Part 8 (2/2)
However, even if Adrienne yielded in favour of a dramatic author to the customs of her profession, or, as Lemontey expresses it, was ”bound to Voltaire by the ties of glory and of love which in the preceding century had united Racine and the Champmesle,” it is improbable that either of the other persons mentioned were anything more than admirers. The actress's early experiences of the tender pa.s.sion had, as we have seen, been singularly bitter; the selfishness of man had inflicted upon her the most cruel of humiliations for a loving and sensitive woman, that of being cast aside like a broken toy when she had surrendered herself in the most absolute confidence, and she had come to Paris firmly resolved to remain henceforth mistress of her heart and her actions. The letters published by M. Monval show that, during the first three years of her residence in the capital, she replied to several declarations of love by offers of friends.h.i.+p, explaining her ideas on the subject with singular frankness.
”If I am unable to render you more happy,” she writes to one of her _soupirants_, ”I am more grieved than you yourself. I reproach myself. I tell myself, without doubt, more than you can tell me; but I could not deceive you. Caprices do not agree with reason, and love is nothing else but a folly which I detest, and to which I shall strive hard not to surrender myself so long as I live. You will understand it yet, and the severity with which I have treated you will serve then only to render you more happy. Permit me to approach the matter with you, and to offer you my counsels. Be my friend; I am worthy of that, but choose for mistress one who possesses a heart quite untampered with; who has not yet repented of that trust which renders everything so beautiful; who has been neither betrayed nor deserted; who believes you such as you are, and all men such as you. Let her be young and rather strong; she will be the less sensitive. Finally, see that she gives to you as much constancy as I should have given, if I had never loved any one save you.”
Among the adorers whom Adrienne rejected, and whose friends.h.i.+p she nevertheless succeeded in retaining through life, was the Marquis de la Chalotais, whose famous quarrel with Madame du Barry's _protege_, the Duc d'Aiguillon, convulsed all France during the last years of Louis XV.
The future Advocate-General of the Parliament of Brittany was, at the time when he made Adrienne's acquaintance, a gay young abbe and a great frequenter of the Comedie-Francaise, where he paid a.s.siduous court to its chief divinity, but without obtaining anything save her friends.h.i.+p and esteem. Having succeeded to the family t.i.tle and become Advocate-General at Rennes, he continued to correspond with his former enchantress, and was in the habit of sending her a present every year.
Only nine days before her death, Adrienne wrote him a charming letter, thanking him for his gift and a.s.suring him of her lasting regard:--
”When one has been acquainted with a person for ten or twelve years, and has a kind of attachment for him which is proof against separation and ought not to injure any one, one may speak without restraint. I a.s.sure you, then, that I love you as much as I esteem you, that I pray for your happiness and that of all belonging to you, and I entreat you to retain for me remembrance and more.”
In his letter, La Chalotais had expressed regret that it was impossible for him to take lessons in declamation from Adrienne; and the actress concludes by very modestly defining her own method of elocution, and giving her friend some very excellent advice on the subject:--
”You say that you would like me to teach you the art of declamation, of which you stand in need. You have then forgotten that I do not declaim.
The simplicity of my acting is my one poor merit; but this simplicity, which chance has turned to my advantage, appears to me indispensable to a man in your profession. The first requisite is intelligence, and that you have; the next, to allow beneficent Nature to do her work. To speak with grace, n.o.bility, and simplicity, and to reserve all your energies for the argument, are what you will say and do better than any man.”
An admirer whom Adrienne had infinitely more difficulty in persuading to be content with friends.h.i.+p than La Chalotais was Voltaire's faithful ally, d'Argental. D'Argental, who was then a lad scarcely out of his teens, conceived for the actress a most violent pa.s.sion, and, though the latter repeatedly a.s.sured him that friends.h.i.+p was all she had to bestow, for long refused to abandon hope.
In the meantime, his infatuation had become common knowledge, and his family, forgetting La Rochefoucauld's maxim that absence, while extinguis.h.i.+ng feeble pa.s.sions, only adds fuel to great ones, sent him to England in the hope that separation might effect a cure. With the consent of his mother, Madame de Ferriol, Adrienne wrote him long and frequent letters, carefully avoiding, however, the forbidden topic, her object being to accustom him to regard her merely as a friend. But these epistles appear to have had a very different effect from the one intended by the writer; the cure made no progress, and the young man's family, fearing that the actress was but simulating indifference in order to augment his pa.s.sion to the point of offering her marriage, resolved to remove him altogether out of reach of his enchantress by banis.h.i.+ng him to St. Domingo.
However, no such drastic measures were necessary, for Adrienne, learning of what was intended, lost no time in writing to the anxious mother a most charming letter, which had the effect of completely allaying her apprehensions on the young gentleman's behalf. As all the actress's biographers concur in p.r.o.nouncing this letter to be the pearl of her correspondence, we need make no apology for transcribing it at length:--
”PARIS, _March 22, 1721_.
”Madame,--I cannot learn without being deeply pained of your anxiety and of the resolves with which this anxiety has inspired you. I might add that I have been not less grieved by learning that you blame my conduct; but I write to you less to justify it than to protest that for the future, in all that concerns you, it shall be such as you may wish to prescribe. I had requested permission to see you last Tuesday, with the intention of speaking to you in confidence and of asking you for your commands. But your reception of me destroyed my ardour, and I found myself only timid and sad. It is necessary, however, that you should be aware of my true sentiments, and, if you will permit me to add something further, that you should not disdain to listen to my very humble remonstrances, if you do not wish to lose your son.
”He is the most respectful youth and the most honest man that I have met in my life. You would admire him did he not belong to you. Once again, Madame, deign to co-operate with me in destroying a weakness which irritates you, and in which I have no part, whatever you may say. Do not show him either contempt or harshness. I would prefer to take upon myself all his hatred, in spite of the friends.h.i.+p, affection, and veneration that I entertain for him, than expose him to the least temptation which might cause him to fail in respect towards you. You are too interested in curing him not to strive earnestly to attain your object; but you are too much so to succeed in attaining it unaided, above all, when you endeavour to combat his inclination by the exercise of your authority, or by painting me in disadvantageous colours, whether true or not. His pa.s.sion must indeed be an extraordinary one, since it has existed so long without the least hope, in the midst of disappointments, in spite of the journeys you have made him undertake, and during eight months' residence in Paris, during which he never saw me, at least not at my house, and was unaware if I should ever receive him again. I conceived him to be cured, and, for that reason, consented to see him during my last illness. It is easy to believe that his society would afford me infinite pleasure, were it not for this unhappy pa.s.sion, which astonishes as much as it flatters me, but of which I decline to take advantage. You fear that, if he sees me, he will depart from his duty, and you carry this fear to such a point as to take violent resolutions against him. a.s.suredly, Madame, it is not just that he should be rendered unhappy in so many ways. Do not add anything to my severity; seek rather to console him; make all his resentment fall on me, but let your kindness serve to rea.s.sure him.
”I will write to him whatever you please; I will never see him again, if such is your wish; I will even withdraw to the country, if you consider it necessary. But do not threaten to send him to the end of the world.
He may be of service to his country; he will be the delight of his friends; he will fill you with pride and satisfaction. You have only to guide his talents, and leave his virtues to act for themselves. Forget for a time that you are his mother, if this character is opposed to the kindness that, on my knees, I beg you to extend to him. Finally, Madame, you will see me prefer to retire from the world, or to love him with the love of pa.s.sion, rather than to suffer him to be any more tormented for me or by me.”
Adrienne did not speak of this letter to her adorer, neither did Madame de Ferriol deem it advisable to communicate it to him; and its existence, in consequence, remained unknown to d'Argental until sixty-three years later, when he discovered it by accident among some old papers which had belonged to his mother.
We may well believe that the old man shed many tears over those faded pages, for Adrienne, while refusing him her love, had succeeded in making him the most faithful and devoted of all her friends. The process of transition, seldom an easy one, had been rendered the more difficult, inasmuch as, shortly after the above letter was written, d'Argental had the mortification of seeing another take the place which had been denied him. However, Adrienne spared no pains to convince him of the wisdom of her decision, and, at the same time, of the value which she attached to his affection and regard.
”Do not cease either to be prudent or to love me,” she writes. ”The sentiments that I entertain for you are worth more than the most violent and most disordered pa.s.sion.” And again: ”Let my life be the term of your constancy, my dear friend.... Adieu, my dear friend; I am very affected in writing to you, and never was I more penetrated by friends.h.i.+p, affection, and esteem. Adieu; do not forget me entirely, or, at any rate, do not allow me to imagine so.”
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