The Queen wrote quant.i.ties of letters to different countries, and especially to Spain, but never, or hardly ever, in her own hand. One day, whilst handling all this correspondence for the princess's signature, the private secretary slipped one in, addressed to Casimir, the Polish King.

In this letter, which from one end to the other sang the praises of the Seigneur Brisacier, the Queen had the extreme kindness to remind the Northern monarch of his old liaison with the respectable mother of the young man, and her Majesty begged the prince to solicit from the King of France the t.i.tle and rank of duke for so excellent a subject.

King Casimir was not, as one knows, distrust and prudence personified; he walked blindfold into the trap; he wrote with his royal hand to his brother, the King of France, and asked him a brevet as duke for young Brisacier. Our King, who did not throw duchies at people's heads, read and re-read the strange missive with astonishment and suspicion. He wrote in his turn to the suppliant King, and begged him to send him the why and the wherefore of this hieroglyphic adventure. The good prince, ignorant of ruses, sent the letter of the Queen herself.

Had this princess ever given any reason to be talked about, there is no doubt that she would have been lost on this occasion; but there was nothing to excite suspicion. The King, no less, approached her with precaution, in order to observe the first results of her answers.

"Madame," he said, "are you still quite satisfied with young Brisacier, your private secretary?"

"More or less," replied the Infanta; "a little light, a little absent; but, on the whole, a good enough young man."

"Why have you recommended him to the King of Poland, instead of recommending him to me directly?"

"To the King of Poland!--I? I have not written to him since I congratulated him on his succession."

"Then, madame, you have been deceived in this matter, since I have your last letter in my hands. Here it is; I return it to you."

The princess read the letter with attention; her astonishment was immense.

"My signature has been used without authority," she said. "Brisacier alone can be guilty, being the only one interested."

This new kind of ambitious man was summoned; he was easily confounded.

The King ordered him to prison, wishing to frighten him for a punishment, and at the end of some days he was commanded to quit France and go and be made duke somewhere else.

This event threw such ridicule upon pretenders to the ducal state, that I no longer dared speak further to the King of the hopes which he had held out to me; moreover, the things which supervened left me quite convinced of the small success which would attend my efforts.

CHAPTER IX.

Compliment from Monsieur to the New Prince de Dombes.--Roman History.--The Emperors Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Verus.--The Danger of Erudition.

Monsieur, having learnt what his cousin of Montpensier had just done for my Duc du Maine, felt all possible grief and envy at it. He had always looked to inherit from her, and the harshest enemy whom M. de Lauzun met with at his wedding was, undoubtedly, Monsieur. When M. le Duc du Maine received the congratulations of all the Court on the ground of his new dignity of Prince de Dombes, his uncle was the last to appear; even so he could not refrain from making him hear these disobliging words,--who would believe it?--"If I, too, were to give you my congratulation, it would be scarcely sincere; what will be left for my children?"

Madame de Maintenon, who is never at a loss, replied: "There will be left always, Monseigneur, the remembrance of your virtues; that is a fair enough inheritance."

We complained of it to the King; he reprimanded him in a fine fashion. "I gave you a condition so considerable," said he, "that the Queen, our mother, herself thought it exaggerated and dangerous in your hands. You have no liking for my children, although you feign a pa.s.sionate affection for their father; the result of your misbehaviour will be that I shall grow cool to your line, and that your daughter, however beautiful and amiable she may be, will not marry my Dauphin."

At this threat Monsieur was quite overcome, and anxious to make his apologies to the King; he a.s.sured him of his tender affection for M. le Duc du Maine, and would give him to understand that Madame de Maintenon had misunderstood him.

"It is not from her that your compliment came to us; it is from M. le Duc du Maine, who is uprightness itself, and whose mouth has never lied."

Monsieur then started playing at distraction and puerility; the medal-case was standing opened, his gaze was turned to it. Then he came to me and said in a whisper: "I pray you, come and look at the coin of Marcus Aurelius; do you not find that the King resembles that emperor in every feature?"

"You are joking," I answered him. "His Majesty is as much like him as you are like me."

He insisted, and his brother, who witnessed our argument, wished to know the reason. When he understood, he said to Monsieur: "Madame de Montespan is right; I am not in the least like that Roman prince in face.

The one to whom I should wish to be like in merit is Trajan."

"Trajan had fine qualities," replied Monsieur; "that does not prevent me from preferring Marcus Aurelius."

"On what grounds?" asked his Majesty.

"On the grounds that he shared his throne with Verus," replied Monsieur, unhesitatingly.

The King flushed at this reply, and answered in few words: "Marcus Aurelius's action to his brother may, be called generous; it was none the less inconsiderate. By his own confession, the Emperor Verus proved, by his debauchery and his vices, unworthy, of the honour which had been done him. Happily, he died from his excesses during the Pannonian War, and Marcus Aurelius could only do well from that day on."

Monsieur, annoyed with his erudition and confused at his escapade, sought to change the conversation. The King, pa.s.sing into his cabinet, left him entirely, in my charge. I scolded him for his inconsequences, and he dared to implore me to put his daughter "in the right way," to become one day Queen of France by marrying Monsieur le Dauphin, whom she loved already with her whole heart.

CHAPTER X.

The Benedictines of Fontevrault.--The Head in the Basin.--The Unfortunate Delivery.--The Baptism of the Monster.--The Courageous Marriage.--Foundation of the Royal Abbey of Fontevrault.

Two or three days after our arrival at Fontevrault, the King, who loves to know all the geographical details of important places, asked me of the form and particulars of the celebrated abbey. I gave him a natural description of it.

"They are two vast communities," I told him, "which the founder, for some inexplicable whim, united in one domain, of an extent which astonishes the imagination."

The Community of Benedictine Nuns is regarded as the first, because of the abbotorial dignity it possesses. The Community of Benedictine Monks is only second,--a fact which surprises greatly strangers and visitors.

Both in the monastery and the convent the buildings are huge and magnificent, the courts s.p.a.cious, the woods and streams well distributed and well kept.

"Every morning you may see a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an immense expanse of land. Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows, or the orchards. Innumerable cows cover the pastures, and legions of women and herds are employed to look after these estates.

"The aspect of Fontevrault gives an exact idea of the ancient homes of the Patriarchs, in their remote periods of early civilisation, which saw the great proprietors delighting in their natal hearth, and finding their glory, as well as their happiness, in fertilising or a.s.sisting nature.

"The abbess rules like a sovereign over her companion nuns, and over the monks, her neighbours. She appoints their officers and their temporal prince. It is she who admits postulants, who fixes the dates of ordinations, p.r.o.nounces interdictions, graces, and penances. They render her an account of their administration and the employment of their revenues, from which she subtracts carefully her third share, as the essential right of her crosier of authority."

"Have you invited the Benedictine Fathers to your fete in the wood?" the King asked me, smiling.

"We had no power, Sire," I answered. "There are many young ladies being educated with the nuns of Fontevrault. The parents of these young ladies respectful as they are to these monks, would have looked askance at the innovation. The Fathers never go in there. They are to be seen at the abbey church, where they sing and say their offices. Only the three secular chaplains of the abbess penetrate into the house of the nuns; the youngest of the three cannot be less than fifty.

"The night of the feast the monks draw near our cloister by means of a wooden theatre, which forms a terrace, and from this elevation they partic.i.p.ate by the eye and ear in our amus.e.m.e.nts; that is enough."

"Has Madame de Mortemart ever related to you the origin of her abbey?"

resumed the King. "Perhaps she is ignorant of it. I am going to tell you of it, for it is extremely curious; it is not as it is related in the books, and I take the facts from good authority. You must hear of it, and you will see.

"There was once a Comtesse de Poitiers, named Honorinde, to whom fate had given for a husband the greatest hunter in the world. This man would have willingly pa.s.sed his life in the woods, where he hunted, night and day, what we call, in hunter's parlance, 'big game.' Having won the victory over a monstrous boar, he cut off the head himself, and this quivering and bleeding mask he went to offer to his lady in a basin. The young woman was in the first month of her pregnancy. She was filled with repugnance and fright at the sight of this still-threatening head; it troubled her to the prejudice of her fruit.

"Eight, or seven and a half, months afterwards, she brought into the world a girl who was human in her whole body, but above had the horrible head of a wild boar! Imagine what cries, what grief, what despair! The cure of the place refused baptism, and the Count, broken down and desolate, ordered the child to be drowned.

"Instead of throwing it into the water, his servant scrupulously went straight to the monastery where your sister rules. He laid down his closed packet in the church of the monks, and then returned to his lord, who never had any other child.

"The religious Benedictines, not knowing whence this monster came, believed there was some prodigy in it. They baptised in this little person all that was not boar, and left the surplus to Providence. They brought up the singular creature in the greatest secrecy; it drank and lapped after the manner of its kind. As it grew up it walked on its feet, and that without the least imperfection; it could sit down, go on its knees, and even make a courtesy. But it never articulated any distinct words, and it had always a harsh and rough voice which howled and grunted. Its intelligence never reached the knowledge of reading or writing; but it understood easily all that could be said to it, and the proof was that it replied by its actions.