Part 18 (1/2)

”A journey was made to Mouchy,” wrote Mademoiselle, ”where three days were pa.s.sed in reviews. The King ordered a quant.i.ty of troops to be a.s.sembled; he also invited many ladies. All these were in mourning.

There was much diversion; the King was in gay spirits; he sang and made verses during the progress.” Although these were not the only ones, Louis did not compose many songs during his life.

He enjoyed feeling free from those wearisome persons who had abused the patronage of his mother in creating themselves censors of their sovereign. No one except his confessor and his preachers concerned themselves further with his sins. When Bossuet and Bourdaloue were appointed Court preachers they restrained themselves but little; but Louis XIV. bore their reproaches with equanimity. It was their duty, and Christians of that date, even bad ones, recognised what they owed to the Church, and bent their heads before the pulpit. Bossuet cried out in the presence of the entire Court that ”immoral manners are always bad manners,” and that ”there is a G.o.d in heaven who avenges the sins of the people, and who, above all, avenges the sins of Kings.”[178] He launched apostrophies at Mlle. de La Valliere: ”O creatures, shameful idols, withdraw from this Court. Shadows, phantoms, dissipate yourselves in the presence of the truth; false love, deceitful love, canst thou stand before it?”

Bourdaloue, who found Mme. de Montespan in the place of Mlle. de La Valliere, reproached the King for his ”debauches,” and openly demanded of him in his sermon if he had kept his promise of rupture: ”Have you not again seen this person fatal to your firmness and constancy? Have you no more sought occasions so _dangerous_ for you?”

Mme. de Sevigne went one day to hear him at Saint-Germain, where he preached a Lenten sermon before the King and Queen. She returned confounded and angry at his boldness: ”We heard after dinner the sermon of Bourdaloue, who speaks with all his force, launching truths with lowered bridle, attacking adultery on every side; regardless of all, he rides straight on.”[179] Louis XIV. accepted these public reproaches without protest; there was, however, but little result.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =MADAME DE MONTESPAN= From the engraving by Flameng after the painting by Mignard]

One effect of the death of the Queen Mother was that rivals to Mlle. de La Valliere were free to appear; also there was a great increase in the number of charlatans and alchemists, who found more easily an aristocratic clientele. Diviners and sorcerers also played an important role in the love life of this society--the most polished in the world.

The practice of the magic arts was at that date considered one of the most flouris.h.i.+ng Parisian industries. The inhabitants of the streets little frequented, or of the suburbs, were accustomed to the movement which took place in the early morning, or in the evening at dusk, around certain isolated houses.[180] People of all ranks, on foot, in carriages or in chairs, women masked or m.u.f.fled, succeeded each other before a closed door, which only opened at a particular sign.

The state of mind which led this crowd to the clairvoyant was to be found in all cla.s.ses of society, from the highest to the lowest. Public credulity was pa.s.sing through a period of expansion, apparently very much at odds with the splendid intellect of France at that date, at which, however, those who believe the simple formulas of history will not be astonished. Two of our grand cla.s.sic writers have left pages which bear witness to the extent of the evil, existing at the very moment in which France became the actual head of Europe.

Moliere mocks at occult science and its adepts, through a long play, or rather a libretto for a ballet,[181] which he wrote for the King in 1670, named as we already know, _Les Amants Magnifiques_. The _dramatis personae_ are divided into two camps according to a rule of his own, in a fas.h.i.+on very unpleasant for the grandees of this world, Moliere allowing them the precedence in folly. It was sufficient for his heroes to be ill.u.s.trious through rank, to endow them with a blind faith in all conjurers. ”The truth of astrology,” says the Prince Iphicrate, ”is an incontestable fact, and no one can dispute against the cert.i.tude of its predictions.” This is also the opinion of the Prince Timocles: ”I am sufficiently incredulous in regard to many things, but as for astrology, there is nothing more certain and more constant than the success with which horoscopes may be drawn.” The Princess Aristione also agrees, and is anxious in finding that her daughter is less convinced.

This is a commencement of a freedom of thought, and one cannot know to what it may lead: ”My daughter,” says the mother, ”you have a little incredulity which never leaves you.”

Disbelief in astrology and sorcery is represented in the play of Moliere, figuring in the name of ”c.l.i.tidas, court jester,” and of another person of obscure birth, ”Sostrate, general of the army,” who takes the part of c.l.i.tidas against the calmer prophets and other exploiters of human folly.

There is nothing more agreeable [says he] than all the great promises of this sublime knowledge. To transform everything into gold; to find immortal life; to heal by words; to make oneself beloved by the person of one's desires; to know all the secrets of the future; to call down from the sky at will impressions upon metals which bear happiness to mortals[182]; to command demons; to render armies invisible and soldiers invulnerable--all this is doubtless charming, and there are people who have no trouble in believing in the possibility; it is the easiest thing in the world for some men to be convinced, but for me, I avow that my grosser mind has some difficulty in comprehending and in believing.

La Fontaine has treated the same subject in three of his fables. It is in one of these, _Les Devineresses_, published in 1678, consequently before the famous drama _Les Poisons_, in which he shows himself very well acquainted with what the police had not yet been sufficiently clever to discover. He knew marvellously well the existence of the _poudre de succession_ and of the _poudre pour l'amour_:

Une femme, a Paris, faisait la pythonisse.

On l'allait consulter sur chaque evenement; Perdait-on un chiffon, avait-on un amant, Un mari vivant trop, au gre de son epouse, Une mere facheuse, une femme jalouse, Chez la Devineuse on courait, Pour se faire annoncer ce que l'on desirait.

The warning was not heeded, and it needed the ”burning chamber” of 1680 to make honest people comprehend that ”clairvoyant” was too often another name for ”seller of poisons.” La Fontaine had, however, given no new information about the confidence inspired. This fact was already too well known.

This dangerous agency, of which we have already had a glimpse on the occasion of the first search for Lesage and Mariette, merits some descriptive details. In Paris, during a period of twenty years, it was so mixed up with intrigues and crimes that it exercised a real influence over the morals of the Parisian world and through it over the affairs at Court.

Like a wave of madness it swept over the heads especially of the women.

Many of these, even those not directly mingling in political life, were in a state of revolt, inconsolable for having lost the importance acquired during the civil troubles.

Women had been emanc.i.p.ated by the force of affairs. During the actual fighting and the general disorders which ensued, the habit of remaining in the shade of obedience was lost; also the considering themselves only as objects of luxury.

Louis XIV. had undertaken the task of bringing the s.e.x back to the playing of a decorative or utilitarian role. It was almost as if to-day we should demand of our daughters, so free, so mingled with the general movement, to return suddenly to the self-effacement and the thousand restraints of our own youth. They would be transported with rage.

In 1666, the larger portion of the clients of the necromancer sought above everything else a secret by the aid of which they might shake off the yoke that had again fallen upon their shoulders. The husband was the natural incarnation of this yoke. It was therefore against him that the revolt was habitually directed. The wives addressed themselves to a clairvoyant. The first consultation was generally innocent enough.

The clairvoyant counselled new-comers to go to the good Saint Denis, always a succour for women unhappy in their domestic life, and to the indefatigable Saint Antoine de Padua. She reserved until later the giving of certain powders, only hinting at their existence, the secret of which had been brought from Italy and which were sought at Paris by both provincials and strangers.

It is now known through contemporaneous doc.u.ments that a.r.s.enic was an element in these powders, and that so many persons accused themselves in confession of having ”poisoned some one” that the priests of Notre-Dame at length gave warning to the authorities (1673). Did the penitents, especially the women, always speak the truth? Popular imagination is so quickly fired when poisoning is suggested, that it may well be queried whether a portion of the unfortunates were not rather hysterical and victims of hallucinations. It is probable that the true answer will never be known. Physicians at that time were the doctors of Moliere, and the science of chemistry did not exist.

With the husband softened or suppressed, the women demanded love to replace emotion in their contracted and faded existence. The task of the necromancer thus consisted in interesting G.o.d or the devil in the heart pangs of her client and of arousing an affection in the breast of the man she designated. This was the beginning for the new clients; the end was the black ma.s.s with its obscene rites or the b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s, for which a small infant was strangled.

All the forms of conjuration were used between the two, every charm, every talisman and many ”kinds of powders,” not always inoffensive. The consultations were paid for according to the rank or fortune of the clients. In default of money, a jewel was given or even a signed note, the imprudence of which last proceeding it is hardly needful to point out.

In the year of the death of Anne of Austria, one of the clairvoyants most frequented was the wife of a hosier named Antoine Montvoisin, whose shop was situated upon the Pont Marie, which to-day still unites the right bank of the Seine with the isle Saint-Louis. The Pont Marie, as almost all the bridges of Paris at that date, had a double row of houses, with shops beneath, which formed a very animated street. The affairs of Montvoisin, however, had not prospered. He had tried several commercial undertakings without success. He had been dry-goods merchant and jeweller, and had always ”lost his shops,” according to the expression of his wife, Catherine Montvoisin, familiarly called ”the neighbour.”