To effect this treaty of peace, she was conducted to the house of Madame de Sévigné by their mutual friend, Madame de la Fayette. The physical personal attraction of the queen of epistolary correspondence has been many times recorded; but the critical Mademoiselle de L’Enclos does not allow her any great claims to it. Her nose was long and sharp, with wide nostrils, and her countenance generally had something of a pedantic stamp. Still, Ninon’s opinion, while Madame de Sévigné’s portrait of her by Mignard exists at Les Rochers, needs not to be accepted as final, and she hastens to speak of her manner, at once so dignified and courteous. She went so far, in discussing Ninon’s liaison with young de Sévigné, as to say that her objection was mainly rooted in the fear that her son’s attachment to her would endure and hinder his desire for marriage, for which Madame de Sévigné herself was so anxious. As things went, de Sévigné soon after took to himself a wife, and Ninon gained a friend, who became a frequent guest at the réunions of the rue des Tournelles.
Profiting by Madame Scarron’s favour at Court, Ninon sought to obtain the king’s pardon for her old friend, St Evrémond; this was accorded. St Evrémond, however, did not return to France. He found the land of his exile a pleasant Patmos, and the Court of Whitehall, where he had won troops of friends, more congenial than Versailles, and he never crossed the Channel again, but lived his span of life, lengthy as Ninon’s; and his resting-place is among the great in Westminster Abbey.
“Carolus de Saint Denis, Duc de St Evrémond.
Viro Clarissimo
Inter Præstantiores
Aloi Sui Scriptores
Semper Memorando
Amici Marantes.
P. P.”
The golden link of their correspondence henceforth was alone to hold together the names of Ninon de L’Enclos and Henri de St Evrémond.
Madame Arnoul was regarded by Ninon with scant favour. She held her for a sort of âme damnée of Madame Scarron, an adventuress, who played her cards well, so skilfully indeed, that her prognostications seemed more and more surely finding realisation. The Montespan’s temper did not improve with time, and the placid demeanour of the royal governess was a great attraction to Louis, who would come oftener, and stay longer in his visits to the children. Moreover, he found great charm in her conversation. Ninon, who could not remain blind to these indications, and was ready to go great lengths to bring about de Montespan’s disgrace, disliking Madame Arnoul as she did, was not above lending herself to forward any scheme to that end, even though it originated in Madame Arnoul’s fertile brain; and one sufficiently daring did presently find birth there. For the service she had rendered Ninon conjointly with Molière, in freeing her from the durance of the Répenties, Madame Arnoul had claimed of her a quid pro quo at some future time. That time, she said, when she called upon her some few weeks later, was now, for putting the finishing strokes to the downfall of the favourite—if that de Montespan could still be designated—and Ninon was to be the instrument for this. She was, in the first place, to disguise herself as a man. So far, nothing easier, said Ninon—was it not to do what she had done so many a time?—and that small matter arranged, she and Madame Arnoul set out for the frontiers, where the king was about to go with all his Court to meet Turenne, who had been waging victorious war against the combined forces of Spain and Austria, waxing ever more alarmed at, and jealous of, the successes of Louis XIV.
Arrived in Lorraine, the two ladies travelled to Nancy, reaching the town a day or so before the royal cortège arrived, Madame Arnoul having acquired the knowledge of the exact route it was to take. From Nancy, the two women proceeded to Luneville, and thence onward into Alsace, and far into the very heart of the Vosges, where they slept on the first night, in a little hamlet called Raon l’Étape. The next day they reached St Dié, a pretty little town, one day, said the terrible tradition, to be crushed by the falling of the huge precipice of l’Ormont; and to avert this catastrophe annual processions were made; but l’Ormont stands somewhat back from the area of St Dié, and if it fell, it would probably be short of the town. Moreover, what is St Dié but the gift of God?—Dieudonné hedged about by the memory of its founder, the assassinated Childéric II.
Faring on by narrow, half-impassable roads, winding on the verge of rugged precipices, through dense pine-forests, whose close network of branches almost hid the sky, they reached St Marie-aux-Mines, a town forming part of the appanage of the Prince Palatine of Birkenfeld. It lies cradled between two pine-clad mountains, watered by innumerable limpid rivulets, meandering in all directions. There Ninon and Madame Arnoul halted for dinner, whose excellence was much below par of the natural attractions of the place; but Madame Arnoul consoled her companion with the information that some few leagues more would bring them to their journey’s end, and the place where the mysterious proceedings indicated were to be carried out. And next day they arrived in the neighbourhood of Ribeauvillé, and Ninon found herself in a magnificent château belonging to the brother-in-law of the Prince Palatine. This personage was, however, absent, and in his place the two ladies were received by the high steward, who, Madame Arnoul afterwards explained, was the cousin of the king’s valet-de-chambre, whom she had enlisted into her project, and she handed the steward a letter from this relative.
Having perused the letter, he redoubled his courtesies; but evidently under the influence of extreme perturbation, which he strove to cover by silence. The letter he thrust into his pocket without any reference to its contents; unless a slight shrug of his shoulders meant anything.
At supper, of which he did the honours, Madame Arnoul asked him why he had not spoken of the famous Chamber of Phantoms the château contained. The steward started like a guilty thing half off his chair, and asked Madame Arnoul if indeed she entertained the dangerous fancy to—to sleep, save the mark!—in that terrible room, as his cousin, had written him. He knew his cousin, of course, to be an idiot, but—but no, the idea was not to be contemplated. Anyone insane enough to spend a night in that awful apartment would be found a strangled corpse in the morning.
Madame laughed, and replied that she did not believe in ghosts; that she and her husband had laid a heavy bet on the point of sleeping in the haunted chamber, and surely Monsieur would not be the cause of their losing it.