Part 3

Reporting himself after his visit to Bar, as in duty bound, to King Louis, Leopold declares himself "_charmé de l'esprit, de la sagesse, de la douceur et des manières gracieuses de M. le Chevalier de Saint Georges_." The 'Journal de Verdun,' drawing its information, of course, from official sources, announces that after their first encounter the two princes "_se separèrent extrêmement satisfaits l'un de l'autre_" in "_parfaite amitié bien cimentée_." Of James it will have it that he is "_d'un caractère si doux, si affable, et si populair, qu'il s'est bientôt acquis, de tous ceux qui ont eu l'honneur de le voir, le respect et la vénération dûs à sa vertu et à sa naissance_."

Leopold gone, the time passed, on the whole, quietly at Bar. There were occasional alarms, when some suspicious stranger had been seized. On one occasion, again, there is some talk of a "poisoned letter," sent in an ingenious fashion. To Louis, we find, the Duke appeared a little too forward in warning James of these dangers, as if he wanted to frighten his guest into quitting Lorraine. To vary the little episodes, there was the famous _coëqure_, who so much amused Queen Mary Beatrice's companions with his odd manners and his "thou"-ing. "The Spirit had moved him," as we know, to inform James that he was to rule over England, in which country there were plenty of well-wishers to support him. Were money wanted, he said that his friends would readily combine to raise some millions. They did not, welcome as the money would have been to James, whom we find continually complaining of want of funds. In the cipher despatches the common burden is, that "Mr. Parton" will not "deliver the goods." There is another prophetic person to encourage the Pretender, a nun of the "Monastère de Sainte Marie del Roma," near Montevallo--accredited by her superior, who writes to the Marquis Spada that her prophecies have never failed to come true. If he escapes the many traps set for him in 1715, so the nun says, James will certainly become King of England. Occasionally also there are little tiffs between English visitors and Barisien residents. What English, Scotch, and Irish there were there, we do not know for certain, but there were a goodly number, and not all of the best manners. Noel, who is a good historian on Lorrain things, but a little at fault on English, will have it that among these people was "_Lord Chatham, qui devint plus tard si célèbre_." Occasionally there was a visitor coming on the sly with news--such as the Duke of Berwick, whose visits were at one time frequent--or, towards the end of the sojourn, the banished Lord Bolingbroke, and "Le Comte de Peterborough" travelling under the pseudonym of "Schmit." Marlborough did not come himself, but he sent an aide-de-camp on a confidential mission to Lunéville, overflowing with pleasant words, and through him be begged particularly to be well and promptly advised on the Chevalier's movements, since "_Le salut d'Angleterre_" might depend upon this. The Duke of Lorraine was not particularly impressed with James's followers, especially after Lord Middleton was gone. "_Ce ne sont que des gens d'un caractère fort médiocre_," he writes. They talk about things which affect their chief with the utmost freedom. In Mr Higgons, who had succeeded Lord Middleton, he could discern no merit whatever. As for Lord Middleton, he found him "_fort reservé et voulant dominer seul_." He gives him credit for capacity and zeal, but censures him as being "_timide et irresolu_." All the rest, he says, are "_de jeunes gens qui ne pouuoint souffrir ce Milord, et qui auoint eu l'imprudence de dire à Lunéville qu'il etoit si fort hay en Angleterre que les plus zelez partisans de leur Maitre auoint temoigné qu'ils ne feroint jamais rien pour ces interests tant qu'il l'auroit au-prez de luy_." All these men evidently have very little knowledge of what is going on at home, he says. There is no one in whose judgment the Pretender might repose any faith except it be the Earl of Oxford or Lord Bolingbroke.

On the whole, the Pretender's life at Bar, though perhaps a little monotonous, can scarcely have been unpleasant. He made friends with the local _haute volée_, asking them to dinner, and being asked back--and borrowed money from them whenever he could. His especial friends were the Marquis de Bassompierre, from whom he borrowed 15,000 livres, which the Duke repaid in 1719, and M. de Rousselle. A good deal of time the Chevalier spent in his closet, with Nairne, or Higgons, or Middleton, concocting plans and dictating long memorials to the Pope, or else to Cardinal Gualterio, advocating the canonisation of Bellarmine, recommending _protégés_ for places which they never got, and insisting on his right to nominate bishops to Irish sees, the names of which he could not spell. At off-times he played _reversi_, _boston_, and _ombre_, and occasionally _petit palet_, which is an aristocratic form of chuck-farthing. Then there was the pleasure of the chase, of which we know from Father Leslie that James was a tolerably keen votary. In Lorraine the diversion of _vénerie_ was held in high estimation, though reserved only for very great magnates, and guarded by a ring-fence of the strictest enactments against vulgar intrusion. Poaching accordingly came to be a very common offence. "Ground game," indeed--at any rate rabbits--it was open to all to shoot. "High game"--_i.e._, deer--on the other hand, was reserved within certain limits exclusively for the Duke. Within about eight miles of the Duke's palaces, in what were called the ducal _plaisirs_, not even nobles of the highest rank were permitted to shoot or hunt. No dogs belonging to private persons were allowed in the fields near those _plaisirs_, on any pretence whatever, be the deer, and boars, and wolves, ever so troublesome. Even shepherds' dogs and watch-dogs must have their hamstrings cut, or else a log tied round their necks. And in some districts every Parish was required by law to provide a _louvière_ or wolf's pit, 20 feet deep, 18 feet wide at its bottom, and 12 at its opening. From "_le haut puissant messire_" Jean de Ligniville's most amusing disquisitions on "_La Meutte et Venerie_" we learn that the district about Bar was "_très boisé_" and well stocked with game of every description, which, local chroniclers tell us, James was frequently occupied in hunting. Lorrain and English hunting were not then as far apart in their general features as one might be tempted to assume. English kings had more than once sent presents of English hounds to Lorrain dukes--Charles III. received from James I. a present of eighty harriers at a time. And more than one Lorrain grandee came over to hunt and shoot here. Ligniville himself, the Duke's _Grand Veneur_ (under Charles IV.), had frequently hunted in England, and expressed himself especially delighted with the sport in which he had joined in Yorkshire. On the whole, he appears to have considered English hounds superior to French--less eager at first, but with more stay in them--and he was proud of having received presents of some from the Prince of Wales of his time (Charles I.), "Milord de Hée," and from "Milord Howard." But a cross between English and French hounds he seems to have regarded as the _ne plus ultra_ of excellence. "Puss" was very much persecuted in the valley of the Meuse, furnishing by its exceptional swiftness and skill in swimming almost too good sport, "_contre montant l'eaüe tellement viste que les chiens ne les pouuoint pas aborder_." James's hunting sometimes led him into adventures, and on one occasion nearly saddled his host with a diplomatic difficulty. Riding hard, he once got to the little town of Ligny at nightfall, some eight miles from Bar, in a vassal territory belonging, under the Duke of Lorraine, to Montmorency, Duke of Luxemburg. The Duke of Luxemburg, being rather a big vassal, was in consequence also a very troublesome one, and the Lorrain Court and his officers frequently found themselves at loggerheads. To James, coming from Bar, with fifty Lorrain _gens d'armes_, besides his own suite, the _maire_ resolutely refused to open the gates and furnish lodgings for the night, grounding his refusal upon a decision of the Parliament of Paris passed in the year 1661. The Lorrains were quite prepared for a siege and an assault. However, James deemed it wiser to leave things alone, and so the company rode half a mile further, to a little village called Velaine, where they spent a most uncomfortable night. Soon we have Montmorency complaining to King Louis of the assumed "_nouuelles entreprises de M. le Duc de Lorrain sur mon comté de Ligny_." Leopold revenged himself by imprisoning about a dozen _maires_ of the Ligny county, on the plea of their having failed to furnish the requisite waggons, and in the end bought Montmorency out with the sum of 2,600,000 francs.

All this, however, was not enough excitement for James. In one of his letters he plaintively calls Bar his "Todis"--by which of course he means "Tomis." "Tomis," by a natural train of thought suggested--besides the _tristia_, of which we have plenty--the _ars amatoria_. And to it the Chevalier devoted not a few of his unoccupied hours. If local tradition speaks true, he differed very materially in his prosecution of this art from his father, of whom Catherine Sedley said that on what principle he selected the ladies of his heart she could never make out. None of them were good-looking, and if any of them had wit, he had not the wit to find it out. And Mary of Modena, his wife, added that, although he was willing to give up his crown for his faith, he could never muster sufficient resolution to discard a mistress. His son was in both respects far more of a man of the world.

It was in the green bosquets of those Pâquis, his favourite lounging-place, that James first discovered his human jewel. To house her suitably, he took--at somebody else's cost--a cottage on the brow of the hill, where the view is delightful and the air magnificent. You can still approximately trace the site, high up in the Rue de l'Horloge, above the Rue St. Jean, a little below the neglected terrace in the Rue Chavée--which is well worth visiting for its prospect. As the house stood with its back to the hill and facing only the open space, there must have been absolute privacy. But, after moving down to the Lower Town, James found the ascent by those _Quatre-vingt Degrés_--which Oudinot rode up on horseback--a trifle laborious. The steps lead almost straight up from his house to the cottage, describing just enough of an angle to take in the humble building, now marked by a tablet, in which Marshal Oudinot was born. A more convenient arrangement could scarcely have been desired. But the steps were sadly "_sales et délabrés_." Not to inconvenience James in his amours, the town council readily voted the requisite sum for putting them into proper repair.

When September came on, James found the air on the castle-hill "_trop vif_." Although his mother generally reports that "_il se porte bien_," it is to be feared that his constitution was none of the strongest. We read in one of D'Audriffet's despatches, "_que sa santé estoit toujours fort delicate_." He has had a "_fluxion_" in the eye. He has "weak lungs." "He is evidently very poorly," writes D'Audriffet to Louis. He finds himself "_alteré par l'intemperie du tems_." He takes the waters of Plombières four times "for his health," and wants to take those of Aix-la-Chapelle. He talks of going to a warmer climate--Spain or Italy, or, more specifically, Venice. But he can now obtain no fresh passport from the Emperor. Then he goes to have a look at Saint Mihiel, likewise in the Barrois, only a few miles from Koeurs, in which another Prince of Wales, young Edward--the same whom Edward IV. meanly struck with his gauntlet, and Richard of Gloucester despatched with a stab, to stop his "sprawling"--spent his young years of exile in company with his mother, Queen Margaret, from 1464 to 1471. But he does not like the idea of living in the Benedictine Abbey. So the Duke orders the town council to get ready once more M. Marchal's convenient house below, to which the Chevalier insists that a second house adjoining shall be added, belonging to M. de Romécourt, besides a portion of one belonging to M. Lepaige, with a kitchen specially built, and a "gardemanger," a new door, and sundry other conveniences, to say nothing of the hiring of further accommodation for his horses, his kennel, his _gens de vénerie_, his guards, some of his suite--all of whom and all of which he wants very near him, and all of which consequently, costs the town a good deal of money. M. de Romécourt's house is a complete match to M. Marchal's, but smaller, bringing up the frontage to thirteen windows.

However, James was not always at Bar, nor yet always, when away, at Plombières. Duke Leopold was constantly inviting him to Lunéville, and sometimes to Nancy, and arranging most magnificent _fêtes_ in his honour. Leopold could do things handsomely when he chose. Even when James stayed three whole weeks, there was something new provided every day to amuse him--"_les plaisirs de la Cour étoint entremêlé de repas, de collations, de bals, de concerts, de Comédie, de promenades, de chasse, de feux d'artifice, etc., mais chaque jour tout étoit nouveau_." Leopold's palace at Lunéville--the same in allusion to which Louis XV. said to King Stanislas, "_Mon père, vous êtes mieux logé que moi_"--was specially laid out for the gaiety and the varied succession of amusements for which the Lorrain Court was famous. It was at the Lorrain Court that the _cotillon_, that universal favourite on the Continent, was first invented. And in Leopold's theatre it was that Adrienne Lecouvreur made her first appearance.

To give James a right royal reception, Leopold spared neither pains nor money. He always made a point of going to meet his guest--to Batelemont, to Houdemont, or to Gondrecourt. To enable the Court to enter with proper spirit into all the magnificence prepared, we read in the official despatches, that in April, 1713, on the occasion of James's first visit, the Duke directed that two quarters' salaries, in arrear since 1711, should be paid to the officers of his household. D'Audriffet makes merry over this. But in France things were no better. The Court of Versailles, we know, was always behindhand in its payments to Queen Mary. Mrs Strickland makes this a matter of reproach to Desmarets, as if purely the result of his negligence. But the Court had not got the money. In 1715 we have D'Audriffet himself sending in his little account, which shows five years' salary to be owing, in addition to 24,800 livres of disbursements, the whole debt amounting to 84,800 livres.

Even more brilliant than the _fêtes_ given at Lunéville, were those to which James was invited at the Château of Commercy, the seat of the Prince de Vaudémont. Vaudémont was rich and generous. He had occupied high positions in the army and the administrative services both of Austria and of Spain. He was a man pre-eminently prudent in council. Our William III. had discovered that, and had frequently sought his opinion, more particularly while the Treaty of Ryswick was under consideration. To James the Prince became a most valuable friend and confidant--more especially at that critical juncture when the Pretender's great aim was to get away unobserved form Lorraine. In his splendid castle of Commercy, set off by magnificent cent gardens and sheets of water throwing Versailles into the shade, the "Damoiseau" of Commercy gave _fêtes_ the description of which baffled Court chroniclers of the period, and after which, in the words of the "Gazette de Hollande," James found himself constrained to go back to Bar in self-defence, "_pour s'y delasser, pour ainsi dire, de la fatigue des plaisirs continuels_." There was such a _fête_ in June, 1713, arranged on a peculiarly lordly scale, in which a chorus of _Pèlerins de Saint Jacques_ were brought in--appropriately hailing from "L'Isle de Cythère," and provided with passports from the goddess Venus--whose special object seems to be to say pretty things to James:--

"Vous gagnez tous les coeurs, tout le monde gémit De voir un Roy d'une bonté si rare, Et brillant de l'éclat de toutes les vertus Loin des Etats qui lui sont dûs Mais nous verrons un jour cette triple couronne Qu'ont porté si longtems vos Illustres Ayeux, Sur votre chef tomber des Cieux. Le mérite, le sang, les Loix, tout vous la donne; Laissez le soin de soûtenir ces droits Au Dieu qui dans ses mains porte les coeurs des Rois."

Then a curious supper was given. The twenty-four most illustrious guests present sat down at two tables, the ladies at one, the gentlemen at the other. Each person was served with an equal portion, "_tous en vaisselle de fayance, jusqu'aux manches des couteaux_."

"Et dans ce sobre repas Chacun n'eut que vingt-sept plats."

In all, to these twenty-four people 648 _plats_ were served. The great joke of the meal was, that strict silence was enjoined. "_Mais on avoit oublié d'en bannir les Ris._" So people soon began to laugh, and then the men accused the ladies of breaking the rule, and the ladies retorted, and that put an end to Trappism. On another occasion, in July, 1714, when James spent a fortnight at Commercy--while his sister was slowly dying--the Prince, in the course of an even more brilliant _fête_, entertained his guests with sham-fights, the siege of a castle, and other incidents of military operations, for which the services of a French army-corps stationed in the neighbourhood, at Troussay, under the command of M. de Ruffey, were impressed.

Mary of Modena must have felt the removal of her only son--her only child, since the Princess Louise, "_la Consolatrice_," was dead--very keenly. She declared that she had no one left to open her heart to. This was not to be understood quite literally, for we find the Queen-Dowager pouring out her confidences very effusively to her _chère mère_ and the sisters at Chaillot, whose journals, in fact, supply the main records of Mary's doings. But, no doubt, she missed James much. Once after his banishment, in July, 1714--when James rushed secretly to Paris, to consult with the king about the steps to be taken in view of Queen Anne's impending death, and was sent away "_fort peu satisfait_"--she had seen him for an hour or two in the night. Very naturally, she wished to visit him at Bar, more particularly as her doctors had advised her to try the waters of Plombières. It is not altogether impossible, also, although the Queen was kept in rather tight leading-strings by Dr. Beaulieu, that, plagued as she was with cancer in the breast, she may have wished to take the advice of a specialist at Bar with whose fame at the time the world was ringing. Bar-le-Duc had become strangely identified with cures for cancer. In 1663 Pierre Alliot first discovered the value of cauterising as a corrective treatment. And early in 1714 M. le sieur Moat, another Bar doctor, astonished the world with quite a novel method, which was probably humbug, since it is said to have effected perfectly incredible recoveries. Some months later we find Queen Mary preparing to set out for Bar and also for Plombières. Her bad health and an abnormally wet summer put a stop to the project. This was just about the time of the death of Queen Anne, when Leopold felt as if he were politically walking on eggs. He had given so much umbrage in England already, that every further offence was to be carefully avoided. If the Queen, as was to be anticipated, in going to Plombières, were also to visit Lunéville, that must of a certainty give rise to misunderstandings. So he sends officers and messengers to inquire and dissuade, as diplomatically as he can. The Queen had been so ill as to be given up, and he did not wish to pain her. But above all things he had to think of himself.

On very different grounds the tidings of the Queen's impending visit also fluttered the good people of Bar not a little. They had never entertained a queen. So on the 13th of July we find the heads of the town council carefully inquiring of the Marquis de Gerbévillers, the governor of the district, what is the proper ceremonial to be observed. Thereupon a deputation is named, and a present of 16 lb. of _dragées_ and forty-eight _pots de confitures_ is voted, besides a _feuillade_ of wine for distribution, and a special _vin d'honneur_, to be presented to the royal visitor by the Marquis de Bassompierre, on behalf of the town. The Barisiens are very proud both of their _confitures_ and of their wine. Both may be had now, presumably, in the same quality in which they were tendered to Queen Mary. The _confitures_ consist of currants, red and white, preserved whole, in a syrup made sweet to excess. But the flavour is good. The _vins de Bar_ have long been reckoned a delicacy, more particularly the _clairet_--a variety having a colour half-way between red and white. The wine is highly praised by patriotic writers as being "_excellent, délicat, léger, et bien-faisant_," and more than any other "_ami de l'homme_." And if you only stick to that wine alone, and take care not to mix, you can drink, they protest, absolutely whatever quantity you like, without feeling one whit the worse next day. To an English palate, I am bound to say, the wine is apt to present itself as intolerably sour.