MARIE JEANNE D’AUMALE
A Little Schoolgirl of Saint-Cyr
Part I.
The little “new” girl had sobbed herself to sleep at last, and in all the long, white dormitory there was no sound but that of the regular breathing of healthy, sleeping children. Very gently, Madame de Fontaine withdrew her hand from the lock of the little fingers which had held it so long. Then, as she stooped to kiss the small face on the tear-stained pillow, she heard a murmur of “Maman!” and saw that the child was smiling in her sleep.
“She is dreaming of home,” said Madame de Fontaine to herself; and, involuntarily, she turned to the unshuttered window, when she was back in her cell at the end of the dormitory, and yielded her own dreams to the spells the white moon was weaving for them.
Away across the park, long cords of light were stretched across the dark mass of the Château, where a King and his courtiers held revel. Now and then, the night wind whispering to the tall trees, carried snatches of the music to which the dainty, jewelled feet of the Court ladies moved rhythmically. But these things barely touched the nun’s consciousness. Beyond the boundaries of the stately park, far away from the echoes of courtly music, or the light of a King’s presence, her dreams were following where those of little Marie Jeanne d’Aumale had led—to an old “gentilhommière” in the heart of the provinces, very shabby, and tumble-down, and dilapidated, but where a little girl could be very happy, because she called it “home.”
It may well have been that more than one of the little sleepers in the long row of little white beds was dreaming of just such an old “noblesse”;[14] and that is why, as she looked into the moonlit park, the nun could see it so plainly before her. Poor little girls! Two titles had procured for them their right of entrance into Saint-Cyr: nobility of birth, and poverty; and one was more clearly written across the tumble-down walls, the grass-grown courtyard, the empty byres and stables of their old provincial “gentilhommières,” than the other on the Coat of Arms carved above the dilapidated doorway.
And was not one as honourable as the other? Nun as she was, Madame de Fontaine was not yet dead to that noble pride, to which, as Madame de Maintenon herself has finely said, “before having died, one must have lived.” And, standing there at the window of that establishment, whose foundation, four years ago, represented an instalment of payment of the debt contracted by the Monarchy to France, to the nobility of France, ruined in its service, she felt the thrill of one whose order “hath chosen the better part.”
And all the time, from the lighted palace across the park, floated the soft strains of dance-music! There, they who had made the other choice, who had abandoned their homes, and their home duties, who lived at Court, absentees from their estates, and deserters from their “consigne,” were dancing their “branles,” and “courantes,” their “menuets” and “passe-pied” in the light of the King’s presence. Let them dance on! The true hope of France was in these little sleeping girls, who, gathered together under the pious roof of Saint-Cyr, were being trained for a womanhood, which should work out the regeneration of a kingdom.
Never has a more splendid tribute been paid to women than in the foundation of Saint-Cyr; and one runs the risk of failing to realize its importance, both in the history of feminism, and in the history of education, if one neglects to consider it, as much in the light of the statesmanship of Louis XIV. as in that of the charity of Madame de Maintenon. The primary idea was hers, no doubt—but it remained for the King, not only to supply her with the means of putting her project into execution, but to perceive the part it might play in the economical reconstruction of his kingdom. Long wars had left the country desolate, but no class was made “with its desolation more desolate” than the class of country gentlemen. And yet it was among them that the King had always found his most gallant and disinterested defenders. It grieved him to the heart when he heard the tales of the misery in which, among their untilled fields and half-ruined walls, they were rearing their families. In his coffers there was not the wherewithal to requite their services, and help them to cultivate their fields again and rebuild their “gentilhommières.” But there was something else that could be done for them, and the King did it. He could give them “Valiant Women”—and he knew in his heart that the gift was indeed a royal one, and worthy of him—more precious to those who received it than gold and silver. “Far, and from the uttermost coasts” was to be the price of those whom Saint-Cyr was rearing for France.