The Complete Celebrated Crimes
by
Alexander Dumas, Pere
Part 33 out of 33
chaplain named Perette, who had been attached for five-and-twenty
years to the family of the marquis. The rest of the household
consisted of a few servants.
The marquise's first care, on arriving at the castle, had been to
collect a little society for herself in the town. This was easy: not
only did her rank make it an honour to belong to her circle, her
kindly graciousness also inspired at first-sight the desire of having
her for a friend. The marquise thus endured less dulness than she
had at first feared. This precaution was by no means uncalled for;
instead of spending only the autumn at Ganges, the marquise was
obliged, in consequence of letters from her husband, to spend the
winter there. During the whole of this time the abbe and the
chevalier seemed to have completely forgotten their original designs
upon her, and had again resumed the conduct of respectful, attentive
brothers. But with all this, M. de Ganges remained estranged, and
the marquise, who had not ceased to love him, though she began to
lose her fear, did not lose her grief.
One day the abbe entered her room suddenly enough to surprise her
before she had time to dry her tears; the secret being thus half
surprised, he easily obtained a knowledge of the whole. The
marquise owned to him that happiness in this world was impossible for
her so long as her husband led this separate and hostile life. The
abbe tried to console her; but amid his consolations he told her that
the grief which she was suffering had its source in herself; that her
husband was naturally wounded by her distrust of him--a distrust of
which the will, executed by her, was a proof, all the more
humiliating because public, and that, while that will existed, she
could expect no advances towards reconciliation from her husband.
For that time the conversation ended there.
Some days later, the abbe came into the marquise's room with a letter
which he had just received from his brother. This letter, supposed
confidential, was filled with tender complaints of his wife's conduct
towards him, and showed, through every sentence, a depth of affection
which only wrongs as serious as those from which the marquis
considered himself to be feeling could counterbalance. The marquise
was, at first, very much touched by this letter; but having soon
reflected that just sufficient time had elapsed since the explanation
between herself and the abbe for the marquis to be informed of it,
she awaited further and stronger proofs before changing her mind.
From day to day, however, the abbe, under the pretext of reconciling
the husband and wife, became more pressing upon the matter of the
will, and the marquise, to whom this insistence seemed rather
alarming, began to experience some of her former fears. Finally, the
abbe pressed her so hard as to make her reflect that since, after the
precautions which she had taken at Avignon, a revocation could have
no result, it would be better to seem to yield rather than irritate
this man, who inspired her with so great a fear, by constant and
obstinate refusals. The next time that he returned to the subject
she accordingly replied that she was ready to offer her husband this
new proof of her love if it would bring him back to her, and having
ordered a notary to be sent for, she made a new will, in the presence
of the abbe and the chevalier, and constituted the marquis her
residuary legatee. This second instrument bore date the 5th of May
1667. The abbe and the chevalier expressed the greatest joy that
this subject of discord was at last removed, and offered themselves
as guarantees, on their brother's behalf, of a better future. Some
days were passed in this hope, which a letter from the marquis came
to confirm; this letter at the same time announced his speedy return
to Ganges.
On the 16th of May; the marquise, who for a month or two had not been
well, determined to take medicine; she therefore informed the chemist
of what she wanted, and asked him to make her up something at his
discretion and send it to her the next day. Accordingly, at the
agreed hour in the morning, the draught was brought to the marquise;
but it looked to her so black and so thick that she felt some doubt
of the skill of its compounder, shut it up in a cupboard in her room
without saying anything of the matter, and took from her dressing-
case some pills, of a less efficacious nature indeed, but to which
she was accustomed, and which were not so repugnant to her.
The hour in which the marquise was to take this medicine was hardly
over when the abbe and the chevalier sent to know how she was. She
replied that she was quite well, and invited them to a collation
which she was giving about four o'clock to the ladies who made up her
little circle. An hour afterwards the abbe and the chevalier sent a
second time to inquire after her; the marquise, without paying
particular attention to this excessive civility, which she remembered
afterwards, sent word as before that she was perfectly well.
The marquise had remained in bed to do the honours of her little
feast, and never had she felt more cheerful. At the hour named all
her guests arrived; the abbe and the chevalier were ushered in, and
the meal was served. Neither one nor the other would share it; the
abbe indeed sat down to table, but the chevalier remained leaning on
the foot of the bed. The abbe appeared anxious, and only roused
himself with a start from his absorption; then he seemed to drive
away some dominant idea, but soon the idea, stronger than his will,
plunged him again into a reverie, a state which struck everyone the
more particularly because it was far from his usual temper. As to
the chevalier, his eyes were fixed constantly upon his sister-in-law,
but in this there was not, as in his brother's behaviour, anything
surprising, since the marquise had never looked so beautiful.
The meal over, the company took leave. The abbe escorted the ladies
downstairs; the chevalier remained with the marquise; but hardly had
the abbe left the room when Madame de Ganges saw the chevalier turn
pale and drop in a sitting position--he had been standing on the foot
of the bed. The marquise, uneasy, asked what was the matter; but
before he could reply, her attention was called to another quarter.
The abbe, as pale and as disturbed as the chevalier, came back into
the room, carrying in his hands a glass and a pistol, and double-
locked the door behind him. Terrified at this spectacle, the
marquise half raised herself in her bed, gazing voiceless and
wordless. Then the abbe approached her, his lips trembling; his hair
bristling and his eyes blazing, and, presenting to her the glass and
the pistol, "Madame," said he, after a moment of terrible silence,
"choose, whether poison, fire, or"--he made a sign to the chevalier,
who drew his sword--" or steel."
The marquise had one moment's hope: at the motion which she saw the
chevalier make she thought he was coming to her assistance; but being
soon undeceived, and finding herself between two men, both
threatening her, she slipped from her bed and fell on her knees.
"What have I done," she cried, "oh, my God? that you should thus
decree my death, and after having made yourselves judges should make
yourselves executioners? I am guilty of no fault towards you except
of having been too faithful in my duty to my husband, who is your
brother."
Then seeing that it was vain to continue imploring the abbe, whose
looks and gestures spoke a mind made up, she turned towards the
chevalier.
"And you too, brother," said she, "oh, God, God! you, too! Oh, have
pity on me, in the name of Heaven!"
But he, stamping his foot and pressing the point of his sword to her
bosom, answered--
"Enough, madam, enough; take your choice without delay; for if you do
not take it, we will take it for you."
The marquise turned once again to the abbe, and her forehead struck
the muzzle of the pistol. Then she saw that she must die indeed, and
choosing of the three forms of death that which seemed to her the
least terrible, "Give me the poison, then," said she, "and may God
forgive you my death!"
With these words she took the glass, but the thick black liquid of
which it was full aroused such repulsion that she would have
attempted a last appeal; but a horrible imprecation from the abbe and
a threatening movement from his brother took from her the very last
gleam of hope. She put the glass to her lips, and murmuring once
more, "God! Saviour! have pity on me!" she swallowed the contents.
As she did so a few drops of the liquid fell upon her breast, and
instantly burned her skin like live coals; indeed, this infernal
draught was composed of arsenic and sublimate infused in aqua-fortis;
then, thinking that no more would be required of her, she dropped the
glass.
The marquise was mistaken: the abbe picked it up, and observing that
all the sediment had remained at the bottom, he gathered together on
a silver bodkin all that had coagulated on the sides of the glass and
all that had sunk to the bottom, and presenting this ball, which was
about the size of a nut, to the marquise, on the end of the bodkin,
he said, "Come, madame, you must swallow the holy-water sprinkler."
The marquise opened her lips, with resignation; but instead of doing
as the abbe commanded, she kept this remainder of the poison in her
mouth, threw herself on the bed with a scream, and clasping the
pillows, in her pain, she put out the poison between the sheets,
unperceived by her assassins; and then turning back to them, folded
her hands in entreaty and said, "In the name of God, since you have
killed my body, at least do not destroy my soul, but send me a
confessor."
Cruel though the abbe and the chevalier were, they were no doubt
beginning to weary of such a scene; moreover, the mortal deed was
accomplished--after what she had drunk, the marquise could live but a
few minutes; at her petition they went out, locking the door behind
them. But no sooner did the marquise find herself alone than the
possibility of flight presented itself to her. She ran to the
window: this was but twenty-two feet above the ground, but the earth
below was covered with stones and rubbish. The marquise, being only
in her nightdress, hastened to slip on a silk petticoat; but at the
moment when she finished tying it round her waist she heard a step
approaching her room, and believing that her murderers were returning
to make an end of her, she flew like a madwoman to the window. At
the moment of her setting foot on the window ledge, the door opened:
the marquise, ceasing to consider anything, flung herself down, head
first.
Fortunately, the new-comer, who was the castle chaplain, had time to
reach out and seize her skirt. The skirt, not strong enough to bear
the weight of the marquise, tore; but its resistance, slight though it
was, sufficed nevertheless to change the direction of her body: the
marquise, whose head would have been shattered on the stones, fell on
her feet instead, and beyond their being bruised by the stones,
received no injury. Half stunned though she was by her fall, the
marquise saw something coming after her, and sprang aside. It was an
enormous pitcher of water, beneath which the priest, when he saw her
escaping him, had tried to crush her; but either because he had ill
carried out his attempt or because the marquise had really had time
to move away, the vessel was shattered at her feet without touching
her, and the priest, seeing that he had missed his aim, ran to warn
the abbe and the chevalier that the victim was escaping.
As for the marquise, she had hardly touched the ground, when with
admirable presence of mind she pushed the end of one of her long
plaits so far down her throat as to provoke a fit of vomiting; this
was the more easily done that she had eaten heartily of the
collation, and happily the presence of the food had prevented the
poison from attacking the coats of the stomach so violently as would
otherwise have been the case. Scarcely had she vomited when a tame
boar swallowed what she had rejected, and falling into a convulsion,
died immediately.
As we have said, the room looked upon an enclosed courtyard; and the
marquise at first thought that in leaping from her room into this
court she had only changed her prison; but soon perceiving a light
that flickered from an upper window of ore of the stables, she ran
thither, and found a groom who was just going to bed.
"In the name of Heaven, my good man," said she to him, "save me!
I am poisoned! They want to kill me! Do not desert me, I entreat
you! Have pity on me, open this stable for me; let me get away! Let
me escape!"
The groom did not understand much of what the marquise said to him;
but seeing a woman with disordered hair, half naked, asking help of
him, he took her by the arm, led her through the stables, opened a
door for her, and the marquise found herself in the street. Two
women were passing; the groom put her into their hands, without being
able to explain to them what he did not know himself. As for the
marquise, she seemed able to say nothing beyond these words: "Save
me! I am poisoned! In the name of Heaven, save me!"
All at once she escaped from their hands and began to run like a mad
woman; she had seen, twenty steps away, on the threshold of the door
by which she had come, her two murderers in pursuit of her.
Then they rushed after her; she shrieking that she was poisoned, they
shrieking that she was mad; and all this happening amid a crowd
which, not knowing what part to take, divided and made way for the
victim and the murderers. Terror gave the marquise superhuman
strength: the woman who was accustomed to walk in silken shoes upon
velvet carpets, ran with bare and bleeding feet over stocks and
stones, vainly asking help, which none gave her; for, indeed, seeing
her thus, in mad flight, in a nightdress, with flying hair, her only
garment a tattered silk petticoat, it was difficult not to--think
that this woman was, as her brothers-in-law said, mad.
At last the chevalier came up with her, stopped her, dragged her, in
spite of her screams, into the nearest house, and closed the door
behind them, while the abbe, standing at the threshold with a pistol
in his hand, threatened to blow out the brains of any person who
should approach.
The house into which the chevalier and the marquise had gone belonged
to one M. Desprats, who at the moment was from home, and whose wife
was entertaining several of her friends. The marquise and the
chevalier, still struggling together, entered the room where the
company was assembled: as among the ladies present were several who
also visited the marquise, they immediately arose, in the greatest
amazement, to give her the assistance that she implored; but the
chevalier hastily pushed them aside, repeating that the marquise was
mad. To this reiterated accusation--to which, indeed, appearances
lent only too great a probability--the marquise replied by showing
her burnt neck and her blackened lips, and wringing her hands in
pain, cried out that she was poisoned, that she was going to die, and
begged urgently for milk, or at least for water. Then the wife of a
Protestant minister, whose name was Madame Brunel, slipped into her
hand a box of orvietan, some pieces of which she hastened to swallow,
while another lady gave her a glass of water; but at the instant when
she was lifting it to her mouth, the chevalier broke it between her
teeth, and one of the pieces of glass cut her lips. At this, all the
women would have flung themselves upon the chevalier; but the
marquise, fearing that he would only become more enraged, and hoping
to disarm him, asked, on the contrary, that she might be left alone
with him: all the company, yielding to her desire, passed into the
next room; this was what the chevalier, on his part, too, asked.
Scarcely were they alone, when the marquise, joining her hands, knelt
to him and said in the gentlest and most appealing voice that it was
possible to use, "Chevalier, my dear brother, will you not have pity
upon me, who have always had so much affection for you, and who, even
now, would give my blood for your service? You know that the things
I am saying are not merely empty words; and yet how is it you are
treating me, though I have not deserved it? And what will everyone
say to such dealings? Ah, brother, what a great unhappiness is mine,
to have been so cruelly treated by you! And yet--yes, brother--if
you will deign to have pity on me and to save my life, I swear, by my
hope of heaven, to keep no remembrance of what has happened; and to
consider you always as my protector and my friend."
All at once the marquise rose with a great cry and clasped her hand
to her right side. While she was speaking, and before she perceived
what he was doing, the chevalier had drawn his sword, which was very
short, and using it as a dagger, had struck her in the breast; this
first blow was followed by a second, which came in contact with the
shoulder blade, and so was prevented from going farther. At these
two blows the marquise rushed towards the door, of the room into
which the ladies had retired, crying, "Help! He is killing me!"
But during the time that she took to cross the room the chevalier
stabbed her five times in the back with his sword, and would no doubt
have done more, if at the last blow his sword had not broken; indeed,
he had struck with such force that the fragment remained embedded in
her shoulder, and the marquise fell forward on the floor, in a pool
of her blood, which was flowing all round her and spreading through
the room.
The chevalier thought he had killed her, and hearing the women
running to her assistance, he rushed from the room. The abbe was
still at the door, pistol in hand; the chevalier took him by the arm
to drag him away, and as the abbe hesitated to follow, he said:--
"Let us go, abbe; the business is done."
The chevalier and the abbe had taken a few steps in the street when a
window opened and the women who had found the marquise expiring
called out for help: at these cries the abbe stopped short, and
holding back the chevalier by the arm, demanded
"What was it you said, chevalier? If they are calling help, is she
not dead, after all?"
"'Ma foi', go and see for yourself," returned the chevalier. "I have
done enough for my share; it is your turn now."
"'Pardieu', that is quite my opinion," cried the abbe; and rushing
back to the house, he flung himself into the room at the moment when
the women, lifting the marquise with great difficulty, for she was so
weak that she could no longer help herself, were attempting to carry
her to bed. The abbe pushed them away, and arriving at the marquise,
put his pistol to her heart; but Madame Brunel, the same who had
previously given the marquise a box of orvietan, lifted up the barrel
with her hand, so that the shot went off into the air, and the bullet
instead of striking the marquise lodged in the cornice of the
ceiling. The abbe then took the pistol by the barrel and gave Madame
Brunet so violent a blow upon the head with the butt that she
staggered and almost fell; he was about to strike her again, but all
the women uniting against him, pushed him, with thousands of
maledictions, out of the room, and locked the door behind him. The
two assassins, taking advantage of the darkness, fled from Ganges,
and reached Aubenas, which is a full league away, about ten in the
evening.
Meanwhile the women were doing all they could for the marquise.
Their first intention, as we have already said, was to put her to
bed, but the broken sword blade made her unable to lie down, and they
tried in vain to pull it out, so deeply had it entered the bone.
Then the marquise herself showed Madame Brunei what method to take:
the operating lady was to sit on the bed, and while the others helped
to hold up the marquise, was to seize the blade with both hands, and
pressing her--knees against the patient's back, to pull violently and
with a great jerk. This plan at last succeeded, and the marquise was
able to get to bed; it was nine in the evening, and this horrible
tragedy had been going on for nearly three hours.
The magistrates of Ganges, being informed of what had happened, and
beginning to believe that it was really a case of murder, came in
person, with a guard, to the marquise. As soon as she saw them come
in she recovered strength, and raising herself in bed, so great was
her fear, clasped her hands and besought their protection; for she
always expected to see one or the other of her murderers return. The
magistrates told her to reassure herself, set armed men to guard all
the approaches to the house, and while physicians and surgeons were,
summoned in hot haste from Montpellier, they on their part sent word
to the Baron de Trissan, provost of Languedoc, of the crime that had
just been committed, and gave him the names and the description of
the murderers. That official at once sent people after them, but it
was already too late: he learned that the abbe and the chevalier had
slept at Aubenas on the night of the murder, that there they had
reproached each other for their unskilfulness, and had come near
cutting each other's throats, that finally they had departed before
daylight, and had taken a boat, near Agde, from a beach called the
"Gras de Palaval."
The Marquis de Ganges was at Avignon, where he was prosecuting a
servant of his who had robbed him of two hundred crowns; when he
heard news of the event. He turned horribly pale as he listened to
the messenger's story, then falling into a violent fury against his
brothers, he swore that they should have no executioners other than
himself. Nevertheless, though he was so uneasy about the marquise's
condition, he waited until the next day in the afternoon before
setting forth, and during the interval he saw some of his friends at
Avignon without saying anything to them of the matter. He did not
reach Ganges until four days after the murder, then he went to the
house of M. Desprats and asked to see his wife, whom some kind
priests had already prepared for the meeting; and the marquise, as
soon as she heard of his arrival, consented to receive him. The
marquis immediately entered the room, with his eyes full of tears,
tearing his hair, and giving every token of the deepest despair.
The marquise receivers her husband like a forgiving wife and a dying
Christian. She scarcely even uttered some slight reproaches about
the manner in which he had deserted her; moreover, the marquis having
complained to a monk of these reproaches, and the monk having
reported his complaints to the marquise, she called her husband to
her bedside, at a moment when she was surrounded by people, and made
him a public apology, begging him to attribute the words that seemed
to have wounded him to the effect of her sufferings, and not to any
failure in her regard for him. The marquis, left alone with his
wife, tried to take advantage of this reconciliation to induce her to
annul the declaration that she had made before the magistrates of
Avignon; for the vice-legate and his officers, faithful to the
promises made to the marquise, had refused to register the fresh
donation which she had made at Ganges, according to the suggestions
of the abbe, and which the latter had sent off, the very moment it
was signed, to his brother. But on this point the marquise was
immovably resolute, declaring that this fortune was reserved for her
children and therefore sacred to her, and that she could make no
alteration in what had been done at Avignon, since it represented her
genuine and final wishes. Notwithstanding this declaration, the
marquis did not cease to--remain beside his wife and to bestow upon
her every care possible to a devoted and attentive husband.
Two days later than the Marquis de Ganges arrived Madame de Rossan
great was her amazement, after all the rumours that were already in
circulation about the marquis, at finding her daughter in the hands
of him whom she regarded as one of her murderers. But the marquise,
far from sharing that opinion, did all she could, not only to make
her mother feel differently, but even to induce her to embrace the
marquis as a son. This blindness on the part of the marquise caused
Madame de Rossan so much grief that notwithstanding her profound
affection for her daughter she would only stay two days, and in spite
of the entreaties that the dying woman made to her, she returned
home, not allowing anything to stop her. This departure was a great
grief to the marquise, and was the reason why she begged with renewed
entreaties to be taken to Montpellier. The very sight of the place
where she had been so cruelly tortured continually brought before
her, not only the remembrance of the murder, but the image of the
murderers, who in her brief moments of sleep so haunted her that she
sometimes awoke suddenly, uttering shrieks and calling for help.
Unfortunately, the physician considered her too weak to bear removal,
and declared that no change of place could be made without extreme
danger.
Then, when she heard this verdict, which had to be repeated to her,
and which her bright and lively complexion and brilliant eyes seemed
to contradict, the marquise turned all her thoughts towards holy
things, and thought only of dying like a saint after having already
suffered like a martyr. She consequently asked to receive the last
sacrament, and while it was being sent for, she repeated her
apologies to her husband and her forgiveness of his brothers, and
this with a gentleness that, joined to her beauty, made her whole
personality appear angelic. When, however, the priest bearing the
viaticum entered, this expression suddenly changed, and her face
presented every token of the greatest terror. She had just
recognised in the priest who was bringing her the last consolations
of Heaven the infamous Perette, whom she could not but regard as an
accomplice of the abbe and the chevalier, since, after having tried
to hold her back, he had attempted to crush her beneath the pitcher
of water which he had thrown at her from the window, and since, when
he saw her escaping, he had run to warn her assassins and to set them
on her track. She recovered herself quickly, however, and seeing
that the priest, without any sign of remorse, was drawing near to her
bedside, she would not cause so great a scandal as would have been
caused by denouncing him at such a moment. Nevertheless, bending
towards him, she said, "Father, I hope that, remembering what has
passed, and in order to dispel fears that--I may justifiably
entertain, you will make no difficulty of partaking with me of the
consecrated wafer; for I have sometimes heard it said that the body
of our Lord Jesus Christ, while remaining a token of salvation, has
been known to be made a principle of death."
The priest inclined his head as a sign of assent.
So the marquise communicated thus, taking a sacrament that she shared
with one of her murderers, as an evidence that she forgave this one
like the others and that she prayed God to forgive them as she
herself did.
The following days passed without any apparent increase in her
illness, the fever by which she was consumed rather enhancing her
beauties, and imparting to her voice and gestures a vivacity which
they had never had before. Thus everybody had begun to recover hope,
except herself, who, feeling better than anyone else what was her
true condition, never for a moment allowed herself any illusion, and
keeping her son, who was seven years old, constantly beside her bed,
bade him again and again look well at her, so that, young as he was,
he might remember her all his life and never forget her in his
prayers. The poor child would burst into tears and promise not only
to remember her but also to avenge her when he was a man. At these
words the marquise gently reproved him, telling him that all
vengeance belonged to the king and to God, and that all cares of the
kind must be left to those two great rulers of heaven and of earth.
On the 3rd of June, M. Catalan, a councillor, appointed as a
commissioner by the Parliament of Toulouse, arrived at Ganges,
together with all the officials required by his commission; but he
could not see the marquise that night, for she had dozed for some
hours, and this sleep had left a sort of torpor upon her mind, which
might have impaired the lucidity of her depositions. The next
morning, without asking anybody's opinion, M. Catalan repaired to the
house of M. Desprats, and in spite of some slight resistance on the
part of those who were in charge of her, made his way to the presence
of the marquise. The dying woman received him with an admirable
presence of mind, that made M. Catalan think there had been an
intention the night before to prevent any meeting between him and the
person whom he was sent to interrogate. At first the marquise would
relate nothing that had passed, saying that she could not at the same
time accuse and forgive; but M. Catalan brought her to see that
justice required truth from her before all things, since, in default
of exact information, the law might go astray, and strike the
innocent instead of the guilty. This last argument decided the
marquise, and during the hour and a half that he spent alone with her
she told him all the details of this horrible occurrence. On the
morrow M. Catalan was to see her again; but on the morrow the
marquise was, in truth, much worse. He assured himself of this by
his own eyes, and as he knew almost all that he wished to know, did
not insist further, for fear of fatiguing her.
Indeed, from that day forward, such atrocious sufferings laid hold
upon the marquise, that notwithstanding the firmness which she had
always shown, and which she tried to maintain to the end, she could
not prevent herself from uttering screams mingled with prayers. In
this manner she spent the whole day of the 4th and part of the 5th.
At last, on that day, which was a Sunday, towards four o'clock in the
afternoon, she expired.
The body was immediately opened, and the physicians attested that the
marquise had died solely from the power of the poison, none of the
seven sword cuts which she had received being, mortal. They found
the stomach and bowels burned and the brain blackened. However, in
spite of that infernal draught, which, says the official report,
"would have killed a lioness in a few hours," the marquise struggled
for nineteen days, so much, adds an account from which we have
borrowed some of these details, so much did nature lovingly defend
the beautiful body that she had taken so much trouble to make.
M. Catalan, the very moment he was informed of the marquise's death,
having with him twelve guards belonging to the governor, ten archers,
and a poqueton,--despatched them to the marquis's castle with orders
to seize his person, that of the priest, and those of all the
servants except the groom who had assisted the marquise in her
flight. The officer in command of this little squad found the
marquis walking up and down, melancholy and greatly disturbed, in the
large hall of the castle, and when he signified to him the order of
which he was the bearer, the marquis, without making any resistance,
and as though prepared for what was happening to him, replied that he
was ready to obey, and that moreover he had always intended to go
before the Parliament to accuse the murderers of his wife. He was
asked for the key of his cabinet, which he gave up, and the order was
given to conduct him, with the other persons accused, to the prisons
of Montpellier. As soon as the marquis came into that town, the
report of his arrival spread with incredible rapidity from street to
street. Then, as it was dark, lights came to all the windows, and
people corning out with torches formed a torchlight procession, by
means of which everybody could see him. He, like the priest, was
mounted on a sorry hired horse, and entirely surrounded by archers,
to whom, no doubt, he owed his life on this occasion; for the
indignation against him was so great that everyone was egging on his
neighbours to tear him limb from limb, which would certainly have
come to pass had he not been so carefully defended and guarded.
Immediately upon receiving news of her daughter's death, Madame de
Rossan took possession of all her property, and, making herself a
party to the case, declared that she would never desist from her suit
until her daughter's death was avenged. M. Catalan began the
examination at once, and the first interrogation to which he
submitted the marquis lasted eleven hours. Then soon afterwards he
and the other persons accused were conveyed from the prisons of
Montpellier to those of Toulouse. A crushing memorial by Madame de
Rossan followed them, in which she demonstrated with absolute
clearness that the marquis had participated in the crime of his two
brothers, if not in act, in thought, desire, and intention.
The marquis's defence was very simple: it was his misfortune to have
had two villains for brothers, who had made attempts first upon the
honour and then upon the life of a wife whom he loved tenderly; they
had destroyed her by a most atrocious death, and to crown his evil
fortune, he, the innocent, was accused of having had a hand in that
death. And, indeed, the examinations in the trial did not succeed in
bringing any evidence against the marquis beyond moral presumptions,
which, it appears, were insufficient to induce his judges to award a
sentence of death.
A verdict was consequently given, upon the 21st of August, 1667,
which sentenced the abbe and the chevalier de Ganges to be broken
alive on the wheel, the Marquis de Ganges to perpetual banishment
from the kingdom, his property to be confiscated to the king, and
himself to lose his nobility and to become incapable of succeeding to
the property of his children. As for the priest Perette, he was
sentenced to the galleys for life, after having previously been
degraded from his clerical orders by the ecclesiastical authorities.
This sentence made as great a stir as the murder had done, and gave
rise, in that period when "extenuating circumstances" had not been
invented, to long and angry discussions. Indeed, the marquis either
was guilty of complicity or was not: if he was not, the punishment
was too cruel; if he was, the sentence was too light. Such was the
opinion of Louis XIV., who remembered the beauty of the Marquis de
Ganges; for, some time afterwards, when he was believed to have
forgotten this unhappy affair, and when he was asked to pardon the
Marquis de la Douze, who was accused of having poisoned his wife, the
king answered, "There is no need for a pardon, since he belongs to
the Parliament of Toulouse, and the Marquis de Ganges did very well
without one."
It may easily be supposed that this melancholy event did not pass
without inciting the wits of the day to write a vast number of verses
and bouts-rimes about the catastrophe by which one of the most
beautiful women of the country was carried off. Readers who have a
taste for that sort of literature are referred to the journals and
memoirs of the times.
Now, as our readers, if they have taken any interest at all in the
terrible tale just narrated, will certainly ask what became of the
murderers, we will proceed to follow their course until the moment
when they disappeared, some into the night of death, some into the
darkness of oblivion.
The priest Perette was the first to pay his debt to Heaven: he died
at the oar on the way from Toulouse to Brest.
The chevalier withdrew to Venice, took service in the army of the
Most Serene Republic, then at war with Turkey, and was sent to
Candia, which the Mussulmans had been besieging for twenty years; he
had scarcely arrived there when, as he was walking on the ramparts of
the town with two other officers, a shell burst at their feet, and a
fragment of it killed the chevalier without so much as touching his
companions, so that the event was regarded as a direct act of
Providence.
As for the abbe, his story is longer and stranger. He parted from
the chevalier in the neighbourhood of Genoa, and crossing the whole
of Piedmont, part of Switzerland, and a corner of Germany, entered
Holland under the name of Lamartelliere. After many hesitations as
to the place where he would settle, he finally retired to Viane, of
which the Count of Lippe was at that time sovereign; there he made
the acquaintance of a gentleman who presented him to the count as a
French religious refugee.
The count, even in this first conversation, found that the foreigner
who had come to seek safety in his dominions possessed not only great
intelligence but a very solid sort of intelligence, and seeing that
the Frenchman was conversant with letters and with learning, proposed
that he should undertake the education of his son, who at that time
was nine years old. Such a proposal was a stroke of fortune for the
abbe de Ganges, and he did not dream of refusing it.
The abbe de Ganges was one of those men who have great mastery over
themselves: from the moment when he saw that his interest, nay, the
very safety of his life required it, he concealed with extreme care
whatever bad passions existed within him, and only allowed his good
qualities to appear. He was a tutor who supervised the heart as
sharply as the mind, and succeeded in making of his pupil a prince so
accomplished in both respects, that the Count of Lippe, making use of
such wisdom and such knowledge, began to consult the tutor upon all
matters of State, so that in course of time the so-called
Lamartelliere, without holding any public office, had become the soul
of the little principality.
The countess had a young relation living with her, who though without
fortune was of a great family, and for whom the countess had a deep
affection; it did not escape her notice that her son's tutor had
inspired this poor young girl with warmer feelings than became her
high station, and that the false Lamartelliere, emboldened by his own
growing credit, had done all he could to arouse and keep up these
feelings. The countess sent for her cousin, and having drawn from
her a confession of her love, said that she herself had indeed a
great regard for her son's governor, whom she and her husband
intended to reward with pensions and with posts for the services he
had rendered to their family and to the State, but that it was too
lofty an ambition for a man whose name was Lamartelliere, and who had
no relations nor family that could be owned, to aspire to the hand of
a girl who was related to a royal house; and that though she did not
require that the man who married her cousin should be a Bourbon, a
Montmorency, or a Rohan, she did at least desire that he should be
somebody, though it were but a gentleman of Gascony or Poitou.
The Countess of Lippe's young kinswoman went and repeated this
answer, word for word, to her lover, expecting him to be overwhelmed
by it; but, on the contrary, he replied that if his birth was the
only obstacle that opposed their union, there might be means to
remove it. In fact, the abbe, having spent eight years at the
prince's court, amid the strongest testimonies of confidence and
esteem, thought himself sure enough of the prince's goodwill to
venture upon the avowal of his real name.
He therefore asked an audience of the countess, who immediately
granted it. Bowing to her respectfully, he said, "Madame, I had
flattered myself that your Highness honoured me with your esteem, and
yet you now oppose my happiness: your Highness's relative is willing
to accept me as a husband, and the prince your son authorises my
wishes and pardons my boldness; what have I done to you, madame, that
you alone should be against me? and with what can you reproach me
during the eight years that I have had the honour of serving your
Highness?"
"I have nothing to reproach you with, monsieur," replied the
countess: "but I do not wish to incur reproach on my own part by
permitting such a marriage: I thought you too sensible and reasonable
a man to need reminding that, while you confined yourself to suitable
requests and moderate ambitions, you had reason to be pleased with
our gratitude. Do you ask that your salary shall be doubled? The
thing is easy. Do you desire important posts? They shall be given
you; but do not, sir, so far forget yourself as to aspire to an
alliance that you cannot flatter yourself with a hope of ever
attaining."
"But, madame," returned the petitioner, "who told you that my birth
was so obscure as to debar me from all hope of obtaining your
consent?"
"Why, you yourself, monsieur, I think," answered the countess in
astonishment; "or if you did not say so, your name said so for you."
"And if that name is not mine, madame?" said the abbe, growing
bolder; "if unfortunate, terrible, fatal circumstances have compelled
me to take that name in order to hide another that was too unhappily
famous, would your Highness then be so unjust as not to change your
mind?"
"Monsieur," replied the countess, "you have said too much now not to
go on to the end. Who are you? Tell me. And if, as you give me to
understand, you are of good birth, I swear to you that want of
fortune shall not stand in the way."
"Alas, madame," cried the abbe, throwing himself at her feet, "my
name, I am sure, is but too familiar to your Highness, and I would
willingly at this moment give half my blood that you had never heard
it uttered; but you have said it, madame, have gone too far to
recede. Well, then, I am that unhappy abbe de Ganges whose crimes
are known and of whom I have more than once heard you speak."
"The abbe de Ganges!" cried the countess in horror,--"the abbe de
Ganges! You are that execrable abbe de Ganges whose very name makes
one shudder? And to you, to a man thus infamous, we have entrusted
the education of our only son? Oh, I hope, for all our sakes,
monsieur, that you are speaking falsely; for if you were speaking the
truth I think I should have you arrested this very instant and taken
back to France to undergo your punishment. The best thing you can
do, if what you have said to me is true, is instantly to leave not
only the castle, but the town and the principality; it will be
torment enough for the rest of my life whenever I think that I have
spent seven years under the same roof with you."
The abbe would have replied; but the countess raised her voice so
much, that the young prince, who had been won over to his tutor's
interests and who was listening at his mother's door, judged that his
protege's business was taking an unfavourable turn; and went in to
try and put things right. He found his mother so much alarmed that
she drew him to her by an instinctive movement, as though to put
herself under his protection, and beg and pray as he might; he could
only obtain permission for his tutor to go away undisturbed to any
country of the world that he might prefer, but with an express
prohibition of ever again entering the presence of the Count or the
Countess of Lippe.
The abbe de Ganges withdrew to Amsterdam, where he became a teacher
of languages, and where his lady-love soon after came to him and
married him: his pupil, whom his parents could not induce, even when
they told him the real name of the false Lamartelliere, to share
their horror of him, gave him assistance as long as he needed it; and
this state of things continued until upon his wife attaining her
majority he entered into possession of some property that belonged to
her. His regular conduct and his learning, which had been rendered
more solid by long and serious study, caused him to be admitted into
the Protestant consistory; there, after an exemplary life, he died,
and none but God ever knew whether it was one of hypocrisy or of
penitence.
As for the Marquis de Ganges, who had been sentenced, as we have
seen, to banishment and the confiscation of his property, he was
conducted to the frontier of Savoy and there set at liberty. After
having spent two or three years abroad, so that the terrible
catastrophe in which he had been concerned should have time to be
hushed up, he came back to France, and as nobody--Madame de Rossan
being now dead--was interested in prosecuting him, he returned to his
castle at Ganges, and remained there, pretty well hidden. M. de
Baville, indeed, the Lieutenant of Languedoc, learned that the
marquis had broken from his exile; but he was told, at the same time,
that the marquis, as a zealous Catholic, was forcing his vassals to
attend mass, whatever their religion might be: this was the period in
which persons of the Reformed Church were being persecuted, and the
zeal of the marquis appeared to M. de Baville to compensate and more
than compensate for the peccadillo of which he had been accused;
consequently, instead of prosecuting him, he entered into secret
communication with him, reassuring him about his stay in France, and
urging on his religious zeal; and in this manner twelve years passed
by.
During this time the marquise's young son, whom we saw at his
mother's deathbed, had reached the age of twenty, and being rich in
his father's possessions--which his uncle had restored to him--and
also by his mother's inheritance, which he had shared with his
sister, had married a girl of good family, named Mademoiselle de
Moissac, who was both rich and beautiful. Being called to serve in
the royal army, the count brought his young wife to the castle of
Ganges, and, having fervently commended her to his father, left her
in his charge.
The Marquis de Ganges was forty-two veers old, and scarcely seemed
thirty; he was one of the handsomest men living; he fell in love with
his daughter-in-law and hoped to win her love, and in order to
promote this design, his first care was to separate from her, under
the excuse of religion, a maid who had been with her from childhood
and to whom she was greatly attached.
This measure, the cause of which the young marquise did not know,
distressed her extremely. It was much against her will that she had
come to live at all in this old castle of Ganges, which had so
recently been the scene of the terrible story that we have just told.
She inhabited the suite of rooms in which the murder had been
committed; her bedchamber was the same which had belonged to the late
marquise; her bed was the same; the window by which she had fled was
before her eyes; and everything, down to the smallest article of
furniture, recalled to her the details of that savage tragedy. But
even worse was her case when she found it no longer possible to doubt
her father-in-law's intentions; when she saw herself beloved by one
whose very name had again and again made her childhood turn pale with
terror, and when she was left alone at all hours of the day in the
sole company of the man whom public rumour still pursued as a
murderer. Perhaps in any other place the poor lonely girl might have
found some strength in trusting herself to God; but there, where God
had suffered one of the fairest and purest creatures that ever
existed to perish by so cruel a death, she dared not appeal to Him,
for He seemed to have turned away from this family.
She waited, therefore, in growing terror; spending her days, as much
as she could, with the women of rank who lived in the little town of
Ganges, and some of whom, eye-witnesses of her mother-in-law's
murder, increased her terrors by the accounts which they gave of it,
and which she, with the despairing obstinacy of fear, asked to hear
again and again. As to her nights, she spent the greater part of
them on her knees, and fully dressed, trembling at the smallest
sound; only breathing freely as daylight came back, and then
venturing to seek her bed for a few hours' rest.
At last the marquis's attempts became so direct and so pressing, that
the poor young woman resolved to escape at all costs from his hands.
Her first idea was to write to her father, explain to him her
position and ask help; but her father had not long been a Catholic,
and had suffered much on behalf of the Reformed religion, and on
these accounts it was clear that her letter would be opened by the
marquis on pretext of religion, and thus that step, instead of
saving, might destroy her. She had thus but one resource: her
husband had always been a Catholic; her husband was a captain of
dragoons, faithful in the service of the king and faithful in the
service of God; there could be no excuse for opening a letter to him;
she resolved to address herself to him, explained the position in
which she found herself, got the address written by another hand, and
sent the letter to Montpellier, where it was posted.
The young marquis was at Metz when he received his wife's missive.
At that instant all his childish memories awoke; he beheld himself at
his dying mother's bedside, vowing never to forget her and to pray
daily for her. The image presented itself of this wife whom he
adored, in the same room, exposed to the same violence, destined
perhaps to the same fate; all this was enough to lead him to take
positive action: he flung himself into a post-chaise, reached
Versailles, begged an audience of the king, cast himself, with his
wife's letter in his hand, at the feet of Louis XIV, and besought him
to compel his father to return into exile, where he swore upon has
honour that he would send him everything he could need in order to
live properly.
The king was not aware that the Marquis do Ganges had disobeyed the
sentence of banishment, and the manner in which he learned it was not
such as to make him pardon the contradiction of his laws. In
consequence he immediately ordered that if the Marquis de Ganges were
found in France he should be proceeded against with the utmost
rigour.
Happily for the marquis, the Comte de Ganges, the only one of his
brothers who had remained in France, and indeed in favour, learned
the king's decision in time. He took post from Versailles, and
making the greatest haste, went to warn him of the danger that was
threatening; both together immediately left Ganges, and withdrew to
Avignon. The district of Venaissin, still belonging at that time to
the pope and being governed by a vice-legate, was considered as
foreign territory. There he found his daughter, Madame d'Urban, who
did all she could to induce him to stay with her; but to do so would
have been to flout Louis XIV's orders too publicly, and the marquis
was afraid to remain so much in evidence lest evil should befall him;
he accordingly retired to the little village of l'Isle, built in a
charming spot near the fountain of Vaucluse; there he was lost sight
of; none ever heard him spoken of again, and when I myself travelled
in the south of France in 1835, I sought in vain any trace of the
obscure and forgotten death which closed so turbulent and stormy an
existence.
As, in speaking of the last adventures of the Marquis de Ganges, we
have mentioned the name of Madame d'Urban, his daughter, we cannot
exempt ourselves from following her amid the strange events of her
life, scandalous though they may be; such, indeed, was the fate of
this family, that it was to occupy the attention of France through
well-nigh a century, either by its crimes or by its freaks.
On the death of the marquise, her daughter, who was barely six years
old, had remained in the charge of the dowager Marquise de Ganges,
who, when she had attained her twelfth year, presented to her as her
husband the Marquis de Perrant, formerly a lover of the grandmother
herself. The marquis was seventy years of age, having been born in
the reign of Henry IV; he had seen the court of Louis XIII and that
of Louis XIV's youth, and he had remained one of its most elegant and
favoured nobles; he had the manners of those two periods, the
politest that the world has known, so that the young girl, not
knowing as yet the meaning of marriage and having seen no other man,
yielded without repugnance, and thought herself happy in becoming the
Marquise de Perrant.
The marquis, who was very rich, had quarrelled With his younger
brother, and regarded him with such hatred that he was marrying only
to deprive his brother of the inheritance that would rightfully
accrue to him, should the elder die childless. Unfortunately, the
marquis soon perceived that the step which he had taken, however
efficacious in the case of another man, was likely to be fruitless in
his own. He did not, however, despair, and waited two or three
years, hoping every day that Heaven would work a miracle in his
favour; but as every day diminished the chances of this miracle, and
his hatred for his brother grew with the impossibility of taking
revenge upon him, he adopted a strange and altogether antique scheme,
and determined, like the ancient Spartans, to obtain by the help of
another what Heaven refused to himself.
The marquis did not need to seek long for the man who should give him
his revenge: he had in his house a young page, some seventeen or
eighteen years old, the son of a friend of his, who, dying without
fortune, had on his deathbed particularly commended the lad to the
marquis. This young man, a year older than his mistress, could not
be continually about her without falling passionately in love with
her; and however much he might endeavour to hide his love, the poor
youth was as yet too little practised in dissimulation to succeed iii
concealing it from the eyes of the marquis, who, after having at
first observed its growth with uneasiness, began on the contrary to
rejoice in it, from the moment when he had decided upon the scheme
that we have just mentioned.
The marquis was slow to decide but prompt to execute. Having taken
his resolution, he summoned his page, and, after having made him
promise inviolable secrecy, and having undertaken, on that condition,
to prove his gratitude by buying him a regiment, explained what was
expected of him. The poor youth, to whom nothing could have been
more unexpected than such a communication, took it at first for a
trick by which the marquis meant to make him own his love, and was
ready to throw himself at his feet and declare everything; but the
marquis seeing his confusion, and easily guessing its cause,
reassured him completely by swearing that he authorised him to take
any steps in order to attain the end that the marquis had in view.
As in his inmost heart the aim of the young man was the same, the
bargain was soon struck: the page bound himself by the most terrible
oaths to keep the secret; and the marquis, in order to supply
whatever assistance was in his power, gave him money to spend,
believing that there was no woman, however virtuous, who could resist
the combination of youth, beauty, and fortune: unhappily for the
marquis, such a woman, whom he thought impossible, did exist, and was
his wife.
The page was so anxious to obey his master, that from that very day
his mistress remarked the alteration that arose from the permission
given him--his prompt obedience to her orders and his speed in
executing them, in order to return a few moments the sooner to her
presence. She was grateful to him, and in the simplicity of her
heart she thanked him. Two days later the page appeared before her
splendidly dressed; she observed and remarked upon his improved
appearance, and amused herself in conning over all the parts of his
dress, as she might have done with a new doll. All this familiarity
doubled the poor young man's passion, but he stood before his
mistress, nevertheless, abashed and trembling, like Cherubino before
his fair godmother. Every evening the marquis inquired into his
progress, and every evening the page confessed that he was no farther
advanced than the day before; then the marquis scolded, threatened to
take away his fine clothes, to withdraw his own promises, and finally
to address himself to some other person. At this last threat the
youth would again call up his courage, and promise to be bolder
to-morrow; and on the morrow would spend the day in making a thousand
compliments to his mistress's eyes, which she, in her innocence, did
not understand. At last, one day, Madame de Perrant asked him what
made him look at her thus, and he ventured to confess his love; but
then Madame de Perrant, changing her whole demeanour, assumed a face
of sternness and bade him go out of her room.
The poor lover obeyed, and ran, in despair, to confide his grief to
the husband, who appeared sincerely to share it, but consoled him by
saying that he had no doubt chosen his moment badly; that all women,
even the least severe, had inauspicious hours in which they would not
yield to attack, and that he must let a few days pass, which he must
employ in making his peace, and then must take advantage of a better
opportunity, and not allow himself to be rebuffed by a few refusals;
and to these words the marquis added a purse of gold, in order that
the page might, if necessary, win over the marquise's waiting-woman.
Guided thus by the older experience of the husband, the page began to
appear very much ashamed and very penitent; but for a day or two the
marquise, in spite of his apparent humility, kept him at a distance:
at last, reflecting no doubt, with the assistance of her mirror and
of her maid, that the crime was not absolutely unpardonable, and
after having reprimanded the culprit at some length, while he stood
listening with eyes cast down, she gave a him her hand, forgave him,
and admitted him to her companionship as before.
Things went on in this way for a week. The page no longer raised his
eyes and did not venture to open his mouth, and the marquise was
beginning to regret the time in which he used to look and to speak,
when, one fine day while she was at her toilet, at which she had
allowed him to be present, he seized a moment when the maid had left
her alone, to cast himself at her feet and tell her that he had
vainly tried to stifle his love, and that, even although he were to
die under the weight of her anger, he must tell her that this love
was immense, eternal, stronger than his life. The marquise upon this
wished to send him away, as on the former occasion, but instead of
obeying her, the page, better instructed, took her in his arms. The
marquise called, screamed, broke her bell-rope; the waiting-maid, who
had been bought over, according to the marquis's advice, had kept the
other women out of the way, and was careful not to come herself.
Then the marquise, resisting force by force, freed herself from the
page's arms, rushed to her husband's room, and there, bare-necked,
with floating hair, and looking lovelier than ever, flung herself
into his arms and begged his protection against the insolent fellow
who had just insulted her. But what was the amazement of the
marquise, when, instead of the anger which she expected to see break
forth, the marquis answered coldly that what she was saying was
incredible, that he had always found the young man very well behaved,
and that, no doubt, having taken up some frivolous ground of
resentment against him, she was employing this means to get rid of
him; but, he added, whatever might be his love for her, and his
desire to do everything that was agreeable to her, he begged her not
to require this of him, the young man being his friend's son, and
consequently his own adopted child. It was now the marquise who, in
her turn, retired abashed, not knowing what to make of such a reply,
and fully resolving, since her husband's protection failed her, to
keep herself well guarded by her own severity.
Indeed, from that moment the marquise behaved to the poor youth with
so much prudery, that, loving her as he did, sincerely, he would have
died of grief, if he had not had the marquis at hand to encourage and
strengthen him. Nevertheless, the latter himself began to despair,
and to be more troubled by the virtue of his wife than another man
might have been by the levity of his. Finally, he resolved, seeing
that matters remained at the same point and that the marquise did not
relax in the smallest degree, to take extreme measures. He hid his
page in a closet of his wife's bedchamber, and, rising during her
first sleep, left empty his own place beside her, went out softly,
double-locked the door, and listened attentively to hear what would
happen.
He had not been listening thus for ten minutes when he heard a great
noise in the room, and the page trying in vain to appease it. The
marquis hoped that he might succeed, but the noise increasing, showed
him that he was again to be disappointed; soon came cries for help,
for the marquise could not ring, the bell-ropes having been lifted
out of her reach, and no one answering her cries, he heard her spring
from her high bed, run to the door, and finding it locked rush to the
window, which she tried to open: the scene had come to its climax.
The marquis decided to go in, lest some tragedy should happen, or
lest his wife's screams should reach some belated passer-by, who next
day would make him the talk of the town. Scarcely did the marquise
behold him when she threw herself into his arms, and pointing to the
page, said:--
"Well, monsieur, will you still hesitate to free me from this
insolent wretch?"
"Yes, madame," replied the marquis; "for this insolent wretch has
been acting for the last three months not only with my sanction but
even by my orders."
The marquise remained stupefied. Then the marquis, without sending
away the page, gave his wife an explanation of all that had passed,
and besought her to yield to his desire of obtaining a successor,
whom he would regard as his own child, so long as it was hers; but
young though she was, the marquise answered with a dignity unusual at
her age, that his power over her had the limits that were set to it
by law, and not those that it might please him to set in their place,
and that however much she might wish to do what might be his
pleasure, she would yet never obey him at the expense of her soul and
her honour.
So positive an answer, while it filled her husband with despair,
proved to him that he must renounce the hope of obtaining an heir;
but since the page was not to blame for this, he fulfilled the
promise that he had made, bought him a regiment, and resigned himself
to having the most virtuous wife in France. His repentance was not,
however, of long duration; he died at the end of three months, after
having confided to his friend, the Marquis d'Urban, the cause of his
sorrows.
The Marquis d'Urban had a son of marriageable age; he thought that he
could find nothing more suitable for him than a wife whose virtue had
come triumphantly through such a trial: he let her time of mourning
pass, and then presented the young Marquis d'Urban, who succeeded in
making his attentions acceptable to the beautiful widow, and soon
became her husband. More fortunate than his predecessor, the Marquis
d'Urban had three heirs to oppose to his collaterals, when, some two
years and a half later, the Chevalier de Bouillon arrived at the
capital of the county of Venaissin.
The Chevalier de Bouillon was a typical rake of the period, handsome,
young, and well-grown; the nephew of a cardinal who was influential
at Rome, and proud of belonging to a house which had privileges of
suzerainty. The chevalier, in his indiscreet fatuity, spared no
woman; and his conduct had given some scandal in the circle of Madame
de Maintenon, who was rising into power. One of his friends, having
witnessed the displeasure exhibited towards him by Louis XIV, who was
beginning to become devout, thought to do him a service by warning
him that the king "gardait une dent" against him. [ Translator's
note.--"Garder une dent," that is, to keep up a grudge, means
literally "to keep a tooth" against him.]
"Pardieu!" replied the chevalier, "I am indeed unlucky when the only
tooth left to him remains to bite me."
This pun had been repeated, and had reached Louis XIV, so that the
chevalier presently heard, directly enough this time, that the king
desired him to travel for some years. He knew the danger of
neglecting--such intimations, and since he thought the country after
all preferable to the Bastille, he left Paris, and arrived at
Avignon, surrounded by the halo of interest that naturally attends a
handsome young persecuted nobleman.
The virtue of Madame d'Urban was as much cried up at Avignon as the
ill-behaviour of the chevalier had been reprobated in Paris. A
reputation equal to his own, but so opposite in kind, could not fail
to be very offensive to him, therefore he determined immediately upon
arriving to play one against the other.
Nothing was easier than the attempt. M. d'Urban, sure of his wife's
virtue, allowed her entire liberty; the chevalier saw her wherever he
chose to see her, and every time he saw her found means to express a
growing passion. Whether because the hour had come for Madame
d'Urban, or whether because she was dazzled by the splendour of the
chevalier's belonging to a princely house, her virtue, hitherto so
fierce, melted like snow in the May sunshine; and the chevalier,
luckier than the poor page, took the husband's place without any
attempt on Madame d'Urban's part to cry for help.
As all the chevalier desired was public triumph, he took care to make
the whole town acquainted at once with his success; then, as some
infidels of the neighbourhood still doubted, the chevalier ordered
one of his servants to wait for him at the marquise's door with a
lantern and a bell. At one in the morning, the chevalier came out,
and the servant walked before him, ringing the bell. At this
unaccustomed sound, a great number of townspeople, who had been
quietly asleep, awoke, and, curious to see what was happening, opened
their windows. They beheld the chevalier, walking gravely behind his
servant, who continued to light his master's way and to ring
along the course of the street that lay between Madame d'Urban's
house and his own. As he had made no mystery to anyone of his love
affair, nobody took the trouble even to ask him whence he came.
However, as there might possibly be persons still unconvinced, he
repeated this same jest, for his own satisfaction, three nights
running; so that by the morning of the fourth day nobody had any
doubts left.
As generally happens in such cases, M. d'Urban did not know a word of
what was going on until the moment when his friends warned him that
he was the talk of the town. Then he forbade his wife to see her
lover again. The prohibition produced the usual results: on the
morrow, as, soon as M. d'Urban had gone out, the marquise sent for
the chevalier to inform him of the catastrophe in which they were
both involved; but she found him far better prepared than herself for
such blows, and he tried to prove to her, by reproaches for her
imprudent conduct, that all this was her fault; so that at last the
poor woman, convinced that it was she who had brought these woes upon
them, burst into tears. Meanwhile, M. d'Urban, who, being jealous
for the first time, was the more seriously so, having learned that
the chevalier was with his wife, shut the doors, and posted himself
in the ante-chamber with his servants, in order to seize him as he
came out. But the chevalier, who had ceased to trouble himself about
Madame d'Urban's tears, heard all the preparations, and, suspecting
some ambush, opened the window, and, although it was one o'clock in
the afternoon and the place was full of people, jumped out of the
window into the street, and did not hurt himself at all, though the
height was twenty feet, but walked quietly home at a moderate pace.
The same evening, the chevalier, intending to relate his new
adventure in all its details, invited some of his friends to sup with
him at the pastrycook Lecoq's. This man, who was a brother of the
famous Lecoq of the rue Montorgueil, was the cleverest eating-house-
keeper in Avignon; his own unusual corpulence commended his cookery,
and, when he stood at the door, constituted an advertisement for his
restaurant. The good man, knowing with what delicate appetites he
had to deal, did his very best that evening, and that nothing might
be wanting, waited upon his guests himself. They spent the night
drinking, and towards morning the chevalier and his companions, being
then drunk, espied their host standing respectfully at the door, his
face wreathed in smiles. The chevalier called him nearer, poured him
out a glass of wine and made him drink with them; then, as the poor
wretch, confused at such an honour, was thanking him with many bows,
he said:--
"Pardieu, you are too fat for Lecoq, and I must make you a capon."
This strange proposition was received as men would receive it who
were drunk and accustomed by their position to impunity. The
unfortunate pastry-cook was seized, bound down upon the table, and
died under their treatment. The vice-legate being informed of the
murder by one of the waiters, who had run in on hearing his master's
shrieks, and had found him, covered with blood, in the hands of his
butchers, was at first inclined to arrest the chevalier and bring him
conspicuously to punishment. But he was restrained by his regard for
the Cardinal de Bouillon, the chevalier's uncle, and contented
himself with warning the culprit that unless he left the town
instantly he would be put into the hands of the authorities. The
chevalier, who was beginning to have had enough of Avignon, did not
wait to be told twice, ordered the wheels of his chaise to be greased
and horses to be brought. In the interval before they were ready the
fancy took him to go and see Madame d'Urban again.
As the house of the marquise was the very last at which, after the
manner of his leaving it the day before, the chevalier was expected
at such an hour, he got in with the greatest ease, and, meeting a
lady's-maid, who was in his interests, was taken to the room where
the marquise was. She, who had not reckoned upon seeing the
chevalier again, received him with all the raptures of which a woman
in love is capable, especially when her love is a forbidden one. But
the chevalier soon put an end to them by announcing that his visit
was a visit of farewell, and by telling her the reason that obliged
him to leave her. The marquise was like the woman who pitied the
fatigue of the poor horses that tore Damien limb from limb; all her
commiseration was for the chevalier, who on account of such a trifle
was being forced to leave Avignon. At last the farewell had to be
uttered, and as the chevalier, not knowing what to say at the fatal
moment, complained that he had no memento of her, the marquise took
down the frame that contained a portrait of herself corresponding
with one of her husband, and tearing out the canvas, rolled, it up
and gave it to the chevalier. The latter, so far from being touched
by this token of love, laid it down, as he went away, upon a piece of
furniture, where the marquise found it half an hour later. She
imagined that his mind being so full of the original, he had
forgotten the copy, and representing to herself the sorrow which the
discovery of this forgetfulness would cause him, she sent for a
servant, gave him the picture, and ordered him to take horse and ride
after the chevalier's chaise. The man took a post-horse, and, making
great speed, perceived the fugitive in the distance just as the
latter had finished changing horses. He made violent signs and
shouted loudly, in order to stop the postillion. But the postillion
having told his fare that he saw a man coming on at full speed, the
chevalier supposed himself to be pursued, and bade him go on as fast
as possible. This order was so well obeyed that the unfortunate
servant only came up with the chaise a league and a half farther on;
having stopped the postillion, he got off his horse, and very
respectfully presented to the chevalier the picture which he had been
bidden to bring him. But the chevalier, having recovered from his
first alarm, bade him go about his business, and take back the
portrait--which was of no use to him--to the sender. The servant,
however, like a faithful messenger, declared that his orders were
positive, and that he should not dare go back to Madame d'Urban
without fulfilling them. The chevalier, seeing that he could not
conquer the man's determination, sent his postillion to a farrier,
whose house lay on the road, for a hammer and four nails, and with
his own hands nailed the portrait to the back of his chaise; then he
stepped in again, bade the postillion whip up his horses, and drove
away, leaving Madame d'Urban's messenger greatly astonished at the
manner in which the chevalier had used his mistress's portrait.
At the next stage, the postillion, who was going back, asked for his
money, and the chevalier answered that he had none. The postillion
persisted; then the chevalier got out of his chaise, unfastened
Madame d'Urban's portrait, and told him that he need only put it up
for sale in Avignon and declare how it had come into his possession,
in order to receive twenty times the price of his stage; the
postillion, seeing that nothing else was to be got out of the
chevalier, accepted the pledge, and, following his instructions
precisely, exhibited it next morning at the door of a dealer in the
town, together with an exact statement of the story. The picture was
bought back the same day for twenty-five Louis.
As may be supposed, the adventure was much talked of throughout the
town. Next day, Madame d'Urban disappeared, no one knew whither, at
the very time when the relatives of the marquis were met together and
had decided to ask the king for a 'lettre-de-cachet'. One of the
gentlemen present was entrusted with the duty of taking the necessary
steps; but whether because he was not active enough, or whether
because he was in Madame d'Urban's interests, nothing further was
heard in Avignon of any consequences ensuing from such steps. In the
meantime, Madame d'Urban, who had gone to the house of an aunt,
opened negotiations with her husband that were entirely successful,
and a month after this adventure she returned triumphantly to the
conjugal roof.
Two hundred pistoles, given by the Cardinal de Bouillon, pacified the
family of the unfortunate pastry-cook, who at first had given notice
of the affair to the police, but who soon afterwards withdrew their
complaint, and gave out that they had taken action too hastily on the
strength of a story told in joke, and that further inquiries showed
their relative to have died of an apoplectic stroke.
Thanks--to this declaration, which exculpated the Chevalier de
Bouillon in the eyes of the king, he was allowed, after travelling
for two years in Italy and in Germany, to return undisturbed to
France.
Thus ends, not the family of Ganges, but the commotion which the
family made in the world. From time to time, indeed, the playwright
or the novelist calls up the pale and bloodstained figure of the
marquise to appear either on the stage or in a book; but the
evocation almost always ceases at her, and many persons who have
written about the mother do not even know what became of the
children. Our intention has been to fill this gap; that is why we
have tried to tell what our predecessors left out, and try offer to
our readers what the stage--and often the actual world--offers;
comedy after melodrama.
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