The hum which the zephyr excites among the leaves of the grove when night is about to cover the earth, was gently agitating the forest of Chantilly, when, upon the principal road, three nymphs appeared to the solitary Tircis. They were not those poor wood-nymphs, more worthy of pity than envy, who, for lodging and clothing, have nothing but the bark of the trees. Their equipage was superb, and their clothing brilliant.... The majestic air of the oldest impressed all who approached her with profound respect. The one by her side displayed a beauty which neither painting, sculpture, nor poetry have ever realized. The third had that easy air that is given to the Graces.

That is to say, Madame, yesterday evening, at twilight, I met, on the great road to Chantilly, Madame the Princess, who was never in better health, accompanied by Madame de Longueville, who never looked more beautiful, and Madame de Saint-Loup,⁠[155] who was never more gay, all three in deshabille and in a calash, followed by the Princes de Condé and de Conti.... Madame the Princess, perceiving me, exclaimed: Sarrazin, I wish you to sit down this moment, and write to Madame de Montausier, that Chantilly was never more beautiful, that time there never passed more pleasantly, that her society was never more desired, and that she is making a fool of herself by staying at Saintonge, while we are here:

We may by this judge what Chantilly must have been eight or ten years before, when all there were young; when the great Condé was still the Duke d’Enghien; Madame de Longueville, Mademoiselle de Bourbon; Madame de Montausier, Mademoiselle de Rambouillet; when, instead of the civil war, a flourishing peace or glorious victories filled every heart with gladness. The Duke d’Enghien was never there except amid a crowd of brave and gallant gentlemen, who afterwards fought with him at Rocroy, at Fribourg, at Dunkirk, at Lens, but who then shared his pleasures at the hôtel de Condé and at Chantilly—devoted confidants of his designs and of his loves. Among these were the Duke de Nemours, so suddenly slain, and whose brother—inheritor of his title, of his beauty, and his bravery—perished also in a frightful duel in the midst of the Fronde; Coligny, killed also, at an early age, in a duel of another character; his brother, Dandelot, afterwards Duke de Châtillon, one of the heroes of Lens, who promised to be a great warrior, and who perished at the attack of Charenton, during the first days of the Fronde; Laval, the son of the Marquis de Sablé, handsome, brave, and witty, who distinguished himself, and was slain at the siege of Dunkirk; La Moussaye, his aid-de-camp and principal officer in every battle, who, too, died young at Sténay, in 1650; Chabot, who married the beautiful and rich heiress of the Rohans; Pisani, the son of the Marchioness de Rambouillet, who fell sword in hand; the Marquis de Fors Du Vigean, Nangis, Tavannes, Seneçay, and many others, among whom arose the young Montmorency-Boutteville, afterwards Duke Maréchal-de-Luxembourg; all this school of Condé, entirely different from that of Turenne, into which the Duke d’Enghien early breathed his genius and the divine part of art, as Napoleon so well expressed it, the instinct of war, the glance which seized the strategic point of an affair, with audacity and obstinacy in execution; that admirable school, which began at Rocroy, and from which arose twelve marshals, without counting those generals who sustained the honor of France to the very end of the century. These were the youth who amused themselves at Chantilly, preluding glory by gallantry.

Mademoiselle de Bourbon, in selecting companions, was equal to her brother. She formed a connection with the Marchioness de Sablé, who became the friend of her whole life; but she had younger friends, if not more dear, at least with whom she was more familiar; she had formed a little private society, composed chiefly of Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, of Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean, and of her two cousins, Mesdemoiselles de Boutteville. It must be confessed that it was a circle of charming and redoubtable beauties, harmonious in their graceful youth, but destined soon to be separated, and to become rivals or enemies.

Voiture, we may conceive, took great care of these beautiful ladies, and especially of Mademoiselle de Bourbon: he celebrated her in verse and in prose, in every tune, and upon every occasion. Even in his letters written to others, he cannot cease speaking of her mind and beauty: “The mind of Mademoiselle de Bourbon,” says he, “is all that can cause one to doubt whether her beauty is the most perfect thing in the world.” He is continually comparing her to an angel:

In another place he says:

It is to her again that he addresses this agreeable song, intended, doubtless, to be chanted in a low tone by the side of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, as she lay dozing in one of the groves of Chantilly:

And if these ladies staid too long in the country, when Voiture was not with them, he called them back to Paris, in his burlesque, sentimental complaints.⁠[158]

But they did not spend the whole summer at Chantilly. Madame the Princess possessed several other country-seats in the vicinity: Marlou, La Versine, Méru, l’Isle-Adam, charming places to which she often went. She was also obliged to visit the cardinal and Madame d’Aiguillon in their beautiful summer residence at Ruel, on the borders of the Seine, between Saint-Germain and Paris.⁠[159] The pleasures of these places were very different from those of Chantilly. Art reigned at Ruel. Like Paris, it had a theatre, where the cardinal caused the representation of pieces with machinery brought from Italy. He gave great mythological ballets, like those of the Louvre, and feasts of a magnificence almost royal; whilst at Chantilly, much more removed from Paris, there was doubtless grandeur and opulence, but a grandeur full of quiet, and an opulence which placed especially at its service the beauties of nature. Ruel was also quite as lively as the Palais-Cardinal. Richelieu labored there with his ministers: there he received the court, France, Europe. Business was there mingled with diversion. The Duchess d’Aiguillon was worthy of her uncle, ambitious and prudent, devoted to him to whom she owed every thing, sharing his cares as well as his fortune, and governing admirably his house. She was still young enough, of a regular beauty, and not implicated in any affair of gallantry. Calumny or slander had attacked her relations with Richelieu, and even with Madame Du Vigean. She had more sense than wit, and was by no means a précieuse, although she frequented the hôtel de Rambouillet. Madame the Princess did not like Richelieu; she could not pardon the death of her brother, Montmorency, whom all her prayers and tears had not been able to save; but she subscribed to the political opinions of her husband. She had been obliged to agree to the marriage of the Duke d’Enghien with Mademoiselle de Brézé, and she was continually with his children at the Palais-Cardinal and at Ruel. She was received there in a manner that was unavoidable, and the poets of the cardinal chanted the praises of both the mother and daughter. Richelieu, as is well known, had five poets whom he employed to labor for his theatre: Bois-Robert, Colletet, l’Etoile, Corneille, and Retrou. They were called the five authors, and as such, produced in common several pieces: l’Aveugle de Smyrne, La Comédie des Tuileries, etc. This did not prevent the presence of other poets at the palace of his Eminence: Georges Scudéry, Voiture himself, who paid court to Richelieu and celebrated the Duchess d’Aiguillon. It was at Ruel that, meeting in an avenue Queen Anne, and challenged by her to make some verses on the spot, Voiture improvised that little piece, remarkable especially for the ease and boldness with which he ventured to speak to her of Buckingham. But the two favorites of the cardinal were Desmarets and Bois-Robert; he employed their pens upon every occasion, in what was light as well as in what was serious. It seems that Desmarets had been instructed to do the poetic honors of Ruel to Madame the Princess and to her daughter. We find in fact, in the collection, now rare enough and very little read, of the works of the king’s counsellor and minister of war, Desmarets, dedicated to Richelieu, and handsomely printed,⁠[160] a multitude of very agreeable verses, which were sung in the mythological ballets of Ruel, and of which several are addressed to Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and to Madame the Princess. In a Mascarade of the Graces and the Loves, addressing themselves to Madame the Duchess d’Aiguillon in presence of Madame the Princess and of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, the Graces say to the latter:

These are but insipid affairs, while the two following pieces have at least the advantage of describing the person of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, as she then was before her marriage, a few years after the portrait of Ducayer. We here see Mademoiselle de Bourbon beginning to fulfil the promise of her youth, and the angelic face described to us by Madame de Motteville, already accompanied by other attractions of true beauty:

To Mademoiselle de Bourbon.

To the same.

A few leagues from Chantilly were the beautiful lands of Liancourt, which Jeanne de Schomberg, at first Duchess de Brissac, then Duchess de Liancourt, had converted into a magnificent abode. She was a person of the greatest merit, and we have received from her pen a very remarkable work,⁠[161] destined for the education of her granddaughter, Mademoiselle de La Roche-Guyon, who, in 1659, married the son of La Rochefoucauld. She took pleasure in planning and carrying out the arrangements of a sumptuous establishment. She bought Rue de Seine, the ancient hôtel de Bouillon, and erected in its place the hôtel de Liancourt, afterwards called the hôtel de La Rochefoucauld, which extended from the Rue de Seine to the Rue des Augustins, in the space now occupied by the Rue des Beaux Arts. “At Liancourt,” says Tallemant,⁠[162] “the duchess had done all that any one could do for avenues and meadows. Every year she added some new beauty.” In 1656, Silvestre designed and engraved the different views of the castle and gardens, fountains, cascades, canals, and parterres of Liancourt.⁠[163] Madame the Princess often made a visit to this beautiful place. At one time when the small-pox was making fearful ravages in the neighborhood of Chantilly, and in the domains of the princess, Marlou, La Versine, Méru, she sent her children, with all their young friends, to pass some time at Liancourt. The Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean alone were wanting, having been called to Paris by their mother. The only son of the house, La Roche-Guyon, was one of the friends of the Duke d’Enghien; he was slain in 1646, while serving under him at the bloody siege of Mardyck. It was autumn. On All-Saints’ Day, these young ladies performed their devotions with accustomed exactitude. They then gave themselves up to quiet diversions, and, for want of better, and sharing the dominant taste for wit, also in the company perhaps of Montreuil or Sarrazin, they employed themselves in making rhymes; so that even on All-Saints’ Day they addressed to Marlou, where Madame the Princess was then staying, The Life and Miracles of Saint Marguerite Charlotte de Montmorency, Princess de Condé, versified at Liancourt. These verses, says the manuscript from which we borrow these details,⁠[164] were made upon the spot, and the authors appear to have been Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and Mesdemoiselles de Rambouillet, de Boutteville, and de Brienne.

It was impossible for them to forget the two amiable absentees, Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean, who were fatiguing themselves at Paris, while they were passing the time so agreeably at Liancourt. They wrote to them a very long letter in verse, wherein they regretted their absence, and enumerated their consolations. These unpublished verses, like the preceding, are also very mediocre; but it must not be forgotten that they are the impromptus of young girls and noble-born ladies.⁠[165]

Letter of Mademoiselle de Bourbon, and of Mesdemoiselles de Rambouillet, de Boutteville, and de Brienne, sent from Liancourt to Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean at Paris.

What was most curious and unexpected was, that the mania for rhyming took possession of Condé himself. As we have said, he had much wit and gayety, and he entered willingly into the society with which he was surrounded. In the midst of the Fronde, when war was also carried on by means of songs, he made more than one, bearing his own peculiar stamp. During the first war of Paris, in which Condé, still faithful to the true interests of his house, sided with the court, one of the most ardent chieftains of the opposing party was the Count de Maure, a cadet of the Duke de Mortemart, uncle of Madame de Montespan, husband of the witty Anne Doni d’Attichy, intimate friend of Madame de Sablé. In the councils of the Fronde, the count always favored the most rash resolutions. The Mazarins turned him into ridicule, and overwhelmed him with a shower of epigrams. Bachaumont, one of the authors of the celebrated Voyage de Chapelle et Bachaumont, had written against him some little verses, which terminated thus:⁠[167]

Condé, according to the testimony of Tallemant, whom we have no reason to discredit, added the following lines:

Among his best lieutenants was the Count de Marsin, father of the marshal, indeed much superior to him, and a veritable warrior. Condé esteemed him highly, but for all that he did not spare him. One day at table, in drinking his health, he improvised to a tune, then very common, this little song,⁠[168] which has never been published, and which seems to us very piquant:

At Liancourt, having nothing to do, and vexed because his sister and her beautiful friends stayed so long at church on All-Saints’ Day, he addressed to them the following epigram:⁠[169]

Among other friends whom he had with him at Liancourt, was the Marquis de Roussillon, an excellent officer and man of spirit, together with the intrepid La Moussaye, who was faithful to him to the last, and who, during the captivity of Condé, shut himself up with Madame de Longueville in the citadel of Sténay, where he died. Roussillon and La Moussaye, having been compelled to leave Liancourt for Lyons, Condé, in imitation of his sister’s letter to the Mesdemoiselles Du Vigean, wrote, or caused to be written, one of the same kind to his two absent friends. We give this piece almost entire, because it is written by Condé, or because Condé, at least, had a hand in it, and especially because it describes so naturally the life lead at Liancourt, at Chantilly, and in all the grand abodes of that aristocracy of the seventeenth century, so badly appreciated, and which, during peace, honored and cultivated the arts, which gave to letters a Rochefoucauld, a Retz, a Saint-Evremond, a Saint-Simond, without speaking of Madame de Sévigné and Madame de La Fayette, and which, when war broke out, flew to the battle-field, and lavished its blood in the cause of France. These are the verses of the future hero of Rocroy:

Letter⁠[170] of Monseigneur the Duke d’Enghien, written from Liancourt to MM. de Roussillon, and de La Moussaye at Lyons.

A very natural feeling leads us to inquire into the destiny of this court of young and brave gentlemen, of gay and charming young women, then surrounding Mademoiselle de Bourbon and her brother. We have told that of the gentlemen: all of them became illustrious warriors; most of them died upon the battle-field. But what became of their amiable companions, that swarm of youthful beauties whom we followed upon the steps of Mademoiselle de Bourbon to Chantilly, to Ruel, to Liancourt,—those five inseparable friends, whose verses, less pleasing than their faces, we have published, Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, Mademoiselle de Brienne, Mademoiselle de Montmorency-Boutteville, Mademoiselle Du Vigean? They had the most dissimilar fortunes, as we shall rapidly indicate.

Marie-Antoinette de Lomélie, daughter of the Count de Brienne, one of the ministers of Queen Anne, married, in 1642, the Marquis de Gamache, who became lieutenant-general. Her portraits, traced by herself, may be seen among the Portraits of Mademoiselle, with those of her father and mother. She made no noise; all her life passed on quietly and piously. She died at the age of eighty years, in 1704. She kept up continually, with Madame de Longueville, the most friendly intercourse. She was the least brilliant of the five friends, but she was the most fortunate.

What became of Mademoiselle de Rambouillet is well known. Spirituelle but ambitious, after having married Montausier, in 1645, she sought, as well as her husband, the favors of the court, and obtained them by paying the ransom. It is sad to begin in youth with harshness to one’s lovers, as they said at the hôtel de Rambouillet, and to be married only as a sort of favor, like the Armande of the Femmes Savantes, in order to become one of the most obliging of duennas. At first appointed a maid of honor of Queen Marie-Thérèse, she had, in 1664, the courage to take the place of the virtuous Duchess de Navailles, who would not countenance the love of the young king, Louis XIV., and Mademoiselle de La Vallière. Hence the well-founded accusations entertained by the benevolent Madame de Motteville herself, and which, at a later period, were confirmed by her weakness, when the king abandoned Mademoiselle de La Vallière for Madame de Montespan.⁠[172] It was in the midst of all these rumors that her husband was named Governor of the Dauphin. Montausier was certainly a man of merit, and, like his wife, he had great qualities, which he spoiled by great defects. He made a great show of virtue, under which was hidden much that was pitiful. He was very free in censuring every one, and suffered no one to fail in rendering him his due. He was abrupt, headstrong, of an insupportable haughtiness and pride.⁠[173] Charged provisionally and by commission with the government of Normandy, at the death of M. de Longueville, in 1663, he assumed the dignity of a prince of the blood, and exacted all the honor that was rendered to M. de Longueville himself. Hard towards his inferiors, difficult with his equals, he knew perfectly how to manage his credit and push his fortune. Born a Protestant, he became converted for the sake of his wife, as well as for political purposes.⁠[174] Madame de Montausier was more amiable, but quite as careful of her own interests. She was of that same school of which Madame de Maintenon was the consummate mistress,—that school which seeks the appearance of good rather than good itself, which accommodates itself to meanness, skilfully concealed, and bestows all its care, all its study upon not compromising itself; whilst proud and truly honest souls, whom passion misleads, take no pains to hide their faults, being careless of reputation when virtue is lost. Madame de Montausier was especially occupied with herself. She had the confidence of the king. She became a duchess. Her career was brilliant, but was she happy? She became embroiled and reconciled more than once with Madame de Longueville. She died in 1671, after her mother, the noble marchioness, who died in 1665, and, like her, she was buried in that convent of the Carmelites of the Rue Saint-Jacques, which most of the friends of Mademoiselle de Bourbon seem to have made a place of rendezvous during life and after death.

Mademoiselle de Montmorency-Boutteville, Isabelle Angélique,⁠[175] possessed at an early age a beauty which she preserved to the end. Her younger sister, Marie Louise, yielded to her, says Lenet,⁠[176] not as to the more beautiful, but as to the elder. She married the Marquis de Valency, and disappeared ten years before her sister, in 1684. Isabelle de Montmorency had much mind, and to the brilliancy of her charms united at first great coquetry, and afterwards the most shameful artifices. The first pages of her life are a romance—the last, a vulgar story. Protected, as well as her sister and brother, by Madame the Princess, and placed almost upon an equality with Mademoiselle de Bourbon and the Duke d’Enghien, she made, or seemed to make, some impression upon the latter; but she inflamed especially the handsome and the brave Dandelot. Madame de Boutteville refused to give him her daughter, because he was a Protestant and simply a younger brother, his elder brother, Coligny, being heir to the fortune and title of the Châtillons. But, after the death of Coligny, Dandelot who took his name, feeling himself upheld by the Duke d’Enghien and by his sister, carried off Mademoiselle de Boutteville, with her own consent of course, and after that it became necessary to marry the two fugitives.⁠[177] Voiture wrote some very lively verses upon this elopement,⁠[178] and Sarrazin made a ballad upon the method of conducting such matters.⁠[179] It would be supposed that a marriage so passionately desired on both sides would result in continued happiness to both parties. It was not, however, so. Coligny having become Duke de Châtillon, thought much more of war than of his wife: he covered himself with glory at Lens; but, as we have said, he perished in a miserable combat at Charenton in 1649. It must be confessed that he was the first to do wrong, and in dying he asked pardon of her whose pride he had especially wounded.⁠[180] The young and beautiful widow soon found consolation; she got possession of the heart of Condé, which had been for some time unoccupied, and exerted herself to keep it without bestowing her own, or even giving it to another, skilful in the art of promoting her interests and her pleasures. The memoirs of the times, and particularly those of La Rochefoucauld, describe her as managing at once the imperious Condé, from whom she drew great advantages, and the suspicious Nemours, whom she preferred, striving to conciliate them, and to win them both to the court with which she had a secret treaty. A little while after she plunges into the most diverse intrigues, connecting herself with the Marshal d’Hoquincourt and with the Abbé Fouquet, retaining over the absent Condé the power of her charms, trying this power upon the young king Louis XIV., marrying in 1664 the Duke de Meklembourg in the hope of a crown in Germany, and leaving after her the reputation of having been as beautiful and as selfish as the Duchess de Montbazon. The latter doubtless possessed beauty of a superior style, but the other, less imposing, was a thousand times more agreeable. They were by turns the two most dangerous rivals and mortal enemies of Madame de Longueville.⁠[181]

But we now present a very different person, whose destiny, like her character, forms a perfect contrast with that of Madame de Châtillon; very beautiful also, but less dazzling and more touching; a person who had not perhaps the mind and the finesse of the seductive friend of her childhood, but who knew none of her artifices and intrigues; who glittered a moment only to be quickly extinguished, but who has left a virtuous and sweet memory; a person superior perhaps to Mademoiselle de La Vallière herself, for she also loved and was able to resist her heart, and, without falling, deceived in her affections, she determined to finish her life like the sister Louise de la Miséricorde. Let us not pity her too much: she tasted in this world an inexpressible happiness; she felt beating for her the heart of a hero, that of the conqueror of Rocroy and of Fribourg, of the ardent and impetuous Duke d’Enghien, who could not quit her without shedding tears and without fainting. Sensible to a passion so true, and which promised to be so durable, but disarmed in some measure by the charm of a modest and sincere virtue, she made Condé know, at least once in his life, what was true love. After that he knew nothing but the transient intoxication of the senses, especially the passion of war, for which he was born—his true passion indeed, his mistress, his part, his country, his king, the true object of all his life, and by turns his shame and his glory.

This charming creature, who for several years was the idol of Condé, was the young Mademoiselle Du Vigean. Her destiny was so touching, and it was so intimately connected with that of Mademoiselle de Bourbon and of Madame de Longueville, that we shall be pardoned for dwelling a few moments upon it.

Mademoiselle Du Vigean was the youngest daughter of François Poussart de Fors, at first Baron, then Marquis Du Vigean, a man of little importance,⁠[182] and of Anne de Neubourg, who was a very great character under Louis XIII., thanks to the friendship of the Duchess d’Aiguillon, niece of Richelieu. Admitted into the first society, the letters and poesy of Voiture show that Madame Du Vigean held well her place.⁠[183] This success, and the connection which was the occasion of it, could not fail to make her the subject of envy, and various rumors were spread concerning her and Madame d’Aiguillon, equally injurious to both, and of which we find no feeble echo in the scandalous chronicle of Tallemant and in the songs of the times.⁠[184] She possessed at La Barre, near Paris, above Saint-Denis and d’Enghien, and quite near to Montmorency, a charming residence which Voiture has described, and where she received magnificently the best and choicest society, even to Madame the Princess and Mademoiselle de Bourbon.⁠[185]

Madame Du Vigean had two sons and two daughters. The eldest of the sons, the Marquis de Fors, was an officer of the greatest promise, who was killed at the age of twenty years at the siege of Arras, where the Duke d’Enghien served as a volunteer. He had been made a prisoner twice, but he perished finally, after prodigies of valor. He was wept by the Duke d’Enghien and by all his comrades. Magnificent funeral ceremonies were performed over him, and Desmarets, one of the poets of Richelieu, consecrated to him a long elegy.⁠[186] His young brother, who also served, finished his career still more sadly: he was assassinated under circumstances which could never be discovered.

As to the two sisters, their eulogy is found in all the gallant poems of this epoch. They are praised equally with Mademoiselle de Boutteville and Mademoiselle de Bourbon, in a piece in the manuscript collection of Maurepas,⁠[187] and Voiture places them in a review of the beauties of the court of Chantilly, addressed to Madame the Princess.⁠[188] He is pleased to celebrate the mother and the two daughters, and particularly the young Du Vigean: