“Harder,” he said to her.
“But I’ll hurt you!”
“Don’t worry.”
“That’s what you want?”
“Yes, but much harder. Harder still. Now, with all your might. There! That didn’t hurt me. Now it’s my turn.”
He yanked on a lock of her hair. She shrieked.
“You see, Madame,” he said calmly, “I’m stronger than you. Argue with me if it pleases you. But don’t try to fight me.”
In that way this new Xanthippe was warned that, though her husband might be as wise as Socrates, he was not as patient.
The Marquis de Rambouillet’s father was, as we’ve said, appointed Viceroy of Poland while that country awaited the arrival of Henri III. While performing this duty, he had saved a hundred thousand crowns in cash, which he presented to the king.
“Do you mock me, Monsieur de Rambouillet?” said Henri III. “A hundred thousand crowns isn’t much to a king.”
“Take them, Sire,” said Monsieur de Rambouillet. “If you don’t need them on this day, you’ll need them on another.” He made the king accept them—and later Henri wasn’t sorry he had.
At the battle of Jarnac, where the Prince de Condé was so brutally murdered, this same Monsieur de Rambouillet had worked wonders, so much so that the Duc d’Anjou had sent his brother, King Charles IX, a letter in which he gave Rambouillet credit for the victory. The family displayed that letter in a golden frame.
In 1606, that is to say after six years of marriage, Monsieur de Rambouillet found himself in financial difficulty and sold the Hotel de Pisany to Pierre Forget-Dufresne for 34,500 livres. In 1624, Forget-Dufresne turned around and sold it, at a great profit, to the cardinal-minister. By the time of our story, Richelieu was busy building on that site what would later become the Palais Cardinal. While waiting for this palace of marvels to be made habitable, Richelieu had two country houses, one at Chaillot, the other at Rueil, as well as a town house in the Place Royale, next door to that of the celebrated courtesan Marion Delorme.
Meanwhile, for thirty years Paris expanded, building daily. You could say that it was Henri IV who laid the groundwork for what would become modern Paris. At the end of the reign of Henri III, Paris had covered an area of 1,414 acres. During the reign of Henri IV, the Tournelles park, the suitable parts of the Marais, and the neighborhood around the Temple were all built up with new houses. The Rue Dauphine and the Place Royale were constructed, the suburbs of Saint-Antoine, Montmartre, Saint-Martin, Saint-Denis, and Saint-Honoré were increased by half, and the new Faubourg Saint-Germain became the seventeenth quarter. Paris grew to enclose over 1,660 acres.
In 1604, the Pont Neuf, begun by Henri III in 1578, was finally completed. In 1606, the Hotel de Ville (City Hall), begun by François I in 1533, was likewise completed. In 1613 were built the Saint-Gervais gate and the aqueduct of Arcueil. From 1614 to 1616, the houses and bridges of the new Île Saint-Louis were constructed. The equestrian statue of Henri IV was placed on the Pont Neuf, and the foundations of the Palais du Luxembourg were laid. Marie de Médicis, during her regency, established the long ranks of trees along the Cours-la-Reine.
In a new burst of building, from 1624 to 1628, Paris grew even further. The western walls were extended to contain the Palais des Tuileries, the neighborhood of Butte-des-Moulins, and that of Ville-Neuve. The new walls began at the Seine at the Porte de la Conférence, at the far end of the Tuileries gardens, ran to the Rue Saint-Honoré, with its new Porte Saint-Honoré, to Rue Galion, where they built the Porte Montmartre, and joined the old walls at the corner of the Rue Neuve-Saint-Denis, at the gate of the same name.
The Marquise de Rambouillet, after the sale of the Hotel de Pisany, resided in her father’s small house in Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, but this dwelling was too cramped for the lady, her six children, and numerous domestics. It was then that she decided to build the famous Hotel de Rambouillet, so celebrated thereafter. However, dissatisfied with the plans submitted by the architects, which she felt didn’t make good use of the available area, she decided to draw up the plans herself. For a long while she labored uselessly at this endeavor, until one day she cried, like Archimedes, “Eureka!” She took pen and paper and quickly sketched both the interior and exterior of the mansion, all with such excellent taste that it impressed Queen Regent Marie de Médicis, then employed in building the Luxembourg. She, who had seen in her youth in Florence the most beautiful palaces in the world, and who had brought to this new Athens the leading architects of the time, sent them to ask for advice from Madame de Rambouillet and to use her mansion as an example.
The eldest child of the Marquise de Rambouillet was the beautiful Julie-Lucine d’Angennes, more celebrated even than her mother. Since the days of Helen, that adulterous wife of Menelaus who drew Europe into war with Asia, no woman’s beauty had been more highly praised, in every key and with every instrument. No one whose heart she stole ever recovered it. The wound inflicted by the surpassingly lovely eyes of Julie d’Angennes, the famous Madame de Montausier, was mortal, or at least incurable. Ninon de Lenclos may have had her “martyrs,” but Julie’s admirers were known as “the perishing.”
Born in 1600, she was now aged twenty-eight, and though her first youth was past, she had arrived at the full bloom of her beauty.
Though Madame de Rambouillet had four other daughters, her eldest eclipsed them all, and today the younger are nearly forgotten. Three of them took the veil: Madame d’Hyères, Madame de Saint-Étienne, and Madame de Pisany. The youngest, Claire-Angélique d’Angennes, was the first wife of Monsieur de Grignan.
In our previous chapters, we made the acquaintance of her eldest son, the Marquis de Pisany. Madame had had a second son who died at the age of eight when his nurse, who’d visited a plague victim at the hospital, had recklessly kissed the child upon her return. Within two days, the plague had taken them both.
The early fame of the Hotel de Rambouillet was due to the passion the beautiful Julie inspired in every man of breeding, and to the curious devotion of the family servants. The Marquis de Pisany’s tutor was Chavaroche, who had been Voiture’s opponent in one of those three duels we mentioned, fighting him by torchlight and giving him a flesh wound in the thigh. Chavaroche was, always had been, and always would be one of the lovely Julie’s “perishing” admirers. When Julie, after being married for twelve years, finally decided at the age of thirty-nine to fulfill her husband Monsieur de Montausier’s desire for a child, she had a very difficult labor. Because they knew he’d be willing to go, they sent Chavaroche to the Abbey of Saint-Germain for the Girdle of Saint Marguerite, a holy relic known to help with childbirth. Chavaroche went at once, but as it was three in the morning, he found the monks in their beds and was obliged, despite his impatience, to wait nearly half an hour.
“By my faith!” he cried. “The nerve of these monks, sleeping while Madame de Montausier is in labor!”
And after that, Chavaroche spoke naught but ill of the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Germain.
One degree of domestic rank below Chavaroche, we find Louis de Neuf-Germain, with his long sword slapping his leg and his goatee almost brushing his chest, and who bore the title Poet-at-Large to Monsieur, the king’s brother. He had an easy facility for doggerel. One day, Madame de Rambouillet had asked him to improvise something for Monsieur d’Avaux, brother of the President of Mesme, the ambassador extraordinaire who had signed the Peace of the North. Neuf-Germain rattled off an entire ode on d’Avaux’s name, with rhymes on da and vaux. Here is the first stanza:
Jove, one day in heaven, had a
Job for Mercury, his bravo,
To have the gods sing a cantata
In praise and honor of great Devaux
Those who wish to read his other works will find them collected by Voiture.
Neuf-Germain had a mistress in the Rue des Gravilliers, the last street in Paris where a gallant was likely to find a mistress. A certain rogue, who insisted he had a prior claim to
the damsel, encountered Neuf-Germain and they quarreled in the street. The rogue grabbed Neuf-Germain by his goatee and yanked so hard, it came off in his hand. Neuf-Germain, who always wore a sword and had given the Marquis de Pisany his first lessons in arms, drew and struck his attacker a blow that made him drop his handful of beard. The rogue, wounded, fled screaming, pursued by half the watching mob, while Neuf-Germain gleefully slashed the air with his rapier, mocking the rogue and loudly calling for him to return.
After Neuf-Germain left, a cobbler who knew that the victor belonged to the Hotel de Rambouillet, the reputation of which had reached even the lowest commoners, noticed that the goatee torn from his chin was still on the battlefield. He picked it up to the last hair, folded it carefully in white paper, and proceeded to the Hotel de Rambouillet.
The household was at dinner when the Marquis de Rambouillet was told that a cobbler from the Rue des Gravilliers wished to speak with him. This was such unexpected news that Rambouillet was curious as to what this cobbler had to say. “Let him enter,” he said.
It was done. The cobbler came in, bowed humbly, and approached Rambouillet. “Monsieur le Marquis,” he said, “I am pleased to present the beard of Monsieur de Neuf-Germain, which he had the misfortune to lose in front of my door.”
Without really knowing what that meant, Monsieur de Rambouillet took from his pouch one of those new crowns struck with the image of Louis XIII, called a louis d’argent, and gave it to the cobbler. The man retired completely satisfied, not for having received a crown, but for having had the honor of seeing at table, eating like mere mortals, Monsieur de Rambouillet and his family.
Rambouillet and family were still looking uncomprehendingly at this handful of beard when Neuf-Germain came in with his stubbly chin, surprised that despite his quick return to the mansion, his beard had arrived before him.
One floor down we meet Silésie the equerry, or rather the quinola, as a sub-equerry was known at the time. Everyone at the Hotel de Rambouillet had his quirks and caprices, but Silésie was a madman of a different stripe. Madame de Rambouillet called Neuf-Germain their indoor madman and Silésie their outdoor madman, as he lived with his wife and children outside the main house, albeit only a few steps away.
One morning, everyone who lived in the same house as Silésie came to complain to the marquis, saying that since the weather had grown hot, it was impossible to sleep under the same roof as his equerry.
Monsieur de Rambouillet called Silésie before him. “What were you doing last night,” he asked, “that all the neighbors complain about not being able to sleep for a moment?”
“With respect, Monsieur le Marquis,” replied Silésie, “I was killing my fleas.”
“And how can you make so much noise killing fleas?”
“Because I kill them with a hammer.”
“A hammer? Explain that, Silésie!”
“Monsieur le Marquis is aware that no animal’s life is harder to take than that of a flea.”
“That’s true.”
“Well, to make sure mine don’t escape, once I catch them, I carry them to the staircase and crush them with a large hammer.”
And Silésie continued to kill his fleas in this fashion, until one night, when he was probably half asleep, he missed the first step and tumbled from the top of the stairs to the bottom. When they found him, he had a broken neck.
After Silésie comes Maître Claude the silversmith, a sort of comic buffoon. He was crazy about executions, and despite the cruelty of the spectacle, he never missed one. But once three or four were held in quick succession, and yet Maître Claude never left the house.
Worried, the marquise asked him the cause of this aberration. “Ah, Madame la Marquise,” replied Maître Claude, shaking his head with an air of melancholy, “I can no longer take pleasure in criminals’ death throes.”
“And why is that?” she asked her servant.
“Because since the beginning of the year, the executioners have been strangling the condemned before hanging them. Can you believe it? If, someday, they return to hanging them outright, on that day I’ll return to the execution ground.”
One night, he went to see the fireworks in honor of Saint-Jean, but as they launched the first rockets, he found himself behind a very tall onlooker whose large head blocked his view. He thought, rather than bother anyone, he would go up to Montmartre, only to find when he arrived breathless at the top of the hill and turned toward the Hotel de Ville that the fireworks were over. Thus instead of seeing poorly, Maître Claude saw nothing at all.
So instead he went to Saint-Denis to see the treasures, and greatly enjoyed himself. Upon his return, when questioned by the marquise, he said, “Ah, Madame, what beautiful things they have, these rascals of churchmen!”
And he began to list the bejeweled crosses, the surplices studded with pearls, the golden monstrance and silver candlesticks. “But there was one thing most important of all,” he added.
“What thing do you think the most important, Maître Claude?”
“Ah, Madame, they have our neighbor’s arm.”
“Which neighbor?” asked Madame de Rambouillet, who wondered who among their neighbors could spare a limb to donate to the treasure-trove of Saint-Denis.
“Why, pardieu, the arm of our neighbor Saint Thomas, Madame; his church is so close we can practically touch it.”
There were also two other servants at the Hotel de Rambouillet who were a credit to the collection: the secretary Adriani and the embroiderer Dubois. The first published a volume of poetry dedicated to Monsieur de Schomberg. The second, who felt called to the vocation, became a Capuchin monk. But the calling didn’t last, and he left his monastery before the end of his novitiate. Not daring to reapply for a place with Madame de Rambouillet, he became supervisor of the actors at the Hotel de Bourgogne. “Because that way,” as he said, “if Madame de Rambouillet ever chanced to go to the theater, I might see her.”
Indeed, the Marquis and Marquise de Rambouillet were worshiped by their servants. One evening, the lawyer Patru, so influential on the modes of polite speech at the Académie Française, was dining at the Hotel de Nemours with the Abbé de Saint-Spire. One of the two mentioned the Marquise de Rambouillet. The sommelier, Audry, who was crossing the room after telling the waiters which wine to serve, heard the marquise’s name and stopped. When the two guests continued to talk about her, the sommelier sent all the other servants from the room.
“Why the devil did you do that?” Patru asked.
“Ah, Messieurs!” the sommelier said. “I was with Madame de Rambouillet for twelve years. If you have the honor to be friends of the marquise, no one shall serve you but me.”
And despite the dignity of his position, he placed a waiter’s towel over his arm, stood behind the guests, and served them until the end of the meal.
Now that we have made the acquaintance of the masters and servants of the Hotel de Rambouillet, we will bring our readers inside the mansion on a night when it was host to the leading celebrities of the age.
V
What Occurred in the Hotel de
Rambouillet as Souscarrières Was Disposing
of His Third Hunchback
On the evening of December 5, 1628, which we began at the Inn of the Painted Beard in the first chapter of this book, all the literary luminaries of the era, those whose society was ridiculed by Molière as they ridiculed him in return, were gathered in the marquise’s mansion. That night they were not ordinary visitors to the marquise’s salon, but specially invited guests, each having received a note from Madame de Rambouillet announcing a special soirée.
The guests had rushed to attend.
This event took place during that happy era when women were beginning to have an influence on society. Poetry was in its infancy, born in the previous century with Marot, Garnier, and Ronsard, and was just then prattling out its first tragedies, pastorals, and comedies by way of Hardy, Desmarests, and Raissiguier. Dramatic literature would foll
ow, thanks to Rotrou, Corneille, Molière, and Racine, elevating France above all other nations, while perfecting that beautiful language created by Rabelais, purified by Boileau, and distilled by Voltaire. Due to its clarity, French would become the diplomatic language of all civilized nations. In language, clarity is integrity.
William Shakespeare, the great genius of the sixteenth century—or rather, of all centuries—had been dead only twelve years, and was as yet known only to the English. Make no mistake, the European popularity of Elizabeth’s great poet is a modern phenomenon; none of the fine minds gathered at Madame de Rambouillet’s had even heard the name of the man who, a century later, Voltaire would call a barbarian. Moreover, at a time when the theater was dominated by plays such as The Deliverance of Andromeda, The Conquest of the Boar of Calydon, and The Death of Bradamante, works like Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar, Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet would have seemed harsh to the delicate French palate.
No, due to the influence of the queen and of the Catholic League of the Guises, it was Spain who set the fashion in literature, through Lope de Vega, Alarcón, and Tirso de Molina; Calderón had not yet appeared.
To end this long digression, which began of its own accord due to the force of circumstance, we’ll repeat our own words: this event took place during a happy era, and we would add that an invitation from Madame de Rambouillet made it doubly special. All knew the marquise’s grand passion for surprising her guests.
For example, consider the day she’d presented the Bishop of Lisieux, Philippe de Cospéan, with a quite unexpected surprise. In the park at Rambouillet was a large, round boulder from which a fountain sprang. Veiled by a curtain of trees, it was dedicated to the memory of Rabelais, who had worked sometimes in his study and sometimes in his dining room. One bright morning, the marquise led the Bishop of Lisieux toward the fountain. The prelate squinted as he approached, trying to make out something that shone through the branches. Soon he could clearly distinguish seven or eight young women dressed as nymphs—that is to say, barely dressed at all. Leading them was Mademoiselle de Rambouillet attired as Diana: quiver on her shoulder, bow in her hand, and circlet on her brow. Beyond her, all the demoiselles of the household posed prettily on the great rock, presenting, according to Tallemant des Réaux, the loveliest tableau in the world. A bishop of our day might be scandalized by such a spectacle, but Monseigneur de Lisieux, on the contrary, was quite charmed. He never saw the marquise thereafter without asking for news of the rocks of Rambouillet.