And Saint-Hyacinthe's father signed "De Belair." The title thus added to his father's name must have given rise to the Chevalier's dreams of a noble birth.
The mystery of the birth extends to the life. In 1701, the Chevalier's mother resided at Troyes in Champagne, giving her son, thanks to the bishop's patronage, a gentleman's education that qualified him for an officer's commission in the régiment-royal. Among the noblemen living on their estates in Chalons and Reims he numbered acquaintances, and they treated him with due respect. Letters are extant which prove that he was on terms of friendship with the Pouillys and the Burignys, no mean men in their province. There is nothing to object to his conduct as a soldier. He fought bravely in Germany, and, if taken prisoner at Blenheim, it was together with Marshal de Tallart and many others whose courage no one dared to question.
His captivity in Holland acted somewhat in the same manner as exile in England did later on upon Voltaire. The ideas upon which his youth had been nursed were shattered to pieces. Eventually he got free and came back to Troyes. In 1709, he turned up in Stockholm, with the intention of fighting the Moscovites under the Swedish flag, but it was too late: Charles xii. had just suffered a crushing reverse at Pultava.
Back the Chevalier went to Holland, learning meantime English, Spanish, and Italian, reading Bayle, Le Clerc, and Locke, and many other books forbidden in France. At the Utrecht congress he caused a scandal by courting the Duchess of Ossuna, wife to the Spanish plenipotentiary. The jealous husband promptly obtained an order of expulsion, and poor Thémiseul needs must take refuge once more at his mother's in Troyes.
A new scandal soon drove him thence. Being entrusted by an austere abbess with the task of teaching her young niece Italian, he fell in love with his fair pupil while they read Dante together, trying maybe to live up to the story of Francesca da Rimini. To avoid the lettre de cachet, he fled to Holland, and for prudence' sake, exchanged his name of Chevalier de Thémiseul for the less warlike one of Saint-Hyacinthe.
Under that name his literary career began. Together with the mathematician S'Gravesande, De Sallengre, and Prosper Marchand the bookseller, he wrote for the Hague Journal littéraire (1713). Two years later, the sudden success of the Chef d'œuvre d'un inconnu acted upon his brain like a potent liquor, and caused all his subsequent misfortunes.
To one who reads the pamphlet to-day, the wit seems rather thin. It is difficult to realise the enjoyment that our great-grandfathers could take in laughing in that exaggerated fashion at a German commentator. An indecent French song beginning L'autre jour Colin malade is supposed to have been discovered by Doctor Matanasius, a scholar of European renown. He proclaims it a masterpiece, the work of an unknown poet of genius, and, with the help of a few hundred notes and comments, strives to gain his point. Now Doctor Matanasius is no more the laughing-stock of the literary world. His name is Renan, Gaston Paris, or Skeat. The Chef d'œuvre gives us the impression of a man loading a blunderbuss to shoot at a shadow. The productions of Swift and Voltaire, in the same vein, are infinitely better. Poor Matanasius, with his elaborate reminiscences of barrack-room raillery, seems sadly out of date; being of the earth, earthy, his song and his commentary have both crumbled to dust.
Yet he sought to build up a career of glory and wealth on the flimsy foundation. Fighting in the cause of modern learning with the headlong rashness of a dragoon charging up to the enemy's guns, he wrote the Lettres to Madame Dacier, he undertook to rival the Dutch literary papers with his Mémoires littéraires; but the public who had appreciated the Chef d'œuvre, were slow in subscribing to the new paper. Unlucky Matanasius was doomed to write only one masterpiece, for all his subsequent productions fell dead from the press.
Once more in France, with brain teeming with schemes and but little money in his pocket, the man, who was now nearing forty, fell back upon his last resource, a new love-affair. The victim this time was Suzanne, Colonel de Marconnay's daughter, with whom he eloped to England (1722).
The duly-married couple remained in England twelve years. What their life and that of their children must have been, a few scattered letters help us to understand. The father-in-law declining to help the wanderers, Saint-Hyacinthe, who decidedly had renounced the Catholic faith, turned to the Huguenot community. The poorer among them eked out a scant livelihood by teaching French, writing for Dutch booksellers, translating English books; the most needy received relief—money and clothing. The brilliant dragoon, who had been feasted in Paris, did not blush to hold out his hand and accept the mite doled out by the trustees of the "Fund for the poor Protestants."