Part 6 (2/2)
An interesting anecdote is told in connection with the travels and cooperation of Mlle. de Scudery 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 a.s.sa.s.sinating 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 Hotel de Rambouillet where Mlle. de Scudery 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 women of the seventeenth century whose popularity was due solely to admirable qualities of mind and soul. With her, friends.h.i.+p 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 Conde 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 Hotel 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 Scudery became independent and established the custom of receiving her friends on Sat.u.r.day; these receptions became famous under the name of _Samedi_, and besides the regular rather bourgeois gathering, the most brilliant talent and highest n.o.bility flocked to them, regardless of rank or station, wealth or influence. Pellisson, the great master, the prince, the Apollo of her Sat.u.r.days, 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 Scudery 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 friends.h.i.+p.
Mlle. de Scudery, 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 friends.h.i.+p--a pure, platonic love, in which her lover must be her all, her confidant, the partic.i.p.ator in her sorrows and her conversation; and his happiness must be in her alone; he must, without feeling pa.s.sion, 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 friends.h.i.+p becomes love in the heart of a lover or when this love is mingled with friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p. It can be said that love and friends.h.i.+p 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 Scudery)--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 languis.h.i.+ng 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 Scudery 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 _precieuses_ to whom she was likened by her 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 Scudery 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-rimes_ (rhymes given to be formed into verse), _vers-echos_, 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 fas.h.i.+on there--they rather made it; in art and literature as in toilets, smallness follows the fas.h.i.+on, pretension exaggerates it, taste makes a compact with it.”
A specimen of the _enigme-sonnets_ may be of interest, to show in what intellectual playfulness and trivialities these wits indulged:
”Souvent, quoique leger, je la.s.se qui me porte.
Un mot de ma facon vaut un ample discours.
J'ai sous Louis le Grand commence d'avoir cours, Mince, long, plat, etroit, d'une etoffe peu forte.
”Les doigts les moins savants me taillent de la sorte; Sous mille noms divers je parais tous les jours; Aux valets etourdis je suis d'un grand secours.
Le Louvre ne voit point ma figure a sa porte.
”Une grossiere main vient la plupart du temps Me prendre de la main des plus honnetes gens.
Civil, officieux, je suis ne pour la ville.
”Dans le plus rude hiver j'ai le dos toujours nu: Et, quoique fort commode, a peine m'a-t-on vu, Qu'ausitot neglige, je deviens inutile.”
[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 coa.r.s.e 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 amus.e.m.e.nt is the following:
”Je suis niais et fin, honnete et malhonnete, Moins sincere a la cour qu'en un simple taudis.
Je fais d'un air plaisant trembler les plus hardis, Le fort me laisse aller, le sage m'arrete.
”A personne sans moi l'on ne fait jamais fete: J'embellis quelquefois, quelquefois, j'enlaidis.
Je dedaigne tantot, tantot j'applaudis; Pour m'avoir en partage, il faut n'etre pas bete.
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