‘Ah!’ said Madame de Tourville triumphantly.
‘What about the dukes, Madame?’ asked Lenet. ‘What about the army?’
‘They don’t mention those.’
‘Then we are stripped bare,’ said Madame de Tourville.
‘No,’ said the princess. ‘Thanks to the Duke d’Epernon’s letter of attestation, I shall have Vayres, which controls the Dordogne.’
‘And I shall have Saint-Georges,’ said Claire, ‘which is the key to the Garonne.’
‘And I,’ said Lenet, ‘shall have the dukes and the army, provided you give me time.’
BOOK III
VISCOUNTESS DE CAMBES
I
Two days later they arrived in sight of Bordeaux; they had to decide how they would enter the town. The dukes with their army were now only at a distance of around ten leagues, so they could try either to enter peacefully or by force. The essential thing was to decide whether it was better to rule in Bordeaux or to obey the parliament. The princess called a meeting of her council, which consisted of Madame de Tourville, Claire, her ladies-in-waiting and Lenet. Madame de Tourville, knowing her opponent, had strongly argued that he should not attend this council meeting, since the war was a war of women in which they only used men for fighting. But the princess insisted that Lenet had been imposed on her by her husband, the prince, so she could not keep him out of the council chamber, where, in any case, his presence would be quite unimportant, since they had agreed in advance that, while he could speak as much as he wished, no one would listen to him.
Madame de Tourville’s caution was not pointless; she had spent the two days of marching that had just ended in turning the princess’s head towards ideas of war (to which she was already only too inclined), and she was afraid that Lenet might again destroy all the scaffolding of her laboriously constructed edifice.
When the council had gathered, Madame de Tourville explained her plan, which was secretly to fetch the dukes and their army; to obtain, either by force or by persuasion, a certain number of boats, and to enter Bordeaux down the river, amid cries of: ‘Join us, people of Bordeaux! Long live Condé! No to Mazarin!’
So the princess’s entry would become a veritable triumph, and Madame de Tourville, by a roundabout way, returned to her famous plan of taking Bordeaux by force and so making the queen afraid of an army whose first outing would be such a brilliant show of strength.
Lenet nodded in approval of everything, interrupting Madame de Tourville with admiring exclamations, then, when she had finished describing her plan, he said: ‘That’s magnificent, Madame! Now, would you kindly sum it up for us.’
‘That’s easy and can be done in two words,’ said the good woman in triumph, becoming excited by her own telling. ‘Amid a hail of shot, to the sound of bells and the popular cries of fury or of adoration, weak women will be seen courageously pursuing their generous mission. A child will be seen in the arms of his mother begging the parliament for its protection. This touching spectacle will not fail to move the fiercest souls. And so we shall win: partly by force, partly by the justice of our cause – which is, I think, the aim of Her Highness the princess.’
The summary was even more of a success than the speech: the princess applauded. Claire, increasingly pricked by the desire to be appointed negotiator on the Ile Saint-Georges, applauded. The captain of the guards, whose role in life was to seek for great feats of swordsmanship, applauded. And, finally, Lenet did more than applaud: he took Madame de Tourville’s hand and exclaimed, pressing it with more respect than feeling: ‘Did I not know, Madame, how great is your prudence and how profoundly you understand the great civic and military question that concerns us – whether by instinct or through study, I do not know or care – I should surely be persuaded at this hour and bow before the most useful counsellor that Her Highness could ever find…’
‘Isn’t that right, Lenet?’ said the princess. ‘Isn’t this a fine thing! That was my opinion, too. Come now, Vialas, quickly, let us give the Duke d’Enghien the little sword that I had made for him and dress him in his helmet and armour.’
‘Yes, do that, Vialas. But just one word, first, if you please, Madame,’ said Lenet, while Madame de Tourville, at first puffed up with pride, was starting to deflate, being as she was well acquainted with Lenet’s sly designs where she was concerned.
‘Yes?’ said the princess. ‘Come on, what more is there?’
‘Nothing, Madame, certainly not, because never was anything presented to us more in harmony with the character of a princess like yourself, and such an opinion could only possibly come from your family.’
These words produced a new puffing up of Madame de Tourville and brought a smile to the lips of the princess, who was starting to raise an eyebrow.
‘But, Madame,’ Lenet went on, his eyes following the effect of this terrible but on the face of his arch-enemy, ‘while adopting this plan, the only suitable one, I shall not even say without repugnance, but with enthusiasm, I should like to suggest a slight modification to it.’
Madame de Tourville swung round, stiff, dry and ready to defend herself. The princess’s eyebrow rose again.
Lenet bowed and made a gesture showing that he was asking for permission to go on.
‘The sound of bells, the adoring cries of the people,’ he said, ‘fill me in advance with a joy greater than I can express. But I am not as happy as I should like to be with the hail of shots that Madame mentioned.’
Madame de Tourville pulled herself up, adopting a martial pose. Lenet bowed even deeper and continued, lowering his voice by half a tone: ‘Certainly, it would be fine to see a woman and her child calm in the midst of this tempest that ordinarily frightens even men. But I would be afraid that one of those musket balls, striking blindly as brutal and unintelligent things are liable to do, might serve the cause of Monsieur de Mazarin against us and spoil our plan which is otherwise so magnificent. My opinion, as Madame de Tourville said with such eloquence, is that people should see the young prince and his noble mother opening a way to the Parliament, but by supplication, not by force of arms. In the end, I think it would be finer to soften the fiercest minds in this way than by other means to defeat the strongest hearts. Finally, I think that one of these two courses offers infinitely better chances of success than the other, and that the princess’s aim, above all, is to enter Bordeaux. And I might say that nothing is less certain than that she will do so if we engage in battle.’
‘You see,’ Madame de Tourville sourly, ‘this gentleman, as usual, is going to demolish my plan point by point and quietly suggest one of his own devising in its place.’
‘I! The most devoted of your admirers!’ Lenet exclaimed, while the princess was reassuring Madame de Tourville with a smile and a glance. ‘No, no, a thousand times no! But I have learned that an officer of His Majesty’s, called Monsieur Dalvimar, has entered the town coming from Blaye, and that his mission is to rouse the aldermen and the people against Her Highness. And I may add that if Monsieur de Mazarin can end the war in one fell swoop, he will do so. This is why I fear the hail of shots that Madame de Tourville mentioned just now – and among those shots, perhaps even more the intelligent musket balls than the brutal and unreasoning ones.’
This last remark by Lenet seemed to have given the princess pause for thought.
‘You always know everything, don’t you, Monsieur Lenet,’ replied Madame de Tourville, in a voice trembling with anger.
‘A good, hot skirmish would have been a fine thing, even so,’ said the captain of the guard, drawing himself up and lunging forward as he might have done in a fencing school – an old soldier who believed in force and who would have gained a great deal of stature in the event of a battle.
Lenet trod on his foot while giving him the most friendly smile.
‘Yes, Captain,’ he said. ‘But you do agree that the Duke d’Enghien is necessary to our cause and that if he were to be killed or captured, the real general-in-chief of the princes’
army would be captured or killed?’
The captain of the guard, who knew that this high-sounding title of general-in-chief, apparently bestowed on a seven-year-old prince, in reality made him the first brigadier in the army, realized that he had done something foolish and gave up his proposal, giving whole-hearted support to Lenet.
Meanwhile, Madame de Tourville had gone over to the princess and said something to her in a whisper. Lenet saw that there would be a fresh battle to fight. And, so indeed, turning back to him, Her Highness said in an irritated voice: ‘Nonetheless, it is strange to put so much relentless fury into undoing something that was so well put together.’
‘Your Highness is wrong,’ said Lenet. ‘Never have I put relentless fury into the advice that I have had the honour to give Your Highness, and if I unmake, it is only in order to remake. If, despite the reasons that I have had the honour to put before you, Your Highness still wishes to have yourself killed together with your son, then you are the mistress, and we shall be killed at your side. This is a simple matter, and the first valet in your household or the least bumpkin in the town would do the same. But if we wish to succeed, despite Mazarin, despite the queen, despite the parliaments, despite Mademoiselle Nanon de Lartigues, and, finally, despite all the disadvantages that inevitably attach to the weakness of our position, this, I believe, is what we must do…’
‘Monsieur!’ Madame de Tourville cried, seizing on Lenet’s last sentence. ‘Monsieur, there is no weakness where you have the name of Condé on the one hand, and two thousand soldiers of Rocroi, Nordlingen and Lens1 on the other. And if, despite that, there is weakness, then we are lost in any event, and it will not be your plan, however splendid that might be, that will save us.’
‘I have read,’ Lenet replied calmly, savouring in advance the effect that he was about to produce on the princess, who was listening closely, despite herself. ‘I have read, Madame, that the widow of one of the most illustrious Romans under Tiberius, the generous Agrippina, whose husband Germanicus had been unjustly taken from her, a princess who could have raised at will an army seething at the memory of the dead general, preferred to enter Brindisi alone, to cross Puglia alone, dressed in widow’s weeds and holding a child by each hand, and so march along, pale, her eyes red with tears, her head bowed, while the children sobbed and looked imploringly… And that, seeing this, all those present, of whom there were more than two million between Brindisi and Rome, burst into tears, overflowed with curses and shouted out threats, and that this woman’s cause was won not only in Rome but throughout Italy;2 not only for her contemporaries, but for posterity, because she found not a hint of resistance to her tears and sighs, while if she had offered lances, she would have seen pikes against them, and swords against swords. I think that there is much resemblance between Your Highness and Agrippina, as there is between the prince and Germanicus – and, finally, between Piso, the minister who was a persecutor and a poisoner, and Monsieur de Mazarin. Well, since the resemblance is identical and the situation comparable, I suggest that we should follow the same course, because in my view it is impossible that what succeeded so well in one age should not succeed in another…’
A smile of approval spread across the princess’s face and assured Lenet that his speech had succeeded. Madame de Tourville took refuge in a corner of the room, pulling a veil across her face like an antique statue. Madame de Cambes, who had found a friend in Lenet, returned the support that he had given her by nodding her head, the captain wept like a military tribune, and the little Duke d’Enghien cried: ‘Mummy, will you hold my hand and dress me in mourning?’
‘Yes, Son,’ the princess replied. ‘Lenet, you know that I have always intended to present myself to the people of Bordeaux dressed in black…’
‘All the more so,’ said Madame de Cambes, ‘since black is so becoming to Your Highness.’
‘Hush, dear girl!’ said the princess. ‘Madame de Tourville will proclaim it loudly enough without you even having to whisper it.’
The programme for the entry into Bordeaux was thus drawn up as Lenet had suggested. The ladies of the escort were ordered to get ready, and the young prince was dressed in a coat of white baize decked with black and silver braid, and a hat covered with black and white feathers.
As for the princess, she dressed in black with no jewellery, affecting the greatest possible simplicity so as to resemble Agrippina, on whom she had decided to model herself on all points.
Lenet, the director of the event, rushed around everywhere to ensure a brilliant success. The house where he lived, in a little town two leagues from Bordeaux, was constantly full of supporters of the princess, who, before getting her to enter Bordeaux, wanted to find out what kind of entry would be most acceptable to her. Lenet, like a modern theatrical director, advised them on flowers, cheers and bells; then, wanting to give some recognition to the warlike Madame de Tourville, suggested a few cannon shots.
On the following day, 31 May, at the invitation of the parliament of Bordeaux, the princess set out. In fact, a certain Lavie, advocate general to the parliament and a fanatical supporter of Mazarin, had ordered the gates to be closed two days earlier to stop the princess from being welcomed in if she should present herself; however, at the same time, the supporters of the Condés had acted, and that same morning, excited by them, the crowd had assembled to cries of: ‘Long live the princess! Long live the Duke d’Enghien!’, before breaking down the gates with axes, so that in the end nothing stood in the way of the famous entry into Bordeaux, which thus took on the appearance of a veritable triumph. In addition to which, observers could see the two events as reflecting the two leaders whose supporters divided the town, since Lavie received advice directly from the Duke d’Epernon, and the populace had its leaders advised by Lenet.
Hardly had the princess got through the gate than the scene, which had long been prepared, took place on a massive scale. A military salute was given by the ships that were in the harbour, and the town’s cannon replied. Flowers fell from the windows or covered the way in garlands, so that the streets were carpeted with them and the air perfumed.3 Cries of welcome were chanted by thirty thousand enthusiasts of all ages and both sexes, whose support grew with the interest inspired by the princess and her son, and the hatred that they felt for Mazarin.
Moreover, the little Duke d’Enghien was the most accomplished actor on the whole of this stage. The princess had decided not to lead him by the hand for fear of tiring him or having him smothered by roses, so he was carried by one of his equerries, with the result that his hands were free to blow kisses to right and left, and to doff his plumed hat gracefully.
The people of Bordeaux are easily intoxicated: the women were moved to frenzied adoration of this lovely child who wept so charmingly, and old magistrates were touched by the little orator’s words when he told them: ‘Gentlemen, be a father to me, since the cardinal has taken mine away.’
The supporters of the minister tried in vain to put up some opposition: fists, stones and even halberds advised them to be cautious. They had to leave the field to the victors.
Meanwhile, Madame de Cambes, pale and serious, walking behind the princess, attracted her own share of attention. She did not consider such glory without it occurring to her painfully that today’s success might make them forget yesterday’s resolution. So while she was on the road, jostled by admirers, trampled by the crowd, inundated with flowers and respectful caresses and trembling at the idea of being carried in triumph (as some were now threatening to do with the princess, the Duke d’Enghien and their attendants), seeing Lenet, who, noticing her difficulty, offered her his hand to get into his carriage, she said, replying to his own thoughts: ‘Ah, you are a happy man, Monsieur Lenet: you make your opinions prevail in everything, and your advice is always followed. It is true,’ she added, ‘that it is good advice and to our benefit…’
‘It seems to me,’ Lenet said, ‘that you have nothing to complain about, Madame, and that the one piece of advice
that you gave was approved.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Isn’t it agreed that you should try to win us the Ile Saint-Georges?’
‘Yes, but when shall I be allowed to start my campaign?’
‘As soon as tomorrow, if you promise me that you will fail.’
‘Have no fear: I am only worried that I might meet your expectations in that respect.’
‘So much the better.’
‘I don’t quite understand…’
‘We need the Ile Saint-Georges to resist if we are to obtain our two dukes and their army from the people of Bordeaux. The dukes and the army, which, I must say, even though my opinion on this point comes close to that of Madame de Tourville, appear to me to be entirely necessary to us in our present circumstances.’
‘Certainly,’ Claire replied. ‘But, although I do not have Madame de Tourville’s understanding of the arts of war, it seems to me that one does not attack a place without first requiring it to yield.’
‘That is quite right.’
‘So we shall be sending an emissary to the Ile Saint-Georges?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Well, I ask that I may be that emissary.’
Lenet’s eyes widened in surprise.
‘You!’ he said. ‘You? But have all our ladies become amazons, then?’
‘Allow me this whim, my dear Lenet.’
‘You are right. The worst thing that can happen, after all, is for you to capture Saint-Georges.’
‘So is it agreed?’
‘Yes.’
‘But promise me one thing.’
‘What is that?’
‘That no one shall know the name or the nature of the emissary whom you have chosen, unless that emissary is successful.’
‘Agreed,’ said Lenet, offering Madame de Cambes his hand.
‘When shall I leave?’
‘When you like.’