Madame de Navailles was a rigid disciplinarian with her charges—not without cause, for Louis XIV., arriving at years of discretion, had evinced great interest in the mode of life led by them in their private apartments; but Madame de Navailles was adamant. De Navailles, therefore, who was ambitious of advancement at Court, devised the notion of becoming once more greatly enamoured of his wife; and thus gaining access to the general salon of the ladies, he contrived, without madame’s knowledge, to get a panel knocked out in the wall skirting a small stairway, by which nothing was easier than for his youthful Majesty to come and go at pleasure. This means of communication being however, very soon discovered, the aperture was blocked up; so greatly to the annoyance of the king, that he dismissed Madame de Navailles from her post; though he had the gratitude to present her husband with the marshal’s bâton.
It was at this time, for a good while past, that Ninon lived under the terror of the queen’s threat of sending her into a convent, the more likely to be carried out now on account of the part she had taken in the events of the Fronde. Her numerous friends and partisans were also anxious on this score, and the matter became one of so much interest and discussion, that one day a champion presented himself at her door, seeking an interview. He represented himself as an ex-captain of the Guards of Christina, Queen of Sweden, who, he said, entertained a considerable appreciation of such fine, tall, robust giants as he was. Ninon, however, who accepted his services and his sword at the wage of a pistole a day, soon found him rather an incubus, and was glad to hand him over to the service of Monsieur de Navailles.
The consecration of the young king was now about to take place at Rheims. Each of the queen’s ladies of honour was authorised to choose a companion from among her friends for the ceremony, and Madame de Choisy invited Ninon for this purpose, having the generous intention of trying to restore her to the regent’s favour. It was entirely successful. Not only was all fear of the terrible injunction being carried out removed, but Ninon, on the return to Paris, was invited to join the friendly réunions at the Palais Royal. Sometimes these took place in the queen’s small salon, sometimes in the apartments of Mazarin. The invited ones vastly enjoyed themselves, with the exciting pastimes of questions and answers, and broken sentences. Sometimes the violins were sent for, and they danced the Quénippe or the Diablesse, and still oftener there were games of romps.
The cardinal’s four nieces were nearly always present at these gatherings. They were all charming and beautiful, Olympe, Hortense and Laure Mancini, though not absolutely and perfectly sweet-tempered. It was reserved to Marie, less regularly featured than her sisters, but far more fascinating and amiable, to bear the palm, and to win the attentions of the king. These were carried so far, that it was thought by many—Mazarin indeed hoped, and his hopes were apt to find fulfilment—that she would be queen. She assumed great authority over Louis, to the extent of not allowing him to cast stray glances of admiration on the ladies of the Court or at her sisters. Louis, however, was apt to rebel on this head. To this influence, Marie, then a girl of fourteen only, the well-known fact is ascribed of Louis, then but a youth of sixteen, hurrying from the chase, back to Paris, and booted and spurred, his whip in his hand, entering the grand council chamber of the Parliament, where some new financial edicts were being considered after the holding of a Bed of Justice, and revised with a view to seeking some modification of them. In haughty tones, and with a majestic air, Louis bade the councillors disperse and leave the edicts as they had been drawn up. “Monsieur le President,” he said, “the evils attending these meetings of Parliament are but too well known. Henceforward I forbid them, as I also forbid these edicts just registered, to be tampered with.”
These words echoed through all Europe. They provoked murmurs long and deep of the Parliament, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that the prudence of Turenne was able to keep under the widespread dissatisfaction.
The policy of Mazarin’s “education” of the young king was already bearing the fruit of the future misery of the country which his Eminence’s alien authority so disastrously ruled.
The intimacy of Ninon and Marie Mancini grew into friendship, and Marie’s confidences made it clear to Ninon that it was her uncle’s intention, if not her own avowed one, that she should be the wife of Louis XIV. But the constancy of the great young monarch was ever a fragile thing.
CHAPTER XII
The Whirligig of Time, and an Old Friend—Going to the Fair—A Terrible Experience—The Young Abbé—“The Brigands of La Trappe”—The New Ordering—An Enduring Memory—The King over the Water—Unfulfilled Aspirations—“Not Good-looking.”