where I am led to hope that, except what is necessary I shall lack nothing. Is it the family of the duke whom I have saved a criminal suit who have imprisoned me? Is it the ministry whose orders I have constantly followed or anticipated? Is it the dukes and peers of the realm with whom I am in no way connected? This is what I do not know, but the sacred name of ‘King’ is so beautiful a thing that one cannot multiply it or employ it too frequently àpropos. It is thus that in every country which is governed by police they torment by authority those whom they cannot inculpate with justice. Wherever mankind is to be found, odious things happen and the great wrong of being in the right is always a crime in the eyes of power, which wishes to punish unceasingly, but never to judge.”
The two rivals were thus very securely lodged for the present and Mademoiselle Ménard, the unwilling pretext of all the trouble, was quite safe from her tormentor. Before the rendering of the sentence, however, which confined the duc de Chaulnes to the prison of Vincennes, in the fear which the violence of his character inspired, this “beautiful Helen,” says Loménie, “went and threw herself at the feet of M. de Sartine, imploring his protection.” The next day she wrote a letter communicating her fixed resolve to retire to a convent. Other letters follow and four days after the terrible scene which has been described, Mademoiselle Ménard entered the couvent des Cordelières, faubourg Saint-Marceau, Paris.
M. de Sartine had entrusted the very delicate, not to say hazardous mission of seeing the young woman in question safely lodged in a convent, to a worthy priest, l’abbé Dugué. This very respectable, very good and very naïf abbé, wrote the same evening a lengthy letter to the lieutenant-general of police in which he showed himself very anxious not to compromise his own dignity as well as not to incur the enmity of
a great duke still at liberty, whose character was universally known.
After explaining the difficulties he had encountered, and his just uneasiness in finding himself entangled in what to him was a very embarrassing affair, he humbly begged that the duke be prevented from disturbing the young woman, the circumstances of whose history he has been forced to hide from the good sisters of the Cordelières. If the interference of the duke could be prevented, he hoped that the repose, joined to the sweetness of the appearance and character of this “affligée recluse” would work in her favor in this home of order and prevent his passing for a liar, or even worse, as though being in fault for irregular conduct.
“I left the ladies,” he continues, “well disposed for their new pensionaire, but I repeat, what disgrace for me, if jealousy or love, equally out of place, find her out and penetrate even to her parlor there to exhale their scandalous or their unedifying sighs.”
The good abbé’s fears in regard to the young woman were, however, groundless, for as we have seen, by the 19th of February the duc de Chaulnes was safe in the fortress of Vincennes.
Loménie continues: “This affligée recluse, as the good abbé Dugué said, was not at all made for the life of a convent, she had scarcely enjoyed the existence within its protecting walls a fortnight before she felt the need to vary her impressions, and she abruptly returned to the world, tranquilized by the knowledge of the solidity of the walls of the château de Vincennes which separated her from the duc de Chaulnes.”
Beaumarchais, inactive at For-l’Evêque, having heard of Mademoiselle Ménard’s return to the world wrote her a most characteristic letter full of brotherly advice in which is
shown his tendency to regulate the affairs of those in whom he feels an interest, as well as a certain chagrin perhaps, that the young woman in question should enjoy her liberty when he, Beaumarchais, is forced to remain inactive at For-l’Evêque.