And now Anne of Austria succumbed to the fell disease which had insidiously attacked her, and she died, and was borne to St Dénis with great pomp, followed by Louis the king, clad in deepest mourning.
CHAPTER XVII
A Fashionable Water-cure Resort—M. de Roquelaure and his Friends—Louis le Grand—“A Favourite with the Ladies”—The Broken Sword—A Billet-doux—La Vallière and la Montespan—The Rebukes from the Pulpit—Putting to the Test—Le Tartufe—The Triumphs of Molière—The Story of Clotilde.
By the advice of Guy Patin, Ninon’s constant friend and medical adviser, she went to drink the chalybeate waters of Forges les Eaux, in Picardy. Not that there was the least thing the matter with her; only, as the wise doctor said, “Prevention was better than cure.” Besides, well or ailing, everybody of any consequence went there; it was the thing to do, ever since Anne of Austria had taken a course of the waters, and a short time after had given birth to the child Louis, the heir to the throne of France, whose coming had been so long hoped for.
Time had brought its sorrows to Ninon. It had treated many of the friends of earlier years with a hand less sparing than its touch on her. Among those passed away into the sleep of death, was Madame de Choisy. A great mutual affection had existed between the two women ever since they had first met, and the severance saddened Ninon. At Forges, she knew there would be many of her friends and acquaintance, old and new, and instead of going to spend the spring days at the Picpus cottage, she yielded to the persuasions of Madame de Montausier and of Madame de la Fayette, and went to drink the waters, mingle in its comparatively mild dissipations, and join in the gay school for scandal for which Forges was as noted as are the run of hydropathic resorts. It lies some half-way between Paris and the coast by Dieppe. One of the three springs it contains is named after the queen, presumably the one which brought Louis the Dieudonné, and the other two are called respectively La Royale and Le Cardinal.
Something neglected now, the place was thronged in Ninon’s day, every season with a motley crowd of varied nationalities and conditions of men and woman. “Parisians and provincials, nobles and citizen-folk, monks and nuns, English, Flemish, Spaniards, Christians—Catholics and Huguenots—Jews, Mohammedans, every one drinks in company the waters, whose detestable flavour brings your heart into your mouth. This debauch takes place at six o’clock a.m.”
Then began a promenade in the avenue of the Capucin garden, thrown open to the public, and tongues, let loose, fell to work upon the passing events and topics and reputations and no reputations. At nine, breakfast drew the hungry ones to table, and Mass the devout. All the morning was spent in doing nothing, or the business of the toilette; then came a copious dinner, then visiting and more chatter.
At five began the theatre, supplied from the Rouen companies. At seven was supper, then more promenading, concluding with litanies sung in the monks’ chapel.
The Duchesse of Montpensier was among the company—her period of mourning just ended for her father, who had died at Blois in the preceding summer. The Grande Mademoiselle had been seized with the cacoëthes scribendi, and treated her circle with readings from her romances, La Princesse de Paphlagonie, L’Ile Imaginaire, and a series of Portraits, for which style of composition there was a rage just then. Ninon considered their excellence fell very short of Mademoiselle’s martial talents. In a day or two arrived the Duc de Roquelaure, with his cousin the chevalier, a personage of terror-striking mien, followed everywhere by a Monsieur de Romainville, a gouty, objectionable individual, as, indeed, not much more could be said of his two friends. Instead of the waters, he drank such a quantity of cider, that it aggravated his malady to the extent of sending for one of the Capucin confessors; but on his appearance the chevalier flourished his sword at him. “Be off with you, my father!” he cried. “He has lived like a heathen: let him die like one”; and so violently did the invalid laugh at this sally, that it cured him.