Part 13

Seventeen months after Maurice's return to France Adrienne died, under peculiarly dramatic circumstances; popular rumour ascribing her death to poison administered by the agents of the Duchesse de Bouillon,[82] a pretender to the heart of the Saxon hero, who was already under suspicion of having made an attempt upon her rival's life. To arrive at a satisfactory conclusion in regard to this very mysterious affair, it would be necessary to have before us the _dossier_ containing the report of the autopsy and other important documents of which Sainte-Beuve speaks in his well-known study of the actress. This _dossier_ has, however, disappeared, and it is uncertain if it is still in existence; the probability is that it has been destroyed. Sainte-Beuve's conclusion was that the Duchesse de Bouillon was guiltless, not only of Adrienne's death, which he ascribes to natural causes, but of any attempt on her life. The former opinion was, no doubt, justified by the evidence which the lost _dossier_ contained. But the latter, which seems to have been based on an altogether misplaced belief in the veracity of a certain Abbé Aunillon--who was on terms of the closest intimacy with the accused duchess, and invented a most ingenious defence on behalf of his friend, which we need not enter into here--the great critic would probably have seen cause to alter had he been acquainted with the documents which have been brought to light of recent years by M. Ravaisson, M. Campardon, and M. Monval.

Let us, however, borrow the account of the affair given a few days after Adrienne's death, by Mlle. Aïssé in a letter to Madame Calandrini, and which, she declares, had been furnished her by "a friend of the Lecouvreur," probably d'Argental, to whom she was related:--

* * * * *

"Madame de Bouillon is capricious, violent, head-strong, and much addicted to gallantry. Her tastes extend from the prince to the actor.[83] She conceived a fancy for the Comte de Saxe, who had none for her. Not that he piques himself on his fidelity to the Lecouvreur; for, together with his passion for her, he has a thousand little passing tastes. But he was neither flattered nor anxious to reply to the impulsiveness of Madame de Bouillon, who was enraged at seeing her charms despised, and who had no doubt that the Lecouvreur was the obstacle that stood in the way of the passion that the Count would otherwise naturally entertain for her.[84] To destroy this obstacle, she resolved to get rid of the actress, and, in order to put this horrible design into execution, chose a young abbé,[85] with whom she was not personally acquainted, to be the instrument of her vengeance. He was approached by two men at the Tuileries, who proposed to him, after a rather lengthy conversation regarding his poverty, to free himself from his distress by obtaining admission, under favour of his skill in painting, into Lecouvreur's house, and persuading her to eat some lozenges, which would be given him. The poor abbé objected strongly, on account of the heinousness of the crime; but the two men replied that it no longer depended upon him to refuse, since he would do so on peril of his life. The abbé, terrified, promised everything; and was conducted to Madame de Bouillon, who confirmed the promises and threats, and handed him the lozenges. The abbé begged that a few days might be allowed him for the execution of these projects; and Mlle. Lecouvreur received one day, on returning home with one of her friends and an actress named Lamothe, an anonymous letter, in which she was implored to come immediately, either alone or with some one on whom she could depend, to the garden of the Luxembourg, where, at the fifth tree in one of the main avenues, she would find a man who had something of the last importance to communicate to her. As it was then precisely the hour appointed for the rendezvous, she re-entered her coach and set out thither, accompanied by the two persons who were with her. She found the abbé, who accosted her and related to her the odious commission with which he had been entrusted, declaring that he was incapable of committing such a crime; but that he was at a loss what to do, inasmuch as he was sure to be assassinated.

"The Lecouvreur told him that, for the safety of both, the whole affair must be denounced to the Lieutenant of Police. The abbé replied that he feared that, if he were to do this, he might make himself enemies too powerful for him to resist; but that, if she believed this precaution necessary for her safety, he would not hesitate to maintain what he had told her. The Lecouvreur took him in her coach to M. Hérault (the Lieutenant of Police), who, on the facts being laid before him, asked the abbé for the lozenges and threw them to a dog, who died a quarter of an hour afterwards. He next inquired of him which of the two Bouillons[86] had given him this commission, and, when the abbé replied that it was the duchess, showed no surprise. M. Hérault continued to question him, and asked if he would venture to support this accusation publicly; to which the abbé replied that he could put him in prison and afterwards confront him with Madame de Bouillon.

"The Lieutenant of Police sent him away, and informed the cardinal (de Fleury) of this adventure. The cardinal was very indignant, and desired in the first instance that the affair should be most strictly investigated. But the relatives and friends of the Bouillon family persuaded the cardinal not to give publicity to so scandalous an affair, and succeeded in appeasing him. Some months later, no one knows how, the adventure was made public and caused a terrible commotion. Madame de Bouillon's brother-in-law spoke of it to his brother, and told him that it was absolutely imperative that his wife should clear herself from such a suspicion, and that he ought to ask for a _lettre de cachet_ to shut the abbé up. There was no difficulty in obtaining this _lettre de cachet_, and the poor wretch was arrested and taken to the Bastille. He was examined, and maintained with firmness all that he had said. Many promises and threats were used to induce him to retract. All kinds of expedients were suggested to him, as, for instance, madness or a passion for the Lecouvreur, which had prompted him to invent this fable, in order to please her. Nothing, however, could move him; he never varied in his answers, and was kept in prison.

"The Lecouvreur wrote to the abbé's father, who lived in the country and was unaware of his son's misfortune. The poor man came at once to Paris, and demanded that his son should either be formally brought to trial or set at liberty. He addressed himself to the cardinal, who inquired of Madame de Bouillon whether she wished the affair to be tried, as otherwise the abbé could not be kept in prison. Madame de Bouillon, dreading publicity and unable to get the abbé assassinated in the Bastille, consented to his liberation. During the two months that the father remained in Paris nothing happened to the son. But when the father had returned to the country, the abbé, having had the imprudence to stay in Paris, suddenly disappeared. No one knows whether he is dead or not, but nothing is heard of him."[87]

* * * * *

Incredible as this story may appear, it, nevertheless, accords in all important details with the documents which M. Monval has extracted from the Archives of the Bastille, preserved in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. The interview at the Tuileries, the conversation with the Duchesse de Bouillon, the suspicious lozenges--all that is true. The Abbé Bouret, imprisoned at Saint-Lazare, confirmed it in a series of examinations to which he was subjected.[88]

Bouret had been arrested on July 29, 1729, and he was kept in prison for three months. During his confinement Adrienne wrote to him, entreating him to withdraw his charge against the Duchesse de Bouillon, if it were untrue, and promising, in that event, to obtain his pardon. She also sent him money, clothes, and books, and did all she could to lighten his imprisonment.

Thanks to the efforts of his father, who, though ill, had hastened to Paris so soon as he was informed of his son's arrest, Bouret was released on October 23, when Adrienne advised him to leave Paris at once, pointing out that the affair had now become common knowledge, and that, if he lingered, the Bouillon family would certainly cause him to be rearrested.

Well would it have been for Bouret had he followed the actress's advice; but, unfortunately, his father's illness took so serious a turn that it was impossible for him to undertake the journey to Lorraine, and the abbé remained to nurse him. Meanwhile, the scandal had assumed such dimensions that the Duc de Bouillon obtained a new _lettre de cachet_, by virtue of which, on January 23, 1730, Bouret was again arrested and conveyed first to For l'Évêque and afterwards back to Saint-Lazare, on a charge of "poisoning or giving false information to the celebrated actress Lecouvreur."

The public interest in the affair had, not improbably, been stimulated by a singular incident which had occurred at the Comédie-Française during the previous autumn. On October 18, Adrienne was playing the part of Phèdre, when, perceiving the Duchesse de Bouillon complacently watching her performance from one of the boxes on the first tier, her feelings overcame her, and, turning in the direction of her enemy, she repeated with unmistakable emphasis the indignant lines:--

"Je sais mes perfidies, OEnone, et ne suis pas de ces femmes hardies Qui, goûtant dans les crimes une tranquille paix, Ont su se faire un front qui ne rougit jamais."

The pit, whose sympathies were entirely on the side of the actress, burst into loud applause, amidst which the duchess angrily quitted the theatre.[89]

Adrienne did not play again until the evening of November 10, owing to ill-health, when she again appeared as Phèdre. The accounts of the Comédie-Française show that, on the following day, a sum of 1 livre, 10 sols was paid for a coach "to go to the Hôtel de Bouillon, on the matter of the footmen," and similar entries occur on the 20th and 30th of the same month. From this M. Monval supposes that the duchess, in order to avenge the affront she had received, had sent her lackeys to create a disturbance and hiss Adrienne.[90]

Early in the following March, Bouret was removed to the Bastille, where he persistently adhered to the statements he had made before Hérault and at Saint-Lazare; and on May 18, Père de Couvrigny, the Jesuit confessor attached to the prison, wrote to the Lieutenant of Police the following significant note:--

* * * * *

"I have visited and had a long conversation with the young abbé brought from Saint-Lazare, and have made strong representations to him on the baseness of the calumny of which he has been guilty. He appears very firm in maintaining that he has done no wrong to others, but that he cannot wrong himself. _The matter is very terrible and serious._"

* * * * *

Terrible and serious it most certainly was, for Adrienne had died two months before, after a very short illness; and the firmness with which Bouret continued to adhere to his accusation against the Duchesse de Bouillon gave the affair a still more sinister complexion. On July 8, he wrote to Hérault:--

* * * * *

"Permit me to cast myself at your feet to implore your protection. I believe that you will not refuse it to me, inasmuch as you are the protector of the innocent. Alas! cast a pitying glance on my misfortunes. It is a sad spectacle for you; you will see nothing but tears, groans, and fears; in a word, all that an agitated mind can exhibit. That is the sad state to which I have been reduced for a whole year. The fury of my enemies ought to be satisfied. You are my only hope; in you I have placed my trust; decide upon my fate, Monseigneur; I will subscribe to everything that I am able to; but, as for my departing from what I have deposed to, were death with all its terrors to appear before my eyes, I would prefer it to calumniating myself."

* * * * *

But, six weeks later, Bouret completely alters his tone, and on August 24 writes again to Hérault:--

* * * * *

"As you have done me the honour to order me to speak the truth touching the Duchesse de Bouillon, I obey your commands. Here it is. The desire that I had to become acquainted with the Lecouvreur induced me to invent a pretext for gaining admission to her house.... I declare to you that the duchess is innocent of everything of which I have accused her. Pardon a wretched man, whose only crimes are a fevered brain and much imprudence."[91]

* * * * *

After this recantation, the unfortunate youth remained a prisoner for nine months longer, when he was finally set at liberty (June 3, 1731). From that date nothing more is heard of him, though there is no reason to assume, with Mlle. Aïssé, that he was the victim of foul play. He probably lost not a moment in returning to Lorraine, heartily glad to turn his back upon the city in which he had suffered so much.

That Adrienne Lecouvreur had been the object of an attempt at poisoning on the part of Madame de Bouillon admits, we think, of very little doubt. Barely half a century had passed since the famous Poison Trials, in which many a high-born dame, including, by the way, another Duchesse de Bouillon,[92] had been compromised. What had occurred with terrible frequency in 1680 was not impossible in 1730; nor does the passionate, vindictive, and unscrupulous character of the duchess render her culpability any the less probable. Again, although Bouret ultimately withdrew his accusation, he persisted in it for many months after his second arrest, in spite of the prospect that a recantation would ensure his release. Thirdly, the official investigation of the affair was very incomplete, and the authorities appear to have had no other object in view than to obtain Bouret's recantation and hush the matter up. Finally, if the duchess were innocent, why, we may well ask, did she not take steps to clear her reputation by prosecuting her accuser before the courts? Why did she prefer to remain under the shadow of so hideous a suspicion to the end of her life?

But even if the charge against Madame de Bouillon is to be considered proved, it seems to us in the highest degree improbable that the attempt against Adrienne was renewed, and that the actress fell a victim to it, as so many persons asserted at the time, and as some writers, including M. Monval, still believe. Let us, however, listen to Mlle. Aïssé's version of the circumstances connected with Adrienne's death:--

* * * * *

"Since then (Bouret's denunciation of the duchess), the Lecouvreur has been on her guard. One day, at the theatre, after the principal piece, Madame de Bouillon sent to ask her to come to her box. The Lecouvreur was extremely surprised, and answered that her toilette was not finished, and it was impossible for her to present herself. The duchess sent a second time, and was told, in reply to her invitation, that the Lecouvreur was about to appear on the stage, but that she would obey her commands when she quitted it. Madame de Bouillon begged her not to fail her, and, as she was making her exit, met her, bestowed upon her all sorts of caresses, complimented her highly on her acting, and assured her that to see her give so finished a rendering of the part which she had just played had afforded her infinite pleasure. Some time afterwards, the Lecouvreur became so ill in the middle of a piece that she was unable to finish it. When the "orator" came forward to make the announcement, the whole pit eagerly demanded news of her condition. Since that day, her health declined and she grew thin and feeble. On the last occasion on which she performed, she took the part of Jocaste in the _OEdipe_ of Voltaire. The rôle is a somewhat trying one. Before the play began, she was seized with a violent attack of dysentery.... It was pitiful to see her exhaustion and weakness. Although I was in ignorance of her indisposition, I remarked two or three times to Madame de Parabère[93] that I felt very distressed on her account. Between the two pieces we were informed of the nature of her illness, and were astonished when she reappeared in the afterpiece, _Le Florentin_, and undertook a very long and difficult part,[94] which, however, she played to perfection, and, to all appearance, as if it gave her pleasure. The audience showed that they greatly appreciated her decision to continue playing, and it was no longer said, as it had been previously, that she was suffering from the effects of poison. The poor creature returned home, and, four days later, at one o'clock in the afternoon, when she was believed to be out of danger, she died. She had convulsions, which never happens in cases of dysentery,[95] and went out like a candle. The body was opened, and the bowels were found to be ulcerated.... If the suspected lady had appeared at the theatre under these circumstances, she would have been driven from the house. She had the effrontery to send every day to the Lecouvreur's house to inquire as to her condition."[96]

* * * * *

If, as Sainte-Beuve and M. Larroumet point out, the Duchesse de Bouillon had really intended to poison Adrienne, the moment chosen for her attempt was singularly inopportune. Suspected by the public of a previous attempt upon the actress's life, with Bouret still in prison and an investigation of the affair hanging over her head, the most ordinary prudence must have dictated to her, if determined on the crime, the advisability of deferring her horrible design at least until she had cleared herself from the charge under which she then lay. The daily inquiries she caused to be made during Adrienne's illness, of which Mlle. Aïssé speaks with such indignation, were no doubt actuated by a sincere desire for the actress's recovery; not, of course, for the poor woman's own sake, but because she foresaw that her death at such a time would render her own position even more unpleasant than it already was.

But there is a far stronger argument in the duchess's favour than the one which we have just stated. Adrienne's correspondence, published by M. Monval, shows that for some years past she had been in very delicate health. "I have not had twelve hours' health since I last saw you," she writes to d'Argental, during the latter's visit to England; while in other letters she complains of being always "insupportably fatigued," and of being "in despair in regard to her health." Moreover--and this is a point of the greatest importance--she was subject to a chronic affection of the intestines, and, in the winter of 1725-1726, had had an attack of dysentery, which all but proved fatal; the very malady of which she eventually died.

It would therefore appear that, however strongly facts may point to Madame de Bouillon's guilt in regard to the charge brought against her by Bouret, it would be manifestly unjust to saddle her with any responsibility for Adrienne's death. Everything, indeed, seems to indicate natural causes; nothing confirms the theory of poison.

Adrienne was taken ill on Tuesday, March 14, and she died on the following Monday, the 20th inst. Maurice de Saxe, Voltaire, and a surgeon named Faget were with her when the end came; and the faithful d'Argental, who had been hurriedly summoned, reached the house a few minutes after she had breathed her last. Neither of her three friends, however, though each possessed influence in his way, was able to save the remains of the celebrated actress from the worst indignity ever offered to those of a member of the theatrical profession in France.

Adrienne's house was situated in the parish of Saint-Sulpice, the curé of which, Languet de Gergy, was one of the most bigoted and obstinate priests in Paris. When the end was seen to be near, he was sent for to receive the usual renunciation and administer the last Sacraments, but accounts differ as to what occurred. Some writers declare that when he arrived the actress was already dead, or at least on the point of death; others that she firmly refused to renounce her profession, and, on the curé continuing to exhort her to repentance, pointed with out-stretched hand to a bust of Maurice de Saxe which stood near her bed, and exclaimed:--

"_Voilà mon univers, mon espoir, et mes dieux!_"

What is certain, is that Adrienne died without the Sacraments, and that Languet de Gergy refused her not only Christian burial (this, as we have seen, had been the invariable practice of the Paris clergy in regard to members of her profession who had died under similar circumstances, ever since the time of Molière), but interment in the cemetery at all, even in that portion of it which was reserved for heretics and unbaptized children--a refusal _absolutely without precedent_ in the history of the theatre.

In the morning of March 21, an autopsy was performed on the body of the deceased actress (according to Voltaire, on his application), when the doctors decided that Adrienne had died a natural death, an opinion to which the poet himself subscribes.[97] Later in the day, Maurepas, in his capacity of Minister for Paris, wrote to the Lieutenant of Police, informing him that it was the intention of Cardinal de Fleury not to interfere in the matter of ecclesiastical burial, but to leave it entirely to the discretion of the Archbishop of Paris and the curé of Saint-Sulpice. "If," he added, "they persist in refusing it to her, as they appear inclined to do, she must be taken away to-night and interred with as little scandal as possible."[98]

At midnight, accordingly, the mortal remains of poor Adrienne were placed in a hackney-coach, and, preceded by two street porters bearing torches, and escorted by a squad of the watch and a M. de Laubinière--whom Sainte-Beuve supposes to have been a friend of the actress, but who, M. Monval thinks, was a representative of the Lieutenant of Police--conveyed to a piece of waste land near the Seine, and there buried, quicklime being thrown over the body, and no stone or mark of any kind being placed to indicate where it lay.[99]

The refusal of admission to the unconsecrated portion of the cemetery--a circumstance, as we have already observed, absolutely without precedent[100]--the secret removal, the presence of the representatives of the Lieutenant of Police at the interment, the precautions taken to destroy the corpse by quicklime and to conceal the grave, all point to an intention on the part of the authorities to render a second autopsy impossible. But the most scandalous part of the whole affair is the conduct of Languet de Gergy and his superior, the Archbishop of Paris, in lending themselves to a deliberate attempt to defeat the ends of justice in the interests of Madame de Bouillon and her powerful friends.