Part 16

But in turning Madame's indifference to Guiche into prejudice, Vardes made the mistake of keeping his memory alive. Deceived by Vardes' amiable and insinuating manners, and believing him to be her friend, Madame distinguished him with certain confidences that he interpreted as signs of a growing affection. Vardes was, however, rudely disillusioned at the very moment he fancied victory within grasp. One night, at some Court function, the conversation in the _entourage_ of Madame chanced to turn on the Comte de Guiche, who from Lorraine had gone to Poland, where he was covering himself with glory and wounds. Among the stories told of him, it was related that in a battle, in which some of the fingers of his right hand had been shot off, a bullet had struck him on the breast, and that death was only averted by a "portrait he wore next his heart." Madame, remembering all that had passed between herself and Guiche, had no doubt the charmed portrait was her own, and, in spite of the prejudice against him that had been subtly instilled into her mind, she was sufficiently touched by what she heard to exclaim to Vardes that "she believed she liked the Comte de Guiche more than she thought."

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

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

To enumerate all the adventures of this precious crew would require a book almost as long as the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." Perhaps only a Dumas could unravel all the threads of this curious tangle. And what a tangle it was! Think of the incriminating correspondence passing from a Montalais' hand to those of a Malicorne and a Manicamp, who wrote a libel on Madame and Guiche, printed in Holland, and bought up, all save one copy, by Madame's father-confessor, who travelled secretly to Holland for the purpose and had adventures not a few. Think of Vardes' forged letters from the Queen of Spain to ruin Madame--letters lost by the forgers. Think of the Comte de Guiche returning from Poland and discovering his friend's treachery; think of Guiche's attempts to clear himself in Madame's eyes--attempts in which the whole Gramont family lent a hand with daily consultations at the house of the famous Philibert and his La Belle Hamilton--attempts in which masked balls and lackey's liveries play a prominent part. If one thinks of the possibilities of such incidents, one will get some idea of the adventures the Affaire Guiche-Madame had to encounter. To stop it, once started, not even Vardes himself, had he wished, had the power. Like a Juggernaut, it continued to advance, crushing all who got in its way, the innocent and the evil alike.

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

But now the Comtesse de Soissons, realising that her jealousy had not only utterly lost her her lover but freed her rival, resolved to be revenged on the Comte de Guiche. She had one of his letters, in which, in his romantic way, he had offered to make his regiment swear allegiance to Madame. But the day was long past when Olympe Mancini could make Louis XIV. eager to fulfil her requests. To the mortification and terror of the Comtesse, he went to consult Madame. By this time Madame's gaiety was sobered by experience; she had come to see the incredible folly of a woman of her position flirting with Guiche and making friends with a Vardes. Whatever affection she may have had for the Comte de Guiche was at an end, and she wished him out of the way. But she was shrewd enough to detect an enemy in the Comtesse de Soissons, and she resolved to save Guiche at her expense as the lesser of two evils. Louis was induced to pardon him if it could be proved that his faults were small in comparison to those of his enemies. As Madame now held all the court-cards in the game, this was easy to do. She gave the King a full and frank account of her flirtation with Guiche from its beginning, as well as the complications to which it had led, and wrote to Guiche to do the same, "assuring him that she had found plain dealing the best security against Court machinations." The indignation of Louis was aroused, and he lost no time in venting his anger. Vardes was taken from the Bastille--the _ancien régime's_ prison for such persons as we nowadays call "first-class misdemeanants"--and immured in a dungeon at Montpelier. It was nearly thirty years before he saw the Court of France again.

A much milder punishment was meted out to the Comtesse de Soissons. She was forced to retire into the country for a time; but, far from having a wholesome effect on her lawless spirit, this temporary exile seemed to have assisted its degeneration. When she returned to Court she took to poisoning, or was at least suspected of being implicated in the "Poison Affair," whereupon Louis had to banish her altogether from the country. She died in great misery, after a sensational vagabond life, just as the star of her son, Prince Eugene of Savoy, began to rise over Europe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her first exclamation was that she was poisoned. Every one in the palace was terrified, except Monsieur. He did not appear in the least put out. Word was despatched to Louis at Versailles, who immediately sent Vallot, his own physician, to St. Cloud. Shortly after he followed himself, accompanied by the Queen and La Grande Mademoiselle. When they arrived they were told, to their horror, that Madame was dying. They found her writhing on a couch, pale, dishevelled, and scarcely recognisable from the convulsive movements that distorted her features. No one, with the exception of her maids of honour who hung over her weeping, appeared the least alarmed. At the sight of the King she uttered a piercing cry and said she felt "a fire in her stomach." The doctors looked on in silence, without attempting to alleviate her sufferings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bossuet was sent for, but in the meantime the rumour "_Madame se meurt!_" had reached Paris, and a host of persons flocked to St. Cloud. Among them were the great Condé and the old Maréchal de Gramont, father of the Comte de Guiche, who went to her bathed in tears. "She told him pathetically that he was losing a good friend, that she was dying, and at first she thought she had been poisoned by mistake." Then turning to her sincerest friend, whose simple narrative of her death should have made all others superfluous, she said with something of her old gaiety--

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

"I answered by my tears, for what she said was only too true, and I had noticed it before. The hiccough seized her. She told Esprit (one of the doctors) that it was the death-hiccough. She had asked several times how soon she should die; she repeated the question, and although she was answered as a person not near death, we saw well that she had no hope. Her thoughts never rested on life; she never uttered a word of reflection on the destiny which was taking her off in the prime of life; never questioned the doctors as to whether it were possible to save her; showed no impatience for remedies, except in so far as the violence of her pains made her long for them; exhibited a calmness in the certainty of death, in the suspicion of poison; in short, a courage of which no example can be found, and which it is difficult even to represent."

When Montague, the English Ambassador, arrived, she said--

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

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

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

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

"'Madame, you must accuse nobody, but offer up your life as a sacrifice to God.'

"So she only shrugged her shoulders."

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

"Adieu, Tréville, adieu, mon ami!" she waved.

The simple farewell broke his heart. The next day he left the Court and the world for ever.

In these last terrible moments she forgot no one. Monsieur having left the room, she sent to call him back, and in bidding him farewell declared that "she had never been faithless to him." The solemnity of the occasion on which these words were uttered has inclined most of her biographers to acquit her of the adulteries with Louis and the Comte de Guiche of which she was suspected. There are other evidences, however, of Madame's virtue which might be cited quite as convincing as this; and in regard to the Comte de Guiche at all events, the various ladies for whom he sighed before he met Madame were all agreed in attributing a physical rather than a spiritual cause to the "Platonic" character of his amours.

Her strength now began to fail fast, and as a last resort the doctors decided to bleed her. The incision was made in her foot, but no blood flowed, and her exhaustion was so extreme that they thought she would die while her foot was still in the warm water. The doctors then declared that they would try one more remedy, but she begged them to give her the Extreme Unction before it was too late. It was given to her by a priest who was present, and who exhorted and rebuked her like a Scotch Calvinist. When he had finished she said meekly--

"At what o'clock did Jesus Christ die? At three o'clock?"

"Do not mind that, Madame," he replied, "you must endure life and wait for death with patience."

At this moment Bossuet arrived. He was so overcome at the sight of her that he nearly fainted.

"He spoke to her of God," says Madame de La Fayette, "in a manner suitable to her condition and with that eloquence which marks all his sermons. He made her perform such little acts as he thought necessary, and she entered into all that he told her with zeal. While he was speaking a maid of honour approached to give her something of which she had need. She said to her in English, in order that Bossuet might not hear, and preserving till death the politeness characteristic of her--

"'Remember to give M. Bossuet, when I am dead, the emerald ring that I have had made for him.'

"While he was praying with her he was nearly exhausted by the strain on his nature. Madame asked him gently if she might not take a few moments' rest; he told her that she might, and he would withdraw and pray for her. M. Feuillet" (the priest who had given her the Extreme Unction) "remained at her side, and almost at the same moment Madame begged him to recall M. Bossuet, for she felt she was about to die. M. Bossuet hurried back and gave her the crucifix. She took it and embraced it with ardour. M. Bossuet continued to speak to her, and she replied with the same clearness as if she had never been ill, keeping the crucifix pressed to her lips to the last. As her strength failed it fell from her hands, and she lost speech and life at the same time. Her agony lasted but a moment; and after two or three little convulsive movements of the mouth, she expired at half-past two in the morning, and nine hours after having been taken ill."

* * * * *

It is only natural that the suddenness and mystery of such an illness and death should have been fertile in historical speculation.

For about one hundred and fifty years the world generally took it for granted that Madame was poisoned--especially as some of the doctors privately expressed this opinion, which was contrary to their official statement at the post-mortem. But in the early part of the nineteenth century the world suddenly changed its mind and declared that Madame died "naturally" of cholera morbus or peritonitis. As far as we are concerned one theory is as good as another. Our object is not to emulate the latest authorities and perform, like them, a literary autopsy on remains we have never seen. At this late day it is of not the least consequence to the world whether Madame was poisoned or not. By all means let us take it for granted, with M. Anatole France and many another of equal distinction, that her untimely end was natural. But as the other theory is thoroughly in keeping with seventeenth-century customs, it is, if no longer worthy of credence--which, after all, is not proved--at least pregnant with possibility.

As a good "poison story" it will always be worth telling; and as no one has ever told it more graphically than Saint-Simon we will give his version.

He says that when the news that Madame had expired reached Versailles--

"The King, who had gone to bed, rose, sent for Brissac, who was the captain of the guards and close at hand, and commanded him to choose six body-guards, trusty and secret, to go and take up Simon Morel, Madame's _maître d'hôtel_, and to bring him to him in his cabinet. This was done before morning. When the King saw him he ordered Brissac and his valet de chambre to withdraw, and assuming a most alarming aspect and tone--

"'My friend,' said he, surveying him from head to foot, 'listen well to me. If you confess all and tell me the truth about what I want to know from you, whatever you may have done I pardon you; it shall never be mentioned again. But beware how you disguise the least thing, for if you do you are a dead man before you leave this place. Has not Madame been poisoned?'

"'Yes, Sire,' answered Morel.

"'And who has poisoned her and how?' said the King.

"He replied that it was the Chevalier de Lorraine, who had sent the poison from Italy to Beuvron and Effiat (two of Monsieur's equerries). Whereupon the King, redoubling his assurances of favour and threats of death, said--

"'And my brother, did he know of it?'

"'No, Sire. None of us three were fools enough to tell him. He never keeps a secret, he would have ruined us.'

"At this reply, the King uttered a long 'Ah!' like a man oppressed, who all at once breathes again.