Part 17

"'Well,' said he, 'that is all I want to know.' And Brissac restored Morel to liberty."

Saint-Simon further declares that a few days before Monsieur married his second wife Louis took her aside and told her these circumstances, assuring her that Monsieur was innocent of any participation in this crime, and that were he not convinced of it he would not have permitted his remarriage. This second Madame, or La Palatine, as she was called, who by this marriage became the mother of the Regent d'Orléans, and was not the least original of the many strikingly original persons of "_le grand siècle_," tells the story in another fashion, in that remarkable correspondence of hers from which as much historical ore has been mined as from Saint-Simon's memoirs:--

"It is only too true," she writes in her blunt, vigorous way, "that Madame was poisoned, but without the knowledge of Monsieur. While the villains were arranging the plan of poisoning the poor woman, they deliberated whether they should tell Monsieur or not.

"The Chevalier de Lorraine said, 'No, don't tell him, for he cannot hold his tongue. If he does not tell the first year, he may have us all hanged ten years afterwards.'

"They therefore made Monsieur believe that Madame had taken poison in Holland (on her way back from England), which did not act until she arrived at St. Cloud. Nor was it Madame's chicory-water that Effiat had poisoned, but the goblet. A valet de chambre, who was with Madame and afterwards in my service, told me that in the morning while Monsieur and Madame were at Mass, Effiat went to the sideboard, and taking Madame's glass rubbed the inside of it with a paper, and that he, the valet, said to him--

"'Monsieur d'Effiat, what are you doing in this room, and why do you touch Madame's glass?'

"Effiat answered, 'I am dying with thirst, I wanted something to drink, and the glass being dirty I was cleaning it with some paper.'

"After dinner Madame asked for some chicory-water, and as soon as she had swallowed it she cried out, 'I am poisoned!'

"All that were present drank of the same chicory-water, but not from the same glass, so, of course, it did them no harm."

Such are the most authoritative "poison" theories which nineteenth-century investigation has very brilliantly but not altogether exploded.

* * * * *

Madame's death, as may be imagined, created a profound sensation throughout Europe. In London, considering how slight had been her connection with her native country, the indignation was remarkable. An infuriated mob rushed to the French Embassy, which but for the precautions taken by the Government to protect it they would have destroyed. Whitehall was utterly prostrated. Charles took to his bed for several days.

"Never," said Rochester, "was any one so regretted since dying was the fashion."

But for the good sense of the King, England would have declared war on France. Louis, whose grief was genuine, did all that he could to prove his regret--all but punish the suspected poisoners. On the contrary, Effiat was promoted and the Chevalier de Lorraine, whom he detested, to Monsieur's and his own delight, was recalled. Perhaps no other course was left open to him, if the report of foul play which threatened to plunge him into a war was not to be hushed up at all costs. But to prove to Charles II. and Europe that he was free from implication in this strange death, he at once ordered a post-mortem, at which English doctors and the English Ambassador were present. The verdict of the autopsy was "death from natural causes." It served to allay popular anger but not popular suspicion.

Louis also gave Madame such a funeral as few kings have ever had.

"I do not think," wrote Madame de Sévigné, who was present, "that there will be any better music in heaven."

Bossuet pronounced over the corpse his masterpiece, which is familiar to every schoolboy in France. On his finger, placed there by Louis himself, there glittered the emerald Madame had bequeathed him with her dying breath, and which he wore till his own death. The body was buried at St. Denis beside that of Henrietta Maria. It was the first that the mob dug up one hundred and twenty-three years later when the tombs of the kings were desecrated. It was flung into a pit behind the church along with Louis' and the rest of his dynasty's. By a curious coincidence it--or what was supposed to be it--was the first body restored to its original resting-place after Waterloo.

By a still more curious coincidence, Madame's daughter, Marie Louise, whom they married to the last King of Spain, of the House of Austria, died at the same age and in the same strange way as her mother. There is something decidedly uncanny in the fate that decreed that Effiat, as French Ambassador at Madrid, should be the medium through whom her husband corresponded with her; that the Chevalier de Lorraine should be the man appointed to lead her to the altar; and that the Comtesse de Soissons should be the one to poison her!

If happiness be the aim of prince and peasant alike, it was not, at all events, in the Armida-courts of the seventeenth century that it was to be found. It was of Madame, his friend and patron, that Molière was thinking when his Alceste sang--

"Si le roi me donnait, Paris sa grande ville, Et qu'il me fallut quitter L'amour de ma mie, Je dirais au roi Henri Reprenez votre Paris, J'aime mieux ma mie, ô gué, J'aime mieux ma mie."

LOUISE DE KÉROUAL, DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH

A SPY OF THE RESTORATION

If proof were required of anything so obvious as the cynicism of fame, one might cite the subject of this memoir as an example. Of European importance in her own day, and now--excepting Nell Gwynn--unquestionably the best remembered because the most odious of all the women of the Restoration, although "Madam Carwell," as the English people called her, has escaped oblivion, the mere spelling of her name has become a matter of indifference to history.

Kéroual, Kéroualle, Querouralles, Querouailles are some of the ways it is printed, and we only adopt the first as being the most frequent French mode.

A similar uncertainty attaches to her origin.

The Duchess of Portsmouth, however, had no doubt about it and was herself extremely proud of her ancestry, and boasted--when in England, be it understood--an ancient and distinguished lineage. It is characteristic of _parvenus_. Colbert, Louis XIV.'s famous Finance Minister, claimed a noble Scot, by name Cuthbert, who flourished in the reign of Macbeth or earlier, as the progenitor of his shopkeeper father. But there were many like Madame de Sévigné, whose opinions take precedence over those of most of her contemporaries, who had the greatest contempt for the Duchess of Portsmouth's family pretensions. Be the matter as it may, by Louise de Kéroual's first start in life there hangs a tale.

Her father, whether or not he could trace his ancestry back to the fourteenth century as his daughter declared--when there was a saying in Brittany: "The Kérouals for antiquity, the Kermans for riches, and the Kergournadecs for chivalry"--went to Paris as a boy to seek his fortune. Of this he appears to have amassed in the wool trade sufficient to enable him to retire in middle life to his native Brittany, where, being from all accounts an honest and unpretentious man, he devoted his leisure to the bringing up of his son and two daughters, and dispensing modest hospitality. It was at his house in Brest that Evelyn made his acquaintance, "and being used very civilly, was obliged to return it in London," when "Monsieur Querouaille and his lady, parents to the famous beauty," paid the Duchess of Portsmouth a visit. Her Grace was then, adds Evelyn, "in the height of favour, but he never made any use of it." The bringing-up of his children, however, would seem to have been beyond the abilities of the civil wool merchant, and owing to the dissension of his daughters he placed Louise, the elder and prettier of the two, at a boarding-school in a neighbouring town. Here she developed the insinuating manners that later on were "to tie England and France together with her silken girdle."

Having won the friendship of the head-mistress, she obtained certain social privileges, which, from the reports of the use she made of them, so alarmed the retired wool merchant that he sent her to Paris to the care of a widowed aunt. This lady, whose very name has long since been forgotten, owed in a great measure her means of subsistence to the generosity of the Duc de Beaufort, in whose service her husband had died. According to the author of the curious libel known as "The Secret History of the Duchess of Portsmouth," Louise got round her aunt as easily as she had got round the head-mistress of her boarding-school. For it was not long before she made the acquaintance of the Duc de Beaufort, and interested this powerful nobleman in her behalf. Whereby she was constrained to learn the rudiments of intrigue, a subject in which she was afterwards to become pre-eminently proficient.

It is easy to censure a girl who deliberately prefers to seek her happiness in immorality. It is done every day. But there are few girls of the alert, ambitious nature of Louise de Kéroual, who if placed in her position would not follow her example. What were her prospects? On the one hand she had the choice between returning home and marrying some petty, humdrum _bourgeois_, or immuring herself for the rest of her life in a convent. On the other, by prudently selling her virtue, she might have the riches, gaiety, and pleasure she craved, and still remain respectable. Of these two prospects, the first was impossible to Louise. But the second was an opportunity--one of those opportunities that Shakespeare says, "if taken at the flood, lead on to fortune"--the great opportunity of life that most of us sigh for and fail to recognise till too late. To Louise de Kéroual it came in the guise of a Duc de Beaufort, High Admiral of France. Her mind never suffered the slightest misgiving, her conscience the least qualm. Like all persons destined for success, she knew what she wanted and took it. A woman so _rusée_ as Louise was not such a fool as to be found out. Her _liaison_ with the Duc de Beaufort was never suspected.

How long it lasted it is impossible to say, but it was brought to an abrupt end in the summer of 1669, when the Duc de Beaufort was given the command of the naval expedition which had for its object the relief of the Venetians who for twenty-four years had been besieged by the Turks in Crete. From this expedition he never returned, but before he sailed Louise took care to provide for her future by obtaining through his influence one of the posts of maid of honour to Madame which had just fallen vacant. This was the beginning of her fortune. The report that she accompanied Beaufort to Crete disguised as a page is a mere fabrication of her libeller. The Kéroual who accompanied the Duc de Beaufort to Crete was her younger brother, Sebastien, whom, no doubt, she now tried to provide for, as she did on a later occasion in England for her sister, Henriette. Sebastien, however, did not long enjoy the fruits of his sister's patronage; he died a few days after his return from Crete.

It was probably through this event that Louise became acquainted with the Comte de Sault, who on Beaufort's death appears to have taken Sebastien into his service, in which he was at the time of his death. This Comte de Sault was the eldest son of the Duc de Lesdiguières, and one of the best-known men at Court. He had won the chief prize a few years before in the famous jousts in front of the Tuileries, which gave their name to the Place du Carrousel. The Comte de Sault soon occupied more or less publicly the same place in the maid of honour's affections that had previously been held by the Duc de Beaufort. In fact, there was so little privacy about their relations that Madame de Sévigné and Louvois did not hesitate to put the worst construction on them, while several years later in England "a great peer taunted her insultingly with the recollection of this old scandal."

This affair was, however, decently conducted, as such things were in France, and Mademoiselle de Kéroual's social standing did not suffer. Perhaps she may have hoped to arrest the notice of the King himself, but if so she was disappointed. During the short time that she was in Madame's service the monarch's attention was too much absorbed by the beautiful Mademoiselle de la Vallière to be diverted by Mademoiselle de Kéroual. From all accounts Louis was scarcely aware of her existence till she was recommended to him as an agent likely to be of use in binding Charles II. hand and foot in the toils of French diplomacy.

As the Imperial policy of Louis XIV. was never so successful as when Louise de Kéroual queened it at Whitehall, some account of the obstacles opposed to it is necessary in order to understand the nature of the game she was unexpectedly called upon to play.

The "hereditary enmity" which until quite recent times so long estranged France and England might be compared to the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues. From time to time, however, this ancient feud was patched up, so to speak, by romantic Romeo and Juliet _ententes_, which, unfortunately, owing to national incompatibility of temper, always ended, as such love-affairs only too often do in real life, in mutual mistrust and animosity. In no instance was the cause of estrangement ever the same. In the age of Louis XIV. the bone of contention was Religion. It is impossible in this day of religious indifference to realise the force of the passions that tormented these two foolish nations then. England was passionately Protestant, and the Civil War and ten years of Cromwell had made her democratic. For the first time in her history England had found an ideal. France, on the other hand, never found hers till the Revolution, but as the "eldest daughter of the Church" she was bigotedly Catholic, and Richelieu and Mazarin had converted her to despotism. The temper of the two neighbours being such, strife was only a question of time, and the political interests of each only served to whet animosity. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was evident that the great House of Austria was slowly dying in Spain, and France, governed by a vigorous and ambitious king who was surrounded with the ablest brains in Europe, determined by fair means or foul to be its heir. Louis XIV. cast a covetous eye on Flanders, and at the bare thought of having such a virile neighbour in the place of this old decrepit one Protestant Holland turned uneasily towards England. The plunder of Spain did not at that time tempt England. Nor was there any particular reason why she should fight Holland's battles, especially as Holland had come out of the recent Thirty Years' War her commercial rival. On the contrary, it would have been to England's interest to see Holland weakened. But a nation with an ideal has "principles," and England made hers the excuse to defy Catholic and despotic France to plunder Spain at the expense of Protestant and democratic Holland. Consequently England joined the Triple League.

To break this formidable barrier, which prevented him from achieving his ambition, was the object of Louis XIV. It was for this purpose that he had sent Madame to England, and when she returned with the treaty she had coaxed out of her brother it not unnaturally seemed to him that his end was in sight. But within three weeks of leaving Dover Madame had died under circumstances that suggested foul play, and Charles all but tore up the "Traité de Madame." Louis instantly despatched the tactful Marécha de Bellefonds to Whitehall to assure Charles of his sincere grief at the untimely end of his sister and to save the treaty if possible. But the King of England was in no mood to be beguiled by expressions of friendship.

"When do they intend to let the Chevalier de Lorraine back to Court?" he asked rudely of the Marécha when that envoy arrived.

It was evident that Louis' road to Flanders and Madrid was blocked again. Madame's death had aroused to a fever heat the hatred of Protestant England for Catholic France. The people were crying out for vengeance on the murderers of their king's sister. Charles, had he wished for war, would have had the support of the nation.

"Must we abandon the great affair?" wrote the French Ambassador in London to his master at Versailles. "It is feared that the grief of the King of England, which is deeper than can be imagined, and the malevolent talk and rumours of our enemies will spoil everything."

But Charles on this occasion was cooler than his people. He contented himself with coldly accepting Louis' sympathy. The Court of Versailles, which dreaded nothing so much at that moment as a war, breathed freely again, and immediately set to work to restore Charles to the good-humour in which he was before Madame's death. French money poured into England, ministers and mistresses fattened on it. For ten thousand livres a year "wanton Shrewsbury" guaranteed "to make Buckingham do whatever the French King wished." Corruption was everywhere. The French Ambassador was prepared to buy both Houses of Parliament and the "principles" of the nation as well. Even Algernon Sidney, who in the eyes of English Liberalism is surrounded with the nimbus of martyrdom, took five hundred pounds every Parliamentary session from Louis. Charles had as great a weakness for French gold as any of his subjects, but though he willingly sold himself, he never gave full value in return if he could possibly avoid it.

Protestant England was not long in discovering this slippery trait in its own dealings with its sovereign. It is a mistake to imagine that Monk jockeyed Charles on to the throne. The crown of his ancestors was enthusiastically restored to him by an overwhelming majority of the nation. The Restoration of Charles II. was the result of, perhaps, the must honest _plebiscite_ in history. Monk was merely the means the English people employed to notify Charles they wanted him. But in their ardour the foolish people forgot to demand security for the power they gave him; they merely contented themselves with an implied understanding that he was to be, so to speak, the junior partner in the national business. Alas for human credulity! Who would have thought that the amiable, charming King, whose frivolity and sensuality seemed to guarantee a weak and pliable nature, would prove to be more than a match for his people? The versatile and shifty monarch made his power felt from the start, and clearly let it be understood that in the firm of Charles Stuart, England and Company, it was he who furnished the brains and England the capital. In such partnerships as a rule the capitalist buys experience dearly. And so it was in this case. Under that good-natured, happy-go-lucky manner of Charles there lurked the cunning of a Mazarin. Totally devoid of "principles" himself, he secretly despised his people for having them, and perhaps, also, for having given him power, such as no sovereign since Elizabeth had possessed, without a guarantee as to how he would use it. What wonder that with such a king and such a people Charles II. should have sat on the English throne, till he tumbled from it in apoplexy, as securely as a cowboy on a broncho? The comparison is apt; for, spurred by Exclusion Bills, Popish Plots, French harlots, and French gold, England, aglow with its new-found ideal of faith and freedom, bucked furiously and in vain with the subtle and ever-popular (!) Charles on its back. To put the bit into this man's mouth as he had put it into that of his country was one of the chief objects of the reign of Louis XIV.

In the nineteenth century it was customary to treat the Grand Monarque and his Grand Siècle with contempt. It was one of those momentary fits of rage into which Progress falls when it beholds its father's ghost in history. The rage has passed--in France at all events--and Louis XIV. and his famous century are receiving more flattery now than even Voltaire bestowed on them. They have become national monuments. Every schoolboy has parsed one of Bossuet's _oraisons funèbres_; every soldier has heard of Condé, every woman remembers the romance of Mademoiselle La Beaume Le Blanc de la Vallière. And there isn't a Socialist workman who goes with his wife and children on a Sunday to see the fountains play at Versailles but has some difficulty in choking the "_Vive la France!_" that sneaks in his throat as he strolls through the historic pile dedicated to All the Glories. For everybody has been taught that Louis XIV. in his long reign of seventy-two years--the longest, by the way, in history--did something more than powder his hair with gold-dust, wear high-heeled shoes, and tamely submit to Madame de Maintenon. Among his many shining endowments he possessed the royal faculty of recognising and appreciating talent in others. As in the earlier part of his reign, at all events, there happened to be a profusion of ability in France, he was served as only the very great are ever served. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the agents he sent to England. They were first-rate diplomatists. Their despatches were sprinkled with all sorts of gossip, _on dits_, and trivial details, which were awaited with impatience and devoured with avidity at Versailles. An English despatch was not unlike a brilliant society novel. Thus it happened that the _personnel_ of Whitehall was as familiar to Louis as that of Versailles; the English people and their "principles" as well known as the condition of his own country; and the life, character, and habits of Charles II. better understood than, perhaps, those of any other person in Europe.

To one so well informed as Louis the key to the riddle, "How is the slippery Charles to be held?" was "Woman." At the time of the death of Madame there was no sultana in the seraglio at Whitehall. This was Louis' chance. His Ambassador and his creatures, the English Ministers, assured him that the Duchess of Cleveland had ceased to be worth her price, that Charles had appeared much smitten with Mademoiselle de Kéroual when she came to England with Madame, and that in their opinion French interests could not better be served than by sending the aforesaid maid of honour to England as soon as possible. Louis and his Council gave the matter their due consideration, and Louise de Kéroual, only too willingly, as her fortunes were now at a very low ebb, started for Whitehall. She was clearly given to understand the capacity in which she was going, the influence that sent her, and the duties expected of her. Buckingham engaged to take her back with him after Madame's funeral, but "he totally forgot both the lady and his promise, and leaving the disconsolate nymph at Dieppe to manage as she could, passed over to England by way of Calais." The English Ambassador in Paris, who was not a "Buckingham man" but an "Arlington" one, never gave Buckingham the time to atone for his forgetfulness. He at once sent Mademoiselle de Kéroual over to Lord Arlington at his own expense, whereby he adroitly made a friend of the future _maîtresse en titre_ for himself and Arlington. For, says Bishop Burnet, "the Duke of Buckingham lost all the merit he might have pretended to, and brought over a mistress whom his own strange conduct threw into the hands of his enemies."