in order that the house might be as it was in the time of Claude de Bullion.
Three Renaissance chimney pieces adorn the great rooms of Wideville. They are constructed of white stone and of different colored marbles, ornamented with marvelous carvings, which represent foliage, sirens and female heads, and they were found in the earlier manor which Bullion demolished. Perhaps it was by the advice of Sarazin that he had them moved to the new home.
Except the guardroom, whose ceiling is a masterpiece of architectural ingenuity, all the rooms of the château have ceilings with painted beams. The enameled brick pavements are intact. Everywhere are tapestries, one of which with deliciously faded tones represents the siege of La Rochelle, precious paintings, family portraits. In the "King's Chamber" almost nothing has been changed since January 23, 1634; it was on this day that Louis XIII paid M. de Bullion the compliment of sleeping at Wideville. And everywhere there occurs to our memory the line of Victor Hugo:
It was a grand chateau of the time of Louis Treize.
XVI. THE ABBEY OF LIVRY
THE ancient abbey of Livry, situated between the village of Livrv-en-l'Aulnoye and that of Clichy-sous-Bois, three leagues from Paris, is about to be sold by public auction. This property belonged to the Congregation of the Fathers of the Assumption, who had their houses of novices here. As in a short time it will probably be turned over to speculators, who will cut it into lots for suburban houses, it is necessary before its destruction to evoke some of the souvenirs which have rendered this place illustrious.
Other than precious and charming memories, there is nothing which can interest us at Livry; and these relate only to literary history. The religious chronicles of the abbey of Notre Dame de Livry, founded at the end of the twelfth century as a monastery of canons regular, offers no episode worthy of attention. There is nothing here for the archaeologist save a pile of old stones, remnants of capitals and of funeral slabs, which were discovered a few years ago. Of the architecture of the ancient monastery, there remains only a dwelling house of the seventeenth century. The rest of the buildings were destroyed after the Revolution and have since been replaced by characterless structures. Finally, though the park presents almost its former beautiful design, its trees were replanted in the nineteenth century. But Livry was the "pretty abbey" dear to Madame de Sévigné. It is here that she wrote her most charming pages, passed her sweetest horns, felt the most vividly the seduction of the country. So Livry is sacred soil for every lover of French letters.
Original
In 1624 the King gave the abbey of Livry to Christophe de Coulanges as commendator. He was then only eighteen years old.
In both a spiritual and a worldly sense the abbey was in a pitiable condition: its church was crumbling, its houses were scarcely inhabitable, and great disorder reigned among the few ecclesiastics who remained in the cloister. The young abbot was pious and economical. The abbey was reformed with his consent, the church restored, and a part of the cloister rebuilt. He put up this grand building of noble and simple aspect, which still stands; he made of it an agreeable country house, surrounded by orange trees, flower beds bits of water, and easily accessible, for a fine avenue joined it to the highway from Paris to Meaux. He furnished apartments there, received his family and his friends, and led a life without display, but without privations. Besides, if the rule was then strictly observed in the monastery, the monks were not very numerous: in 1662, there were only eight professed friars there. 30
In 1636, the Abbé de Coulanges was invested with the guardianship of a little orphan, his niece, Marie de Chantai: the child was ten years old; the tutor twenty-nine. For fifty years he watched over the person and the property of his ward with an entirely paternal solicitude, gave her very wise masters, like Ménage and Chapelain, occupied himself with her establishment and, when she became a widow, wisely administered her fortune. But everything was said by Madame de Sévigné herself, when the "very good" died: "There is nothing good that he did not do for me, either in giving me his own property entirely, or in preserving and reestablishing that of my children. He drew me from the abyss in which I was at the death of M. de Sévigné, he won lawsuits, he restored all my properties to good condition, he paid our debts, he made the estate which my son inhabits the most handsome and agreeable in the world, he married off my children; in a word I owe peace and repose in life to his continuous cares..." And she adds this reflection so tenderly true and so sadly human: "The loss that we feel when the old die is often considerable when we have great reasons for loving them and when we have always seen them." (September 2, 1687.)
Madame de Sévigné had passed her youth at Livry near this worthy man. After the death of her husband she stayed there from choice. She lived happily there with her daughter, and the latter even returned there several times after her marriage. These memories rendered Livry still more dear to Madame de Sévigné, who, on an April day, after having heard the nightingales and contemplated the budding greenery of the park, wrote to Madame de Grignan: "It is very difficult for me to revisit this place, this garden, these alleys, this little bridge, this avenue, this meadow, this mill, this little view, this forest, without thinking of my very dear child." (April 22, 1672.) In the summer, when they put her little daughter in her care, she took her to Livry: "Presently I am going to Livry; I will take with me my little child and her nurse and all the little household...." (May 27, 1672.) She loved to receive her son at Livry. She went to Livry to care for her maladies and to follow her treatments.
She also went there to pay her devotions in Holy Week: "I have made of this house a little Trappe.... I have found pleasure in the sadness which I have had here: a great solitude, a great silence, a sad office, Tenebræ intoned with devotion (I had never been at Livry in Holy Week), a canonical fast and a beauty in these gardens with which you would be charmed, all these have pleased me." (March 24, 1671.) It was her favorite place for writing, and she said that her mind and her body were there in peace. And, truly, almost all the letters which she wrote from Livry breathed joy and health.
So what despair, when, at the death of the Abbé de Coulanges, she believes that she will no longer be able to return to Livry and that she must say farewell to that agreeable solitude which she loves so much! "After having wept for the Abbé," she cries, "I weep for the abbey." (November 13, 1687.) Happily the successor of the Abbé de Coulanges is Séguier de la Verrière, former bishop of Nîmes. He is a very holy prelate, and allows Madame de Sévigné liberty to go to Livry, as in the days of the "very good." But Séguier dies. New anxieties. Finally the abbey is given to Denis Sanguin, bishop of Senlis, an uncle of Louis Sanguin, Lord of Livry, friend of the Coulanges and of Madame de Sévigné. Then she writes to her daughter: "It is true that these Sanguins, this Villeneuve, the idea of the old Pavin, these old acquaintances, are so confused with our garden and our forest, that it seems to me it is the same thing, and that not only have we lent it to them, but that it is still ours by the assurance of again finding there our old furniture and the same people whom we saw there so often. Finally, my child, we were worthy of this pretty solitude by the taste which we had and which we still have for it."
Since we have opened the letters of Madame de Sévigné, let us continue to mark the pages in which she has spoken of Livry, and let us seek the reason for the taste for this "pretty solitude" which she showed to the end.
She knew how to enjoy the days of sadness in this "solitude," for example when she had just been separated from her daughter, or when she had received some unpleasant news from Grignan. On these days she tasted the silence of the forest and of the meadow: "Here is a true place for the humor in which I am: there are hours and alleys whose holy horror is interrupted only by the love affairs of our stags, and I enjoy this solitude." (October 4, 1679.) And, a few days later: "I wish to boast of being all afternoon in this meadow talking to our cows and our sheep. I have good books and especially the little letters and Montaigne. What more is needed when I have not you?" (October 25, 1679.) But she was not the woman to content herself with the holy horror of the woods and to converse forever with the beasts of her meadow. She had a little of the turn of imagination of the good La Fontaine. But, affectionate and sociable, she also wished friends about her and loved conversation. At Livry she very often met her uncle, her cousins, the de Coulanges, her friend Corbinelli, the Abbé de Grignan and many others. She was neighborly with the families and guests of de Pomponne, de Clichy and de Chelles. Chariots brought from Paris loquacious visitors, rich in news. Walks on foot in the near-by forest were improvised.
Nowhere—not even at Les Rochers, where she drew so many pleasant landscapes—did Madame de Sévigné better express the pleasure given her by the spectacles of nature. She has expressed with inimitable art the particular charm of each season in a few words, and we might, by collecting certain passages of the letters written at Livry, compose, as it were, the picturesque calendar of Madame de Sévigné. Let us try it.
February: "We have passed here the three days of carnival, the sun which shone Saturday made us decide on it.... We have tempered the brilliancy of approaching Lent with the dead leaves of this forest; we have had the most beautiful weather in the world, the gardens are clean, the view beautiful, and a noise of birds which already commences to announce spring has seemed to us much more pleasant than the horrid cries of Paris...." (February 2, 1680.)
April: "I departed quite early from Paris: I went to dine at Pomponne; there I found our bonhomme (Arnaud d'Andilly).... Finally, after six hours of very agreeable, though very serious conversation, I left him and came here, where I found all the triumph of the month of May. The nightingale, the cuckoo, the warbler have opened the spring in our forests. I walked there all evening quite alone." (April 29, 1671.)
May: "The beauty of Livry is above everything that you have seen; the trees are more beautiful and more green; everything is full of those lovely honeysuckles. This odor has not yet sickened me; though you greatly scorn our little bushes, compared with your groves of oranges." (May 30, 1672.)
July: "Ah, my very dear one, how I would wish for you such nights as we have here! What sweet and gracious air! What coolness! What tranquillity! What silence! I would like to be able to send it to you and let your north wind be confounded by it." (July 3, 1677.)
August: "You well remember that beautiful evenings and full moonlight gave me a sovereign pleasure." (August 14, 1676.)
November: "I have come here to finish the fine weather and bid adieu to the leaves; they are all still on the trees; they have only changed color; instead of being green, they are the color of dawn and of so many kinds of dawn that they compose a rich and magnificent cloth of gold which we wish to find more beautiful than green, even if it were only as a change (November 3, 1677.)—I leave this place with regret, my daughter: the country is still beautiful; this avenue and all that was stripped by the caterpillars and which has taken the liberty of growing out again with your permission, is greener than in the spring of the most beautiful years; the little and the great palisades are adorned with those beautiful shades of autumn by which the painters know so well how to profit; the great elms are somewhat stripped, but we do not regret these punctured leaves; the country as a whole is still all smiling..."
These samples, chosen from a hundred others, show how delicate was the sentiment of nature in Madame de Sévigné. We find in her letters all the themes with which modern poets since Lamartine have experimented: the first songs of birds announcing the spring, the "triumph of May," the serenity of summer nights, the beauty of moonlight, the charm of Indian summer, the sumptuous sadness of autumn. We may say that these are the commonplaces of universal poetry. But as it was long since conceded that, except for La Fontaine, no one in the seventeenth century was sensible of the charm of landscapes, it is well to note these impressions of Madame de Sévigné. I know the reply: Madame de Sévigné is herself a second exception. Is this quite certain? Observe that Madame de Sévigné does not witness in the least that she considers it original to take a Virgilian pleasure in the song of the nightingale or even in the full moon. Her correspondents whose letters we possess, do not show any more surprise at these effusions. There is no doubt that they themselves are moved by the same emotion before the same pictures. They do not say so. Therefore, the rule is to communicate one's intimate thoughts and sentiments only with all sorts of reserves and precautions; one's "impressions" are not written down. La Fontaine scorns this rule, like all others. Madame de Sévigné does not submit to it any more than he does, because she writes only for a little group of friends, and because she abandons herself to her expansive nature in everything. But, even if not the object of literature, the love of the country was neither less lively nor less widespread in the seventeenth century than at any other period.
Madame de Sévigné, then, is pleased at Livry because she is sensitive to the varied shadings of landscapes and to the changes of nature. But she has a singular preference for this bit of soil, so much so that she does not seem to feel the dampness there—which is unusual for a rheumatic—and that one day she will regret all of it, even to the rain: "How charming these rainy days are! We will never forget this little place." Perhaps the landscape of Livry, this modest and gracious landscape of the Parisis which she describes so charmingly—"this garden, these alleys, this little bridge, this avenue, this meadow, this mill, this little view, this forest"—is what accords best with her imagination. Exalted in her maternal tenderness, passionate in her friendships, Madame de Sévigné offers the contrast of ardent sensitiveness and controlled taste. Her judicious spirit shudders at excess and disorder. The humble and fine elegance of this countryside in the surroundings of Paris must have enchanted her. She loves her estate of Les Rochers greatly, but more as a proprietor proud of the improvements with which she has enriched her domain. For Livry she has a tenderness of the heart.
The comparison between Livry and Grignan recurs incessantly in her letters, as we have seen. Without doubt she is thinking principally of the health of her daughter when she curses the north wind of Provence and "this sharp and frosty air which pierces the most robust." But, at the same time, how clearly we see that to the harsh and rocky sites of the Midi she prefers northern nature, more gentle, more smiling, and to "this devil of a Rhone, so proud, so haughty, so turbulent," the "beautiful Seine" whose gracious banks are "ornamented with houses, trees, little willows, little canals, which we cause to issue from this great river!" On another occasion she writes: "How excessive you are in Provence! All is extreme, your torridities, your calms, your north winds, your rains out of season, your thunders in autumn: there is nothing gentle nor temperate. Your rivers are out of their banks, your fields drowned and furrowed. Your Durance has almost always the devil in its bosom; your Isle of Brouteron very often submerged." (November 1, 1679.)
In the last years of her life, she ended by pardoning Provence for its north wind and its sharp air; one winter, she will even decide that the mountains covered with snow are charming, and she will wish that a painter might reproduce these frightful beauties. And it will be not only the joy of living near her daughter which will cause her thus to abjure her tastes of aforetime, but also the softness of the sun and of the light. There are no old people who can resist this sorcery. In the last letters written to Grignan there is no longer a mention of Livry.
We would like to, find today in the house and the garden of the old abbey some trace of the sojourn of Madame de Sévigné; but everything has been upset since the end of the eighteenth century.
Here is the dwelling house constructed by the Abbé de Coulanges, in which Madame de Sévigné dwelt. Where was the apartment of the Marquise? In a letter of August 12, 1676, she says: "We have made a casement opening on the garden in the little cabinet, which takes away all the damp and unhealthy air which was there, and which gives us extreme pleasure; it does not make the room warm, for only the rising sun visits it for an hour or two...." The indication is precise. We are oriented, and we recognize very nearly the position of the little cabinet. But was this on the first or second floor? It is impossible to discover any indication. And we walk about soberly in the apartments, deserted since the departure of the Assumptionists: some abandoned books, collections of sermons, rest on a shelf of the library; old priests' hats lie on the floor; a béret lies on a corner of a table, a great map of Paris in the eighteenth century hangs askew upon a wall; the breeze blows through the windows whose panes are broken....
The gardens have long since given place to meadows and thickets. An old orange house with broken glass is half in ruins. The basins have disappeared. Here is, however, the canal where M. du Plessis, tutor of the children of M. de Pomponne, tried to down himself. The little bridge, near which Madame de Sévigné went to wait for her visitors or her mail, no longer exists, but the abutments mark its position, and, there also, an iron gate which assuredly dates from the time of the Abbé de Coulanges still hangs between two stone pillars. And this poor remnant of the ancient architecture is sufficient to render more lively the little picture which Madame de Sévigné has drawn in one of her letters: "I pace about the little bridge; I emerge from the 'Humor of my Daughter' and look through the 'Humor of my Mother' to see if La Beauce (one of her lackeys) does not come; and then I walk up again and return to put my nose into the end of the path which leads to the little bridge; and by dint of taking this walk, I see this dear letter come, and I receive it and read it with all the sentiments which you may imagine." (August 4, 1677.) And naturally, nothing exists of the two alleys which had been given those singular names, "under which"—the remark is by Father Mesnard, the best of the biographers of Madame de Sévigné—"one cannot fail to imagine the so different tastes of the mother and of the daughter, their so opposite characters, their occasional poutings, and their promenades separated after some quarrel, and which make us always think, the one of a beautiful smiling alley, full of light and verdure, the other of some path more cramped, more sad and more dry." In the park, if we no longer promenade under the very trees that sheltered the reveries of Madame de Sévigné, the alleys at least have remained rectilinear and still present the perspectives which were ingeniously arranged by the gardener of the Abbé de Coulanges. Finally, the "little view" which charmed Madame de Sévigné has not changed. There is always, beyond the meadows and the park, the same horizon harmoniously bounded by a swell of land covered with woods—a gracious site, ennobled by so many beautiful memories that, if we were not entirely barbarous, we would have to save it from the woodcutters and the builders. Ah! if there could only be found some friend of Madame de Sévigné to prevent them from touching the "pretty solitude!"
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
1 (return)
[ Page 28. Bossuet by
Rebelliau, in the series "Grands Écrivains français."]
2 (return)
[ Page 42. Le Naturaliste
Bosc. Un Girondin herborisant, by Auguste Rey.—Versailles, published
by Bernard.]
3 (return)
[ Page 45. Mémoires de
Larêveillière-Lêpeaux.]
4 (return)
[ Page 53. Mémoires de
Larêveillière-Lêpeaux, Vol. I, page 167.]
5 (return)
[ Page 61. I owe this
quotation to the excellent work of Canon Müller: Senlis et ses environs.
Why can we not have a book written with such knowledge and skill about
every city of France!]
6 (return)
[ Page 82. Sainte-Beuve]
Port-Royal, Vol. Ill, pages 510-512.]
7 (return)
[ Page 82. The historian of
Juilly is M. Charles Hamel. His book (Paris, Gervais, 1888) is a moving
and very vivid picture of the college during its three centuries of
existence.]
8 (return)
[ Page 83. L'Oratoire de
France, by Cardinal Perraud.]
9 (return)
[ Page 88: Published in four
volumes by Dufey, Paris, 1833.]
10 (return)
[ Page 101. In regard to
the history of the Oratory in the nineteenth century we may profitably
read the work in which Father Chauvin has preserved the life and work of
Father Gratry.]
11 (return)
[ Page 105. The Louvre has
just bought an Egyptian stele for a hundred and three thousand francs, and
the Château de Maisons going to be demolished.]
12 (return)
[ Page 113. We may remark
that the Château de Maisons was later purchased by the State while M.
Henri Marcel was Director of Fine Arts.]
13 (return)
[ Page 130. It must be
understood that this impression does not correspond to archaeological
facts.]
14 (return)
[ Page 136. The most
important document about Thomas of Gallardon is the medical report,
addressed to the Ministry of Police, by Doctors Pinel and Royer-Collard,
in 1816. I owe to the courtesy of M. Gazier the opportunity of seeing a
copy of this report. At the same time, this learned professor of the
Sorbonne has been kind enough to place at my disposal a mass of pamphlets
and manuscripts, some of which are unpublished, in regard to the seer of
Gallardon: I have made use of these various documents in preparing this
little essay.—In 1892, Captain Marin published an interesting book:
Thomas Martin de Gallardon (published by Carré of Paris), in which he
studied numerous articles which appeared during the Restoration, and
reproduced the report of the doctors from a copy in the possession of M.
Anatole France. We may add that the latter wrote a charming article in
review of Captain Marin's book (Temps, March 13, 1892).]
15 (return)
[ Page 165. The most
extraordinary thing was that ingenious Legitimists later found a way to
give credence to the prophecies of Martin of Gallardon without ceasing to
be faithful to the Count de Chambord. In 1871, thirty-seven years after
Martin's death, an anonymous author (the question of Louis XVII has been
handled by a number of anonymous writers) relates a conversation which M.
Hersent, a Lazarist, had with the visionary in 1830. The latter then
announced that the crown of France would return to its true heir.
"But," said the curious Lazarist, "how will he ascend to the throne?"
"Monsieur, he will ascend to the throne over corpses!"
"Who will lead him to us?"
"The troops of the north."
"How long will he reign?"
"Not very long; he will leave the crown to a prince of his race."
"And when will all this happen?"
"When France shall have been sufficiently punished for the death of his father."
Now see the conclusion of the anonymous writer of 1871: "Henri V has indeed said lately, in a letter which has been universally judged to be of very great importance: 'I am the heir'; but he has not said: 'I am the immediate heir' If Louis XVII exists, his proposition is true; he is the heir, after the immediate heir, since, according to Martin, this true heir, who must come in an extraordinary manner, led by troops from the north, who have already frightfully punished France, is to reign only a very short time, and leave the crown to a prince of his race, who can only be Henri V." (Grave question.—Louis XVII est-il bien mort?—Roanne, 1871.) Credulous persons are full of subtlety.]
16 (return)
[ Page 167. Figaro, August
8,1904.]
17 (return)
[ Page 172. In regard to
these charities consult the work of Émile Rousse: La Roche-Guyon:
Châtelains, Château et Bourg (Hachette et Cie., 1892). This book,—much
more vivid and captivating than this kind of local monographs generally
are,—contains a very accurate and very complete history of La
Roche-Guyon. I have used it extensively.]
18 (return)
[ Page 176. Chronique de
Sabit-Denis.]
19 (return)
[ Page 191. Instead of to
give it would be better to write here arc en tiers-point, so as not to
annoy the archaeologists. But all my readers are not archaeologists and
would not be interested in the fine distinctions among pointed arches.]
20 (return)
[ Page 194. This history is
a reprint from the Mémoires du Comité archéologique de Noyon (Vol. XVII);
it is adorned with numerous illustrations which show different aspects of
the cathedral.—The members of a recent Congress of the French
Society of Archaeology met at Novon. The Guide published for members of
the Congress contains short and precise notes upon the different monuments
which were visited. That which relates to the Cathedral of Noyon was
written by the Director of the Society, M. Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis.]
21 (return)
[ Page 201. The stone is
broken at the end of the seventh line.]
22 (return)
[ Page 206. I have taken
these dates and some other facts from an article by M. Fernand Blanchard,
Secretary of the Archaeological, Historical and Scientific Society of
Soissons (1905). This pamphlet contains a very clear summary of the
history of the monument and an excellent description of the ruins.]
23 (return)
[ Page 213. These ingenious
remarks on the flora of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes were made by M. Fernand
Blanchard (Joe. cit).]
24 (return)
[ Page 217. Nothing has
been done since 1905 in the way of freeing from military authority the
refectory of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes.]
25 (return)
[ Page 220. The history of
Madame de Monaco has been pleasingly told by Marquis Pierre de Ségur, in a
study which forms the second part of the book entitled La Dernière des
Condé. I have borrowed from this work many details regarding Betz which
the Marquis de Ségur has extracted from the archives of Beauvais.]
26 (return)
[ Page 243. Musées et
Monuments de France, 1906, No. 10.]
27 (return)
[ Page 244. The architect
of the Temple of Friendship was called Le Roy; this is the name which is
signed to the memorandum of the sums paid to the sculptor Dejoux for the
casting of the group by Pigalle,—a memorandum which has been
published by M. Rocheblave.]
28 (return)
[ Page 249. Since these
lines were written the Archaeological Committee of Senilis has published a
work on the gardens of Betz by M. Gustav Macon. The gifted curator of the
Musée Condé reproduces in this a very complete description of the gardens
of the Princess of Monaco which must have been drawn up in the last half
of 1792 or the first half of 1793. Its author is unknown. According to M.
Macon, he was perhaps one of the writers who collaborated at that time in
the preparation of Le Voyage 'pittoresque de la France' we might also
think of Mérigot, who had just described the gardens of Chantilly so
attractively. To this unpublished description M. Macon has added a series
of notes in which he has collected all the information which he has found
in the works of other historians or which he has himself discovered in
regard to the artists who collaborated in the adornment of the domain of
Betz. In short, he has exhausted the subject.]
29 (return)
[ Page 266. The
transformations of Chantilly have been studied and described by M. G.
Macon Revue de l'art ancien et moderne, April, 1898.]
30 (return)
[ Page 293. I have
profitably consulted Livry et son abbaye, by Abbé A. E. Genty (1898).]