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

Contents

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
[pg viii]
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
[pg ix]
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
[pg 4]
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
[pg 5]
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
[pg 6]
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
[pg 7]
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
[pg 9]
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,
[pg 11]
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
[pg 12]
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
[pg 13]
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
[pg 14]
woman but a goddess. Thus he styles her in verses of burning tenderness:

[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
[pg 15]
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
[pg 17]
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
[pg 18]
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;
[pg 19]
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
[pg 20]
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
[pg 21]
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)
[pg 22]
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
[pg 23]
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.
[pg 24]
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
[pg 25]
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
[pg 26]
have them undressed and slapped vigorously with the back
of the hand. Françoise of Rohan, cousin of Jeanne d’Albret,
wrote the following poem:

[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:

[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
[pg 28]
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
[pg 29]
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.
[pg 34]
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
[pg 35]
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
[pg 36]
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,
[pg 37]
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
[pg 38]
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
[pg 39]
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
[pg 40]
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
[pg 41]
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
[pg 42]
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
[pg 43]
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
[pg 45]
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
[pg 46]
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
[pg 47]
’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:

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
[pg 48]
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,
[pg 49]
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
[pg 50]
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
[pg 51]
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
[pg 52]
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
[pg 53]
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,
[pg 55]
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
[pg 56]
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
[pg 57]
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
[pg 58]
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
[pg 59]
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
[pg 60]
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
[pg 61]
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
[pg 62]
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
[pg 63]
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,
[pg 64]
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
[pg 65]
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.
[pg 66]
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
[pg 67]
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
[pg 72]
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
[pg 73]
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
[pg 74]
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
[pg 75]
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
[pg 76]
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
[pg 77]
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
[pg 78]
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.
[pg 79]
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
[pg 80]
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
[pg 81]
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
[pg 82]
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
[pg 84]
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
[pg 85]
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
[pg 86]
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
[pg 87]
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
[pg 88]
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:

[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
[pg 89]
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
[pg 90]
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
[pg 91]
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
[pg 92]
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
[pg 93]
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
[pg 94]
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
[pg 95]
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
[pg 100]
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
[pg 101]
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
[pg 102]
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
[pg 103]
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
[pg 104]
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,
[pg 105]
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
[pg 106]
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
[pg 107]
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
[pg 108]
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,
[pg 109]
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
[pg 110]
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
[pg 111]
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
[pg 112]
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
[pg 113]
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,
[pg 114]
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
[pg 115]
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:

[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:

[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
[pg 118]
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
[pg 119]
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 unusual power of analysis; in
them, Victor Cousin recognizes a truly virile spirit. In the
history of the French novel, she forms a transition period,
her productions having both a psychological interest and
a historical value of a very high degree. Through her
finesse and marvellous feminine penetration, her truthful,
delicate and fine portraitures, which were widely imitated
later, she has exerted an extensive influence.

With Mlle. de Scudéry “we have substance, real character
painting, true psychological penetration, and realism
in observation,” while previously the novel, under such
men as Gomberville and La Calprenède, was imaginative
and full of fancy. Her talent, then, in that field, lay in
the analysis and development of sentiments, in delineation
of character, in the creation and reproduction of refined
and ingenious conversations, and in her reflections on subjects
pertaining to morality and literature—in all of which
she displayed justness and entire liberty and independence
of thought. Her poetry, delicate compliment or innocent
gallantries, was a mere bagatelle of the salon.

Charming as well as accomplished, Mlle. de Scudéry
was as intelligent, witty, and intellectual a woman as
[pg 120]
could be found in the seventeenth century; and in the
history of that period she retains an undisputed position
as one of its great leaders of thought and progress. Her
salon, inasmuch as the salon of Mme. de Lambert was not
opened until 1710, and therefore the discussion of it belongs
properly to the beginning of the eighteenth century,
really closes the literary progress of the seventeenth century.

The influence of the seventeenth century salon was of
a threefold nature—literary, moral, and social. According
to the salon conception, artistic, literary, or musical pleasure
being derived from form and mode of expression, it
possessed a special and unique interest in proportion to
the efforts made and the difficulties surmounted in attaining
that form and expression: thus, woman introduced a new standard of excellence.

Préciosité treated language not as a work of art, but as a
medium for the display of individual linguistic dexterity;
giving no thing its proper name, it delighted in paraphrase,
allusion, word play, unexpected comparisons and abundance
of metaphors, and revelled in the elusive, delicate,
subtle, and complex. Hence conversation turned constantly
to love and gallantry; thus woman developed to
a wonderful degree, unattainable to but few, the art
of conversation, politeness and courtesy of manners, and
social relations, at the same time purifying language and enriching it.

French women of the seventeenth century are condemned
for having treated serious things too lightly; and
it is said that “in confining the French mind to the observation
of society and its attractions, she has restricted and
retarded a more realistic and larger activity.” In answer
to this it may be asserted that the French mind was not
prepared for a broader field until it had passed through the
[pg 121]
process of expurgating, refining, drilling, and disciplining.
If préciosité influenced politics, it was by developing diplomacy,
for, from the time that this spirit began to spread,
French diplomacy became world-renowned.

The social influence of the movement may be better
appreciated by considering the condition of woman in
earlier periods. Having practically no position except that
of housewife or mother, she was merely a source of pleasure
for man, for whom she had little or no respect. The
précieuses, on the contrary, exacted respect, honor, and a
place beside man, as rights that belonged to them.

As the outcome of their desire to think, feel, and act
with greater delicacy, women introduced propriety in expression,
finesse in analysis, keenness of esprit, psychological
subtleness: qualities that surely tended to higher
standards of morality, purer social relations, finer and more
subtle diplomacy, more elegance and precision in literature.
Therefore, préciosité in France had a wholesome influence,
which was possible because woman had won for herself
her rightful position, and her aspirations were toward social
and moral elevation.

In general, the women of France have always been conscious
of their duty, their importance, and their limitations,
appreciating their power and cultivating the characteristics
that attract man and retain his respect and attention:
sociability, morality, esprit, artistic appreciation, sensitiveness,
tact. These qualities became manifest to a remarkable
degree in French women of the seventeenth century,
and created in every writer, great or unimportant, the
desire to win their favor. Thus, Corneille strove to write
dramas with which he might establish the reign of decency
on a stage the liberties of which had previously made the
theatre inaccessible to woman; hence, his characters of
humanity (Cid) and politeness (Menteur).

The purpose of the French Academy itself was not different
from that of the précieuses. Richelieu, realizing that
every great talent accepted the discipline of these women,
sought to use this power for his own ends by interesting
the world of letters in the accomplishment of his plans for
a general political unity. Thus, when the first period of
préciosité had reached its highest point and was beginning
to decline, and other smaller and envious social groups
were forming about Paris and causing a conflict of ideas,
Richelieu conceived the scheme of joining all in a union,
with strong ideals and with a language as dignified as the
Latin and the Greek. The result was the formation of
the French Academy. From this time begins the decline
of the authority of woman; for while she still exerted a
powerful influence, it was no longer absolute. After the
decline of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, feminine influence
became more general, expending itself in petty rivalries,
gossip, intrigues, and partaking of the nature of that court
life which was filled by the young king with parties, feasts,
collations, walks, carousals, boating, concerts, ballets, and
masquerades—a mode of living that gave rise to a new
standard of politeness, which was freer and looser than
that of préciosité.

As the power of the young king became stronger, his
favor became the goal of all men of letters. Although
woman still to some extent controlled the destinies of those
who were struggling for recognition and reputation, her
influence was of a secondary nature, that of the king being
supreme. Woman seemed to be overcoming the influence
of woman—Mme. de Montespan replaced Mlle. de La Vallière,
and she was in turn replaced by Mme. de Maintenon.

The degeneration of the king was accompanied by that
of literature, society, and morals. The characteristic
inclination of the day was eagerly to seek and grasp that
[pg 123]
which was new, and the noble, forceful, and dignified style
of language of the previous period was replaced by one of
much lighter description; many female writers directed
their efforts entirely toward amusing, pleasing, and gaining applause.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century, with Mme.
de Lambert as its leader, there was a renascence of the
préciosité of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, women protesting
against the prevalent grossness and indecency of manners.
The salon of Mme. de Lambert was the great antechamber
to the Academy, election to which was generally gained
through her. A new aristocracy was forming, a new
society arose; from about 1720 to 1750, libertinism and
atheism, licentiousness and intrigue, crept into the salons.

The new aristocracy was of doubtful and impure source,
cynical in manner, unbridled in habits, over-fastidious in
taste, and politically powerful. In this society woman
began to be felt as a political force. M. Brunetière said:
“Mme. de Lambert made Academicians; the Marquise de
Prie made a queen of France; Mme. de Tencin made cardinals
and ambassadors.” Montesquieu wrote: “There
is not a person who has any employment at the court in
Paris or in the provinces, who has not the influence (and
sometimes the injustices which she can cause) of a woman
through whom all favors pass;” and M. Brunetière added:
“This woman is not his wife.” The popular spirit in
literature was one of subtleness, irony, superficial observations
on manners and customs. From the beginning of
the eighteenth century up to the eve of the Revolution,
woman’s influence continued to increase, but that influence
was mainly in the direction of politics. Thus, in
every period in French history, a group of women effectively
moulds French thought and language, and directs
intellectual activity in general.

After the death of Louis XIV., society passed under the
rule of the regent, the Duke of Orléans—the personification
of gallantry and affability, of depravity which was a
mania, and of licentiousness which was a disease. From
this atmosphere the salon of Mme. de Lambert became a
refuge to those who still cherished the ideals of the good
old times of Mme. de Rambouillet; it was distinguished by
its refined sentiment and polished manners, which were
like those of the seventeenth century at its best.

Mme. de Lambert believed that the demands of the time
were just the opposite of those of the seventeenth century:
“What a multitude of tastes nowadays—the table, play,
theatre! When money and luxury are supreme, true
honor loses its power. Persons seek only those houses
where shameful luxury reigns.” In her own salon, none
might enter who were not of the small number of the elect.

Very little is known of the life of Mme. de Lambert.
She was born in 1647, and, in spite of the unfavorable
surroundings of her youth and of a dissolute, extravagant,
and unrefined mother, the observance of decorum and
honor became the actuating principle of her life. Until
her marriage (in 1666) to Henri de Lambert, Marquis de
Bris en Auxerrois, she was in the midst of the grossest
licentiousness and freedom of manners; when married,
she entered a family the very opposite of her own.

She was a woman who believed in the power of ambitious
energy. To her son she once said: “Nothing is
less becoming to a young man than a certain modesty that
makes him believe that he is not capable of great things.
This modesty is a languor of the soul, which prevents it
from soaring and rapidly carrying itself to glory.”

At first she lived in the Hôtel de Lambert (in the
Ile Saint-Louis), renowned for its splendidly sculptured
[pg 125]
decorations, painted ceilings, panels, and staircases. Her
famous Salon des Muses and Cabinet d’Amours were filled
with the finest works of art and the most exquisite paintings.
There the élite of all classes were entertained until
the death of her husband (1686), when the hôtel was
closed; it was not reopened until 1710.

Though left with immense wealth, her affairs were in a
very complicated state. While actively employed in untangling
her difficulties, she at the same time superintended
the education of her son and daughter. After long and trying
lawsuits, she managed to put her fortune in order and
established herself at Paris, where the Duc de Nevers
ceded to her, for life, a large portion of the magnificently
furnished Palais Mazarin, now the National Library. On
the completion of her work in remodelling this palace and
furnishing it with the most costly and beautiful panel
paintings by Watteau and other artists, she inaugurated
her Tuesday and Wednesday dinner parties.

One remarkable characteristic of her company was the
age of her intimate associates—the Marquis de Saint-Aulaire,
Fontenelle, Mme. Dacier, and her husband, Louis
de Sacy, all of whom, as well as Mme. de Lambert herself,
had passed threescore and more; but they still kept alive
the cherished memories of the brilliant society of their
youth. Mme. de Lambert did not personally know Mme.
de Rambouillet, but she visited the latter’s daughter, Julie
d’Angennes, from whom she learned the customs and
etiquette in vogue at the Hôtel de Rambouillet.

The Wednesday dinners of Mme. de Lambert were to
her intimate friends, while every Tuesday afternoon she
received a general circle which indulged in general conversation
and read and discussed books which were
about to be published; gambling, which seemed to be the
principal means of entertaining in those days, had no place
[pg 126]
there. Fontenelle says: “It was, with very few exceptions,
the only house which had been preserved from the
epidemic of gambling—the only house where persons congregated
simply for the sake of talking sensibly and with
esprit. Those who had their reasons for considering it bad
taste that conversation was still carried on in any place,
cast mean reflections, whenever they could, against the
house of Mme. de Lambert.” In the evening, she received
only a few select friends with whom she talked seriously.
Her salon soon became the envy of those who were not
admitted (and they were numerous), and was the object
of many calumnies and attacks.

During this time she found leisure to write two treatises
of practical morality, Avis d’une mère à son fils, and Avis
d’une mère à sa fille, which appeared without her permission.
The manuscripts, lent to friends, fell into the hands of
a publisher; and although the authoress endeavored to prevent
the distribution of the works by buying up the entire
editions, they were published outside of France. The two
works written to her children form an important contribution
to the educational literature of the time; in them the
religion of the eighteenth century is first defined.

“Above all these duties—civil and human (says the
mother to her son)—is the duty you owe to the Supreme
Being. Religion is a commerce established between God
and man through the grace of God to man and through the
duty of man to God. Elevated souls have for their God
sentiments and a cult apart, which do not resemble at all
those of the people; everything issues from the heart and goes to God.”

In these works, she attacked also the fad of free-thinking
in vogue among the young men of the time. She was one
of the few women of that age who could not separate
themselves from reason and thought, even in religion; the
[pg 127]
latter was a matter for the reason and the intellect to
decide, and was thus an elevated product of the mind
rather than an instinct coming from the heart, or a positive
revelation as it was in the seventeenth century. In
this view, Madame de Lambert indicated the beginning of
the later eighteenth-century spirit.

Mme. de Lambert taught her children to be satisfied
with nothing but the highest attainable object. She advised
her son to choose his friends from among men above
him, in order to accustom himself to respectful and polite
demeanor; “with his equals he might cultivate negligence
and his mind might become dull.” She desired her children
to think differently from the people—”Those who think
lowly and commonly, and the court is filled with such.” To
their servants they were to be good and kind, for humanity
and Christianity make all equal. She was the first to use
those words, “humanity” and “equality,” which later became
the bywords of everyone, and the first to teach that
conscience is the best guide. “Conscience is defined as
that interior sentiment of a delicate honor which assures you
that you have nothing with which to reproach yourself.”

Possibly the most important and lasting effect of Mme.
de Lambert’s influence resulted from the expression of her
ideas on the education of young women who “are destined
to please, and are given lessons only in methods of
delighting and pleasing.” She was convinced that in order
to resist temptation and be normal, women must be educated,
must learn to think. Her counsels to her daughter
are remarkable for an unusual insight into the temperament
of her sex and for an extreme fear that makes her call to
her aid all precautions and resources. She thus advises her daughter:

“Try to find resources within yourself—this is a revenue
of certain pleasures. Do not believe that your only
[pg 128]
virtue is modesty; there are many women who know no
other virtue, and who imagine that it relieves them of all
duties toward society; they believe they are right in lacking
all others and think themselves privileged to be proud
and slanderous with impunity. You must have a gentle
modesty; a good woman may have the advantages of a
man’s friendship without abandoning honesty and faithfulness
to her duties. Nothing is so difficult as to please
without the use of what seems like coquettishness. It is
more often by their defects than by their good qualities
that women please men; men seek to profit by the weaknesses
of good and kind women, for whose virtues they
care nothing, and they prefer to be amused by persons
not very estimable than to be forced merely to admire virtuous persons.”

This is a most faithful description of the society of her
time, and it was because her treatises struck home that
they were severely criticised; but, nothing daunted, she
carried out her plans in her own way, resorting neither to
intrigue nor artifice. Many of her sayings became household
maxims, such as—”It is not always faults that undo
us; it is the manner of conducting ourselves after having committed them.”

Her reflections on women might be called the great plea,
at the end of the seventeenth century, for woman’s right
to use her reason. After the severe and cruel satire of
Molière, attacking women for their innocent amusements,
they gave themselves up entirely to pleasure. “Mme. de
Lambert now wrote to avenge her sex and demand for it
the honest and strong use of the mind; and this was done
in the midst of the wild orgies of the Regency.”

Mme. de Lambert was not a rare beauty, but she possessed
recompensing charms. M. Colombey asserts that
she became convinced of two things, about which she
[pg 129]
became highly enthusiastic: first, that woman was more
reasonable than man; secondly, that M. Fontenelle, who
presided over or filled the functions of president of her
salon, was always in the right. He was indeed in harmony
with the tone of the salon, being considered the most
polished, brilliant, and distinguished member of the intellectual
society of Paris, as well as one of the most talented
drawing room philosophers. He made the salon of Mme.
de Lambert the most sought for and celebrated, the most
intellectual and moral of the period.

Mme. de Lambert has, possibly, exercised more influence
upon men—and especially upon the Forty Immortals
of her time—than did any woman before or after her.
The Marquis d’Argenson states that “a person was seldom
received at the Academy unless first presented at her
salon. It is certain that she made at least half of our actual Academicians.”

Her salon was called a bureau d’esprit, which was due
to the fact that it was about the only social gathering
point where culture and morality were the primary requisites.
As she advanced in years, she became even more
influential. After her death in 1733, her salon ceased to
exist, but others, patterned after hers, soon sprang up;
to those, her friends attached themselves—Fontenelle frequented
several, Hénault became the leader of that of Mme. du Deffand.

The finest résumé that can be given of Mme. de Lambert,
is found in the letters of the Marquis d’Argenson:
“Her works contain a complete course in the most perfect
morals for the use of the world and the present time.
Some affectation of the préciosité is found; but, what beautiful
thoughts, what delicate sentiments! How well she
speaks of the duties of women, of friendship, of old age, of
the difference between actual character and reputation!”

The salon of Mme. de Lambert forms a period of transition
from the seventeenth century type in which elegance,
politeness, courtesy, and morality were the first requisites,
to the eighteenth century salon in which esprit and wit
were the essentials demanded. It retained the dignity,
discipline, refinement, and sentiments of morality of the
Hôtel de Rambouillet; it showed, also, the first signs of
pure intellectuality. The salons to follow, will exhibit
decidedly different characteristics.

Chapter V

Mistresses and Wives of Louis XIV

The story of the wives and mistresses of Louis XIV.,
embraces that which is most dramatic morally (or immorally
dramatic) in the history of French women. The record
of the eighteenth century heroines is essentially a tragic
one, while that of those of the previous century is essentially
dramatic in its sadness, remorse, and repentance.

The mistress, as a rule, was unhappy; there were few
months during the period of her glory, in which she was
entirely free from anxiety or in which her conscience
was at rest. Mme. de Montespan “was for so many
years the sick nurse of a soul worn out with pride, passion,
and glory.” Mme. de Maintenon wrote to one of
her friends: “Why cannot I give you my experience?
Why cannot I make you comprehend the ennui which
devours the great, and the troubles that fill their days?
Do you not see that I am dying of sadness, in a fortune
the vastness of which could not be easily imagined? I
have been young and pretty; I have enjoyed pleasures;
I have spent years in intellectual intercourse; I have
attained favor; and I protest to you, my dear child, that
all such conditions leave a frightful void.” She said, also,
to her brother, Count d’Aubigné: “I can hold out no longer;
I would like to be dead.” It was she too, who, after her
successes, made her confession thus: “One atones heavily
[pg 134]
for the pleasures and intoxications of youth. I find, in
looking back at my life, that since the age of twenty-two—which
was the beginning of my fortune—I have not
had a moment free from sufferings which have constantly increased.”

M. Saint-Amand gives a description of the women of
Louis XV. which well applies to those of his predecessor:
“These pretended mistresses, who, in reality, are only
slaves, seem to present themselves, one after the other,
like humble penitents who come to make their apologies
to history, and, like the primitive Christians, to reveal
publicly the miseries, vexations, and remorses of their
souls. They tell us to what their doleful successes
amounted: even while their triumphal chariot made its
way through a crowd of flatterers, their consciences hissed
cruel accusations into their ears; like actresses before a
whimsical and variable public, they were always afraid
that the applause might change into an uproar, and it was
with terror underlying their apparent coolness that they
continued to play their sorry part…. If among
these mistresses of the king there were a single one who
had enjoyed her shameful triumphs in peace, who had
called herself happy in the midst of her dearly bought
luxury and splendor, one might have concluded that, from
a merely human point of view, it is possible to find happiness
in vice. But, no—there is not even one!” Massillon,
the great preacher of truth and morality, said: “The worm
of conscience is not dead; it is only benumbed. The
alienated reason presently returns, bringing with it bitter
troubles, gloomy thoughts, and cruel anxieties”—a true
picture of every mistress.

The remarkable power and influence of these women,
the love and adoration accorded them, ceased with their
death; the memory of them did not survive overnight.
[pg 135]
When, during a terrible storm, the remains of the glorious
Mme. de Pompadour were being taken to Paris, the king,
seeing the funeral cortége from his window, remarked:
“The Marquise will not have fine weather for her journey.”

Each one of these powerful mistresses represents a
complete epoch of society, morals, and customs. Mme.
de Montespan—that woman whose very look meant fortune
or disfavor—with all her wit and wealth, her magnificence
and pomp and superb beauty—she, in all her
splendor, is a type of the triumphant France, haughty,
dictatorial, scornful and proud, licentious and decayed at
the core. Voluptuousness and haughtiness were replaced
by religiosity and repentance in Mme. de Maintenon, with
her temperate character, consistency, and propriety.

The Regency was a period of scandal and wantonness,
personified in the Duchess of Berry. The licentious and
extravagant, yet brilliant and exquisite, frivolous but
charming, intriguing and diplomatic, was represented by
the talented and politically influential Mme. de Pompadour.
Complete degeneracy, vice with all manner of disguise
thrown off, adultery of the lowest order, were personified
in the common Mme. du Barry, who might be classed with
Louise of Savoy of the sixteenth century, while Mme. de
Pompadour might be compared with Diana of Poitiers.

In this period the queens of France were of little importance,
being too timid and modest to assert their rights—a
disposition which was due sometimes to their restricted
youth, spent in Catholic countries, sometimes to a naturally
unassuming and sensitive nature. To this rule Maria
Theresa, the wife of Louis XIV., was no exception. She
inherited her sweetness of disposition and her Christian
character from her mother, Isabella of France, the daughter
of Henry IV. and Marie de’ Medici. She was pure and
[pg 136]
candid; a type of irreproachable piety and goodness, of
conjugal tenderness and maternal love; and recompensed
outraged morality for all the false pride, selfish ambition,
depravity, and scandals of court. She is conspicuous as a
model wife, one that loved her husband, her family, and her children.

Around Maria Theresa may be grouped the noble and
virtuous women of the court of Louis XIV., for she was
to that age what Claude of France was under Francis I.,
Elizabeth of Austria under Charles V., Louise de Vaudemont
under Henry III. However, in extolling these women,
it must be remembered that they had not, as queens, the
opportunity to participate in debauchery, licentiousness,
and intrigue, as had the mistresses of their husbands; they
had no power, were not consulted on state or social affairs,
and had granted to them only those favors to the conferring
of which the mistresses did not object.

Maria Theresa was a perfect example of the self-sacrificing
mother and devoted wife. Her feelings toward the
king are best expressed by the Princesse Palatine: “She
had such an affection for the king that she tried to read in
his eyes whatever would give him pleasure; providing he
looked kindly at her, she was happy all day.” Mme. de
Caylus wrote: “That poor princess had such a dread of
the king and such great natural timidity that she dared
neither to speak to him nor to run the risk of a tête-à-tête
with him. One day, I heard Mme. de Maintenon say that
the king having sent for the queen, the latter requested
her to go with her so that she might not appear alone in
his presence: but that she (Mme. de Maintenon) conducted
her only to the door of the room and there took the liberty
of pushing her so as to make her enter, and that she observed
such a great trembling in her whole person that her
very hands shook with fright.”

From about 1680, especially after the death of Mlle. de
Fontanges, his last mistress, Louis XIV. began to look
with disfavor upon the women of doubtful morality and to
advance those who were noted for their conjugal fidelity.
He became more attentive to the queen—a change of attitude
which was due partly to the influence of Mme. de
Maintenon and partly to the fact that he was satiated with
the excesses of his debauches, by which his physical system
had been almost wrecked. He would not have dared
to legitimatize his bastard children, had he not been so
thoroughly idolized by his greatest heroes and most powerful
ministers. As an illustration, it may be remarked
that the Great Condé proposed the marriage of his son to
the king’s daughter by Mlle. de La Vallière.

The queen became so religious that she derived more
enjoyment from praying at the convents or visiting hospitals
than from remaining at her magnificent apartments.
She waited upon the sick with her own hands and carried
food to them; she never meddled in political affairs or took
much interest in social functions.

Timidity, an instinctive shrinking from the slanders,
calumnies, and intrigues of the court, appeared to be the
most pronounced characteristic of queens who seemed to
believe themselves too inferior to their husbands to dare
to offer any political counsel. While none of them were
superior intellectually, they possessed dignity, good sense,
and tact, “a reverential feeling for the sanctity of religion
and the majesty of the throne,” an admirable resignation,
a painful docility and submission—qualities which might
have been turned to the advantage of their owners and
the state, had the former been more self-assertive.

The infidelities of their husbands caused the queen-consorts
constant torture; they were forced to behold the
kings’ favorites becoming part of their own households
[pg 138]
and were compelled to endure the presence, as ladies in
waiting, of those who, as their rivals, caused them to
suffer all possible torments of jealousy and outraged conjugal love.

First among the mistresses of Louis XIV. was Mlle. de
La Vallière, whom Sainte-Beuve mentions as the personification
of the ideal of a lover, combining disinterestedness,
fidelity, unique and delicate tenderness with a touching
and sincere kindness. When, at the age of seventeen,
she was presented at court, the king immediately selected
her as one of his victims. Her beauty was so striking, of
such an exquisitely tender type, that no woman actually
rivalled her as queen of beauty. Distinguished by blond
hair, dark blue eyes, a most sympathetic voice, and a
complexion of rare whiteness mingled with red, she was
guileless, animated, gentle, modest, graceful, unaffected,
and ingenuous; although slightly lame, she was, by everyone,
considered charming.

Mlle. de La Vallière was the mother of several children
of whom Louis XIV. was the father. On realizing that
she had rivals in the favor of the sovereign, she fled several
times from the Tuileries to the convent; on her
second return, the king, about to go to battle, recognized
his daughter by her, whom he made a duchess. Remorse
overcame the mistress so deeply that she, for the third
and final time, left court. Especially on the rise to power
of Mme. de Montespan was she painfully humiliated, suffering
the most intense pangs of conscience. The evening
before her final departure to the convent, she dined with
Mme. de Montespan, to drink “the cup to the dregs and
to enjoy the rejection of the world even to the last remains of its bitterness.”

Guizot describes this period most vividly: “When
Mme. de Montespan began to supplant her in the king’s
[pg 139]
favor, the grief of Mlle. de La Vallière was so great that
she thought she would die of it. Then she turned to God,
penitent and in despair; twice she sought refuge in a convent
at Chaillot. On leaving, she sent word to the king:
‘After having lost the honor of your good graces I would
have left the court sooner, if I could have prevailed upon
myself never to see you again; but that weakness was so
strong in me that hardly now am I capable of sacrificing
it to God. After having given you all my youth, the remainder
of my life is not too much for the care of my
salvation.'” The king still clung to her. “He sent
M. Colbert to beg her earnestly to come to Versailles
that he might speak with her. M. Colbert escorted her
thither and the king conversed for an hour with her and
wept bitterly. Mme. de Montespan was there to meet
her, with open arms and tears in her eyes.” “It is all
incomprehensible,” adds Mme. de Sévigné; “some say
that she will remain at Versailles and at court, others that
she will return to Chaillot; we shall see.”

Mlle. de La Vallière remained three years at court, “half
penitent,” she said, humbly, detained by the king’s express
wish, in consequence of the tempers and jealousies
of Mme. de Montespan who felt herself judged and condemned
by her rival’s repentance. Attempts were made
to turn Mlle. de La Vallière from her inclination for the
Carmelites’: “Madame,” said Mme. Scarron to her, one
day, “here are you one blaze of gold; have you really
considered that, before long, at the Carmelites’ you will
have to wear serge?” She, however, was not to be dissuaded
from her determination and was already practising,
in secret, the austerities of the convent. “God has laid
in this heart the foundation of great things,” said Bossuet,
who supported her in her conflict; “the world puts great
hindrances in her way, and God great mercies; I have
[pg 140]
hopes that God will prevail; the uprightness of her heart
will carry everything before it.”

“When I am in trouble at the Carmelites’,” said Mlle.
de La Vallière, as for the last time she quitted the court,
“I shall think of what those people have made me suffer.”
“The world itself makes us sick of the world,”
said Bossuet in the sermon which he preached on the day
she took the veil; “its attractions have enough of illusion,
its favors enough of inconstancy, its rebuffs enough
of bitterness. There is enough of bitterness, enough of
injustice and perfidy in the dealings of men, enough of inconsistency
and capriciousness in their intractable and
contradictory humors—there is enough of it all, to disgust us.”

When, in 1675, she took the final vows, she cut off her
beautiful hair and devoted herself to the church and to
charity, receiving the veil from the queen, whose forgiveness
she sought before entering the convent. The king
showed himself to be such a jealous lover, that when
Mlle. de La Vallière entirely abandoned him for God,
he forgot her absolutely, never going to the convent to see her.

She was by far the most interesting and pathetic of the
three mistresses of Louis XIV.; her heart was superior to
that of either of her successors, though her mind was
inferior; she belonged to a different atmosphere—such
kindness, charity, penitence, resignation, and absolute
abandonment to God were rare among the conspicuous
French women. Sainte-Beuve says: “She loved for love,
without haughtiness, coquetry, arrogance, ambitious designs,
self-interest, or vanity; she suffered and sacrificed
everything, humiliated herself to expiate her wrong-doing,
and finally surrendered herself to God, seeking in
prayer the treasures of energy and tenderness; through
[pg 141]
her heart, her mental powers attained their complete development.”

The fate of Mlle. de La Vallière was the same as that
of nearly all royal mistresses; abandoned and absolutely
forgotten by her lover, she sought refuge and consolation
in religion and God’s mercy. “She was dead to me the
day she entered the Carmelites’,” said the king, thirty-five
years later, when the modest and fervent nun at last
expired, in 1710, without having ever relaxed the severities of her penance.

Of an entirely different type from Mlle. de La Vallière
was that haughtiest and most supercilious of all French
mistresses, Mme. de Montespan. The picture drawn by
M. Saint-Amand does her full justice: “A haughty and
opulent beauty, a forest of hair, flashing blue eyes, a complexion
of splendid carnation and dazzling whiteness, one
of those alluring and radiant countenances which shed
brightness around them wherever they appear, an incisive,
caustic wit, an unquenchable thirst for riches and pleasure,
luxury and power, the manners of a goddess audaciously
usurping the place of Juno on Olympus, passion without
love, pride without true dignity, splendor without harmony—that
was Mme. de Montespan.” And these qualities
were the secret of her success as well as of her fall.

From this description it can easily be divined of what
nature was her influence and how she gained and held her
power over the king. She won Louis XIV. entirely by
her sensual charms, provoked him by her imperious exactions,
her ungovernable fits of temper, and her daring sarcasm;
always extravagant and unreasonable, she talked
constantly of balls and fêtes, the glories of court and its
scandals. Most exacting, yet never satisfied, she had no
regard for the interests or honor of the weak king, to
whose lower nature only she appealed.

Mme. de Montespan was of noble birth, being the youngest
daughter of Rochechouart, first Duke of Mortemart.
She was born in 1641, at the grand old château of Tonnay-Charente,
and was educated at the convent of Sainte-Marie.
Brought up religiously, she at first evinced a much
greater tendency toward religion than toward worldly ambition
and vanity. Mme. de Caylus, in her Souvenirs,
wrote that “far from being born depraved, the future
favorite had a nature inherently disinclined to gallantry and
tending to virtue. She was flattered at being mistress, not
solely for her own pleasure, but on account of the passion
of the king; she believed that she could always make him
desire what she had resolved never to grant him. She
was in despair at her first pregnancy, consoled herself for
the second one, and in all the others carried impudence as far as it could go.”

She was known first as Mlle. Tonnay-Charente, and
was maid of honor to the Duchess of Orléans. When, at
the age of twenty-two, she married the Marquis de Montespan
and became lady in waiting to the queen, her
beauty, wit, and brilliant conversational powers at once
made her the centre of attraction; for several years, however,
the king scarcely noticed her. Upon secretly becoming
his mistress in 1668 and openly being declared as
such two years later, her husband attempted to interfere,
and was unceremoniously banished to his estates; in 1676
he was legally separated from her. She persuaded the
king to legitimatize their children, who were confided to
Mme. Scarron,—afterward Mme. de Maintenon,—who later
influenced the king to abandon his mistress.

Mme. de Montespan’s power, lasting fourteen years, was
almost unlimited, and was the epoch of courtiers intoxicated
with passion and consumed by vice, infatuated with
the king and his mistress, whose title as maîtresse-en-titre
[pg 143]
was considered an official one, conferring the same privileges
and demanding the same ceremonies and etiquette
as did a high court position. The only opposition incurred
was from the clergy, who eventually, by uniting their
forces with the influence of Mme. de Maintenon, brought
about the disgrace of the mistress.

When, in 1675, she desired to perform her Easter duties
publicly at Versailles, the priest refused to grant absolution
until she should discontinue her wanton, adulterous
life. She appealed to the king, and he referred the decision
of the matter to Bossuet, who decided that it was an
imperative duty to deny absolution to public sinners of
notorious lives who refused to abandon them. This was
immediately before her legal separation from her husband.

Influenced by the preaching of men like Bourdaloue and
Bossuet, the king resolved to abandon his powerful mistress;
in 1686 she was finally separated from Louis XIV.,
but did not leave Versailles until 1691, when, becoming
reconciled to her fate, she decided to retire to a convent.
Bossuet became her spiritual adviser, and described her
habits in the following letter to the king:

“I find Mme. de Montespan sufficiently tranquil. She
occupies herself greatly in good works. I see her much
affected by the verities I propose to her, which are the
same I uttered to your majesty. To her—as to you—I
have offered the words by which God commands us to
yield our whole hearts to him; they have caused her to
shed many tears. May God establish these verities in the
depths of the hearts of both of you, in order that so many
tears, so much suffering, so many efforts as you have
made to subdue yourselves, may not be in vain.”

The king did not wholly abandon his mistress; from a
material point of view, she was more powerful than ever,
for Louis XIV. gave orders to his minister, Colbert, to
[pg 144]
do for Mme. de Montespan whatever she wished, and her
wishes caused a heavy drain upon the treasury. The
king continued to pay court to other favorites, such as
the Princesse de Soubèse and Mlle. de Fontanges; the
latter was his third mistress, but her career was of short
duration, as one of the last acts of Mme. de Montespan
was, it is said, the poisoning of Mlle. de Fontanges; this,
however, is not generally accepted as true, although the
Princesse Palatine wrote the following which throws suspicion
upon the former favorite: “Mme. de Montespan
was a fiend incarnate, but the Fontanges was good and
simple. The latter is dead—because, they say, the former
put poison in her milk. I do not know whether or not
this is true, but what I do know well is that two of the
Fontanges’s people died, saying publicly that they had
been poisoned.” With the increasing influence of Mme. de
Maintenon, the king completely forgot his former mistress.

Mme. de Montespan was possibly the most arrogant and
despotic of all French mistresses and she was, also, the
most humiliated. She had inspired no confidence, friendship,
love, or respect in Louis XIV., who eventually looked
with shame and remorse upon his relations with her. It
took her sixteen years to overcome her terrible passion
and to give up the court forever. Not until 1691 did she
become reconciled to departure from Versailles; thenceforth,
penitence conquered immoral desires. M. Saint-Amand
says she not only “arrived at remorse, but at
macerations, fasts, and haircloths. She limited herself
to the coarsest underlinen and wore a belt and garters
studded with iron points. She came at last to give all she
had to the poor;” she also founded a hospital in which she nursed the sick.

While at the convent, she tried, in vain, to effect a
reconciliation with her husband; not until every avenue
[pg 145]
to a social life was cut off from her, did she entirely surrender
herself to charity and the service of God. In her
latest years, she was so tormented by the horrors of death
that she employed several women whose only occupation
was to watch with her at night. She died in 1707, forgotten
by the king and all her former associates; Louis XIV.
formally prohibited her children, the Duke of Maine, the
Comte de Toulouse, the Comte de Vexin, and Mlles. de
Nantes, de Blois, and de Tours, from wearing mourning for her.

A striking contrast to Mme. de Montespan in character,
disposition, morality, and birth was Mme. de Maintenon,
one of the greatest and most important women in French
history. What is known of her is so enveloped in calumny
and falsehood and made so uncertain by dispute, that to
disentangle the actual facts is almost an impossibility,
despite the glowing tribute paid to her in the immense
work published recently by the Comte d’Haussonville and M. Gabriel Hanotaux.

It would seem that the more the history of Mme. de
Maintenon is studied, the more one is led away from a
first impression—which usually proves to be an erroneous
one. Thus, M. Lavallée, in his first work, Histoire des
Français, wrote that she “was of the most complete aridity
of heart, narrow in the scope of her affections, and
meanly intriguing. She suggested fatal enterprises and inappropriate
appointments; she forced mediocre and servile
persons upon the king; she had, in fine, the major share
in the errors and disasters of the reign of Louis XIV.” A
few years later he wrote, in his Histoire de la maison royale
de Saint-Cyr: “Mme. de Maintenon gave Louis XIV. none
but salutary and disinterested counsels which were useful
to the state and instrumental in making less heavy the burdens of the people.”

Opinion in general, especially French opinion, has been
very bitter toward her. History has even reproached her
with having been a usurper, a tyrant, and a selfish master.
The great preacher, Fénelon, wrote to her:

“They say you take too little part in affairs. Your
mind is more capable than you think. You are, perhaps,
a little too distrustful of yourself, or, rather, you are too
much afraid to enter into discussions contrary to the inclination
you have for a tranquil and meditative life.”

Is this picture, left by Emile Chasles and accepted by
M. Saint-Amand, truthful? “This intelligent woman, far
from being too much heeded, was not enough so. There
was in her a veritable love for the public welfare, a true
sorrow in the midst of our misfortunes. To-day, it is
necessary to retrench much from the grandeur of her
worldly power and add a great deal to that of her soul.”
M. Saint-Amand believes her sincere when she wrote to Mme. des Ursins:

“In whatever way matters turn, I conjure you, madame,
to regard me as a person incapable of directing affairs, who
heard them talked too late to be skilful in them, and who
hates them more than she ignores them…. My
interference in them is not desired and I do not desire to
interfere. They are not concealed from me, but I know
nothing consecutively and am often badly informed.”

The opinions of her contemporaries are not always flattering,
but such are possibly due to envy and jealousy or to
some purely personal prejudice. Thus, when the Duchess
of Orléans, the Princesse Palatine, calls her “that nasty
old thing, that wicked devil, that shrivelled-up, filthy old
Maintenon, that concubine of the king,” and casts upon her
other gross aspersions that are unfit to be repeated, one
must remember that the calumniator was a German, the
daughter of the Elector Palatine Charles-Louis, a woman
[pg 147]
honest in her morals, but shameless in her speech, who
loved the beauties of nature more than those of the palaces;
more shocked at hypocrites than at religion or irreligion,
she took Mme. de Maintenon to be a type of the
impostors whom she detested. It was her son who became
regent, and it was her son who married one of the
illegitimate daughters of Louis XIV.—an alliance of which
his mother had a horror.

The memoirs of Saint-Simon are interesting, but the
odious picture he has drawn of Mme. de Maintenon is
hardly in accord with later appreciations. M. Saint-Amand
sums up the two classes of critics thus:

“The revolutionary school which likes to drag the
memory of the great king through the mire, naturally
detests the eminent woman who was that king’s companion,
his friend and consoler. Writers of this school
would like to make of her a type not only odious and fatal,
but ungraceful and unsympathetic, without radiance,
charm or any sort of fascination. She is too frequently
called to mind under the aspect of a worn old woman,
stiff and severe, with tearless eyes and a face without a
smile. We forget that in her youth she was one of the
prettiest women of her time, that her beauty was wonderfully
preserved, and that in her old age she retained that
superiority of style and language, that distinction of
manner and exquisite tact, that gentle firmness of character,
that charm and elevation of mind, which, at every
period of her life, gained her so much praise and so many friends.”

Mme. de Maintenon was born in prison. Her maiden
name was Françoise d’Aubigné. She was the granddaughter
of Agrippa d’Aubigné, the historian. Her father
had planned to settle in the Carolinas, and his correspondence
with the English government, to that effect, was
[pg 148]
treated as treason; he was thrown into prison, where his
wife voluntarily shared his fate and where the future
Mme. de Maintenon was born. After the death of her
father, she was confided to her aunt, Mme. de Villette, a
Calvinist, who trained her in the principles of Protestantism.
Because of the refusal of her daughter to attend
mass, her mother put her in charge of the Countess of
Neuillant who, with great difficulty, converted Françoise back to Catholicism.

At the home of the Countess of Neuillant, she often met
Scarron, the comic poet—a paralytic and cripple—who
offered her money with which to pay for admission to a
convent, a proposition which she refused; subsequently,
however, the countess sent her to the Ursulines to be
educated. When, after two years, she lost her mother
and was thus left without home, fortune, or future prospects,
she consented, at the age of seventeen, to marry
the poet. Thus, born in a prison, without even a dowry,
harshly reared by a mother who was under few obligations
to life, more harshly treated in the convent, introduced
as a poor relation into the society of her aunt and
to the friends of her godmother, the Countess of Neuillant,
she early learned to distrust life and suspect man, and to
restrain her ambitions.

Exceedingly beautiful, graceful, and witty, she soon
won her way to the brilliant and fashionable society of the
crippled wit, buffoon, and poet, who was coarse, profane,
ungodly, and physically an unsightly wreck. In this
society, which the burlesque poet amused by his inexhaustible
wit and fancy, and his frank, Gallic gayety, she
showed an infinite amount of tact and soon made his salon
the most prominent social centre of Paris. There, Scarron,
never tolerated a stupid person, no matter of what blood or rank.

When asked what settlement he proposed to make upon
his wife, he replied: “Immortality.” At another time, he
remarked: “I shall not make her commit any follies, but I
shall teach her a great many.” On his deathbed he said:
“My only regret is that I cannot leave anything to my
wife with whom I have every imaginable reason to be
content.” In this free-and-easy salon, a young noble said,
soon after the marriage of Scarron: “If it were a question
of taking liberties with the queen or Mme. Scarron, I
would not deliberate; I would sooner take them with the queen.”

The reputation made by the young Mme. Scarron gained
her many influential friends, especially among court
people. At the death of her husband, in 1660, to avoid
trouble with his family, she renounced the marriage dowry
of twenty-four thousand livres. Her friends procured her
a pension of two thousand livres from the queen. Thus
freed from care, she lived according to her inclination, which
tended toward pleasing and doing good; taking good cheer
and her services voluntarily and unaffectedly to all families,
she gradually made herself a necessity among them—thus
she laid the foundation of her future greatness. She
was received by the best families, grew in favor everywhere,
and even won over all her enemies. Modest, complaisant,
promptly and readily rendering a favor, prudent,
practical and virtuous, her one desire was to make friends,
not so much for the purpose of using them, but because
she realized that a person in humble circumstances cannot have too many friends.

Her portrait as a widow is admirably drawn by M. Saint-Amand:
“Mme. Scarron seeks esteem, not love. To
please while remaining virtuous, to endure, if need be,
privations and even poverty, but to win the reputation
of a strong character, to deserve the sympathy and
[pg 150]
approbation of honest persons—such is the direction of
all her efforts. Well dressed, though very simply; discreet
and modest, intelligent and distingué, with that patrician
elegance which luxury cannot create, but which is
inborn and comes by nature only; pious, with a sincere
and gentle piety; less occupied with herself than with
others; talking well and—what is much rarer—knowing
how to listen; taking an interest in the joys and sorrows
of her friends, and skilful in amusing and consoling them—she
is justly regarded as one of the most amiable as
well as one of the superior women in Paris. Economical
and simple in her tastes, she makes her accounts balance
perfectly, thanks to an annual pension of two thousand
livres granted her by Queen Anne of Austria.”

When Mme. Scarron was about to leave Paris because
of lack of funds and the loss of her pension, after the
death of Queen Anne, her friend Mme. de Montespan,
the king’s mistress, interfered in her behalf and had the
pension renewed, thus inadvertently paving the way for
her own downfall. Three years later Mme. Scarron was
established in an isolated house near Paris, where she received
the natural children of Louis XIV. and Mme. de
Montespan, as they arrived, in quick succession, in 1669,
1670, 1672, 1673, and 1674. There, acting as governess,
she hid them from the world. This is the only blemish
upon the fair record of her life. It is maintained by her
detractors that a virtuous woman would not have undertaken
the education of the doubly adulterous children of
Louis XIV. (thus, in a way, encouraging adultery), and
that she would have given up her charge upon the first proposals of love.

However deep this stain may be considered, one must
remember that the standard of honor at the court of
Louis XIV. did not encourage delicacy in matters of love,
[pg 151]
and Mme. Scarron knew only the standard of society; her
morality was no more extraordinary than was her intelligence,
and it was to her credit that she preserved intact
her honor and her virtue. At first the king looked with
much dissatisfaction upon her appointment, not admiring
the extreme gravity and reserve of the young widow;
however, the unusual order of her talents and wisdom
soon attracted his attention, and her entrance at court was
speedily followed by quarrels between the mistress and
Louis XIV. In 1674 the king, wishing to acknowledge his
recognition of her merits, purchased the estate of Maintenon
for her and made her Marquise de Maintenon.

Her primary object became the gaining of the favor of
Mme. de Montespan; for this purpose she taught herself
humility, while toward the king she directed the forces of
her dignity, reserve, and intellectual attainments. Being
the very opposite of the mistress who won and retained
him by sensuous charms (in which the king was fast
losing pleasure and satisfaction), she soon effected a
change by entertaining her master with the solid attainments
of her mind—religion, art, literature.

Mme. de Maintenon was always amiable and sympathetic,
kind and thoughtful, never irritating, crossing, or
censuring the king; wonderfully judicious, modest, self-possessed,
and calm, she was irreproachable in conduct
and morals, tolerating no improper advances. Although
the characteristics and general deportment of Mme. de
Montespan were entirely different from those of Mme.
de Maintenon, the latter entertained true friendship for her
benefactress, displaying astonishing tact, shrewdness, and self-control.

If Mme. de Maintenon were not, at first, loved by the
king, it was because she appeared to him too ideal, sublime,
spirituelle, too severely sensible. Then came the
[pg 152]
turning point; at forty years of age she was “a beautiful
and stately woman with brilliant dark eyes, clear complexion,
beautiful white teeth, and graceful manners;”
sedate, self-possessed, and astonished at nothing, she had
learned the art of waiting, and studied the king—showing
him those qualities he desired to see.

Her aim became to take the king from his mistress and
lead him back to the queen. After gaining his confidence
by her sincerity and trustworthiness, and making herself
indispensable to him, she succeeded in bringing about the
desired separation, through the medium of the dauphiness,
whom she won over to her cause. Thus, without perfidy,
hypocrisy, intrigue, or manœuvring, by simply being
herself, she replaced the haughty and beautiful Mme. de Montespan.

When, after the queen’s death, and after having lived
about the king for fifteen years, “she had succeeded in
making the devotee take precedence of the lover, when
piety had overcome passion, when religion had effected its
change, then Louis the Great offered his hand in marriage
to her who had only veneration, gratitude, and devotion
for him, but no passion or love.” Reasons of state demanded
the secrecy of the marriage; for had he raised her
to the throne, political complications would have arisen
and disturbed his subsequent career; Mme. de Maintenon
fully appreciated the intricacies of the situation, and was
therefore content to remain what she was.

She came to the king when he was beginning to feel the
effects of his former mode of life; he needed fidelity and
friendship, and he saw these in her. His feelings for her
are well described in the following extract by M. Saint-Amand:

“To sum up: the king’s sentiment for her was of the
most complex nature. There was in it a mingling of
[pg 153]
religion and of physical love, a calculation of reason and
an impulse of the heart, an aspiration after the mild joys
of family life and a romantic inclination—a sort of compact
between French good sense, subjugated by the wit, tact,
and wisdom of an eminent woman, and Spanish imagination
allured by the fancy of having extricated this elect
woman from poverty in order to make her almost a queen.
Finally, it must be noted that Louis XIV., always religiously
inclined, was convinced that Mme. de Maintenon
had been sent to him by Heaven for his salvation, and that
the pious counsels of this saintly woman, who knew how
to render devotion so agreeable and attractive, seemed to
him to be so many inspirations from on High.”

It must not be inferred, however, that the feeling for
Mme. de Maintenon was purely ideal. “He was unwilling
to remarry,” says the Abbé de Choisy, “because of
tenderness for his people. He had, already, three grandsons,
and wisely judged that the princes of a second marriage
might, in course of time, cause civil wars. On the
other hand, he could not dispense with a wife and Mme. de
Maintenon pleased him greatly. Her gentle and scintillating
wit promised him an agreeable intercourse which would
refresh him after the cares of royalty. Her person was still
engaging and her age prevented her from having children.”

As his wife, Mme. de Maintenon took more interest in
the king and his family than she did in the affairs of the
kingdom. To be the wife of the hearth and home, to
educate the princes, to rear the young Duchess of Bourgogne,
granddaughter of Louis XIV., to calm and ease the
old age of the king and to distract and amuse him, became
her sole objects in life. Her power, thus directed, became
almost unbounded; she was the dispenser of favors
and the real ruler, sitting in the cabinet of the king; and her
counsels were so wise that they soon became invaluable.

At court, she opposed all foolish extravagance, such as
the endless fêtes and amusements of all kinds which had
become so popular under Mme. de Montespan—a procedure
which caused her the greatest difficulties and provoked
revolts and quarrels in the royal family. By her prudence,
tact, wisdom, and the loyalty of her friendship,
she won and retained the respect and favor—if not the
love—of everyone. Her reputation was never tarnished
by scandal. “When one reflects that Louis XIV. was only
forty-seven years old and in the prime of life and Mme.
de Montespan in the full blaze of her marvellous beauty,
that this woman of humble birth, in her youth a Protestant,
poor, a governess, the widow of a low, comic poet, should
win so proud a man as Louis XIV., seems incredible.”

When one considers that throughout life her one aspiration
was an irreproachable conduct, that her manner of
action was always defensive, never offensive, that her
chief aim was to restore the king to the queen (who died
in her arms) and not to replace his mistress, one cannot
withhold admiration and esteem from this truly great
woman who accomplished all those honorable designs.

The obstacles to be conquered before reaching her goal
were indeed numerous, but she managed them all. There
were so many persons hostile to her,—mistresses and intriguers,
bishops and priests, courtesans and valets, princes
and members of the royal family,—to overcome whom she
had to be on her guard, make use of every opportunity,
show a rare knowledge of society and court, a profound
skill and address, resolution and will; and she was equal to all occasions.

Her greatest defect was the narrowness of her religious
views. Entirely in the hands of her spiritual advisers,
obeying them faithfully and blindly, she was not inclined
to theological investigation, but was sincerely devout.
[pg 155]
More interested in the various persons than in doctrines,
she showed a passion for making bishops, abbots, and
priests, as well as for negotiating compromises, reconciling
amours propres and doing away with all religious hatred.
Lacking, above all else, clearness of conception, promptness
and firmness of decision, she was finally persuaded
to encourage the bigotry of Louis XIV. and his intolerance
toward those who differed from him. Hence, in 1685,
she permitted that fearfully destructive persecution of the
Protestants, which caused over three hundred thousand
of France’s most solid people to leave the country; and
by her fanaticism and false zeal, she caused the king to be
a party to that awful catastrophe.

“This one act of hers counterbalances nearly all her
virtues, and we remember her more as the murderess of
thousands of innocents than as the calm and virtuous governess.
But we must remember the nature of her advisers
and the eternal policy of the Catholic Church, which are
ever identical with absolutism. To uphold the institutions
and opinions already established, was the one sentiment of
the age; innovation, progress, were destructive—Mme. de
Maintenon became the watchful guardian of royalty and
the Church.” Such is the verdict of English opinion.
M. Saint-Amand judges the affair differently:

“A woman as pious and reasonable as she was, animated
always by the noblest intentions, loving her country
and always showing sympathy for the poor people—not
merely in words but in deeds as well—detesting war and
loving justice and peace, always moderate and irreproachable
in her conduct—such a woman cannot be the mischievous,
crafty, malicious, and vindictive bigot imagined
by many writers; she did not encourage such an act, nor
would her nature permit to do so…. The prayer
she uttered every morning, best portrays the woman and
[pg 156]
her rôle: ‘Lord, grant me to gladden the king, to console
him, to sadden him when it must be for Thy glory. Cause
me to hide from him nothing which he ought to know
through me, and which no one else would have courage to
tell him.’ … To Madame de Glapion she said: ‘I
would like to die before the king; I would go to God; I would
cast myself at the foot of His throne; I would offer Him
the desires of a soul that He would have purified; I would
pray Him to grant the king greater enlightenment, more
love for his people, more knowledge of the state of the
provinces, more aversion for the perfidy of the countries,
more horror of the ways in which his authority is abused:
and God would hear my prayers.'”

This pious woman was weary of life before her marriage,
and but changed the nature of her misery upon
reaching the highest goal open to a woman. Marly, Versailles,
Fontainebleau were only different names for the
same servitude. When she had attained her desire, she
thought her repose assured; instead, her ennui, her disgust
of life and the world, only increased; realizing this,
she began to direct her thoughts entirely toward God and
her aspirations toward things not of this earth—hence the
almost complete absence of her influence in politics.

She was never happy, and that her life was a disappointment
to her may be gathered from the following words from
her pen: “Flee from men as from your mortal enemies;
never be alone with them. Take no pleasure in hearing that
you are pretty, amiable, that you have a fine voice. The
world is a malicious deceiver which never means what it
says; and the majority of men who say such things to young
girls, do it hoping to find some means of ruining them.”

Her most intense desire seemed to be to please, and be
esteemed—to receive the honneur du monde, which appeared
to be her sole motive for living. When in power, she
[pg 157]
did not use her influence as the intriguing women of the
epoch would have done, because she did not possess
their qualities—taste, breadth of vision, and selfish ambitions.
Her objects in life were the reform of a wicked
court, the extirpation of heresy, the elevation of men of
genius, and the improvement of the society and religion
of France. After the death of the king (in 1715), she retired
to Saint-Cyr, and spent the remainder of her life in
acts of charity and devotional exercises.

After the king’s death she dismissed all her servants
and disposed of her carriages as well, “unable to reconcile
herself to feeding horses while so many young girls were
in need,” as she said. For almost four years she peacefully
and happily lived in a very modest apartment. She
seldom went out and then only to the village to visit the
sick and the poor. On June 10, 1717, when she was
eighty-one years old, Peter the Great went to Saint-Cyr
for the purpose of seeing and talking to the greatest
woman of France. He found her confined to her bed; the
chamber being but dimly lighted, he thrust aside the curtain
in order to examine the features of the woman who
had ruled the destinies of France for so many years. The
Czar talked to her for some time, and when he asked
Madame de Maintenon from what she was suffering, she
replied: “From great old age.” She died on August 15,
1719, and was buried in the choir of the church of Saint-Cyr,
where a modest slab of marble indicated the spot
where her body reposed until, in 1794, when the church
was being transformed into hospital wards, “the workmen
opened the vault, and took out the body and dragged it
into the court with dreadful yells and threw it, stripped
and mutilated, into a hole in the cemetery.”

The greatest work of Mme. de Maintenon was the
founding of the Seminary of Saint-Cyr, which the king
[pg 158]
granted to her about the time of their marriage and of his
illness; it was probably intended as the penance of a sick
man who wished to make reparation for the wrongs inflicted
upon some of the young girls of the nobility, and as
a wedding gift to Mme. de Maintenon. There, aided by
nuns, she cared for and educated two hundred and fifty
pupils, dowerless daughters of impoverished nobles. It
was “the veritable offspring of her who was never a
daughter, a wife, nor a mother.” There she was happy
and content; there she recalled her own youth when
she was poor and forsaken; there she found respite from
the turmoils and agitations of Versailles; there she was
supreme; there she governed absolutely and was truly loved.

For thirty years she was queen at Saint-Cyr, visiting it
every other day and teaching the young girls for whom
it was a protection against the world. Since childhood,
she had been so accustomed to serve herself, to wait upon
others and to care for the smallest details of the management
of the household, that she introduced this spirit into
society and at Saint-Cyr, where she managed every detail,
from the linen to the provisions; this showed a reasonable
and well-balanced mind, but not any high order of intelligence.

Of the young girls in her charge, she desired to make
model women, characterized by simplicity and piety; they
were to be free from morbid curiosity of mind, were to
practise absolute self-denial and to devote their lives to a
practical labor. Her advice was: “Be reasonable or you
will be unhappy; if you are haughty, you will be reminded
of your misery, but if you are humble, people will recall
your birth…. Commence by making yourself loved,
without which you will never succeed. Is it not true that,
had you not loved me or had you had an aversion for me,
[pg 159]
you would not have accepted, with such good grace, the
counsels that I have given you? This is absolutely certain—the
most beautiful things when taught by persons
who displease us, do not impress but rather harden us.”

A counsel that strikes home forcibly to-day, one which
strongly attacks the modern fad of neglecting home for
church, is expressed well in one of her letters: “Your
piety will not be right if, when married, you abandon your
husband, your children and your servants, to go to the
churches at times when you are not obliged to go there.
When a young girl says that a woman would do better
properly to raise her children and instruct her servants,
than to spend her morning in church, one can accommodate
one’s self to such religion, which she will cause to be loved and respected.”

At the hour of leisure, she gave the girls those familiar
talks which were anticipated by them with so much pleasure,
and extracts from which are still cherished by the
young women of France. She believed that the aim of
instruction for young girls should be to educate them to be
Christian women with well-balanced and logical minds.
With her varied experience of the ups and downs of life,
she gradually came to the conclusion that, after all, there
is nothing in the world so good as sound common sense,
but one that is not enamored of itself, which obeys established
laws and knows its own limits. Her sex is intended
to obey, thus her reason was a Christian reason.

“You can be truly reasonable only in proportion as you
are subservient to God…. Never tell children fantastic
stories, nor permit them to believe them; give them
things for what they are worth. Never tell them stories
of which, when they grow to independent reasoning, you
must disillusion them. You must talk to a girl of seven
as seriously and with as much reason as to a young lady
[pg 160]
of twenty. You must take part in the pleasures of children,
but never accommodate them with a childish language
or with foolish or puerile ways. You can never be
too reasonable or too sane. Religion, reason, and truth are always good.”

To appreciate the importance of Mme. de Maintenon’s
position and the revolutionary effect which her attitude
produced upon the customs of the time, one must remember
with what she had to contend. Hers was a period of
passion and adventure—a period which was followed by
sorrow and disaster. The novels of Mlle. de Scudéry,
which were at the height of their popularity, had over-refined
the sentiments; the chevaleresque heroes and picturesque
heroines turned the heads of young girls, who
dreamed of an ideal and perfect love; their one longing
was for the romantic—for the enchantments and delights
of life. In this stilted and amorous atmosphere, Mme. de
Maintenon preserved her poise and fought vigorously
against the fads of the day. The young girls under her
care were taught to love just as they were taught to do
other things—with reason. Also, she guarded against the
weaknesses of nature and the flesh. “Than Mme. de
Maintenon, no one ever better knew the evils of the world
without having fallen prey to them,” says Sainte-Beuve;
“and no one ever satisfied and disgusted the world more,
while charming it at the same time.”

Mme. de Maintenon’s ideal methods of education were
not immediately effective; there were many periods of
hardship, apprehension, and doubt. Thus, when Racine’s
Esther (written at the request of Mme. de Maintenon, to
be presented by the pupils at Saint-Cyr) was performed,
there sprang up a taste for poetry, writing, and literature
of all kinds. The acting turned the girls’ thoughts into
other channels and threatened to counteract the teachings
[pg 161]
of simplicity and reason; no one ever showed more genuine
good sense, wholesomeness of mind, and breadth of
view, than were displayed by Mme. de Maintenon in
dealing with these disheartening drawbacks.

In endeavoring to impress upon those young minds the
correct use of language and the proper style of writing,
she wrote for them models of letters which showed simplicity,
precision, truth, facility, and wonderful clearness;
and these were imitated by them in their replies to her.

She wished, above all, to make them realize that her
experience with that social and court life, for which they
longed, was one of disappointment: that was a world apart,
in which amusing and being amused was the one occupation.
She had passed wearily through that period of life,
and sought repose, truth, tranquillity, and religious resignation;
to make those young spirits feel the fallacy of
such a mode of existence was her earnest desire, and her
efforts in that direction were characterized by a zeal,
energy, and persistence which were productive of wonderful
results. That was one phase of her greatness and influence.

But Mme. de Maintenon was somewhat too severe, too
narrow, too strict,—one might say, too ascetic,—in her
teaching. There was too little of that which, in this world,
cheers, invigorates, and enlivens. Her instruction was all
reason, without relieving features; it lacked what Sainte-Beuve
calls the don des larmes (gift of tears). Hers was
a noble, just, courageous, and delicate judgment; but it
was without the softening qualities of the truly feminine,
which calls for tears and affection, tenderness and sympathy.

She remains in educational affairs the greatest woman
of the seventeenth century, if not of all her countrywomen.
M. Faguet says: “This widow of Scarron, who was nearly
[pg 162]
Queen of France, was born minister of public instruction.”
She powerfully upheld the cause of morality, was a
liberal patroness of education and learning, and all aspiring
geniuses were encouraged and financially aided by her.
It was she who impressed upon Louis XIV. the truth of
the existence of a God to whom he was accountable for his
acts—a teaching which contributed no little to the general
purification of morals at court.

The writings of Mme. de Maintenon occupy a very high
place in the history of French literature; in fact, her letters
have often been compared with those of Mme. de Sévigné,
although, unlike the latter, she never wrote merely
to please, but to instruct, to convert, and to console. In
her works there was no pretension to literary style; they
were sermons on morals, characterized by discretion and
simplicity, dignity and persuasiveness, seriousness and
earnestness; Napoleon placed her letters above those of
Mme. de Sévigné. M. Saint-Amand says of her writings:
“More reflection than vivacity, more wisdom than passion,
more gravity than charm, more authority than grace,
more solidity than brilliancy—such are the characteristics
of a correspondence which might justify the expression, the style is the woman.”

He gives, also, the following discriminating comparison
between the two writers: “Enjoyment, Gallic animation,
good-tempered gayety, fall to the lot of Mme. de Sévigné;
what marks Mme. de Maintenon is experience, reason,
profundity. The one laughs from ear to ear—the other
barely smiles. The one has pleasant illusions about everything,
admiration which borders on naïveté, ecstasies when
in the presence of the royal sun: the other never permits
herself to be fascinated by either the king or the court,
by men, women, or things. She has seen human grandeur
too close at hand not to understand its nothingness,
[pg 163]
and her conclusions bear the imprint of a profound sadness.
At times Mme. de Sévigné, also, has attacks of
melancholy, but the cloud passes quickly and she is again
in the sunshine. Gayety—frank, communicative, radiant
gayety—is the basis of the character of this woman
who is more witty, seductive, and amusing than is any
other. Mme. de Sévigné shines by imagination—Mme.
de Maintenon by judgment. The one permits herself to
be dazzled, intoxicated—the other always preserves her
indifference. The one exaggerates the splendors of the
court—the other sees them as they are. The one is more
of a woman—the other more of a saint.”

Mme. de Maintenon may be called “a woman of fate,”
She was never daughter, mother, or wife; as a child, she
was not loved by her mother, and her father was worthless;
married to two men, both aged beyond their years, she
was, indeed, but an instrument of fate. Truthful, candid,
and discreet she was entirely free from all morbid tendencies,
and was modest and chaste from inclination as well
as from principle. Though outwardly cold, proud, and reserved,
yet in her deportment toward those who were
fortunate enough to possess her esteem, she was kind—even
loving. While not intelligent to a remarkable degree,
she was prudent, circumspect, and shrewd, never losing
her self-control. When once interested, and convinced as
to the proper course, she displayed marvellous strength of
will, sagacity, and personal force. Beautiful and witty, she
easily adapted herself to any position in which she might
be placed; though intolerant and narrow in her religious
views, she was otherwise gentle, charitable, and unselfish.
Therefore, it is evident that she possessed, to a greater
degree than did any other woman of her time, unusual as
well as desirable qualities—qualities that made her powerful and incomparable.

Chapter VI

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

The seventeenth century was, in French history, the
greatest century from the standpoint of literary perfection,
the sixteenth century the richest in naissant ideas,
and the eighteenth the greatest in the way of developing and
formulating those ideas; and each century produced great
women who were in perfect harmony with and expressed
the ideals of each period of civilization.

It is not within the limits of reason to expect women
to rival, in literature, the great writers such as Corneille,
Racine, Molière, Bossuet, La Fontaine, Descartes, Pascal—most
of whom were but little influenced by femininity;
there were those, however, among the sex, who were
conspicuous for elevation of thought, dignity in manner
and bearing, and brilliancy in conversation—attributes
which they have left to posterity in numberless exquisite
and charming letters, in interesting and invaluable
memoirs, or in consummate psychological and social portraitures
incorporated into the form of novels. Among
female writers of letters, Mme. de Sévigné wears the
laurel wreath; Mme. de La Fayette, with Mlle. de Scudéry,
is the representative of the novel; Mme. Dacier
was the great advocate of the more liberal education of
women; and the Souvenirs of Mme. de Caylus made that authoress immortal.

The association of La Rochefoucauld, the Cardinal de
Retz, the Chevalier de Meré, Mme. de La Fayette, and
Mme. de Sévigné, was responsible for almost everything
elevating and of interest produced in the seventeenth century.
Of that highly intellectual circle, Mme. de Sévigné
was the leading spirit by force of her extraordinary faculty
for making friends, her wonderful talent as a writer, her
originality and her charming disposition. She gave the
tone to letters; M. Faguet says that her epistles were all
masterpieces of amiable badinage, lively narration, maternal
passion, true eloquence. More than that, they are important
sources of historical knowledge, inasmuch as they
contain much information concerning the politics of the
day, and furnish an excellent guide to the etiquette,
fashions, tastes, and literature of the writer’s period.

Mme. de Sévigné was the most important figure of the
time, being to that third prodigiously intellectual epoch of
France what Marguerite de Navarre was to the sixteenth
century, and the Hôtel de Rambouillet to the beginning
of the seventeenth century. She represented the style,
esprit, elegance, and goût of this greatest of French cultural
periods. Her life may be considered as having had
two distinct phases—one connected with an unhappy marriage
and the other the period of a restless widowhood.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marchioness of Sévigné, was
born at Paris, in 1626; at the age of eighteen months she
lost her father; at seven years of age, her mother; at
eight, her grandmother; at ten, her grandfather on her
mother’s side; she was thus left with her paternal grandmother,
Mme. de Chantal, who had her carefully educated
under the best masters, such as Ménage and Chapelain
(court favorites), from whom she early imbibed a genuine
taste for solid reading; from these instructors she learned
Spanish, Italian, and Latin.

In 1644, she was married to the Marquis Henri de
Sévigné, who was killed six years later in a duel, but who
had, in the meantime, succeeded in making a considerable
gap in her immense fortune, in spite of the precautions of
her uncle, the Abbé of Coulanges. Henceforward, her
interests in life were centred in the education of her two
children; to them she wrote letters which have brought
her name down to posterity as, possibly, the greatest
epistolary writer that the history of literature has ever recorded.

Mme. de Sévigné was but nineteen years old when,
after the marriage of Julie d’Angennes, the frequenters of
the Hôtel de Rambouillet began to disperse, and she was in
much demand by the successors of Mme. de Rambouillet.
While the women of the reign of Louis XIII.—Mmes. de
Hautefort, de Sablé, de Longueville, de Chevreuse, etc.—were
exceedingly talented talkers, they were poor writers:
but in Mme. de Sévigné, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mlle. de
Scudéry both arts were developed to the highest degree.

Mme. de Sévigné was on the best terms with every
great writer of her time—Pascal, Racine, La Fontaine,
Bossuet, Bourdaloue, La Rochefoucauld. She was a
woman of such broad affections that numerous friends and
admirers were a necessary part of her existence. Of all the
eminent women of the seventeenth century, she had the
greatest number of lovers—suitors who frequently became
her tormentors. Ménage, her teacher, who threatened to
leave her never to see her again, was brought back to her
by kind words, such as: “Farewell, friend—of all my
friends the best.” The Abbé Marigny, that “delicate
epicurean, that improviser of fine triolets, ballads, vaudevilles,
that enemy of all sadness and sticklers for morality,”
charmed her, at times, with sentimental ballads, such as the following:

Tréville went so far as to say that the figure of Mme.
de Sévigné was beautiful enough to set the world afire.
M. du Bled divides her lovers into three classes: the first
was composed of her literary friends; the second, of those
enamored, impassioned suitors, loving her from good
motives or from the opposite, who strove to compensate
her for the unfaithfulness of her husband while alive and
for the ennui of her widowhood; the third class was composed
of her Parisian friends, of whom she had hosts,
court habitués who were leaders of society.

Representatives of the second class were the Prince de
Conti, the great Turenne, various counts and marquises,
and Bussy-Rabutin, who was a type of the sensual lover
and the more dangerous on account of the privileges he
[pg 172]
enjoyed because of his close relationship to Mme. de Sévigné.
His portrait of her is interesting: “I must tell you,
madame, that I do not think there is a person in the world
so generally esteemed as you are. You are the delight of
humankind; antiquity would have erected altars to you,
and you would certainly have been a goddess of something.
In our century, when we are not so lavish with incense,
and especially for living merit, we are contented to say
that there is not a woman of your age more virtuous and
more amiable than are you. I know princes of the blood,
foreign princes, great lords with princely manners, great
captains, gentlemen, ministers of state, who would be off
and away for you, if you would permit them. Can you ask any more?”

Such eulogies came not only from men like the perfidious
and cruel cousin, but from her friends everywhere. The
finest of these is the one by her friend Mme. de La Fayette,
contained in one of the epistolary portraits so much
in vogue at that time, and which were turned out, par excellence,
in the salon of Mlle. de Luxembourg: “Know,
madame,—if by chance you do not already know it,—that
your mind adorns and embellishes your person so well
that there is not another one on earth so charming as you
when you are animated in a conversation in which all
constraint is banished. Your soul is great, noble, ready
to dispense with treasures, and incapable of lowering itself
to the care of amassing them. You are sensible to glory
and ambition, and to pleasures you are less so; yet you
appear to be born for the latter, and they made for you;
your person augments pleasures, and pleasures increase
your beauty when they surround you. Joy is the veritable
state of your soul, and chagrin is more unlike to you
than to anyone. You are the most civil and obliging person
that ever lived, and by a free and calm air—which is in
[pg 173]
all your actions—the simplest compliments of seemliness
appear, in your mouth, as protestations of friendship.”

The originality which gained Mme. de Sévigné so many
friends lay principally in her force, wealth of resource,
intensity, sincerity, and frankness. M. Scherer said she
possessed “surprises for us, infinite energy, inexhaustible
variety—everything that eternally revives interest.”

The interest of the modern world in this remarkable
woman is centred mainly in her letters. Guizot says:
“Mme. de Sévigné is a friend whom we read over and
over again, whose emotions we share, to whom we go for
an hour’s distraction and delightful chat; we have no
desire to chat with Mme. de Grignan (her daughter)—we
gladly leave her to her mother’s exclusive affection, feeling
infinitely obliged to her for having existed, inasmuch
as her mother wrote letters to her. Mme. de Sévigné’s
letters to her daughter are superior to all her other epistles,
charming as they all are; when she writes to M. Pomponne,
to M. de Coulanges, to M. de Bussy, the style is
less familiar, the heart less open, the soul less stirred; she
writes to her daughter as she would speak to her—it is
not a letter, it is an animated and charming conversation,
touching upon everything, embellishing everything with an inimitable grace.”

She had married her daughter to the Comte de Grignan,
a man of forty, twice married, and with children, homely,
but wealthy and aristocratic; writing to her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin,
concerning this marriage, she said: “All these
women (the count’s former wives) died expressly to make
room for your cousin.” By marrying her daughter to such
a man she encouraged all the questionable proprieties of
the time. Mme. de Sévigné’s affection for that daughter
amounted almost to idolatry; it was to her that most of
the mother’s letters were written, telling her of her health,
[pg 174]
what was being done at Vichy, and about her business
and for that child the authoress gave up her life at Paris
in order to economize and thereby to help Mme. de Grignan
in her extravagance, her son-in-law being an expert in spending money.

The intensity of her nature is well reflected in her letter
upon the separation from her daughter: “In vain I seek
my darling daughter; I can no longer find her, and every
step she takes removes her farther from me. I went to
St. Mary’s, still weeping and dying of grief; it seemed as
if my heart and my soul were being wrenched from me
and, in truth, what a cruel separation! I asked leave to
be alone; I was taken into Mme. du Housset’s room, and
they made me up a fire. Agnes sat looking at me, without
speaking—that was our bargain. I stayed there till five
o’clock, without ceasing to sob; all my thoughts were mortal
wounds to me. I wrote to M. de Grignan (you can
imagine in what key). Then I went to Mme. de La Fayette’s,
and she redoubled my griefs by the interest she
took in them; she was alone, ill, and distressed at the death
of one of the nuns; she was just as I should have desired,
I returned hither at eight; but oh, when I came in! can
you conceive what I felt as I mounted these stairs? That
room into which I always used to go, alas! I found the
doors of it open, but I saw everything upturned, disarranged,
and your little daughter, who reminded me of
mine…. The wakenings of the night were dreadful.
I think of you continuously—it is what devotees call
habitual thought, such as one should have of God, if one
did one’s duty. Nothing gives me diversion; I see that
carriage which is forever going on and will never come
near me. I am forever on the highways; it seems as if I
were sometimes afraid that the carriage will upset with
me; the rains there for the last three days, drove me to
[pg 175]
despair. The Rhone causes me strange alarm. I have a
map before my eyes—I know all the places where you
sleep. This evening you are at Nevers; on Sunday you
will be at Lyons where you will receive this letter. I
have received only two of yours—perhaps the third will
come; that is the only comfort I desire; as for others, I seek none.”

The letters of Mme. de Sévigné contain a great number
of sayings applicable to habits and conduct, and these
have had their part in shaping the customs and in depicting
the time. To be modest and moderate, friendly, and
conciliatory, to be content with one’s lot and to bow to
circumstances, to be sincere, to cultivate good sense and
good grace—these counsels have been and still are, according
to French opinion, the basis of French character:
and Mme. de Sévigné’s own popularity and success attest their wisdom.

She had not the gift of seeing things vividly and reproducing
them in living form; her talent was a rarer one—it
induced the reader to form a mental picture of the scene
described, so vivid as to be under the illusion of being
present in reality; and this is done with so much grace,
charm, happy ease and naturalness, that to read her letters
means to love the writer. What mother or friend would
not fall a willing victim to the charm of a woman who
could write the following letter?

“You ask me, my dear child, whether I continue to be
really fond of life; I confess to you that I find poignant
sorrows in it, but I am even more disgusted with death;
I feel so wretched at having to end all thereby, that, if I
could turn back again, I would ask for nothing better,
I find myself under an obligation which perplexes me; I
embark upon life without my consent, and so must I go
out of it; that overwhelms me. And how shall I go?
[pg 176]
Which way? By what door? When will it be? In what
condition? Shall I suffer a thousand, thousand pains which
will make me die desperate? Shall I have brain fever?
Shall I die of an accident? How shall I be with God?
What shall I have to show Him? Shall fear, shall necessity
bring me back to Him? Shall I have sentiment except
that of dread? What can I hope? Am I worthy of
heaven? Am I worthy of hell? Nothing is such madness
as to leave one’s salvation in uncertainty, but nothing is
so natural. The stupid life I lead is the easiest thing in the
world to understand; I bury myself in these thoughts and
I find death so terrible that I hate life more because it leads
me thereto, than because of the thorns with which it is
planted. You will say that I want to live forever, then;
not at all; but, if my opinion had been asked, I would have
preferred to die in my nurse’s arms; that would have removed
me from the vexations of spirit and would have
given me heaven full surely and easily.”

Mme. de Sévigné never bored her readers with her own
reflections. She differed from her contemporaries, who
seemed to be dead to nature’s beauty, in her striking descriptions
of nature. A close observer, she knew how to
describe a landscape; animating and enlivening it, and
making it talk, she inspired the reader with love of it.

“I am going to be alone and I am very glad. Provided
they do not take away from me the charming country, the
shore of the Allier, the woods, streams, and meadows,
the sheep and goats, the peasant girls who dance the
bourrée in the fields, I consent to say adieu; the country
alone will cure me…. I have come here to end the
beautiful days and to say adieu to the foliage—it is still
on the trees, it has only changed color; instead of being
green, it is golden, and of so many golden tints that it
makes a brocade of rich and magnificent gold, which we
[pg 177]
are likely to find more beautiful than the green, if only it
were not for the changing part.”

If the style of her letters did not make her the greatest
prose writer of her time, it certainly entitled her to rank
as one of the most original. The prose of the seventeenth
century lacked “easy suppleness in lively movement, and
imagination in the expression”—two qualities which Mme.
de Sévigné possessed in a high degree. The slow and
grave development, the just and harmonious equilibrium,
the amplitude, are in her supplanted by a quick, alert,
and free saillie; the detail and marvellous exactness are
enriched by color, abundance of imagery, and metaphors.
M. Faguet says she is to prose what La Fontaine is to poetry.

The literary style of Mme. de Sévigné is not learned,
studied, nor labored. In an epoch in which the language
was already formed, she did what Montaigne did a century
before, when, we may almost assert, he had to create
the French language. Her most striking expressions are
her own—newly coined, not taken from the vocabulary in
usage. Her style cannot be duplicated, and for this
reason she has few imitators. Her letters show that they
were improvised—her pen doing, alone, the work over
which she seemed to have no control when communicating
with her daughter; to the latter she said: “I write prose
with a facility that will kill you.”

Mme. de Sévigné was possibly not a beautiful woman,
but she was a charming one; broad in the scope of her
affections, she found the making of friends no difficult
task. M. Vallery-Radot leaves the following picture of her:
“A blonde, with exuberant health, a transparent complexion,
blue eyes, so frank, so limpid, a nose somewhat
square, a mouth ready to smile, shoulders that seem to
lend splendor to her pearl necklace. Her gayety and
[pg 178]
goodness are so in evidence that there is about her a kind
of atmosphere of good humor.”

M. du Bled most admirably sums up her character and
writings in the following: “She is the person who most
resembles her writings—that is, those that are found; for
alas! many (the most confidential, the most interesting, I
think) are lost forever: in them she is reflected as she reflects
French society in them. Endowed—morally and
physically—with a robust health, she is expansive, loyal,
confiding, impressionable, loving gayety in full abundance
as much as she does the smile of the refined, as eager for
the prattle of the court as for solid reading, smitten with
nobiliary pride, a captive of the prejudices, superstitions
and tastes of her caste (or of even her coterie), with her
pen hardly tender for her neighbor—her daughter and intimates
excepted. A manager and a woman of imagination,
a Frondist at the bottom of her soul, and somewhat
of a Jansenist—not enough, however, not to cry out that
Louis XIV. will obscure the glory of his predecessors because
he had just danced with her—faithful to her friends
(Retz, Fouquet, Pomponne) in disgrace and detesting
their persecutors, seeking the favor of court for her children.
In the salons, she is celebrated for her esprit—and
this at an age when one seldom thinks about reputation,
when one is like the princess who replied to a question on
the state of her soul, ‘At twenty one has no soul;’ and she
possesses the qualities that are so essential to style—natural éclat,
originality of expression, grace, color, amplitude
without pomposity and abundance without prolixity;
moreover, she invents nothing, but, knowing how to observe
and to express in perfection everything she had seen
and felt, she is a witness and painter of her century: also,
she loves nature—a sentiment very rare in the seventeenth century.”

Mme. de Sévigné was endowed with the best qualities
of the French race—good will and friendliness, which influence
one to judge others favorably and to desire their
esteem; of a very impressionable nature, she was gifted
with a natural eloquence which enabled her to express her
various emotions in a light or gay vein which often bordered
on irony. Affectionate and appreciative and tender and
kind to everyone in general, toward those whom she loved
she was generous to a fault and unswerving in her fidelity.

Her last years were spent in the midst of her family.
She died in 1696, of small-pox, thanking God that she was
the first to go, after having trembled for the life of her
daughter, whom she had nursed back to health after a long
and dangerous illness. Her son-in-law, M. de Grignan,
wrote to her uncle, M. de Coulanges:

“What calls far more for our admiration than for our
regret, is the spectacle of a brave woman facing death—of
which she had no doubt from the first days of her illness—with astounding
firmness and submission. This person, so
tender and so weak towards all whom she loved, showed
nothing but courage and piety when she believed that her
hour had come; and, impressed by the use she managed to
make of that good store in the last moments of her life, we
could not but remark of what utility and of what importance
it is to have the mind stocked with the good matter
and holy reading for which Mme. de Sévigné had a liking—not
to say a wonderful hunger.”

In order to give an idea of the place that Mme. de
Sévigné holds in the opinion of the average Frenchman,
we quote the final words of M. Vallery-Radot:

“To take a place among the greatest writers, without
ever having written a book or even having thought of
writing one—this is what seems impossible, and yet this is
what happened to Mme. de Sévigné. Her contemporaries
[pg 180]
knew her as a woman distinguished for her esprit, frank,
playful and sprightly humor, irreproachable conduct,
loyalty to her friends, and as an idolizer of her daughter;
no one suspected that she would partake of the glory of
our classical authors—and she, less than any one. She
had immortalized herself, without wishing or knowing it,
by an intimate correspondence which is, to-day, universally
regarded as one of the most precious treasures and
one of the most original monuments to French literature.
To deceive the ennui of absence, she wrote to her daughter
all that she had in her heart and that came to her mind—what
she did, wished to do, saw and learned, news of
court, city, Brittany, army, everything—sadly or gayly,
according to the subject, always with the most keen,
ardent, delicate, and touching sentiments of tenderness
and sympathy. She amuses, instructs, interests, moves
to tears or laughter. All that passes within or before her,
passes within and before us. If she depicts an object, we
see it; if she relates an event, we are present at its
occurrence; if she makes a character talk, we hear his
words, see his gestures, and distinguish his accent. All is
true, real, living: this is more than talent—it is enchantment.
Generations pass away in turn; a single one, or,
rather, a group escapes the general oblivion—the group of
friends of Mme. de Sévigné.”

A woman with characteristics the very opposite of those
of Mme. de Sévigné, but who in some respects resembled
her, was Mme. de La Fayette. Of her life, very little
is to be said, except in regard to her lasting friendship
and attachment for La Rochefoucauld. She was born in
1634, and, with Mme. de Sévigné, was probably the best
educated among the great women of the seventeenth century.
She was faithful to her husband, the Count of La
Fayette, who, in 1665, took her to Paris, where she
[pg 181]
formed her lifelong attachment for the great La Rochefoucauld,
and where she won immediate recognition for her
exquisite politeness and as a woman with a large fund of common sense.

After her marriage, she seemed to have but one interest—La
Rochefoucauld, just as that of Mme. de Maintenon
was Louis XIV. and that of Mme. de Sévigné—her
daughter. These three prominent women illustrate remarkably
well that predominant trait of French women—faithfulness
to a chosen cause; each one of the three was
vitally concerned in an enduring, a legitimate, and sincere
attachment, which state of affairs gives a certain distinction
to the society of the time of Louis XIV.

Mme. de La Fayette, like Mme. de Sévigné, possessed
an exceptional talent for making and retaining friends.
She kept aloof from intrigues, in fact, knew nothing about
them, and consequently never schemed to use her favor at
court for purposes of self-interest. Two qualities belonged
to her more than to any of her contemporaries—an instinct
which was superior to her reason, and a love of truth in all things.

Compared with those of Mme. de Rambouillet, it is said
that her attainments were of a more solid nature; and
while Mlle. de Scudéry had greater brilliancy, Mme. de
La Fayette had better judgment. These qualities combined
with an exquisite delicacy, fine sentiment, calmness,
and depth of reason, the very basis of her nature, are
reflected in her works. Sainte-Beuve says that “her
reason and experience cool her passion and temper the
ideal with the results of observation.” She was one of
the very few women playing any rôle in French history
who were endowed with all things necessary to happiness—fortune,
reputation, talent, intimate and ideal friendship.
Extremely sensitive to surroundings, she readily received
[pg 182]
impressions—a gift which was the source of a somewhat doubtful happiness.

In her later days, notwithstanding terrible suffering, she
became more devout and exhibited an admirable resignation.
A letter to Ménage will show the mental and physical
state reached by her in her last days: “Although you
forbid me to write to you, I wish, nevertheless, to tell
you how truly affected I am by your friendship. I appreciate
it as much as when I used to see it; it is dear to me
for its own worth, it is dear to me because it is at present
the only one I have. Time and old age have taken all my
friends away from me…. I must tell you the state
I am in. I am, first of all, a mortal divinity, and to an
excess inconceivable; I have obstructions in my entrails—sad, inexpressible
feelings; I have no spirit, no force—I
cannot read or apply myself. The slightest things affect
me—a fly appears an elephant to me; that is my ordinary
state…. I cannot believe that I can live long in
this condition, and my life is too disagreeable to permit me
to fear the end. I surrender myself to the will of God;
He is the All-Powerful, and, from all sides, we must go to
Him at last. They assure me that you are thinking seriously
of your salvation, and I am very happy over it.”

There probably never existed a more ideal friendship
between two French women, one more lasting, sincere,
perfect in every way, than that of Mme. de Sévigné and
Mme. de La Fayette. The major part of the information we
possess regarding events in the life of Mme. de La Fayette
is obtained from their letters. Said Mme. de Sévigné:
“Never did we have the smallest cloud upon our friendship.
Long habit had not made her merit stale to me—the flavor
of it was always fresh and new. I paid her many attentions,
from the mere promptings of my affection, not because of
the propriety by which, in friendships, we are bound. I was
[pg 183]
assured, too, that I was her dearest consolation—which, for
forty years past, had been the case.”

Shortly before her death, she wrote to Mme. de Sévigné:
“Here is what I have done since I wrote you last. I have
had two attacks of fever; for six months I had not been
purged; I am purged once, I am purged twice; the day
after the second time, I sit down at the table; oh, dear! I
feel a pain in my heart—I do not want any soup. Have
a little meat, then? No, I do not wish any. Well, you
will have some fruit? I think I will. Very well, then,
have some. I don’t know—I think I will have some by
and by. Let me have some soup and some chicken this
evening…. Here is the evening, and there are the
soup and the chicken; I don’t desire them. I am nauseated,
I will go to bed—I prefer sleeping to eating. I go to
bed, I turn round, I turn back, I have no pain, but I have
no sleep either. I call—I take a book—I close it. Day
comes—I get up—I go to the window. It strikes four, five,
six—I go to bed again, I doze until seven, I get up at eight,
I sit down to table at twelve—to no purpose, as yesterday…. I
lay myself down in my bed, in the evening,
to no purpose, as the night before. Are you ill?
Nay, I am in this state for three days and three nights.
At present, I am getting some sleep again, but I still eat
mechanically, horsewise—rubbing my mouth with vinegar.
Otherwise, I am very well, and I haven’t so much as a pain in my head.”

Her depressing melancholy kept her indoors a great
deal; in fact, after 1683, after the death of the queen, who
was one of her best friends, she was seldom seen at court.
Mme. de Sévigné gives good reason for this in her letter:

“She had a mortal melancholy. Again, what absurdity!
is she not the most fortunate woman in the world?
That is what people said; it needed that she should die to
[pg 184]
prove that she had good reason for not going out and for
being melancholy. Her reins and her heart were all gone—was
not that enough to cause those fits of despondency
of which she complained? And so, during her life she
showed reason, and after death she showed reason, and
never was she without that divine reason which was her principal gift.”

Her liaison with La Rochefoucauld is the one delicate
and tender point in her life, a relation that afforded her
much happiness and finally completed the ruin of her
health. M. d’Haussonville said: “It is true that he took
possession of her soul and intellect, little by little, so that
the two beings, in the eyes of their contemporaries, were
but one; for after his death (1680) she lived but an incomplete
and mutilated existence.”

Some critics have ventured to pronounce this liaison one
of material love solely, others are convinced of its morality
and pure friendship. In favor of the latter view, M.
d’Haussonville suggests the fact that Mme. de La Fayette
was over thirty years of age when she became interested
in La Rochefoucauld, and that at that age women rarely
ally themselves with men from emotions of physical love
merely. At that age it is reason that mutually attracts
two beings; and this feeling was probably the predominant
one in that case, because her entire career was one of the
most extreme reserve, conservatism, good sense, and propriety.
However, other proofs are brought forward to
show that there was between the two a sort of moral
marriage, so many examples of which are found in the
seventeenth century between people of prominence, both
of whom happened to have unhappy conjugal experiences.

French society, one must remember, was different from
any in the world; it seems to have been a large family
gathering, the members of which were as intimate, took
[pg 185]
as much interest in each other’s affairs, showed as much
sympathy for one another and participated in each other’s
sorrows and pleasures, as though they were children of the same parents.

In his early days, La Rochefoucauld found it convenient,
for selfish purposes, to simulate an ardent passion for
Mme. de Longueville, of which mention has been made in
the chapter relating to Mme. de Longueville. In his later
period, he had settled down to a normal mode of life and
sought the friendship of a more reasonable and less passionate
woman. He himself said:

“When women have well-informed minds, I like their
conversation better than that of men; you find, with them,
a certain gentleness which is not met with among us; and
it seems to me, besides, that they express themselves with
greater clearness and that they give a more pleasant turn
to the things they say.”

Mme. de La Fayette exercised a great influence upon
La Rochefoucauld—an influence that was wholesome in
every way. It was through her influential friends at court
that he was helped into possession of his property, and it
was she who maintained it for him. As to his literary
work (his Maxims), her influence over him was supposed
to have somewhat modified his ideas on women and to
have softened his tone in general. She wrote: “He gave
me wit, but I reformed his heart.” M. d’Haussonville has
proved, without doubt, that her restraint modified many
of his maxims that were tinged with the spirit of the
commonplace and trivial. While Mme. de Sablé—essentially
a moralist and a deeply religious woman—was more
of a companion to him, and though his maxims were, for
the greater part, composed in her salon, Mme. de La Fayette,
by her tenderness and judgment, tempered the tone
of them before they reached the public.

Mme. de La Fayette will always be known, however,
as the great novelist of the seventeenth century. Two
novels, two stories, two historical works, and her memoirs,
make up her literary budget. M. d’Haussonville claims
that her memoirs of the court of France are not reliable,
because she was so often absent from court; also, in them
she shows a tendency to avenge herself, in a way, upon
Mme. de Maintenon, whose friend she was until the trouble
between this lady and Mme. de Montespan occurred. The
latter was the intimate friend of Mme. de La Fayette. As
for her literary work proper, her desire to write was possibly
encouraged, if not created, by her indulgence in the
general fad of writing portraitures, in which she was especially
successful in portraying Mme. de Sévigné. Her
literary effort was, besides, a revolt of her own taste and
sense against the pompous and inflated language of the
novels of the day and against the great length of the development
of the events and adventures in them. Thus,
Mme. de La Fayette inaugurated a new style of novel; to
show her influence, it will be well to consider the state of
the Romanesque novel at the period of her writing.

In the beginning of the century, D’Urfé’s novels were
in vogue; these works were characterized by interminable
developments, relieved by an infinite number of historical
episodes. All characters, shepherds as well as noblemen,
expressed the same sentiments and in the same language.
There was no pretension to truth in the portraying of
manners and customs.—A reaction was natural and took
the form of either a kind of parody or gross realism.
These novels, of which Francion and Berger Extravagant
were the best known, depicted shepherds of the Merovingian
times, heroes of Persia and Rome, or procurers,
scamps, and scoundrels; but no descriptions of the manners
of decent people (honnêtes gens) were to be found.

The novels of Mlle. de Scudéry, while interesting as
portraitures, are not thoroughly reliable in their representation
of the sentiments and environment of the times; on
the other hand, those of Mme. de La Fayette are impersonal—no
one of the characters is recognizable; yet their
atmosphere is that of the court of Louis XIV., and the
language, never so correct as to be unnatural, is that used
at the time. Her novels reflect perfectly the society of
the court and the manner of life there. “Thus,” says
M. d’Haussonville, “she was the first to produce a novel
of observation and sentiment, the first to paint elegant
manners as they really were.”

Her first production was La Princesse de Montpensier
(1662); in 1670, appeared Zayde, it was ostensibly the
work of Segrais, her teacher and a writer much in vogue
at the time; in 1678, La Princesse de Clèves, her masterpiece,
stirred up one of the first real quarrels of literary
criticism. For a long time after the appearance of that
book, society was divided into two classes—the pros and
the cons. It was the most popular work of the period.

M. d’Haussonville says it is the first French novel which
is an illustration of woman’s ability to analyze the most
subtile of human emotions. Mme. de La Fayette was,
also, the first to elevate, in literature, the character of the
husband who, until then, was a nonentity or a booby; she
makes of him a hero—sympathetic, noble, and dignified.

In no fictitious tale before hers was love depicted with
such rare delicacy and pathos. In her novel, La Princesse
de Clèves, “a novel of a married woman, we feel the
woman who has loved and who knows what she is saying,
for she, also, has struggled and suffered.” The writer
confesses her weakness and leaves us witness of her
virtue. All the soul struggles and interior combats represented
in her work the authoress herself has experienced.
[pg 188]
As an example of this we cite the description of the sentiments
of Mme. de Clèves when she realizes that her feeling
toward one of the members of the court may develop
into an emotion unworthy of her as a wife. She falls upon her knees and says:

“I am here to make to you a confession such as has
never been made to man; but the innocence of my conduct
and my intentions give me the necessary courage. It is
true that I have reasons for desiring to withdraw from
court, and that I wish to avoid the perils which persons of
my age experience. I have never shown a sign of weakness,
and I would not fear of ever showing any, if you
permitted me to withdraw from court, or if I still had, in
my efforts to do right, the support of Mme. de Chartres.
However dangerous may be the action I take, I take it
with pleasure, that I may be worthy of your actions, I
ask a thousand pardons; if I have sentiments displeasing
to you, I shall at least never displease you by my actions.
Remember, to do what I am doing, one must have for a
husband more friendship and esteem than was ever before
had. Have pity on me and lead me away—-and love me still, if you can.”

La Princesse de Clèves is a novel of human virtue purely,
and teaches that true virtue can find its reward in itself
and in the austere enjoyment of duty accomplished. “It
is a work that will endure, and be a comfort as well as a
guide to those who aspire to a high morality which necessitates
a difficult sacrifice.”

M. d’Haussonville regards the novels of Mmes. de Charrière,
de Souza, de Duras, de Boigne, as mere imitations
or as having been inspired by that masterpiece of Mme. de
La Fayette. He says: “In fact, novels in general, that
depict the struggle between passion and duty, with the victory
on the side of virtue, emanate more or less from it.”

Taine wrote: “She described the events in the careers
of society women, introducing no special terms of language
into her descriptions. She painted for the sake of painting
and did not think of attempting to surpass her predecessors.
She reflects a society whose scrupulous care was to
avoid even the slightest appearance of anything that might
displease or shock. She shows the exquisite tact of a
woman—and a woman of high rank.”

Mme. de La Fayette is one of the very rare French
writers that have succeeded in analyzing love, passion,
and moral duty, without becoming monotonous, vulgar,
brutal, or excessively realistic. Her creations contain the
most minute analyses of heart and soul emotions, but
these never become purely physiologic and nauseating, as
in most novels. This achievement on her part has been
too little imitated, but it, alone, will preserve the name of
Mme. de La Fayette.

Mme. de Motteville is deserving of mention among the
important literary women of the seventeenth century.
She is regarded as one of the best women writers in
French literature, and her memoirs are considered authority
on the history of the Fronde and of Anne of Austria.
The poetry of Mme. des Houlières was for a long time
much in vogue; to-day, however, it is not read. The
memoirs of Mlle. de Montpensier are more occupied with
herself than with events of the time or the numerous
princes who tarried about her as longing lovers. Guizot
says: “She was so impassioned and haughty, with her
head so full of her own greatness, that she did not marry
in her youth, thinking no one worthy of her except the
king and the emperor, and they had no fancy for her.”
The following portrait of her was sketched by herself:

“I am tall, neither fat nor thin, of a very fine and easy
figure. I have a good mien, arms and hands not beautiful,
[pg 190]
but a beautiful skin—and throat, too. I have a straight
leg and a well-shaped foot; my hair is light and of a beautiful
auburn; my face is long, its contour is handsome,
nose large and aquiline; mouth neither large nor small,
but chiselled and with a very pleasing expression; lips
vermilion, not fine, but not frightful, either; my eyes are
blue, neither large nor small, but sparkling, soft, and proud
like my mien. I talk a great deal, without saying silly
things or using bad words. I am a very vicious enemy,
being very choleric and passionate, and that, added to my
birth, may well make my enemies tremble; but I have,
also, a noble and kindly soul. I am incapable of any
base and black deed; and so I am more disposed to
mercy than to justice. I am melancholic, and fond of
reading good and solid books; trifles bore me—except
verses, and them I like, of whatever sort they may be;
and undoubtedly I am as good a judge of such things as if I were a scholar.”

Possibly the greatest female scholar that France ever
produced was Mme. Dacier, a truly learned woman and
one of whom French women are proud; during her last
years she enjoyed the reputation of being one of the foremost
scholars of all Europe. It was Mme. de Lambert who wrote of her:

“I esteem Mme. Dacier infinitely. Our sex owes her
much; she has protested against the common error which
condemns us to ignorance. Men, as much from disdain as
from a fancied superiority, have denied us all learning;
Mme. Dacier is an example proving that we are capable
of learning. She has associated erudition and good manners;
for, at present, modesty has been displaced; shame
is no longer for vices, and women blush over their learning
only. She has freed the mind, held captive under this
prejudice, and she alone supports us in our rights.”

Tanneguy-Lefèvre, the father of Mme. Dacier, was a
savant and a type of the scholars of the sixteenth century.
He brought up his sons to be like him—instructing them
in Greek, Latin, and antiquities. The young daughter,
present at all the lessons given to her brothers, acquired,
unaided, a solid education; her father, amazed at her marvellous
faculty for comprehending and remembering, soon
devoted most of his energy to her. He was, at that time,
professor at the College of Saumur; and he was conspicuous
not only for the liberty he exhibited in his pedagogical
duties, but for his general catholicity.

After the death of her father, the young daughter went
to Paris where her family friends, Chapelain and Huet,
encouraged her in her studies, the latter, who was assistant
preceptor to the dauphin, even going so far as to request her
to assist him in preparing the Greek text for the use of
the dauphin. She soon eclipsed all scholars of the time by
her illuminating studies of Greek authors and of the quality
of the new editions which she prepared of their works, but
she was continually pestered on account of her erudition
and her religion, the Protestant faith, to which she clung
while realizing that it had been the cause of the failure of
her father’s advancement.

From that time appeared her famous series of translations
of Terence and Plautus, which were the delight of
the women of the period and which gave her the reputation
of being the most intellectual woman of the seventeenth
century. In 1635, when nearly thirty years of
age, she married M. Dacier, the favorite pupil of her
father, librarian to the king and translator of Plutarch—a
man of no means, but one who thoroughly appreciated
the worth of Mlle. Lefèvre. This union was spoken
of by her contemporaries as “the marriage of Greek and Latin.”

Two years after their marriage, after long and serious
deliberation, both abjured Protestantism, adopted the Catholic
religion, and succeeded in converting the whole town of
Castres—an act which gained them royal favor, and
Louis XIV. granted them a pension of two thousand livres.
Sainte-Beuve states that their conversion was perfectly
sincere and conscientious. In all their subsequent works
were seen traces of Mme. Dacier’s powerful intellect,
which was much superior to that of her husband. Boileau
said: “In their production of esprit, it is Mme. Dacier who
is the father.”

Besides her translations of the plays of Plautus, all of
Terence, the Clouds and Plutus of Aristophanes, she published her
translation of the Iliad and Odyssey
(1711-1716), which gave her a prominent place in the history of French
literature, especially as it appeared at the time of the
“quarrels of the ancients and moderns,” which concerned
the comparative merits of ancient and modern literature.

Mme. Dacier thoroughly appreciated the grandeur of
Homer and knew the almost insurmountable difficulties
of a translation; therefore, when in 1714 the Iliad appeared
in verse (in twelve songs by La Motte-Houdart),
preceded by a discourse on Homer, in which the author
announced that his aim was to purify and embellish Homer
by ridding him “of his barbarian crudeness, his uncivil
familiarities, and his great length,” the ire of Mme. Dacier
was aroused, and in defence of her god she wrote her
famous Des Causes de la Corruption du Goût (Causes of
the Corruption of Taste), a long defence of Homer, to
which La Motte replied in his Réflexions de la Critique
This rekindled the whole controversy, and sides were immediately formed.

Mme. Dacier was not politic; although she sustained
her ideas well and displayed much erudition and depth of
[pg 193]
reason, she is said to have injured her cause by the violence
of her polemic. Her immoderate tone and bitter
assaults upon the elegant and discerning favorite only
detracted from his opponent’s favor and grace. Voltaire
said: “You could say that the work of M. de La Motte was
that of a woman of esprit, while that of Mme. Dacier was of
a homme savant. He translated the Iliad very poorly, but attacked
very well.” Mme. Dacier’s translation remained
a standard for two centuries. She and her adversary became
reconciled at a dinner given by M. de Valincour for
the friends of both parties; upon that festive occasion,
“they drank to the health of Homer, and all was well.”

Mme. Dacier died in 1720. “She was a savante only in
her study or when with savants; otherwise, she was unaffected
and agreeable in conversation, from the character
of which one would never have suspected her of knowing
more than the average woman.” She was an incessant
worker and had little time for social life; in the evening,
after having worked all morning, she received visits from
the literary men of France; and, to her credit may it be
added, amid all her literary work, she never neglected her
domestic and maternal duties.

A woman of an entirely different type from that of
Mme. Dacier, one who fitly closes the long series of great
and brilliant women of the age of Louis XIV., who only
partly resembles them and yet does not quite take on the
faded and decadent coloring of the next age, was Mme. de
Caylus, the niece of Mme. de Maintenon. It was she
who, partly through compulsion, partly of her own free
will, undertook the rearing of the young and beautiful
Marthe-Marguerite de Villette. Mme. de Maintenon was
then at the height of her power, and naturally her beautiful,
clever, and witty niece was soon overwhelmed by
proposals of marriage from the greatest nobles of France.
[pg 194]
To one of these, M. de Boufflers, Mme. de Maintenon replied:
“My niece is not a sufficiently good match for you.
However, I am not insensible to the honor you pay me;
I shall not give her to you, but in the future I shall consider you my nephew.”

She then married the innocent young girl to the Marquis
de Caylus, a debauched, worthless reprobate—a union
whose only merit lay in the fact that her niece could thus
remain near her at court. At the latter place, her beauty,
gayety, and caustic wit, her adaptable and somewhat superficial
character and her freedom of manners and speech, did
not fail to attract many admirers. Her frankness in expressing
her opinions was the source of her disgrace; Louis XIV.
took her at her word when she exclaimed, in speaking of
the court: “This place is so dull that it is like being in
exile to live here,” and forbade her to appear again in the
place she found so tiresome. Those rash words cost her
an exile of thirteen years, and only through good behavior,
submission, and piety was she permitted to return.

She appeared at a supper given by the king, and, by the
brilliancy of her beauty and esprit, she attracted everyone
present and soon regained her former favor and friends.
From that time she was the constant companion of Mme.
de Maintenon, until the king’s death, when she returned
to Paris; at that place her salon became an intellectual
centre, and there the traditions of the seventeenth century were perpetuated.

Sainte-Beuve said that Mme. de Caylus perfectly exemplified
what was called urbanity—”politeness in speech
and accent as well as in esprit.” In her youth she was
famous for her extraordinary acting in the performance,
at Saint-Cyr, of Racine’s Esther. Mme. de Sévigné wrote:
“It is Mme. de Caylus who makes Esther.” Her brief and
witty Souvenirs (Memoirs), showing marvellous finesse in
[pg 195]
the art of portraiture, made her name immortal. M. Saint-Amand
describes her work thus:

“Her friends, enchanted by her lively wit, had long
entreated her to write—not for the public, but for them—the
anecdotes which she related so well. Finally, she
acquiesced, and committed to paper certain incidents, certain
portraits. What a treasure are these Souvenirs—so
fluently written, so unpretentious, with neither dates nor
chronological order, but upon which, for more than a century,
all historians have drawn! How much is contained
in this little book which teaches more in a few lines than
interminable works do in many volumes! How feminine
it is, and how French! One readily understands Voltaire’s
liking for these charming Souvenirs. Who, than Mme. de
Caylus, ever better applied the famous precept: ‘Go
lightly, mortals; don’t bear too hard.'”

She belonged to that class of spontaneous writers who
produce artistic works without knowing it, just as M. Jourdain
wrote prose, and who do not even suspect that they
possess that chief attribute of literary style—naturalness.
What pure, what ready wit! What good humor, what unconstraint,
what delightful ease! What a series of charming
portraits, each more lifelike, more animated, still better
than all the others! “These little miniatures—due to the
brush of a woman of the world—are better worth studying
than is many a picture or fresco.”

Chapter VII

Woman in Religion

The entire religious agitation of the seventeenth century
was due to women. Port-Royal was the centre from
which issued all contention—the centre where all subjects
were discussed, where the most important books were
written or inspired, where the genius of that great century
centred; and it was to Port-Royal that the greatest women
of France went, either to find repose for their souls or to
visit the noble members of their sex who had consecrated
their lives to God—Mère Angélique, Jacqueline Pascal.
Never in the history of the world had a religious sect or
party gathered within its fold such an array of great minds,
such a number of fearless and determined heroines and
esprits d’élite. A short account of this famous convent
must precede any story of its members.

The original convent, Port-Royal des Champs, near
Versailles, was founded as early as 1204, by Mathieu of
Montmorency and his wife, for the Cistercian nuns who
had the privileges of electing their abbess and of receiving
into their community ladies who, tired of the social
world, wished to retire to a religious asylum, without,
however, being bound by any religious vows. Later on,
the sisters were permitted to receive, also, young ladies of the nobility.

These privileges were used to such advantage that the
institution acquired great wealth; and through its boarders,
some of whom belonged to the most important families
of France, it became influential to an almost incalculable
degree. For four centuries this convent had been developing
liberal tendencies and gradually falling away from
its primitive austerity, when, in 1605, Sister Angélique
Arnauld became abbess and undertook a thorough reform.
So great was her success in this direction that, after having
effected similar changes at the Convent of Maubuisson
and then returned to Port-Royal des Champs, the latter
became so crowded that new and more commodious quarters had to be obtained.

The immense and beautiful Hôtel de Cluny, at Paris,
was procured, and a portion of the community moved
thither, establishing an institution which became the best
known and most popular of those French convents which
were patronized by women of distinction. The old abbey
buildings near Versailles were later occupied by a community
of learned and pious men who were, for the most part,
pupils of the celebrated Abbé of Saint-Cyran, who, with
Jansenius, was living at Paris at the time that Mère Angélique
was perfecting her reforms; she, attracted by the
ascetic life led by the abbé, fell under his influence, and
the whole Arnauld family, numbering about thirty, followed her example.

Soon “the nuns at Paris, with their numerous and
powerful connections, and the recluses at Port-Royal des
Champs, together with their pupils and the noble or
wealthy families to which the latter belonged, were imbued
with the new doctrines of which they became apostles.”
The primary aim was to live up to a common ideal
of Christian perfection, and to react against the general
corruption by establishing thoroughly moral schools and
[pg 201]
publishing works denouncing, in strong terms, the glaring
errors of the time, the source of which was considered, by
both the Abbé of Saint-Cyran and Jansenius, to lie in the
Jesuit Colleges and their theology. Thus was evolved a
system of education in every way antagonistic to that of the Jesuits.

At this time the convent at Paris became so crowded
that Mère Angélique withdrew to the abbey near Versailles,
the occupants of which retired to a neighboring
farm, Les Granges; there was opened a seminary for females,
which soon attracted the daughters of the nobility.
An astounding literary and agricultural activity resulted,
both at the abode of the recluses and at the seminary: by
the recluses were written the famous Greek and Latin
grammars, and by the nuns, the famous Memoirs of the
History of Port-Royal and the Image of the Perfect and
Imperfect Sister; a model farm was cultivated, and here the
peasants were taught improved methods of tillage. During
the time of the civil wars the convent became a resort
where charity and hospitality were extended to the poor peasants.

“The mode of life at Port-Royal was distinguished for
austerity. The inmates rose at three o’clock in the morning,
and, after the common prayer, kissed the ground as a
sign of their self-humiliation before God. Then, kneeling,
they read a chapter from the Gospels and one from the
Epistles, concluding with another prayer. Two hours in
the morning and a like number in the afternoon were devoted
to manual labor in the gardens adjoining the convent;
they observed, with great strictness, the season of
Lent.” Their theories and practices, and especially their
sympathy with Jansenius, whose work Mars Gallicus attacked
the French government and people, aroused the
suspicions of Richelieu. When in 1640 the Port-Royalists
[pg 202]
openly and enthusiastically received the famous work,
Augustinus, of Jansenius, the government became the declared
opponent of the convent. Saint-Cyran had been
imprisoned in 1638, and not until after the death of Richelieu,
in 1642, was he liberated. After the appearance, in
1643, of Arnauld’s De la Fréquente Communion, in which
he attacked the Jesuits for admitting the people to the
Lord’s Supper without due preparation, two parties formed—the
Jesuits, supported by the Sorbonne and the government,
and the Port-Royalists, supported by Parliament
and illustrious persons, such as Mme. de Longueville.

In 1644, the nuns were dispersed by order of Louis XIV.,
against whose despotic caprices two Jansenist bishops had
fought in support of the rights of the pope. The Paris
convent remained closed until 1669, when it and the one
at Chevreuse, near Versailles were made independent of
each other, a proceeding which resulted in the two institutions
becoming opponents. In 1708 the Convent of Port-Royal
des Champs was suppressed, and, a year later, the
beautiful and once prosperous community was destroyed,
the buildings being levelled to the ground. In 1780 the
Paris convent was abolished; five years later the structure
was converted into a hospital, and in 1814 it became the
lying-in asylum of La Maternité.

In those two convents, which were practically one, was
fomented and developed the entire religious movement of
the seventeenth century, to which period belong the general
study and development of theology, metaphysics, and
morality. Such great, good, and brilliant women as the
Countess of Maure, Mlle. de Vandy, Anne de Rohan,
Mme. de Brégy, Mme. de Hautefort, Mme. de Longueville,
Mme. de Sévigné, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mme.
de Sablé were inmates of Port-Royal, or its friends and constant visitors.

Port-Royal may have been the cause of the civil war
waged by the Frondists against the government. It did
bring on the struggle between the Jesuits, who were all-powerful
in the Church, and the Jansenists. The latter
denied the doctrine of free will, and taught the absolutism
of religion, the “terrible God,” the powerlessness of kings
and princes before God—a doctrine which brought down
upon them the wrath of Louis XIV., for whom their notion
of virtue was too severe, their use of the Gospel too excessive,
and their Christianity impossible.

In its purest form, Port-Royalism was a return to the
sanctity of the primitive church—an attempt at the use, in
French, of the whole body of Scriptures and the writings
of the Church Fathers; it aimed to maintain a vigorous
religious reaction in the shape of a reform, and that reform
was vigorously opposed by the Catholic Church.

One family that is associated with Port-Royal gave to
its cause no less than six sisters; the latter all belonged
to the Convent of Port-Royal and were attached to the
Jansenist party; of them, the Archbishop of Paris said that
they were “as pure as angels, but as proud as devils.”
They were related to the one great Arnauld family,
of which Antoine and his three sons—Robert, Henri, and
the younger Antoine, called “the great Antoine”—were
illustrious champions of Port-Royal.

Marie Jacqueline Angélique, the oldest among the three
abbesses, was born in 1591, and, at the early age of fourteen,
was made abbess of Port-Royal des Champs; it was
she who, after having instituted successful reforms at Port-Royal,
was sent to reform the system of the Abbey of
Maubuisson, thus initiating the important movement which
later involved almost all France. She became convinced
that she had not been lawfully elected abbess and resigned,
securing, however, a provision which made the
[pg 204]
election of abbesses a triennial event. To her belongs
the honor of having made Port-Royal anew. She was a
woman capable of every sacrifice,—a wonderful type in
which were blended candor, pride, and submission,—and
she exhibited indomitable strength of will and earnest zeal for her cause.

Her sister, Agnes, but three years younger than Marie,
also entered the convent, and, at the age of fifteen, was
made mistress of the novices; during the absence of her
sister, at Maubuisson, she was at the head of the convent;
from that time, she governed Port-Royal alternately with
her sister, for twenty-seven years. Her work, The Secret
Chapter of the Sacrament, was suppressed at Rome, but
without bringing formal censure upon her.

The last of those great abbesses was Mère Angélique,
who lived through the most troublous and critical times of
Port-Royal (1624 to 1684). At the age of twenty she
became a nun, having been reared in the convent by her
aunt, Marie, who was the most perfect disciple of Saint-Cyran.
Mère Angélique was especially conspicuous for
her obstinacy, and when the nuns were forced to accept
the formulary of Pope Alexander VI., she, alone, was excepted,
because of that well known characteristic. Upon
the reopening of Port-Royal (in 1689), her powerful protectress,
Mme. de Longueville, died and the persecutions
were renewed; Mère Angélique endeavored to avert the
storm, but all in vain; amidst her efforts, she collapsed.
She was also a writer, her Memoirs of the History of Port
Royal being the most valuable history of that institution.

Thus, about those three women is formed the religious
movement which involved both the development of religious
liberty, free will, and morality, and of the philosophical
literature of the century—a century which boasts such
writers and theologians as Nicole, Pascal, Racine, etc.

The mission of Port-Royal seems to have been preparation
of souls for the struggles of life, teaching how to
resist oppression or to bear it with courage, and how, for
a righteous cause, to brave everything, not only the persecutions
of power—violence, prison, exile,—but the ruses
of hypocrisy and the calumny of opposing opinion. The
Port-Royalist nun combated and taught how to combat;
she lacked humility, but possessed an abundance of courage
which often bordered upon passion.

One of the most pathetic and striking illustrations of
the fervent devotion which was a characteristic product
of Port-Royal, is supplied by Jacqueline Pascal, sister of
the great Blaise Pascal. Young, spirituelle, very much
sought after and the idol of brilliant companions, at the
age of twenty-six she abandoned the world to devote herself
to God. At thirty-six years of age she died of sorrow
and remorse for having signed an equivocal formulary
of Pope Alexander VI., “through pure deference to the
authority of her superiors.” The papal decision concerning
Jansenius’s book, already mentioned, was drawn up
in a formula “turned with some skill, and in such a way
that subscription did not bind the conscience; however, the
nuns of Port-Royal refused to sign.” Jacqueline Pascal wrote:

“That which hinders us, what hinders all the ecclesiastics
who recognize the truth from replying when the
formulary is presented to them to subscribe is: I know
the respect I owe the bishops, but my conscience does not
permit me to subscribe that a thing is in a book in which
I have not seen it—and after that, wait for what will
happen. What have we to fear? Banishment and dispersion
for the nuns, seizure of temporalities, imprisonment,
and death if you will; but is not that our glory and
should it not be our joy? Let us either renounce the
[pg 206]
Gospel or faithfully follow the maxims of that Gospel and
deem ourselves happy to suffer somewhat for righteousness’
sake. I know that it is not for daughters to defend
the truth, though, unfortunately, one might say that since
the bishops have the courage of daughters, the daughters
must have the courage of bishops; but, if it is not for us
to defend the truth, it is for us to die for the truth and to
suffer everything rather than abandon it.”

She subscribed, “divided between her instinctive repugnance
and her desire to show herself an humble daughter
of the Catholic Church.” She said: “It is all we can
concede; for the rest, come what may,—poverty, dispersion,
imprisonment, death,—all those seem to me nothing
in comparison with the anguish in which I should pass the
remainder of my life, if I had been wretch enough to make
a covenant with death on the occasion of so excellent an
opportunity for proving to God the sincerity of the vows
of fidelity which our lips have pronounced.” According
to Mme. Périer, the health of the writer of the above
epistle was so undermined by the shock which all that
commotion had caused her, that she became dangerously
ill, dying soon after. Thus was sacrificed the first victim of the formulary.

Cousin says that few women of the seventeenth century
were as brilliantly endowed as Jacqueline Pascal; possessing
the finesse, energy, and sobriety of her brother, she
was capable of the most serious work, and yet knew perfectly
how to lead in a social circle. Also, she was most
happily gifted with a talent for poetry, in relation to which
her reputation was everywhere recognized; at the convent,
she consulted her superiors as to the advisability of
continuing her verse making; and upon being told that
such occupation was not a means of winning the grace of
Jesus Christ, she abandoned it.

Cousin maintained that the avowed principle of the
Port-Royalists was the withdrawal from all worldly pleasure
and attachment. “‘Marriage is a homicide; absolute
renunciation is the true régime of a Christian.’ Jacqueline
Pascal is an exaggeration of Port-Royal, and Port-Royal is
an exaggeration of the religious spirit of the seventeenth
century. Man is too little considered; all movement of
the physical world comes from God; all our acts and
thoughts, except those of crime and error, come from and
belong to Him. Nothing is our own; there is no free will;
will and reason have no power. The theory of grace is
the source of all truth, virtue, and merit—and for this
doctrine Jacqueline Pascal gives up her life.”

Among the great spirits of Port-Royal, the women especially
were strong in their convictions and high in their
ideals. They naturally followed the ideas of man and
naturally fell into religious errors; but their firmness, constancy,
and heroism were striking indeed. Their aspiration
was the imitation of Christ, and they approached
their model as near as ever was done by man. In an age
of courtesans, when convictions were subservient to the
pleasure of power, they set a worthy example of strength
of mind, firmness of will, purity, and womanliness. M. du Bled says:

“Port-Royal was the enterprise of the middle-class aristocracy
of France; you can see here an anticipated attempt
of a sort of superior third estate to govern for itself in the
Church and to establish a religion not Roman, not aristocratic
and of the court, not devout in the manner of the
simple people, but freer from vain images and ceremonies,
and freer, also, as to the temporal in the face of worldly
authority—a sober, austere, independent religion which
would have truly founded a Gallican reform. The illusion
was in thinking that they could continue to exist in Rome—that
[pg 208]
Richelieu and Louis XIV. would tolerate the boldness of this attempt.”

A celebrated woman of the seventeenth century, one
who really belongs to the circle of Mme. de Longueville
and Mme. de La Fayette, but who early in life, like Mme.
de Longueville, devoted herself to religion and retired to
live at Port-Royal, and is therefore more intimately associated
with the religious movement, was Mme. de Sablé, a
type of the social-religious woman.

Mme. de Sablé is a heroine of Cousin, whom we closely
follow in this account of her career. According to that
writer, she is a type of the purely social woman, a woman
who did less for herself than for others, in aiding whom
she took delight, a woman who was the inspiration of
many writers and many works.

Mlle. de Souvré married the wealthy Marquis of Sablé,
of the house of Montmorency, of whom little is known.
He soon abandoned her; and she, most unhappy over
unworthy rivals, fell very ill, retired from society for
a time, and then reappeared; her career as a society
woman then began. At an early age, by force of her
decided taste for the high form of Spanish gallantry,
then so much in vogue, and her inclination to all things
intellectual, she became one of the leaders of the Hôtel de
Rambouillet. She, Mmes. de Sévigné, de Longueville,
and de La Fayette formed that circle of women who idealized friendship.

Within a few years she lost her father, husband, two of
her brothers, and her second son; and after putting her
financial affairs into order, she and her friend, the Countess
of Maure, took up their quarters at the famous Place
Royale; there they decided to devote their lives to letters,
and there assembled their friends, men and women, regardless
of rank or party, personal merit being the only
[pg 209]
means of access. Mmes. de Sablé and de Rambouillet
were called the arbiters of elegance and good taste.

To her friends, Mme. de Sablé was always accommodating
and showed no partiality; well informed, she was
constantly approached for counsel and favors; discreet and
trustworthy, the most important secrets were intrusted to
her—a confidence which she never betrayed. During the
Fronde she remained faithful to the queen and Mazarin,
but did not become estranged from her friends, so many
of whom were Frondists, and who chose her as their
counsellor, arbitrator, and pacifier.

About 1655 she began to realize her unsettled position
in the world and to long for a place where she might,
modestly and becomingly, spend her declining years. She
was then fifty-five years of age. The ideas of Jansenism
had so impressed the great people of the day, that she decided
to retire to Port-Royal, to end her days with sympathizers
of the spiritual life around her and her former
friends whenever she desired them. There she gathered
about her the most exclusive and aristocratic people of the
day: La Rochefoucauld, the Prince and Princess of Conti,
Condé, Monsieur,—brother of Louis XIV.,—Mme. de La
Fayette, Mme. de Hautefort, and others.

At her apartments, not only were religious and literary
affairs discussed, but the most delicate and delicious dishes
were prepared and elixirs and remedies for disease compounded.
Famous people were led to seek her, through
her reputation and influence, and through friendship, for
she seldom left her house. Mme. de Sablé possessed all
the qualities that attract and hold, nothing extraordinary
or rare, but abundant politeness and elegance.

It was not long before she began to withdraw from even
her friends, still continuing, however, her fine cuisine, the
remarkable care of her health, and her medical experiments.
[pg 210]
Her dinners became celebrated, and invitations to them were
much in demand; about them there were no signs of opulence,
but her gatherings were distinguished for refinement
and taste. Her friends were constantly asking her
for her recipes, of the preparation of which no one but herself knew the secret.

At the salon of Mme. de Sablé originated many famous
literary works, such as the Conférences sur le Calvinisme,
works on Cartesian philosophy, the Logique de Port-Royal,
Questions sur l’Amour, Les Maximes, etc. She will be
remembered as the initiator of many maxims, in the composition
of which she excelled. A number of her sayings
concerning friendship have been preserved. Two treatises,
in the form of maxims, on the education of children and on
friendship, respectively, are supposed to have come from
her pen; from them La Rochefoucauld conceived the ideas
he utilized in his famous Maxims.

La Rochefoucauld’s maxims were composed according
to the chance of conversation, which gave rise to various
subjects and led to his serious reflection upon them.
Cousin even goes so far as to say that the Pensées of
Pascal would never have been published in that form had
not the Maxims enjoyed such favor. Pascal often visited
Port-Royal and naturally followed the general reflective
tendency of its society. His Discours sur les Passions de
l’Amour possibly originated at the salon of Mme. de Sablé,
because the subject of which that work treated was one
much discussed there. La Rochefoucauld was in the habit
of sending his maxims to Mme. de Sablé with the message:
“As you do nothing for nothing, I ask of you a carrot soup or mutton stew.”

When La Rochefoucauld entered the society of Mme.
de Sablé, he had seen much of life, was familiar with
most of the adventures and intrigues of the Fronde and
[pg 211]
the society of the time; he himself had acted his part in
all, and at the age of fifty was ready to put his experience
into a permanent form of reflection. His Maxims created
a stir, through the clearness and elegance of their character,
their fine analyses of man as he was in the seventeenth
century, and through their truthfulness and general
applicability to men of every country. From all the illustrious
women of the day, either he or Mme. de Sablé
received letters of criticism or suggestion—eulogies and
condemnations of which he took notice in his next edition.
This shows the intense interest felt in the appearance of
any new literary production.

Cousin says that the whole literature of maxims and
reflections issued directly from the salon of a kind and good
woman who had retired to a convent with no other desire
than to live over her life, to recall her past and what she
had seen and felt therein; and upon her society, that
woman impressed her own tastes, elegance, and seriousness.
Her great act of benevolence was her protection of
Port-Royal. When, after the death in 1661 of Mother
Angélique Arnauld, that institution became the object of
persecution and its tenants were either imprisoned or compelled
to seek refuge in the various families of Paris, Mme.
de Sablé remained faithful to its principles; she lived with
her friends, Mme. de Longueville and Mme. de Montausier,
until 1669, when, with the coöperation of Mme. de Longueville,
who exerted all her influence for Port-Royal, she
finally succeeded in bringing about its reopening. At least,
Cousin ascribes this result to Mme. de Sablé, but he may
have somewhat exaggerated her influence in this respect.
From her retreat at Port-Royal, she kept up a constant
correspondence with her friends all over France; she lived
there until 1678, with but one intimate friend, Mme. de Longueville.

Mme. de Sablé had remarkable gifts; her mission in
politics, religion, and literature seems to have been to
excite to action, to stimulate and to bring out to its fullest
value, the talents and genius of others. In her modest
salon, she inspired the great and illustrious work which
will keep her memory alive as long as the Maxims and
Pensées are read. Her name will be connected with that
of Mme. de Longueville, because of their ideal friendship,
and with that of Port-Royal because of her ardent and
self-sacrificing support of it in the time of its direst persecution,
when any exhibition of sympathy was dangerous
in the extreme; and finally, her name will always be connected
with that small circle of French society of the seventeenth
century, which was noble, moral, and elevating to an unusual degree.

Somewhat later in the century a different movement
was started by a woman, which involved many of the
highest in rank at court. This took the form of a kind of
mystical enthusiasm, running into a theory of pure love,
and was instigated by Mme. Guyon, a widow, still young,
and gifted with a lofty and subtile mind. After losing her
husband, whom she had converted to her religious views,
she went, in 1680, to Paris to educate her children. Becoming
interested in religion, she went to Geneva, where
she became very intimate with a priest who was her spiritual
director, and whom she soon wholly subjected to her
influence. On account of their views on sanctification,
they were ordered to leave.

After travelling over Europe for a number of years, and
writing several works, including Spiritual Torrents and
Short and Easy Method of Making Orison with the Heart,
the widow returned to Paris, with the intention of living
in retirement; but so many persons of all ranks sought her
out, that she organized, for ladies of rank, meetings for
[pg 213]
purposes of prayer and religious conversation. The Duchess
of Beauvilliers, the Duchess of Béthune, the Countess
of Guiche, the Countess of Chevreuse, and many others,
with their husbands, became her devoted adherents.

According to Mme. Guyon, prayer should lose the character
of supplication, and become simply the silence of a
soul absorbed in God. “Why are not simple folks so
taught? Shepherds, keeping their flocks, would have the
spirit of the old anchorites; and laborers, whilst driving
the plow, would talk happily with God. In a little while,
vice would be banished and the kingdom of God would be
realized on earth.” Thus, her doctrine was directly opposite
to the theories of the Jansenists.

At that time, 1687 to 1688, all religious movements,
however quiet, were condemned at Rome; and the teachings
of Mme. Guyon were found to differ very little from
those of the Spanish priest Molinas. The first arrest, that
of her friend Lacombe, was soon followed by that of Mme.
Guyon herself, by royal order; she was released through
the intercession of Mme. de Maintenon, who was fascinated
by her to the extent of permitting her to teach her doctrines
at Saint-Cyr, Upon the appearance of her Method of
Prayer, an examination was instituted by Bossuet and
Fénelon, who marked out a few passages as erroneous—a
procedure to which she submitted. However, Bossuet
himself wrote a treatise against her Method of Prayer, in
which he cast reflections upon her character and conduct;
to that work Fénelon refused to subscribe, which antagonistic
proceeding brought on the great quarrel between
those two absolute ecclesiasts. In fact, Fénelon became
imbued with the doctrines of Mme. Guyon.

She was imprisoned at various times; and when a letter
was received from Lacombe, who had been imprisoned at
Vincennes for a long time, exhorting her to repent of their
[pg 214]
criminal intimacy, Mme. Guyon’s cause was hopeless.
She was sent to the Bastille, her son was dismissed from
the army, and many of her friends were banished. In
1702 she was released from prison and banished to Diziers;
she passed the remainder of her life in complete retirement at Blois.

Fénelon had written a treatise, Maxims of the Saints,
which was said to favor Mme. Guyon’s doctrines, and
which was sent to Rome for examination. He defined her
doctrine of divine love in the following maxim, which was condemned at Rome:

“There is an habitual state of love of God, which is
pure charity without any taint of the motive of self-interest.
Neither fear of punishment nor desire of reward
has, any longer, part in this love; God is loved, not for the
merit, but for the happiness to be found in loving Him.”

Such a doctrine made repentance unnecessary, destroyed
all effort to withstand evil, and did not acknowledge the
need of a Redeemer. This the great Bossuet foresaw;
consequently, he, as the supreme religious potentate of
his inferior in rank, Fénelon, demanded the condemnation
by the latter of the works of Mme. Guyon. The refusal
cost Fénelon exile for life. To Mme. de Maintenon he
wrote a letter which shows the sincerity of his devotion to
a friend in disgrace, even though his own reputation was thereby endangered:

“So it is to secure my own reputation that I am wanted
to subscribe that a lady—my friend—would plainly deserve
to be burned, with all her writings, for an execrable
form of spirituality which is the only bond of our friendship.
I tell you, madame, I would burn my friend with
my own hands, and I would burn myself joyfully, rather
than let the Church be imperilled; but here is a poor,
captive woman, overwhelmed with sorrows; there is none
[pg 215]
to defend her, none to excuse her; all are afraid to do so.
I maintain that this stroke of the pen, given from a cowardly
policy and against my conscience, would render me
forever infamous and unworthy of my ministry and my position.”

Thus, in the seventeenth century, religious agitations
and religious reform were the work preëminently of
women; but that reform and those agitations were productive
of good results to a far greater degree than was
any similar movement in any other century, with the
possible exception of the nineteenth. The seventeenth
century was, as mentioned before, a century of stability,
one that toned down and crushed all violations and abuses
of the standard established by authority. Woman, in her
constant striving for the complete emancipation and gradual
purification of her sex, rebelled against the power of
established authority; she did not consciously or intentionally
violate law and order, but in her intense desire to act
for good as she saw it, and in her noble efforts to ameliorate
all undesirable conditions, she created commotion and
confusion. The seventeenth-century woman is conspicuous
as a champion of religion, moral purity, and social
reform; therefore, her influence was mainly social, religious,
moral, and literary, while that of the woman of
the sixteenth century was mainly political. This difference
was the result of the greater advantages of education
and training enjoyed by the females of the later period.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, young girls
were granted greater privileges and received more attention
from men and society than did their predecessors;
they thus had more opportunities for mental development,
more occasion to become aware of the temptations and injustices
of life, without falling prey to them. Such young
girls as Julie d’Angennes, Mlle. d’Arquenay, and Mlle. de
[pg 216]
Pisani, took part in the balls, fêtes, garden parties, and all
amusements in which society indulged. They met young
men of their own age and became intimately acquainted
with them, morals were purer, marriages of affection were
much more frequent, and the state of married life was much
more congenial, than in any other century. Young men
paid court to the older ladies, to refine their manners and
sharpen their intellects, but not for any immoral purpose.
To a certain extent women were more world-wise when
they reached the marriageable age, and inspired respect
and admiration rather than passion and desire as in the next century.

Young girls of the seventeenth century were early placed
in a convent, and when they left it they were ready for
marriage; in the meantime, they frequently visited home
and associated with their parents and brothers; at the convents
intellectual intercourse with people of high rank and
men of letters was encouraged. Yet the discipline at those
institutions was very rigid, the boarders being more carefully
watched then than later on; two nuns always accompanied
them on their walks, and when not busy with their
studies, to prevent the mind from wandering, they were
kept busy with their hands; “the transports of the soul
of the young girl, as every reflection of the intelligence,
are watched and held in check, every one of her inclinations
opposed, all originality suppressed.”

At first the convents were reproached for stifling all culture
and development and applying only correction and
mortification of the flesh. Mme. de Maintenon opposed
such a state of affairs, but her methods discouraged true
independence. The happiness of her charges was her one
aim, but they had no voice in the matter. When of marriageable
age, they were given a trousseau and a husband;
however, they were taught to be reasonable.

In that century, the young girl, mixing more generally
in society, received greater consideration—hence, she became
more active and conspicuous. It will be seen that
the rôle played by the eighteenth century woman was not
so much played by the young woman as it was by the
woman of mature years, of the mother, the counsellor—the
indispensable element of society. There were three
classes of women—young women, mature women who
sought consideration, and old women who received respect
and deference, and who, as arbiters of culture, upheld the
principles already established.

A young man making his début had to find favor with
one of those classes which decided his future reputation
and the extent of his favor at court, and assigned him his
place and grade, upon which depended his marriage. All
education was directed to the one end—social success.
The duty of the tutor charged with the instruction of a
young son was to give a well-rounded, general education;
by the mother, he was taught politeness, grace, amiability—a
part of his training to which more importance was
attached than to the intellectual portion. Whenever a
young man was guilty of misconduct toward a woman, his
mother was notified of the occurrence, on the same evening,
and he promptly received his reprimand. This spirit
naturally fostered that rare politeness, exquisite taste
and tact in conversation, in which the eighteenth century excels.

But where did the young girls receive the education
which gave them such prestige—that consummate art of
conversation exemplified in Mme. de Boufflers, Mme. de
Luxembourg, Mme. de Sabran, the Duchess of Choiseul,
the Princess of Beauvau, the Countess of Ségur? The
sons were educated in the usages of the bonne compagnie
by the mothers, but the daughters did not enjoy that
[pg 218]
attention, for, at the age of five or six years, they were
sent to the convent; there the mother’s influence could
not have reached them, and they never left the convent
except to marry. The middle class imitated the higher
class, and family life became practically impossible. All
men of any importance had a charge at court or a grade in
the army, and lived away from their families. A large
number of women were attached to the queen, spending
the greater part of their time at Versailles; the little time
passed at their homes was entirely occupied in preparation
for the evening causeries at the salons, in reading new
books, acquiring information upon current events, and in
superintending the making of the many necessary and
always elaborate gowns; as M. Perey so well says, “as
the toilettes and hairdressing took up the greater part of the
morning, they devoted the time used by the coiffeur, in
constructing complicated edifices that crushed down the
heads of women, to the reading of new books.”

Nearly every large establishment kept open house, dining
from twenty to thirty persons every day. They dined at
one, separated at three, were at the theatre at five, and
returned with as many friends as possible—the more,
the greater the reputation for hospitality and popularity.
Under such circumstances, the mother had no time for the
daughters, nor were the conversations at those dinners
food for young, innocent girls—and innocence was the
first requirement of a marriageable young woman.

The great convents were the Abbaye-aux-Bois and
Penthemont, where the daughters of the wealthiest and
highest families were educated. In those convents or
seminaries, strange to say, the young girls were taught
the most practical domestic duties, as well as dancing,
music, painting, etc. Such teachers as Molé and Larrive
gave instruction in declamation and reading, and Noverre
[pg 219]
and Dauberval in dancing; the teaching nuns were all from
the best families. The most complete costumes, scenic
decorations, and other equipments of a complete theatre
were supplied, special hours being set aside for the play.
However, much intriguing went on there, and many
friendships and lifelong enmities were formed, which later
led to serious troubles.

Often, from the midst of a group of young girls of from
ten to fifteen years of age, one would be notified of her
coming marriage with a man she had never seen, and
whom, in all probability, she could not love, having given
her heart to another. If it turned out to be an uncongenial
marriage, a separate life would be the result, and, while
still absolutely ignorant of the world, those young married
women would fall prey to the charms of young gallants or
men of quality, and a liaison would follow.

The difference between a liaison of the seventeenth
century and one of the eighteenth led to one essential difference
in the standards of social and moral etiquette; in the
former period, a liaison meant nothing more censurable than
an intimate friendship, a purely platonic love; the lover
simply paid homage to the lady of his choice; it was an attraction
of common intellectual interests and usually lasted
for life; in the eighteenth century, a liaison was essentially
immoral, rarely a union of interests, but rather one of
passions and physical propensities. Such relations developed
and fostered deceit, intrigues, infidelity, and rivalry,
one woman endeavoring to allure the lover of another;
affairs of that nature were the chief topic of conversation
in social circles, and were soon reflected in every phase of
the intelligent world. This will be seen in the study of the eighteenth century.

Chapter VIII

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

In studying the vast numbers of salons of the eighteenth
century, three types are discernible, each of which was
prominent and in full sway throughout the century up to
the Revolution. To the first class belong the great literary
and philosophical salons which, though not political in
nature, finally changed politics; such were the circles of
Mme. de Tencin, Mme. Geoffrin, Mme. du Deffand, Mlle.
de Lespinasse, Mme. Necker, Mme. d’Epinay, Mme. de
Genlis; with these every literary student is familiar.
The second class includes the smaller and less important
literary, philosophical, and social salons—those of Mme.
de Marchais, Mme. de Persan, Mme. de Villars, Mme. de
Vaines, and of D’Alembert, D’Holbach, Helvétius. The
third class is of a social nature exclusively, good breeding
and good tone being the essentials; its conspicuous features
were the dinners and suppers of Suard, Saurin, the Abbés
Raynal and Morellet, of the Palais-Royal of Mme. de Blot,
of the Temple of the Prince of Conti, those of Mme. de
Beauvau, Mme. de Gramont, M. de La Popeliniére, and others.

The distinctions thus made will not hold throughout,
but they facilitate the presentation of a subject that is
exceedingly complicated. It may almost be said that
[pg 224]
each generation of the eighteenth century had a salon
with a different physiognomy; those of 1710, 1730, 1760,
and 1780 were all inspired by different motives, causes,
and events, and were all led by women of different histories
and aspirations, whose common idol was man, but
whose ideas of what constituted a hero were as widely
different as was the constitution of society in the respective
periods. Not until the middle of the reign of
Louis XIV. did social life become detached from Versailles,
and, spreading out and circulating in a thousand hôtels,
showed itself in all its force, splendor, and elegance. The
celebrated women of the regency—Mme. de Prie, Mme. de
Parabère, Mme. de Sabran—had no salon, while those of
the Marquis d’Alluys and the Hôtels de Sully, de Duras,
de Villars, and the suppers of Mme. de Chauvelin were of
a distinctly different type from those of the earlier and the later periods.

In a certain sense, the salons changed the complexion of
the age. The eighteenth century itself was friendly and
generous; it was, also, impatient and inexperienced, seeing
things not as they were but as it wished them to be, compelling
science and art to serve its purpose. It was frank,
often brutally frank, a characteristic due partly to the
conversational license of the salons. With its Fontenelle,
Voltaire, Piron, etc., it was indeed a happy century. A
bon mot was the event of the day and travelled over all
the civilized world.

Feeling keenly the need of a guiding principle, the need
of a more substantial foundation in education, the women
of the century thought and wrote much on that subject;
such was, for the most part, the work of the great salons,
but in them the philosophical tenets of the age were also
discussed. The spirit of criticism thus created and cultivated,
which finally spread through all classes of society,
[pg 225]
gradually conquered the new power in the state—public
opinion which, at the end of the century, ruled supreme
in all its strength and vehemence, defying every effort of
the government to stifle it. The highest form of agreeable
and intellectual society which the world has ever
seen attained to its most complete development in these salons.

Every century has had its specialty: the twelfth had its
crusades, the sixteenth its religious struggles, the seventeenth
its grand goût, the eighteenth its conversation and
love of reason, the nineteenth its political struggles; and
each one displayed the French passion for esprit; the
eighteenth, however, was, par excellence, the century of
esprit, and it was most remarkably developed in woman.

“Such astonishingly loquacious people as lived in Paris
in the eighteenth century! ineffective, sardonic, verbose,
sociable, intellectual, elegant, immoral—grand gentlemen
and ladies, with tears for mimic woes and none for actual
ones, praise for wit, rewards for cleverness, and absolute
ignorance of the destinies they were preparing for themselves;”
such is the story of women and society of the
eighteenth century. Among these women the salon leaders
will be found the most attractive, and the most influential
in literature, theory of government, and social and
moral development; to the mistresses belongs the title of “politicians.”

La Ménagerie de Mme. de Tencin was one of the earliest
of the eighteenth-century salons, although, in the strict
sense of the word, Mme. de Tencin’s salon was of a
political rather than a literary nature. Successively nun,
mistress, mother, she was one of the shrewdest women
of the century. Born in 1681, she early became a nun;
but such was the character of her life at the convent that
it was not long before she became a mother. In 1714
[pg 226]
she abandoned her conventual life and went to Paris,
where she rose to influence as the mistress of Cardinal
Dubois and of the regent, the Duke of Orléans. At
Paris her real activity began; she arrived at that gay
capital with no other collateral than a pretty face and an
extraordinary cunning, which soon brought her a fortune.
Fertile in resources of all kinds, she succeeded immediately,
and gained for her nephew the cardinal’s hat. In
1717 was born to her the afterward famous d’Alembert,
whom she left upon the steps of the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond;
afterward, when he had become eminent and her
power was waning, she unsuccessfully used every means
at her command to gain his favor and recognition; the
father of that child was the Chevalier Destouches.

About 1726, when lovers were numerous and friends
plentiful, the death of Lafresnaye occurred at her salon.
In his testament he stated that his death was caused by
Mme. de Tencin; however, she was too shrewd, cunning,
and careful to be guilty of permitting any weak points to
appear in her plots, and it was not difficult for her to clear
herself of that charge by the verdict of the judges, who
considered the accusation a posthumous vengeance.

The great literary men whom Mme. de Tencin gathered
about her, Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Marivaux,
Helvétius, Marmontel, were called her menagerie, or her
bêtes. Among them, Marivaux received a pension of one
thousand écus from her, besides drawing at will upon
the exchequer of an old maid by the name of Saint-Jean.
Marmontel, desirous of writing tragedies, took lessons
from the famous Mlle. Clairon—at his friend’s expense.
To give a correct idea of the character of woman’s influence
upon the literary style of that century, the words
of Marmontel may be quoted: “He who wishes to write
with precision, energy, and vigor, may live with man only;
[pg 227]
but he who in his style wishes to have subtleness, amenity,
charm, flexibility, will do well, I think, to live with woman.”

Mme. de Tencin exerted an immense influence upon the
men of her circle, especially socially; for example, she
married the wealthy M. de La Popelinière to Mlle. Dancourt.
She was one of the few really consummate diplomats;
later on, she became less associated with intrigues,
and gave lessons in current diplomacy, with which she
was perfectly familiar. Her counsel to her pupils was to
gain friends among women rather than among men.
“For,” she would say, “we do whatever we wish with
men; they are so dissipated, or so preoccupied with their
personal interests, that to give attention to them would be
to neglect your own interests.”

Every New Year’s Day the bêtes of her menagerie received
two yards of velvet, to make knickerbockers to be
worn at her receptions; this custom was observed up to
the last year of the existence of her salon. Her receptions
were among the first of the kind in France. Like the
majority of salon leaders, she was an authoress of no
mean ability. Her novels were widely read at the time—Le
Siège de Calais and Les Malheurs de l’Amour. Her
memoirs, throwing light upon the intrigues and plots, social
animosities, and general state of the society of the time,
are historically valuable. She died in Paris, in 1749.

Among all the great salons, that of Mme. de Tencin was
the only one in which gambling was indulged in on a
wholesale scale; fortunes changed hands every evening,
a large part of the gains always falling to the lot of the
hostess, as a sort of “rake off.” She herself was a professional
at the business, and by receiving private information
from headquarters, through her famous friend Law,
the contrôleur-général, and her lover Dubois, she was able
[pg 228]
to acquire an immense fortune which she distributed freely
among her friends and favorites. Her place among the
literary salon leaders depends mainly upon her endeavors
to advance the interests of the aspiring young authors who
were willing to place themselves under her protection.

After the death of Mme. de Tencin and that of Mme. de
Châtelet, who had received many of the celebrities of the
time, there remained but two distinguished, purely literary
and philosophical salons open in Paris. By right of
precedence, the bêtes should have gone over to the salon
of Mme. du Deffand, as she had been established some
years when Mme. Geoffrin began to receive at her residence,
which gained its first renown through the exquisite
dinners served there. But the bêtes all flocked to the
salon bourgeois, and consequently a more brilliant gathering
never assembled in a salon; here sat, enjoying the
liberal hospitalities, Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Mairan, Marmontel,
Helvétius, Diderot, D’Alembert, Thomas, D’Holbach,
Hume, Morellet, Mlle. de Lespinasse, the Marquis
de Duras, Comtesses d’Egmont and de Brionne. Here,
conversation—which, in the eighteenth century, was not
only a discussion or a dissertation, but an art—reached its
highest development; the members did not need to be eloquent,
to expatiate upon some theory or science; the conversation
moved about the members, and they had to be a part of it.

Mme. Geoffrin was born in Paris in 1699, and was the
daughter of M. Rodet, valet de chambre of the dauphiness,
Duchesse de Bourgogne, mother of Louis XV. When
barely fifteen she was married to the wealthy M. Geoffrin,
the so-called founder of the celebrated Manufacture des
Glaces de Gobelins. Through his wealth and his associations
with people of nobility who bought his ware, she was
soon encouraged in her desire to entertain the nobility; and
[pg 229]
her esprit, tact, intelligence, and admirable taste in dress
were all effective in bringing about the desired results.

Her career was one of continual successes. When she
opened her salon, in 1741, she instituted the custom of receiving
her friends at table, not only men of letters, but
artists, architects, builders, painters, sculptors, all men of
genius and prominence. Monday was the day reserved
for artists exclusively; Marmontel, who lived with Mme.
Geoffrin for ten years “as her tenant,” and the indispensable
Abbé Morellet were the exceptions who might be
present upon that day. From the very beginning she
formed the habit of permitting conversation to go just so
far, then cutting it off with her famous: Voil qui est bien!

Her husband was the maître d’hôtel, of whom many
interesting anecdotes are told; the best and one that illustrates
well the appreciation of individuals in those days is
the following, which is so admirably told by Lady Jackson
that we quote from her: “For some years, there sat at
the bottom of Mme. Geoffrin’s dinner and supper table
a dignified-looking, white-haired old gentleman, bland in
manner, but very modest and retiring, speaking only when
spoken to, but looking very happy when the guests seemed
to enjoy the good cheer set before them. When, at last,
his customary place became vacant, and some brilliant
butterfly of madame’s circle of visiteurs flottants, who,
perhaps, had smiled patronizingly upon the silent old gentleman,
becoming aware of his absence, would, perchance,
carelessly inquire what had become of her constant dinner
guest, madame would reply: Mais, c’était mon mari. Hélas!
il est mort, le bon homme. [Why, that was my husband!
alas, he is dead, poor man!] Just so little was the consideration
shown this worthy creature in his own house!
Yet it both pleased and amused him to sit there silently
and gaze at the throng of rank, fashion, and learning,
[pg 230]
assembled in his wife’s salon, and to witness her social success.”

After the death of Mme. Geoffrin’s husband, the immense
fortune passed under her own management, whereupon
began her real career as a social arbitress, during
which she is said to have tempered both opinions and characters.
Thomas said of her that “she was, in morals, like
that divinity of the ancients which maintained or reëstablished
limits.” She was a great patroness of arts and her
rooms were decorated with pictures by Vanloo, Greuze,
Vernet, Robert, etc. She and her salon became, in time,
the acknowledged judge and dictator of matters literary
and artistic. Whenever a financier wished to purchase a
certain work of art, it was taken to her Monday dinner,
where the artists determined its artistic value and fixed the
price. Her house was a real museum; there the precious
Mariette collection was on permanent exhibition.

Besides her Monday dinners to artists and her Wednesday
dinners to the literary world, she gave private luncheons
to a select few who were especially congenial. At
those functions, such celebrities as the Comtesses d’Egmont
and de Brionne, the Marquise de Duras, and the
Prince de Rohan were frequent guests.

Mme. Geoffrin was shrewd and tactful enough to avoid
politics and not to permit discussions of a political nature
at her salon—precautions which she observed to keep the
government from interfering with her fortune and mode of
living. Her salon and dinners became so famous that every
foreigner going to Paris had the ambition to be received at
Mme. Geoffrin’s; when any aspirant was successful in
this, she would say to her friends: Soyons aimables [Let us
be kind]. She spent freely of her immense fortune constantly
seeking and aiding the poor. Persons who refused
to accept her charity found little favor with her; Rousseau
[pg 231]
was one of these. It was her habit to go frequently to
see friends, merely to ascertain their wants and to satisfy
them. The Abbé Morellet, Thomas, D’Alembert, and
Mlle. de Lespinasse (the only lady admitted to her Wednesdays)
were given liberal pensions. Upon each New Year’s
Day, in commemoration of Mme. de Tencin, she sent each
Wednesday guest a velvet cap. Her motto was: Donner
et pardonner [Give and forgive].

Stanislas, King of Poland, her protégé, whom she had
rescued from the debtor’s prison in Paris, and to whom
she had shown many favors, upon being elected King of
Poland in 1764, said to her: Maman, votre fils est roi
[Mamma, your son is king]. Two years later, when she
paid him a visit, the leading members of the Polish nobility
met her on the road, and the king had a special residence
prepared for her. As she passed through Vienna,
Joseph II. received her, and the Empress Maria entertained
her at dinner. Upon her return to Paris, after this triumphal
tour through Europe, the members of the world of
literature and art, and even the ministers and the nobility,
flocked to see her; this demonstration was the more remarkable
from the fact that she wielded no political influence,
her only desire and pleasure seeming to lie in aiding her friends.

Mme. Geoffrin was too practical and had too much good
common sense to be vain. The majority of men were influenced
by and favored her, and, which seemed strange,
she had few enemies among her own sex. Mme. Necker
said: “The old age of Mme. Geoffrin is like that of old
trees, whose age we know by the space they cover and
the quantity of roots they spread. She has seen all the
illustrious men of the century; she has discovered, with
sagacity, their peculiarities and their defects. She judges
them by their conduct, never by their talents.”

In her best years, she was intimately associated with
the Encyclopædists, to whom she paid over one hundred
thousand francs for the publication of their work. Of all
the great women of that century, she was the closest
friend of the philosophers and free-thinkers, being called
La Fontenelle des Femmes. She was always ready with an
answer; one day a friend pointed out to her the house of
the farmer-general Bouvet, and asked her: “Have you
ever seen anything as magnificent and in better taste?”
She replied: “I would have nothing to say if Bouvet were
the frotteur [floor polisher] of it.”

Mme. Geoffrin, more than any other woman of the
salons, possessed the three essential qualifications of a
salon leader,—good sense, tact, and intelligence. She had
also esprit, perfect simplicity, precision, and faultless taste;
though a sceptic, she was a diplomat who perfectly understood
the art of manœuvring. In short, Mme. Geoffrin
was an intellectual authority, a sort of minister to society,
and her salon was the great centre and rendezvous, a
veritable institution of the eighteenth century. This seems
the more remarkable when we consider that she belonged
to the bourgeoisie, and that by dint of her exquisite tact, her
almost infallible judgment, her admirable taste in dress,
and her keen intelligence, she created for herself a position
which was the envy of all Europe. Such women are
rare. During the last eighteen months of her life, though
suffering from paralysis and rheumatism, which she contracted
at a religious fête at Notre-Dame, she was unremitting
in her attention to her friends and the poor; and
up to her death, in 1777, her friends were faithful to her.

That spirit, or malady, which penetrated and ruled
almost every creature in the eighteenth century found its
most notable victim in Marie de Vichy-Chamrond—Mme.
du Deffand. She, so to speak, yawned out her life in a
[pg 233]
blasé society without faith or ideal. That horrible affliction,
with all its painful symptoms, ennui, whose origin
was seen to lie in an excess and abuse of esprit in a society
that based all its pleasures and happiness upon the mind
without any higher interest than the self, infected a whole
century with an “irremediable disenchantment of others
and one’s self.” This self-cult, or life in and for the mind,
developed sagacity, justness of views, and an incomparable
penetration, but it neglected all the elements necessary to
contentment and those other pleasures, of which the first
is love for one’s fellow beings. Mme. du Deffand exemplified
this stage of mental unbalance; and when she
wrote of her former friend and companion: “Mlle. de
Lespinasse died to-day at two o’clock; formerly, that
would have been an event for me; to-day, it is nothing at
all,” she gave an idea of the indifference which was characteristic
of the society of the time—an indifference which
developed into an incurable malady and an all-consuming
egoism, stifling the heart-beat of that world which was
weary of everything and yet was unwilling to close its eyes.

Marie de Vichy-Chamrond was born in 1697, of a noble
family. She began the same manner of life as that followed
by most French women, being reared in the Convent
of Madeleine de Frénel, where, when quite young,
she evinced a strong spirit of impiety, giving expression to
the most sceptical opinions upon religious subjects, to the
great dismay of her superiors and parents. At the age of
twenty she was married to the Marquis du Deffand, who
had but his brevet of colonel of a regiment of dragoons,
and whose intelligence and fortune were of a nullité rare.
However, her marriage was a sort of emancipation which
enabled her to enter society; and it is asserted that she
soon became the mistress of Philippe of Orléans, the
[pg 234]
regent, from whom she received six thousand francs life income.

As the result of a disagreement, she separated from her
husband, and then began a life of pleasure among the
gayest of the most fashionable world, where, through
the power of her brilliancy, wit, charm, and fascinating
beauty, she immediately became a leader. After passing
through all the phases of social life and its varied experiences—from
the society of Mme. de Prie, the type of the
dissolute woman of the Regency, from the famous suppers
of the regent, whose ingenious inventions of lewd and
wanton pleasures made him notorious, from an association
with the intriguing Duchesse de Maine, to all the great
and influential social centres of Paris—in short, after pursuing
a career of fashionable dissipation, she became
reconciled to her husband, and lived with him in peace
and happiness for a short time; but six months of regular
life affected her behavior toward the poor marquis to such
a degree that he thought it best to leave her. After that
episode, she returned to her lover; and, rejected by him
and her friends, and becoming the subject of the gossip of
the entire city, she sought consolation from one acquaintance
after another, and was miserable all the time.

At the age of about thirty-four, Mme. du Deffand returned
to a kind of regular life, and, in time, won a
reputation for esprit, regained her honorable friends and
established for herself a kind of accepted authority. Thus,
when she opened a salon in 1742, she was able to attract
a brilliant company, which became famous after 1749,
when she took apartments in the Convent Saint-Joseph.
Here wit and polished manners, taste, vivacity, and good
sense were the requisites; literature, politics, and philosophy
were not tolerated, but “sparkling bons mots, glancing
epigrams, witty verses, were the avenues to social success.”

Until her dotage this woman, who, from a natural selfishness
and lack of sympathy, was incapable of loving
with the characteristic ardor of the women of her time, by
knowing how to inspire love in others, controlled and held
near her the famous men and women of her age. When
she began to realize the calamity of her failing sight, which
was probably due to her general state of restlessness and
the resultant physical decay, she received, as companion,
a relative, Mlle. de Lespinasse, who undertook the most
difficult, disagreeable, and ungrateful task of waiting on
the marquise. As Mme. du Deffand arose in time to receive
at six, mademoiselle soon announced to the friends
that she herself would be visible at an earlier hour. Thus,
it happened that Marmontel, Turgot, Condorcet, and
d’Alembert regularly assembled in mademoiselle’s room—a
proceeding which soon led to a rupture between the two
women and a breach between Mme. du Deffand and
d’Alembert. The marquise was therefore left alone, blind,
but too proud to tolerate pity, yet by her conversation
retaining her power of fascination. It was about this
time that Horace Walpole became connected with her life.
Upon the death of Mme. Geoffrin, she, hearing of the imposing
ceremonies and funeral orations, exclaimed: Voilà
bien du bruit pour une omelette au lard. [A great ado about
a lard omelet!] Her latter years were dragged out most
miserably, being marked by a singular feverishness and
unavailing efforts toward the acceptance of some faith.
Her death, in 1780, finally brought her relief.

The career of Mme. du Deffand actually began as early
as 1730, when she opened her establishment on the Rue
de Beaune, at the time that she became attached to the
president Hénault, who presided over her salon for more
than thirty years. The famous salon Du Deffand at the
Convent Saint-Joseph was not opened until 1749; there
[pg 236]
she was very particular as to those whom she received,
and access to her salon was a matter of difficulty. Grimm
was never received, and Diderot was present but once.
The conversation was always intellectual, and whenever
she tired of French vivacity, she would spend an evening with Mme. Necker.