The Noailles, unlike most of the great French families, although they lived in Paris during the winter, spent a portion of their time on their estates, looked after their people, and occupied themselves with charities and devotion. The Maréchal de Mouchy de Noailles, brother of the Duc d’Ayen, even worked with his own hands amongst his peasants, while his wife and daughter, Mme. de Duras, shared his views and the life he led, as did his sons, the Prince de Poix and the Vicomte de Noailles, of whom more will be said later.
With these and all the different relations of her husband, Mme. d’Ayen lived in the greatest harmony, especially with his sister, the Duchesse de Lesparre, a calm, holy, angelic woman after her own heart.
With his other sister, the Comtesse de Tessé, she was not at first so intimate. For Mme. de Tessé, a brisk, clever, amusing, original person, was not only a friend of Voltaire, and a diligent frequenter of the salons of the philosophers, wits, and encyclopædists, but, although not going to their extreme lengths, was rather imbued with their opinions.
But the most extraordinary and absurd person in the family was the Maréchale de Noailles, mother of the Duc d’Ayen, whose eccentricity was such that she might well have been supposed to be mad. It was, however, only upon certain points that her delusions were so singular—otherwise she seems to have been only an eccentric person, whose ideas of rank and position amounted to a mania.
She had a large picture painted by Boucher, in which all her grandnephews were represented as Cupids, with nothing on but the Order of the Grand Cross of Malta, to show their right to belong to it. None of the family could look at or speak of it with gravity. But what was a more serious matter was her passion for stealing relics and objects of religious value. She even mixed one into a medicine for her son, the Duc d’Ayen, when he had the measles. This had been lent her by some nuns, who of course could never get it back again. The nuns were very angry, so were the Archbishop of Paris and the Bishop of Chartres; she had also stolen a beautiful chalice and they refused to give her the Holy Communion. Her family were much disturbed and had considerable trouble in getting her out of the difficulties and trying to hush up the affair.
She also used to write letters to the holy Virgin, which she hid in a dovecote, in which she always found answers, supposed to be written by her priest. On one occasion she complained that the way of addressing her, “Ma chère Maréchale,” was not quite respectful in une petite bourgeoise de Nazereth, but observed that as she was the mother of our Saviour she must not be exacting; besides, St. Joseph belonged to the royal house of David, and she added, “I have always thought St. Joseph must have belonged to a younger branch, sunk by injustice or misfortune.”
The Abbess of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, hearing that a pilgrim was in the habit of coming into the Abbey Church during dinner time when nobody was there, had her watched, and discovered that it was the Duchesse de Noailles, who would stand for an interminable time before a statue of the Virgin, talking and even seeming to dispute with it.
One day she arrived, and after many bows and speeches began to address her prayers to the holy Virgin, and it appeared that what she asked for was in the first place a sum of eighteen hundred thousand livres for her husband, the Maréchal, then the Order of the Garter, which he wanted because it was the only great order not possessed by his family, and finally the diplôme of a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, because it was the only title he did not already bear.
Suddenly a shrill voice was heard from the altar, saying, “Mme. la Maréchale, you will not have the eighteen hundred thousand francs that you ask for your husband, he has already one hundred thousand écus de rente, and that is enough; he is already Duke, Peer, Grandee of Spain, and Marshal of France; he has already the orders of the Saint-Esprit and the Golden Fleece; your family is loaded with the favours of the court; if you are not content it is because it is impossible to satisfy you; and I advise you to renounce becoming a princess of the Empire. Your husband will not have the garter of St. George either.”
The Maréchale thought it was the Holy Child Himself speaking, and called out to Him to be quiet and let His Mother speak; when a burst of laughter was heard from behind the altar. It was the Vicomte de Chabrillan, one of the Queen’s pages, the little nephew of the coadjutrice of the Abbey, who had hidden there to play a trick.