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Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme · English · Gutenberg #17159 · 701,561 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Women of Modern France

Author: Hugo P. Thieme


        
Release date: November 26, 2005 [eBook #17159]
                Most recently updated: December 13, 2020

Language: English

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Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was added by the
Transcriber.



WOMAN

In all ages and in all countries


WOMEN OF MODERN FRANCE

by

HUGO P. THIEME, Ph.D.

Of the University of Michigan


THE RITTENHOUSE PRESS PHILADELPHIA




Copyrighted at Washington and entered at Stationer's Hall, London,

1907—1908

and printed by arrangement with George Barrie's Sons.


PRINTED IN U.S.A.




CONTENTS

                PREFACE

     Chapter I. Woman in politics

    Chapter II. Woman in Family Life, Education, and Letters

   Chapter III. The Seventeenth Century: Woman at Her Best

    Chapter IV. Woman in Society and Literature

     Chapter V. Mistresses and Wives of Louis XIV

    Chapter VI. Mme. de Sévigné, Mme. de La Fayette, Mme. Dacier,
                Mme. de Caylus

   Chapter VII. Woman in Religion

  Chapter VIII. Salon Leaders Mme. de Tencin, Mme. Geoffrin, Mme.
                du Deffand, Mlle. de Lespinasse, Mme. du Châtelet

    Chapter IX. Salon Leaders—(Continued): Mme. Necker, Mme.
                d'Epinay, Mme. de Genlis: Minor Salons


     Chapter X. Social Classes

    Chapter XI. Royal Mistresses

   Chapter XII. Marie Antoinette and the Revolution

  Chapter XIII. Women of the Revolution and the Empire

   Chapter XIV. Women of the Nineteenth Century




PREFACE


Among the Latin races, the French race differs essentially in one
characteristic which has been the key to the success of French
women—namely, the social instinct. The whole French nation has always
lived for the present time, in actuality, deriving from life more of
what may be called social pleasure than any other nation. It has been
a universal characteristic among French people since the sixteenth
century to love to please, to make themselves agreeable, to bring joy
and happiness to others, and to be loved and admired as well. With
this instinctive trait French women have always been bountifully
endowed. Highly emotional, they love to charm, and this has become
an art with them; balancing this emotional nature is the mathematical
quality. These two combined have made French women the great leaders
in their own country and among women of all races. They have developed
the art of studying themselves; and the art of coquetry, which
has become a virtue, is a science with them. The singular power of
discrimination, constructive ability, calculation, subtle intriguing,
a clear and concise manner of expression, a power of conversation
unequalled in women of any other country, clear thinking: all these
qualities have been strikingly illustrated in the various great women
of the different periods of the history of France, and according to
these they may by right be judged; for their moral qualities have not
always been in accordance with the standard of other races.

According as these two fundamental qualities, the emotional and
mathematical, have been developed in individual women, we meet the
different types which have made themselves prominent in history. The
queens of France, in general, have been submissive and pious, dutiful
and virtuous wives, while the mistresses have been bold and frivolous,
licentious and self-assertive. The women outside of these spheres
either looked on with indifference or regret at the all-powerfulness
of this latter class, unable to change conditions, or themselves
enjoyed the privilege of the mistress.

It must be remembered that in the great social circles in France,
especially from the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth centuries,
marriage was a mere convention, offences against it being looked upon
as matters concerning manners, not morals; therefore, much of the
so-called gross immorality of French women may be condoned. It will
be seen in this history that French women have acted banefully on
politics, causing mischief, inciting jealousy and revenge, almost
invariably an instrument in the hands of man, acting as a disturbing
element. In art, literature, religion, and business, however, they
have ever been a directing force, a guide, a critic and judge, an
inspiration and companion to man.

The wholesome results of French women's activity are reflected
especially in art and literature, and to a lesser degree in religion
and morality, by the tone of elegance, politeness, _finesse_,
clearness, precision, purity, and a general high standard which man
followed if he was to succeed. In politics much severe blame and
reproach have been heaped upon her—she is made responsible for
breaking treaties, for activity in all intrigues, participating in
and inciting to civil and foreign wars, encouraging and sanctioning
assassinations and massacres, championing the Machiavelian policy and
practising it at every opportunity.

It has been the aim of this history of French women to present the
results rather than the actual happenings of their lives, and
these have been gathered from the most authoritative and scholarly
publications on the subject, to which the writer herewith wishes to
give all credit.

Hugo Paul Thieme.

_University of Michigan._




Chapter I

Woman in politics


French women of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries,
when studied according to the distinctive phases of their influence,
are best divided into three classes: those queens who, as wives,
represented virtue, education, and family life; the mistresses, who
were instigators of political intrigue, immorality, and vice; and the
authoresses and other educated women, who constituted themselves the
patronesses of art and literature.

This division is not absolute by any means; for we see that in the
sixteenth century the regent-mother (for example, Louise of Savoy and
Catherine de' Medici), in extent of influence, fills the same position
as does the mistress in the eighteenth century; though in the former
period appears, in Diana of Poitiers, the first of a long line of
ruling mistresses.

Queen-consorts, in the sixteenth as in the following centuries,
exercised but little influence; they were, as a rule, gentle and
obedient wives—even Catherine, domineering as she afterward showed
herself to be, betraying no signs of that trait until she became
regent.

The literary women and women of spirit and wit furthered all
intellectual and social development; but it was the mistresses—those
great women of political schemes and moral degeneracy—who were vested
with the actual importance, and it must in justice to them be said
that they not infrequently encouraged art, letters, and mental
expansion.

Eight queens of France there were during the sixteenth century,
and three of these may be accepted as types of purity, piety, and
goodness: Claude, first wife of Francis I.; Elizabeth of France, wife
of Charles IX.; and Louise de Vaudemont, wife of Henry III. These
queens, held up to ridicule and scorn by the depraved followers of
their husbands' mistresses, were reverenced by the people; we find
striking contrasts to them in the two queens-regent, Louise of Savoy
and Catherine de' Medici, who, in the period of their power, were
as unscrupulous and brutal, intriguing and licentious, jealous and
revengeful, as the most wanton mistresses who ever controlled a
king. In this century, we find two other remarkable types: Marguerite
d'Angoulême, the bright star of her time; and her whose name comes
instantly to mind when we speak of the Lady of Angoulême—Marguerite
de Navarre, representing both the good and the doubtful, the broadest
sense of that untranslatable term _femme d'esprit_.

The first of the royal French women to whom modern woman owes a great
and clearly defined debt was Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII.
and the personification of all that is good and virtuous. To her
belongs the honor of having taken the first step toward the social
emancipation of French women; she was the first to give to woman an
important place at court. This precedent she established by requesting
her state officials and the foreign ambassadors to bring their wives
and daughters when they paid their respects to her. To the ladies
themselves, she sent a "royal command," bidding them leave their
gloomy feudal abodes and repair to the court of their sovereign.

Anne may be said to belong to the transition period—that period in
which the condition of slavery and obscurity which fettered the
women of the Middle Ages gave place to almost untrammelled liberty.
The queen held a separate court in great state, at Blois and Des
Tournelles, and here elegance, even magnificence, of dress was
required of her ladies. At first, this unprecedented demand caused
discontent among men, who at that time far surpassed women in
elaborateness of costume and had, consequently, been accustomed to
the use of their surplus wealth for their own purposes. Under Anne's
influence, court life underwent a complete transformation; her
receptions, which were characterized by royal splendor, became the
centre of attraction.

Anne of Brittany, the last queen of France of the Middle Ages and
the first of the modern period, was a model of virtuous conduct,
conjugal fidelity, and charity. Having complete control over her own
immense wealth, she used it largely for beneficent purposes; to her
encouragement much of the progress of art and literature in France was
due. Hers was an example that many of the later queens endeavored to
follow, but it cannot be said that they ever exerted a like influence
or exhibited an equal power of initiation and self-assertion.

The first royal woman to become a power in politics in the period that
we are considering was Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I., a type
of the voluptuous and licentious female of the sixteenth century. Her
pernicious activity first manifested itself when, having conceived
a violent passion for Charles of Bourbon, she set her heart upon
marrying him, and commenced intrigues and plots which were all the
more dangerous because of her almost absolute control over her son,
the King.

At this time there were three distinct sets or social castes at the
court of France: the pious and virtuous band about the good Queen
Claude; the lettered and elegant belles in the coterie of Marguerite
d'Angoulême, sister of Francis I.; and the wanton and libertine young
maids who formed a galaxy of youth and beauty about Louise of Savoy,
and were by her used to fascinate her son and thus distract him from
affairs of state.

Louise used all means to bring before the king beautiful women through
whom she planned to preserve her influence over him. One of these
frail beauties, Françoise de Foix, completely won the heart of the
monarch; her ascendency over him continued for a long period, in spite
of the machinations of Louise, who, when Francis escaped her control,
sought to bring disrepute and discredit upon the fair mistress.

The mother, however, remained the powerful factor in politics. With an
abnormal desire to hoard money, an unbridled temper, and a violent and
domineering disposition, she became the most powerful and dangerous,
as well as the most feared, woman of all France. During her regency
the state coffers were pillaged, and plundering was carried on on all
sides. One of her acts at this time was to cause the recall of Charles
of Bourbon, then Governor of Milan; this measure was taken as much
for the purpose of obtaining revenge for his scornful rejection of her
offer of marriage as for the hope of eventually bringing him to her
side.

Upon the return of Charles, she immediately began plotting against
him, including in her hatred Françoise de Foix, the king's mistress,
at whom Bourbon frequently cast looks of pity which the furiously
jealous Louise interpreted as glances of love. As a matter of fact,
Bourbon, being strictly virtuous, was out of reach of temptation by
the beauties of the court, and there were no grounds for jealousy.

This love of Louise for Charles of Bourbon is said to have owed most
of its ardor to her hope of coming into possession of his immense
estates. She schemed to have his title to them disputed, hoping that,
by a decree of Parliament, they might be taken from him; the idea in
this procedure was that Bourbon, deprived of his possessions, must
come to her terms, and she would thus satisfy—at one and the same
time—her passion and her cupidity.

Under her influence the character of the court changed entirely;
retaining only a semblance of its former decency, it became utterly
corrupt. It possessed external elegance and _distingué_ manners, but
below this veneer lay intrigue, debauchery, and gross immorality. In
order to meet the vast expenditures of the king and the queen-mother,
the taxes were enormously increased; the people, weighed down by the
unjust assessment and by want, began to clamor and protest. Undismayed
by famine, poverty, and epidemic, Louise continued her depredations
on the public treasury, encouraging the king in his squanderings;
and both mother and son, in order to procure money, begged, borrowed,
plundered.

Louise was always surrounded by a bevy of young ladies, selected
beauties of the court, whose natural charms were greatly enhanced by
the lavishness of their attire. Always ready to further the plans of
their mistress, they hesitated not to sacrifice reputation or honor to
gratify her smallest whim. Her power was so generally recognized that
foreign ambassadors, in the absence of the king, called her "that
other king." When war against France broke out between Spain and
England, Louise succeeded in gaining the office of constable for the
Duc d'Alençon; by this means, she intended to displace Charles of
Bourbon (whom she was still persecuting because he continued cold to
her advances), and to humiliate him in the presence of his army; the
latter design, however, was thwarted, as he did not complain.

To the caprice of Louise of Savoy were due the disasters and defeats
of the French army during the period of her power; by frequently
displacing someone whose actions did not coincide with her plans, and
elevating some favorite who had avowed his willingness to serve her,
she kept military affairs in a state of confusion.

Many wanton acts are attributed to her: she appropriated forty
thousand crowns allowed to Governor Lautrec of Milan for the
payment of his soldiers, and caused the execution of Samblancay,
superintendent of finances, who had been so unfortunate as to incur
her displeasure. It was Charles of Bourbon, who, with Marshal Lautrec,
investigated the episode of the forty thousand crowns and exposed the
treachery and perfidy of the mother of his king.

Finding that Bourbon intended to persist in his resistance to her
advances, Louise decided upon drastic measures of retaliation. With
the assistance of her chancellor (and tool), Duprat, she succeeded in
having withheld the salaries which were due to Bourbon because of the
offices held by him. As he took no notice of these deprivations, she
next proceeded to divest him of his estates by laying claim to them
for herself; she then proposed to Bourbon that, by accepting her hand
in marriage, he might settle the matter happily. The object of her
numerous schemes not only rejected this offer with contempt, but added
insult to injury by remarking: "I will never marry a woman devoid of
modesty." At this rebuff, Louise was incensed beyond measure, and when
Queen Claude suggested Bourbon's marriage to her sister, Mme. Renée
de France (a union to which Charles would have consented gladly), the
queen-mother managed to induce Francis I. to refuse his consent.

After the death of Anne of Beaujeu, mother-in-law of Charles of
Bourbon, her estates were seized by the king and transferred to
Louise while the claim was under consideration by Parliament. When
the judges, after an examination of the records of the Bourbon estate,
remonstrated with Chancellor Duprat against the illegal transfer, he
had them put into prison. This rigorous act, which was by order of
Louise, weakened the courage of the court; when the time arrived for a
final decision, the judges declared themselves incompetent to decide,
and in order to rid themselves of responsibility referred the matter
to the king's council. This great lawsuit, which was continued for a
long time, eventually forced Charles of Bourbon to flee from France.
Having sworn allegiance to Charles V. of Spain and Henry VIII. of
England against Francis I., he was made lieutenant-general of the
imperial armies.

When Francis, captured at the battle of Pavia, was taken to Spain,
Louise, as regent, displayed unusual diplomatic skill by leaguing the
Pope and the Italian states with Francis against the Spanish king.
When, after nearly a year's captivity, her son returned, she welcomed
him with a bevy of beauties; among them was a new mistress, designed
to destroy the influence of the woman who had so often thwarted the
plans of Louise—the beautiful Françoise de Foix whom the king had
made Countess of Châteaubriant.

This new beauty was Anne de Pisseleu, one of the thirty children of
Seigneur d'Heilly, a girl of eighteen, with an exceptional education.
Most cunning was the trap which Louise had set for the king. Anne was
surrounded by a circle of youthful courtiers, who hung upon her words,
laughed at her caprices, courted her smiles; and when she rather
confounded them with the extent of the learning which—with a sort of
gay triumph—she was rather fond of showing, they pronounced her "the
most charming of learned ladies and the most learned of the charming."

The plot worked; Francis was fascinated, falling an easy prey to the
wiles of the wanton Anne. The former mistress, Françoise de Foix, was
discarded, and Louise, purely out of revenge and spite, demanded the
return of the costly jewels given by the king and appropriated them
herself.

The duty assigned to the new mistress was that of keeping Francis
busy with fêtes and other amusements. While he was thus kept under the
spell of his enchantress, he lost all thought of his subjects and the
welfare of his country and the affairs of the kingdom fell into the
hands of Louise and her chancellor, Duprat. The girl-mistress, Anne,
was married by Louise to the Duc d'Etampes whose consent was gained
through the promise of the return of his family possessions which,
upon his father's departure with Charles of Bourbon, had been
confiscated.

The reign of Louise of Savoy was now about over; she had accomplished
everything she had planned. She had caused Charles of Bourbon, one
of the greatest men of the sixteenth century, to turn against his
king; and that king owed to her—his mother—his defeat at Pavia, his
captivity in Spain, and his moral fall. Spain, Italy, and France were
victims of the infamous plotting and disastrous intrigues of this one
woman whose death, in 1531, was a blessing to the country which she
had dishonored.

At the time of the marriage of Francis I. to Eleanor of Portugal
(one of the last acts of Louise), Europe was beginning to look upon
France as ahead of all other nations in the "superlativeness of
her politeness." The most rigid etiquette and the most punctilious
politeness were always observed, fines being imposed for any
discourtesy toward women.

After the death of Louise, the lot of managing the king and directing
his policy fell to the share of his mistress, the Duchesse d'Etampes,
who at once became all-powerful at court; her influence over him was
like that of the drug which, to the weak person who begins its use,
soon becomes an absolute necessity.

After the death of the dauphin, all the court flatteries were directed
toward Henry, the eldest son of Francis. Though his mistress, Diana of
Poitiers, ruled him, she exercised no influence politically; that
she was not lacking in diplomacy, however, was proved by her attitude
toward Henry's wife, Catherine, whom she treated with every indication
of friendship and esteem, in marked contrast to the disdain exhibited
by other ladies of the court. These two women became friends, working
together against the mistress of the king—the Duchesse d'Etampes—and
causing, by their intrigues, dissensions between father and son.

The duchess was not a bad woman; her dissuasion of Francis I. from
undertaking war with Solyman II. against Charles V. is one instance of
the use of her influence in the right direction. By some historians,
she is accused of having played the traitress, in the interest of
Emperor Charles V., during the war of Spain and England against
France. It was she who urged the Treaty of Crépy with Charles V.; by
it, through the marriage of the French king's second son, the Duke of
Orleans, to the niece of Charles V., the duchess was sure of a safe
retreat when her bitter enemy, Henry's mistress, should reign after
the king's death. Her plans, however, did not materialize, as the duke
died and the treaty was annulled.

The death of Francis I. occurred in 1547; with his reign ends the
first period of woman's activity—a period influenced mainly by Louise
of Savoy, whose relations to France were as disastrous as were those
of any mistress. The influence exerted by her may in some respects be
compared with that of Mme. de Pompadour; though, were the merits and
demerits of both carefully tested, the results would hardly be
in favor of Louise. Strong in diplomacy and intrigue, she was
unscrupulous and wanton—morally corrupt; she did nothing to further
the development of literature and art; if she favored men of genius it
was merely from motives of self-interest.

With the accession of Henry II. his mistress entered into possession
of full power. The absolute sway of Diana of Poitiers over this
weakest of French kings was due to her strong mind, great ability,
wide experience, fascination of manner, and to that exceptional beauty
which she preserved to her old age. Immediately upon coming into
power, she dispatched the Duchesse d'Etampes to one of her estates
and at the same time forced her to restore the jewels which she had
received from Francis I., a usual procedure with a mistress who knew
herself to be first in authority.

After being thus displaced, the duchess spent her time in doing
charitable work, and is said to have afforded protection to the
Protestants. Eventually, hers was the fate of almost all the
mistresses. Compelled to give up many of her possessions, miserable
and forgotten by all, her last days were most unhappy.

Early in her career, Henry made Diana Duchesse de Valentinois. So
powerful did she become that Sieur de Bayard, secretary of state,
having referred in jest to her age (she was twenty years the king's
senior), was deprived of his office, thrown into prison, and left to
die. In her management of Queen Catherine, Diana was most politic;
she never interfered, but constituted herself "the protectress of the
legitimate wife, settling all questions concerning the newly born,"
for which she received a large salary. When, while the king was in
Italy, the queen became ill, she owed her recovery to the watchful
care of the mistress. The latter appointed to the vacant estates and
positions members of her house—that of Guise. In time, this house
gained such an ascendency that it conceived the project of setting
aside all the princes of the blood royal.

Having (through one of her favorites) gained control of the royal
treasury, Diana appropriated everything—lands, money, jewels. Her
influence was so astonishing to the people that she was accused of
wielding a magic power and bewitching the king who seemed, verily,
to be leading an enchanted existence; he had but one thought, one
aim—that of pleasing and obeying his aged mistress. To make
amends for his adultery, he concluded to extirpate heretics. Such
a combination of luxury and extravagance with licentiousness and
brutality, such wholesale murder, persecution, and burning at the
stake have never been equalled, except under Nero.

Michelet reveals the character of Diana in these words: "Affected by
nothing, loving nothing, sympathizing with nothing; of the passions
retaining only those which will give a little rapidity to the
blood; of the pleasures preferring those that are mild and without
violence—the love of gain and the pursuit of money; hence, there was
absence of soul. Another phase was the cultivation of the body, the
body and its beauty uniquely cared for by virile treatment and a rigid
régime which is the guardian of life—not weakly adored as by women
who kill themselves by excessive self-love." M. Saint-Amand continues,
after quoting the above: "At all seasons of the year, Diana plunges
into a cold bath on rising. As soon as day breaks, she mounts a horse,
and, followed by swift hounds, rides through dewy verdure to her royal
lover to whom—fascinated by her mythological pomp—she seems no
more a woman but a goddess. Thus he styles her in verses of burning
tenderness:

  "'Hélas, mon Dieu! combien je regrette
  Le temps que j'ai perdu en ma jeunesse!
  Combien de fois je me suis souhaité
  Avoir Diane pour ma seule maîtresse.
  Mais je craignais qu'elle, qui est déesse,
  Ne se voulût abaisser jusque là.'"

[Alas, my God! how much I regret the time lost in my youth! How often
have I longed to have Diana for my only mistress! But I feared that
she who is a goddess would not stoop so low as that.]

Catherine remained quietly in the palace, preferring her position,
unpleasant as it was, to the persecution and possible incarceration in
a convent which would result from any interference on her part between
the king and his mistress. Without power or privileges, she was a mere
figurehead—a good mother looking after her family. However, she
was not idle; without taking part in the intrigues, she was
studying them—planning her future tactics; in all relations she was
diplomatic, her conversation ever displaying exquisite tact.

While France groaned under the burdens of seemingly interminable wars
and exorbitant taxes, her king revelled in excessive luxury; the aim
of his favorite mistress seemed to be to acquire wealth and spend
it lavishly for her own pleasure. Voluptuousness, cruelty, and
extravagance were the keynotes of the time. All means were used to
procure revenues, the king easing any pangs of conscience by burning a
few heretics whose estates were then quickly confiscated.

Diana, even at the age of sixty, still held Henry in her toils; an
easy prey for the wiles of the flatterer, he was kept in ignorance of
the hatred and anger heaping up against him. In the midst of riotous
festivity, Henry II. died, a victim of the lance of Montgomery;
and the twelve years' reign of debauchery, cruelty, and shameless
extravagance came to an end.

Whatever else may be said of Diana, she proved to be a liberal
patroness of art and letters; this was possible for her, since, in
addition to inherited wealth and the gifts of lands and jewels
from the king, she procured the possessions of many heretics whose
confiscated wealth was assigned to her as a faithful servant and
supporter of the church.

Her hotel at Anet was one of the most elaborate, tasteful, and elegant
in all France; there the finest specimens of Italian sculpture,
painting, and woodwork were to be seen. The king, upon making her
a duchess, presented her with the beautiful château of Chenonceaux,
which was so much coveted by Catherine. The latter attempted to make
Diana pay for the château, thus interrupting her plans for building;
upon discovering this, Henry sent his own artists and workmen to carry
out Diana's desires. Such was the power of his mistress over the weak
king that he respected her wishes far more than he did those of his
queen. This was one of those instances in which Catherine saw fit to
remain silent and plan revenge.

The death of Diana of Poitiers was that common to all women of her
position. She died in 1566, forgotten by the world—her world. In her
will she made "provision for religious houses, to be opened to
women of evil lives, as if, in the depth of her conscience, she had
recognized the likeness between their destiny and her own." Like
the former mistresses, she had been required to give up the jewels
received from Henry II.; but as this order was from Francis II.
instead of from his mistress, the gems were returned to the
crown after having passed successively through the hands of three
mistresses.

Catherine's time had not yet come, for she dared not interfere
when Mary Stuart (a beautiful, inexperienced, and impetuous girl of
seventeen) gained ascendency over Francis II.—a mere boy. The house
of Guise was then supreme and began its bloody campaign against its
enemies; fortunately, however, its power was short-lived, for in 1560
the king died after reigning only seventeen months. At this point,
Catherine enters upon the scene of action. Jealous of Mary Stuart
and fearing that the young king, Charles IX., then but ten years old,
might become infatuated with her and marry her, she promptly returned
the fair young woman to Scotland.

The task before the regent was no light one; her kingdom was
divided against itself, the country was overburdened with taxes, and
discontent reigned universally. All who surrounded her were full of
prejudice and actuated solely by personal aspirations—she realized
that she could trust no one.

Her first act of a political nature was to rescue the house of Valois
and solidify the royal authority. Some critics maintain that she
began her reign with moderation, gentleness, impartiality, and
reconciliation. This view finds support in the fact that during the
first years she favored Protestantism; finding, however, that the
latter was weakening royal power and that the country at large was
opposed to it, she became its most bitter enemy. To the Protestants
and their plottings she attributed all the disastrous effects of the
civil war, all thefts, murders, incests, and adulteries, as well
as the profanation of the sepulchres of the ancestors of the royal
family, the burning of the bones of Louis XI. and of the heart of
Francis II.

The Machiavellian policy was Catherine's guide; bitter experience had
robbed her of all faith in humanity—she had learned to despise it
and the judgment of her contemporaries. At first she was amiable and
polite, seemingly intent upon pleasing those with whom she talked;
in fact, it is said that she was then more often accused of excessive
mildness and moderation than of the violence and cruelty which later
characterized her. Experience having taught her how to deal with
people, she never lost her self-control.

Subsequent history shows that any gentle and conciliatory policy of
Catherine was merely a method of furthering her own interests, and was
therefore not the outcome of any inborn feeling of sympathy or
womanly tenderness. Whether her signing of the Edict of Saint-Germain,
admitting the Protestants to all employments and granting them the
privilege of Calvinistic worship in two cities of every province, and
her refusal, upon the urgent solicitations of her son-in-law, Philip
II., to persecute heretics were really snares laid for the Huguenots,
is a matter which historians have not decided.

Inasmuch as the entire history of France plays about the personality
of Catherine de' Medici, no attempt will be made to give a detailed
chronological account of her career; the results, rather than the
events themselves, will be given. M. Saint-Amand, in his work on
_French Women of the Valois Court_, presents one of the strongest
pictures drawn of Catherine. We shall follow him in the greater part
of this sketch.

According to some historians, Catherine was a mere intriguer, without
talent or ability, living but in the moment, often caught in her
own snares; according to others, by her intelligence, ability, and
strength of character she advanced a cause truly national—that of
French unity; thus, she worked either the ruin or the salvation of
France. Michelet calls her a nonentity, a stage queen with merely the
externals—the attire—of royalty, remaining exactly on a level
with the rulers of the smaller Italian principalities, contriving
everything and fearing everything, with no more heart than she had
sense or temperament. Being a female, she loved her young; she loved
the arts, but cared to cultivate only their externalities. In this,
however, Michelet goes to an extreme; for no woman ever lived who had
so great a talent for intrigues and politics as she—a very type of
the deceit and cunning which were inherent in her race. If she were
not important, had not wielded so much influence and decided the fate
of so many great men, women, and even states, she would not be the
subject of so much writing, of such fierce denunciation and
strong praise. To her family, France owes her finest palaces,
her masterpieces of art—painting, bookmaking, printing, binding,
sculpture.

M. Saint-Amand declares that "isolated from her contemporaries,
Catherine de' Medici is a monster; brought back within the circle of
their passions and their theories, she once more becomes a woman."
But Catherine was the instigator, the embodiment of all that is vice,
deceit, cunning, trickery, wickedness, and bold intrigue; she set
the example, and her ladies followed her in all that she did; "the
heroines bred in her school (and what woman was not in her school?)
imitate, with docility, the examples she gives them." She was not
only the type of her civilization,—brutal, gross, immoral, elegant,
polished, and _mondain_,—but she was also its leader.

Greatness of soul, real moral force, strict virtue, are not attributes
of the sixteenth-century woman—they are isolated and rare exceptions;
these Catherine did not possess. Nor was she influenced deeply by her
environments; the latter but encouraged and developed those
qualities which were hers inherently,—will, intelligence, inflexible
perseverance, tenacity of purpose, unscrupulousness, cruelty;
hence, to say "She is the victim rather than the inspiration of the
corruption of her time" is misleading, to say the least. If, upon
her arrival at court, "she at once pleased every one by her grace and
affability, modest air, and, above all, by her extreme gentleness,"
she could not have changed, say her defenders, into the perfidious,
wicked, and cruel creature she is said to have become as soon as she
stepped into power. "During the reign of Henry II., she wisely avoided
all danger; faithful to her wifely duties, she gave no cause for
scandal, and, realizing that she was not strong enough to overcome her
all-powerful rival, she bided her time. She was loved and respected by
everyone for her personal qualities and her benevolence." But why
may it not be true that all this was but part of her politics, the
politics in which she had been educated? Wise from experience, she
foresaw the future and what was in store for her if she remained
prudent and made the best of the surroundings until the time should
come when she could strike suddenly and boldly.

Brought up from infancy amidst snares, intrigues, the clash of arms,
the furious shouts of popular insurrections, tempests, and storms, she
could not escape the influence of her early environment. Her talent
for studying and penetrating the designs of her enemies, for facing or
avoiding dangers with such sublime calmness and prudence, was partly
inherited, partly acquired. That spirit she took with her to France,
where her experience was widened and her opportunities for the study
of human nature were increased.

It is not generally known that her mother was a French woman—a
Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne, daughter of Jean, Count of Boulogne,
and Catherine of Bourbon, daughter of the Count of Vendôme; thus, her
gentler nature was a French product. Her mother and father both died
when she was but twenty-two days old, and from that time until her
marriage she was cast about from place to place. But from the very
first she showed that talent of adapting herself to her surroundings,
living amidst intrigues and discords and yet making friends. She
has been called "the precocious heiress of the craftiness of her
progenitors."

In her thirteenth year, after being sought by many powerful princes,
Clement VII. (her greatuncle), in order to secure himself against the
powerful Charles V., married her to Henry, Duke of Orleans, the second
son of Francis I. Even at that early age she was fully aware of all
the dreariness and danger attached to positions of power, and knew
that the art of governing was not an easy one. She had studied
Machiavelli's famous work, _The Prince_, which had been dedicated to
her father, and it was from it, as well as from her ancestors, that
she derived her wisdom and astuteness. Her childhood had prepared
her for the work of the future, and she went at it with caution and
reserve until she was sure of her ground.

She first proceeded to study the king, Francis I., watching his
actions, extracting his secrets; a fine huntress and at his side
constantly, she pleased him and gained his favor. Brantôme says
she was subtle and diplomatic, quickly learning the craft of her
profession; she sought friends among all classes and ranks, directing
her overtures specially toward the ladies of the court, whom she soon
won and gathered about her.

In 1536 the dauphin died, and Catherine's husband became heir to
the throne of France. Though they had been married three years,
no offspring had resulted, which unfortunate circumstance made her
position a most uncertain one, especially as Diana of Poitiers was
then at the height of her power, controlling Henry absolutely. A
furious rivalry sprang up between the Duchesse d'Etampes, mistress
of Francis I., and Diana and Catherine; the two mistresses formed two
parties, and a war of slanders, calumnies, and unpleasant epigrams
ensued. Queen Eleanor, the second wife of Francis I., took no active
part, thus leaving all power in the hands of the mistress of her
husband. (It was at this time that the Emperor Charles V. gained the
Duchesse d'Etampes over to his cause.) Poets and artists, politicians
and men of genius took sides, extolling the beauty of the one they
championed. Catherine, although befriended and treated with apparent
respect by Diana, remained a good friend to both women, thus evincing
her tact. By keeping her own personality in the background, she won
the esteem of both her husband and the king.

Brantôme leaves a picture of Catherine at this time: "She was a fine
and ample figure; very majestic, yet agreeable and very gentle when
necessary; beautiful and gracious in appearance, her face fair and her
throat white and full, very white in body likewise.... Moreover, she
dressed superbly, always having some pretty innovation. In brief,
she had beauties fitted to inspire love. She laughed readily, her
disposition was jovial, and she liked to jest." M. Saint-Amand
continues: "The artistic elegance that surrounded her whole person,
the tranquil and benevolent expression of her countenance, the good
taste of her dress, the exquisite distinction of her manners, all
contributed to her charm. And then she was so humble in the presence
of her husband! She so carefully avoided whatever might have the
semblance of reproach! She closed her eyes with such complaisance!
Henry told himself that it would be difficult to find another woman
so well-disposed, another wife so faithful to her duties, another
princess so accomplished in point of instruction and intelligence. The
_ménage à trois_ (household of three) was continued, therefore, and if
the dauphin loved his mistress, he certainly had a friendship for his
wife. And, on her part, whenever she felt an inclination to complain
of her lot, Catherine bethought herself that if she quitted her
position she would probably find no refuge but the cloister, and
that—taking it all around—the court of France (in spite of the
humiliations and vexations one might experience there) was an abode
more desirable than a convent;" this, then, is the secret of her
submission. In spite of her beauty, mildness, and distinction of
manner, she could not overcome the prestige of Diana.

After nine years, Catherine was still without children and began to
fear the fate in store for her; but when she gave birth to a son in
1543, she felt assured that divorce no longer threatened her and she
resolved that as soon as she came into power she would be revenged
upon her enemies and Diana of Poitiers. When, in 1547, her husband
succeeded his father as King of France, she did not feel that the time
had yet arrived to interfere in any social or domestic arrangements
or affairs of state; not until ten years later did she show the first
sign of remarkable statesmanship or ability as a politician.

After the battle and capture of Saint-Quentin, France was in a most
deplorable state; the enemy was believed to be beneath the walls of
Paris; everybody was fleeing; the king had gone to Compiègne to muster
a new army. Catherine was alone in Paris "and of her own free will
went to the Parliament in full state, accompanied by the cardinals,
princes, and princesses; and there, in the most impressive language,
she set forth the urgent state of affairs at the moment.... With so
much sentiment and eloquence that she touched the heart of everybody,
the queen then explained to the Parliament that the king had need of
three hundred thousand livres, twenty-five thousand to be paid every
two months; and she added that she would retire from the place of
session, so as not to interfere with the liberty of discussion;
accordingly, she retired to another room. A resolution to comply with
the wishes of her majesty was voted, and the queen, having resumed her
place, received a promise to that effect. A hundred nobles of the
city offered to give at once three thousand francs apiece. The queen
thanked them in the sweetest form of words, and thus terminated this
session of Parliament—with so much applause for her majesty and such
lively marks of satisfaction at her behavior, that no idea can be
given of them. Throughout the city, nothing was spoken of but the
queen's prudence and the happy manner in which she proceeded in this
enterprise" (Guizot). From this act dates Catherine's entrance into
political consideration.

During the reign of Francis II., Catherine de' Medici exercised no
influence at court, the king being completely under the dominion
of his wife and the Duke of Guise, who was not favorable to the
queen-mother's schemes and policies. Catherine, however, was plotting;
caring little about religion so long as it did not further her plans,
she connected herself with the Huguenots; her scheme was to bring the
Guises to destruction and to form a council of regency which, while
composed of the Huguenot leaders, was to be under her guidance. As
this plan failed, bringing ruin to many princes, she deserted the
Huguenots and allied herself with the Catholics.

She is next found attempting the assassination of the Duke of Condé,
but she failed to accomplish that crime because her son, the king,
refused his consent. Soon after, Francis II. died, it is said from
the effect of poison dropped into his ear while he was sleeping; it
is probable that this crime was committed at the instigation of the
mother, since by his death and the accession of Charles IX. she became
regent (1560). She was then all-powerful and in a position to exercise
her long dormant talents.

Her first plan was to incapacitate all her children by plunging them
"into such licentious pleasure and voluptuous dissipation that
they were speedily unfitted for mental activity or exertion."
Most unprejudiced historians credit her with the Massacre of Saint
Bartholomew; she is said to have boasted about it to Catholic
governments and excused it to Protestant powers. For a number of
years, she had been planning the destruction of the Huguenot princes,
and as early as 1565 she and Charles IX. had an interview with the
Duke of Alva (representative of Philip II), to consult as to the means
of delivering France from heretics. It was decided that "this great
blessing could not have accomplishment save by the deaths of all the
leaders of the Huguenots."

That fearful crime, the bloody Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, is
familiar to everyone. The only excuse offered for this most heinous of
Catherine's many offences is her intense sentiment of national unity;
the actual reason for it is to be sought in the fact that as long as
the Protestants retained their prestige and influence, Catherine
and her Catholic party could not do as they pleased, could not
gain absolute control over the government. History holds her more
responsible than it does her weak son. The climax came on the occasion
of the wedding of Marguerite of Valois with the Prince of Navarre,
which meant the union of the branches—the Catholic and the
Protestant. This resulted in the first breach between the king and
Catherine; the latter at that time perpetrated one of her dastardly
deeds by poisoning the mother of the Prince of Navarre—Jeanne
d'Albret, her bitter enemy.

After the death of Charles IX., Henry III. was the sole survivor of
the four sons of Catherine. Although her power was limited during his
reign, she managed to continue her murderous plans and accomplished
the death of Henry of Guise and his brother the cardinal, which crime
united the majority of the Catholics of France against the king and
was the cause of his assassination in 1589. This ended the power of
Catherine de' Medici; when she died, no one rejoiced, no one lamented.
Wherever she had turned her eyes, she had seen nothing but occasions
for uneasiness and sadness; she had retired from court, feeling her
helplessness and disgrace as well as the decline in power of that son
in whom her hopes were centred. She decided to reënter the scene of
action and save Henry. The stormy scenes of the Barricades and the
League and the murder of the Duke of Guise hastened her death, which
occurred in 1589.

Catherine de' Medici may rightfully be called the initiator and
organizer of social and court etiquette and courtesy—of conventional
and social laws. However great her political activity, she made
herself deeply felt in the social and moral worlds also. She taught
her husband the secret of being king; she introduced the _lever_
audience; in the afternoon of every day, she held a reunion of all the
ladies of the court, at which the king was to be found after dinner
and every lord entertained the lady he most loved; two hours were
spent in this pleasure which was continued after supper if there were
no balls; bitter railleries and anything that passed the restrictions
of good company were forbidden.

Her ladies of honor obeyed her as they would their God. Marguerite
of Valois said of her: "I did not dare to speak to her, and when
she looked at me I trembled for fear of having done something that
displeased her." Ladies who had been delinquent were stripped and
beaten with lashes; for correction—frequently for mere pastime—she
would have them undressed and slapped vigorously with the back of
the hand. Françoise of Rohan, cousin of Jeanne d'Albret, wrote the
following poem:

  "Plus j'ai de toi souvent esté battue,
  Plus mon amour s'efforce et s'évertue
  De regretter ceste main qui me bat;
  Car ce mal-là m'estait plaisant esbat.
  Or, adieu done la main dont la rigueur
  Je préferais à tout bien et honneur."

[The more often I have been struck by you, the more my love struggles
and strives to regret the hand that beats me; for that punishment
was a pleasant pastime for me. Now farewell to the hand whose rigor I
preferred to every fortune and honor.]

The following portrait and poetry, taken from M. Saint-Amand, does
the subject full justice: "Catherine de' Medici represented with a
sinister glance, deadly mien, mysterious and savage aspect—a spectre,
not a woman—is not true to nature. Her self-possession, cool cunning,
supreme elegance, imperturbable tranquillity, calmness, moderation,
noble serenity, and dignified poise, gave her an individuality such as
few women ever possessed. Gentle in crime and tragedy, polite like an
executioner toward his victim—this Machiavellianism which is equal
to every trial, which nothing alarms or surprises, and which
with tranquil dexterity makes sport of every law of morality and
humanity—this is the real character of Catherine de' Medici." The
following burlesque poetry was composed for her:

  "La reine qui ci-git fut un diable et un ange,
  Toute pleine de blâme et pleine de louange,
  Elle soutint l'Etat, et l'Etat mit à bas;
  Elle fit maints accords et pas moins de débats;
  Elle enfanta trois rois et trois guerres civiles,
  Fit bâtir des châteaux et ruiner des villes,
  Fit bien de bonnes lois et de mauvais édits.
  Souhaite-lui, passant, enfer et paradis."

[The queen lying here was both devil and angel, blamed and praised;
she both put down and upheld the state; she caused many an agreement
and no end of disputes; she produced three kings and three civil wars;
she built castles and ruined cities, made many good laws and many bad
decrees. Wish her, passer-by, hell and paradise.]

With the reign of Henry IV.—the first king of the house of Bourbon,
and the first king of the sixteenth century with a will of his own and
the courage to assert it—begins a period of revelling, debauch, and
the most depraved immorality. Three mistresses in turn controlled
him—morally, not politically.

Henry was master of his own will, and, had he desired to do so, could
have overcome his evil tendencies; instead, he openly countenanced and
even encouraged dissoluteness and elegant debauchery, as long as he
himself was not deprived of the lady upon whom his capricious fancy
happened to fall. His advances were but seldom repulsed; but upon
making his usual audacious proposals to the Marquise de Guercheville,
he was informed that she was of too insignificant a house to be the
king's wife and of too good a race to be his mistress; and when the
king, in spite of this rebuff, made her lady of honor to his wife,
Marie de' Medici, she continued to resist him and remained virtuous.
Such types of purity, honor, and moral courage were very exceptional
during this reign.

The three principal mistresses of this sovereign represent three
phases of influence and three periods of his life. Corisande
d'Andouins, Comtesse de Guiche and Duchesse de Gramont, fascinated him
for eight years, while he was King of Navarre (1582-1590); to her he
was deeply attached, and recompensed her for her devotion; this is
called his _chevaleresque_ period. The beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrées,
Duchesse de Beaufort, was called his mate after victory; "she refined,
sharpened, softened, and tamed his customs; she made him king of the
court instead of the field." It was she who ventured to meddle in his
politics, she whom Marguerite of Valois, his wife, so detested that
she refused to consent to a divorce as long as Gabrielle (by whom he
had several children) remained his mistress. The latter even went so
far as to demand the baptism, as a child of France, of her son by the
king. Sully, in a rage, declared there were no "children of France,"
and took the order to the king, who had it destroyed; he then asked
his minister to go to his mistress and satisfy her, "in so far as you
can." To his efforts she replied: "I am aware of all, and do not care
to hear any more; I am not made as the king is, whom you persuade that
black is white." Upon receiving this report, the king said: "Here,
come with me; I will let you see that women have not the possession
of me that certain malignant spirits say they have." Accompanied by
Sully, he immediately went to the Duchesse de Beaufort, and, taking
her by the hand, said: "Now, madame, let us go into your room, and let
nobody else enter except Rosny. I want to speak to you both and teach
you how to be good friends." Then, having closed the door, holding
Gabrielle with one hand and Rosny with the other, he said: "Good God,
madame! What is the meaning of this? So you would vex me from sheer
wantonness of heart in order to try my patience? By God, I swear to
you that, if you continue these fashions of going on, you will find
yourself very much out in your expectations! I see quite well that you
have been put up to all this pleasantry in order to make me dismiss
a servant whom I cannot do without, and who has served me loyally for
five-and-twenty years. By God, I will do nothing of the kind! And I
declare to you that if I were reduced to such a necessity as to
choose between losing one or the other, I could better do without ten
mistresses like you than one servant like him." Shortly after this
episode, Gabrielle died so suddenly that she was supposed to have been
poisoned. Immediately after her death the divorce was granted, and
Henry married Marie de' Medici.

The third mistress, Henriette de Balzac d'Entragues, Marquise de
Verneuil, who led Henry IV. along a path of the worst debauchery,
gained control over him by lewd, lascivious methods. While
negotiations were being carried on for his divorce from Marguerite,
only a few weeks after the death of Gabrielle, he signed a promise to
marry Henriette; this, however, he failed to keep. She, more than any
other of his mistresses, was the cause of national distress and of
more than one ruinous war. When, after the marriage of the king
to Marie de' Medici, Henriette began to nag, rail, intrigue, and
conspire, she was disgraced by Henry, who at least had the courage to
honor his own family above that of his mistresses. She is accused of
having had, solely from motives of revenge, a hand in the death of the
king.

Thus, around the queens-regent and the mistresses of the kings of
France in the sixteenth century there is constant intriguing, murder,
assassination, immorality, and debauchery, jealousy and revenge,
marriage and divorce, honor and disgrace, despotism and final
repentance and misery. The greatest and lowest of these women
was Catherine de' Medici; Diana of Poitiers was famed as the most
marvellously beautiful woman in France, and she was the most powerful
and intelligent mistress until the time of Mme. de Pompadour. Amid all
this bribery and corruption, elegant and refined immorality, there
are some few types that represent education, family life, purity, and
culture.




Chapter II

Woman in Family Life, Education, and Letters


The queens of France exerted little or no influence upon the cultural
or political development of that country. Frequently of foreign
extraction and reared in the strict religious discipline of
Catholicism, they spent their time in attending masses, aiding the
poor and, with the little money allowed them, erecting hospitals and
other institutions for the weak and needy. Thus, they are, as a rule,
types of gentleness, virtue, piety, and self-sacrifice.

The little information which history gives concerning them is confined
mainly to their matrimonial alliances. To them, marriage represented
nothing more than a contract—a union entered into for the purpose of
settling some political negotiation; thus they were often cast upon
strange and unfriendly soil where intrigues and jealousy immediately
affected them.

Seldom did they venture to interfere with the intrigues of the
mistress; in their uncertain position, any manifestation of resentment
or opposition resulted in humiliation and disgrace; if wise, they
contented themselves with quietly performing their functions as
dutiful wives. Such women were Claude, daughter of Louis XII., and
Eleanor of Spain—wives of Francis I.; lacking the power to act
politically, both passed uneventful and virtuous lives in comparative
obscurity. The wife of Charles IX.—Elizabeth of Austria, daughter of
Maximilian II.—had absolutely no control over her husband; however,
he condescended to flatter himself with having, as he said, "in an
amiable wife, the wisest and most virtuous woman not only of France
and Europe, but of the universe." Her nature is well portrayed in
the answer she gave to the remark made to her, after the death of her
husband: "Ah, Madame, what a misfortune that you have no son! Your
lot would be less pitiful and you would be queen-mother and regent."
"Alas, do not suggest such a disagreeable thing!" she replied. "As
if France had not afflictions enough without my producing another to
complete its ruin! For, if I had a son, there would be more divisions
and troubles, more seditions to obtain the administration and
guardianship during his infancy and minority; all would try to profit
themselves by despoiling the poor child—as they wanted to do with the
late king, my husband." Returning to Austria, she erected a convent,
treated the nuns as friends and refused to marry again even to ascend
the throne of Spain.

Louise de Vaudemont, wife of Henry III, was a French woman by
birth and blood. After the death of the Princess of Condé, whom he
passionately loved and desired to marry, Henry conceived an intense
affection for Louise, daughter of Nicholas of Lorraine, Count of
Vaudemont—a young lady of education and culture—"a character of
exquisite sweetness lends distinction to her beauty and her piety;
her thorough Christian modesty and humility are reflected in her
countenance." Brantôme wrote: "This princess deserves great praise;
in her married life she comported herself so wisely, chastely, and
loyally toward the king that the nuptial tie which bound her to him
always remained firm and indissoluble,—was never found loosened or
undone,—even though the king liked and sometimes procured a change,
according to the custom of the great who keep their full liberty."
Soon after the marriage, however, Henry began to make life unpleasant
for the queen, one of his petty acts being to deprive her of the moral
ladies in waiting whom she had brought with her.

Louise de Vaudemont was a striking contrast to the perverted woman of
the day; the latter, no longer charmed by the gentler emotions, sought
the exaggerated and the eccentric, extraordinary incidents, dramatic
situations, unexpected crises, finding all amusements insipid unless
they involved fighting and romantic catastrophes. "_Billets doux_ were
written in blood and ferocity reigned even in pleasure."

In the midst of this turmoil, Louise busied herself with charity,
appearing among the poor and distributing all the funds which her
father gave her for pocket money; the evils of her surroundings threw
her virtues, by contrast, into so much the brighter light. Though she
held herself aloof from intrigues and rivalries, favoring no one and
encouraging no slander, she was, strange to say, respected, admired
and honored by Protestants and Catholics alike.

Calumny and all the agitations about her did not disturb Louise in her
prayers. "The waves of the angry ocean broke at the foot of the
altar as the queen knelt; but Huguenots and Catholics, leaguers and
royalists, united to pay her homage. They were amazed to see such
purity in an atmosphere so corrupt, such gentleness in a society so
violent. Their eyes rested with satisfaction on a countenance whose
holy tranquillity was undisturbed by pride and hatred. The famous
women of the century, wretched in spite of all their amusements and
their feverish pursuit of pleasure, made salutary reflections as they
contemplated a woman still more highly honored for her virtues than
for her crown." That she was not a mother was, with her, an enduring
sorrow; even that, however, did not alter her calmness and benign
resignation.

Louise de Vaudemont was indeed a bright star in a heaven of
darkness—one of the best queens of whom French history can boast;
she is an example of goodness and gentleness, of purity, charity, and
fidelity in a world of corruption, cruelty, hatred, and debauch—where
sympathy was rare and chastity was ridiculed. Although a highly
educated woman, the faithful performance of her duties as queen and
as a devout Catholic left her little time for literature and art; she
remains the type of piety and purity—an ideal queen and woman.

A heroine in the fullest sense of that word was Jeanne d'Albret, the
great champion of Protestantism; she was the mother of Henry IV. and
the wife of the Duke of Bourbon, Count of Vendôme, a direct descendant
of Saint Louis. This despotic, combative, and war-loving queen reigned
as absolute monarch, and was as autocratic and severe as Calvin
himself, confiscating church property, destroying pictures and
altars—even going so far as to forbid the presence of her subjects
at mass or in religious processions. "Her natural eloquence, the
lightning flashes from her eyes, her reputation as a Spartan matron
and an intractable Calvinist, all contributed to give her great
influence with her party. The military leaders—Coligny, La
Rochefoucauld, Rohan, La Noue—submitted their plans of campaign to
her."

Though Jeanne was, perhaps, as fanatical, intolerant, and cruel as her
adversaries, she was driven to this by the hostility shown her by
the Catholic party—a party in which she felt she could place no
confidence. Her retreat was amid rocks and inaccessible peaks, whence
she defied both the pope and Philip II. She brought up her son—the
future Henry IV.—among the children of the people, exercising toward
him the severest discipline, and inuring him to the cold of the winter
and the heat of the summer; she taught him to be judicious, sincere,
and compassionate—qualities which she possessed to a remarkable
degree. Chaste and pure herself, she considered the court of France
a hotbed of voluptuousness and debauchery, and at every opportunity
strengthened herself against its possible influence.

The political and religious troubles of Jeanne d'Albret began when
Pope Paul IV. invested Philip II. of Spain with the sovereignty of
Navarre—her territory; she resisted, and, following the impulses of
her own nature, formally embraced Calvinism, while her weak husband
acceded to the commands of the Church, and, applying to the pope for
the annulment of his marriage, was prepared, as lieutenant-general of
the kingdom, a position he accepted from the pontiff, to deprive
his wife of her possessions. His death before the realization of his
project made it possible for Jeanne to retain her sovereignty; alone,
an absolute monarch, she declared Calvinism the established religion
of Navarre. After the assassination of Condé she remained the champion
of the Huguenots, defying her enemies and scorning the court of
France.

So great were her power and influence over the soldiery that Catherine
de' Medici, her bitter enemy, desiring to bring her into her power,
or, at least, to conciliate her, planned a marriage between Jeanne's
son and Marguerite of Valois—sister of Charles IX. When the
suggestion that the marriage should take place came from the king of
France, Jeanne d'Albret suspected an ambush; with the determination
to supervise personally all arrangements for the nuptials, she set
out for the French court. Venerated by the Protestants, and hated but
admired by the Catholics, she had become celebrated throughout Europe
for her beauty, intelligence, and strength of mind; thus, her arrival
at Paris created a sensation.

She was so scandalized at the luxury and bold debauchery at court that
she decided to give up the marriage; she had detected the intrigues
and falsity of both the king and Catherine, and had a foreboding of
evil. She wrote to her son Henry:

"Your betrothed is beautiful, very circumspect and graceful, but
brought up in the worst company that ever existed (for I do not see
a single one who is not infected by it) ... I would not for anything
have you come here to live; this is why I desire you to marry and
withdraw yourself and your wife from this corruption which (bad as I
supposed it to be) I find still worse than I thought. Here, it is not
the men who invite the women, but the women who invite the men. If you
were here, you could not escape contamination without a great grace
from God."

In the meantime, Catherine, undecided whether to strike immediately or
to wait, was redoubling her kindness and courtesy and her affectionate
overtures; her enemies were in her hands. Although Jeanne suspected
that Catherine was capable of every perfidy, she at times believed
that her suspicions were unjust or exaggerated. The situation between
these two great women was indeed a dramatic one: both were tactful,
powerful, experienced in war and diplomacy; both were mothers with
children for whose future they sought to provide. Jeanne's hesitancy,
however, was fatal; physically exhausted from suffering and sorrow,
worry and excitement, she suddenly died, in the midst of her
preparations for the marriage. While it is not absolutely certain that
her death was due to poison, subsequent events lead strongly to the
belief that Catherine was instrumental in causing it—that, probably,
being but the first act toward the awful catastrophe she was planning.

"A few hours before her agony, Jeanne dictated the provisions of her
will. She recommended her son to remain faithful to the religion
in which she had reared him, never to permit himself to be lured by
voluptuousness and corruption, and to banish atheists, flatterers, and
libertines.... She begged him to take his sister, Catherine, under his
protection and to be, after God, her father. 'I forbid my son ever
to use severity towards his sister; I wish, to the contrary, that he
treat her with gentleness and kindness; and that—above all—he have
her brought up in Béarn, and that she shall never leave there until
she is old enough to be married to a prince of her own rank and
religion, whose morals shall be such that the spouses may live happily
together in a good and holy marriage.'" D'Aubigné wrote of her:
"A princess with nothing of a woman but sex—with a soul full of
everything manly, a mind fit to cope with affairs of moment, and a
heart invincible in adversity."

It was in deep mourning that her son, then King of Navarre, arrived at
Paris; the eight hundred gentlemen who attended him were all likewise
in mourning. "But," says Marguerite de Valois, "the nuptials took
place in a few days, with triumph and magnificence that none others,
of even my quality, had ever beheld. The King of Navarre and his troop
changed their mourning for very rich and fine clothes, I being dressed
royally, with crown and corsage of tufted ermine all blazing with
crown jewels, and, the grand blue mantle with a train four ells long
borne by three princesses. The people down below, in their eagerness
to see us as we passed, choked one another." (Thus quickly was Jeanne
d'Albret forgotten.) The ceremonies were gorgeous, lasting four days;
but when Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot leader, was struck in the hand
by a musket ball, the festive aspect of affairs suddenly changed.
On the second day after the wounding of Coligny, and before the
excitement caused by that act had subsided, Catherine accomplished
the crowning work of her invidious nature, the tragedy of Saint
Bartholomew.

Peace and quiet never appeared upon the countenance of Catherine
de' Medici—that woman who so faithfully represents and pictures the
period, the tendencies of which she shaped and fostered by her own
pernicious methods; and Charles IX., her son, was no better than his
mother. Saint-Amand, in his splendid picture of the period, gives a
truthful picture of Catherine as well: "It is interesting to observe
how curiously the later Valois represented their epoch. Francis I. had
personified the Renaissance; Charles IX. sums up in himself all the
crises of the religious wars—he is the true type of the morbid and
disturbed society where all is violent; where the blood is scorched
by the double fevers of pleasure and cruelty; where the human soul,
without guide or compass, is tossed amid storms; where fanaticism
is joined to debauchery, superstition to incredulity, cultured
intelligence to depravity of heart. This wholly unbalanced
character—which stretches evil to its utmost limits while preserving
the knowledge of what is good, which mistrusts everybody and yet
has at least the aspiration toward friendship and love, if not its
experience—is it not the symbol and living image of its time?"

Marguerite de Valois, sister of Charles IX. and wife of Henry IV., by
her own actions and intrigues exercised little influence politically;
she was, above all else, a woman of culture and may be taken as an
example of the type which was largely instrumental in developing
social life in France. Famous for her beauty, talents, and profligacy,
it seems that historians are prone to dwell too exclusively upon the
last quality, overlooking her principal rôle—that of social leader.

She first came into prominence through her relations with the Duke of
Guise who paid assiduous court to her for some time; for a while, no
topic was more discussed than that of their marriage. When, however,
Charles IX. heard that the duke had been carrying on a secret
correspondence with his sister, he exclaimed, savagely: "If it be so,
we will kill him!" Thereupon, the duke hurriedly contracted a marriage
with Catherine of Clèves. That Marguerite, at this early date, had
become the mistress of Henry of Guise is hardly likely and becomes
even less probable when it is considered how closely she was watched
by her mother, Catherine de' Medici.

Her marriage, previously mentioned, to Henry of Navarre was a mere
political match, there being absolutely no love, no affection, no
sympathy. This union was looked upon as the surest covenant of peace
between Catholicism and Protestantism and put an end to the disastrous
religious wars that had been carried on uninterruptedly for years;
both the parties to this contract lived at court, leading an existence
of pleasure and immorality. Remarkably intelligent, Marguerite was a
scholar of no mean ability; she displayed much wit and talent, but
no judgment or discretion; though conveying the impression of being
rather haughty and proud, she lacked both self respect and true
dignity. Her beauty was marvellous, but "calculated, to ruin and damn
men rather than to save them."

Henry, the husband of Marguerite, was constantly sneered at and
taunted by the Catholics; although Catholic in name he was Protestant
at heart and keenly felt his false position. During Catherine's short
term as queen-regent, he was held in captivity until the arrival
of Henry III., when he escaped to his own Béarn people; for this,
Marguerite was held responsible and kept under guard.

Although hating his religion, his wife went to live with him,
tolerating his infidelities while he refused to tolerate her religion.
The unhappiness of this marriage was not due to Marguerite alone; the
first trouble arose when she discovered his love for his mistress,
Gabrielle d'Estrées, and, thinking herself equally privileged,
she began to indulge in the same excesses. The result of so many
annoyances and debaucheries, so much vexation, was an illness; as soon
as she became convalescent, she returned to her mother at court where
she speedily gained the ill will of the king by her profligate habits,
her quarrels with both Catholics and Protestants, her intimacy with
the Duke of Guise, her plottings with her younger brother, her cutting
satires on court favorites.

She was sent back to Henry, upon the way meeting with the mishap of
being insulted by archers and, with her maids, led away prisoner. Her
husband was with difficulty persuaded to receive her, and, finding him
all attentive to his mistress, Marguerite fled to Agen, where she
made war upon him as a heretic; unable to hold her position there on
account of her licentious manner of living and the exorbitant taxes
imposed upon the inhabitants, she fled again and continued moving
from one place to another, causing mischief everywhere, "consuming the
remainder of her youth in adventures more worthy of a woman who had
abandoned her husband than of a daughter of France." At last, she was
seized and imprisoned in the fortress of Usson; here she was supported
mainly by Elizabeth of Austria, widow of Charles IX.

When her husband became King of France, he refused to liberate her
until she should renounce her rank; to this condition she refused
to accede until after the death of her rival, the mistress of
Henry—Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess de Beaufort. After the annulment
of the marriage, Marguerite said: "If our household has been little
noble and less bourgeois, our divorce was royal." She was permitted
to retain the title of queen, her debts were paid and other great
concessions granted. Her subsequent relations with Henry IV. were very
cordial and fraternal; she even revealed political plots to him.

When, after nearly twenty years of captivity, Marguerite returned to
Paris (1605), she gained the favor of everybody—the king, dauphin,
and court ladies. She was present at the coronation of Marie de'
Medici, and, by being tactful enough to keep apart from all intrigues,
quarrels, and jealousies, she managed to win the good will of the
king's favorites. She became the social leader, the queen inviting her
to all court ceremonies and consulting her on all disputed questions
of etiquette—even going so far as to intrust her with the reception
of the Duke of Pastrana, who had come to ask the hand of Elizabeth
of France. It is reported that in her last years she led a worse life
than in her earlier days—she had become a woman of the bad world,
resorting to every possible means to hide her age and to gain any
vantage ground. In order to be well supplied with blond wigs, she kept
fair-haired footmen who were shorn from time to time to furnish
the supply. In the latter part of her life, spent at Paris and its
vicinity, she fell a victim to hypochondria, suffering the most bitter
pangs of remorse and terrible fear at approaching death. To alleviate
this, she founded a convent where she taught the children music. She
died in 1615, in Paris, "in that blended piety and coquetry which
formed the basis of a character unable to give up gallantries and
love."

One of the very few historians who give due credit to her social
importance and assign her the position she may rightfully command
among French women of the sixteenth century is M. Du Bled. According
to him, she was the leader of fashion, and in all its components
she showed excellent taste and judgment. Forced to marry the king of
Navarre, she said, after the ceremony: "I received from marriage all
the evil I ever received, and I consider it the greatest plague of my
life. They tell me that marriages are made in heaven; heaven did not
commit such an injustice;" and this seems to be the secret of her
"vicious life."

As soon as she discovered that the king's favorites were determined
to make life hard and disagreeable for her, she sought consolation in
love and the toilette, in balls and fêtes, in ballets and hunting, in
promenades and gallant conversations, in tennis and carousals, and in
an infinite variety of ingeniously planned pleasures. The spirit of
chivalry, the habits of exalted devotion, were again in full sway
about her. She worried little about virtue: "She had the gift of
pleasing, was beautiful, and made full use of the liberality of the
gods. Whatever may be said of her morals, it can truthfully be stated
that she showed art in her love and practised it more in spirit than
with the body." Music was a favorite art with her; she encouraged
and rewarded singing, especially in the convent which she founded and
where she spent almost all of her later days instructing the children.

Her court at Usson, where, as a prisoner, she lived for twenty years,
was the most brilliant and least material of all France; there poets,
artists, and scholars were held in high esteem, and were on familiar
footing with Marguerite; the latter showed no despotism, but, with the
most consummate skill, directed conversations and proposed subjects,
encouraging discussion, and skilfully drawing from her friends the
most brilliant repartees. She received people of distinction without
ceremony.

She introduced the two elements which were combined in the
eighteenth-century salon: a fine cuisine and freedom among her friends
from the restraint usually imposed by distinction. She was, also,
one of the first to have a circle—well organized according to modern
etiquette—where the highest aristocracy, men of letters, magistrates,
artists, and men of genius met on equal terms and in familiar and
social intercourse; Montaigne, Brantôme, and other great writers
dedicated their works to her. She also directed a select few, an
academy, to instruct and distract herself. It is said that every
coquette, every bourgeois woman, and almost every court lady
endeavored to imitate her. When she died, at the age of sixty-two,
poets and preachers sang and chanted her merits, and all the poor wept
over their loss; she was called the queen of the indigent. Richelieu
mentioned her devotion to the state, her style, her eloquence, the
grace of her hospitality, her infinite charity. "She remains, _par
excellence_, the one great sympathetic woman of the sixteenth century;
her admirers, during life and after death, were legion. She shared
in the lesser evils of the century, but it cannot be said that she
participated in the brutalities, grossness, or glaring immoralities
of her time; her weaknesses, compared with the great debauches of the
age, seemed like virtues."

Such is this great woman of the sixteenth century, who has received
almost universal condemnation at the hands of historians. It is to be
taken into consideration that she was forced to marry a man whom she
did not love, and to live in a country utterly uncongenial to
her nature and opposed to the religion in which she was reared;
furthermore, that her husband first defiled the marital union, thus
driving her to follow the general tendencies of the time or to seek
solace in religious activity, for which she had too much energy. After
due consideration of the extenuating circumstances, her faults and
vices, such as they were, may easily be condoned. Because she was the
wife of a powerful Protestant king, she was condemned by Catholics and
by them regarded with suspicion; and, in order to save herself, she
was forced to commit unwise acts and even follies.

In fine, whatever may be said against Marguerite de Valois, whom
despair drove to acts which are not generally pardoned, she stands
foremost among the social leaders and cultured women of the sixteenth
century, a century whose prominent women were notorious for their
licentiousness and lack of conscience rather than famous for their
virtue and womanly accomplishments. Undeniably powerful and brilliant,
these unscrupulous women were never happy; usually proud, they finally
suffered the most cruel humiliations; "voluptuous, they found anguish
underlying pleasure." Their misfortunes are, possibly more interesting
than those successes of which chagrin anxiety, and heavy hearts were
the inseparable associates.

Religion, which in the sixteenth century was so badly understood, and
practised even worse—obscured and falsified by fanaticism, disfigured
and exaggerated by passion and hatred—was the secret cause of all
downfalls crimes, horrors, intrigues, and brutality. Yet, it alone
survives, and all the important figures of history return to it after
a period of negligence and forgetfulness. In their religious aspect,
the women of the sixteenth century differ as a rule, from those of
the eighteenth, who, though equally powerful, witty, refined, sensual,
frivolous, and scoffing, were far less devout; for "'tis religion
which restores the great female sinners of the sixteenth century 'tis
religion which saves a society ploughed up by so many elements of
dissolution and so many causes of moral and material ruin, rescuing
it from barbarism, vandalism, and from irretrievable decay;" but the
women of the eighteenth century clung, to the end, to the scepticism
and material philosophy which served them as their religion, their
God.

Among the conspicuous women of the sixteenth century to whom, thus
far, we have been able to attribute so little of the wholesome
and pleasing, the womanly or love-inspiring, there is one striking
exception in Marguerite d'Angoulême, a representative of letters, art,
culture, and morality. With the study of this character we are taken
back to the beginning of the century and carried among men of letters
especially, for she formed the centre of the literary world. She, her
mother, Louise of Savoy, and her brother, Francis I., were called a
"trinity," to the existence of which Marguerite bore witness in the
poem:

  "Such boon is mine—to feel the amity
  That God hath putten in our trinity
  Wherein to make a third, I, all unfitted
  To be that number's shadow, am admitted."

Marguerite inherited many of her qualities from her mother, "a most
excellent and a most venerable dame," though anything but moral and
conscientious; she, upon discovering that her daughter possessed rare
intellectual gifts, provided her with teachers in every branch of the
learning of the age. "At fifteen years of age, the spirit of God
began to manifest itself in her eyes, in her face, in her walk, in her
speech, and in all her actions generally." Brantôme says: "She had
a heart mightily devoted to God and she loved mightily to compose
spiritual songs. She devoted herself to letters, also, in her young
days and continued them as long as she lived, in the time of her
greatness, loving and conversing with the most learned folks of her
brother's kingdom, who honored her so greatly that they called her
their Mæcenas." Tenderness, particularly for her brother, seemed to
develop in her as a passion.

Marguerite was a rare exception in a period described by M.
Saint-Amand as one in which women were Christian in certain aspects
of their character and pagan in others, taking an active part in
every event, ruling by wit and beauty, wisdom and courage; an age of
thoughtless gaiety and morbid fanaticism, and of laughter and tears,
still rough and savage, yet with an undercurrent of subtle grace and
exquisite politeness; an age in which the extremes of elegance and
cruelty were blended, in which the most glaring scepticism and intense
superstitions were everywhere evident; an age which was religious as
well as debauched and whose women were both good and evil, innocent
and intriguing. Everything was fluctuating; there was inconstancy
even in the things most affected: pleasure, pomp, display. The natural
outcome of this undefined restlessness was dissatisfaction; and when
dissatisfaction brought in its train the inevitable reaction against
falseness and immorality, Marguerite d'Angoulême stood at the head of
the movement.

With her begins the cultural and moral development of France. It was
she who encouraged that desire for a new phase of existence,
which arose through contact with Italian culture. The men of
learning—poets, artists, scholars—who soon gathered about the French
court received immediate recognition from the king's sister, who had
studied all languages, was gay, brilliant, and æsthetic. While her
mother and brother were in harmony with the age, no better, no worse
than their environment, Marguerite aspired to the most elevated morals
and ideals; thus, she is a type of all that is refined, sensitive,
loving, noble, and generous in humanity, a woman vastly superior to
her time; in fact, the modern woman, with her highest attributes.

In Marguerite d'Angoulême contemporaries admired prudence, chastity,
moderation, piety, an invincible strength of soul, and her habit of
"hiding her knowledge instead of displaying it." "In an age wholly
depraved, she approached the ideal woman of modern times; in spite
of her virtue, she was brilliant and honored, the centre of a coterie
that delighted in music, verse, ingenious dialogues and gossip, story
telling, singing, rhyming. Deeply afflicted by the sad and odious
spectacle of the vices, abuses, and crimes which unroll before her,
she suffers through her imagination, mind and heart." Serious and
sympathetic, she was interested in every movement, feeling with those
who were persecuted on account of their religious opinions.

Various are the names by which she is known: daughter of Charles of
Orléans, Count of Angoulême, Duchesse d'Alençon through her first
marriage, and Queen of Navarre through her second, she was called
Marguerite d'Angoulême, Marguerite of Navarre, of Valois, Marguerite
de France, Marguerite des Princesses, the Fourth Grace, and the Tenth
Muse. A most appreciative and just account of her life is given by
M. Saint-Amand, which will be followed in the main outline of this
sketch.

She was born in 1492, and, as already stated, received a thorough
education under the direction of her mother, Louise of Savoy. At
seventeen she was married to Charles III., Duke of Alençon; as he
did not prove to be her ideal, she sought consolation in love for her
brother, sharing the almost universal admiration for the young king,
whose tendency to favor everything new and progressive was stimulated
by her. She became his constant and best adviser in general affairs
as well as in those of state. The foreign ambassadors sought her after
having accomplished their mission, and were referred to her when
the king was busy; they were enraptured, and carried back wonderful
reports of Marguerite.

The world of art was opened to the French by a bevy of such painters
and sculptors as Leonardo da Vinci, Rosso, Primaticcio, Benvenuto
Cellini, and Bramante, and they were encouraged and fêted by
Marguerite especially. In those days a new picture from Italy by
Raphael was received with as much pomp and ceremony as, in olden
times, were accorded the holiest relics from the East.

Men of letters gathered about the sister of the king, forming what
might be termed a court of sentimental metaphysics; for the questions
discussed were those of love. This refined gallantry, empty and vapid,
formed the foundation of the seventeenth-century salon, where the
language and fine points of sentiment were considered and cultivated
until sentiment acquired poise, grandeur, and an air of dignity and
reserve.

The period was one in which, during times of trial and misfortune, the
presence of an underlying religious sentiment became unmistakable. In
such an atmosphere, the propensity toward mysticism, which Marguerite
had manifested as a child, grew more and more apparent. When Francis
I. was captured at the battle of Pavia, his sister immediately sought
consolation in devotion, the nature of which is well illustrated in a
letter to the captive king:

"Monseigneur, the further they remove you from us, the greater becomes
my firm hope of your deliverance and speedy return, for the hour
when men's minds are most troubled is the hour when God achieves His
masterstroke ... and if He now gives you, on one hand, a share in the
pains which He has borne for you, and, on the other hand, the grace
to bear them patiently, I entreat you, Monseigneur, to believe
unfalteringly that it is only to try how much you love Him and to give
you leisure to think how much He loves you. For He desires to have
your heart entirely, as, for love, He has given you His own; He has
permitted this trial, in order, after having united you to Him by
tribulation, to deliver you for His own glory—so that, through you,
His name may be known and sanctified, not in your kingdom alone, but
in all Christendom and even to the conversion of the infidels. Oh, how
blessed will be your brief captivity by which God will deliver so many
souls from that infidelity and eternal damnation! Alas, Monseigneur!
I know that you understand all this far better than I do; but seeing
that in other things I think only of you, as being all that God has
left me in this world,—father, brother, husband,—and not having the
comfort of telling you so, I have not feared to weary you with a
long letter, which to me is short, in order to console myself for my
inability to talk with you."

After his incarceration in the gloomy prison in Spain where he was
taken ill, Francis asked for the safe conduct of Marguerite; this
was gladly granted. Ignorant of her future duty in Spain, she wrote:
"Whatever it may be, even to the giving of my ashes to the winds to do
you a service, nothing will seem strange, difficult or painful to me,
but will be only consolation, repose, and honor." So impatient was she
to arrive at her brother's side that she could not travel fast enough.

Her presence only increased his fever and a serious crisis soon came
on, the king remaining for some time "without hearing or seeing or
speaking." Marguerite, in this critical time, implored the assistance
of God. She had an altar erected in her chamber, and all the French of
the household, great lords and domestics alike, knelt beside the
sick man's sister and received the communion from the hands of the
Archbishop of Embrun, who, drawing near the bed, entreated the king to
turn his eyes to the holy sacrament. Francis came out of his lethargy
and asked to commune likewise, saying: "It is my God who will heal my
soul and body; I entreat you that I may receive him." Then, the
Host having been divided in two, the king received one half with the
greatest devotion, and his sister the other half. The sick man felt
himself sustained by a supernatural force; a celestial consolation
descended into the soul that had been despairing. Marguerite's prayer
had not been unavailing—Francis I. was saved.

She then proceeded to visit different cities and royalties,
endeavoring to secure concessions for her brother. From the people in
the streets as well as from the lords in their houses, she received
the most unmistakable proofs of friendly feeling; in fact, her favor
was so great that Charles V. informed "the Duke of Infantado that, if
he wished to please the emperor, neither he nor his sons must speak to
Madame d'Alençon." The latter, unable to secure her brother's release,
planned a marriage between him and Eleanor of Portugal, sister of
Charles V.; her successes at court and in the family of the emperor
furthered this scheme. Brantôme says: "She spoke to the emperor so
bravely and so courteously that he was quite astonished, and she spoke
even more to those of his council with whom she had audience; there
she produced an excellent impression, speaking and arguing with an
easy grace in which she was proficient, and making herself rather
agreeable than hateful or tiresome. Her reasons were found good and
pertinent and she retained the high esteem of the emperor, his court
and council."

Although she failed in her attempts to free the king, she succeeded,
by arranging the marriage, in completely changing the rigorous
captivity to which Charles had subjected him. Finally, by giving his
two eldest sons as hostages, the king obtained his release, and in
March, 1526, he again set foot, as sovereign, on French soil. Thus the
king's life was saved and he was permitted to return to his country,
Marguerite's devotion having accomplished that in which the most
skilled diplomatist would have failed.

All historians agree that Marguerite d'Angoulême was a devout
Catholic, but that she was too broad and liberal, intelligent
and humane, to sanction the unbridled excesses of fanaticism. The
acknowledged leader of moral reform, she protected and assisted those
persecuted on account of their religious views and sympathized with
the first stages of that movement which revolted against abuses, vice,
scandals, immorality, and intrigue. With her, the question was not one
of dogma, but concerned, instead, the religion which she considered
most conducive to progress and reform. It grieved her to see her
religion defile itself by cruel and inhuman persecutions and tortures,
by intolerance and injustice. She felt for, but not with, the heretics
in their errors. "She typifies her age in all that is good and noble,
in artistic aspirations, in literary ideals, in pure politics—in
short,—in humanity; in her is not found the chaotic vagueness which
so often breaks out in license and licentiousness, cruelty, and
barbarism."

During the absence in Spain of Francis I. and Marguerite, the
mother-regent sought to gain the support and favor of Rome by ordering
imprisonments, confiscations, and punishments of heretics; but upon
the return of the king and his sister, the banished were recalled and
tolerance again ruled. When (in 1526) Berquin was seized and tried for
heresy, he found but one defender. Marguerite wrote to her brother,
still at Madrid:

"My desire to obey your commands was sufficiently strong without
having it redoubled by the charity you have been pleased to show poor
Berquin according to your promise; I feel that He for whom I believe
him to have suffered will approve of the mercy which, for His honor,
you have had upon His servant and your own."

Marguerite had saved Berquin and had even taken him into her service.
Her letter to the constable, Anne de Montmorency, shows her esteem of
men of genius and especially of Berquin:

"I thank you for the pleasure you have afforded me in the matter of
poor Berquin whom I esteem as much as if he were myself; and so you
may say you have delivered me from prison, since I consider in that
light the favor done me."

When on June 1, 1528, a statue of the Virgin was thrown down and
mutilated by unknown hands, a reversion of feeling arose immediately,
and even Marguerite was not able to save poor Berquin, and he was
burned at the stake. Upon learning of his imminent peril, she wrote to
Francis from Saint-Germain:

"I, for the last time, very humbly make you a request; it is that
you will be pleased to have pity upon poor Berquin, whom I know to be
suffering for nothing other than loving the word of God and obeying
yours. You will be pleased, Monseigneur, so to act that it be not
said that separation has made you forget your most humble and obedient
sister and subject, Marguerite."

Encouraged by their success in that instance, the intolerant party
began furious attacks upon her, one monk going so far as to say from
the pulpit that she should be put into a sack and thrown into the
Seine. Upon her publication of a religious poem, _Miroir de l'âme
pécheresse_, in which she failed to mention purgatory or the saints,
she was vigorously attacked by Beda, who had the verses condemned
by the Sorbonne and caused the pupils of the College of Navarre to
perform a morality in which Marguerite was represented under the
character of a woman quitting her distaff for a French translation
of the Gospels presented to her by a Fury. This was too much even for
Francis, and he ordered the principal and his actors arrested; it was
then that Marguerite showed her gentleness, mercy, and humanity by
throwing herself at her brother's feet and asking for their pardon.

After but a short respite the persecution broke out anew, and with
the full sanction of the king, who, upon finding at his door a placard
against the mass, went even so far as to sign letters patent ordering
the suppression of printing (1535). While away from the soothing
influence of his sister, Francis I. was easily persuaded to sign, for
the Catholic party, any permit of execution or cruelty. The life
of Marguerite herself was constantly in danger, but in spite of
persistent efforts to turn brother against sister, the king continued
to protect and defend the latter; and though she gradually drew closer
to Catholicism, she continued to protect the Protestants. She founded
nunneries and showed a profound devotion toward the Virgin; although
realizing the dangers and follies of the new doctrine, she had too
much humanity to encourage cruelty.

The husband whom the king forced upon her was twelve years her junior,
poor, and subsidized by Francis; by him she had a daughter, Jeanne
d'Albret, who became the champion of Protestantism. Her married life
at Pau, where she had erected beautiful buildings and magnificent
terraces, was not happy; the subjects of love that formerly had amused
her had lost their charm; and the incurable disease with which her
brother was stricken caused her constant worry and mental suffering.
When banquets, the chase, and other amusements no longer attracted
Francis, he summoned Marguerite to comfort and console him; her
devotion and goodness never failed. Unable to recover from the grief
caused by his death in 1547, she expressed her sorrow in the most
beautiful poems.

She gave the remainder of her life to religion and charity, abandoning
her literary ambitions and plans. "The life after death gave her much
trouble and many moments of perplexity and uneasiness. She survived
her brother only two years, dying in 1549; the helper and protector
of good literature, the defence, consolation, and shelter of the
distressed, she was mourned by all France more than was any other
queen." Sainte-Marthe says: "How many widows are there, how many
orphans, how many afflicted, how many old persons, whom she pensioned
every year, who now, like sheep whose shepherd is dead, wander hither
and thither, seeking to whom to go, crying in the ears of the wealthy
and deploring their miserable fate!" Poets, scholars, all learned and
professional men, commemorated their protectress in poems and funeral
orations. France was one large family in deep mourning.

Marguerite d'Angoulême must first be considered as the real power
behind the supreme authority of her period, her brother the king;
secondly, as a furtherer of the development and encouragement of
good literature, good taste, high art, and pure morals; thirdly, as
a critic of importance. She is entitled to the first consideration by
the fact that as the confidential adviser of Francis I. she moulded
his opinions and checked his evil tendencies: the affairs of the
kingdom were therefore, to a large extent, in her hands. She collected
and partly organized the chaotic mass of material thrown upon the
sixteenth-century world, leaving its moulding into a classic
French form to the next century; and by her spirit of tolerance she
endeavored to further all moral development: thus is she entitled to
the second consideration. Gifted with rare delicacy of taste, solidity
of judgment, and the ability to select, discriminate, and adapt, she
set the standards of style and tone: therefore, she is entitled to the
third consideration.

The love of Marguerite for her brother, and her unselfish devotion to
his interests, is a precedent unparalleled in French history until
the time of Madame de Sévigné. In all her letters we find the same
tenderness, gentleness, passion, inexhaustible emotion, sympathy, and
compassion that distinguished her actions.

In her _Contes_ (the _Heptameron_) _de la Reine de Navarre_ we have
an accurate representation of society, its manners and style of
conversation; in it we find, also, remnants of the brutality and
grossness of the Middle Ages, as well as reflections of the higher
tendencies and aspirations of the later time. In having a thorough
knowledge of the tricks, deceits, and follies of the professional
lovers of the day, and of their object in courting women, Marguerite
was able to warn her contemporaries and thus guard them against
immorality and its dangers. In her works she upheld the purity of
ideal love, exposing the questionable and selfish designs of the
clever professional seducers. A specimen may be cited to show her
style of writing and the trend of her thought:

"Emarsuite has just related the history of a gentleman and a young
girl who, being unable to be united, had both embraced the religious
life. When the story is ended, Hircan, instead of showing himself
affected, cries: 'Then there are more fools and mad women than there
ever were!' 'Do you call it folly,' says Oisille, 'to love honestly
in youth and then to turn all love to God?' ... 'And yet I have the
opinion,' says Parlemente, 'that no man will ever love God perfectly
who has not perfectly loved some creature in this world.' 'What do you
by loving perfectly?' asks Saffredant; 'do you call perfect lovers
who are bashful and adore ladies from a distance, without daring
to express their wishes?' 'I call those perfect lovers,' replies
Parlemente, 'who seek some perfection in what they love—whether
goodness, beauty or kindness—and whose hearts are so lofty and honest
that they would rather die than perform those base deeds which honor
and conscience forbid; for the soul which was created only to return
to its Sovereign Good cannot, while it is in the body, do otherwise
than desire to win thither; but because the senses, by which it can
have tidings of that which it seeks, are dull and carnal on account
of the sin of our first parents, they can show it only those visible
things which most nearly approach perfection; and the soul runs after
them, believing that in visible grace and moral virtues it may find
the Sovereign Grace, Beauty and Virtue. But without finding whom it
loves, it passes on like the child who, according to his littleness,
loves apples, pears, dolls and other little things—the most beautiful
that his eye can see—and thinks it riches to heap little stones
together; but, on growing larger he loves living things, and,
therefore, amasses the goods necessary for human life; but he knows,
by the greatest experiences, that neither perfection nor felicity is
attained by possessions only, and he desires true felicity and the
Maker and Source thereof.'"

In her writings, much apparent indelicacy and grossness are
encountered; but it must be remembered for whom she was writing, the
condition of morality and the taste of the public at that time, and
that she aimed faithfully to depict the society that lay before her
eyes. It is argued by some critics that these indecencies could not
have emanated from a pure, chaste woman; that Marguerite must have
experienced the sins she depicted; but such reasoning is not sound.
The expressions used by her were current in her time; there
was greater freedom of manners, and coarseness and drastic
language—examples of which are found so frequently in the writings of
Luther—were very common.

Marguerite was less remarkable for what she did than for what she
aspired to do. "She invoked, against the vices and prejudices of her
epoch, those principles of morality and justice, of tolerance and
humanity, which must be the very foundation of all stable society. She
wished to make her brother the protector of the oppressed, the support
of the learned, the crowned apostle of the Renaissance, the promoter
of salutary reforms in the morals of the clergy; in politics, he was
to follow a straight line and methodically advance the accomplishment
of the legitimate ambitions of France."

She expressed the most modern ideas on the rights of woman,
particularly on her relative rights in the married state:

"It is right that man should govern us as our head, but not that he
should abandon us or treat us ill. God has so well ordered both man
and woman, that I think marriage, if it is not abused, one of the most
beautiful and secure estates that can be in this world, and I am sure
that all who are here, no matter what pretense they make, think as
much or more; and as much as man calls himself wiser than woman, so
much the more grievously will he be punished if the fault be on his
side. Those who are overcome by pleasure ought not to call themselves
women any longer, but men, whose honor is but augmented by fury and
concupiscence; for a man who revenges himself upon his enemy and slays
him for a contradiction is esteemed a better companion for so doing;
and the same is true if he love a dozen other women besides his wife;
but the honor of woman has another foundation: it is gentleness,
patience, chastity."

Désiré Nisard says that Marguerite d'Angoulême was the first to write
prose that can be read without the aid of a vocabulary; in verse, she
excels all poets of her time in sympathy and compassion; her poetry
is "a voice which complains—a heart which suffers and which tells us
so." "It is not so much her own deep sentiment that is reflected, but
her emotion, which is both intellectual and sympathetic, volitional
and spontaneous." Her letters were epoch-making; nothing before
her time nor after her (until Madame de Sévigné) can equal them in
precision, purity of language, sincerity and frankness of expression,
passion and religious fervor.

In spite of what may be said to the contrary, her life was an
ideal one, an example of perfect moral beauty and elevation; noble,
generous, refined, pious, and sincere, she possessed qualities which
were indeed rare in her time. She was attacked for her charity, and is
to-day the victim of narrow sectarian and biased devotees. Her act of
renouncing all gorgeous dress, even the robes of gold brocade so much
worn by every princess, in order to give all her money to the poor;
her protection of the needy and persecuted; her court of poets and
scholars; her visits to the sick and stricken; even her untiring love
for her brother and her acts of clemency—all have frequently been
misinterpreted.

The greatest poets and men of letters of the sixteenth century
were encouraged financially and morally or protected by Marguerite
d'Angoulême—Rabelais, Marot, Pelletier, Bonaventure-Desperiers,
Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Lefèvre d'Etaples, Amyot, Calvin, Berquin.
Charles de Sainte-Marthe says: "In seeing them about this good lady,
you would say it was a hen which carefully calls and gathers her
chicks and shelters them with her wings."

Many critics believe that her literary work was imitative rather than
original; even if this be true, it in no measure detracts from her
importance, which is based upon the fact that she was the leading
spirit of the time and typified her environment. Her followers, and
they included all the intellectual spirits, looked up to her as
the one incentive for writing and pleasing. Her disposition was
characterized by restlessness, haste—too great eagerness to absorb
and digest and appropriate all that was unfolded before her. She
imitated the _Decameron_ and drew up for herself a _Heptameron_; her
poetry showed much skill and great ease, but little originality.
Her extreme facility, her wonderfully active mind, her power of
_causerie_, and her ability to discuss and write upon philosophical
and religious abstractions, won the deep admiration and respect of her
followers, who were not only content to be aided financially by her,
but looked to her for guidance and counsel in their own work, though
she never imposed her ideas and taste upon others. By her tact,
she was able practically to control and guide the entire literary,
artistic, and social development of the sixteenth century. Every form
of intellectual movement of this period is impregnated with the spirit
of Marguerite d'Angoulême.

With her affable and loving manners, her refined taste and superior
knowledge, she was able to influence her brother and, through him,
the government. Just as her mother controlled in politics, so
did Marguerite in arts and manners. In her are found the main
characteristics to which later French women owed their influence—a
form of versatility which included exceptional tact and enabled the
possessor to appreciate and sympathize with all forms of activity, to
deal with all classes, to manage and be managed in turn.

The writings of Marguerite are quite numerous, consisting of six
moralities or comedies, a farce, epistles, elegies, philosophical
poems, and the _Heptameron_, her principal work—a collection of prose
tales in which are reflected the customary conversation, the morals of
polite society, and the ideal love of the time. They are a medley of
crude equivocalities, of the grossness of the _fabliaux_, of Rabelais,
and of the delicate preciosity of the seventeenth century. Love is
the principal theme discussed—youth, nobility, wealth, power, beauty,
glory, love for love, the delicate sensation of feeling one's self
loved, elegant love, obsequious love; perfect love is found in those
lovers who seek perfection in what they love, either of goodness,
beauty, or grace—always tending to virtue.

Thoroughly to appreciate Marguerite d'Angoulême's position and
influence and her contributions to literature, the conditions existing
in her epoch must be carefully considered. It was in the sixteenth
century that the charms of social life and of conversation as an art
were first realized; all questions of the day were treated gracefully,
if not deeply; woman began to play an important part, to appear
at court, and, by her wit and beauty, to impress man. From the
semi-barbaric spirit of the Middle Ages to the Italian and Roman
culture of the Renaissance was a tremendous stride; in this cultural
development, Marguerite was of vital importance. In intellectual
attainments far in advance of the age, among its great women she
stands out alone in her spirit of humanity, generosity, tolerance,
broad sympathies, exemplary family life, and exalted devotion to her
brother.

Of the other literary women of the sixteenth century, mention may be
made of two who have left little or no work of importance, but who are
interesting on account of the peculiar form of their activity.

Mlle. de Gournay, _fille d'alliance_ of Montaigne, is a unique
character. Having conceived a violent passion for the philosopher
and essayist, she would have no other consort than her honor and good
books. She called the ladies of the court "court dolls," accusing
them of deforming the French language by affecting words that had
apparently been greased with oil in order to facilitate their flow.
She was one of the first woman suffragists and the most independent
spirit of the age. In 1592, to see the country of her master, she
undertook a long voyage, at a time when any trip was fraught with the
gravest dangers for a woman.

She is a striking example of the effect of sixteenth-century sympathy,
admiration, and enthusiasm; she was protected by some of the greatest
literary men of the age—Balzac, Grotius, Heinsius; the French Academy
is said to have met with her on several occasions, and she is said
to have participated in its work of purifying and fixing the French
language. Her adherence to the Montaigne cult has brought her name
down to posterity.

M. du Bled relates a droll story in connection with her meeting
Richelieu. Mlle. de Gournay was an old maid, who lived to the ripe age
of eighty. Being a pronounced _féministe_, she—like her sisters of
to-day—cultivated cats. The story runs as follows:

"Bois-Robert conducted her to the Cardinal, who paid her a compliment
composed of old words taken from one of her books; she saw the point
immediately. 'You laugh over the poor old girl, but laugh, great
genius, laugh! everybody must contribute something to your diversion.'
The Cardinal, surprised at her ready wit, asked her pardon, and said
to Bois-Robert: 'We must do something for Mlle. de Gournay. I give
her two hundred écus pension.' 'But she has servants,' suggested
Bois-Robert. 'Who?' 'Mlle. Jamyn (bastard), illegitimate daughter
of Amadis Jamyn, page of Ronsard.' 'I will give her fifty livres
annually.' 'There is still dear little Piaillon, her cat.' 'I give her
twenty livres pension, on condition that Piaillon shall have tripes.'
'But, Monseigneur, she has had kittens!' The Cardinal added a pistole
for the little kittens."

A woman of large fortune, she spent it freely in study, in her
household, and especially in alchemy. Her peculiar ideas about love
kept her from falling prey to the wealth-seeking gallants of the time.
She was one of the few women who made a profession of writing; she
compiled moral dissertations, defences of woman, and treatises on
language, all of which she published at her own expense; while they
are of no real importance, they show a remarkable frankness and
courage.

Mlle. de Gournay was, possibly, the first woman to demand the
acceptance of woman on an equal status with man; for she wrote two
treatises on woman's condition and rank, insisting upon a better
education for her, though she herself was well educated. Following the
events of the day with a careful scrutiny and interpreting them in her
writings, she showed a remarkable gift of perspective and deduction
and an intimate knowledge of politics. The fact that she was severely,
even spitefully, attacked in both poetry and prose but proves that her
writings on women were effective.

Some writers claim that the founding of the French Academy had its
inception at her rooms, where many of the members met and where, later
on, they discussed the work of the Academy. Her one desire for the
language was to have it advance and develop, preserving every word,
resorting to old ones, accepting new ones only when necessary. Thus,
among French female educators, Mlle. de Gournay deserves a prominent
place, because of her high ideals and earnest efforts in the study of
the language, for the courage with which she advanced her convictions
regarding woman, and for the high moral standard which she set by her
own conduct.

In Louise Labé—_La Belle Cordière_—we meet a warrior, as well as a
woman of letters. The great movement of the Renaissance, as it swept
northward, invaded Lyons; there Louise Labé endeavored to do what
Ronsard and the Pléiade were doing at Paris. A great part of her youth
she passed in war, wearing man's apparel and assuming the name of
"Captain Loys"; at an early age, she left home with a company of
soldiers passing through Lyons on the way to lay siege to Perpignan,
where she showed pluck, bravery, and skill. Upon her return, she
married a merchant ropemaker, whence her sobriquet—_La Belle
Cordière_.

She soon won a reputation by gathering about her a circle of men, who
complimented her in the most elegant language and read poetry with
her. Science and literature were discussed and the praises of love
sung with passionate, inflamed eloquence. In this circle of congenial
spirits, "she gave rise to doubts as to her virtue." As her husband
was wealthy, she was able to collect an immense library and to
entertain at her pleasure; she could converse in almost any language,
and all travellers stopped at Lyons and called to see her at her
salon. Her writings consisted of sonnets, elegies, and dialogues in
prose; her influence, being too local, is not marked. Her greatest
claim to attention is that she encouraged letters in a city which was
beyond the reach of every literary movement. Such were the women of
the sixteenth century; in no epoch in French history have women played
a greater rôle; art, literature, morals, politics, all were governed
by them. They were active in every phase of life, hunting with men,
taking part in and causing duels, intriguing and initiating intrigues.
"In the midst of battle, while cannon-balls and musket-shots rained
about her, Catherine de' Medici was as brave and unconcerned as the
most valiant of men. Diana of Poitiers was called the most wondrous
woman, the woman of eternal youth, the beautiful huntress; it was
she whom Jean Goujon sculptured, nude and triumphant, embracing with
marble arms a mysterious stag, enamoured like Leda's swan."

In general, the women of that century "liked better to be feared
than loved; they inspired mad passions, insensate devotions, ecstatic
admirations. The epoch was one in which life counted for little, when
balls alternated with massacres; when virtue was befitting only
the lowly born and ugly (Brantôme recommends the beautiful to be
inconstant because they should resemble the sun who diffuses his light
so indiscriminately that everybody in the world feels it). It was the
age of beauty—a beauty that fascinated and entranced, but the glow
of which melted and killed; but this glow also reacted upon them
that caused it and they became victims of their own passions—through
either jealousy or their own weaknesses. No age was ever more
luxurious, pompous, elegant, brilliant, and wanton, yet beneath all
the glitter there were much misery and bitter repentance; amongst the
violent wickedness there were noble and pure women such as Elizabeth
of Austria and Louise de Vaudemont."

The whole century seemed to be afire and to tingle with that spirit of
liberty, imitation, and experimentation, which, so often abused, led
to much disaster. In spite of that unsettled and excited condition,
the sixteenth century attained greater development, had more avenues
of intellectual activity opened to it, imitated, thought and imagined
more and produced as much as any other century; in every field,
we find the names of its masters. As M. Faguet says, the sixteenth
century was, in France, the century _créateur par excellence_; and in
this, woman's part was, above all, political, her social, moral, and
literary influence being less marked.





Chapter III

The Seventeenth Century: Woman at Her Best


In the seventeenth century, the influence exerted by the women of
France, departing from the political aspect which had characterized it
in the preceding century, became of a social, literary, religious,
and moral nature, the last predominating. Inasmuch as the reins of
government were in the hands of the king and his ministers, political
affairs were but slightly affected by the feminine element. Woman,
realizing the uselessness as well as danger of plotting against
the inviolate person and power of the king, contented herself with
scheming against those ministers whose attitudes she considered
unfavorable to her plans.

Of all social and literary movements, however, woman was the
acknowledged leader; in that institution of culture and development,
the seventeenth century salon, her undisputed supremacy placed her in
the position of patroness and protectress of men of letters. In the
general religious movement her rôle was one of secondary importance;
and as mistress, she ceased with the sixteenth century to be either
active politically or disastrous morally and became merely a temporary
recipient of capriciously bestowed wealth and favors. In order
to fully comprehend woman's position and the exact nature of her
influence in this century and the following one, the position and
constitution of the nobility before, during and after the ministry of
Richelieu, must be studied.

The great houses of Carolingian origin were those of Alençon,
Bourgogne, Bourbon, Vendôme, Kings of Navarre, Counts of Valois,
and Artois; the great gentlemen were the Dukes of Guise, Nemours,
Longueville, Chevreuse, Nevers, Bouillon, Rohan, Montmorency, and,
later, Luxembourg, Mortemart, Créqui, Noailles; names which are
constantly met with in French history. Before the time of Louis XIV.,
men of such rank, when dissatisfied or discontented, might leave
court at their will and were requested to return; but with Louis XIV.,
departure from court was considered a disgrace, and offending parties
were permitted, not asked, to return.

Outside the army, there was open to the princes of the nobility no
occupation in which they might expend their surplus energy; thus,
being free from the burden of taxes, it was but natural that they
should seek amusement in literature, society, and intrigue. The honor
of their respective houses and the fear of being damned in the next
world were their only sources of deep concern; other than these, they
assumed no responsibilities, desiring absolute freedom from care.

Legal, judicial, and ecclesiastical offices were open to them but were
little favored except as convenient means of obtaining revenues
and positions otherwise not procurable. The first requisites toward
advancement were bravery and skill, not learning; the majority of
the members of the nobility much preferred buying a regiment to being
president of a tribunal, and their primary ambition was to acquire a
reputation for magnificence, heroism, and gallantry. They fought for
glory, to show their skill and courage; the sentiment of patriotism
was but weakly developed, and war was indulged in merely for the sake
of fighting, passing the time, and being occupied. As in the preceding
century, death was but little feared; in fact, the scorn of it was
carried to the extreme. "The French went to death as though they were
to be resuscitated on the morrow."

That man went to war was not sufficient proof of his bravery; in
addition, he must, upon the smallest pretext, draw his sword, must
fight constantly, and especially with adversaries better armed and
larger in force; the love of woman was for such men only. Adventure
was the fad: it is said of one seigneur that he took pleasure in going
every night to a certain corner and, from pure malice, striking with
his sword the first person who chanced that way; this unique pastime
he continued until he himself was killed.

Marriage, until the eighteenth century, was not a union of affection,
but merely an alliance between two families and in the interest of
both; women, to preserve their identity after marriage, signed their
family names. As maturity was reached at the age of twelve, marriage
meant simply cohabitation. Until the Revolution, free marriages, or
liaisons, were recognized as natural if not legitimate institutions,
and the offspring of such unions, who were said to be more numerous
than legitimate children, were legitimatized and became heirs simply
through recognition by the father. (At first, princes were unwilling
to accept, as wives, the natural daughters of kings; however, the Duke
of Orleans and the Prince of Conti married the natural daughters
of Louis XIV.) As a rule, titles could not be transmitted through
females; when a woman married beneath her rank she lost her titles,
but they were given to her children.

In the seventeenth century, woman's influence was of a nature vastly
superior to that exerted by her in the sixteenth century, in that it
rendered sacred both her and her honor; but, in spite of the refining
restraint of the salon, brutality was still the main characteristic
of man. To express beautiful sentiments in the midst of jealousies,
rivalries, adventures, complaints, and despair, was the _savoir-vivre_
of the Catherine de' Medici type of elegance brought from Italy in the
sixteenth century. This caused the extremes of external fastidiousness
and internal grossness to be embodied in the same individual; in the
eighteenth century, man was, inwardly as well as outwardly, refined,
mild, kind, a friend of pleasure; and therein lies the fundamental
difference between the _honnête homme_ of Louis XIV. and the _homme
du monde_ of Louis XV. The seventeenth century type of man is midway
between that of the sixteenth and eighteenth—more polished and less
gross than the former, yet lacking the knowledge and culture of the
latter.

When in the seventeenth century the two all-powerful forces, brute
force and money, of the preceding century were replaced by those of
money and the pen, the decay of the impoverished and unintellectual
nobility became but a question of time. The day when great gentlemen
might scorn men of letters and learning was rapidly passing; with
the French Academy arose a new spirit, a fresh impulse was given to
intellectual attainments. Although treated as inferiors, the literary
men of the seventeenth century spoke of the aristocracy in a spirit
of raillery, but slightly veiled with respect; and the nobility while
remaining, in its way, courageous and glorious, lost its prestige,
force, and influence.

In the seventeenth century, money acquired a certain purchasing value
which procured advantages and luxuries impossible in the preceding
period when the brave man was worth infinitely more than the rich
who, scorned and considered as a rapacious Jew, was isolated and in
constant fear of being robbed or killed. As the number of government
officials increased, individual fortunes grew; men became enormously
wealthy through the various offices bought by them or given to them by
the government. The financier was a king and many marriages of princes
and dukes with daughters of men of wealth are recorded. Women of
station, however, seldom married beneath their rank, because they
lost their titles by so doing, and titles were still the only road
to social success. As a rule, titles could not be transmitted through
females; when a woman made a misalliance her titles were given to her
children. Almost all rich men of the period, from the time of Louis
XIII. to the Revolution, became nobles, as almost every brave man was
made a knight up to the seventeenth century. It was possible for
the wealthy to buy a marquisate or baronetage and give it to their
children; a grand-marshal of France was no longer so powerful as a
rich banker.

The complete change, under Louis XIV., of the customs of the time,
caused numberless petty jealousies, scandals, and intrigues in the
aristocracy, which could no longer maintain its old form and yet had
to be considered by the government. The question of reform arose—how
to restrict the number of nobles, which increased every year. Rank
was bestowed for service and, sometimes, even for wealth; the old
families, being poor, had no distinctive prestige except that given by
their privileges at court; their titles no longer distinguished them
from the newcomers, whom they gradually began to disdain, and the
result was a general lowering of the standing, importance, and
influence of nobility. Another party which gained prominence was that
of the bench; the judges, as interpreters of the king's laws, became
powerful, for law was absolute. A deadly rivalry sprang up between the
parties of rank with no money or power and of power and money without
rank.

The desire of every man of rank to be independent, to be a force in
himself instead of a part of a unit which might be useful to the
state as a whole, was one of the principal defects of the French
aristocracy; poverty crushed it, idleness robbed it of its alertness,
intriguing and gradual oppression reduced it to despair. Appointed to
offices, its members failed in the performance of their duties; the
latter fell to the under men who, while the aristocracy was busy at
fêtes, in society, at the table, became experts in the affairs of the
government—shrewd politicians and financiers. The new nobility,
that of the robe, replaced that of the sword in all interests of the
government except war; gradually, Parliament was made up of men who,
having been elevated to the rank of nobility, retained their aversion
to those who were noble by birth, recognizing only the king as their
superior and refusing precedence to even the princes of the blood.
Louis XIV., however, objecting to and fearing such a strong class as
that of the robe, employed, wherever possible, people of lower rank.
Thus it happened in the seventeenth century that the still powerful
nobility of higher rank was scorned and kept down; but in the
eighteenth century, when the gentlemen of the robe had become
all-powerful and therefore constituted a dangerous party, it was they
who became the objects of scorn and persecution, while the aristocrats
of blood, the gentlemen of the court, recovered the royal favors
through their political powerlessness.

French aristocracy really had no object, no _raison d'être_, after
its disappearance from all governmental functions; it became an
encumbrance to the state; having no particular part to play, it did
nothing; this is one of the causes of its dissolution and of the
Revolution as well. Thus France gradually passed from inequality of
classes under the sanction of custom to equality of classes before
the law: this change in the condition and constitution of the French
nobility accounts for many intrigues and scandals and explains the
social and moral actions of French women, as well as the difference
in the nature of their activities in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.

The seventeenth was, _par excellence_, the century which can boast
of that incomparable society the cult of which was the highest in all
things—art, religion, philosophy, poetry, politics, war, and beauty.
From the convent of the Carmelites to the Hôtel de Rambouillet, from
the Place Royale to the various châteaux and salons, we must seek only
that which is elevating and spiritual, beautiful and religious. In
the famous society which kept pace with the political reputation
and influence of France is found a coterie of women who combined
remarkable beauty and intelligence with a high moral standard, and
whose names are intimately connected with the history of France.
Where again can we find such a galaxy of beauties as that formed by
Charlotte de Montmorency, Mme. de Chevreuse, Mme. de Hautefort, Mme.
de Montbazon, Mme. de Guémené, Mme. de Châtillon, Mme. de Longueville,
Marie de Gonzague, Henriette de la Vallière, Mme. de Montespan, Mme.
de Maintenon, without enumerating such great writers and leaders of
salons as Mme. de Rambouillet, Mlle. de Scudéry, Mme. de Lambert,
Mme. de Sévigné, and Mme. de la Fayette? The seventeenth century
could tolerate no mediocrity; grandeur was in the very atmosphere;
its political movements were great movements; it produced in art
a Poussin, in letters a Corneille, in science and philosophy a
Descartes.

The various movements of which woman was the head may be divided into
two periods, and each period into two parts. The political women may
well be grouped about Marie de' Medici,—whose career will not be
given separate treatment, inasmuch as there was no drop of French
blood in her veins,—and the social and literary women about Mme.
de Rambouillet and her salon. In the latter half of the seventeenth
century and at the beginning of the eighteenth, politics are
represented by Mme. de Montespan—the mistress—and Mme. de
Maintenon—the wife; social life and literature have their purest
representative in Mme. de Lambert. The two queens of the seventeenth
century, Anne of Austria and Maria Theresa, were without influence;
the religious movement was represented by the galaxy of women of whom
we write in a later chapter.

After the death of Henry IV., Marie de' Medici succeeded in having
herself made queen-regent for Louis XIII., who was then but nine years
old. A woman of no particular capacity, who had in no way adapted
herself to French life and customs, she allowed herself to be governed
by an adventurer, an Italian who understood and appreciated French
ideals no more than did Marie; these two—the queen and Concini, her
minister—immediately began to concoct plans to gain control of the
state. The king was kept in virtual captivity until he reached the age
of seventeen, when, having asserted his rights, Concini was killed,
and Marie's dominant power and influence came to an abrupt end.

Louis XIII. reigned, with his minister, the Prince de Luynes, from
1617 to 1624, when he became reconciled to his mother and appointed
her favorite, Richelieu, his minister. From 1610 to about 1640,
Marie de' Medici exercised more or less influence, always of a nature
disastrous to France.

After the king's death, Anne of Austria, as queen-regent, with
Mazarin, directed the destinies of France. During the ministry of the
two cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin, occurred the political intrigues
and astute diplomatic movements of Mme. de Chevreuse and the unwise
and short-sighted aspirations of Mme. de Longueville. These intimate
friends were women of the highest intelligence, most perfect beauty,
and uncapitulating devotion, and were working for the same cause,
though from different motives.

Mme. de Chevreuse was the daughter of M. de Rohan, Duke of Montbazon.
She had married M. de Luynes, the minister of Louis XIII., who
overthrew the power of Marie de' Medici, and who, by initiating his
wife into his secrets, gave her the schooling and experience which she
later used to such advantage. De Luynes presented her at court
with instructions to ingratiate herself with the queen—Anne of
Austria—and the king. In this design she succeeded so well that she
was soon made superintendent of the household of the queen, and became
as influential with Anne as was her husband with the king.

In 1621 M. de Luynes died; a year later his widow married Claude of
Lorraine, Duke of Chevreuse; but as that was an unhappy union,
she soon began her career as an intriguer. On the arrival of Lord
Kensington, the English ambassador, she fell in love with him, that
escapade being the first of a long series; the two proceeded to
inveigle Queen Anne into a liaison with the Duke of Buckingham, which
scheme, as history so well records, partly succeeded.

When Mme. de Chevreuse accompanied to England the new queen,
Henriette-Marie, wife of Charles I., both Buckingham and Kensington
outdid themselves in showing her attention, Richelieu, fearing her
influence and intrigues at the court of England, hastened the recall
of her husband, but she received through her friends, from the English
monarch himself, an invitation to remain; during the time, she gave
birth to a child.

Her next famous undertaking, which involved the lives of various
persons of high rank, was the scheme to persuade Monsieur the Dauphin
to refuse to marry Mlle. de Montpensier; Queen Anne was opposed to
this union, and Mme. de Chevreuse gained to their cause a number of
influential friends who were all madly in love with her. The ever
vigilant Richelieu having discovered the plot, Monsieur confessed.
In this conspiracy, M. de Chalais lost his head, other plotters lost
their positions, and some were exiled. Mme. de Chevreuse was forced
to retire to Lorraine; there she set in movement a vast plan against
Richelieu and France, allying England and various princes, but, by the
arrest of Montaigu, the plot was discovered, the alliance broken up,
and peace restored.

In 1626, by request of England, Mme. de Chevreuse returned to France.
For a time she was quiet and seemed to favor Richelieu, but she
soon captivated one of his ministers, the Marquis of Châteauneuf.
Richelieu discovered the latter's weakness, and, having captured his
correspondence, sent him to prison, where he remained for ten years.
The fair intriguer was exiled to Dampierre, the cardinal fearing to
send her out of France on account of her influence with the Duke
of Lorraine. She managed to steal into Paris at night and see the
queen; when discovered, she was sent to Touraine where she began the
dangerous task of carrying on the correspondence between the Dukes of
Savoy and Lorraine and England, and between Spain and Queen Anne. Even
when this correspondence was intercepted and the queen confessed all,
Richelieu was afraid to banish Mme. de Chevreuse; though he believed
her to be at the bottom of all the current intrigues, he knew that out
of France she would stir up the rulers of England and Spain as well as
the Duke of Lorraine and others hostile to the cardinal.

Violence being out of the question, because of her influence in
England and of the prominence of her family, he decided to win her
over by kindness; he even sent her money, but she was too shrewd to
permit Richelieu to outwit her, always paying him back in his own
coin. However, that kind of play was too dangerous for her and she
escaped to Spain. As soon as her departure became known, Richelieu
set to work every means in his power to bring her back, sending her an
urgent invitation to return and promising to pardon her past. When his
messages reached her, she was already in Madrid, where she was royally
received as the friend of the king's sister, Anne; there, by means of
her beauty and wonderful intelligence, she conquered every cavalier.
When the war broke out between France and Spain, she left for England
where she was welcomed like a visiting queen.

Richelieu, anxious for the support of the Duke of Lorraine in his
war against Spain and Austria, needed the coöperation of Mme. de
Chevreuse, and with that end in view sent ambassadors to London
to arrange for her return; but an agreement was not an easy matter
between two such astute politicians, and negotiations went on
unsuccessfully for over a year. Her subtleness, apparent docility
and invincible precautions were pitted against the artifices and
dissimulation of the cardinal; both employed all the astute manœuvres
of diplomacy and exhausted the resources of consummate skill in
gaining the point desired by each. The cardinal failed to convince her
of her safety.

Mme. de Chevreuse soon formed about her a circle of émigrés—Marie de'
Medici, Duc La Vallette, Soubèse, La Vieuville, and many others. This
coterie was in open correspondence with Spain, Austria, and the Duke
of Lorraine. From every side, Richelieu felt the intriguing hand
and influence of Mme. de Chevreuse, and decided to put forth another
effort to get her to return, this time sending her husband; but
not sure of the latter's sincerity and in fear of him, the duchess
concluded to leave England for Flanders, and, escorted by a squad of
dukes and lords, departed like a queen.

At Brussels, she entered into open relations with Spain, drawing
over the Duke of Lorraine. She was accused of being in the plot of
Cinq-Mars and the Duke of Bouillon with Spain; when Richelieu exposed
this to Queen Anne, the latter for the first time became her enemy.
Just at this time of his triumph, Richelieu died, his death being
followed soon after by that of Louis XIII., who left a special
order for the exile forever of Mme. de Chevreuse, whom he called _Le
Diable_. The queen-regent, however, recalled her, and set at liberty
her friend, Châteauneuf, who had been imprisoned for ten years.

When Mme. de Chevreuse returned to Paris after an absence of ten
years, her beauty was still unimpaired, she possessed an experience
such as no man of the day could boast, was personally acquainted with
nearly every great statesman and aware of the weak points in every
court of Europe. While she could now count on the support of
the majority of the princes, plots were being formed about the
queen-regent, the object of which was to persuade the latter to give
up the friends who had served her faithfully for so many years. La
Rochefoucauld was sent to meet Mme. de Chevreuse and to inform her of
the change of attitude of the queen-regent; as her devoted friend, he
advised her to abandon, for the present, all hopes of governing the
queen and to devote herself entirely to regaining her favor and to
preparing for the possible fall of Mazarin.

After securing the release of her friend Châteauneuf, Mme. de
Chevreuse set to work to restore him to his former office of Guard
of the Seals, but did not succeed. She then turned her attention to
undermining the power of Mazarin, agitating all émigrés returning to
France and starting the most outspoken denunciation of the policy
of the cardinal, his injustice and tyranny against the nobility. The
cries of disapproval became so general that Mazarin was kept busy
warding off the blows aimed at him by his enemy; the latter succeeded
in placing Châteauneuf as _Chancelier des ordres du roi_ and in having
his estates restored to him, while Alexandre de Campion she placed in
the household of the queen. Mazarin, living in constant dread of her,
managed to thwart two of her cherished schemes—the restoration to
the Duke of Vendôme of the government of Brittany and the placing of
Châteauneuf in the ministry—upon the success of which depended her
own influence and power.

Finding that ruse, flattery, insinuation, and ordinary court intrigues
were of no avail, she turned to other methods. The Importants, a party
made up of adventurers and a large number of the nobility, were making
themselves felt more and more; they were opposed to Richelieu and
Mazarin, and Mme. de Chevreuse became their chief and instigator.
Failing to succeed with the cardinal's own methods, she decided to
assassinate him, but the plot was discovered, the Duke of Beaufort
was arrested and all the princes of the party of the Importants were
ordered to leave Paris. Mme. de Chevreuse was compelled to depart from
court and retire to Dampierre, and then to Touraine, where she did
everything in her power to assist the friends who had compromised
themselves for her. During her first exile she had had the consolation
of the friendship of the queen; but now she was banished by the very
friend whom she had served so well and who had up to this time been
able and willing to afford her comfort and protection. Through
Lord Goring, Count Craft, and the Commander de Jars, she opened up
correspondence and negotiations with England, but was again surprised
by the vigilant Mazarin and sent to Angoulême; determining to escape,
after many hardships, she successfully reached Liège; from there, as
head of all foreign intrigues against France, she continued to thwart
Mazarin's foreign policy.

As soon as the first signs of the Fronde broke out, Mme. de Chevreuse
became active and succeeded in attracting to her the young Marquis de
Laigues with whom, later on, she contracted a _mariage de conscience_.
As ambassador of the Fronde, she prevailed upon Spain to promise
troops and subsidies to her party. After the peace of 1649, she went
to Paris where she found almost all her friends ready to follow
her and to pay her homage. It was she who conceived the idea of an
aristocratic league which, under the auspices of the two great princes
of the blood, the Duke of Orléans and the Prince of Condé, would unite
the best part of the nobility.

Her plan was to marry her daughter to the Prince de Conti and the
young Duc d'Enghien to one of the daughters of the Duke of Orléans.
The contracts were signed and all was in readiness when Mazarin was
exiled, and the following Frondists came into power: the Duke
of Orléans at court, Condé and Turenne at the head of the army,
Châteauneuf in the Cabinet, Molé in Parliament, while Mme. de
Chevreuse and Mme. de Longueville managed to keep harmony among all.
Queen Anne in a short time annulled the marriage contracts; and on the
return of Mazarin, Mme. de Chevreuse took up her work with him, the
cardinal being wise enough to appreciate the fact that she was a
greater force with than against him.

Strange as it may seem, Mme. de Chevreuse in time became the great
acting and controlling force of royalty, winning over the Duke of
Lorraine and becoming a staunch friend to both the regent and the
cardinal; after the death of the latter, she became all-powerful, and
it may be said that she made Colbert what he was. In the fulness of
her power, she gradually retired, having seen, in turn, the passing
away or the fall of Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIII., Anne of Austria,
the Queen of England, Châteauneuf, the Duke of Lorraine, her daughter,
and the Marquis de Laigues. She ceased plotting, renounced politics
and intrigues, and retired to the country, where she died in 1679.

Mme. de Chevreuse was undoubtedly one of the most important political
characters of the seventeenth century, just as she was also one of its
greatest beauties—possibly the most seductive and charming woman of
her epoch. A consummate diplomat and an untiring worker, she was at
the head of more intrigues and plots, had more thrilling adventures,
controlled and ruined more men, than any other woman of her century,
if not of all French history. Thinking little of religion, she was
yet in the very midst of the Catholic party; unswerving in her
friendships, she scorned danger, opinion, fortune, for those whom she
loved or whose cause she espoused; an implacable foe, she was the most
dreaded enemy of both Richelieu and Mazarin.

With a remarkable ability for grasping the details of an antagonist's
position she combined all the other qualities of an astute politician;
thus, upon the desired consummation of her plots she brought to bear
a sagacity, finesse, and energy that baffled all her adversaries. With
her, politics became a passion and a necessity; even while in exile,
her zeal was unflagging and she intrigued over all Europe. Scorning
peril as well as all petty restraints, and characterized by courage,
loyalty, and devotion, she was without an equal among the members of
her sex.

Mme. de Hautefort, while less powerful than Mme. de Chevreuse and of
quite a different type, is associated with her in the history of the
time. Pure, beautiful, and virtuous, she everywhere inspired love and
respect; without political aspirations and seeking neither power nor
favors, she refused to deliver her soul or betray her friends for
Richelieu or Mazarin; she was their enemy, but not their rival.

Because of her desire to serve the queen, of whom she was an intimate
friend, and to further her interests, she was connected with the first
intrigues of Mme. de Chevreuse, but as an innocent and disinterested
party. Louis XIII. conceived an ardent attachment for her, and
Richelieu endeavored to win her over to his policies, but she remained
faithful to her queen and refused to sacrifice her honor to the king.

The cardinal did not rest until he had prevailed upon the king to
exile her, ostensibly for only fifteen days; and as her unselfishness
and generosity had made an impression upon the whole court, her
departure was much regretted, though no demonstration was made. When,
after the king's death, Mme. de Hautefort returned to Paris, she soon
reëstablished herself in the affection, admiration, and respect of her
associates.

As Mazarin gained ascendency over Queen Anne, that regent changed her
policy and abandoned her former friends. Mme. de Hautefort was opposed
to the queen on account of her liaison with her minister and her lack
of fidelity to those who, in time of trouble, had served her so well.
As _dame d'atours_, she was forced either to close her eyes to all
scenes between the cardinal and Anne or to combat the regent and
resign. She was not to be tempted by the honors and favors with which
the two sought to purchase her criminal connivance or her silence;
preferring poverty and exile to a guilty conscience, she soon retired
to the convent of the Daughters of Sainte-Marie, where she was
followed by her admirers, who were willing to place themselves and
their fortunes at her disposal. At the age of thirty she accepted
the hand of the Duke of Schomberg, and, away from the court and its
intrigues, lived in peace.

Indifferent to the powerful, but kind and compassionate to the poor
and oppressed, Mme. de Hautefort is a type of those great women of
the seventeenth century who stood for honor, courage, generosity,
sympathy, and virtue; fervently, even austerely, religious, she was
yet far removed from anything resembling bigotry. Among the ladies
of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, she was one of the most popular; her
vivacity, modesty, and reserve, combined with a tall figure, imposing
bearing, and large, expressive blue eyes, won the hearts of many
cavaliers, among whom the most prominent were the Dukes of Lorraine
and La Rochefoucauld.

A close second to Mme. de Chevreuse in influence and power, was Mme.
de Longueville, a woman of exquisite and aristocratic beauty, of
brilliant mind, and an adept in the art of conversation. Tender and
kind, but ambitious, she, like many others of her time and sex, had
two distinct periods—one of conquest and one of penitence and pious
devotion.

Born in a prison at Vincennes during the captivity of her father,
the great Henry of Bourbon, Prince of Condé, she in time developed
remarkable personal charms. Her early days were spent at the convent
of the Carmelites and at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, her mind—in these
opposite worlds of religion and society—being divided between pious
meditations and romantic dreams. At the time of the execution at
Toulouse of her uncle, M. de Montmorency, she seriously considered
entering the Carmelite convent.

Upon making her social début, she immediately became one of the
leaders about whom all the gallants gathered. She formed a fast
friendship with Mme. de Sablé, Mme. de Rambouillet, Mme. de
Bouteville, and Mlle. du Vigean. Her beauty, which was quite
phenomenal, soon became the subject of poetry. Voltaire wrote:

  "De perles, d'astres et de fleurs,
  Bourbon, le ciel fit tes couleurs,
  Et mit dedans tout ce mélange
    L'esprit d'un ange!
  L'on jugerait par la blancheur
  De Bourbon, et par sa fraicheur,
  Qu'elle a prit naissance des lis."

[The heaven made thy colors, Bourbon, of pearls, of stars, of flowers,
and to all this mixture added the spirit of an angel. One would judge
by the whiteness and freshness of Bourbon that she was born of the
lilies.]

In 1642, at the age of twenty-three, she was married, against her
will, to M. de Longueville who was, after the princes of the blood,
the greatest seigneur of France; he was old and indifferent, and
enamored of another woman, while she was young and full of hopes,
ambitions, and love. His conduct, being anything but correct,
immediately set the young wife, with her instincts of refinement and
principles and habits of the _précieuses_, against her husband. The
advent of a rival in the person of Mme. de Montbazon, one of the
most noted beauties of the day, made the state of affairs even more
unpleasant, the humiliation being so much keener because it was on
account of her charms that Montbazon was preferred to the wife. The
latter's fate was a cruel one; she could not respect her husband, and,
for her, respect was the only road to love. She continued to live at
the Hôtel de Longueville and to attend all court functions, where,
through her beauty, she early became the object of much attention from
the young lords, among whom Coligny seemed to impress her more than
any other.

About this time occurred the deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and
the Importants, flocking to Paris to regain their rights and to share
in the spoils of the new regency, began to make themselves felt. The
leaders expected great favors from Anne of Austria who had been forced
into obedience by the cardinal, but she was a great disappointment to
them. A born lady of leisure, she was only too glad to be relieved
of the arduous duties of government, and this her minister, Mazarin,
quickly proceeded to do; his first object was to crush the influence
of the Importants, who were very powerful in the salons, society, and
politics.

The house of Condé declared in favor of Mazarin, but at first this
did not affect Mme. de Longueville, whose kindness of heart and
indifference to politics and intrigues were generally known. Probably,
she never would have taken a part in the Fronde had it not been for
the rival who had been seeking, by every possible means, to injure her
reputation—a design which Mme. de Montbazon well-nigh accomplished by
declaring that two letters which, at a reception, had fallen from the
pocket of Coligny had been written by Mme. de Longueville. In reality,
they had been written by Mme. de Fouquerolles to the Marquis of
Maulevrier. Mme. la Princesse, mother of Mme. de Longueville demanded
full reparation, threatening that unless it was at once granted the
house of Condé would withdraw from court, and Mazarin managed to
induce the queen to compel Mme. de Montbazon to apologize publicly. It
may be of interest to give, in full, the apology, to show the nature
of court etiquette, hypocrisy, and intrigue of that day. Mme. de
Montbazon called at the hôtel of the princess and spoke the following
words, which were written on a paper attached to her fan: "Madame, I
come here to attest that I am innocent of the spitefulness of which
they accuse me, there being no person of honor capable of uttering
such a calumny; and if I had committed such a crime, I would have
submitted to the punishments that the queen would have imposed upon
me, would never have shown myself before the world again, and would
have asked your pardon. I beg you to believe that I shall never be
lacking in the respect that I owe you because of the opinion which
I have of the merit and virtue of Mme. de Longueville." To which the
princess replied: "I very willingly receive the assurance you give
me of having had no part in the spitefulness that was published,
deferring all to the order the queen has given me."

After this episode, the princess refused to be in the same place with
Mme. de Montbazon. On one occasion, Mme. de Chevreuse had invited the
queen to a collation at a place where the queen enjoyed walking; she
requested the princess to join her, giving her word of honor that Mme.
de Montbazon would not be there; she was present, however, and the
princess was about to leave when the queen ordered Mme. de Montbazon
to feign illness and retire; this she refused to do and remained,
whereupon the queen and the princess left, and shortly afterward Mme.
de Montbazon received orders to leave Paris.

This excited the Importants to fever heat and a plot was formed, with
Mme. de Chevreuse as the leader, to assassinate the cardinal. Shortly
after this, Coligny, as champion of the cause of Mme. de Longueville,
challenged the Duc de Guise to a duel. The whole court was made up
of two parties: the Importants with Mme. de Montbazon and Mme. de
Chevreuse; and Condé and Mme. de Longueville with their friends;
the result was the death of Coligny. Mme. de Longueville was a true
_précieuse_ and hardly loved Coligny, but allowed him and any other to
serve and adore her in a respectable way—a principle followed by
the better women of the age, such as Mme. de Rambouillet and Mme. de
Sablé.

Some time after these occurrences, Mme. de Longueville was stricken
with smallpox which, fortunately, did not impair her beauty; it was
said, on the contrary, that in taking away its first flower it left
all the brilliancy which, joined to her culture and charming
languor, made her one of the most attractive persons in France. La
Rochefoucauld has left the following picture of her: "This princess
had all the advantages of _esprit_ and beauty to as great a degree as
if nature had taken pleasure in completing, in her person, a perfect
work; but these qualities shone less brilliantly on account of one
characteristic which led her to imbibe so thoroughly the sentiments of
those who adored her that she no longer recognized her own."

After her twenty-fifth year, Mme. de Longueville became more and more
imbued with the general spirit of the seventeenth century: coquetry
and _bel esprit_ became her chief occupation. The glory of her
brother, the Duc d'Enghien, who was rapidly becoming a power, and the
probability of the house of Condé becoming dangerous, made Mazarin
realize that Mme. de Longueville was to be reckoned with, inasmuch as
she had full control over D'Enghien and was constantly instilling new
ideas into his mind and requesting from him the distribution of all
sorts of favors. Mazarin, in 1646, succeeded in causing her withdrawal
to Münster for one year; there she ruled as queen of the Congress. On
the death of her father, the Prince of Condé, and at the request
of her mother to come home for her lying-in, the husband of Mme. de
Longueville consented to her return to Paris.

In the meantime, everything was being done by the Importants to win
over the house of Condé and cause a breach between it and Mazarin.
The court at this time was in full glory; to amuse the queen-regent,
Mazarin was lavishing money on artists from Italy, and the nobility
outdid itself in its attempts to rival royalty in elegance and luxury.
Upon her return, everyone paid homage to Mme. de Longueville; it
was at this period that La Rochefoucauld, who was anxious about his
position at court, as he was accused of being in league with the
Importants and was therefore refused the favors he desired, met Mme.
de Longueville who was in the height of her glory and in full control
of the most prominent house of the time—that of the Duc d'Enghien and
the Prince de Conti, her brothers.

In order to conquer for himself what the cardinal would not grant him,
La Rochefoucauld put forth every effort to win Mme. de Longueville;
captivated by his fine appearance, his chivalry and, above all, by his
powerful intellect, she gave herself up entirely, willing to share his
destiny, to sacrifice all her interests, even those of her family, and
the deepest sentiment of her life—the tenderness for her brother.

France at this time, 1648, was in a position to gain for herself a
peace with the world at her own terms, and her future seemed to be
without a cloud. It was the Fronde that checked her growth and glory,
and the cause of this was the estrangement of the house of Condé
through the action of Mme. de Longueville in passing with her husband
over to the party of the Importants, she being the first of her family
to forsake the government. Under the leadership of La Rochefoucauld,
she cast her lot with the opposing party, allowing herself to be
identified with the interests of those who had endeavored to tarnish
her early reputation. Becoming a leader with Mme. de Chevreuse and
Mme. de Montbazon (her rival), she easily won over her young brother,
the Prince de Conti. After the imprisonment of her husband and her two
brothers, she began her real career as a woman of tactics, politics,
and generalship.

With the connivance of Mme. de Chevreuse and the Princess Palatine, a
general plan had been formed to create a new government by the union
of the aristocracy. The marriage, already spoken of, between the Duke
of Enghien and one of the daughters of the Duke of Orléans and that
arranged between the Prince of Conti and the daughter of Mme. de
Chevreuse were to have united the Fronde with the house of Condé. The
alliances, however, were declared off, and Mme. de Chevreuse went
over to the cardinal and the queen; Condé's fall and Mazarin's success
followed, being the result, mainly, of the determination of Mme. de
Chevreuse to avenge herself upon Condé for having consented to the
breaking of the marriage contracts.

Mme. de Longueville did all in her power to continue the conflict that
Condé had undertaken, but, exhausted by continual excitement and ill
success, she was compelled to retire. After this, her life, spent in
Normandy, at the Carmelites' convent and at Port Royal, became a long
penance, which increased in austerity until she died in 1679. Thus,
her career was at first one of unblemished brilliancy, then a period
of elegant and intellectual debauch, and finally one of expiation.

"Her politics," says Sainte-Beuve, "considered in the _ensemble_, are
nothing more than a desire to please, to shine—a capricious love. Her
character lacked consistency and self-will, her mind was keen, ready,
subtle, ingenious, but not reasonable."

In her convent life, her crowning virtue was humility. Her enemies did
not cease to attack her, but she received all their affronts with
the noblest resignation. The following testimonies are taken from a
Jansenist manuscript of 1685:

"She never said anything to her own advantage. She made use of as
many occasions as she could find for humiliating herself without any
affectation. What she said, she said so well that it could not be
better said. She listened much, never interrupted, and never showed
any eagerness to speak. She spoke sensibly, modestly, charitably, and
without passion. To court her was to speak with equity and without
passion of everyone and to esteem the good in all. Her whole exterior,
her voice, her face, her gestures, were a perfect music; and her mind
and body served her so well in expressing what she wished to make
heard, that she appeared the most perfect actress in the world."

Her love for La Rochefoucauld was the secret of her failure in life.
When she experienced the disappointments of her married life and
discovered that her dream of being loved by her husband could not be
realized, she looked to other sources for diversion. She was not an
intriguing woman like Mme. de Chevreuse, but one of ambitions which
were incited by her love for and interest in the objects of her
affection. Although she carried on flirtations with Coligny and the
Duke of Nemours, she really loved no one but La Rochefoucauld, to
whom she sacrificed her reputation and tranquillity, her duties and
interests. For him she took up the cause of the Fronde; for him she
was a mere slave, her entire existence being given up to his love, his
whims, his service; when he failed her, she was lost, exhausted, and
retired to a convent at the age of thirty-five and in the full bloom
of her beauty. Her professed lover simply used her as a means to an
end, seeking only his own interests in the Fronde, while she sought
his; and this is the explanation of her seeming inconsistency of
conduct. In her religious life she was happy and contented; surrounded
by her friends, she lived peacefully for over twenty years.

Thus, Marie de' Medici, a foreigner, Mme. de Chevreuse, and Mme. de
Longueville represent the political women of the first half of the
seventeenth century; Anne of Austria, who was of foreign extraction,
was a mere tool in the hands of Mazarin, and exerted little influence
in general.

One of the principal differences between the conspicuous political
women of the sixteenth and those of the seventeenth centuries lies in
the possession by the latter of less personal force than that wielded
by the former, who allowed nothing to thwart their plans. The women
of both periods were beautiful, but those of the earlier one were of a
magnetic and sensual type, "inspiring insensate passions and exciting
a feverish unrest," thus ruling man through his lower instincts. The
lack of refinement, sympathy, and charity reflected in their actions
is in glaring contrast to the dignity, repose, reserve, and womanly
modesty and grace displayed by their less masterful successors of the
seventeenth century.




Chapter IV

Woman in Society and Literature


At the beginning of the seventeenth century, after the death of Henry
IV., there were three classes in France,—the nobility, clergy, and
third estate,—each with a distinct field of action: the nobility
dominated customs, morality, and the government; the clergy supervised
instruction and education; the third estate furnished the funds, that
is, its work made possible the operations of the other classes.

At court, various dialects and diverse pronunciations were in use by
the representatives of the different provinces; the written language,
though understood generally, was not used. Warriors were largely
in evidence among the members of the nobility and court; entirely
indifferent to decency of expression, purity of morals, and refinement
of manners, and even boasting of their scorn of all restrictions,
they took their boisterous rudeness into the drawing room where their
influence was unlimited. The king, being of the same class, knew no
better, or, if he did, had not the moral courage to compel a change;
thus, the institution of a reformatory movement fell to the lot of
woman.

Then, however, woman was but little better than man; to gain his
esteem, she would first have to make radical changes in her own
behavior and become self-respecting. The customs of the time placed
many disadvantages in the way of her social and moral reform. As
a rule, the young girl was confined to a convent until she reached
marriageable age; when that came and with it an undesired husband, she
was ready for almost any prank that would relieve the monotony of her
uncongenial marital relations. The convents themselves were so corrupt
or so easily corruptible, that, very frequently, young girls did not
leave them with unstained purity. To certain of these institutions,
women and men of standing often bought the privilege of access at any
time, to drink, dine, sleep, or attend sacred exercises with other
persons; thus, libertinage was not uncommon within the walls of those
so-called religious establishments.

Mme. de Rambouillet felt most keenly the degradation of woman and
resolved to act against it by combating everything that could offend
taste or delicacy. As in the beginning of every great age, all things
tended to greatness. A period of discipline and coördination set
in, and elegance, grace, and refinement became the most pronounced
characteristics of the time; rough, crude, robust, vigorous, and
energetic characteristics, combined with coarseness and brutality,
were eliminated during the seventeenth century. The women who caused
this general purification of morals and language were given the name
of _précieuses_ and the movement that of _préciosité_.

The extent to which the _précieuses_ went in inventing locutions by
which they were to be recognized as elegant, is generally exaggerated;
Livet says that out of six hundred women hardly thirty could be
accused of such fatuity. The wiser and more conservative women
did adopt a large number of expressions which were necessary for
refinement of language and these classicisms were exaggerated by some
of the provincial classes who received their expressions from books
and the theatre; such authors as Corneille, etc., were studied and
their poetic licenses introduced into spoken language. These follies,
pictured by Molière, naturally afforded much amusement in cultured
circles where every event of the day was discussed, from the vital
affairs of the government to the æsthetic interests of art and
literature.

The tremendous vogue of the seventeenth century salons or drawing
rooms naturally gave a stimulus to literature; but, as they were so
numerous and as each one claimed its large coterie of literary men,
they proved to be disastrous to some while helpful to others. Two
distinct classes of writers arose: the one, serious, elevated,
thoughtful, classical, and independent of the salon, is well
represented by Molière, Pascal, Boileau; the other, light, affected,
gallant, superficial, was composed of the innumerable unimportant
writers of the day.

The salon movement must not be confounded with two other social
movements or forces—those of court and society; while at the former
all was formality, the latter was still gross and brutish. The Marquis
de Caze, at a supper seized a leg of mutton and struck his neighbor
in the face with it, sprinkling her with gravy, whereupon she laughed
heartily; the Count of Brégis, slapped by the lady with whom he was
dancing, tore off her headdress before the whole company; Louis XIII.,
noticing in the crowd admitted to see him dine a lady dressed too
_décolleté_, filled his mouth with wine and squirted the liquid into
the bosom of the unfortunate girl; the Prince of Condé, indulging in
customary brutishness, ate dung and had the ladies follow his example;
these are fair illustrations of social _elegances_.

As will be seen, nothing of this nature occurred in the salon of Mme.
de Rambouillet, whose object was to charm her leisure hours, distract
and amuse the husband whom she adored, and be agreeable to her
friends. Her amusements were most original—concerts, mythological
representations, suppers, fireworks, comedies, readings, always
something new, often in the form of a surprise or a joke. Of the
latter, the best known is the one played on the Count of Guise whose
fondness for mushrooms had become proverbial; on one occasion when he
had consumed an immense number of them at table, his valet, who had
been bribed, took in all his doublets; on trying to put them on again,
he found them too narrow by fully four inches. "What in the world is
the matter—am I all swollen—could it be due to having eaten too many
mushrooms?" "That is quite possible," said Chaudebonne; "yesterday you
ate enough of them to split." All the accomplices joined in ridiculing
him, and he began to squirm and show a somewhat livid color. Mass was
rung, and he was compelled to attend in his chamber robe. Laughing, he
said: "That would be a fine end—to die at the age of twenty-one from
having eaten too many mushrooms." In the meantime, Chaudebonne advised
the use of an antidote which he wrote and handed to the count, who
read: "Take a good pair of scissors and cut your doublet." Only then
did the victim comprehend the joke.

One day, Voiture, having met a bear trainer, took him with his animals
to the room of the Marquise de Rambouillet; she, turning at the noise,
saw four large paws resting upon her screen. She readily forgave the
author of the surprise. Du Bled relates many more of these innocent
jokes.

Among the congenial people of the salons, the relations were always of
the most cordial, friendly, free, and intimate nature; they were like
the members of a large family. By them, love was not considered a
weakness but a mark of the elevation of the soul, and every man had
to be sensitive to beauty. When the Duchesse d'Aiguillon presented
to society her nephew, who later became the Duke of Richelieu, she
advised and encouraged him to complete his education and make of
himself an _honnête homme_ by association with the elder Mlle. du
Vigean and other women; the object of this procedure was to polish his
manners, elevate his instincts, and develop ease in deportment toward
the ladies. There was no hint of the vulgar or licentious pleasures
which became the characteristics of love in the eighteenth century.

The woman who inaugurated the movement toward purity of morals,
decency of language, polish of manners, and courtesy to woman, was
Mme. de Rambouillet. Cathérine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet,
whose mother was a great Roman lady and whose father had been
ambassador to Rome, inherited that pride of race and independence of
spirit for which she was so well known. In 1600, she was married, at
the age of twelve, to the Marquis de Rambouillet who was her senior by
eleven years, but who treated her with deference and respect rare at
that time. Husband and wife were perfectly congenial, and their happy
and peaceful life was a great contrast to that led by the majority of
the married couples of the day. Absolutely irreproachable in conduct,
she set a worthy example for all women who knew her.

Her high ideals, independence of character, family duties, and the
general debauchery, which was incompatible with her rigid chastity and
"precocious wisdom," caused her to withdraw from the court in 1608;
two years later, she decided to open her salon to such aristocratic
and cultured persons as appreciated womanly grace, wit, and taste. Her
familiarity with Italian and Spanish history and art placed her at
the head of intellectual as well as moral movements. She surrounded
herself with the distinguished men and women of the day, and her
salon, which in every detail was decorated and arranged for pleasure,
immediately became, through the exquisite charm with which she
presided, the one goal of the cultured; her blue room was the
sanctuary of polite society and she was its high priestess.

The highest ambition of the _habitué_ of the salon was to sing, dance,
and converse artistically and with refinement. A reaction against the
general social state immediately set in, even the brusque warriors
acquiring a refinement of speech and manners; and as conversation
developed and became a power, the great lords began to respect men
of letters and to cultivate their society. Anyone who possessed good
manners, vivacity, and wit was admitted to the salon, where a new and
more elevating sociability was the aspiration.

Mme. de Rambouillet was very particular in the choice of friends, and
they were always sincere and devoted, knowing her to be undesirous of
political favors and incapable of stooping to intrigue. Even Richelieu
could not, as compensation to him for a favor to her husband, induce
her to act as spy on some of the frequenters of her salon.

While not a woman of remarkable beauty, she was the personification
of reason and virtue; her unassuming frankness, exquisite tact, and
exceptional reserve discouraged all advances on the part of those
gallants who frequented every mansion and were always prepared to lay
siege to the heart of any fair woman. Her wide culture, versatility,
modesty, goodness, fidelity, and disinterestedness caused her to be
universally sought. Mlle. de Scudéry, in her novel _Cyrus_, leaves a
fine portrait of her:

"The spirit and soul of this marvellous person surpass by far her
beauty: the first has no limits in its extent and the other has no
equal in its generosity, goodness, justice, and purity. The intellect
of Cléomire (Mme. de Rambouillet) is not like that of those whose
minds have no brilliancy except that which nature has given them, for
she has cultivated it carefully, and I think I can say that there are
no _belles connaissances_ that she has not acquired. She knows various
languages, and is ignorant of hardly anything that is worth knowing;
but she knows it all without making a display of knowing it; and one
would say, in hearing her talk, 'she is so modest that she speaks
admirably of things, through simple common sense only'; on the
contrary, she is versed in all things; the most advanced sciences
are not beyond her, and she is perfectly acquainted with the most
difficult arts. Never has any person possessed such a delicate
knowledge as hers of fine works of prose and poetry; she judges them,
however, with wonderful moderation, never abandoning _la bienséance_
(the seemliness) of her sex, though she is far above it. In the whole
court, there is not a person with any spirit and virtue that does not
go to her house. Nothing is considered beautiful if it does not
have her approval; no stranger ever comes who does not desire to see
Cléomire and do her homage, and there are no excellent artisans who
do not wish to have the glory of her approbation of their works. All
people who write in Phénicie have sung her praises; and she possesses
the esteem of everyone to such a marvellous degree that there is no
one who has ever seen her who has not said thousands of favorable
things about her—who has not been charmed likewise by her beauty,
_esprit_, sweetness, and generosity."

Mlle. de Scudéry describes the salon of Mme. de Rambouillet in the
following:

"Cléomire (Mme. de Rambouillet) had built, according to her own
design, a place which is one of the finest in the world; she has found
the art of constructing a palace of vast extent in a situation
of mediocre grandeur. Order, harmony, and elegance are in all the
apartments, and in the furniture also; everything is magnificent,
even unique; the lamps are different from those of other palaces, her
cabinets are full of objects which show the judgment of her who chose
them. In her palace, the air is always scented; many baskets full of
magnificent flowers make a continual spring in her room, and the place
which she frequents ordinarily is so agreeable and so imaginative as
to make one feel as if she were in some enchanted place."

The very names of the frequenters of the salon of Mme. de Rambouillet
testify to the prominence of her position in the world of culture:
Mlle. de Scudéry, Mlle. du Vigean; Mmes. de Longueville, de la Vergne,
de La Fayette, de Sablé, de Hautefort, de Sévigné, de la Suze, Marie
de Gonzague, Duchesse d'Aiguillon, Mmes. des Houlières, Cornuel,
Aubry, and their respective husbands; the great literary men: Rotrou,
Scarron, Saint-Evremond, Malherbe, Racan, Chapelain, Voiture, Conrart,
Benserade, Pellisson, Segrais, Vaugelas, Ménage, Tallemant des Réaux,
Balzac, Mairet, Corneille, Bossuet, etc. In the entire period of the
French salon, no other such brilliant gathering of men and women of
social standing, princely blood, genuine intelligence, and literary
ability ever assembled from motives other than those of politics
or intrigue; here was a gathering purely social and for purposes of
mutual refinement. The nobility went through a process of polishing,
and the men of letters sharpened their intelligence and modified their
manners and customs.

Julie, Duchess of Montausier, and Angélique, daughters of Mme. de
Rambouillet, were popular, but the former lost much of her charm after
she sacrificed her independence of thought and action by becoming
governess of the children of the queen. Julie was the centre of
attraction for all perfumed rhymesters, all sighers in prose and
verse, who thronged about her. The stern and unbending Duke of
Montausier was so under her influence that in 1641 he arranged and
laid before her shrine the famous _guirlande_ which was illustrated by
Robert and to which nineteen authors contributed. After her marriage
to the duke, the Hôtel de Rambouillet may be said to have ceased to
exist, as madame, who was seventy years of age, had for a number
of years kept herself in the background, and Julie had become the
acknowledged leader.

With the outbreak of the Fronde, friends were separated by their
individual interests and the reunions at the salon were interrupted
from about 1650 to 1652. After the death of her husband, Mme. de
Rambouillet retired, to reside with her daughter, Mme. de Montausier;
after that, she seldom appeared in public. She hardly lived to see the
spirit of the salon changed to the real _préciosité_—the direction
and aim she gave to it being gradually abandoned.

In her salon, for nearly fifty years, no pedantry, no loose manners,
no questionable characters, no social or political intrigues, no
discourtesies of any kind, were recorded; hers was a reign of dignity
and grace, of purity of language, manners, and morals. She died in
1665, at the advanced age of seventy-seven, esteemed and mourned by
the entire social and intellectual world of France. Her influence
was incalculable; it was the first time in the history of France
that refined taste, intellectuality, and virtue had won importance,
influence, and power.

It must be remembered that in the first period of the salon there were
no blue-stockings, no pedants: these were later developments. It was,
primarily, a gathering which found pleasure in parties, excursions,
concerts, balls, fireworks, dramatic performances, living tableaux;
the last form of amusement very strongly influenced the development
of the art, for in the galleries there appeared a surprisingly large
number of portraits of the women of the day in character—sometimes as
a nymph, sometimes as a goddess.

The salon, in its first phase, showed and developed tolerance in
religion as well as in art and literature. It also encouraged progress
and displayed acute discrimination, keeping pace with the time in all
that was new and meritorious. It developed individual liberty, public
interest, criticism, good taste, and the elegant, clear, and precise
conversational language in which France has excelled up to the present
day.

When about to build the Hôtel Pisani, Mme. de Rambouillet, having
no love for architects, planned its construction without their
assistance. She revolutionized the architecture of the time by
introducing large and high doors and windows and putting the stairway
to one side in order to secure a large suite of rooms. She was also
the first to decorate a room in other colors than red or tan. The
construction of her hôtel completely changed domestic architecture;
and it may be noted that when the Luxembourg was to be built,
the designers were instructed to examine, for ideas, the Hôtel de
Rambouillet.

Legouvé gives as the object and mission of Mme. de Rambouillet:
"to combat the sensualism of Rabelais, Villon, and Marot, to reform
society through love by reforming love through chastity; to place
women at the head of civilization, by beginning a crusade against vice
in the disguise of sentiment. The word 'fame' must, in the seventeenth
century, apply to both man and woman, meaning honor for the one and
purity for the other. Her ideal falls with the accession of Louis
XIV.; the dazzling luxury of royalty hardly conceals, under its
exterior elegance, the profound and deep-seated grossness of
Versailles and Marly."

To Mme. de Rambouillet, then, belongs the distinction of having
been the first to bring together men of letters and great lords on
a footing of social equality and for mutual benefit. Her salon
and friends continued in the seventeenth century what Marguerite
d'Angoulême had begun in the first part of the sixteenth—an
intellectual, social, and moral reform.

Many salons which were all more or less patterned after that of
Rambouillet sprang into existence. Among these the Academy of the
Vicomtesse d'Auchy, with Malherbe as president and tyrant, was of
little influence as far as women were concerned. The members were all
of second-rate importance, and Malherbe tolerated only the discussion
of his verses, while Mme. d'Auchy was better known for her splendid
neck than for any intellectuality. Every salon had a master of
ceremonies, who performed the rite of presentation; these men were
frequently abbés, and some of them, such as Du Buisson and Testu,
became famous.

Among the most noted of these salons was that of the celebrated
beauty, Ninon de Lenclos, she who called the _précieuses_ the
"Jansenists of love," an expression which became very popular. Her
salon was situated on the Rue des Tournelles. Ninon de Lenclos was a
woman of the most brilliant mind and exquisite taste, and it was at
her hôtel that Molière first read his _Tartuffe_ before Condé, La
Fontaine, Boileau, Lulli, Racine, and Chapelle, and it was there that
he received the principal ideas for his drama.

Ninon became famous for making staunch friends of her former lovers,
in which connection some interesting tales are told. She was the
mother of two children; upon the arrival of the first, a heated
discussion arose between Count d'Estrées and Abbé d'Effiat, both
claiming the honor of paternity. When the mother was consulted, she
made no attempt to conceal her amusement; finally, the rivals threw
dice for "father or not father."

The other child, whose father was the Marquis de Gersay, was the
victim of an unnatural passion for his mother with whom, when a young
man, he fell desperately in love, being ignorant of their relation.
While pleading his cause, he learned from her lips the secret, and, in
despair, blew out his brains, a tragedy which apparently had no effect
upon the mother. At one time, at the request of the clergy Ninon was
sent, for impiety, to the convent of the Benedictines at Lagny.

Among her friends she counted the greatest men and women of the day
and her salon was the foyer of _savoir-vivre_, of letters and art. At
the age of sixty she met the Great Condé, who dismounted to greet
her, something that he very seldom did, as he was not in the habit
of paying compliments to women. The saying: _Elle eut l'estime de
Lenclos_ [she had the esteem of Lenclos] became a popular manner of
expressing the fact that a certain woman was especially esteemed. Even
to the last (she died at the age of eighty-five), Ninon preserved
her grace, beauty, and intelligence. Colombey calls her _La mère
spirituelle de Voltaire_ [the spiritual mother of Voltaire].

The generality of women had their lovers; even the famous Mlle. de
Scudéry, in spite of her homeliness—she was a dark, large-boned,
and lean sort of old maid—had admirers galore; among the latter
was Pellisson who was said to be so ugly "that he really abused the
privilege—which man enjoys—of being homely."

The hôtel of the famous poet Scarron—Hôtel de
l'Impécuniosité—received almost all the frequenters of Ninon's salon.
At the former place there were no restrictions as to the manner of
enjoyment; after elevating and edifying conversation at the salon
of Ninon, the members would repair to that of Scarron for a feast of
_broutilles rabelaisiennes_ [Rabelaisian tidbits].

The salon of Mme. de Montbazon had its frequenters who, however, were
attracted mainly by her beauty; she was, to use the words of one of
her friends, "One of those beauties that delight the eye and provoke
a vigorous appetite." Her salon was one of suitors rather than of
intellectuality or harmless sociability.

The most famous of the men's salons was the Temple, constructed in
1667 by Jacques de Souvré and conducted from 1681 to 1720 by Phillipe
de Vendôme and his intendant, Abbé de Chaulieu. These reunions,
especially under the latter, were veritable midnight _convivia_; he
himself boasted of never having gone to bed one night in thirty years
without having been carried there dead drunk, a custom to which he
remained "faithful unto death." His boon companion was La Duchesse
de Bouillon. Most of his frequenters were jolly good persons, utterly
destitute of the sense of sufficiency in matters of carousing; the
better people declined his invitations.

After that of Mme. de Rambouillet, there were, in the seventeenth
century, but two great salons that exerted a lasting influence and
that were not saturated with the decadent _préciosité_. Of these
the salon of Mlle. de Scudéry has been called the salon of the
_bourgeoisie_, because the majority of its frequenters belonged to the
third estate, which was rapidly acquiring power and influence.

Mlle. de Scudéry, who was born in 1608 and lived through the whole
century, saw society develop, and therefore knew it better than did
any of her contemporaries. Having lost her parents early in life, her
uncle reared her and she received advantages such as fell to the lot
of few women of her condition; she was given an excellent education in
literature, art, and the languages.

Until the marriage of her brother, she was his constant and devoted
companion, exiling herself to Marseilles when he was appointed
governor of Notre Dame de La Garde, and returning to Paris with him
in 1647. She first collaborated with him in a literary production of
about eighty volumes. In their works, the brother furnished the rough
draft, the dramatic episodes, adventures, and the Romanesque part,
while she added the literary finish through charming character
sketches, conversation, sentimental analyses, and letters. With a
strong inclination toward society, and constantly fulfilling its
obligations, she would from day to day write up her conversations of
the evening before.

An interesting anecdote is told in connection with the travels and
coöperation of Mlle. de Scudéry and her brother; once, on the way to
Paris, while stopping over night at Lyons, they were discussing the
fate of one of their heroes, one proposing death and the other rescue,
one poison and the other a more cruel death; a gentleman from Auvergne
happened to overhear them and immediately notified the people of the
inn, thinking it was a question of assassinating the king; the brother
and sister were thrown into prison and only with great difficulty
were they able to explain matters the next morning. From this incident
Scribe drew the material for his drama, _L'Auberge ou les Brigands
sans le Savoir_.

At the Hôtel de Rambouillet where Mlle. de Scudéry was received early,
she won everyone by her modesty, simplicity, _esprit_, and lovable
disposition, and, in spite of her homeliness and poor figure, she
attracted many platonic lovers. She was one of the few brilliant
and famous women of the seventeenth century whose popularity was due
solely to admirable qualities of mind and soul. With her, friendship
became a cult, and it was in time of trouble that her friends received
the strongest proof of her affection. She preferred to incur disgrace
and the disfavor of Mazarin rather than forsake Condé and Madame de
Longueville; to them she dedicated the ten volumes, successively,
of her novel, _Cyrus_; the last volume was published after Mme. de
Longueville's retirement and partial disgrace.

After the brilliant society of the Hôtel de Rambouillet had been
broken up by the marriage of Julie and the operations of the Fronde,
and after her brother's marriage in 1654, Mlle. de Scudéry became
independent and established the custom of receiving her friends on
Saturday; these receptions became famous under the name of _Samedi_,
and besides the regular rather bourgeois gathering, the most brilliant
talent and highest nobility flocked to them, regardless of rank or
station, wealth or influence. Pellisson, the great master, the prince,
the Apollo of her Saturdays, was a man of wonderfully inventive
genius, and possessed in a higher degree than any of his
contemporaries the art of inventing surprises for the society that
lived on novelty. When, on account of his devotion to Fouquet, he
was imprisoned in the Bastille, Mlle. de Scudéry managed to persuade
Colbert to brighten his confinement by permitting him to see friends
and relatives. Part of every day she spent in his prison, conversing
and reading; and this is but one instance of her fidelity and
friendship.

Mlle. de Scudéry, considering all men as aspirants for authority
who, when husbands, degenerate into tyrants, preferred to retain
her independence. Her ideas on love were very peculiar and were
innovations at the time: she wished to be loved, but her love must be
friendship—a pure, platonic love, in which her lover must be her all,
her confidant, the participator in her sorrows and her conversation;
and his happiness must be in her alone; he must, without feeling
passion, love her for herself, and she must have the same feeling
toward him. These sentiments are expressed in her novels, from which
the following extracts are taken:

"When friendship becomes love in the heart of a lover or when this
love is mingled with friendship without destroying it, there is
nothing so sweet as this kind of love; for as violent as it is, it is
always held somewhat more in check than is ordinary love; it is more
durable, more tender, more respectful, and even more ardent, although
it is not subject to so many tumultuous caprices as is that love which
arises without friendship. It can be said that love and friendship
flow together like two streams, the more celebrated of which obscures
the name of the other." ... "They agreed on even the conditions of
their love; for Phaon solemnly promised Sapho (Mlle. de Scudéry)—who
desired it thus—not to ask of her anything more than the possession
of her heart, and she, also, promised him to receive only him in hers.
They told each other all their thoughts, they understood them even
without confessing them. Peace, however, was not so completely
established that their affection could not become languishing or cool;
for, although they loved each other as much as one can love, they at
times complained of not being loved enough, and they had sufficient
little difficulties to always leave something new to wish for; but
they never had any troubles that were serious enough to essentially
disturb their repose."

Mlle. de Scudéry was mistress of the art of conversation, speaking
without affectation and equally well on all affairs, serious, light,
or gallant; she objected, however, to being called a _savante_, and
she was far from resembling the false _précieuses_ to whom she was
likened by her enemies. The occupations of her salon were somewhat
different from those of the salon of Mme. de Rambouillet. M. du Bled
describes them as follows:

"What they did in the salon of Mlle. de Scudéry you can guess readily:
they amused themselves as at Mme. de Rambouillet's, they joked quite
cheerfully, smiled and laughed, wrote farces in prose and
poetry. There were readings, _loteries d'esprit_, sonnet-enigmas,
_bouts-rimés_ (rhymes given to be formed into verse), _vers-échos_,
fine literary joustings, discussions between the casuists. This salon
had its talkers and speakers, those who tyrannized over the audience
and those who charmed it, those who shot off fireworks and those who
prepared them, those who had made a symphony of conversation and those
who made of it a monologue and had no flashes of silence. They did not
follow fashion there—they rather made it; in art and literature as
in toilets, smallness follows the fashion, pretension exaggerates it,
taste makes a compact with it."

A specimen of the _énigme-sonnets_ may be of interest, to show in what
intellectual playfulness and trivialities these wits indulged:

  "Souvent, quoique léger, je lasse qui me porte.
  Un mot de ma façon vaut un ample discours.
  J'ai sous Louis le Grand commencé d'avoir cours,
  Mince, long, plat, étroit, d'une étoffe peu forte.

  "Les doigts les moins savants me taillent de la sorte;
  Sous mille noms divers je parais tous les jours;
  Aux valets étourdis je suis d'un grand secours.
  Le Louvre ne voit point ma figure à sa porte.

  "Une grossière main vient la plupart du temps
  Me prendre de la main des plus honnêtes gens.
  Civil, officieux, je suis né pour la ville.

  "Dans le plus rude hiver j'ai le dos toujours nu:
  Et, quoique fort commode, à peine m'a-t-on vu,
  Qu'ausitôt négligé, je deviens inutile."

[Often, although light, I weary the person who carries me. A word in
my manner is worth a whole discourse. I began under Louis the Great to
be in vogue,—slight, long, flat, narrow, of a very slight material.

The most unskilled fingers cut me in their way; under a thousand
different forms I appear every day; I am a great aid to the astonished
valets. The Louvre does not see my face at its door.

A coarse hand most of the time receives me from the hand of the nicest
people. Civil, officious, I am born for the city.

In the coldest weather, my back is always bare; and, although quite
convenient, scarcely have they seen me, when I am neglected and
useless.—Visiting card.]

A more interesting one and one that caused no little amusement is the
following:

  "Je suis niais et fin, honnête et malhonnête,
  Moins sincère à la cour qu'en un simple taudis.
  Je fais d'un air plaisant trembler les plus hardis,
  Le fort me laisse aller, le sage m'arrête.

  "A personne sans moi l'on ne fait jamais fête:
  J'embellis quelquefois, quelquefois, j'enlaidis.
  Je dédaigne tantôt, tantôt j'applaudis;
  Pour m'avoir en partage, il faut n'être pas bête.

  "Plus mon trône est petit, plus il a de beauté.
  Je l'agrandis pourtant d'un et d'autre côté,
  Faisant voir bien souvent des défauts dont on jase.

  "Je quitte mon éclat quand je suis sans témoins,
  Et je me puis vanter enfin d'être la chose
  Qui contente le plus et qui coûte le moins."

[I am both stupid and bright, honest and dishonest; less sincere at
court than in a simple hovel; with a pleasant air, I make the boldest
tremble, the strong let me pass, the wise stop me.

There is no joy to anyone without me; I embellish at times, at times I
distort; I disdain and I applaud; to share me, one must not be stupid.

The smaller my throne, the greater my beauty; I enlarge it, however,
on both sides, often showing defects which are made sport of.

I leave my brilliancy when I am without witness, and I can boast
of being the thing which contents the most and costs the least.—A
smile.]

Critics often reproach Mlle. de Scudéry for having portrayed
herself—as Sapho—in a flattering light in her novel _Cyrus_; but it
must be remembered that at that time this was a common custom, women
of the highest quality indulging in such pastimes, there even being a
prominent salon where verbal portraiture was the sole occupation. No
one has written more or better on the condition of woman, for she,
above all, had the experience upon which to base her writings. The
idea of woman's education and aim, which was generally entertained by
the intelligent and modest women of the seventeenth century, is well
expressed by Mlle. de Scudéry in the following:

"The difficulty of knowing something with seemliness does not come to
a woman so much from what she knows as from what others do not know;
and it is, without doubt, singularity that makes it difficult to be as
others are not, without being exposed to blame. Seriously, is not the
ordinary idea of the education of women a peculiar one? They are not
to be coquettes nor gallants, and yet they are carefully taught all
that is peculiar to gallantry without being permitted to know anything
that can strengthen their virtue or occupy their minds. Don't imagine,
however, that I do not wish woman to be elegant, to dance or to sing;
but I should like to see as much care devoted to her mind as to her
body, and between being ignorant and _savante_ I should like to see
a road taken which would prevent annoyance from an impertinent
sufficiency or from a tiresome stupidity. I should like very much to
be able to say of anyone of my sex that she knows a hundred things of
which she does not boast, that she has a well-balanced mind, that she
speaks well, writes correctly, and knows the world; but I do not wish
it to be said of her that she is a _femme savante_. The best women of
the world when they are together in a large number rarely say anything
that is worth anything and are more ennuyé than if they were alone; on
the contrary, there is something that I cannot express, which makes it
possible for men to enliven and divert a company of ladies more than
the most amiable woman on earth could do."

Mlle. de Scudéry considered marriage a long slavery and preferred
virtuous celibacy enlivened by platonic gallantry. When youth and
adorers had passed away, she found consolation in interchanges of
wit, congenial conversation, and the cultivation of the mind by study.
Making of love a doctrine, a manual of morals or _savoir-vivre_, has
had a refining effect upon civilization; but the process has rendered
the emotion itself too subtle, select, narrow, enervating, and
exhausting; it has resulted in the production of splendid books
with heroes and heroines of the higher type, and has purified the
atmosphere of social life; this phase of its influence, however,
is felt by only a set of the élite, and its adherents are scattered
through every age and every country. Mlle. de Scudéry was a perfect
representative of that type, but healthy and normal rather than
morbidly æsthetic.

An opposition party soon arose, formed by those, especially, who
entertained different ideas of the sphere and duties of woman. Just
as the type of the salon of Mme. de Rambouillet degenerated among the
aristocracy into those of the Hôtel de Condé, Mme. de Sablé, and Mlle.
de Luxembourg, so the type of the salon of Mlle. de Scudéry gave rise
to a number of literary salons among the _bourgeoisie_. The aim of
the latter institutions was to imitate her example in endeavoring to
spread the taste for courtesy, elegant manners and the higher forms
of learning; all these aspirations, however, drifted into mere
affectation, while the requisites of welcome at the original salon
were simplicity, freedom from affectation, delicacy, amiability, and
dignity.

As a writer, Mlle. de Scudéry occupies no mean position in the history
of French literature of the seventeenth century. Her descriptions
and anecdotes possess a wonderful charm and display un

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