[CHAPTER III]
Adolphe de Leuven—His family—Unpublished details concerning the death of Gustavus III.—The Count de Ribbing—The shoemakers of the château de Villers-Hellon
I first met Leuven at a fête in the beautiful village of Corey, a league's distance from Villers-Cotterets—a village buried in the centre of great woods, like a nest among high branches. I had left my companions for an instant in the course of the dance, and I had gone to some distance to pay a visit to an old friend of my father, a farmer, whose farm was nearly a quarter of a league from the village. I took a pretty path at the foot of a hill to get there, hedged on both sides by hawthorn in full blossom, and studded with daisies, their golden centres fringed by pink-tipped petals.
Suddenly, at a bend in the path, I saw three people coming towards me, in a ray of sunlight which bathed them in light; two were well known to me, but the third was a complete stranger. The two I knew were Caroline Collard, who, as previously related, had become Baroness Capelle. The other was her daughter, Marie Capelle, then only three years old, who to her misfortune was to become Madame Lafarge. The third person, the stranger, looked at first sight like a German student; he was a youth of between sixteen and seventeen, and was dressed in a grey jacket, an oilskin cap, a waistcoat of chamois leather and bright blue trousers, almost as tight-fitting as mine, but with this difference, that while my topboots covered up my breeches, his, on the contrary, were covered up by his trousers. This young man was tall, dark and gaunt, his black hair cut as short as bristles; he had good eyes and a strikingly defined nose; his teeth were as white as pearls, and he had a carelessly aristocratic bearing; he was the Viscount Adolphe Ribbing de Leuven, future author of Vert-Vert and of Postilion de Long-jumeau son of Count Adolphe-Louis Ribbing de Leuven, one of the three Swedish noblemen who were inculpated in the murder of Gustavus III., King of Sweden.
These Counts Ribbing de Leuven were of an old and noble family, used to carrying on royal intrigues and to treat on equal terms with the powerful ones of earth. It was a Ribbing who rose in 1520 against the tyrant Christiern who had caused his two children to be murdered. There was a sad and melancholy legend in the family, connected with the beheading of these two children, the one aged twelve and the other only three. The executioner had cut off the head of the eldest and had seized hold of the second to execute him too, when the poor mite said in childish accents, "Oh, please do not soil my collar as you have soiled my brother Axel's, for mamma would scold me." The executioner had two children of his own just the same ages as these. Moved by the words, he flung down his sword and ran off, overwhelmed with remorse. Christiern sent soldiers after him and he was killed.
Adolphe's father, with whom I have since become very friendly and who loves me like a father, was then a man of fifty; extremely distinguished in appearance, with a charming nature, although perhaps a little too sarcastic, and of indomitable courage. He had been educated at the Military School in Berlin, and had come to France when quite young as a captain in one of Louis XVI.'s foreign mercenary regiments—those regiments which did him far more harm than any good their loyal services rendered him. He had been presented to Marie-Antoinette by the Count de Fersen and, under the patronage of that illustrious favourite, the queen gave him a most favourable reception. He remembered poor. Marie-Antoinette with most respectful veneration, and thirty years after her death I often heard him speak of her with a voice full of tears. He was recalled to Sweden towards the close of the year 1791. He was betrothed to one of his cousins, whom he worshipped, and, intending to marry her on his return, he learnt on his arrival at Stockholm that, by the order of King Gustave III., her hand had been disposed of and she was the wife of the Count d'Essen. In his first transport of despair, Count Ribbing provoked a quarrel with her husband. A duel ensued, and the Count d'Essen fell with a sword-wound through his chest which kept him chained for six months to his bed.
Sweden was greatly disturbed at this period: the king insisted upon enforcing his Diet to accept the deed of union and of security, and at Geft the coup d'état took place which invested the king with sole power in the making of peace and war. A tremendous strife had been waged for a long period between the regal power and the nobility. Though the king was married in 1766 to Sophie-Madeleine of Denmark, he had no heir to his crown even in 1776. And the Swedish nobility attributed the queen's sterility to the same cause as that of Louise de Vaudemont, Henri III.'s wife. As in the case of the last of the house of Valois, Gustavus had his favourites, and their familiarity with him led to their making the most extraordinary suggestions to their prince. After a time, the courtiers made up their minds to remonstrate with the king about the queen's barrenness and to tell him he ought to try to remedy this deficiency by every means in his power. Gustavus promised to see what could be done in the matter. Then, so folks said, a curious thing happened. The evening of the day on which he had pledged his word to the Swedish lords, he took his equerry Monck to the queen's chamber and, in the presence of the confused and blushing queen, he explained to the equerry the service he required of him; then he withdrew and shut the door of the royal chamber upon the pair. Some time later the queen's pregnancy was proclaimed, and she gave birth to a prince, who after his father's death reigned under the title of Gustavus IV., until the Swedish Parliament proclaimed his deposition in 1809. I knew his son very well in Italy, where he travelled under the name of the Count de Wasa.
In 1770, Gustavus III., then twenty-four years of age, came to France as the Count de Haga. He had an interview with a kind of sorceress who predicted future events in her hypnotic trances; she had scarcely touched his hand before she told him to beware of the year 1792, as he would incur danger of death from firearms during the course of it. Gustavus was a brave man; he had often exposed himself to danger. He several times repeated the prediction laughingly, but it never troubled him.