Cette dame s'enfuit exprès,
Et se sauva par le marais.
But if the ladies were not lambs, the gentlemen were not sheep. They were no laggards in war. When they turned the flank of the enemy they did not mince matters, and upon occasion they drew the first blood. Once upon a time, at a dance, Comte de Brégis, having received a slap from his partner, turned upon her and pulled her hair down in the midst of the banquet. At a supper, in the presence of a great and joyous company, the Marquis de la Case snatched a leg of mutton from a trencher and buffeted his neighbour in her face, smearing her with gravy. As she was a lady of an even temper, she laughed heartily,[43] and the incident was closed. Malherbe confessed to Madame de Rambouillet that he had "cuffed the ears of the Viscountess d'Auchy until she had cried for aid." As he was a jealous man, his action was not without cause, and in that day to flog a woman was a thing that any gentleman felt free to do.
The regenerating Précieuses had not arrived too soon. Ignoble jests and obscenities too foul to recount were accepted as conversation by both sexes. The father of the great Condé, who was president of a "social" club whose rules compelled members to imitate every movement made by their leader, ate, and forced his fellow members (including the ladies) to eat—I dare not say what; do not try to guess—you could never do it!
The modest and timid Louis XIII. could—when he set about it—give his Court very unappetising examples. In a book of Edification, bearing date 1658, we read that "the late King, seeing a young woman among the crowds admitted to his palace so that they might see the King eat, said nothing, and gave no immediate evidence that he had seen her; but, as he raised his glass for the last sup, before rising from the table, he filled his mouth with wine, and having held it thus sanctuaried for an instant, launched it forth into the uncovered chest of the watchful lady," who had been too eager to witness the mastications of royalty.
Aristocratic traditions exacted that the nobles should flog their inferiors, and the nobles conformed to the traditional exactions freely. Men and women were flogged for "failures" of the least importance, and knowing those antique customs as we do, we may be permitted to wonder that we have so few records of the music of that eventful day.
Richelieu "drubbed his people," he drubbed his officers, he drubbed (so it was said) his ministers. The celebrated Duke d'Épernon, the last of the great Seigniors after Saint Simon, was "as mild-mannered a man as ever cut a throat or scuttled a ship"; one day when he was discussing some official question with his Eminence, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, he gave the exalted prelate "three clips of his fist full in the archiepiscopal face and breast, supplementing them by several cuts of the end of his cane in the pit of the stomach." We are not told how the priest received his medicine, but history records that "this done, Monsieur the Duke bore witness to his Lordship (the Archbishop) that had it not been for the respect due to his character, he (the Duke) should have tipped him over on the pavement." One day when the feelings of the Maréchal de Mauny were outraged because a farmer had kept the de Mauny servitors waiting for their butter and eggs, he (the Maréchal) rushed from his palace like a madman, fell upon the first peasants who crossed his path, and with sword-thrusts and with pistol-shots wounded two of the "aggressors" mortally. This last event occurred in Burgundy; it was merely an incident. In Anjou, Comte de Montsoreau maintained a private money-coining establishment in the wood near, or on, his property, halted the travellers on the highways, obliged them to pay their ransom, and, at the head of a band of twenty men, all being brigands of his own species, swept over the country, pillaging in all directions. The daily occurring duels accustomed men to look lightly upon death, and contempt for human life prevailed. When the Chevalier d'Andrieux was thirty years old, he had killed seventy-two men. In such cases edicts were worthless; the national need demanded a radical change of morals. Nine years after the death of Louis XIII., Maréchal de Grammont said in one of his letters: "Since the beginning of the Regency, according to the estimate made, nine hundred and forty gentlemen have been killed in duels." That was an official estimate, and it did not include the deaths which, though they were attributed to other causes, were the direct and immediate results of honourable encounters; the dead thus enumerated having been killed on the spot.[44]
At that time the duel was not attended by ceremonies; it was a hand-to-hand encounter between barbarians. The contestants fought with any weapons that came to hand, and in the way most convenient to their needs. All means were considered proper for the killing of men, though it was generally conceded that for killing well the different means were, or might be made, more or less courteous. This being the case, the duel was in more or less good or bad taste, according to the means used in its execution, and according to the regularity, or the lack of regularity, employed in their use.
In 1612, Balagny and Puymorin alighted from their horses and drew swords in the rue des Petits Champs. While they were fighting, a valet took a pitchfork and planted it in Balagny from the back. Balagny died of the wound inflicted by the valet, and Puymorin also died; he had been wounded when the valet interfered. Still another lackey killed Villepreau in the duel between Beaupré and Villepreau. That duel also was fought in the street (rue Saint Honoré.) When young Louvigny[45] fought with d'Hocquincourt, he said: "Let us take our swords!" As the other bent to comply with the suggestion, Louvigny gave a great sword-thrust, which, running his adversary through and through, put him to death. Tallemant des Reaux qualified the act as "appalling," but it bore no consequences for Louvigny.