Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise

‘To arms, friends, to arms! There’s the enemy. Kill him! and we shall have vengeance for all we suffer!’

The mob rushed after, shouting horribly. Armantine began to cry, and I took her in my arms, while Nicole held my son.

The whole crowd rushed past us, never heeding us, as we stood above them, and as we were only thirty yards from home I hoped soon to reach it, though I hesitated, as the screeches, yells, and howls were still to be heard lower down the street, and fresh parties of men, women, and children kept rushing down to join the throng. If it should surge back again before we could get home, what would become of us?

Suddenly Gaspard cried out: ‘My uncle!’ And there was indeed my brother. ‘Good heavens!’ he cried, ‘you there, sister! They told me you were gone to church, but I could hardly believe it! Come home before the mob comes back.’

I asked anxiously for the Chancellor, and heard he had escaped into the Hotel de Luynes, which was three doors beyond ours. He had set out at six in the morning for the palace, it was believed to take orders for breaking up the Parliament. His daughter, thinking there might be danger, chose to go with him, and so did his brother the Bishop; but the instant he was known to be entangled in the streets, the mob rose on him, the chains were put up, he had to leave his carriage and flee on foot to the Hotel de Luynes, where his brother-in-law lived. There the door was open, but no one was up but an old servant, and, in the utmost terror, the unhappy Chancellor rushed into a little wainscoted closet, where he shut himself up, confessing his sins to the Bishop, believing his last moments were come. In fact, the mob did search all over the hotel, some meaning to make him a hostage for Broussel, and others shouting that they would cut him to pieces to show what fate awaited the instruments of tyranny. They did actually beat against the wainscot of his secret chamber, but hearing nothing, they left the spot, but continued to keep guard round the house, shouting out execrations against him.

Meantime Eustace had brought us safely home, where the first thing we did was to hurry up to the balcony, where Annora was already watching anxiously.

Presently, Marshal de Meilleraye and his light horse came galloping and clattering down the street, while the mob fled headlong, hither and thither, before them. A carriage was brought out, and the Chancellor with his brother and daughter was put into it, but as they were driving off the mob rallied again and began to pursue them. A shot was fired, and a poor woman, under a heavy basket, fell. There was another outburst of curses, screams, howls, yells, shots; and carriage, guards, people, all rushed past us, the coach going at the full speed of its six horses, amid a shower of stones, and even bullets, the guards galloping after, sometimes firing or cutting with their swords, the people keeping up with them at a headlong pace, pelting them with stones and dirt, and often firing at them, for, indeed, the poor young Duchess received a wound before they could reach the palace. Meanwhile others of the mob began ransacking the Hotel de Luynes in their rage at the Chancellor’s escape, and they made dreadful havoc of the furniture, although they did not pillage it.

My mother wept bitterly, declaring that the evil days she had seen in England were pursuing her to France; and we could not persuade her that we were in no danger, until the populace, having done their worst at the Hotel de Luynes, drifted away from our street. Eustace could not of course bear to stay shut up and knowing nothing, and he and the Abbe both went out different ways, leaving us to devour our anxiety as best we could, knowing nothing but that there was a chain across each end of our street, with a double row of stakes on either side, banked up with earth, stones, straw, all sorts of things, and guarded by men with all manner of queer old weapons that had come down from the wars of the League. Eustace even came upon one of the old-fashioned arquebuses standing on three legs to be fired; and, what was worse, there was a gorget with the portrait of the murderer of Henri III. enameled on it, and the inscription ‘S. Jacques Clement,’ but the Coadjutor had the horrible thing broken up publicly. My brother said things did indeed remind him of the rusty old weapons that were taken down at the beginning of the Rebellion. He had been to M. Darpent’s, and found him exceedingly busy, and had learned from him that the Coadjutor was at the bottom of all this day’s disturbance. Yes, Archbishop de Gondi himself. He had been bitterly offended at the mocking, mistrustful way in which his services had been treated, and besides, reports came to him that Cardinal talked of sending him of Quimper Corentin, and Broussel to Havre, and the Chancellor to dismiss the Parliament! He had taken counsel with his friends, and determined to put himself and the head of the popular movement and be revenged upon the Court, and one of his familiar associates, M. d’Argenteuil, had disguised himself as a mason, and led the attack with a rule in his hand, while a lady, Madame Martineau, had beaten the drum and collected the throng to guard the gates and attack the Chancellor. There were, it was computed, no less than 1260 barricades all over Paris, and the Parliament was perfectly amazed at the excitement produced by the capture of Broussel. Finding that they had such supporters, the Parliament was more than ever determined to make a stand for its rights—whatever they might be.

The Queen had sent to command the Coadjutor to appease the sedition, but he had answered that he had made himself so odious by his exertions of the previous day that he could not undertake what was desired of him.

The next thing we heard was that the First President, Mathieu Mole, one of the very best men then living, had gone at the head of sixty-six Counsellors of Parliament, two and two, to seek an audience of the Queen. They were followed by a huge multitude, who supposed Broussel to be still at the Palais Royal.

The Counsellors were admitted, but the Queen was as obdurate as ever. She told them that they, their wives and children, should answer for this day’s work, and that a hundred thousand armed men should not force her to give up her will. Then she got up from her chair, went out of the room, and slammed the door! It is even said that she talked of hanging a few of the Counsellors from the windows to intimidate the mob; but Mademoiselle assured me that this was not true; though M. de Meilleraye actually proposed cutting off Broussel’s head and throwing it out into the street.

The Counsellors were kept waiting two hours in the Great Gallery, while the mob roared outside, and the Cardinal, the Dukes of Orleans and Longueville, and other great nobles, argued the matter with the Queen. The Cardinal was, it seems, in a terrible fright. The Queen, full of Spanish pride and high courage, would really have rather perished than yielded to the populace; but Mazarin was more and more terrified, and at last she yielded, and consented to his going to the Counsellors to promise the release of the prisoners. He was trembling all over, and made quite an absurd appearance, and presently the Parliament men appeared again, carrying huge sealed letters; Broussel’s was borne by his nephew in triumph. We could hear the Vivas! With which the people greeted them, as the promise of restoration was made known. At eleven at night there was a fresh outcry, but this was of joy, for M. Blancmesnil had actually come back from Vincennes; but the barricades were not taken down. There was to be no laying down of arms till Broussel appeared, and there were strange noises all night, preventing sleep.

At eight o’clock the next morning Broussel had not appeared; the people were walking about in a sullen rage, and this was made worse by a report that there were 10,000 soldiers in the Bois de Boulogne ready to chastise the people. We could see from our house-top the glancing or arms at every barricade where the sun could penetrate, and in the midst came one of the servants announcing Monsieur Clement Darpent.

He had a sword by his side, and pistols at his belt, and he said that he was come to assure the ladies that there would be no danger for them. If any one tried to meddle with the house, we might say we were friends of M. Darpent, and we should be secure. If the account of the soldiers outside were true, the people were determined not to yield to such perfidy; but he did not greatly credit it, only it was well to be prepared.

‘Alas! my friend,’ said Eustace, ‘this has all too much the air of rebellion.’

‘We stand on our rights and privileges,’ said Darpent. ‘We uphold them in the King’s name against the treachery of a Spanish woman and an Italian priest.’

‘You have been sorely tried,’ said Eustace; ‘but I doubt me whether anything justifies taking arms against the Crown.’

‘Ah! I am talking to a Cavalier,’ said Clement. ‘But I must not argue the point. I must to my barricade.’

Nan here came forward, and desired him to carry her commendations and thanks to Madame sa mere, and he bowed, evidently much gratified. She durst not go the length of offering her good wishes, and she told me I ought to have been thankful to her for the forbearance, when, under a strong sense of duty, I reproved her. Technically he was only Maitre Darpent, and his mother only would have been called Mademoiselle. Monsieur and Madame were much more jealously limited to nobility than they are now becoming, and the Darpents would not purchase a patent of nobility to shelter themselves from taxation. For, as Eustace said, the bourgeoisie had its own chivalry of ideas.

There was no more fighting. By ten o’clock Broussel was in the city, the chains were torn down, the barricades leveled, and he made a triumphal progress. He was taken first to Notre Dame, and as he left the carriage his old dressing-gown was almost torn to pieces, every one crowding to kiss it, or his feet, calling him their father and protector, and anxiously inquiring for his health. A Te Deum was sung—if not so splendid, much more full of the ring of joy than the grand one two days before! Engravings of his portrait were sold about the streets, bearing the inscription ‘Pierre Broussel, father of his country;’ and the good-natured old man seemed quite bewildered at the honours that had befallen him.

There were a few more alarms that night and the next day, but at last they subsided, the barricades were taken down, and things returned to their usual state, at least to all outward appearance.

CHAPTER XVII. – A PATIENT GRISEL

Matters seemed to be getting worse all round us both in France and England. King Charles was in the hands of his enemies, and all the good news that we could hear from England was that the Duke of York had escaped in a girl’s dress, and was on board the fleet at helvoetsluys, where his brother the Prince of Wales jointed him.

And my own dear brother, Lord Walwyn, declared that he could no longer remain inactive at Paris, so far from intelligence, but that he must be with the Princes, ready to assist in case anything should be attempted on the King’s behalf. We much dreaded the effect of the Dutch climate on his health. And while tumultuous assemblies were constantly taking place in Parliament, and no one could guess what was coming next, we did not like parting with our protector; but he said that he was an alien, and could do nothing for us. The army was on its way home, and with it our brother de Solivet, and M. d’Aubepine; and his clear duty was to be ready to engage in the cause of his own King. We were in no danger at Paris, our sex was sufficient protection, and if we were really alarmed, there could be no reason against our fleeing to Nid de Merle. Nay, perhaps, if the Court were made to take home the lesson, we might be allowed to reside there, and be unmolested in making improvements. He had another motive, which he only whispered to me.

‘I cannot, and will not, give up my friend Darpent; and it is not fitting to live in continual resistance to my mother. It does much harm to Annora, who is by no means inclined to submit, and if I am gone there can be no further question of intercourse.’

I thought this was hard upon us all. Had we not met M. Darpent at the Hotel Rambouillet, and was he not a fit companion for us?

‘Most assuredly,’ said Eustace; ‘but certain sentiments may arise from companionship which in her case were better avoided.’

As you may imagine, my grandchildren, I cried out in horror at the idea that if M. Darpent were capable of such presumption, my sister, a descendant of the Ribaumonts, could stoop for a moment to favour a mere bourgeois; but Eustace, Englishman as he was, laughed at my indignation, and said Annora was more of the Ribmont than the de Ribaumont, and that he would not be accessory either to the breaking of hearts or to letting her become rebellious, and so that he should put temptation out of her way. I knew far too well what was becoming to allow myself to suppose for a moment that Eustace thought an inclination between the two already could exist. I forgot how things had been broken up in England.

As to Annora, she thought Eustace’s right place was with the Prince, and she would not stretch out a finger to hold him back, only she longed earnestly that he would take us with him. Could he not persuade our mother that France was becoming dangerous, and that she would be safe in Holland? But of course he only laughed at that; and we all saw that unless the Queen of England chose to follow her sons, there was no chance of my mother leaving the Court.

‘No, my sister,’ said Eustace tenderly, ‘there is nothing for you to do but to endure patiently. It is very hard for you to be both firm and resolute, and at the same time dutiful; but it is a noble part in its very difficulty, and my Nan will seek strength for it.’

Then the girl pressed up to him, and told him that one thing he must promise her, namely, that he would prevent my mother from disposing of her hand without his consent.

‘As long as you are here I am safe,’ said she; ‘but when you are gone I do not know what she may attempt. And here is this Solivet son of hers coming too!’

‘Solivet has no power over you,’ said Eustace. ‘You may make yourself easy, Nan. Nobody can marry you without my consent, for my father made me your guardian. And I doubt me if your portion, so long as I am living, be such as to tempt any man to wed such a little fury, even were we at home.’

‘Thanks for the hint, brother,’ said Annora. ‘I will take care that any such suitor SHALL think me a fury.’

‘Nay, child, in moderation! Violence is not strength. Nay, rather it exhausts the forces. Resolution and submission are our watchwords.’

How noble he looked as he said it, and how sad it was to part with him! my mother wept most bitterly, and said it was cruel to leave us to our fate, and that he would kill himself in the Dutch marshes; but when the actual pain of parting with him was over, I am not sure that she had not more hope of carrying out her wishes. She would have begun by forbidding Annora to go, attended only by the servants, to prayers at the England ambassador’s: but Eustace had foreseen this, and made arrangements with a good old knight and his lady, Sir Francis Ommaney, always to call for my sister on their way to church, and she was always ready for them. My mother used to say that her devotion was all perverseness, and now and then, when more than usually provoked with her, would declare that it was quite plain that her poor child’s religion was only a heresy, since it did not make her a better daughter.

That used to sting Annora beyond all measure. Sometimes she would reply by pouring out a catalogue of all the worst offences of our own Church, and Heaven knows she could find enough of them! Or at others she would appeal to the lives of all the best people she had ever heard of in England, and especially of Eustace, declaring that she knew she herself was far from good, but that was not the fault of her religion, but of herself; and she would really strive to be submissive and obliging for many days afterwards.

Meantime the Prince of Conde had returned, and had met the Court at Ruel. M. d’Aubepine and M. de Solivet both were coming with him, and my poor little Cecile wrote letter after letter to her husband, quite correct in grammar and orthography, asking whether she should have the Hotel d’Aubepine prepared, and hire servants to receive him; but she never received a line in reply. She was very anxious to know whether the concierge had received any orders, and yet she could not bear to betray her ignorance.

I had been startled by passing in the street a face which I was almost sure belonged to poor Cecile’s former enemy, Mademoiselle Gringrimeau, now the wife of Croquelebois, the intendant of the estate; and setting old Nicole to work, I ascertained that this same agent and his wife were actually at the Hotel d’Aubepine, having come to meet their master, but that no apartments were made ready for him, as it was understood that being on the staff he would be lodge in the Hotel de Conde.

‘His duty!’ said Cecile; ‘he must fulfil his duty, but at least I shall see him.’

But to hear of the intendant and his wife made me very uneasy.

The happier wives were going out in their carriages to meet their husbands on the road, but Cecile did not even know when he was coming, nor by what road.

‘So much the better,’ said our English Nan. ‘If I had a husband, I would never make him look foolish in the middle of the road with a woman and a pack of children hanging on him!’

No one save myself understood her English bashfulness, shrinking from all display of sentiment, and I—ah! I had known such blissful meetings, when my Philippe had been full of joy to see me come out to meet him. Ah! will he meet me thus at the gates of Paradise? It cannot be far off now!

I knew I should weep all the way if I set out with my mother to meet her son; and Cecile was afraid both of the disappointment if she did not meet her husband, and of his being displeased if he should come. So she only took with her Annora and M. de Solivet’s two daughters, Gabrielle and Petronille, who were fetched from the Convent of the Visitation. There they sat in the carriage, Nan told me, exactly alike in their pensionnaire’s uniform, still and shy on the edge of the seat, not daring to look to the right or left, and answering under their breath, so that she longed to shake them. I found afterwards that the heretic Mademoiselle de Ribaumont was a fearful spectacle to them, and that they were expecting her all the time to break out in the praises of Luther, or of Henry VIII., or of some one whom they had been taught to execrate; and whenever she opened her lips they thought she was going to pervert them, and were quite surprised when she only made a remark, like other people, on the carriages and horsemen who passed them.

Meanwhile Cecile saw her little girl and boy dressed in their best, and again rehearsed the curtsey and the bow and the little speeches with which they were to meet their father. She was sure, she said, that whatever he might think of her, he must be enchanted with them; and truly they had beautiful eyes, and Armantine was a charming child, though Maurice was small and pale, and neither equaled my Gaspard, who might have been White Ribaumont for height and complexion, resembling much his uncle Walwyn, and yet in countenance like his father. Then Cecile and I, long before it was reasonable, took our station near a window overlooking the porte-cochere. I sat with my work, while the children watched on the window-seat, and she, at every exclamation of theirs, leaped up to look out, but only to see some woodcutter with his pile of faggots, or a washer-woman carrying home a dress displayed on its pole, or an ell of bread coming in from the baker’s; and she resumed her interrupted conversation on her security that for the children’s sake her husband would set up his household together with her at the Hotel d’Aubepine. She had been learning all she could, while she was with us, and if she could only be such that he need not be ashamed of her, and would love her only a little for his children’s sake, how happy she should be!

I encouraged her, for her little dull provincial convent air was quite gone; she had acquired the air of society, my mother had taught her something of the art of dress, and though nothing would ever make her beautiful in feature, or striking in figure, she had such a sweet, pleading, lovely expression of countenance that I could not think how any one could resist her. At last it was no longer a false alarm. The children cried out, not in vain. The six horses were clattering under the gateway, the carriage came in sight before the steps. Cecile dropped back in her chair as pale as death, murmuring: ‘Tell me if he is there!’

Alas! ‘he’ was not there. I only saw M. de Solivet descend from the carriage and hand out my mother, my sister, and his two daughters. I could but embrace my poor sister-in-law, and assure her that I would bring her tidings of her husband, and then hurry away with Gaspard that I might meet my half-brother at the salon door. There he was, looking very happy, with a daughter in each hand, and they had lighted up into something like animation, which made Petronille especially show that she might some day be pretty. He embraced me, like the good-natured friendly brother he had always been, and expressed himself perfectly amazed at the growth and beauty of my little Marquis, as well he might be, for my mother and I both agreed that there was not such another child among all the King’s pages.

I asked, as soon as I could, for M. d’Aubepine, and heard that he was attending the Prince, who would, of course, first have to dress, and then to present himself to the Queen-Regent, and kiss her hand, after which he would go to Madame de Longueville’s reception of the King. It was almost a relief to hear that the Count was thus employed, and I sent my son to tell his aunt that she might be no longer in suspense.

I asked Solivet whether we might expect the young man on leaving the Louvre, and he only shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘What know I?’ It became plain to me that he would not discuss the matter before his daughters, now fourteen and fifteen, and we all had to sit down to an early supper, after which they were to be taken back to their convent. M. d’Aubepine appeared, and was quite cheerful, for she figured to herself once more that her husband was only detained by his duties and his value to his Prince, and was burning every moment to see his little ones. She asked questions about him, and became radiant when she heard of his courage at Lens, and the compliments that M. le Prince had paid to him.

After supper the little pensionnaires were to be taken back, and as some lady must escort them, I undertook the charge, finding with great delight that their father would accompany them likewise. I effaced myself as much as I could on the way, and let the father and daughters talk to one another; and they chattered freely about their tasks, and works, and playfellows, seeming very happy with him.

But on the way home was my opportunity, and I asked what my half-brother really thought of M. d’Aubepine.

‘He is a fine young man,’ he said.

‘You have told me that before; but what hopes are there for his wife?’

‘Poor little thing,’ returned Solivet.

‘Can he help loving her?’ I said

‘Alas! my sister, he has been in a bad school, and has before him an example—of courage, it is true, but not precisely of conjugal affection.’

‘Is it true, then,’ I asked, ‘that the Princess of Conde is kept utterly in the background in spite of her mother-in-law, and that the Prince publishes his dislike to her?’

‘Perfectly true,’ said my brother. ‘When a hero, adored by his officers, actually declares that the only thing he does not wish to see in France is his wife, what can you expect of them? Even some who really love their wives bade them remain at home, and will steal away to see them with a certain shame; and for Aubepine, he is only too proud to resemble the Prince in being married against his will to a little half-deformed child, who is to be avoided.’

I cried out at this, and demanded whether my little sister-in-law could possibly be thus described. He owned that she was incredibly improved, and begged my pardon and hers, saying that he was only repeating what Aubepine either believed or pretended to believe her to be.