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Stray Pearls

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> Stray Pearls



STRAY PEARLS

MEMOIRS OF MARGARET DE RIBAUMONT

VISCOUNTESS OF BELLAISE





PREFACE



No one can be more aware than the author that the construction of
this tale is defective. The state of French society, and the strange
scenes of the Fronde, beguiled me into a tale which has become rather
a family record than a novel.

Formerly the Muse of the historical romance was an independent and
arbitrary personage, who could compress time, resuscitate the dead,
give mighty deeds to imaginary heroes, exchange substitutes for
popular martyrs on the scaffold, and make the most stubborn facts
subservient to her purpose. Indeed, her most favoured son boldly
asserted her right to bend time and place to her purpose, and to make
the interest and effectiveness of her work the paramount object. But
critics have lashed her out of these erratic ways, and she is now
become the meek hand maid of Clio, creeping obediently in the track
of the greater Muse, and never venturing on more than colouring and
working up the grand outlines that her mistress has left undefined.
Thus, in the present tale, though it would have been far more
convenient not to have spread the story over such a length of time,
and to have made the catastrophe depend upon the heroes and heroines,
instead of keeping them mere ineffective spectators, or only engaged
in imaginary adventures for which a precedent can be found, it has
been necessary to stretch out their narrative, so as to be at least
consistent with the real history, at the entire sacrifice of the
plot. And it may be feared that thus the story may partake of the
confusion that really reigned over the tangled thread of events.
There is no portion of history better illustrated by memoirs of the
actors therein than is the Fronde; but, perhaps, for that very reason
none so confusing.

Perhaps it may be an assistance to the reader to lay out the bare
historical outline like a map, showing to what incidents the memoirs
of the Sisters of Ribaumont have to conform themselves.

When Henry IV. succeeded in obtaining the throne of France, he found
the feudal nobility depressed by the long civil war, and his
exchequer exhausted. He and his minister Sully returned to the
policy of Louis XI., by which the nobles were to be kept down and
prevented from threatening the royal power. This was seldom done by
violence, but by giving them employment in the Army and Court,
attaching them to the person of the King, and giving them offices
with pensions attached to them.

The whole cost of these pensions and all the other expenses of
Government fell on the townspeople and peasantry, since the clergy
and the nobles to all generations were exempt from taxation. The
trade and all the resources of the country were taking such a spring
of recovery since the country had been at peace, and the persecution
of the Huguenots had ceased, that at first the taxation provoked few
murmurs. The resources of the Crown were further augmented by
permitting almost all magistrates and persons who held public offices
to secure the succession to their sons on the payment of a tariff
called LA PAULETTE, from the magistrate who invented it.

In the next reign, however, an effort was made to secure greater
equality of burthens. On the meeting of the States-General--the only
popular assembly possessed by France--Louis XIII., however, after
hearing the complaints, and promising to consider them, shut the
doors against the deputies, made no further answer, and dismissed
them to their houses without the slightest redress. The Assembly was
never to meet again till the day of reckoning for all, a hundred and
seventy years later.

Under the mighty hand of Cardinal Richelieu the nobles were still
more effectually crushed, and the great course of foreign war begun,
which lasted, with short intervals, for a century. The great man
died, and so did his feeble master; and his policy, both at home and
abroad, was inherited by his pupil Giulio Mazarini, while the regency
for the child, Louis XIV., devolved on his mother, Anne of Austria--a
pious and well-meaning, but proud and ignorant, Spanish Princess--who
pinned her faith upon Mazarin with helpless and exclusive devotion,
believing him the only pilot who could steer her vessel through
troublous waters.

But what France had ill brooked from the high-handed son of her
ancient nobility was intolerable from a low-born Italian, of graceful
but insinuating manners. Moreover, the war increased the burthens of
the country, and, in the minority of the King, a stand was made at
last.

The last semblance of popular institutions existed in the Parliaments
of this was the old feudal Council of the Counts of Paris, consisting
of the temporal and spiritual peers of the original county, who had
the right to advise with their chief, and to try the causes
concerning themselves. The immediate vassals of the King had a right
to sit there, and were called Paris De France, in distinction from
the other nobles who only had seats in the Parliament in whose
province their lands might lie. To these St. Louis, in his anxiety
to repress lawlessness, had added a certain number of trained lawyers
and magistrates; and these were the working members of these
Parliaments, which were in general merely courts of justice for civil
and criminal causes. The nobles only attended on occasions of
unusual interest. Moreover, a law or edict of the King became valid
on being registered by a Parliament. It was a moot question whether
the Parliament had the power to baffle the King by refusing to
register an edict, and Henry IV. had avoided a refusal from the
Parliament of Paris, by getting his edict of toleration for the
Huguenots registered at Nantes.

The peculiarly oppressive house-tax, with four more imposts proposed
in 1648, gave the Parliament of Paris the opportunity of trying to
make an effectual resistance by refusing the registration. They were
backed by the municipal government of the city at the Hotel de Ville,
and encouraged by the Coadjutor of the infirm old Archbishop of
Paris, namely, his nephew, Paul de Gondi, titular Bishop of Corinth
in partibus infidelium, a younger son of the Duke of Retz, an Italian
family introduced by Catherince de Medici. There seemed to be a hope
that the nobility, angered at their own systematic depression, and by
Mazarin's ascendency, might make common cause with the Parliament and
establish some effectual check to the advances of the Crown. This
was the origin of the party called the Fronde, because the speakers
launched their speeches at one another as boys fling stones from a
sling (fronde) in the streets.

The Queen-Regent was enraged through all her despotic Spanish
haughtiness at such resistance. She tried to step in by the arrest
of the foremost members of the Opposition, but failed, and only
provoked violent tumults. The young Prince of Conde, coming home
from Germany flushed with victory, hated Mazarin extremely, but his
pride as a Prince of the Blood, and his private animosities impelled
him to take up the cause of the Queen. She conveyed her son secretly
from Paris, and the city was in a state of siege for several months.
However, the execution of Charles I. in England alarmed the Queen on
the one hand, and the Parliament on the other as to the consequences
of a rebellion, provisions began to run short, and a vague hollow
peace was made in the March of 1649.

Conde now became intolerably overbearing, insulted every one, and so
much offended the Queen and Mazarin that they caused him, his
brother, and the Duke of Bouillon, to be arrested and imprisoned at
Vincennes. His wife, though a cruelly-neglected woman whom he had
never loved, did her utmost to deliver him, repaired to Bordeaux, and
gained over the Parliament there, so that she held out four months
against the Queen. Turenne, brother to Bouillon, and as great a
general as Conde, obtained the aid of Spaniards, and the Coadjutor
prevailed on the King's uncle, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, to represent
that the Queen must give way, release the Princes, part with Mazarin,
and even promise to convoke the States-General. Anne still, however,
corresponded with the Cardinal, and was directed by him in
everything. Distrust and dissension soon broke out, Conde and the
Coadjutor quarrelled violently, and the royal promises made to both
Princes and Parliament were eluded by the King, at fourteen, being
declared to have attained his majority, and thus that all engagements
made in his name became void.

Conde went of to Guienne and raised an army; Mazirin returned to the
Queen; Paris shut its gates and declared Mazarin an outlaw. The
Coadjutor (now become Cardinal de Retz) vainly tried to stir up the
Duke of Orleans to take a manly part and mediate between the parties;
but being much afraid of his own appanage, the city of Orleans, being
occupied by either army, Gaston sent his daughter to take the charge
of it, as she effectually did--but she was far from neutrality, being
deluded by a hope that Conde would divorce his poor faithful wife to
marry her. Turenne, on his brother's release, had made his peace
with the Court, and commanded the royal army. War and havoc raged
outside Paris; within the partisans of the Princes stirred the
populace to endeavour to intimidate the Parliament and municipality
into taking their part. Their chief leader throughout was the Duke
of Beaufort, a younger son of the Duke of Vendome, the child of
Gabrille d'Estrees. He inherited his grandmother's beauty and his
grandfather's charm of manner; he was the darling of the populace of
Paris, and led them, in an aimless sort of way, whether there was
mischief to be done; and the violence and tumult of this latter
Fronde was far worse than those of the first.

A terrible battle in the Faubourg St. Antoine broke Conde's force,
and the remnant was only saved by Mademoiselle's insisting on their
being allowed to pass through Paris. After one ungrateful attempt to
terrify the magistrates into espousing his cause and standing a siege
on his behalf, Conde quitted Paris, and soon after fell ill of a
violent fever.

His party melted away. Mazarin saw that tranquillity might be
restored if he quitted France for a time. The King proclaimed an
amnesty, but with considerable exceptions and no relaxation of his
power; and these terms the Parliament, weary of anarchy, and finding
the nobles had cared merely for their personal hatreds, not for the
public good, were forced to accept.

Conde, on his recovery, left France, and for a time fought against
his country in the ranks of the Spaniards. Beaufort died bravely
fighting against the Turks at Cyprus. Cardinal de Retz was
imprisoned, and Mademoiselle had to retire from Court, while other
less distinguished persons had to undergo the punishment for their
resistance, though, to the credit of the Court party be it spoken,
there were no executions, only imprisonments; and in after years the
Fronde was treated as a brief frenzy, and forgotten.

Perhaps it may be well to explain that Mademoiselle was Anne
Genevieve de Bourbon, daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, by his
first wife, the heiress of the old Bourbon branch of Montpensier.
She was the greatest heiress in France, and an exceedingly vain and
eccentric person, aged twenty-three at the beginning of the Fronde.

It only remains to say that I have no definite authority for
introducing such a character as that of Clement Darpent, but it is
well known that there was a strong under-current of upright, honest,
and highly-cultivated men among the bourgeoisie and magistrates, and
that it seemed to me quite possible that in the first Fronde, when
the Parliament were endeavouring to make a stand for a just right,
and hoping to obtain further hopes and schemes, and, acting on higher
and purer principles than those around him, be universally
misunderstood and suspected.


C. M. YONGE.





CONTENTS



CHAPTER I. WHITEHALL BEFORE THE COBWEBS

CHAPTER II. A LITTLE MUTUAL AVERSION

CHAPTER III. CELADON AND CHLOE

CHAPTER IV. THE SALON BLEU

CHAPTER V. IN GARRISON

CHAPTER VI. VICTORY DEARLY BOUGHT

CHAPTER VII. WIDOW AND WIFE

CHAPTER VIII. MARGUERITE TO THE RESCUE

CHAPTER IX. THE FIREBAND OF THE BOCAGE

CHAPTER X. OLD THREADS TAKEN UP

CHAPTER XI. THE TWO QUEENS

CHAPTER XII. CAVALIERS IN EXILE

CHAPTER XIII. MADEMOISELLE'S TOILETTE

CHAPTER XIV. COURT APPOINTMENTS

CHAPTER XV. A STRANGE THANKGIVING DAY

CHAPTER XVI. THE BARRICADES

CHAPTER XVII. A PATIENT GRISEL

CHAPTER XVIII. TWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILL

CHAPTER XIX. INSIDE PARIS (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XX. CONDOLENCE (By Margaret)

CHAPTER XXI. ST. MARGARET AND THE DRAGON

CHAPTER XXII. ST. MARGARET AND THE DRAGON (By Annora)

CHAPTER XXIII. THE LION AND THE MOUSE

CHAPTER XXIV. FAMILY HONOUR

CHAPTER XXV. THE HAGUE

CHAPTER XXVI. HUNKERSLUST

CHAPTER XXVII. THE EXPEDIENT (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BOEUF GRAS (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXIX. MADAME'S OPPORTUNITY (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXX. THE NEW MAID OF ORLEAN (Margaret's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXXI. PORTE ST. ANTOINE (Margaret's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXXII. ESCAPE (Annora's Narrative)

CHAPTER XXXIII. BRIDAL PEARLS

CHAPTER XXXIV. ANNORA'S HOME





STRAY PEARLS

MEMOIRS OF MARGARET DE RIBAUMONT

VISCOUNTESS OF BELLAISE





CHAPTER I.

WHITEHALL BEFORE THE COBWEBS.



I have long promised you, my dear grandchildren, to arrange my
recollections of the eventful years that even your father can hardly
remember. I shall be glad thus to draw closer the bonds between
ourselves and the English kindred, whom I love so heartily, though I
may never hope to see them in this world, far less the dear old home
where I grew up.

For, as perhaps you have forgotten, I am an English woman by birth,
having first seen the light at Walwyn House, in Dorsetshire. One
brother had preceded me--my dear Eustace--and another brother,
Berenger, and my little sister, Annora, followed me.

Our family had property both in England and in Picardy, and it was
while attending to some business connected with the French estate
that my father had fallen in love with a beautiful young widow,
Madame la Baronne de Solivet (nee Cheverny), and had brought her
home, in spite of the opposition of her relations. I cannot tell
whether she were warmly welcomed at Walwyn Court by any one but the
dear beautiful grandmother, a Frenchwoman herself, who was delighted
again to hear her mother tongue, although she had suffered much among
the Huguenots in her youth, when her husband was left for dead on the
S. Barthelemi.

He, my grandfather, had long been dead, but I perfectly remember her.
She used to give me a sugar-cake when I said 'Bon soir, bonne maman,'
with the right accent, and no one made sugar-cake like hers. She
always wore at her girdle a string of little yellow shells, which she
desired to have buried with her. We children were never weary of
hearing how they had been the only traces of her or of her daughter
that her husband could find, when he came to the ruined city.

I could fill this book with her stories, but I must not linger over
them; and indeed I heard no more after I was eight years old. Until
that time my brother and I were left under her charge in the country,
while my father and mother were at court. My mother was one of the
Ladies of the Bedchamber of Queen Henrietta Maria, who had been
enchanted to find in her a countrywoman, and of the same faith. I
was likewise bred up in their Church, my mother having obtained the
consent of my father, during a dangerous illness that followed my
birth, but the other children were all brought up as Protestants.
Indeed, no difference was made between Eustace and me when we were at
Walwyn. Our grandmother taught us both alike to make the sign of the
cross, and likewise to say our prayers and the catechism; and oh! we
loved her very much.

Eustace once gave two black eyes to our rude cousin, Harry
Merricourt, for laughing when he said no one was as beautiful as the
Grandmother, and though I am an old woman myself, I think he was
right. She was like a little fairy, upright and trim, with dark
flashing eyes, that never forgot how to laugh, and snowy curls on her
brow.

I believe that the dear old lady made herself ill by nursing us two
children day and night when we had the smallpox. She had a stroke,
and died before my father could be fetched from London; but I knew
nothing of all that; I only grieved, and wondered that she did not
come to me, till at last the maid who was nursing me told me flatly
that the old lady was dead. I think that afterwards we were sent
down to a farmer's house by the sea, to be bathed and made rid of
infection; and that the pleasure of being set free from our sick
chambers and of playing on the shore drove from our minds for the
time our grief for the good grandma, though indeed I dream of her
often still, and of the old rooms and gardens at Walwyn, though I
have never seen them since.

When we were quite well and tolerably free from pock-marks, my father
took us to London with him, and there Eustace was sent to school at
Westminster; while I, with little Berry, had a tutor to teach us
Latin and French, and my mother's waiting-maid instructed me in
sewing and embroidery. As I grew older I had masters in dancing and
the spinnet, and my mother herself was most careful of my deportment.
Likewise she taught me such practices of our religion as I had not
learnt from my grandmother, and then it was I found that I was to be
brought up differently from Eustace and the others. I cried at
first, and declared I would do like Eustace and my father. I did not
think much about it; I was too childish and thoughtless to be really
devout; and when my mother took me in secret to the queen's little
chapel, full of charming objects of devotion, while the others had to
sit still during sermons two hours long, I began to think that I was
the best off.

Since that time I have thought much more, and talked the subject over
both with my dear eldest brother and with good priests, both English
and French, and I have come to the conclusion, as you know, my
children, that the English doctrine is no heresy, and that the Church
is a true Church and Catholic, though, as my home and my duties lie
here, I remain where I was brought up by my mother, in the communion
of my husband and children. I know that this would seem almost
heresy to our good Pere Chavand, but I wish to leave my sentiments on
record for you, my children.

But how I have anticipated my history! I must return, to tell you
that when I was just sixteen I was told that I was to go to my first
ball at Whitehall. My hair was curled over my forehead, and I was
dressed in white satin, with the famous pearls of Ribaumont round my
neck, though of course they were not to be mine eventually.

I knew the palace well, having often had the honour of playing with
the Lady Mary, who was some years younger than I, so that I was much
less alarmed than many young gentlewomen there making their first
appearance. But, as my dear brother Eustace led me into the outer
hall, close behind my father and mother, I heard a strange whistle,
and, looking up, I saw over the balustrade of the gallery a droll
monkey face looking out of a mass of black curls, and making
significant grimaces at me.

I knew well enough that it was no other than the Prince of Wales. He
was terribly ugly and fond of teasing, but in a good-natured way,
always leaving off when he saw he was giving real pain, and I liked
him much better than his brother, the Duke of York, who was proud and
sullen. Yet one could always trust the Duke, and that could not be
said for the Prince.

By the time we had slowly advanced up the grand staircase into the
banqueting-hall, and had made our reverences to the king and queen--
ah, how stately and beautiful they looked together!--the Prince had
stepped in some other way, and stood beside me.

'Well, Meg,' he said, in an undertone--'I beg pardon, Mrs. Margaret--
decked out in all her splendour, a virgin for the sacrifice!'

'What sacrifice, sir?' I asked, startled.

'Eh!' he said. 'You do not know that le futur is arrived!'

'She knows nothing, your Highness,' said Eustace.

'What, oh, what is there to know?' I implored the Prince and my
brother in turn to inform me, for I saw that there was some earnest
in the Prince's jests, and I knew that the queen and my mother were
looking out for a good match for me in France.

'Let me show him to you,' presently whispered the Prince, who had
been called off by his father to receive the civilities of an
ambassador. Then he pointed out a little wizened dried-up old man,
who was hobbling up to kiss Her Majesty's hand, and whose courtly
smile seemed to me to sit most unnaturally on his wrinkled
countenance. I nearly screamed. I was forced to bite my lips to
keep back my tears, and I wished myself child enough to be able to
scream and run away, when my mother presently beckoned me forward. I
hardly had strength to curtsey when I was actually presented to the
old man. Nothing but terror prevented my sinking on the floor, and I
heard as through falling waters something about M. le Marquis de
Nidemerle and Mrs. Margaret Ribmont, for so we were called in
England.

By and by I found that I was dancing, I scarcely knew how or with
whom, and I durst not look up the whole time, nor did my partner
address a single word to me, though I knew he was near me; I was only
too thankful that he did not try to address me.

To my joy, when we had made our final reverences, he never came near
me again all the evening. I found myself among some young maidens
who were friends of mine, and in our eager talk together I began to
forget what had passed, or to hope it was only some teasing pastime
of the Prince and Eustace.

When we were seated in the coach on the way to our house my father
began to laugh and marvel which had been the most shy, the gallant or
the lady, telling my mother she need never reproach the English with
bashfulness again after this French specimen.

'How will he and little Meg ever survive to-morrow's meeting!' he
said.

Then I saw it was too true, and cried out in despair to beg them to
let me stay at home, and not send me from them; but my mother bade me
not be a silly wench. I had always known that I was to be married in
France and the queen and my half-brother, M. de Solivet, had found an
excellent parti for me. I was not to embarrass matters by any folly,
but I must do her credit, and not make her regret that she had not
sent me to a convent to be educated.

Then I clung to my father. I could hold him tight in the dark, and
the flambeaux only cast in a fitful flickering light. 'Oh, sir,'
said I, 'you cannot wish to part with your little Meg!'

'You are your mother's child, Meg,' he said sadly. 'I gave you up to
her to dispose of at her will.'

'And you will thank me one of these days for your secure home,' said
my mother. 'If these rogues continue disaffected, who knows what
they may leave us in England!'

'At least we should be together,' I cried, and I remember how I
fondled my father's hand in the dark, and how he returned it. We
should never have thought of such a thing in the light; he would have
been ashamed to allow such an impertinence, and I to attempt it.

Perhaps it emboldened me to say timidly: 'If he were not so old---'

But my mother declared that she could not believe her ears that a
child of hers should venture on making such objections--so
unmaidenly, so undutiful to a parti selected by the queen and
approved by her parents.

As the coach stopped at our own door I perceived that certain strange
noises that I had heard proceeded from Eustace laughing and chuckling
to himself all the way. I must say I thought it very unkind and
cruel when we had always loved each other so well. I would hardly
bid him good-night, but ran up to the room I shared with nurse and
Annora, and wept bitterly through half the night, little comforted by
nurse's assurance that old men were wont to let their wives have
their way far more easily than young ones did.




CHAPTER II.

A LITTLE MUTUAL AVERSION.



I had cried half the night, and when in the morning little Nan wanted
to hear about my ball, I only answered that I hated the thought of
it. I was going to be married to a hideous old man, and be carried
to France, and should never see any of them again. I made Nan cry
too, and we both came down to breakfast with such mournful faces that
my mother chid me sharply for making myself such a fright.

Then she took me away to the still-room, and set me for an hour to
make orange cakes, while she gave orders for the great dinner that we
were to give that day, I knew only too well for whose sake; and if I
had only known which orange cake was for my betrothed, would not it
have been a bitter one! By and by my mother carried me off to be
dressed. She never trusted the tiring-woman to put the finishing
touches with those clumsy English fingers; and, besides, she bathed
my swollen eyelids with essences, and made me rub my pale cheeks with
a scarlet ribbon, speaking to me so sharply that I should not have
dared to shed another tear.

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