Ninon de l'Enclos and her century

by Mary C. Rowsell

At Pignerol, Fouquet was treated with great rigour. Some few months after his arrival there, a peril of another kind came very near to him. The lightning of a heavy thunderstorm struck the powder-magazine of the fortress, and it exploded, burying many in its ruins. Fouquet, who was standing at the moment in the recess of a window, remained unhurt. Mystery hangs over the last days of his life; for while it is said that he died in his captivity at Pignerol, his friend Gourville states that he was set at liberty before his death. Voltaire also declares that Fouquet’s daughter-in-law, the Comtesse de Vaux, confirmed the fact of this to him. Another surmise, and one that found wide acceptance, is that although he was liberated for a while, he was rearrested, and that it was he who was the mysterious individual known as the Man in the Iron Mask.

Human Nature loves a mystery, and would resent being deprived of this most memorable enigma in modern history, by any reasonable and certain solution of it, could it be beyond all doubt and question established. Again and again it has been explained and explained away, but it is, as Galileo declared of the earth and the sun: e pur se muove. The Man in the Iron Mask stands the Man in the Iron Mask—which was, in fact, not of iron, at all, but of stoutly-lined velvet, as the loups and masks of the time nearly always were made. Probably this mask was secured by extra strong springs and fastenings, as mostly was the case for prisoners of distinction, when they were being conveyed from one place of captivity to another.

Such kind of explanation was afforded to Ninon by the governor of the Bastille when she discussed the point with him. There was, he said, no mystery at all in it. Yet the possibility remains that it did not suit the governor of the grim old prison-house absolutely to lift the veil covering its secrets, even to Ninon.

It has been contended that it could not have been Fouquet; since the Iron Mask’s death is recorded in the register of the Bastille, where he was confined for the last five years of his life in November 1703, and Fouquet, at that date, would have been in extreme old age, which this prisoner was still short of. Not being Fouquet, was it Count Matthioli accused of betraying the French Government, in the matter of putting a French garrison into Casale to defend it against Spain? Was it the Duke of Monmouth, after all not beheaded in England? Was it the child of Buckingham, the bitter fruit of his intrigue with Anne of Austria? Was it the twin brother she was said to have borne with Louis XIV., as Dumas tells—he who was taken by d’Artagnan from the Bastille, and placed on the throne of France, while the other Louis was shut up in his stead, the substitution remaining undiscovered, so great was the resemblance between the two—undetected by the queen, Maria Théresa, herself. The romance is well founded, but even for the great master of romance it goes far. Was it—No; the mystery, like Sheridan’s quarrel, is “a very pretty mystery as it stands. We should only spoil it by trying to explain it.”

Ninon was troubled at this time with an unsatisfactory, rather casual admirer, Monsieur le Comte de Choiseul, an individual of whom it was difficult for her to decide whether his pertinacity or his supreme self-conceit predominated. Monsieur Précourt, the celebrated dancer, an intimate acquaintance of hers, whom she one morning invited to breakfast with her, did her the good service of finally relieving her of de Choiseul’s incommoding presence. The breakfast was laid for two, and Choiseul, entering, was about to seat himself, whereupon Précourt claimed the place at table, and Choiseul, declining to stir, Précourt invited him to adjourn to the neighbouring boulevard with him, and settle the matter at the sword’s point. Choiseul replied that he did not fight with mountebanks. That was as well, Précourt retorted, since they might make him dance; and the unwelcome one took his hat, went out from the house, and did not return.

The liaison of Louis with Mademoiselle de la Vallière was now generally known; and notwithstanding the warning of the disgrace and banishment of St Evrémond, satirical rhymes began to circulate at the expense of the royal favourite and her lover Deodatus. How fortunate he was, said Bussy Rabutin, “in pressing his lips on that wide beak, which stretched from ear to ear”; and forthwith the poet found himself lodged in the Bastille.

Physically, the beauty of La Vallière was not flawless. Her mouth was somewhat large; but it has frequently been said, that somehow the defect of her lameness only added to the grace of her movements, which were at once so gentle and dignified, while her magnificent, dark dreamy eyes and her soft winning smile rendered her singularly charming; and if Louis ever loved any but himself, it was Louise de la Vallière, who so passionately loved, not Louis the king, but the ardent wooer and winner of her heart. There is a story of the rose-tree from which Louis plucked the rose which he offered her on that ball night in the Louvre. It had been cultivated by le Nôtre, the famous gardener of Versailles, and was an object of his tenderest care; so much cherished, that he was far from pleased when he saw the king pluck its loveliest blossom for la Vallière. She regarded the rose-tree which had borne it with the tenderness one feels for some beloved sentient thing, enlisting le Nôtre’s interest in it, which in its way was as great as her own; and wherever she went to spend any length of days, the rose-tree was transported in its box of earth to the gardens of the palace—Versailles or the Louvre, as it might be—and for two years the beautiful bush flourished under the joint care of le Nôtre, and of the king’s beloved mistress. And in her gentle confidences with Mademoiselle Athénais de Mortemar, the fiancée of Monsieur le Marquis de Montespan, with whom she was great friends, she told her the romance of her rose, and how it was her belief, her superstition—call it what you will—that while it flourished, Louis’s love would be hers.

And then all at once the rose-tree began to fade. Slowly but surely, despite all the skill of le Nôtre, rapidly it withered, and he carried a handful of the earth of the new box, into which he had transplanted the tree, as a last resource, to a chemist for analysation. Nothing more simple: vitriol had been poured on the earth, a drop or two at a time, and the root was corroded to dry threads. And for la Vallière, it was only left to make a little mausoleum for her rose-tree in the shadow of a retired thicket round the bosquets of Versailles—a little crystal globe upon a low marble stand; and within it, in a box exquisitely enriched with gold filigree, the withered rose-tree, to one of whose branches was fastened the faded rose, whose petals still hung together; and thither to the secluded spot every day came la Vallière to kneel at the tomb of her rose-tree, and kiss the shadowy souvenir of the love that had faded for ever. Just a few petals left of its countless leaves, so sweet and glowing once in their crimson beauty.

And Mademoiselle Athénais de Mortemar’s nuptials with Monsieur le Marquis de Montespan having been solemnised, the wife was left by the complaisant husband to become the second mistress of Louis XIV., and this ere the first was discarded, and Maria Théresa still a youthful wife. The two children of la Vallière the king legitimised by Act of Parliament; but soon Louise was seen no more at Court. She found refuge and rest for weariness and regrets of heart and spirit within convent walls.