Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

It is a singular thing that scarcely a monarch has had anything to do with the knightly residence of Rambouillet, but mischance has befallen him. The kings were unjust to the knights, and the latter found for the former a Nemesis. Francis I. was hunting in the woods of Rambouillet when he received the news of the death of Henry VIII. that knight-sovereign, with whom he had struggled on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. With the news, he received a shock, which the decay sprung from various excesses could not resist. He entered the chateau as the guest of the Chevalier d’Angennes, in whose family the proprietorship then resided. The chamber is still shown wherein he died, roaring in agony, and leaving proof of its power over him, in the pillow, which, in mingled rage and pain, he tore into strips with his teeth.

The French author, Leon Gozlau, has given a full account of the extraordinary ceremonies which took place in honor of Francis after his death. In front of the bed on which lay the body of the king, says M. Gozlau, “was erected an altar covered with embroidered cloth; on this stood two gold candlesticks, bearing two lights from candles of the whitest wax. The cardinals, prelates, knights, gentlemen, and officers, whose duty it was to keep watch, were stationed around the catafalque, seated on chairs of cloth of gold. During the eleven days that the ceremony lasted, the strictest etiquette of service was observed about the king, as if he had been a living monarch in presence of his court. His table was regularly laid out for dinner, by the side of his bed. A cardinal blessed the food. A gentleman in waiting presented the ewer to the figure of the dead king. A knight offered him the cup mantling with wine: and another wiped his lips and fingers. These functions, with many others, took place by the solemn and subdued light of the funeral torches.”

The after ceremonies were quite as curious and extraordinarily magnificent; but it is unnecessary to rest upon them. A king, in not much better circumstances than Francis, just before his death, slept in the castle for one night in the year 1588. It was a night in May, and the knight proprietor Jean d’Angennes, was celebrating the marriage of his daughter. The ceremony was interrupted by a loud knocking at the castle gates. The wary Jean looked first at the clamorous visitors through the wicket, whence he descried Henri III. flurried, yet laughing, seated in an old carriage, around which mustered dusty horsemen, grave cavaliers, and courtiers scantily attired. Some had their points untrussed, and many a knight was without his boots. An illustrious company, in fact; but there were not two nobles in their united purses. Jean threw open his portals to a king and his knights flying from De Guise. The latter had got possession of Paris, and Henri and his friends had escaped in order to establish the regal authority at Chartres. The two great adversaries met at Blois: and after the assassination of Guise, the king, with his knights and courtiers, gallopped gayly past Rambouillet on his return to Paris, to profit by his own wickedness, and the folly of his trusty and well-beloved cousin, the duke.

Not long before this murder was committed, in 1588, the Hotel Pisani in Paris was made jubilant by the birth of that Catherine de Vivonnes, who was at once both lovely and learned. She lived to found that school of lingual purists whose doings are so pleasantly caricatured in the Précieuses Ridicules of Molière. Catherine espoused that noble chevalier, Charles d’Angennes, Lord of Rambouillet, who was made a marquis for her sake. The chevalier’s lady looked upon marriage rather as a closing act of life than otherwise; but then hers had been a busy youth. In her second lustre she knew as many languages as a lustrum has years. Ere her fourth had expired, her refined spirit and her active intellect were disgusted and weary with the continual sameness and the golden emptiness of the court. She cared little to render homage to a most Christian king who disregarded the precepts of Christianity; or to be sullied by homage from a monarch, which could not be rendered without insult to a virtuous woman. Young Catherine preferred, in the summer eve, to lie under the shadow of her father’s trees, which once reared a world of leafy splendor on the spot now occupied by the Palais Royal. There she read works coined by great minds. During the long winter evenings she lay in stately ceremony upon her bed, an unseemly custom of the period, and there, surrounded by chevaliers, wits, and philosophers, enjoyed and encouraged the “cudgelling of brains.” At her suggestion the old hotel was destroyed, and after her designs a new one built; and when, in place of the old dark panelling, obscurely seen by casements that kept out the light, she covered the walls of her reception-rooms with sky-blue velvet, and welcomed the sun to shine upon them, universal France admiringly pronounced her mad, incontinently caught the infection, and broke out into an incurable disease of fancy and good taste.

The fruit of the union above spoken of was abundant, but the very jewel in that crown of children, the goodliest arrow in the family quiver, was that Julie d’Angennes who shattered the hearts of all the amorous chevaliers of France, and whose fame has, perhaps, eclipsed that of her mother. Her childhood was passed at the feet of the most eminent men in France; not merely aristocratic knights, but as eminent wits and philosophers. By the side of her cradle, Balzac enunciated his polished periods, and Marot his tuneful rhymes, Voiture his conceits, and Vaugelas his learning. She lay in the arms of Armand Duplessis, then almost as innocent as the little angel who unconsciously smiled on that future ruthless Cardinal de Richelieu; and her young ear heard the elevated measure of Corneille’s “Melite.” To enumerate the circles which was wont to assemble within the Hôtel Rambouillet in Paris, or to loiter in the gardens and hills of the country château, whose history I am sketching, would occupy more space than can be devoted to such purpose. The circle comprised parties who were hitherto respectively exclusive. Knights met citizen wits, to the great edification of the former; and Rambouillet afforded an asylum to the persecuted of all parties. They who resisted Henry IV. found refuge within its hospitable walls, and many nobles and chevaliers who survived the bloody oppression of Richelieu, sought therein solace, and balm for their lacerated souls.

Above all, Madame de Rambouillet effected the social congregation of the two sexes. Women were brought to encounter male wits, sometimes to conquer, always to improve them. The title to enter was, worth joined with ability. The etiquette was pedantically strict, as may be imagined by the case of Voiture, who, on one occasion, after conducting Julie through a suite of rooms, kissed her hand on parting from her, and was very near being expelled for ever from Rambouillet, as the reward of his temerity. Voiture subsequently went to Africa. On his return, he was not admitted to the illustrious circle, but on condition that he narrated his adventures, and to these the delighted assembly listened, all attired as gods and goddesses, and gravely addressing each other as such. Madame de Rambouillet presided over all as Diana, and the company did her abundant homage. This, it is true, was for the nonce; but there was a permanent travesty notwithstanding. It was the weak point of this assembly that not only was every member of it called by a feigned, generally a Greek, name, but the same rule was applied to most men and things beyond it; nay, the very oaths, for there were little expletives occasionally fired off in ecstatic moments, were all by the heathen gods. Thus, as a sample, France was Greece. Paris was Athens; and the Place Royale was only known at Rambouillet as the Place Dorique. The name of Madame de Rambouillet was Arthemise; that of Mademoiselle de Scudery was Aganippe; and Thessalonica was the purified cognomen of the Duchess de Tremouille. But out of such childishness resulted great good, notwithstanding that Molière laughed, and that the Academie derided Corneille and all others of the innovating coterie. The times were coarse; things, whatever they might be, were called by their names; ears polite experienced offence, and at Rambouillet periphrasis was called upon to express what the language otherwise conveyed offensively by the medium of a single word. The idea was good, although it was abused. Of its quality some conjecture may be formed by one or two brief examples; and I may add, by the way, that the French Academy ended by adopting many of the terms which it at first refused to acknowledge. Popularity had been given to much of the remainder, and thus a great portion of the vocabulary of Rambouillet has become idiomatic French. “Modeste,” “friponne,” and “secrète,” were names given to the under-garments of ladies, which we now should not be afraid to specify. The sun was the “amiable illuminator;” to “fulfil the desire which the chair had to embrace you,” was simply to “sit down.” Horses were “plushed coursers;” a carriage was “four cornices,” and chairmen were “baptized mules.” A bed was the “old dreamer;” a hat, the “buckler against weather;” to laugh was to “lose your gravity;” dinner was the “meridional necessity;” the ear was the “organ, or the gate of hearing;” and the “throne of modesty” was the polished phrase for a fair young cheek. There is nothing very edifying in all this, it is true; but the fashion set people thinking, and good ensued. Old indelicacies disappeared, and the general, spoken language was refined. If any greater mental purity ensued from the change, I can scarcely give the credit of it to the party at Rambouillet, for, with all their proclaimed refinement, their nicety was of the kind described in the well-known maxim of the Dean of St. Patrick.

One of the most remarkable men in the circle of Rambouillet, was the Marquis de Salles, Knight of St. Louis. He was the second son of the Duke de Montausier, and subsequently inherited the title. At the period of his father’s death, his mother found herself with little dower but her title. She exerted herself, however, courageously. She instructed her children herself, brought them up in strict Huguenot principles, and afterward sent them to the Calvinistic college at Sedan, where the young students were famous for the arguments which they maintained against all comers—and they were many—who sought to convert them to popery. At an early age he acquired the profession of arms, the only vocation for a young and portionless noble; and he shed his blood liberally for a king who had no thanks to offer to a protestant. His wit, refinement, and gallant bearing, made him a welcome guest at Rambouillet, where his famous attachment to Julie, who was three years his senior, gave matter for conversation to the whole of France. Courageous himself, he loved courage in others, and his love for Julie d’Angennes, was fired by the rare bravery exhibited by her in tending a dying brother, the infectious nature of whose disorder had made even his hired nurses desert him. In the season of mourning, the whole court, led by royalty, went and did homage to this pearl of sisters. But no admiration fell so sweetly upon her ear as that whispered to her by the young Montausier. One evidence of his chivalrous gallantry is yet extant. It is in that renowned volume called the “Guirlande de Julie,” of which he was the projector, and in the accomplishing of which, knights, artists, and poets, lent their willing aid. It is superb vellum tome. The frontispiece is the garland or wreath, from which the volume takes its name. Each subsequent page presents one single flower from this wreath (there are eighteen of them) with verses in honor of Julie, composed by a dozen and a half of very insipid poets. This volume was sold some years ago to Madame D’Uzes, a descendant of the family, when its cost amounted to nearly one thousand francs per page.

As everything was singular at Rambouillet, so of course was the wooing of Julie and her knight. It was very “long a-doing,” and we doubt if in the years of restrained ardor, of fabulous constancy, of reserve, and sad yet pleasing anguish, the lover ever dared to kiss the hand of his mistress, or even to speak of marriage, but by a diplomatic paraphrase.

The goddesses of Rambouillet entertained an eloquent horror of the gross indelicacy of such unions, for which Molière has whipped them with a light but cutting scourge. The lover, moreover, was a Huguenot. What was he to do? Like a true knight he rushed to the field, was the hero of two brilliant campaigns, and then wooed her as knight of half-a-dozen new orders, marechal-du-camp, and Governor of Alsatia. The nymph was still coy. The knight again buckled on his armor, and in the mêlée at Dettingen was captured by the foe. After a two months’ detention, he was ransomed by his mother, for two thousand crowns. He re-entered Rambouillet lieutenant-general of the armies of France, and he asked for the recompense of his fourteen years of constancy and patience. Julie was shocked, for she only thought how brief had been the period of their acquaintance. At length the marquis made profession of Romanism, and thereby purchased the double aid of the church and the throne. The king, the queen, Cardinal Mazarin, and a host of less influential members, besought her to relent, and the shy beauty at length reluctantly surrendered. The marriage took place in 1645, and Julie was then within sight of forty years of age. The young chevaliers and wits had, you may be sure, much to say thereupon. The elder beaux esprit looked admiringly; but a world of whispered wickedness went on among them, nevertheless.

Montausier, for he now was duke and knight of the Holy Ghost, became the reigning sovereign over the literary circle at Rambouillet, during the declining years of Julie’s mother. Catherine died in 1665, after a long retirement, and almost forgotten by the sons of those whom she once delighted to honor. The most delicate and the most difficult public employment ever held by the duke, was that of governor to the dauphin. This office he filled with singular ability. He selected Bossuet and Huet to instruct the young prince in the theoretical wisdom of books, but the practical teaching was imparted by himself. Many a morning saw the governor and his pupil issue from the gilded gates of Versailles to take a course of popular study among the cottages and peasantry of the environs.