Court Beauties of Old Whitehall Part 11

Montalais, believing that with persons of such consequence she was pulling the strings of an intrigue that would govern the State, wished to give an air of importance to an affair in which she was interested.

So, under the pledge of the strictest secrecy, she confided to La Valliere all that had pa.s.sed between Guiche and Madame. Poor La Valliere, who had sworn never to hide anything from her royal lover, kept the secret till it endangered her own happiness. For Louis, talking one day to his mistress about Madame, noticed that she became confused, whereupon he instantly suspected that something important was being hidden from him. As the unfortunate girl, whom he had seduced and was later to abandon heartlessly, could not deny that she had a secret from him and, owing to her promise to Montalais, would not betray it, the King left her in a pa.s.sion, swearing never to see her again. But when twenty-four hours had elapsed and she neither saw nor heard from the man she loved as few kings have been loved, Mademoiselle de la Valliere lost her head and fled to a convent. Louis, however, was no sooner informed of her flight than he went after her; and at the sight of him the beautiful girl, whom the loss of her virtue and the loss of her lover had between them nearly driven mad, rushed to his arms and told him all she knew.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIeRE.]

The surprise of Madame--who had no idea that La Valliere was acquainted with her secrets--may be imagined when Louis coldly informed her that he was aware of her indiscretions. For her, the flirtation with which she had amused herself might easily have had serious consequences; but she was quick to discover the loop-hole by which she, and even Guiche--for she was not base enough to leave him to his fate--might escape. It was in Louis' infatuation for La Valliere that she discovered her opportunity. To him it was necessary that his mistress's flight should be hushed up by her return to the Court of Madame in the position from which she had fled. And as the cunning Madame would only agree to this on the condition that Guiche, whom she promised not to see again, should not be molested, ruin was thus averted.

At this point the Louis-Valliere intrigue became disentangled from that of Guiche-Madame, and wandered off into another and more intricate labyrinth, where after many adventures it was finally devoured by the dragon Montespan; while the Affaire Guiche-Madame, having anointed its wounds with the oil of intrigue, picked itself up and went on its perilous way more vigorously than ever.

It began its new lease of life, however, with an indiscretion. The Comte de Guiche had a friend to whom he was in the habit of confiding all his secrets, and who now appeared on the scene to play the part of villain as consummately as ever it was interpreted. This individual was the famous or infamous Marquis de Vardes, one of the most polished and attractive men at Court. He was something of a Chevalier de Gramont on an inferior scale. His epigrams and _bons mots_ were proverbial, and the dexterity with which he could turn an awkward situation to his advantage was unrivalled. He was quite universally popular, and even Louis allowed him to take an occasional liberty with him.

"De Vardes!" wrote Madame de Sevigne to her daughter; "toujours de Vardes! He is the gospel according to the day!"

This brilliant and popular Marquis was, however, as proficient in intrigue as Mademoiselle de Montalais herself, and utterly devoid of principle. The confidences of Guiche and perhaps, too, the fascination of Madame, had inspired him with the desire to win her heart. To achieve his end it was necessary that his friend Guiche should be got out of the way. On learning that the King knew of Madame's flirtation, he went to Guiche's father, the Marechal de Gramont, and so cleverly worked on the old man's fears that he himself went to Louis and begged his Majesty to order his son to join his regiment in Lorraine. This the King willingly did, but when the news of Guiche's departure reached Madame, believing that Louis had not kept his word to her, she broke hers to him. Guiche persuaded her to grant him a farewell interview, and Montalais undertook to arrange matters. But while the Comte de Guiche, skilfully smuggled into the palace, was saying good-bye to Madame, who should be unexpectedly announced but Monsieur! The ever-vigilant Montalais had only time to whisper a warning, and the high-flown Guiche was obliged to fling dignity to the winds and escape like some ridiculous _bourgeois_ lover in a similar predicament. When Monsieur entered his wife's apartment the Comte de Guiche was in the chimney!

This expedient, however, did not prevent the _denouement_ to which the foolish flirtation was now hurrying. Two of Madame's women, who were jealous of Montalais, having seen her smuggle Guiche into their mistress's bedroom, promptly went off to Anne of Austria and told her what they knew. Such a piece of news was too much for Anne to keep to herself, so she imparted it, with the usual exaggeration with which one embroiders a sensation, to Monsieur. His revenge was characteristic.

Having packed Montalais out of the palace the next morning before his wife was awake, he went off to Henrietta Maria and complained of her daughter's conduct. But, thanks to Madame, the disagreeable notoriety this affair might have created was again averted. She frankly confessed to having acted foolishly, promised to treat Guiche for the future with the indifference she felt towards him, and begged her husband's forgiveness. Monsieur, disarmed by such straightforward conduct, and satisfied with having humbled his wife, agreed to a reconciliation, which, however, was not of long duration. As he had sense enough to understand that a scandal would damage him as much as Madame, he suffered Guiche to depart quietly for Lorraine, and contented himself with insisting on the dismissal of Montalais.

The ground was now cleared for Vardes. His plans to make himself master of Madame by love if possible, otherwise by blackmail, were most skilfully laid. As it was, above all, necessary that he should not excite the jealousy of Monsieur against himself, he set to work to excite it against the young Prince de Marsillac, the eldest son of La Rochefoucauld. He succeeded so well that Marsillac was banished from the Court, and Monsieur treated Vardes with almost as much favour as he did his _mignon_, the Chevalier de Lorraine. Having been informed by his friend Guiche of all that had pa.s.sed between him and Madame, Vardes was led to believe that the pa.s.sion was mutual, and in his treacherous determination to supplant Guiche he did not hesitate to paint the absent lover in the worst possible light.

But in turning Madame's indifference to Guiche into prejudice, Vardes made the mistake of keeping his memory alive. Deceived by Vardes'

amiable and insinuating manners, and believing him to be her friend, Madame distinguished him with certain confidences that he interpreted as signs of a growing affection. Vardes was, however, rudely disillusioned at the very moment he fancied victory within grasp. One night, at some Court function, the conversation in the _entourage_ of Madame chanced to turn on the Comte de Guiche, who from Lorraine had gone to Poland, where he was covering himself with glory and wounds. Among the stories told of him, it was related that in a battle, in which some of the fingers of his right hand had been shot off, a bullet had struck him on the breast, and that death was only averted by a "portrait he wore next his heart."

Madame, remembering all that had pa.s.sed between herself and Guiche, had no doubt the charmed portrait was her own, and, in spite of the prejudice against him that had been subtly instilled into her mind, she was sufficiently touched by what she heard to exclaim to Vardes that "she believed she liked the Comte de Guiche more than she thought."

Realising that he had failed, Vardes now resolved to be revenged on both Madame and Guiche.

At the time of her arrest Mademoiselle de Montalais had managed to save Guiche's letters to Madame, of which she had the care, from falling into the hands of Monsieur. These she carried with her to her convent prison, whence she had sent them for safer keeping, as she thought, to her lover, Malicorne. This man showed them to a certain Manicamp, a supposed friend of the Comte de Guiche, from whom Vardes artfully got possession of them. And from this rape of the letters sprung a numerous progeny of little intrigues, by means of which, in the usual French fas.h.i.+on, a crowd of minor persons set to work to weave the threads of their own fortunes into the general pattern of Vardes-Guiche-Madame.

To enumerate all the adventures of this precious crew would require a book almost as long as the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." Perhaps only a Dumas could unravel all the threads of this curious tangle. And what a tangle it was! Think of the incriminating correspondence pa.s.sing from a Montalais' hand to those of a Malicorne and a Manicamp, who wrote a libel on Madame and Guiche, printed in Holland, and bought up, all save one copy, by Madame's father-confessor, who travelled secretly to Holland for the purpose and had adventures not a few. Think of Vardes'

forged letters from the Queen of Spain to ruin Madame--letters lost by the forgers. Think of the Comte de Guiche returning from Poland and discovering his friend's treachery; think of Guiche's attempts to clear himself in Madame's eyes--attempts in which the whole Gramont family lent a hand with daily consultations at the house of the famous Philibert and his La Belle Hamilton--attempts in which masked b.a.l.l.s and lackey's liveries play a prominent part. If one thinks of the possibilities of such incidents, one will get some idea of the adventures the Affaire Guiche-Madame had to encounter. To stop it, once started, not even Vardes himself, had he wished, had the power. Like a Juggernaut, it continued to advance, crus.h.i.+ng all who got in its way, the innocent and the evil alike.

So cleverly had Vardes schemed, it seemed impossible that Madame, still unaware of his villainy, could escape destruction. She carried on an intimate correspondence with her brother, Charles II., in which neither concealed their thoughts of the people around them. One of these letters, not very flattering to Louis, Vardes got possession of and showed the King, to whom as gentleman of the bedchamber he had easy access. But this fatal shot missed fire owing to the treachery of his chief ally--his mistress, Olympe Mancini, Comtesse de Soissons. This woman, believing that Vardes' hatred of Madame was but a mask to conceal a pa.s.sion as wild as Guiche's for the Princess, had a quarrel with her lover, on whom in a fit of jealousy she revenged herself by having an _eclairciss.e.m.e.nt_ with Madame. Horrified at the plot of which she was to be the victim, Madame went straight to the King and explained to him what she had learnt. Louis accepted her interpretation of the letter to her brother, and Vardes was sent to the Bastille.

But now the Comtesse de Soissons, realising that her jealousy had not only utterly lost her her lover but freed her rival, resolved to be revenged on the Comte de Guiche. She had one of his letters, in which, in his romantic way, he had offered to make his regiment swear allegiance to Madame. But the day was long past when Olympe Mancini could make Louis XIV. eager to fulfil her requests. To the mortification and terror of the Comtesse, he went to consult Madame. By this time Madame's gaiety was sobered by experience; she had come to see the incredible folly of a woman of her position flirting with Guiche and making friends with a Vardes. Whatever affection she may have had for the Comte de Guiche was at an end, and she wished him out of the way.

But she was shrewd enough to detect an enemy in the Comtesse de Soissons, and she resolved to save Guiche at her expense as the lesser of two evils. Louis was induced to pardon him if it could be proved that his faults were small in comparison to those of his enemies. As Madame now held all the court-cards in the game, this was easy to do. She gave the King a full and frank account of her flirtation with Guiche from its beginning, as well as the complications to which it had led, and wrote to Guiche to do the same, "a.s.suring him that she had found plain dealing the best security against Court machinations." The indignation of Louis was aroused, and he lost no time in venting his anger. Vardes was taken from the Bastille--the _ancien regime's_ prison for such persons as we nowadays call "first-cla.s.s misdemeanants"--and immured in a dungeon at Montpelier. It was nearly thirty years before he saw the Court of France again.

A much milder punishment was meted out to the Comtesse de Soissons. She was forced to retire into the country for a time; but, far from having a wholesome effect on her lawless spirit, this temporary exile seemed to have a.s.sisted its degeneration. When she returned to Court she took to poisoning, or was at least suspected of being implicated in the "Poison Affair," whereupon Louis had to banish her altogether from the country.

She died in great misery, after a sensational vagabond life, just as the star of her son, Prince Eugene of Savoy, began to rise over Europe.

As for the Comte de Guiche, he and his Dulcinea never met again, in spite of all his attempts, in the last of which, disguised as a footman, he fainted in the very presence of Madame. Louis once more obliged him to carry his high-flown, imaginary pa.s.sion off to the war then raging, in which, after a short but brilliant career, he perished. Of all those who had been entangled in this intrigue Madame alone succeeded in escaping with colours flying. But though the King's confidence in his brilliant sister-in-law was fully restored, and she was admitted to the secret councils of the Cabinet--a distinction that no other woman, save Madame de Maintenon, enjoyed in this reign--she could not win happiness. Monsieur was a constant thorn in her flesh. Perhaps it would have been impossible to overcome the resentment of his petty, contemptible nature; but Madame's attempt merely served to whet his dislike into hatred. Rightly guessing that his favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine, fomented the discord between them, she determined that this man should be banished. The necessary excuse for effecting an object so thoroughly justifiable was provided for her by Louis, who disliked the Chevalier de Lorraine quite as much as she did herself. Instead of remonstrating with his brother on his behaviour, the King gave the Chevalier a lecture on the subject, who, by declaring that henceforth he would be answerable for Monsieur's good conduct, fell into the trap set for him.

"What!" said Louis haughtily, "you answerable to me for _my_ brother? Do you think that I choose to have such a guarantee? But, be it so, I shall hold you to your word."

As opportunities of objecting to Monsieur's conduct were innumerable, the Chevalier's impertinent boast was soon put to the test. One day, accordingly, without any warning, Louis sent to arrest him. He was seized in a room in which he was closeted with Monsieur, who fell into such a paroxysm of grief and rage as to give the widest publicity to a disagreeable scandal.

But the Chevalier de Lorraine in a dungeon at the Chateau d'If, or in exile in Italy, was even more dangerous to Madame's domestic happiness than when at the Palais Royal. From the day of his favourite's disgrace to his wife's strange death a few months later, Monsieur was an impossible husband for any woman to live with. He seemed now to have but two objects in life, to be possessed of two burning desires which dwelt in him evilly like demons. One was the return of his Chevalier, the other the death of Madame.

The vindictive animosity that Monsieur displayed towards his wife was still further whetted by a singular mark of favour which Louis bestowed on his sister-in-law. Wis.h.i.+ng to detach Charles II. from the alliances he had formed, the King of France thought that he could not find a more suitable instrument to accomplish his design than the insinuating Madame, whose relations with her brother were, as Vardes had proved to him, of the most cordial description. The Princess, when the subject was explained to her, willingly undertook to go to England and negotiate with Charles in person, having, according to one authority, the ulterior object of persuading her brother to afford her his protection in the not unlikely event of her separating from her husband, whose conduct was becoming more and more insupportable. Whether this was so or not, considering the character of Monsieur, it was extremely undesirable that he should be acquainted with the secret of her mission. Hereupon he availed himself of his conjugal rights with characteristic pettiness and forbade her to leave France. But Louis was not to be thwarted in a matter of such importance to him by his brother's paltry rancour, and he sternly told Monsieur "that she _should_ go and that he would have no more obstacles thrown in his way."

Madame consequently departed, accompanied by a brilliant suite which included the Comte and Comtesse de Gramont and Anthony Hamilton. Charles and his whole Court went to Dover to meet her, and in his eagerness to see his sister again the King, like an impatient schoolboy, rowed out into the Channel to welcome her. The business transacted during this brief visit need not detain us here. On the ability she showed in negotiating the "Traite de Madame" her fame chiefly rests. When the articles of this treaty were made public she was censured as a traitress who had sold her country to France, and English historians generally have ever since accused her of an utter lack of principle. But considering that she was, in spite of her birth, far more French than English, the obloquy that attaches to her name seems to us to have been inspired more by a prejudice against the whole House of Stuart than by a love of fairness. At the time, however, her reception in England was not only brilliant but cordial, and proved that her popularity had not waned since her last visit. The ten or twelve days she pa.s.sed at Dover were, perhaps, the brightest of her life. Certainly she never knew a happy day afterwards.

Whether she was as successful in the personal as she was in the political object of her mission is not known. All accounts on the subject are at variance; some declare that she came back from Dover radiant, others depressed. At any rate, the reception she met with from her husband was well calculated to damp the gayest spirits. Monsieur began at once to reproach her in regard to the Chevalier de Lorraine; "he told her plainly that he knew his favourite's banishment was her doing, that she should have no peace till she had him recalled, and even threatened her with worse if she did not comply with his wishes." As the recall of the Chevalier meant her humiliation, she refused to yield. The relations between them were at their worst when one morning, three weeks after her arrival at St. Cloud, as she finished drinking a gla.s.s of chicory-water she was seized with violent intestinal pains.

Her first exclamation was that she was poisoned. Every one in the palace was terrified, except Monsieur. He did not appear in the least put out.

Word was despatched to Louis at Versailles, who immediately sent Vallot, his own physician, to St. Cloud. Shortly after he followed himself, accompanied by the Queen and La Grande Mademoiselle. When they arrived they were told, to their horror, that Madame was dying. They found her writhing on a couch, pale, dishevelled, and scarcely recognisable from the convulsive movements that distorted her features. No one, with the exception of her maids of honour who hung over her weeping, appeared the least alarmed. At the sight of the King she uttered a piercing cry and said she felt "a fire in her stomach." The doctors looked on in silence, without attempting to alleviate her sufferings.

"But," said Louis to them, "is it possible you will let a woman die like this without doing something?"

Vallot replied that the illness was not fatal. "It is," he explained, "a sort of colic which may last nine, ten, or even twenty-four hours at the most."

And people continued to go and come in the room, laugh and talk with an inhuman indifference that must have been heart-rending to the unhappy woman.

La Grande Mademoiselle was astonished that no one had thought of speaking to her of the state of her soul.

"At this moment," she writes, "Monsieur entered. I said to him, 'Madame is not in a fit state to die, and she should be confessed.'

"He answered that I was right, and told me that her confessor was a Capuchin who was good for nothing except to do her honour by appearing in public in her coach that people might see she had one.

"'A different sort of man,' he added, 'is needed to speak to her about death. Whom could we get that would sound well to put in the _Gazette_?'

"'At such a time,' I said, 'the best qualification that a confessor could have was to be a pious man.'

"'Ah, I have it!' he replied; 'the Abbe Bossuet is the man. He has just been nominated for the bishopric of Condom.'"

Hereupon Louis, disgusted at such callousness, and unable to support the sight of Madame's sufferings, took an affectionate leave of her and hastened back to Versailles.

Bossuet was sent for, but in the meantime the rumour "_Madame se meurt!_" had reached Paris, and a host of persons flocked to St. Cloud.

Among them were the great Conde and the old Marechal de Gramont, father of the Comte de Guiche, who went to her bathed in tears. "She told him pathetically that he was losing a good friend, that she was dying, and at first she thought she had been poisoned by mistake." Then turning to her sincerest friend, whose simple narrative of her death should have made all others superfluous, she said with something of her old gaiety--

"'Madame de La Fayette, my nose has shrunk already.'

"I answered by my tears, for what she said was only too true, and I had noticed it before. The hiccough seized her. She told Esprit (one of the doctors) that it was the death-hiccough. She had asked several times how soon she should die; she repeated the question, and although she was answered as a person not near death, we saw well that she had no hope.

Her thoughts never rested on life; she never uttered a word of reflection on the destiny which was taking her off in the prime of life; never questioned the doctors as to whether it were possible to save her; showed no impatience for remedies, except in so far as the violence of her pains made her long for them; exhibited a calmness in the certainty of death, in the suspicion of poison; in short, a courage of which no example can be found, and which it is difficult even to represent."

When Montague, the English Amba.s.sador, arrived, she said--

"You see the sad condition I am in. I am going to die. Ah! how I pity the King, my brother, for I am sure he loses the person in the world who loves him best."

"A little while later," says Montague in a letter he wrote to Charles, "she called me again, bidding me _be sure_ to say all the kind things in the world from her to her brother, and thank him for all his kindness and care of her.

"'Pray tell my brother I never persuaded him to join France out of my own interest, but because I thought it for his honour and advantage, for I always loved him above all things in the world.'

"I asked her in English if she believed herself poisoned. Some confessor standing near catching the word _poison_, which is the same in French as in English, quickly interposed--

"'Madame, you must accuse n.o.body, but offer up your life as a sacrifice to G.o.d.'

"So she only shrugged her shoulders."

Perhaps the most touching incident of this leave-taking was a.s.sociated with Treville. This man was the Captain of Monsieur's Mousquetaires, and one of the wittiest and best-educated men at Court. "To talk like Treville, to be as learned as Treville, was the highest compliment you could pay a man." He was one of the chiefs of the Port-Royal coterie, which was the centre of intellectual life in France--and he loved Madame. It was a love that did them both honour--a chivalrous devotion that never overstepped the bounds of respect. To approach Madame at such a moment and take leave of her for ever before the envious eyes of that crowded, callous room was impossible to Treville. But, notwithstanding her hectic excitement and intense suffering, Madame observed him standing in the background.