Page images
PDF
EPUB

66

in his letters to Fayet, who, being compelled about | talking of her, sought excuses for her conduct, and this time to make a journey to Paris, was received only spoke of her as his "adorable deceiver." on his return with every mark of joy by the mis-"The incidents of your narrative," says Fléchier, tress of his affections. Still, although she had when thanking the obliging gentleman for the reached her twenty-fifth year, she seemed in no pleasure he had procured him, are very pleasant, hurry to take the steps necessary to their marriage; and you have told them so agreeably, that I find she was less eager to hear from her lover, and less them marvellously so. If you ask my opinion, I assiduous in writing to him. Some time after- take part with Fayet against his false mistress, wards, Fayet, discovered that she was in corre- and I wish that, for her punishment, the intendant spondence with M. Fortia, and chancing to see one may amuse her for a while and then leave her; of her letters, he nearly fainted with surprise and that she may then seek to return to Fayet, and grief at its contents. "Do not press me, sir, I that Fayet may have nothing to say to her. entreat you," wrote the perfidious beauty, "to Heaven often punishes one infidelity by another." reply very exactly to the last passage in your letter. The adorable trompeuse, as we are informed by a You well know that word is difficult to utter, and note, ultimately married neither Fortia nor Fayet, still more so to write; be satisfied with the assur- but became the wife of a M de la Barge. ance that as a good Christian I strictly obey the If we have thus lingered over the love story with commandment that bids me love my neighbor. which Fléchier commences his Mémoires, it is Another time you shall know more." Poor Fayet because these milder episodes are, to our thinking, sought his mistress, who denied having written to more agreeable to dwell upon and, in their style Fortia, and protested that her sentiments were un- of telling, more characteristic of the writer, than changed. Persuaded of her dissimulation, and the details of barbarous crimes and sanguinary overwhelmed with sorrow, he addressed her in a scenes with which, at a later period of the volume strain of feeling wholly thrown away upon the we are abundantly indulged. We will get on to calculating and deceitful damsel. "If my suspi- the staple of the book, the proceedings of the cions are just, madam,' he said amongst other Grands-Jours. This tribunal, although, as already things, "and you are more moved by the fortune mentioned, it took cognizance of all manner of of an intendant than by the sincere passion of a causes, civil as well as criminal, and judged offendlover lacking such brilliant recommendations, I feel ers of every degree, from the meanest peasant to that you will render me the most miserable of men; the highest noble, was intended chiefly for the but I consent to be miserable so that you be the benefit of the turbulent and tyrannical nobility, who, happier." The lady consoled him, taxed him with in those latter days of expiring feudality, still opinjustice in thus suspecting her after ten years' pressed their weaker neighbors, murdered their fidelity, dismissed him only halt persuaded, and dependents, and kept up bloody feuds amongst wrote to him that same evening to beg him to re- themselves. Such excesses and injustice were turn her letters. Fayet saw that he was sacrificed. common in Bretagne, Dauphiné, and other provHe sent back the letters, retaining only a few of inces of France; but we cannot trace them as the best, especially the one written in blood. To having taken place anywhere quite so late as in add to his annoyance, his false friend the intendant Auvergne, whose remote position and mountainous had the hypocritical assurance to protest that he configuration, as well as the rude and obstinate had done all in his power for him, but that, finding character of its inhabitants, gave greater liberty all in vain, he at last, subjugated by the lady's and pretext for a state of things recalling in some charms. had pleaded his own cause. He then degree the lawless periods of the middle ages. told him in confidence that he was to be married" The license that a long war has introduced into in a few days, and, with more anxiety than delicacy, entreated him to say how far his familiarity with Mademoiselle de Combes had been carried during the ten years' courtship. Gentle creature as the jilted suitor evidently was, he could not resist the temptation thus indiscreetly held out, and, without compromising to the last point the lady's reputation, he contrived, by his ambiguous replies, greatly to perplex and torment his rival. The latter, in his uneasiness, consulted other persons; the report of his indiscretion got wind, and was made the subject of songs and pasquinades, rather witty than decent. The marriage, which was to have taken place in a few days, had been several months pending when Fléchier heard the story, and the general opinion was, that the intendant was only amusing himself, and that it would never occur. Meanwhile poor feeble Fayet could not get cured of his love; he thought continually of his lost mistress, took pleasure in praising and

our provinces," says the king's letter to the Echevins, or chief magistrates of Clermont," and the oppression that the poor suffer from it, having made us resolve to establish in our town of Clermont in Auvergne, a court vulgarly called the Grands-Jours, composed of persons of high probity and consummate experience, who, to the extent of the authority we have intrusted to them, shall take cognizance of all crimes, and pass judgment on the same, punishing the guilty, and powerfully enforcing justice; we will, and command you, &c." "This letter," (of which the remainder refers to the quarters to be provided for the judges, and to the consideration to be shown to their persons and quality,) "read, with sound of trumpet, upon the principal squares and cross-streets of the town, produced an effect difficult to describe. One can form an idea of it, only when the picture of the Grands-Jours, unrolled before our eyes by Fléchier, shall have permitted us to imagine the

examine his conscience, recall the evil passages of his life, and endeavor to repair the wrongs done his vassals, in hopes of stifling complaint. Numerous were the conversions wrought, less by the grace of God than by the justice of man, but which were not the less advantageous for being compulsory. Those who had been the tyrants of the poor became their suppliants, and more restitutions were made than had been operated at the great jubilee of the holy year. The arrest of M. de la Mothe Canillac was the chief subject of consternation." Evil was the fate of the unlucky delinquents who fell into the clutches of the dread tribunal, before the severity of its zeal had been appeased by the infliction of punishment, and daunted by the popular effervescence its first san

system of oppression under which the people flight, and not a gentleman remained who did not groaned. The letter was like a signal of general deliverance." (Introduction, p. xix.) Of deliverance, that is to say, for the lower orders, the vast majority, who foresaw, in the severity and omnipotence of the dreaded tribunal, revenge for their long sufferings at the hands of arrogant and lawless masters. The aristocracy of the province, on the other hand, few of whom could boast clear consciences, beheld the arrival of the royal commissioners with feelings far less pleasing; and although a body of them, including many notorious delinquents, went out to meet and welcome the Messieurs des Grands-Jours, the ceremony was scarcely at an end when most of them took to flight, to await in distant hiding-places the subsidence of the storm of retribution. These were the gentlemen referred to in the popular song of the day, com-guinary measures occasioned. The Viscount de posed for the occasion, and which resounded in la Mothe was the most estimable of the numerous the streets of Clermont on the morrow of the and powerful family of Canillac; he was much receipt of the king's letter. It is given, at its full esteemed in the province, and by no means the length of twenty-two couplets, in the appendix to man who should have been selected for conthe Mémoires, and breathes a bitter hatred of the dign chastisement, as an example to titled evilunfeeling nobles and insolent retainers who ill-doers. Nevertheless, the judges had scarcely artreated the people-a savage joy at their impend-rived at Clermont, when their president, Monsieur ing castigation. One of the verses may be quoted, as comprising the principal hardships and extortions suffered by the peasantry.

A parler Français,
Chaque gentilhomme
Du matin au soir
Fait croître ses cens,
Et d'un liard en a six.

Il vit sans foi,

Prend le pré, le foin,

Le champ et les choux du bonhomme;
Puis fait l'économe

De ses pois, de son salé,

Bat celui qui lui déplaît;

Et, comme un roi dans son royaume,
Dit que cela lui plaît,*

“Tel est notre plaisir," such is our pleasure, the customary termination of all royal edicts and ordinances, was the closing phrase of the letter already cited, conveying the king's will to the authorities of Clermont. And the insolent assumption of the Auvergnat nobles had to yield to the strong will and energetic measures of the fourteeth Louis. Without dreaming of disputing the royal mandate, the guilty fled in confusion and dismay.

"On my arrival at Clermont," says Fléchier, "I remarked universal terror, there, and throughout the country. All the nobility had taken to

[blocks in formation]

de Novion, (himself distantly connected by marriage with the Canillac family,) and Talon, the advocate-general, agreed to arrest M. de la Mothe. The provost of Auvergne and his archers found him in bed, and so surprised was he at the intimation of arrest, that he lost his presence of mind, and gave up some letters he had just received from a mistress. At dinner, that day, his friends had bantered him about the Grands-Jours, but he thought himself so innocent, that he could not believe his danger. Nor would he perhaps, have been interfered with, but for reasons which ought never to have swayed ministers of justice. The name of Canillac was in ill repute as that of a turbulent and tyrannical family; M. de Novion desired to strike terror and prove his impartiality by arresting a man of first-rate importance, who was also a connection of his own; and, moreover, the viscount had borne arms against the king in the civil wars. The crime alleged against him could hardly be deemed very flagrant, and did not justify, at least in those days, the rigor of his judges. During the wars, M. de la Mothe had received a sum of money from the Prince de Condé, to be employed in levying cavalry. The viscount sought assistance from his friends, and especially from a certain M. d'Orsonette, to whom he remitted five thousand francs to equip a troop of horse. The levies not coming in fast enough to please the prince, he flew into a passion with the viscount, who, proud as Lucifer, would not put up with blame, abandoned Condé, and demanded an account from d'Orsonette of the cash intrusted to him. This person, however, neither produced his recruits nor restored the enlistment money, and, whilst acknowledging the debt, showed little haste to discharge it. I blood was the consequence; the two gentlemen met, each with retainers at his back, a fight

ensued, D'Orsonette was wounded and his fal-riage only can pass along them; so that the meetconer killed. All this was an old story in 1665, ing of two vehicles caused a terrible blaspheming and a malicious animus appeared in the eagerness of coachmen, who swear there, Fléchier thinks, of the court to revive it. La Mothe even ob- better than anywhere else, and who assuredly would tained letters of pardon for the offence, but by a have set fire to the town had they been more nulegal quibble these were nullified and made to merous, and but for the many beautiful fountains serve against him. The evidence was very con- at hand to extinguish the flames. "On the other tradictory as to who had been the assailant, al- hand, the town is well peopled, the women are though it seemed well established that the vis- ugly but prolific, and if they do not inspire love, count had greatly the advantage of numbers. At they at least bear many children. It is an estabthe worst, and to judge from Fléchier's account, lished fact, that a lady who died a short time ago, the offence did not exceed manslaughter, and aged eighty years, made the addition of her dewould have been sufficiently punished by a less scendants, and counted up four hundred and sixtypenalty than death, to which M. de la Mothe was nine living, and more than a thousand dead, whom condemned, and which he suffered four hours af- she had seen during her life. After that, can one terwards. Fléchier displays some indignation, doubt the prodigious propagation of Israel during cloaked by his hahitnally-guarded phrase, in his the time of the captivity, and may not one ask here comments on the hard measure of justice shown what the Dutch asked when they entered China to the poor viscount. "I know," he says, and saw the immense population, whether the 66 that many persons, who judge things very women of that country bore ten children at a wisely, thought the president and M. Talon might time?" If Fléchier, when inditing the lively recwell have consulted the principal of those Mes-ord of his residence in Auvergne, contemplated the sieurs" (the members of the tribunal) "on this probability of his manuscript some day finding its affair, and especially M. de Caumartin, who held way into print, it is evident that he cared little for so high a rank among them; and that they would the suffrages of the ladies of Clermont. Had he have done better not to have thus spread the alarm valued their good opinion, or expected the Mémoires amongst a great number of gentlemen, who took to be submitted to them, he would hardly have their departure immediately after this arrest. To ventured to note thus plainly-not to say brutally prevent the escape of a man who was only half-his depreciation of their personal attractions. guilty, they lost the opportunity of capturing a Ugly, child-bearing housewives! Such crude unhundred criminals; and every one agrees that this civil phrase would have been more appropriate in first arrest is a good hit for the judge, but not for the day of the eccentric monarch who used firejustice." There was one very singular circum- tongs to remove a love-letter from a lady's bosom,* stance in the case, and which could have been than in that of the graceful lover of La Vallière, met with, as the abbé observes, only in a country | who cloaked the extremity of egotism under the so full of crime as Auvergne then was. The most exquisite external courtesy. Not often do accuser, the person who laid the information, and we catch Fléchier thus transgressing the limits of the witnesses, were all more criminal than the polite comment. His keen perception of the ridicaccused himself. The first was charged by his ulous more frequently finds vent in sly and guarded own father with having killed his brother, with satire. But the rusticity and want of court-usage having attempted parricide, and with a hundred of the Auvergne dames meet in him a cruel censor. other crimes; the second was a convicted forger; "All the ladies of the town come to pay their reand the others, for sundry crimes, were either at spects to our ladies, not successively, but in troops. the galleys or in perpetual banishment. So that, Each visit fills the room; there is no finding chairs to all appearance, the viscount must have been enough; it takes a long time to place all these litacquitted for want of testimony, had not the pres-tle people; (ce petit monde ;) you would think it ident, by a pettifogging manœuvre, not very clearly a conference or an assembly, the circle is so large. explained but manifestly unfair, managed to turn I have heard say that it is a great fatigue to salute against him his own admissions in the letters of pardon granted by M. de Caumartin, and in which it was customary to set down the criminal's full confession of his offences. Fléchier's account is, however, too disconnected and imperfect to afford us a clear view of the singular system of jurisprudence argued by this remarkable trial and sen

tence.

The versatile abbé does not plume himself on his legal knowledge, and indeed is rather too apt, as many will think, to turn from the rigorous and somewhat partial proceedings of the tribunal, to flowery topics of gallant gossip. The town of Clermont finds little favor in his eyes, and he doubts that there is one more disagreeable in all France, the streets being so narrow that one car

so many persons at one time, and that one is much embarrassed before and after so many kisses. As the greater number (of the visitors) are not accustomed to court ceremony, and know nothing but their provincial customs, they come in a crowd, to avoid special notice, and to gain courage from each other. It is a pleasant sight to see them enter, one with her arms crossed, another with her hands hanging down like those of a doll; all their conversation is trivial (bagatelle;) and it is a happiness for them when they can turn the discourse to their dress, and talk of the points d'Aurillac."

Even

[blocks in formation]

the homage paid to his own talents and growing | but their houses were razed, their lands confiscated, reputation is insufficient to mollify the abbé and or struck with a heavy fine, and they themselves blunt the point of his sarcastic pen. A capuchin were frequently decapitated in effigy, a ceremony monk of worldly tastes, who passed his time at watering places, coquetting with sick belles and belles lettres, had read some of Fléchier's poetry, and spread his fame amongst the Clermont bluestockings. Forthwith the abbé received the visits of two or three of these précieuses languissantes, who thought, he informs us with less than his usual modesty" that to be seen with me would make them pass for learned persons, and that wit is to be acquired by contagion. One was of a height approaching that of the giants of antiquity, with a face of Amazonian ugliness; the other, on the contrary, was very short, and her countenance was so covered with patches, that I could form no opinion of it, except that she had a nose and eyes. It did not escape me that she was a little lame, and I remarked that both thought themselves beautiful. The pair alarmed me, and I took them for evil spirits trying to disguise themselves as angels of light." Then comes a dialogue à la Molière clumsy compliments on the one hand, modestly declined on the other, and at last the ladies take their departure, after turning over the abbe's books, and borrowing a translation of the "Art of Love." "I wish," concludes the abbé, "I could also have given them the art of becoming loveable." These incidents and digressions, petty in the abstract, will have a collective worth in the eyes of those who seek in the Mémoires what we maintain ought to be there sought :—a valuable addition to our knowledge of the manners, follies, and foibles of a very interesting period.

to which they attached but slight importance. After the execution of poor Canillac, the court flagged a little in their proceedings, and resumed their energy only towards the close of the session, and under terror of its further prolongation-one having already taken place. "Then," says Fléchier, "they applied themselves without pause or relaxation to the consideration of important offences, and despatched them so rapidly that they did not give us time to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with the circumstances." Assassinations, abductions, and oppression, were the usual subjects of their deliberations; and so numerous were the condemnations, that in one day thirty persons were executed in effigy. These pasteboard punishments must seriously have diminished the prestige of the Grands-Jours, by imparting an air of ridiculous impotency to their proceedings. And amongst others, the Marquis of Canillac, a cousin of La Mothe, and the biggest and oldest sinner in the province, was greatly diverted by the bloodless beheading of his counterfeit. Fléchier believes it was matter of deep regret to this hardened offender that he could not look on at his own execution, as he had done once before when similarly condemned by the parliament of Toulouse. "He had seen his execution himself from an adjacent window, and had found it very pleasant to be at his ease in a house whilst he was beheaded in the street; and to see himself die out of doors, when perfectly comfortable at his fire-side." Judging from the smallness of the sum (thirty livres) set down in the account of expenses of the GrandsJours as paid the painter, the decapitated portraits were by no means masterpieces of art, nor probably was it deemed necessary to obtain a very exact resemblance of the contumacious originals.

age, by discountenancing superstition, and by his enlightened disapproval of the abuses of the conventual system. A great doubter of modern miracles, he scrupled not, when a bishop, to protest in a letter to his flock, relating to some miraculous cross, against "those who put their confidence in wood and in lying prodigies." His natural good

The comprehensive nature of the court of the Grands-Jours, competent to judge every description of case, is one cause of the motley appearance of Fléchier's pages. There was little sorting of causes, civil or criminal, but all were taken as they came uppermost, and strong contrasts are the re- Although none ever ventured to cast a doubt on sult. We pass from farce to tragedy, and thence Fléchier's strict orthodoxy, he made himself reagain to comedy, with curious rapidity of transi-markable by a spirit of tolerance unusual in that tion. Now we are horrified by the account of an atrocious assassination or wholesale massacre; turn the leaf, and we trace the derelictions of a rakish husband, or the scandalous details of conventual irregularities. Here we have a puissant count or baron brought up for judgment, or, more often, condemned by default; thereafter followeth the trial and sentence of a scoundrel-peasant, or un-sense and kindness of heart made him oppose the lucky fille-de-joie. The Grands-Jours would cer- compulsory profession of young women. tainly have been improved by the establishment of Mémoires, he relates an anecdote of a young girl, a court of appeal; many of the sentences needed at whose reception as a nun M. Chéron, the grand revision, and the errors committed were seldom on vicar of Bourges, was requested to assist. The the side of mercy. The reproach usually made to vicar, having donned his sacerdotal robes, asked partial judges, of favoring the rich, and dealing the novice, in the usual formula, what she dehardly with the poor, would here have been un-manded. "I demand the keys of the monastery, justly applied, for it was the wealthy and power- sir, in order to leave it," was her firm reply, ful whom this tribunal chiefly delighted to condemn. These, it is true, in some degree neutralized the effects of such disfavor by getting out of the way; used except by peasant women, and its manufacture is

almost abandoned.

In the

which astonished all present. The vicar could not believe his ears, till she repeated her words, adding, that she had chosen that opportunity to protest against her destiny, because there were abundant witnesses. "If the girls who are daily

over, could not have been intended to wound the feelings of persons in whose lifetime, it is pretty evident, Fléchier did not destine his book to publication. Neither can fault be fairly found with the occasional freedom of his language and peculiarity of his topics. What we esteem license in these strait-laced days, was regarded as decorous, and passed without censure or observation in those in which he wrote; and the most rigorous will admit the absence of all offensive intention. The abbé is a chronicler; as such he puts down facts, unmutilated and unabridged. If the words in which he clothes them have sometimes more of the courtier's easy pleasantry than of the churchman's grave reserve, we must make allowance for the spirit of the age, look to intention rather than form, and we shall admit that his gaillardises, are set down all "in the ease of his heart," without the least design of conveying impure thoughts or immodest images to the imaginations of his contemporaries or of future generations. "If any wonder," says M. Gonod, "at Fléchier's language, as being sometimes rather free, I tell them he derived his freedom from his virtue; unreproached by his conscience, he thought he might speak plainly: omnia munda mundis. As an historian, he understood the historian's duty differently from the Abbé Ducreux, differently from this or that obscure critic who may dare attack him; he took as a guide this maxim: Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat.'—(Cic. de Orat., ii. 15.) We must also revert to the times in which he wrote; do we not see, if only by Molière's comedies, how much more prudish and reserved our language has become?"

sacrificed, had as much resolution," says Fléchier, good-humored bonhomie; and such sallies, more"the convents would be less populous, but the sacrifices offered up in them would be more holy and voluntary." When invested with the episcopal purple, the worthy man acted up to these sound opinions. "I may be allowed," says M. Gonod in his appendix, " to cite, to his glory and to that of religion, his conduct with regard to a nun at Nismes, who had not, like her sister at Bourges, had the courage to demand the keys of the convent, and who subsequently yielded to another description of weakness. Fléchier, then Bishop of Nismes, extended to her his paternal hand, and in this instance, as in many others, approved himself of the same merciful family as a Vincent de Paul and a Fénelon." The story is told by D'Alembert in his "Eulogiums read at the public sittings of the French Academy," p. 421. An unfortunate girl, whom unfeeling parents had forced into a convent, was unable to conceal the consequences of a deplorable error, and her superior confined her in a dungeon, where she lay upon straw, scarcely nourished by an insufficient ration of bread, and praying for death as a rescue from suffering. Fléchier heard of it, hastened to the convent, and after encountering much resistance, obtained admission into the wretched cell where the unfortunate creature languished and despaired. On beholding her pastor, she extended her arms as to a liberator sent by divine mercy. The prelate cast a look of horror and indignation at the abbess. "I ought," he said, "if I obeyed the vɔice of human justice, to put you in the place of | this unhappy victim of your barbarity; but the God of clemency, whose minister I am, bids me show, even to you, an indulgence you have not had for her. Go, and for sole penance, read daily in the evangelists the chapter of the woman taken in adultery." He released the nun, and caused every care to be taken of her, but she was past recovery, and died soon afterwards, blessing his

name.

How can we, after reading such traits as this, criticise with any severity the occasional levity displayed in the Mémoires? How dwell invidiously on the small frivolities and flippancies of the abbé, whose after life was a pattern of Christian virtue and charity? Short of a degree of perfection impossible to humanity, we can scarcely imagine a more charming character than that of Fléchier, whose very failings "leaned to virtue's side.' His sincere benevolence and gentle temper display themselves in each page of his book, in every recorded action of his life. His professed principles from which we can nowhere trace his practice to have differed-breathed a very different spirit to that usually attributed to the Roman Catholic priesthood. "Violence and oppression," he says, in a letter to M. Vignier," are not the paths the gospel has marked out for us." His smallest actions were inspired by the same kindly maxims, by a spirit of tolerance and compassion for human frailty. The vein of satire we have exemplified by extracts is tempered by a tone of

Amongst the long list of crimes of which the Grands-Jours took cognizance, that of sorcery was not forgotten. "Conversation is an agreeable thing," says Fléchier, after three or four pages of gossip, including an anecdote of Mademoiselle de Scudéry and her brother, who had been arrested at Lyons on suspicion of high treason, for having discussed rather too loudly the manner of slaying the king in a projected tragedy—“ but exercise is also necessary, and I know nothing pleasanter than to take the country air after having passed several hours discoursing in one's apartment. So we got into our coaches with some ladies, and went to visit the source of the Clermont fountains, one of the curiosities of the country." His elegant account of these springs and the surrounding scenery is alone sufficient to establish his reputation as a proficient in the descriptive art, and loses little by comparison with Charles Nodier's brilliant description of the same spot, the Tivoli of Auvergne. "On our return home we found M. l'Intendant there before us. He had come from Aurillac, and had had great difficulty in getting through the snow which had already fallen in the mountains. He had caused a president of the election of Brioude to be arrested, accused of several crimes, and especially of magic. One of his servants deposed that he had given him certain

« PreviousContinue »