The youth of Madame de Longueville, or new revelations of court and convent in the seventeenth century

It is an error too general, and recently fortified by M. Rœderer in his ingenious and learned memoir on Polite Society in France,⁠[121] that the hôtel de Rambouillet was the first, and for a long time the only salon in Paris where good company ever assembled. No: the Marchioness de Rambouillet did not create, she simply followed up the happy revolution which caused a taste for intellectual things, delicate pleasures, elegant occupations to succeed, in France, the barbarity of the civil wars, and the license of manners too much allowed by Henry IV. This taste is the distinctive characteristic of the seventeenth century; it is the pure and noble source whence issued all the wonders of this great period. Louis XIV., in 1661, received it wholly formed, illustrious on all sides by reason of the most brilliant military and political success, rich in masterpieces of every kind, when already the finest geniuses had finished or commenced their career; when Malherbe and Balzac, the founders of the new prose and of the new poesy, when Descartes, the founder of the new philosophy, had long been buried; when Le Sueur and Sarrazin were dead; when Pascal and Poussin were about to close their eyes; when Corneille was no longer but a shadow of himself; when Madame de Sévigné, La Fontaine, and Molière, were forty, and Bossuet thirty-six years of age. All these great minds have, in their style as well as in their thought, something artless and masculine, which betrays another epoch; an art and a literature developed under other auspices. The seventeenth century does not commence with Louis XIV., who crowns it, but with Richelieu, who inspired it. No one felt better than Richelieu the growing taste for politeness and letters. The foundation of this great soul was ambition: his true genius was for politics; but, eager for every kind of glory, he desired also to be, or to appear, one of the first wits of his time, and even an accomplished cavalier. Like all great men from Cæsar to Napoleon, he was very amiable when he wished to be so. It pleased him for a while to affect to be a discontented man of ambition, who was abiding his time under the appearance of a man of the world, seeking and obtaining the most brilliant success in society. As soon as he acquired power, he gave vogue to his own tastes; and in 1630 there was in Paris more than one hôtel where there were assembled, for agreeable pastime, people of wit, of lofty and of low descent, military personages, lawyers and theologians, with their amiable wives, who naturally gave the ton. The hôtel de Rambouillet was the most considerable of all the rendezvous of the new spirit, and it continued to be the most celebrated, by reason rather of the defects than of the good qualities there encountered.

In fact, what idea is presented to the mind as soon as we hear mentioned the hôtel de Rambouillet? That of a choice reunion where the most exquisite politeness is cultivated, but where, little by little, the genre précieux enters and acquires full control.

And what was this genre précieux?

It was at first simply what is now called the style distingué. Distinction was what was sought above all things at the hôtel de Rambouillet: whoever possessed it, or aspired to it, from princes and princesses of the blood to lettered persons of the most humble fortune, was well received, attracted to, retained in the amiable and illustrious company.

But what must we understand by distinction? It cannot be defined in an absolute manner. Each epoch makes an ideal of distinction for its own use. Two things, however, almost always enter it, two things in appearance contrary, and which are combined only in choice spirits happily cultivated: a certain elevation in ideas and sentiments, with an extreme simplicity in manners and language. I suppose that with Aspasia, at Athens, Pericles, Anaxagoras, and Phidias talked of art, of philosophy, of politics, with no more effort and declamation, than workmen and merchants would have used in conversing about their ordinary occupations. Socrates was an accomplished model in this style, and the Banquet of Plato, wherein, after supper, discourse is held upon the most elevated topics in the most charming and most natural manner, gives us a perfect idea of what was then the ton of that particular atticism at Athens, and which, even at Athens, was the mark of distinction. It was the same at Rome with the Scipios, where an amiable badinage was often mingled with the gravest matters, a little less, perhaps, at the suppers of Cicero, when Cæsar was not present, the master of the house not being a sufficiently great lord to be always perfectly simple, and the new man,—I do not say the parvenu—especially the orator and the man of letters, being a little too perceptible, even when he strove most to imitate Plato. It was this Roman urbanity, the somewhat degenerated daughter of Athenian atticism, that the hôtel de Rambouillet aimed at and contributed to spread.⁠[122]

Grandeur was in some sort in the air from the very commencement of the seventeenth century. The policy of the government was grand, and great men sprang up in crowds to carry it out in the councils and on the battle-field. A mighty spirit pervaded French society. Everywhere were great designs in the arts, in letters, in sciences, in philosophy. Descartes, Poussin, and Corneille were advancing towards their future glory, full of bold thoughts, under the eyes of Richelieu. Every thing was turned to grandeur. Every thing was rude, even somewhat gross, mind as well as heart. Force abounded; grace was absent. In this excessive vigor, good taste was unknown. Politeness was necessary to lead the century to perfection. Of this the hôtel de Rambouillet was particularly the school.

The days of its greatest lustre begin in 1630, and extend to 1648, when the idol of the house, Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, married in 1645 to M. de Montausier, follows him into his government of Saintonge and of Angoumois, at the commencement of the Fronde. The palmy days of the illustrious hôtel were then under Richelieu, and during the first years of the regency. For a score of years it rendered incontestable services to the national taste; but the good which it was able to do, was achieved in 1648. Already its defects had begun to appear and to encroach upon its good qualities. The inferior circles which had been formed in Paris and in the provinces, at first useful because they promoted politeness, had terminated in being dangerous by degenerating loftiness of ideas and sentiments into a false grandeur, extravagant and affected, especially by carrying affectation into simplicity. It was then that the genre précieux, becoming corrupted, the great master in fact of nature and truth, declared against it that pitiless war, opened by his comedy of Les Précieuses Ridicules, printed in 1660, and closed by that of Les Femmes Savantes, printed in 1673. But let us return to 1630.

In 1630 there was much originality in France, but it was an originality which showed the necessity of foreign models. At a later period, Molière, La Fontaine, Boileau, and Racine, those geniuses so eminently French, proposed the study of models; they sought them in antiquity, which they imitated without ceasing to be original, giving the French character to every thing that they touched. Their predecessors had addressed themselves to Italy and to Spain, in their eyes the two nations most advanced. The Médicis had introduced among us a taste for Italian literature. Queen Anne brought, or rather strengthened, a taste for Spanish literature. The hôtel de Rambouillet endeavored to unite them.

The Spanish style was, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, made up of high gallantry, languishing and Platonic; of a heroism somewhat romantic; a knightly courage; a lively sentiment of the beauties of nature, which developed itself in eclogues and idyls, both prose and verse; a passion for music and serenades, as well as for carousals, elegant conversations, and magnificent diversions. The Italian style was precisely the contrary of Spanish grandeur, or, if you please, bombast, wit, carried to refinement, raillery and jesting, which threatened to abase every thing. From the mixture of these two styles sprang the alliance, ardently pursued, rarely accomplished in a perfect proportion, of the grand and the familiar, of the grave and the pleasant, of the sprightly and the sublime.

At the hôtel de Rambouillet, it was not sufficient to be a hero; it was also necessary to be a gallant man, an honnête man, as was the appellation in 1630, and as it continued to be during the seventeenth century; an honnête man, new and piquant expression, mysterious type which it is difficult to define, and whose sentiment spread with inconceivable rapidity. The honnête man had elevated sentiments: he was necessarily brave, gallant, liberal; he had wit and fine manners, but all this without the least appearance of pedantry, and with an easy and familiar air. Such was the ideal which the hôtel de Rambouillet proposed for public admiration, and for the imitation of people who prided themselves on being comme il faut.

The women were naturally called upon to play the principal rôle in an enterprise like this, and the Marchioness de Rambouillet seemed formed expressly to preside over it. She was almost Italian: her father was Vivonne Pisani, and her mother, Savelli. Her husband was a very high lord, and had been ambassador extraordinary to Spain. They had already withdrawn from business, with a considerable fortune, to a beautiful hôtel near Paris, a magnificent country residence:⁠[123] they were there in the way of no one, and drew about them a large circle. To finish the portrait of an accomplished hostess, add that Madame de Rambouillet, though very beautiful, had never been engaged in any intrigue, and that she was passionately fond of people of wit, though without any pretension thereto herself: in fact, only a few letters and two stanzas are all that can be found from her pen.⁠[124]

She was also an object of admiration to all those who knew her. Tallemant des Réaux himself passes upon her the highest eulogy. He says that she was beautiful, virtuous, and sensible. “She has,”⁠[125] observes he, “always loved beautiful things; and for the sake of reading Virgil, she applied herself to the study of Latin, but was prevented from accomplishing her design by sickness: she contented herself afterwards with learning Spanish.... She was in every thing a very clever person.... No one in the world was less selfish; she went farther than those who say that giving is a pleasure worthy of a king, for she said that it was a pleasure worthy of God.... There never was a mind more upright.... Never was there a truer friend.” Her only defect which M. Rœderer has intentionally suppressed, and which Tallemant does not fail to notice, was an excessive delicacy in language. There were words which frightened her, and which found no favor with her,⁠[126] so that there was already in Arthénice (the nom de précieuse of Madame de Rambouillet) something of Philaminte. Segrais speaks of her in terms similar to those of Tallemant:⁠[127] “Madame de Rambouillet was admirable; she was good, gentle, beneficent, and warm-hearted, and she possessed a correct mind. It was she who corrected the bad manners then prevalent. She had formed her mind by reading good Italian and Spanish books; and she taught politeness to all those who frequented her company. Princes visited her, though she was not a duchess. She was also an excellent friend, obliging to every one. The Cardinal Richelieu held her in the highest esteem.... Madame de La Fayette learned much from her.” One of her daughters, the celebrated Julie, possessed a most remarkable mind, and, in default of great beauty, a very fine form and noble air. She understood how to make agreeable the house of her mother, and she was ably seconded by her brother, the Marquis de Pisani, as intellectual as he was brave; also by her numerous sisters, especially by her who was the first Madame de Grignan.⁠[128]

We may find anywhere a description of the hôtel de Rambouillet, and of that famous blue chamber, which was in some sort the sanctuary of the temple of the goddess of Athens, to speak like Mademoiselle in La Princesse de Paphlagonie.⁠[129] It was a large salon, the decorations of which were all of blue velvet, set off with gold and silver, and whose large windows, opening from the ceiling to the floor, admitted abundance of light and air, and gave the prospect of a very beautiful and well-cultivated garden, which extended as far as the eye could reach. The hôtel had been built upon a new plan, designed by Madame de Rambouillet herself. It was not very vast, but of a beautiful appearance. It was the last hôtel but one of the Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, on the side of the Place du Palais Cardinal, between the Quinze-Vingts, which occupied the corner of the street, and the hôtel de Chevreuse, afterwards the hôtel d’Epernon, and a little later, towards 1663 or 1664, the hôtel de Longueville.⁠[130]

M. Rœderer has left hardly any thing to be done in cataloguing the great lords and ladies who frequented the hôtel de Rambouillet during the last half of its long and brilliant existence. I will limit myself to selecting, from the group of amiable women ever found there, one whom M. Rœderer has too much neglected, and who is, in my eyes, the model of a true and perfect précieuse, Madeleine de Souvre, Marchioness de Sablé, whose life is connected with that of Madame de Longueville, and of whom Madame de Motteville has left us the following portrait:

“The Marchioness de Sablé⁠[131] was one of those whose beauty was creating the most sensation when the queen (Queen Anne) arrived in France (in 1615); but if she was lovely, she was still more desirous of appearing so. The love which this lady had for herself rendered her a little too sensible to that testified to her by the other sex. There were in France some relics of the politeness that Catherine de Médicis had introduced from Italy; and so much delicacy was found in the new comedies and in all other works, both prose and verse, which came from Madrid, that she conceived a very high opinion of the gallantry which the Spaniards had caught from the Moors. She was persuaded that men might, without crime, entertain the most tender sentiments for females; that the desire of pleasing impelled them to the greatest and handsomest acts, gave them spirit and inspired them with liberality and every virtue; but that, on the other hand, women, who were the ornament of the world, and made to be served and adored, ought to tolerate their respect alone. This lady, supporting her sentiments with fine wit and great beauty, gave them much authority in her time; and the number and consideration of those who continued to see her, perpetuated in our time what the Spaniards call, fucezas.”⁠[132]

Madame de Sablé had been passionately loved by the brave, handsome, and unfortunate Duke de Montmorency, uncle of Madame de Longueville, who was decapitated at Toulouse in 1632. She responded to his passion; but Montmorency having raised his eyes upon the queen, Madame de Sablé, like a true Spaniard, broke connection with him. “I heard her say,” says Madame de Motteville again, “that her own pride was so great, that, on the first demonstration made by the Duke de Montmorency of his change of affection, she wished to see him no more, being unable to receive agreeably devotion which she was obliged to share even with the greatest princess in the world.”

The Marchioness de Sablé continued faithful to the manners of her youth, and, when the hôtel de Rambouillet was almost closed, she maintained something akin to it in her hôtel of the Place-Royale, with her intellectual friend, the Countess de Maure, and even in her retreat of Port-Royal, at the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. She kept up for a long time a school of bon ton, of morale, and of refined literature, whence originated the Maximes of La Rochefoucauld.

Among the people of letters who came often to the hôtel de Rambouillet, the two most celebrated are without contradiction Corneille and Voiture.

Corneille, with Descartes, is the highest expression of the literature of the first half of the seventeenth century. His qualities, like his defects, were in the most perfect harmony with his times. Hence a success which no one has since equalled. Under Louis XIV., what piece of Racine produced the impression made by the Cid, in 1636? It is necessary to read the writers of the times in order to obtain an idea of the enthusiasm which seized Paris and all France. They were true transports:

Nothing more true. Because at this time there was not a gentleman in Paris who did not pretend to be a Rodrigue; not a woman of bon ton who had not at heart, or who did not affect the sentiments of Chimène. The more we study this admirable piece, which Polyeucte alone surpassed a few years after, the more we discover in it the traits of that great epoch forever gone, heroism and great gallantry; that point of honor which doubtless shed much blood, but promoted the warlike spirit; in ripe men and in chieftains, serious interests and energetic passions clashing with each other; in youth, the generous struggle of love and duty, which will one day be carried to the utmost degree of the pathetic in Pauline and in Sévère, throughout it a language somewhat rude, but artless and strong, ever familiar; at the same time, it is true, an ill-founded taste straying sometimes in the pursuit of grandeur, of delicacies infinite and full of grace, but somewhat critical, and of subtile analyses of passion reasoning upon itself. Such was the hôtel de Rambouillet. It recognized itself in and defended the Cid against the all-powerful minister.⁠[133] It was in the noble salon that Corneille encountered Balzac, and conversed with him concerning Rome and the Romans. Let the discourses upon the Romans addressed by Balzac to the Marchioness de Rambouillet⁠[134] be read, and it will be seen whether the conversations of this period were useless. I dare say that France never witnessed a time when politics were more the order of the day. Every one was then occupied with public affairs. It was neither Lucan nor Tacitus who taught Corneille the language of Cinna and of the first scene of La Mort de Pompée. The true school of Corneille was the spectacle of what passed around him, the story of great contemporaneous events, the conversations of Richelieu and of his familiars, Father Joseph, Mazarin, Lyonne, and those who were every day in the companies which he frequented, where ambassadors, warriors, bishops, councillors of state mingled with men of letters. Corneille read all his pieces at the hôtel de Rambouillet. It was in all its glory, and it declined with him; his masterpiece, the masterpiece also of the French stage, Polyeucte, appeared in 1643, that is, during the most brilliant days of the hôtel de Rambouillet, and I may add of France, for it was in this same year, 1643, that one of the youngest disciples of the illustrious hôtel, the most passionate admirer of Corneille, the brother of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, the Duke d’Enghien, gained at the age of twenty-two years, in a manner worthy of Alexander and of Cæsar, one of those battles of which history records but five or six—that battle of Rocroy, in which the designs of Henri IV. and of Richelieu were justified by victory, and by which France succeeded Spain in the moral and military supremacy of Europe.

Voiture was admired by his most intellectual and fastidious contemporaries. La Fontaine places him in the number of his masters.⁠[135] Madame de Sévigné characterizes his mind as “free, playful, charming.”⁠[136] Boileau says that Voiture is, in his eyes, a sort of clown, asking what there is in him to be so much admired.⁠[137] Let us confess it: we all more or less resemble this clown: we are scarcely able at the present day to account for the fame of Voiture. Many reasons may be assigned for it which militate neither against Voiture nor ourselves.

Of all our faculties, wit is that which has most to do with social intercourse, but which leaves the least trace. A sally, a repartee, cannot be separated from the manner in which they are expressed. Sprightly sayings have not all their grace except in the mouth of a man of wit. It is not thus with words proceeding from the heart, and with great thoughts. As they come from the depths of human nature, which changes not, they have infinite perspectives, and they endure as long as the heart and the reason. But wit plays upon the surface; it sparkles and becomes extinguished in an instant. Wit is the offspring of the moment. The effect of an impromptu depends upon a thousand things, which, in disappearing, carry with them what had most charmed us. What, I pray you, is the present value of a pleasantry perpetrated two centuries ago?

Madame de Sévigné, in her enthusiasm for him who had been one of the masters of her youth, exclaims: “So much the worse for those who do not understand him!” But it is easy for the amiable marchioness to speak concerning him; she had an intimate knowledge of the manners, of the things, of the men, of the women, of the adventures, of the little accidents to which the verses and prose of Voiture related. His nephew, Martin Pinchesne, who, a year or two after the death of his uncle, published his works, was foolish or kind enough to suppress the dates of the jokes and the names of most of the persons who had called them forth, so that even in the seventeenth century those who had not been of Voiture’s society, had need of a commentator to understand him. Tallemant confesses that there are in his writings many things, the point of which he has not been able to discover. “At some future day,” says he, “if it can be done without offending too many people, I will have them printed with notes, and I will add to them such other pieces as I shall be able to find of the society of the hôtel de Rambouillet.”⁠[138]

In fact, to relish Voiture, he should have been seen upon the theatre of his success from 1630 to 1648, with those pretty women who sought to be amused, among those young gentlemen who, in the interval of battles, were partaking of the most refined pleasures of the mind. Voiture reigned at the hôtel de Rambouillet. Corneille, timid and proud, neglected and full of himself, was but ill at ease in this great society: he listened almost always in silence, and seldom conversed except with Balzac, his fellow-citizen in the Roman republic. But Voiture was the gayety, the life, the soul of the house. He was always in the proper mood; his inexhaustible flow of spirits mingled in every thing, animated every thing, and, while Corneille was grave in the midst of trifles, and introducing, involuntarily, into the very comedies which he wished to make most diverting, tragic movements, Voiture, in the most serious matters, was lavishing his witticisms. He represents the playful side of the hôtel de Rambouillet, as Corneille did its severe side.

Let us not forget that Voiture wrote only as he was inspired by the occasion—that circumstance was his favorite muse, and that she dictated to him most of those little things, produced in haste, and which he did not even take the trouble to collect. It is then ridiculous to criticise them. They were for the most part songs, intended to be sung, and which were sung. The editor has sometimes indicated the airs, and we have found nearly all of them in a curious collection, belonging to the library of the Arsenal, entitled Chansons notées.

But Voiture has not merely a facility full of charm; it seems to me that in his somewhat more studied efforts, he has ideas, philosophy, sensibility, sometimes even passion. I feel obliged to shelter myself behind the authority of Boileau, who, in his letter to Perrault,⁠[139] eulogizes Voiture, and particularly his elegies. For my part, I prefer them to all those which appeared before 1648, the year of the death of Voiture, and of the end, or at least of the decay of the hôtel de Rambouillet, excepting, indeed, the elegies of Corneille, now too much forgotten, and which contain passages vieing with the most touching of his tragedies.⁠[140]

I would call attention to the elegy to a coquette, whom Voiture names Bélise. Is there, indeed, no elevation, no force in the following verses?

We must give almost in full the elegy to a lady whom he had quitted for another, and to whom he returned:

We cannot mistake a true sensibility, the accent of passion, or, if you please, of pleasure, in these stanzas, addressed to an Aminte who is unknown to us:

Here, in a very different style, are some verses, which, twenty years later, Saint-Evremond would not have disavowed. Voiture is writing to the Duke d’Enghien on his recovery from a disease by which it was thought he would be carried off, after the campaign in Germany, in 1645:

In justice to Voiture, it must be acknowledged: he is the creator of a particular literature—the literature of society, if the expression may be allowed. He excelled in playful and light poetry; in that kind of trifling verse in which he has since had so many insipid imitators; which Voltaire carried so far, and which forms the best part, the truest title, to his poetic glory. Voiture was indeed the miniature Voltaire of the hôtel de Rambouillet.

I leave him, after saying to his honor that, though an attendant at the court, he had not the manners of a courtier. Voiture is the first example of a man of letters who preserved his independence among the greatest lords: he had rather the saucy tone and manners of his successors of the end of the eighteenth century. He was very caustic, and therefore much dreaded. Great care was taken not to incur one of his epigrams, for they were sharp swift arrows that flew all over Paris, tearing their poor victim to pieces in a thousand different places at the same time. The Duke d’Enghien, who loved to laugh, and who could appreciate a joke, because he himself had great wit, agreed perfectly with Voiture, saying, however, “He would be insupportable, if he was one of ourselves.” Besides, Voiture, still surpassing his disciples of the eighteenth century, had procured an excellent post through his success in society. He was appointed introducer of ambassadors to his Royal Highness, Gaston, Duke of Orleans. He was also appointed an officer of finance, in which capacity he seldom served, although he thence derived a handsome income. He had been intrusted with more than one important mission, principally to the Count Duke d’Olivares. In person he was well made, and he dressed himself in the best taste. It was his office to be the chevalier, the lover, and, as they then said, the mourant (dying man) of all the belles, especially of the pretty Mademoiselle Paulet, whose somewhat bold manners and blond hair had won for her the name of the lioness of the hôtel de Rambouillet.

Such was the society into which, about the year 1635 or 1636—after the great ball which bore off Mademoiselle de Bourbon from the Carmelites—the Princess de Condé introduced her daughter, with her son, the young Duke d’Enghien. They did not enter it unprepared. The hôtel de Condé was also the rendezvous of the best company. Situated in the vast space at present occupied by the Rue de Condé, the street, place, and theatre de l’Odéon, as far as the Rue des Fossés-Monsieur-le-Prince, it was, says Sauval,⁠[142] magnificently built, and Madame the Princess did its honors with a dignity almost royal, tempered with grace and wit. Lenet, to whom we must always refer in regard to every thing connected with the Condés, informs us that Madame the Princess had bestowed great pains upon the manners of her children. “Marguerite de Montmorency,⁠[143] who had been the beauty, grace, and majesty of her times, and who was proportionably so in advanced age, even till her death, had always around her a circle of the most agreeable and intellectual ladies of the court. Near her were found all the most gallant, the most honnête, and most elevated, both by birth and merit. The young prince became pleased with this society. He frequented it continually, and from it received the first tincture of that noble and gallant civility which he has ever possessed, which he still preserves towards ladies ... Mademoiselle de Bourbon, his sister, who was afterwards the Duchess de Longueville, possessed great spirit and extraordinary beauty.” We can then easily conceive how the two young people were received at the hôtel de Rambouillet. From the first moment, they gave it the greatest lustre.

Mademoiselle de Bourbon, the person whom we have described, with beautiful blue eyes, light hair, fine form, careless and languishing air, was formed exactly, by the bent of her mind and character, to become an accomplished pupil of the hôtel de Rambouillet. There was in her an innate depth of pride, which slumbered in ordinary life, but, at intervals, was promptly aroused. Her mind was of the finest stamp, but its delicacy often turned to subtilty. Especially the tender, Platonic gallantry, which was the order of the day, was calculated to charm without causing her fear, for her rank protected her; and, besides, she says in the most humble of confessions, the pleasures of sense never attracted her. What touched her, and ended in misleading her, was a desire to be loved, and also the wish to appear, to show, as they then said, the power of her mind and of her eyes.

Her brother, the Duke d’Enghien, had her hauteur, but nothing whatever of her delicacy. In spite of all the efforts of his mother, and the example of his sister, the easy manner of the warrior always marked him; and he often carried freedom of thought and language even to license. Though not handsome, he was well made; and, when elegantly dressed, he presented a fine appearance. His keen eyes, very aqueline nose, somewhat decayed teeth, abundant and usually disordered hair, gave him an eagle-like look when animated.⁠[144] He possessed an agreeable mind, a gayety which was most freely exhibited in the midst of dangers, and which did not abandon him in prison. Whatever may be said of him, he was full of heart. He loved his friends, and he never betrayed one of them. He exacted much from them, but he also gave them much. He lavished their blood, as well as his own, upon the battle-field; but he promoted their interests, and demanded for them more than for himself. Any other person, after the battle of Rocroy, would have been jealous of Gassion, who was said to have advised the manœuvre which decided the day; he himself, from the field of battle, demanded for Gassion the baton of Marshal of France, and the office of Lieutenant-General for Sirot, who, at the head of the reserve, had completed the victory. When, in the fight of the Rue Saint-Antoine, escaping with difficulty from the carnage, harassed with fatigue, defeated, covered with blood, he arrived, sword in hand, at the house of Mademoiselle, his first exclamation, accompanied with a torrent of tears, was, “Ah! madame, you see a man who has lost all his friends!” At Brussels, when negotiating his return to France, he stipulated also for a similar grace to those who had followed him. He wrote very spirited verses, but they were satirical and somewhat soldierlike.⁠[145] He once loved, in the Spanish fashion, according to all the rules of the hôtel de Rambouillet. We shall presently make known the object of this touching passion, which does lasting honor to the great Condé; but we may here say that she was a heroine worthy of the hero.

Represent to yourself these two young persons at the hôtel de Rambouillet. There Condé amused himself and laughed freely with Voiture and the wits around him; but his favorite was Corneille. The latter, who was poor, and somewhat fond of money, complained to Segrais, a Normand like himself,⁠[146] that the Prince de Condé, who professed so much admiration for his works, had never made him large presents. Segrais did not then know, that until the death of his father in 1646, the Duke d’Enghien had nothing but his glory, that he was unable to give the least pension; and what pension, I ask, would have been worth so much as the presence of Condé at the first representation of Cinna, and the sobs which escaped him at those memorable words:

We should remark in passing that this same Condé, who was the enthusiastic admirer of Corneille, became the friend of Bossuet, and the faithful defender of Molière. He had seen Bossuet almost a child beginning his career as a preacher at the hôtel de Rambouillet; he had been present at, and had thought of taking part in the brilliant struggles of his doctorship: near the close of his life he sought his conversation, and found in him not only the most eloquent, but the most exact historian, the most faithful painter of Rocroy, especially the most worthy interpreter of that great heart, immortal dwelling of the beautiful and good.

Mademoiselle de Bourbon soon became one of the most brilliant ornaments of the hôtel de Rambouillet. She there met the Marchioness de Sablé, still beautiful, and celebrated for her admiration of Spanish manners, and for her loves with Montmorency. Madame de Sablé guided the first steps of her youth, and twenty-five years after, received her at that common rendezvous of noble disabused hearts, religion. But Mademoiselle de Bourbon was then in the morning of life; and, little thinking of the storms that awaited her, she yielded herself, on leaving the Carmelites, to all the pleasures which came before her.

Like her brother, she admired Corneille; but she had a particular taste for Voiture, and this taste never forsook her. She thought, she spoke continually of Voiture, like Madame de Sévigné. It was not the charm of his wit alone that pleased her; she was, doubtless, touched with the sensibility which we have shown that he possessed, and which places Voiture above all his rivals. In the famous quarrel concerning the two sonnets upon Job, and upon Uranie, which divided the court and the city, the salons and the Academy, when every one was for Benserade, Madame de Longueville, then the arbiter of taste and of elegance, took in hand the cause of Voiture, and brought all to her opinion. A whole volume has been written on this quarrel: it is not exhausted, and we shall hereafter take it up by aid of new pieces, which, in showing for the first time the motives of Madame de Longueville, will reveal to us the delicacy of her mind, which belongs to that of her heart.⁠[147]

Mademoiselle de Bourbon became acquainted, also, at the hôtel de Rambouillet, with the cultivated, moderate, discreet Chapelain, the sincere friend of good literature, and who might have become a writer of the third, perhaps, even of the second rank, as well as his friend, Pélisson, if, as was said by Boileau, whose shafts of wit are all serious judgments, he had been contented to write in prose. Mademoiselle de Bourbon conceived a great esteem for Chapelain, and, when she married, she made Monsieur de Longueville give him a pension sufficient to enable him to labor in security upon that famous Pucelle, which was to be the Iliad of France, which was applauded in advance in the salons of the Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, and of which the young admirer of Corneille and Voiture was already beginning to grow weary.

Among the mediocre wits whom she met in the illustrious hôtel, was Godeau, the little abbé, who was called in the house the dwarf of Julie, and who during all his life, by turns bishop of Grasse and of Vence, kept up a written correspondence, half devotional, half gallant, with Mademoiselle de Bourbon and Madame de Longueville.⁠[148] There was Esprit, too, of the French Academy, who played all sorts of parts; at first, a man of letters and messmate of the chancellor, who placed him in the Academy, then suddenly a priest of l’Oratoire, then a man of the world again, and father of a family, who could not have been devoid of merit, for he had the esteem of the best judges of his times: attached afterwards to the embassy of Munster, one of the pensioners of M. and Madame de Longueville, preceptor of their nephews, the young princes de Conti, holding a prominent place in the salon of Madame de Sablé, consulted by La Rochefoucauld, and even passing for one of the authors of the Maximes, a reputation which he might have preserved if he had not been so imprudent as to print a work in 1678.⁠[149]

I should be scrupulous, were I to forget Madame Scudéry as one of the frequenters of the hôtel de Rambouillet. She was certainly very homely, yet a person of true talent, writing perhaps too rapidly, but with a correctness and polish which were not common in 1640. She enjoyed and merited great consideration. Leibnitz sought the honor of her correspondence. She wrote verses which were relished in their time, and which still seem to us very agreeable. Her romances are so long, and the episodes in them so embarrassing to one another, that it is absolutely impossible to read them at the present day. But those who dare to enter this labyrinth will meet here and there portraits well drawn, and resembling, though somewhat flattered, the illustrious originals, poorly disguised under Greek, Persian, and Roman names; exact descriptions of the finest places, and most magnificent palaces of France and of Paris, transported to Rome or to Armenia; great sentiments then in vogue; tendernesses of a refined Platonism; conversations sometimes a little insipid, sometimes a little refined, but which give a very agreeable idea of the real conversations which Madame Scudéry tried to imitate. Madame de Lafayette will, some day, abridge these pictures and these discourses; she will take from them these insipidities and weaknesses; she will soften these subtilties; but she will preserve the charm of these heroic and gallant manners, and the delicate minds, whose delights are in Zaïdé, and The Princesses de Clèves, in the Bérénice of Racine, the Psyché of Molière, and of Corneille, will not read without pleasure, certain chapters of the Grand Cyrus. Georges Scudéry himself, insupportable on account of his self-love and bravado style, was a man of honor, reliable as a friend, and who, in the most trying moments, before Mazarin, on whom he depended, preserved proudly his fidelity to Condé and his sister.

It is proper to mention these different persons, because they reappear in the life of Madame de Longueville. At the hôtel de Rambouillet, they attached themselves to Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and began her reputation, which grew rapidly from year to year.

Mademoiselle de Bourbon passed the winters in Paris, at the hôtel de Condé, at the Louvre, at the Palais Cardinal, in some hôtels of the Place-Royale, especially at the hôtel de Rambouillet, amid balls, concerts, comedies, gallant conversations; and everywhere she was brilliant by the graces of her mind and person. In summer she was occupied with other pleasures: she went to Fontainebleau with the court, or to visit her mother at Chantilly, or to see Cardinal Richelieu and the duchess d’Aiguillon at Ruel, or perhaps to Liancourt, to visit the Duchess of Liancourt, Jeanne de Schomberg; or perhaps again, to Labarre, near Paris, to pass some time with the Baroness Du Vigean, who, though of inferior rank, but of great fortune, had the most amiable family,—a son, the Marquis de Fors, one of the bravest comrades of the Duke d’Enghien, and two charming daughters, who were greatly sought by all the young and gallant nobility. Before as well as after her marriage, Mademoiselle de Bourbon divided her time among these different residences, which rivalled each other in magnificence and charms. Naturally, it was to her mother, at Chantilly, that she went most frequently.

We must look in Du Cerceau⁠[150] and in Perelle⁠[151] to know what Chantilly was at the beginning and at the end of the seventeenth century. This vast and beautiful domain had long belonged to the family of Montmorency, and it came into that of Condé, in 1632, through Madame the Princess, on the death of her brother, decapitated at Toulouse. It assembles then the souvenirs of the two greatest military families of ancient France. Anne and Louis de Bourbon pervade it, and their spirits will cover and protect Chantilly so long as there shall remain among us any patriotic piety, any national pride. The Montmorencys transferred the charming château to the Condés a little before the renaissance, which Du Cerceau has described in all its details. It was the great Condé, during the last fifteen years of his life, who, finding in the vicinity the most beautiful woods, a true forest, with a canal resembling a river, abundant waters and vast gardens, drew from them the wonders which the graver of Perelle has preserved for us, and which Bossuet could not help praising,—those fountains, those cascades, those grottoes, those pavilions, “those superb avenues, those water jets which ceased neither day nor night.”⁠[152] They have ceased now. The bad taste of the seventeenth century and revolutions have destroyed Chantilly. A prince worthy of his name had undertaken to restore it to its first beauty. He had wished to expend upon it the fortune which the mishaps of the house of Condé had brought to him, and that which he held from his own house. The young captain had dreamed of returning at a future day, after having extended and secured French dominion in Africa, to repose with his lieutenants in the sacred home of the Montmorencys and the Condés, restored and embellished by his own hand. Providence ordered otherwise, and Chantilly still awaits a repairing hand. But let us return to the Chantilly of the middle of the seventeenth century, before the epoch of its great magnificence, between the periods described respectively by Du Cerceau and Perelle.

It was already a delicious abode. Madame the Princess delighted in it, and there passed, with her children, almost every summer. She brought with her a little court, composed of the friends of her son and daughter, with some of the choicest wits, and particularly Voiture, with whom they could not dispense. In default of Voiture, they had his small change, Montreuil or Sarrazin, attachés of the house of Condé, and who were successively secretaries of Condé, of the Prince de Conti, and of Madame de Longueville. They were men of fine spirit; and Boileau, in his letter to Perrault, names Sarrazin after Voiture. M. the Prince, for whom the country possessed but little charm, remained usually in Paris, to prosecute his designs and his fortune. Madame the Princess did not dislike diversion, and young people devoted themselves to her with ardor. Court was paid to the ladies. During the heat of the day, they amused themselves in reading romances or poetry; in the evening they took long promenades and held long conversations. They lived after the manner of Astrea, in awaiting the adventures of the great Cyrus. Even in 1650, after the death of her husband, during the captivity of her two sons and of her son-in-law and the exile of her daughter, the troubles of the civil war and the noise of arms, Lenet relates to us how the Princess de Condé, passed the time at Chantilly:⁠[153] “The promenades were the most agreeable in the world.... The evenings were not less diverting. The company repaired to the apartment of the princess, where they played at different games. There were often fine voices, and especially agreeable conversations and stories of intrigues, which made life pass as pleasantly as possible.... These diversions were interrupted by bad news, occasionally brought or written. It was a very great pleasure to see all the young ladies sad or gay, according to the rare or frequent visits made to them, and according to the nature of the letters which they received; and as the affairs of each were pretty well known, it was easy to enter into them enough in advance to be amused. Every moment some visitors or some messages arrived, which caused great jealousy among those who did not receive them; and all this occasioned songs, sonnets, and elegies, which were not less diverting to the indifferent than to the interested. They made rhymes and enigmas, which occupied spare hours. Some might be seen walking along the banks of the ponds, in the avenues of the garden or park, on the terrace or on the downs, alone or in troops, according to the humor of the moment; while others were singing an air or reciting verses, or reading romances on a balcony, or walking or reclining upon the grass. Never did any one see so beautiful a place, in so beautiful a season, filled with better or more amiable company.”

But before 1650, before the Fronde, which divided all French society, Chantilly was a still more agreeable abode. Judge of it by this letter, which Sarrazin wrote from thence, at the commencement of 1648, to Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, at that time Madame de Montausier, who had just set out, with her husband, for their government of Saintonge and d’Angoumois:⁠[154]