Having learnt that they had neither terraces nor gardens at the grand monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine, his Majesty made a present to his confessor of a very agreeable house in the district of Belleville, and caused to be transported thither all kinds of orange-trees, rare shrubs, and flowers from Versailles. These tasteful attentions, these filial cares, diverted the capital somewhat; but Paris is a rich soil, where the strangest things are easily received and naturalised without an effort.
The Pare de la Chaise had his chariot with his arms on it, and his family livery; and as the income from his benefices remained to him, joined to his office of confessor, he continued to have every day a numerous court of young abbes, priests well on in years, barons, countesses, marquises, magistrates and colonels, who came to Belleville in anxiety about his health, to congratulate themselves upon his convalescence, to ask of him, with submission and reverence, a bishopric, an archbishopric, a cardinal"s hat, an important priory, a canonry, or an abbey.
Having myself to place the three daughters of one of my relatives, I went to see the n.o.ble confessor at his pavilion of Belleville. He received me with the most marked distinction, and was lavish in acts of grat.i.tude for all the benefits of the King.
As he crossed his salon, in order to accompany me and escort me out, he let his white handkerchief fall; three bishops at once flung themselves upon it, and there was a struggle as to who should pick it up to give it back to him.
I related to the King what I had seen. He said to me: "These prelates honour my confessor, looking upon him as a second me." In fact, the sins of the King could only throw his confessor into relief and add to his merit.
CHAPTER XVI.
Mademoiselle de Fontanges.--The Pavilions of the Garden of Flora.--Rapid Triumph of the Favourite.--Her Retreat to Val-de-grace.--Her Death.
Madame de Maintenon was already forty-four years old, and appeared to be only thirty. This freshness, that she owed either to painstaking care or to her happy and quite peculiar const.i.tution, gave her that air of youth which fascinated the eyes of the courtiers and those of the monarch himself. I wished one day to annoy her by bringing the conversation on this subject, which could not be diverting to her. I began by putting the question generally, and I then named several of our superannuated beauties who still fluttered in the smiling gardens of Flora without having the youth of b.u.t.terflies.
"There are b.u.t.terflies of every age and colour in the gardens of Flora,"
said she, catching the ball on the rebound. "There are presumptuous ones, whom the first breath of the zephyr despoils of their plumage and discolours; others, more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour and prestige for a much longer time. For the rest, the latter seem to me to rejoice without being vain in their advantages. And at bottom, what should any insect gain by being proud?"
"Very little," I answered her, "since being dressed as a b.u.t.terfly does not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts at most till the day after to-morrow."
The King entered. I started speaking of a young person, extremely beautiful, who had just appeared at Court, and would eclipse, in my opinion, all who had shone there before her.
"What do you call her?" asked his Majesty. "To what family does she belong?"
"She comes from the provinces," I continued, "just like silk, silver, and gold. Her parents desire to place her among the maids of honour of the Queen. Her name is Fontanges, and G.o.d has never made anything so beautiful."
As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise. She listened to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such is her power of suppressing her natural feeling. The King only added these words:
"This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity. However, we shall see."
Two days afterwards, Mademoiselle de Fontanges was seen in the salon of the grand table. The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and attentions for no one else.
This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the blandishments of the young coquette and the King"s response, guessed the whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it, seeing that my turn had come.
Mademoiselle de Fontanges, given to the King by her shameless family, feigned love and pa.s.sion for the monarch, as though he had returned by enchantment to his twentieth year.
As for him, he too appeared to us to forget all dates. I know that he was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest man in the world, he could not but preserve agreeable vestiges of a once striking beauty. But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the most inattentive, or most indulgent eyes.
The King, with a sort of antic.i.p.atory resignation, had for six or seven years greatly simplified his appearance. We had seen him, little by little, reform that Spanish and chivalric costume with which he once embellished his first loves. The flowing plumes no longer floated over his forehead, which had become pensive and quite serious. The diagonal, scarf was suppressed, and the long boots, with gold and silver embroidery, were no longer seen. To please his new divinity, the monarch suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire. The most elegant stuffs became the substance of his garments; feathers reappeared. He joined to them emeralds and diamonds.
Allegorical comedies, concerts on the waters recommenced. Triumphant horse-races set the whole Court abob and in movement. There was a fresh carousal; there was all that resembles the enthusiasms of youthful affection, and the deliriums of youth. The youth alone was not there, at least in proportion, a.s.sortment, and similarity.
All that I was soliciting for twelve years, Mademoiselle de Fontanges had only to desire for a week. She was created d.u.c.h.ess at her debut; and the lozenge of her escutcheon was of a sudden adorned with a ducal coronet, and a peer"s mantle.
I did not deign to pay attention to this outrage; at least, I made a formal resolution never to say a single word on it.
The King came no less from time to time, to pay me a visit, and to talk to me, as of old, of operas and his hunting. I endured his conversation with a philosophical phlegm. He scarcely suspected the change in me.
At the chase, one day, his nymph, whom nothing could stop, had her knot of riband caught and held by a branch; the royal lover compelled the branch to restore the knot, and went and offered it to his Amazon.
Singular and sparkling, although lacking in intelligence, she carried herself this knot of riband to the top of her hair, and fixed it there with a long pin.
Fortune willed it that this coiffure, without order or arrangement, suited her face, and suited it greatly. The King was the first to congratulate her on it; all the courtiers applauded it, and this coiffure of the chase became the fashion of the day.
All the ladies, and the Queen herself, found themselves obliged to adopt it. Madame de Maintenon submitted herself to it, like the others. I alone refused to sacrifice to the idol, and my knee, being once more painful, would not bend before Baal.
With the exception of the general duties of the sovereignty, the prince appeared to have forgotten everything for his flame. The Pere de la Chaise, who had returned to his post, regarded this fresh incident with his philosophic calm, and congratulated himself on seeing the monarch healed of at least one of his pa.s.sions.
I had always taken the greatest care to respect the Queen; and since my star condemned me to stand in her shoes, I did not spare myself the general attentions which two well-born people owe one another, and which, at least, prove a lofty education.
The d.u.c.h.esse de Fontanges, doubtless, believed herself Queen, because she had the public homage and the King. This imprudent and conceited schoolgirl had the face to pa.s.s before her sovereign without stopping, and without troubling to courtesy.
The Infanta reddened with disapproval, and persuaded herself, by way of consolation, that Fontanges had lost her senses or was on the road to madness.
Beautiful and brilliant as the flowers, the d.u.c.h.ess, like them, pa.s.sed swiftly away. Her pregnancy, by reason of toilsome rides, hunting parties, and other agitations, became complicated. From the eighth month she fell into a fever, into exhaustion and languor. The terror that took possession of her imagination caused her to desire a sojourn in a convent as a refuge of health, where G.o.d would see her nearer and, perhaps, come to her aid.
She had herself transported during the night to the House of the Ladies of Val-de-Grace, and desired that they should place in her chamber several relics from their altars.
Her confinement was not less laboured and sinister. When she saw that all the a.s.sistance of art could not stop the bleeding, with which her deep bed was flooded, she caused the King to be summoned, embraced him tenderly, in the midst of sobs and tears, and died in the night, p.r.o.nouncing the name of G.o.d and the name of the King, the objects of her love and of fears.
CHAPTER XVII.
Madame de Sevigne.--Madame de Grignan.--Madame de Montespan at the Carmelites.--Madame de la Valliere.--These Two Great Ruins Console One Another.--An Angel of Sweetness, Goodness, and Kindness.
Fifteen or twenty days before the death of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, my sister and I were taking a walk in the new woods of Versailles. We met the Marquise de Sevigne near the ca.n.a.l; she was showing these marvellous constructions to her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan. They greeted us with their charming amiability, and, after having spoken of several indifferent matters, the Marquise said to me: "We saw, five or six days ago, a person, madame, of whom you were formerly very fond, and who charged us to recall her to the memory of her friends. You are still of that number,--I like to think so, and our commission holds good where you are concerned, if you will allow it."
Then she mentioned to me that poor d.u.c.h.esse de la Valliere, to whom I was once compelled by my unhappy star to give umbrage, and whom, in my fatal thoughtlessness, I had afflicted without desiring it.
Tears came into my eyes; Madame de Sevigne saw them, and expressed her regret at having caused me pain. Madame de Thianges and I asked her if my old friend was much changed. She and Madame de Grignan a.s.sured us that she was fresh, in good health, and that her face appeared more beautiful. On the next day I wished absolutely to see her, and drove to the Carmelites.
On seeing my pretty cripple, who hobbled among us with so great a charm, I uttered a cry, which for a moment troubled her. She sank down to salute the crucifix, as custom demands, and, after her short prayer, she came to me. "I did not mention your name to Mesdames de Sevigne," said she; "but, however, I am obliged to them, since they have been able to procure me the pleasure of seeing you once more."
"The general opinion of the Court, and in the world, my dear d.u.c.h.ess,"
answered I, "is that I brought about your disgrace myself; and the public, that loved you, has not ceased to reproach me with your misfortune."
"The public is very kind still to occupy itself with me," she answered; "but it is wrong in that, as in so many other matters. My retirement from the world is not a misfortune, and I never suspected that the soul could find such peace and satisfaction in these silent solitudes.
"The first days were painful to me, I admit it, owing to the inexpressible difference which struck me between what I found here and what I had left elsewhere. But just as the eye accustoms itself, little by little, to the feeble glimmer of a vault, in the same way my body has accustomed itself to the roughness of my new existence, and my heart to all its great privations.
"If life had not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy. But all that will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end. I left you young, beautiful, adored, and triumphant in the land of enchantments. But six years have pa.s.sed, and they a.s.sure me that your own afflictions have come, and that you, yourself, have been forced to drink the bitter cup of deprivation."