Another question suggests itself, which we should like equally to be able to solve with more certainty. Racine had the most intimate relations with Du Parc, as the latter had with La Voisin. In 1679, the year in which the great poisoning matter came to light, Phèdre appeared. Is it rash to suppose that, through his conversations with Du Parc, La Voisin’s confidante, the poet with his keen observation had seen the features of the passion-tost marchionesses, criminals for love, who had been the clients of the sorceresses, and that from these fleeting suggestions he had succeeded in reconstructing their whole characters?
‘Imagine,’ writes Monsieur Brunetière, ‘Racine’s agitation when this case became public. At Paris, in the heart of Paris—the Paris of Louis XIV—in the Rue Verdelet or the Rue Michel-Lecomte, Orestes was assassinating Pyrrhus, Roxane was selling herself to some witch to secure the love of Bajazet or the death of Attalide; the famous Locusta was not an invention of Tacitus, and every day some Phèdre was poisoning some Hippolyte. And all these horrors were what he, Racine, had been for ten years toiling to envelop and to disguise, as it were, with the charm of his verse—murder and lust! adultery and incest! the delirium of the senses! the madness of homicide! This was what for ten years he had been endeavouring to win plaudits for, and when a Hermione or a Nero issued from the Hôtel de Bourgogne[17] intent on committing the crime they had seen glorified under their eyes—what, was it this that he called his glory! O shame and agony and remorse! And from the moment that such a question started up before the conscience of such a man, how think you he could have answered but by quitting the stage? The truth even of his own art rose up against him. What brought his pictures into condemnation was just their accent of truth!’
THE ‘DEVINERESSE’
LA DEVINERESSE, a fairy comedy by Donneau de Visé and Thomas Corneille—the latter is usually called by his contemporaries Corneille de Lisle—was represented at Paris in 1679, the year of the great poison case.
In his reports to the king and the Secretaries of State Nicolas de la Reynie insisted on the necessity, not only of punishing the guilty, but of preventing the spread and, if possible, the recurrence of crimes like those which had been brought to light. We have shown how he had drawn up, in collaboration with Colbert, the decree registered in the Parlement on August 31, 1682, by which the magicians were expelled from France, and by which, more especially, the making and the sale of poisons necessary in medicine and in trade were placed under rigorous regulations. This was a masterly work: as we have mentioned, these regulations are in force to this day, after the lapse of two centuries.
La Reynie thought that it was advisable, apart from these preventive measures, to put the public on their guard against the dangerous infatuation which had thrown so many pretty and passionate women body and soul into the hands of the fortune-tellers. Let us recall the declarations of one of the latter: ‘Persons who look into the hand are the ruin of all women, women of quality as well as others, because their weakness is soon found out, and when discovered is taken advantage of, and they are driven to whatever length the witches please.’ As lieutenant of police La Reynie had a general control of the theatres; he revised and censored the manuscripts of the playwrights; he was in constant touch with them. He was the friend of more than one writer of talent, for the magistrate was doubled in him with the refined and delightful man of letters, who had both delicate taste and an excellent library. In this year 1679 he had particularly close relations with Donneau de Visé, founder and editor of the Mercure galant, and assuredly one of the most curious figures in our literary history. Boursault had just written his witty comedy, also entitled the Mercure galant, in which he directed lively and incisive satire upon the journalism then at its dawn, which had already taken, under the influence of Donneau de Visé, many of the characteristics of modern journalism.
The Mercure, said Boursault, is a delightful thing:—
‘On y trouve de tout, fable, histoire, vers, prose,
Sièges, combats, procès, mort, mariage, amour,
Nouvelles de Province et nouvelles de Cour.’
Visé begged La Reynie not to authorise the representation of the piece under the same title as the journal; La Reynie acquiesced, and Boursault, putting a good face on the matter, called his piece La Comédie sans titre. Moreover, Visé was in high favour at Court. When Louis XIV saw the success of the Mercure, he hastened to award the editor-in-chief a pension of 500 crowns, gave him apartments in the Louvre, and appointed him his historiographer. Visé’s pen became an accommodating tool.
Donneau de Visé was not only a journalist; he was a dramatic author, and as a dramatic author he was, as he was in journalism, very modern. He had found means of achieving a noisy notoriety by beginning with an extremely violent attack on Corneille and Molière. Against the latter he composed his comedy Zélinde, ou la véritable critique de l’Echole des Femmes et la critique de la critique, in which he has left a portrait of the poet that has become famous, and which is, in our eyes, not a criticism but a splendid eulogy. ‘I came down,’ says a lace merchant; ‘Elomire [an anagram on Molière] did not say a single word. I found him leaning up against my shop in the attitude of a man in a dream. He had his eyes fixed on three or four persons of quality who were bargaining for lace; he appeared attentive to their words, and seemed by the movement of his eyes to be scanning the depths of their souls to see there what they did not say.’