Francesca Carrara/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
"The future, that sweet world which is hope's own,
Lay fair before."Anon.
France now became the land of promise to the Carraras; their youthful connexion with the nieces of Cardinal Mazarin might have encouraged the most ambitious hopes; but they knew too little of the world to be worldly: Guido dwelt only on the thought that he should again see Marie Mancini; and Francesca remembered that it was so much nearer England. Her expectations were, however, of a more subdued kind—the very depth of a woman's affection casts its own shadow, and love and fear are with her twin-born. With a natural sensitiveness, she exaggerated dangers, and with natural timidity mistrusted the effects of absence. Months had passed away, and she had heard nothing of Evelyn. Alas! how many old stories had she been told of change and falsehood! But her spirit was firm as gentle. She had been from childhood less her grandfather's favourite than her cousin, and from the very earliest age all the household cares had fallen to her share. Thus, habits of thought and activity were forced upon her; she soon acquired that self-reliance which exertion ever brings; and at the age of seventeen she united a sweet seriousness, a mild energy, with all the guileless simplicity of youth.
Impassioned and imaginative, living in an ideal world, little broken in upon by the small sacrifices of daily life, Guido was far less fitted for the ordinary struggle of existence; he possessed genius in the highest sense of the word—inherent, spiritual, and creative. In hand, heart, and mind, he was alike a poet. But, alas! those who are heirs of the future, destined to fill the earth with the immortal and the beautiful, what is their share in the present? the sad and the weary path—the bowed-down and broken heart! Look at the golden list of the few who have left behind them the bright picture, the god-like statue, the inspired scroll, to whom we yet owe—ay, and now pay our debt of gratitude—what was each life but a long and terrible sacrifice to futurity? But the young look to the goal, not to the road; and well it is for them so to do; they would never reach it but for such onward gaze.
Their few arrangements were soon made, hastened by a letter from Henrietta, now Duchesse de Mercœur; and they found themselves in possession of a degree of wealth, which, however moderate, was sufficient to preclude anything like dependence. It was a bright morning when they embarked at the port of Leghorn. The blue sea spread far away, till lost, as it were, in light; the shore lay glittering behind, and the sunshine seemed to fall like a blessing around. The buoyant atmosphere gives its own lightness to the spirits; and our young voyagers felt as if the beautiful day were the augury of the future.
Yet, at that very time the power of their expected patron seemed on the verge of final overthrow. Cardinal Mazarin had, for the second time, been forced into exile by the Fronde, and Paris was in a state of equal confusion and excitement—excitement, that peculiarly Parisian word. The disturbance had commenced, like those of England, in the refusal of the parliament to sanction an obnoxious tax; but here all resemblance ended. The position of the two countries was, indeed, entirely opposite. In the English parliament the tax was refused on great and general principles; in the French, in consequence of its immediate pressure and hardship. In France, the parliament soon became a mere engine in the hands of a few high-born and ambitious men, who had nothing in common with its interests, which were those of the people. In England, the House of Commons was a powerful body, sufficing to itself, and whose members had common cause in the privileges for which they contended. The truth is, our island had far preceded her Gallic neighbour in knowledge and liberality. The great body of Englishmen were far better educated than their compeers on the other side the channel. The Reformation had thrown open the rich extent of classic literature; the age had been fertile in those great men who give their own impetus to the national mind: and habits of religious led also to political discussion. Moreover, one greatest advantage in all questions of government, the spring of action was no vain love of change, but a just desire of confirming olden privileges. The claimants went back upon what they believed to be their rights. Perhaps a more able and intelligent body of men were never collected together—strong in conviction and ability—than that which presented the memorable petition of rights.
But that hope is the most enduring of mortal feelings, what profound discouragement would it throw on the noblest and most promising efforts of humanity, to think that men so intellectual and so upright could be swayed, in the long run, by the thirst of dominion; and, carried away from all sober sense by the wildest and most fanatic enthusiasm, that a spirit of fierce and narrow religious persecution should be one of the chief legacies which they bequeathed to posterity!
But neither with the just sense of right with which our struggle was commenced, nor with the mad fanaticism with which it continued, had the division of the Fronde anything in common. The parliament refused to register the royal edict because the tax was a present grievance, a hardship immediately felt. But they had not that only material for resistance—a strong and rising middle class—a class whose prosperity must ever grow out of commerce. Their opposition became armed rebellion, because upheld and stimulated by those to whom they gave all they wanted—a sanction and a name.
The wars of La Fronde were in reality the struggle of Cardinal de Retz for the post of Cardinal Mazarin. The Coadjutor—for so he was then entitled—was the extraordinary man of his time. Disliking the clerical profession, which his family obliged him to adopt, he was as unprincipled as those necessarily must be upon whom hypocrisy is forced. It is difficult to imagine a more thoroughly bad person. Profligate, selfish, false, and profane, his moral character had but one excuse—that of circumstance. His hypocrisy was matter of necessity, and his faults were those of his day; but his talents—perhaps the surest mark of talents—were eminently suited to the times which called them forth. Ready-witted, he had a resource for every emergency; and whatever was his purpose, he perceived intuitively the best methods of effecting it. He was both eloquent and persuasive, and few men ever better understood the delicate science of flattery. A temper originally violent was kept under by the strong curb of interest; though what it naturally was when unchecked by the all-potent fear—that of consequences—may be inferred by an anecdote.
The Princess de Guimenée deserted Paris on the first breaking out of the disturbances. De Retz's connexion with her had been of long continuance; her timidity savoured, therefore, of treachery. On her return, he himself states, "I was so transported with rage, that I caught her by the throat!"
What must have been his self-control, when, amid all the thwarting and vexatious affairs by which he was surrounded, in scarce a single instance did passion hurry him beyond the bounds of prudence! La Fronde was equally of his fomenting and his continuing. With the parliament for his pretext, and some prince of the blood for his puppet, he twice drove his rival into exile, governed a violent party, and made his way to power by the sole force of his own genius.
Nothing more sensibly shows the veneration and the obedience of the French for the royal authority, than that a foreigner, obnoxious to all ranks, and mediocre in talent, was supported by it against all opposition. Well might De Retz exclaim, "Give me but the king on my side for a single day!" Another striking difference between the two countries was the nullity of female influence in the one, and its extreme importance in the other. True that in London a brewer's wife headed a godly company of her sex, and presented a petition against popery, and that Mr. Pym commended their anxiety, and voted them the thanks of the house. True, also, that in Scotland the old women showed much activity in pelting the ungodly with the stools whereon they sat at meeting. But these absurdities were of no real consequence. In France the dames of La Fronde were equally active with its cavaliers; every intrigue passed through their hands, and the Duchesse de Longueville's part in the drama was quite as effective as that of the Prince of Condé, her brother. The results of this feminine interference were inevitable—vacillation, absurdity, and profligacy. The northern and southern hemispheres are not more divided than those allotted to man and woman—public and private life.
There is no period of history which records the authority of the gentler sex without also recording its injurious effects. Leaving out the darker shades of the picture, are not impulse and sentiment the two mainsprings of all female action? and can aught be more mischievous in matters of politics or business? A king, the history of whose youth is that of a few insipid flirtations—a queen, weak, bigoted, and obstinate—a court rent by petty factions—a detested minister—a capital in a state of insurrection, and suffering both from inundation and famine;—such was the country, and such the state of affairs, where our young Italians expected to find all the rainbow dreamings of youth and hope realised. Something of this, however, they heard in the progress of their voyage, during which their principal companion was a little French painter called Bournonville.
If self-content form happiness, Corregio Bournonville was the happiest of men. Perfectly convinced that miniature-painting was the most important pursuit in life, he was equally persuaded that he was the finest miniature-painter in the world. Character he had none; for he was simple as a child—experience taught him nothing, being one of those in whom the faculty of comprehension is utterly wanting, His only remaining characteristic was an extravagant deference to rank, mingled, too, with an odd sort of patronage. "I to whom the court will owe its immortality!" was with him a common phrase. For hours he would dilate, with an enthusiasm only broken in upon by emotion, how he had relieved the monotony of colouring in Anne of Austria's picture (taken during the second year of her widowhood, when she wore a suit of entire grey silk) by painting her as Juno, and introducing a peacock. He was touched even to tears when he mentioned that her majesty graciously condescended to resume the use of powder for that occasion expressly, she not having worn it since the death of the king. "Yes, her grace had her hair frizzed and powdered entirely on my account!" Neither was he less animated in describing the young monarch, whom he had represented as Jupiter, dressed in purple velvet broidered in gold, a flaxen periwig floating over his shoulders, an eagle by his side, and a thunderbolt in his hand.
Guido's ideas of these personifications were somewhat at variance with Monsieur Corregio Bournonville's; but, naturally shy and silent, he was little inclined to dispute the point; and, long before the voyage was over, they were the best possible friends. The ignorance of the young Italians was their best recommendation; it gave the Frenchman an agreeable feeling of superiority, and, by a very ordinary process, he liked them because he was useful to them. Thus, when on their arrival in France, they found that Mazarin had a second time been forced into exile by the Fronde, he insisted on their making his house at least their temporary home. Dreary, indeed, was their journey to Paris; want and desolation appalled them on every side. In addition to the distress occasioned by intestine troubles, the severity of the season, and the scarcity of provisions, the Seine had recently overflowed its banks, and the horrors of inundation were added to those of war and famine. Groups of shivering wretches sat by the road-side, and more than one unburied corpse showed what inroads distress had made on humanity. So strongly is sympathy with the dead implanted in our nature, that when, those last sad offices of affection and decency are neglected, life indeed is in its last despair.
It was midday when they arrived in Paris; and though Bournonville's house was near the Barrier de Sergens, they saw enough to show them what excitement prevailed through the city. Groups of citizens (armed apparently with the heir-looms of the wars of the league, so heavy were some of the two-handled swords, and so antiquated were the long and lumbering pikes) were scattered round; and if they were to be as violent in action as they were in gesture and discourse, the future might well be matter of apprehension. But Bournonville, who had witnessed the day of the barricades in the first La Fronde, looked on with great composure. "They will disperse," said he, "about four o'clock; nos bons bourgeois ne s'en desheureront jamais. They must go home to their soup, coúte qui coúte."
A shrill sound of childish voices rose upon the air; and whether from the folly or the carelessness of their parents, some of the clamourers actually carried daggers; and what appeared to them a holyday, had its enjoyment increased by a sort of self-importance. Last of all, crying "Point de Mazarin!" with the whole power of his voice, and dragging after him a huge spear, whose weight greatly impeded his progress, came a boy of some five or six years old. Alas! the young patriot was soon taught a wholesome lesson of submission to the powers that be; for from. a corner-house out came his mother, a slight, active, viragoish-looking woman. She seized the juvenile Gracchus, with a sharp question of "Petit vaurien! what do you do in the streets?" and having duly enforced her words with a box on the ear, dragged the child home, still tenaciously clinging to his spear.
The travellers were welcomed to Bournonville's house by the gouvernante Madelon, a bustling, goodnatured Normande, whose pyramidal white cap and large gold ear-rings were the delight of her heart; next came the house, and after that her master;—all objects of a most deep and unfeigned attachment.
Bournonville's first step was to ask Madelon a few questions, and then hurry to his painting-room. "Everything has changed since I left, and I must change everything too. The beauties of La Fronde will soon ask of me chains for posterity, and they must not encounter their rivals."
The first objects that caught the Italians' attention were portraits of Henriette and Marie Mancini.
"How she is improved!" exclaimed Guido, gazing on the face of the last.
Francesca almost unconsciously asked herself how much of this improvement might be owing to the courtly flattery of the painter.
Bournonville allowed them no time for remark. Hastily he turned their faces to the wall, and placed before them two others—one whose large melancholy blue eyes and languid fairness bespoke the Duchesse de Longueville, while the other had the perfect features and dark oriental orbs of Mademoiselle de Chevreuse. These two heroines of La Fronde being placed in the most conspicuous lights, the artist proceeded to other arrangements.
"The King may remain," muttered he, brushing the dust from the periwig of the royal Jupiter; "the Queen is just as well in the shade—this sketch of Mademoiselle will partially hide her. Now, a few nobodies and messieurs of La Fronde may come as soon as they please. And so, my children, for some dinner!" And the man who had just been engaged in the most time-serving neglect of former, and a most cringing anticipation of new patrons, became forthwith the kind and hospitable host of strangers who had no claim upon him beyond their own isolated situation. Consistency is a human word, but it certainly expresses nothing human.