About this time Scarron wrote his Mazarinade, and continued to be in love with his Françoise. She was desperately poor, and gained scanty subsistence by needlework, supplemented by what Scarron earned from the proceeds of his writing, which she carried in MS. for him to and fro the printers. The Mazarinade was an immense success; but the author gained financially less than nothing from its publication; as it so offended the queen, that the pension she had granted him was withdrawn, and the marriage with Françoise his heart was set upon had to be delayed. She had, however, in the meantime, consented to take up her abode with him, and they were happy.
After some months’ sulking away in various places, the Court returned to Paris, having again patched up a sort of reconciliation, and on that occasion Condé found himself in the same coach with Mazarin. The drive could scarcely have been an enjoyable one, and the hollow entente cordiale only gave the Frondeurs offence. It lasted a very little time, for soon after, when Mazarin was attempting to arrange a marriage of one of his nieces with a close connexion of de Condé’s, the proud prince said furiously that at the best “they were only fit to be the wives of Mazarin’s valets. Go and tell him so,” added Condé; “and if he is angry, let his captain of the guards bring him by his beard to the Hôtel de Condé.”
The cardinal swallowed the insult and continued to offer high favours to Condé, who refused them all, and in a little time the fury of the dispute broke out again more fiercely than ever. Condé, strong in the service he had rendered his country, grew insupportably arrogant, and, not content with insulting Mazarin, was constantly offending the queen. This ended in the arrest of himself, his brother, the Prince de Conti, and the Duc de Longueville, and they were imprisoned at Havre. Madame de Longueville thereupon hastened to Normandy, where she tried to create an uprising for her party, but failing in this she allied herself with Turenne, then fighting for Spain. A new party was now formed, headed by the princes, and called the “Little Fronde”—and big and little joined force against Mazarin, and the cardinal, bending at last to the storm, went to Havre and set Condé and the other princes free. But this did not satisfy the demands of the Fronde, and he finally quitted France and took up his abode in Cologne, still contriving to pull the strings of the French Court party.
The following year he was back again, taking advantage of the quarrel within quarrel of the leaders of both parties. Memorable among these fearful frays was that encounter in the Faubourg St Antoine, when Mademoiselle de Montpensier, “La Grande Mademoiselle,” the brave daughter of the pusillanimous Gaston of Orléans, mounted to the towers of the Bastille, and ordered the troops of the king to fire upon the troops of Condé, now a leader of the Fronde. It was a splendid victory as far as it went; but it only strengthened the hatred against the cardinal. Anarchy and terror were at their height, and to be accused of Mazarinism was to come in fear of death. Yet, for the third time, and the triumphant last, Mazarin returned, to be welcomed by the fickle people, to remain at the head of the government till he died, after having the satisfaction of seeing his five nieces all brilliantly married, and supremely content with the result of his training of the young king, which was to prove so disastrous at a later time. It was a training of utter neglect of everything but the knowledge of his own importance, and that did not need impressing upon the proud, dominating nature of Louis XIV. Said Mazarin one day—“He has stuff in him to make four kings.”
CHAPTER XI
Invalids in the rue des Tournelles—On the Battlements—“La Grande Mademoiselle”—Casting Lots—The Sacrifice—The Bag of Gold—“Get Thee to a Convent”—The Battle of the Sonnets—A Curl-paper—The Triumph and Defeat of Bacchus—A Secret Door—Cross Questions and Crooked Answers—The Youthful Autocrat.
Several of the severely wounded, under the firing of the Bastille cannon, were carried by Ninon’s desire into her house in the rue des Tournelles. Among these were the Comte de Fiesque and the Abbé d’Effiat. Both of these gentlemen were so cruelly weakened by loss of blood, that it was long before either of them was able to be removed. Fiesque had the misfortune to be married to an exceedingly disagreeable woman, cross and ill-tempered with everybody, herself included. There was no longer any affection between her and her husband, and as he made no pretence of being true to her, it was little less than a matter of course that he should find himself fascinated by the charms of his kind nurse and hostess, while the abbé was no less enthralled; and Ninon, weary of the Fronde—as in fact who was not?—resumed the old society ways of the rue des Tournelles.
It was Gondi, the bishop’s coadjutor, who laid to his singular half-devout, half-profligate soul the flattering unction that he was the author of the restored peace; and on the strength of it, he obtained the red hat he so ardently coveted, and became the Cardinal de Retz, so renowned for his romantic and adventurous career; but he did not escape the vengeance of his mortal foe Mazarin, who arrested him and confined him in the castle of Vincennes. Thence de Retz obtained removal to the Château of Nantes, a stronghold safely walled and moated round about, which appertained to his family. Some chroniclers credit it with being the scene of the crimes of the terrible Bluebeard, Gilles de Retz, Marquis de Laval. It is almost as stern and forbidding-looking as “Black Angers,” and with as long a record of interest. Its massive walls were first built into the bed of the deep-flowing Loire in the fourteenth century, and its frowning towers vividly conjure to the mind’s eye the picture of Sister Anne watching from their summits for “anybody coming.”
Its bastions and walls, and slate and granite round-towers bear the cross of Lorraine, carved on them during the wars of the League. Anne of Brittany, born within its walls, is said to have been married for the second time in its chapel—now a powder-magazine—and here, too, Henri IV. signed the Edict of Nantes, which gave to the Huguenots their religious freedom, to be so shamefully withdrawn at the instigation of the amiable Françoise d’Aubigné.