On August 30, 1724, one of the friends of the Duc de Bourbon, the Duc de Melun, is killed in one of the hunts given in honor of the King. Here is the story from the gazettes: "Towards seven o'clock in the evening, half a league from the château, the Duc de Melun, riding at a gallop in one of the forest ways, was wounded by the stag which was being tracked and which was almost at bay. The blow which he gave in passing was so hard that horse and horseman were thrown. The Duc de Melun was aided at first by the Due de Bourbon and the Comte de Clermont. Sieur Flandin du Montblanc, surgeon to the King, gave him first aid and had him carried to the château where he died today, the 31st, at five o'clock in the morning, in the thirtieth year of his age, after having received all the sacraments and made his will."
This tragic event moves the guests of the château, for the Duc de Melun is related to all the great families of the kingdom. The King sheds a few tears and talks of leaving the same evening. But he is made to understand that so sudden a departure will be interpreted in a fashion not very complimentary to the Prime Minister. He consents to remain two days longer at Chantilly and returns to Versailles.
Madame de Genlis is the author of a historical novel entitled Mademoiselle de Clermont. In it she relates that this princess had secretly married the Duc de Melun eight days before the accident which led to his death. Of the history of the amours of Mlle, de Clermont and M. de Melun, she had composed a touching and dramatic little story.
At the bottom of the first page of this work she puts the following note: "The substance of this history, and almost all the details which it contains, are true; the author received them from a person (the late Marquise de Puisieulx-Sillery) who was as noteworthy for the sincerity of her character as for the superiority of her mind, and whom Mlle, de Clermont honored for twenty years, up to the day of her death, with her most intimate friendship. It was at Chantilly itself and in the fatal alley, which still bears the name of Melun, that this story was told for the first time to the author, who then wrote down its principal features and afterward forgot this little manuscript for thirty years. It was neither finished, nor written for the public, but no historic detail has been excised."
Is not this merely one of those subterfuges which romancers use to persuade us that they have "invented nothing" and to give us the illusion that it "really happened"? Or did Madame de Genlis really receive the confidences of a well-informed old lady?
First, we must note that if the author wished to mystify her readers, she succeeded on this occasion. When the Due d'Aumale had Mile, de Clermont and M. de Melun painted as a pendant to Théophile and Sylvie, he accepted the truth of the story told by Madame de Genlis. It may possibly be said that the Due d'Aumale could not refuse such a species of posthumous homage to the tutor of Louis Philippe. But all the historians who have written of Chantilly have in turn told the story of the adventure of Mlle, de Clermont, without even discussing its probability.... And now let us read the novel of Madame de Genlis.
It is a short and very agreeable task. The contemporaries of Madame de Genlis united in considering Mademoiselle de Clermont as her masterpiece and as a masterpiece. On the first point, I am ready to believe them; I cannot compare Mademoiselle de Clermont with the innumerable romances, tales and novels of the same author: I do not know them. As a child, I read Les Veillées du Chateau, and I cannot say today if it is necessary to set them above the similar works of Boüilly and of Berquin. As to the Souvenirs de Félicie, it has always seemed to me a sufficiently diverting book, full of doubtful anecdotes and of untruthful portraits, but in which the author shows her true self, with all her vanities of a woman and all her ridiculous traits as a writer. Is Mademoiselle de Clermont a masterpiece? Perhaps it was, but it is no longer. It remains a delightful book. It has great merits: marvelous rapidity, perfect skill and ease in the knitting together of the different episodes, a facile, supple and natural way of telling. If we confine ourselves to the composition of the work, it is a model: neither Mérimée nor Maupassant has written anything more concise or more polished. Without doubt, the style of Madame de Genlis seems terribly out of date today; her simple, limpid, perfectly correct language entirely lacks accent; her somewhat vague expressions have today a trace of age and colorlessness; in the tragic passages she exasperates us a little by the abuse of points of suspense; finally we are sometimes tired out by the lazy sensibility of the writer, the simplicity of the maxims which she inserts in her narration, her childish efforts to give a moral appearance to the most passionate of adventures; we discover too often the author of Les Veillées du Château in a story which we would have preferred to have told by the author of La Chartreuse de Parme. But the pleasure of a well-written story is so vivid that even in spite of the affectations, the artifices and the childishness, we still feel the emotion of the drama.
The two principals of the story are Mademoiselle de Clermont, sister of the Duc de Bourbon, and the Duc de Melun.
"Mlle, de Clermont received from nature and from fortune all the gifts and all the goods which can be envied: royal birth, perfect beauty, a fine and delicate mind, a sensitive soul and that sweetness, that equality of character which are so precious and so rare, especially in persons of her rank. Simple, natural, chary of words, she always expressed herself delightfully and wisely; there was as much reason as charm in her conversation. The sound of her voice penetrated to the bottom of the heart, and an air of sentiment, spread over her whole person, gave interest to her least important actions; such was Mlle, de Clermont at the age of twenty." She appears at Chantilly and, immediately, the beauty of the place, which offers "all that a sensitive soul can love in the way of rural and solitary delights," the splendor of "the most ingenious and the most sumptuous feasts," the pleasure of her first homage and her first praise, intoxicate her youthful heart.