Ninon de l'Enclos and her century

by Mary C. Rowsell

It was Mazarin France had to thank for establishing in Paris, musical Italian plays, in other words, Italian operas. From time to time, since the days of Henri III., Italian dramatic singers had visited Paris, finding no regular stage or fair opportunity for their beautiful presentations. Mazarin, however, secured them the rights for these at the Hôtel Bourgogne, and by one of the exercises of his wily ingenuity, also contrived to win away from Charles II. Budeaud, the musical leader of the Court-revels in London, as the conductor of the Paris company.

Early in the winter, whose approach brought Ninon and everybody back to Paris, invitations were issued for the performance of an Italian opera on a magnificent scale, in the Palais Royal, and to Ninon the invitation was sent by the Duc de Condé—who had repented of his harsh estimate of her conduct—and finding his way to her fauteuil in the course of the performance, the two made their peace by mutual concessions. Meanwhile Condé had diplomatically set several hundred leagues between the lovers, by pairing off Madame de Longueville with her husband to Münster, while he caused the Duc de la Rochefoucauld to be summoned to his duties as governor of Poitou. Independently of the ardent but brief attachment of Rocroi and Nordlingen days, the Duc de Condé entertained sterling admiration and esteem for the qualities of Ninon, and their friendship remained sincere through life.

For three years Ninon came to Paris only at intervals; she remained in the Vexin, with the erratic Marquis de Villarceaux for her companion. Of a furiously jealous nature in regard to the object of his affectionate consideration, he permitted himself a wide range. The lawful wife he owned was, not unnaturally, jealous of Ninon, and made her a constant subject of contention between them. One day she requested the tutor of her little son to examine him before some company she was entertaining, upon his recent classical studies. “Quem habuit successorum Bellus, rex Assyriorum?” (“Who succeeded Belus, King of the Assyrians?”) inquired the tutor, who was no less a person than the Abbé Scarron.

“Ninum,” replied the little boy.

The word, so absolutely resembling Ninon, threw Madame de Villarceaux into a furious rage. Scarron vainly endeavoured to explain and justify himself. She would not listen. The answer, she said, was quite enough for her; and Scarron was dismissed. It was a cruel accident for him, crippled as he was, so utterly as not to be able to stir from his wheel-chair. Bodily “a wretched log,” as he called himself, intellectually more brilliant than ever, and in a human sense, ever the same kindly, generous epicurean philosopher as of old, “always” as he said, “unfortunate.” On the top of all his other troubles he had fallen in love. Alas! for the poor prisoner of that wheeled-chair, the helpless wreck of the ex-canon! Ninon found refuge in silence as she stood before him where he had been carried in from his coach. It was long since they had met, and her heart was full of pity. The object of his affection, Scarron went on to tell her, was one Françoise d’Aubigné, a native of Niort. “Ah, d’Aubigné,” interrupted Ninon at last. “A Protestant then?” A Calvinist by birth, went on Scarron, and reared in that teaching by an aunt who had adopted her on the death of her parents; but the aunt died, and then a lady, Madame de Neuillan, a friend of the Marquise de Villarceaux, had taken her in hand. It was a misuse of words to call it befriending. It was in this way Scarron had seen her, a charmingly pretty girl of about seventeen.

This Countess de Neuillan was a gorgon of virtue and principle, and, as also a bigot of a Catholic, she had compelled Françoise to become one. In return for all her tender care, Madame de Neuillan imposed the most menial duties on the young girl, who was of angelic disposition as well as beautiful. Her father had been the son of the friend of Henri IV. More or less worthy as he might be represented—de mortuis nil nisi bonum—he had died in prison, guilty of no other crimes, perhaps, than being a Protestant; and so his two children had been left cast in indigence upon the world. The lot of Françoise in the house of Madame de Neuillan was deplorable, and Scarron, as well as some other friends, had advised her to leave her, and get her living by the work of her hands sooner than remain in such dependence; and for twelve months past she had lodged in a little street of a neighbouring faubourg, with her brother, a ne’er-do-well; but still her brother; and her goodness to him was the only fault Scarron had to find in the adorable Françoise. And Ninon’s generous heart overflowed with sympathy for the young girl, and she took her to her own home, and they were warm friends, living in the closest ties of affection; and ere long the sweet, modest, gentle girl repaid the kind friend’s goodness by winning her lover, Monsieur de Villarceaux, away from her, and Ninon, who was sincerely attached to him, felt the sting acutely. She taxed Françoise with the attempt, which was quite successful, and refused to listen to any denial or excuse, merely saying that they would have the field quite free to themselves, as she was leaving on the following day for Naples. And thither she went, taking the sea-journey from Marseilles. For travelling companion, she had the Chevalier de Méri. This gentleman who had been one of the guests of Monsieur Vicariville had a sister who was married to a Spanish Grandee, to whom was promised the viceroyalty of Naples.

Monsieur de Méri was in every way far more desirable as a companion than the man she had left in the company of Françoise, to whom she also entrusted the ménage in the rue des Tournelles, only making the condition that she and Villarceaux should hold their sweet converse exclusively in the “Yellow Chamber,” which was the most retired of the rooms. Finding this a little restrictive however, they betook themselves to Brie-Comte Robert, where they spent a fortnight at the house of a cousin of the marquis, who possessed the gift of a still tongue.

Arrived in Naples, Ninon established herself with her faithful servant Perrote, who had attended her en courrier, in a small house near the park, and yielded herself up to the charm of the place. “See Naples and die,” but it thrilled Ninon with new life. The sunshine, the colour, the curious mingling of indolence and the activity of a seaport, the cloudless azure overhead, the clear blue depths of the bay, the islands washed by the sparkling waters, Vesuvius, calm and treacherous, enchanted her. She lost no time in providing herself with a Neapolitan costume, in which she roved about as the will took her. Nothing was more likely than that when she chartered a barque to sail away and dream her dreams, rocked by the gentle waves of that inland sea, it should have been guided by a young fisherman of some five-and-twenty years old. His handsome features wore a nobility of expression and energy—a picture worthy of a painter’s brush, with his sunburnt skin and flashing dark eyes, and dark locks, surmounted by his red woollen cap. This young fisherman, who told Ninon, when she asked him his name, that it was Aniello—Tommaso Aniello—but the people and his comrades called him “Masaniello.” Forever a favourite with them, they were in those early July days of that year of 1647 beginning to idolise him as their champion and leader in the revolt against the oppression and robbery of their Spanish masters.

The viceroyalty of Naples equalled in pomp and extravagance the Court of Madrid, and what wealth was found more than could be used for Naples, was shipped off and transported to Spain, leaving the Neapolitans crushed with poverty, neglected and groaning under the haughty tyranny of the delegated power. Recently the viceroy of the Spanish king, Philip IV., the Duke of Arcos, who wanted more and more funds for carrying on the war with France, had bethought himself of levying a tax on fruit and vegetables. It was but Mazarin’s Toisé over again, ever for Jacques Bonhomme and his Italian equivalent to keep things spinning for the honour and glory of a spendthrift nobility, while they robbed the country of their young men, to draft them as soldiers to Spain. In the course of a century, millions of ducats had been paid from one source alone, into the Spanish treasury. These wrongs were stirring the indignation of the Neapolitans to seething heat, and to the people Aniello spoke aloud and with fiery eloquence of the iniquities. To add fuel to the flame, his young wife—or, as other chroniclers tell, his deaf and dumb sister, living at Portici—had been arrested and cast into prison for having in her possession some contraband flour, and Aniello had been made to pay to obtain her release. A disturbance in the market-place over the sale of a basket of figs, upon which the unfortunate man who had brought them for sale, was finally required to pay the imposts, ignited the smouldering rage of the oppressed people, and at the head of a troop of thousands of men, women and boys, who wrought destruction on every side as they went, Masaniello forced a way into the viceroy’s palace. There with the help and counsel of the Archbishop of Naples, a man popular and respected, the demand for exemption of taxation on all articles of food was accorded. The triumph of Masaniello was complete; but the excitement and the adulation not alone of the people for whose rights he had so successfully striven, but of the viceroy himself, proved too much for him. His mind gave way, he began to act like a maniac; he complained of a sensation like boiling lead in his head. Some of the wretched dregs of the people he had so nobly served, took umbrage at his wild conduct, and the shot from an arquebuse, in the hands of one of the mob thus turned on him, pierced him to the heart. There was nothing left but to regret the heroic man, and he was laid to rest, after his young life’s fitful fever, with great pomp and ceremony in the church of S. Maria del Carmine.