This affair, with all its dramatic features and tragical termination, created an immense and painful impression not only in Paris, but throughout France. It momentarily awakened party feelings which had for some time slumbered, and suspended the festivals of the winter of 1644. It not only occupied the families more closely concerned and the Court, but forcibly affected the whole of the highest class of society, and long remained the absorbing topic of every saloon. It may be readily conceived that the story in spreading thus widely became enlarged with imaginary incidents one after another. At first, it was supposed that Madame de Longueville was in love with Coligny. That was necessary to give the greater interest to the narrative. From thence came the next invention, that she herself had armed Coligny’s hand, and that D’Estrades, charged to challenge the Duke de Guise, having remarked to Coligny that the Duke might probably repudiate the injurious words attributed to him, and that honour would thus be satisfied, Coligny had thereupon replied: “That is not the question. I pledged my word to Madame de Longueville to fight him on the Place Royale, and I cannot fail in that promise.”[43] There was no stopping a cavalier in such a chivalrous course as that, and Madame de Longueville would not have been the sister of the victor of Rocroy—a heroine worthy of sustaining comparison with those of Spain, who beheld their lovers die at their feet in the tournament—had she not been present at the duel between Guise and Coligny. It is asserted, therefore, that on the 12th of December she was stationed in an hôtel on the Place Royale belonging to the Duchess de Rohan, and that there, concealed behind a window-curtain, she had witnessed the discomfiture of her preux chevalier.
Then, as now, it was verse—that is to say, the ballad—which set its seal on the popular incident of the moment. When the event was an unlucky one, the song was a burlesquely pathetic complaint, and always with a vein of raillery running through it. Such was the effusion with which every ruelle rang, and it was really set to music, for the notation is still to be found in the Recueil de Chansons notées, preserved at the Arsenal at Paris. It ran thus:—
“Essuyez vos beaux yeux,
Madame de Longueville,
Coligny se porte mieux.
S’il a demandé la vie,
Ne l’en blâmez nullement;
Car c’est pour être votre amant
Qu’il veut vivre éternellement.”
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Grandson of the famous Admiral de Coligny, who perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
[41] Henry, son of Charles de Guise, and grandson of the Balafré.
[42] An inedited Memoir upon the Regency.
[43] Mad. de Motteville.