Marquise de Ganges

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CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE

BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

IN EIGHT VOLUMES




THE MARQUISE DE GANGES--1657

Toward the close of the year 1657, a very plain carriage, with no arms
painted on it, stopped, about eight o'clock one evening, before the door
of a house in the rue Hautefeuille, at which two other coaches were
already standing. A lackey at once got down to open the carriage door;
but a sweet, though rather tremulous voice stopped him, saying, "Wait,
while I see whether this is the place."

Then a head, muffled so closely in a black satin mantle that no feature
could be distinguished, was thrust from one of the carriage windows, and
looking around, seemed to seek for some decisive sign on the house front.
The unknown lady appeared to be satisfied by her inspection, for she
turned back to her companion.

"It is here," said she. "There is the sign."

As a result of this certainty, the carriage door was opened, the two
women alighted, and after having once more raised their eyes to a strip
of wood, some six or eight feet long by two broad, which was nailed above
the windows of the second storey, and bore the inscription, "Madame
Voison, midwife," stole quickly into a passage, the door of which was
unfastened, and in which there was just so much light as enabled persons
passing in or out to find their way along the narrow winding stair that
led from the ground floor to the fifth story.

The two strangers, one of whom appeared to be of far higher rank than the
other, did not stop, as might have been expected, at the door
corresponding with the inscription that had guided them, but, on the
contrary, went on to the next floor.

Here, upon the landing, was a kind of dwarf, oddly dressed after the
fashion of sixteenth-century Venetian buffoons, who, when he saw the two
women coming, stretched out a wand, as though to prevent them from going
farther, and asked what they wanted.

"To consult the spirit," replied the woman of the sweet and tremulous
voice.

"Come in and wait," returned the dwarf, lifting a panel of tapestry and
ushering the two women into a waiting-room.

The women obeyed, and remained for about half an hour, seeing and hearing
nothing. At last a door, concealed by the tapestry, was suddenly opened;
a voice uttered the word "Enter," and the two women were introduced into
a second room, hung with black, and lighted solely by a three-branched
lamp that hung from the ceiling. The door closed behind them, and the
clients found themselves face to face with the sibyl.

She was a woman of about twenty-five or twenty-six, who, unlike other
women, evidently desired to appear older than she was. She was dressed
in black; her hair hung in plaits; her neck, arms, and feet were bare;
the belt at her waist was clasped by a large garnet which threw out
sombre fires. In her hand she held a wand, and she was raised on a sort
of platform which stood for the tripod of the ancients, and from which
came acrid and penetrating fumes; she was, moreover, fairly handsome,
although her features were common, the eyes only excepted, and these, by
some trick of the toilet, no doubt, looked inordinately large, and, like
the garnet in her belt, emitted strange lights.

When the two visitors came in, they found the soothsayer leaning her
forehead on her hand, as though absorbed in thought. Fearing to rouse
her from her ecstasy, they waited in silence until it should please her
to change her position. At the end of ten minutes she raised her head,
and seemed only now to become aware that two persons were standing before
her.

"What is wanted of me again?" she asked, "and shall I have rest only in
the grave?"

"Forgive me, madame," said the sweet-voiced unknown, "but I am wishing to
know----"

"Silence!" said the sibyl, in a solemn voice. "I will not know your
affairs. It is to the spirit that you must address yourself; he is a
jealous spirit, who forbids his secrets to be shared; I can but pray to
him for you, and obey his will."

At these words, she left her tripod, passed into an adjoining room, and
soon returned, looking even paler and more anxious than before, and
carrying in one hand a burning chafing dish, in the other a red paper.
The three flames of the lamp grew fainter at the same moment, and the
room was left lighted up only by the chafing dish; every object now
assumed a fantastic air that did not fail to disquiet the two visitors,
but it was too late to draw back.

The soothsayer placed the chafing dish in the middle of the room,
presented the paper to the young woman who had spoken, and said to her--

"Write down what you wish to know."

The woman took the paper with a steadier hand than might have been
expected, seated herself at a table, and wrote:--

"Am I young? Am I beautiful? Am I maid, wife, or widow? This is for
the past.

"Shall I marry, or marry again? Shall I live long, or shall I die young?
This is for the future."

Then, stretching out her hand to the soothsayer, she asked--

"What am I to do now with this?"

"Roll that letter around this ball," answered the other, handing to the
unknown a little ball of virgin wax. "Both ball and letter will be
consumed in the flame before your eyes; the spirit knows your secrets
already. In three days you will have the answer."

The unknown did as the sibyl bade her; then the latter took from her
hands the ball and the paper in which it was wrapped, and went and threw
both into the chafing pan.

"And now all is done as it should be," said the soothsayer. "Comus!"

The dwarf came in.

"See the lady to her coach."

The stranger left a purse upon the table, and followed Comus. He
conducted her and her companion, who was only a confidential maid, down a
back staircase, used as an exit, and leading into a different street from
that by which the two women had come in; but the coachman, who had been
told beforehand of this circumstance, was awaiting them at the door, and
they had only to step into their carriage, which bore them rapidly away
in the direction of the rue Dauphine.

Three days later, according to the promise given her, the fair unknown,
when she awakened, found on the table beside her a letter in an
unfamiliar handwriting; it was addressed "To the beautiful Provencale,"
and contained these words--

"You are young; you are beautiful; you are a widow. This is for the
present.

"You will marry again; you will die young, and by a violent death.
This is for the future.
THE SPIRIT."

The answer was written upon a paper like that upon which the questions
had been set down.

The marquise turned pale and uttered a faint cry of terror; the answer
was so perfectly correct in regard to the past as to call up a fear that
it might be equally accurate in regard to the future.

The truth is that the unknown lady wrapped in a mantle whom we have
escorted into the modern sibyl's cavern was no other than the beautiful
Marie de Rossan, who before her marriage had borne the name of
Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc, from that of an estate belonging to her
maternal grandfather, M. Joannis de Nocheres, who owned a fortune of five
to six hundred thousand livres. At the age of thirteen--that is to say,
in 1649--she had married the Marquis de Castellane, a gentleman of very
high birth, who claimed to be descended from John of Castille, the son of
Pedro the Cruel, and from Juana de Castro, his mistress. Proud of his
young wife's beauty, the Marquis de Castellane, who was an officer of the
king's galleys, had hastened to present her at court. Louis XIV, who at
the time of her presentation was barely twenty years old, was struck by
her enchanting face, and to the great despair of the famous beauties of
the day danced with her three times in one evening. Finally, as a
crowning touch to her reputation, the famous Christina of Sweden, who was
then at the French court, said of her that she had never, in any of the
kingdoms through which she had passed, seen anything equal to "the
beautiful Provencale." This praise had been so well received, that the
name of "the beautiful Provencale" had clung to Madame de Castellane, and
she was everywhere known by it.

This favour of Louis XIV and this summing up of Christina's had been
enough to bring the Marquise de Castellane instantly into fashion; and
Mignard, who had just received a patent of nobility and been made painter
to the king, put the seal to her celebrity by asking leave to paint her
portrait. That portrait still exists, and gives a perfect notion of the
beauty which it represents; but as the portrait is far from our readers'
eyes, we will content ourselves by repeating, in its own original words,
the one given in 1667 by the author of a pamphlet published at Rouen
under the following title: True and Principal Circumstances of the
Deplorable Death of Madame the Marquise de Ganges:

[Note: It is from this pamphlet, and from the Account of the Death of
Madame the Marquise de Ganges, formerly Marquise de Castellane, that we
have borrowed the principal circumstances of this tragic story. To these
documents we must add--that we may not be constantly referring our
readers to original sources--the Celebrated Trials by Guyot de Pitaval,
the Life of Marie de Rossan, and the Lettres galantes of Madame
Desnoyers.]

"Her complexion, which was of a dazzling whiteness, was illumined by not
too brilliant a red, and art itself could not have arranged more
skilfully the gradations by which this red joined and merged into the
whiteness of the complexion. The brilliance of her face was heightened
by the decided blackness of her hair, growing, as though drawn by a
painter of the finest taste, around a well proportioned brow; her large,
well opened eyes were of the same hue as her hair, and shone with a soft
and piercing flame that rendered it impossible to gaze upon her steadily;
the smallness, the shape, the turn of her mouth, and, the beauty of her
teeth were incomparable; the position and the regular proportion of her
nose added to her beauty such an air of dignity, as inspired a respect
for her equal to the love that might be inspired by her beauty; the
rounded contour of her face, produced by a becoming plumpness, exhibited
all the vigour and freshness of health; to complete her charms, her
glances, the movements of her lips and of her head, appeared to be guided
by the graces; her shape corresponded to the beauty of her face; lastly,
her arms, her hands, her bearing, and her gait were such that nothing
further could be wished to complete the agreeable presentment of a
beautiful woman."

[Note: All her contemporaries, indeed, are in agreement as
to her marvellous beauty; here is a second portrait of the
marquise, delineated in a style and manner still more
characteristic of that period:--

"You will remember that she had a complexion smoother and
finer than a mirror, that her whiteness was so well
commingled with the lively blood as to produce an exact
admixture never beheld elsewhere, and imparting to her
countenance the tenderest animation; her eyes and hair were
blacker than jet; her eyes, I say, of which the gaze could
scarce, from their excess of lustre, be supported, which
have been celebrated as a miracle of tenderness and
sprightliness, which have given rise, a thousand times, to
the finest compliments of the day, and have been the torment
of many a rash man, must excuse me, if I do not pause longer
to praise them, in a letter; her mouth was the feature of
her face which compelled the most critical to avow that they
had seen none of equal perfection, and that, by its shape,
its smallness, and its brilliance, it might furnish a
pattern for all those others whose sweetness and charms had
been so highly vaunted; her nose conformed to the fair
proportion of all her features; it was, that is to say, the
finest in the world; the whole shape of her face was
perfectly round, and of so charming a fullness that such an
assemblage of beauties was never before seen together. The
expression of this head was one of unparalleled sweetness
and of a majesty which she softened rather by disposition
than by study; her figure was opulent, her speech agreeable,
her step noble, her demeanour easy, her temper sociable, her
wit devoid of malice, and founded upon great goodness of
heart."]

It is easy to understand that a woman thus endowed could not, in a court
where gallantry was more pursued than in any other spot in the world,
escape the calumnies of rivals; such calumnies, however, never produced
any result, so correctly, even in the absence of her husband, did the
marquise contrive to conduct herself; her cold and serious conversation,
rather concise than lively, rather solid than brilliant, contrasted,
indeed, with the light turn, the capricious and fanciful expressions
employed by the wits of that time; the consequence was that those who had
failed to succeed with her, tried to spread a report that the marquise
was merely a beautiful idol, virtuous with the virtue of a statue. But
though such things might be said and repeated in the absence of the
marquise, from the moment that she appeared in a drawing-room, from the
moment that her beautiful eyes and sweet smile added their indefinable
expression to those brief, hurried, and sensible words that fell from her
lips, the most prejudiced came back to her and were forced to own that
God had never before created anything that so nearly touched perfection.

She was thus in the enjoyment of a triumph that backbiters failed to
shake, and that scandal vainly sought to tarnish, when news came of the
wreck of the French galleys in Sicilian waters, and of the death of the
Marquis de Castellane, who was in command. The marquise on this
occasion, as usual, displayed the greatest piety and propriety: although
she had no very violent passion for her husband, with whom she had spent
scarcely one of the seven years during which their marriage had lasted,
on receipt of the news she went at once into retreat, going to live with
Madame d'Ampus, her mother-in-law, and ceasing not only to receive
visitors but also to go out.

Six months after the death of her husband, the marquise received letters
from her grandfather, M. Joannis de Nocheres, begging her to come and
finish her time of mourning at Avignon. Having been fatherless almost
from childhood, Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc had been brought up by this
good old man, whom she loved dearly; she hastened accordingly to accede
to his invitation, and prepared everything for her departure.

This was at the moment when la Voisin, still a young woman, and far from
having the reputation which she subsequently acquired, was yet beginning
to be talked of. Several friends of the Marquise de Castellane had been
to consult her, and had received strange predictions from her, some of
which, either through the art of her who framed them, or through some odd
concurrence of circumstances, had come true. The marquise could not
resist the curiosity with which various tales that she had heard of this
woman's powers had inspired her, and some days before setting out for
Avignon she made the visit which we have narrated. What answer she
received to her questions we have seen.

The marquise was not superstitious, yet this fatal prophecy impressed
itself upon her mind and left behind a deep trace, which neither the
pleasure of revisiting her native place, nor the affection of her
grandfather, nor the fresh admiration which she did not fail to receive,
could succeed in removing; indeed, this fresh admiration was a weariness
to the marquise, and before long she begged leave of her grandfather to
retire into a convent and to spend there the last three months of her
mourning.

It was in that place, and it was with the warmth of these poor cloistered
maidens, that she heard a man spoken of for the first time, whose
reputation for beauty, as a man, was equal to her own, as a woman. This
favourite of nature was the sieur de Lenide, Marquis de Ganges, Baron of
Languedoc, and governor of Saint-Andre, in the diocese of Uzes. The
marquise heard of him so often, and it was so frequently declared to her
that nature seemed to have formed them for each other, that she began to
allow admission to a very strong desire of seeing him. Doubtless, the
sieur de Lenide, stimulated by similar suggestions, had conceived a great
wish to meet the marquise; for, having got M. de Nocheres who no doubt
regretted her prolonged retreat--to entrust him with a commission for his
granddaughter, he came to the convent parlour and asked for the fair
recluse. She, although she had never seen him, recognised him at the
first glance; for having never seen so handsome a cavalier as he who now
presented himself before her, she thought this could be no other than the
Marquis de Ganges, of whom people had so often spoken to her.

That which was to happen, happened: the Marquise de Castellane and the
Marquis de Ganges could not look upon each other without loving. Both
were young, the marquis was noble and in a good position, the marquise
was rich; everything in the match, therefore, seemed suitable: and indeed
it was deferred only for the space of time necessary to complete the year
of mourning, and the marriage was celebrated towards the beginning of the
year 1558. The marquis was twenty years of age, and the marquise
twenty-two.

The beginnings of this union were perfectly happy; the marquis was in
love for the first time, and the marquise did not remember ever to have
been in love. A son and a daughter came to complete their happiness.
The marquise had entirely forgotten the fatal prediction, or, if she
occasionally thought of it now, it was to wonder that she could ever have
believed in it. Such happiness is not of this world, and when by chance
it lingers here a while, it seems sent rather by the anger than by the
goodness of God. Better, indeed, would it be for him who possesses and
who loses it, never to have known it.

The Marquis de Ganges was the first to weary of this happy life. Little
by little he began to miss the pleasures of a young man; he began to draw
away from the marquise and to draw nearer to his former friends. On her
part, the marquise, who for the sake of wedded intimacy had sacrificed
her habits of social life, threw herself into society, where new triumphs
awaited her. These triumphs aroused the jealousy of the marquis; but he
was too much a man of his century to invite ridicule by any
manifestation; he shut his jealousy into his soul, and it emerged in a
different form on every different occasion. To words of love, so sweet
that they seemed the speech of angels, succeeded those bitter and biting
utterances that foretell approaching division. Before long, the marquis
and the marquise only saw each other at hours when they could not avoid
meeting; then, on the pretext of necessary journeys, and presently
without any pretext at all, the marquis would go away for three-quarters
of a year, and once more the marquise found herself widowed. Whatever
contemporary account one may consult, one finds them all agreeing to
declare that she was always the same--that is to say, full of patience,
calmness, and becoming behaviour--and it is rare to find such a unanimity
of opinion about a young and beautiful woman.

About this time the marquis, finding it unendurable to be alone with his
wife during the short spaces of time which he spent at home, invited his
two brothers, the chevalier and the abbe de Ganges, to come and live with
him. He had a third brother, who, as the second son, bore the title of
comte, and who was colonel of the Languedoc regiment, but as this
gentleman played no part in this story we shall not concern ourselves
with him.

The abbe de Ganges, who bore that title without belonging to the Church,
had assumed it in order to enjoy its privileges: he was a kind of wit,
writing madrigals and 'bouts-rimes' [Bouts-rimes are verses written to a
given set of rhymes.] on occasion, a handsome man enough, though in
moments of impatience his eyes would take a strangely cruel expression;
as dissolute and shameless to boot, as though he had really belonged to
the clergy of the period.

The chevalier de Ganges, who shared in some measure the beauty so
profusely showered upon the family, was one of those feeble men who enjoy
their own nullity, and grow on to old age inapt alike for good and evil,
unless some nature of a stronger stamp lays hold on them and drags them
like faint and pallid satellites in its wake. This was what befell the
chevalier in respect of his brother: submitted to an influence of which
he himself was not aware, and against which, had he but suspected it, he
would have rebelled with the obstinacy of a child, he was a machine
obedient to the will of another mind and to the passions of another
heart, a machine which was all the more terrible in that no movement of
instinct or of reason could, in his case, arrest the impulse given.

Moreover, this influence which the abbe had acquired over the chevalier
extended, in some degree also, to the marquis. Having as a younger son
no fortune, having no revenue, for though he wore a Churchman's robes he
did not fulfil a Churchman's functions, he had succeeded in persuading
the marquis, who was rich, not only in the enjoyment of his own fortune,
but also in that of his wife, which was likely to be nearly doubled at
the death of M. de Nocheres, that some zealous man was needed who would
devote himself to the ordering of his house and the management of his
property; and had offered himself for the post. The marquis had very
gladly accepted, being, as we have said, tired by this time of his
solitary home life; and the abbe had brought with him the chevalier, who
followed him like his shadow, and who was no more regarded than if he had
really possessed no body.

The marquise often confessed afterwards that when she first saw these two
men, although their outward aspect was perfectly agreeable, she felt
herself seized by a painful impression, and that the fortune-teller's
prediction of a violent death, which she had so long forgotten, gashed
out like lightning before her eyes. The effect on the two brothers was
not of the same kind: the beauty of the marquise struck them both,
although in different ways. The chevalier was in ecstasies of
admiration, as though before a beautiful statue, but the impression that
she made upon him was that which would have been made by marble, and if
the chevalier had been left to himself the consequences of this
admiration would have been no less harmless. Moreover, the chevalier did
not attempt either to exaggerate or to conceal this impression, and
allowed his sister-in-law to see in what manner she struck him. The
abbe, on the contrary, was seized at first sight with a deep and violent
desire to possess this woman--the most beautiful whom he had ever met;
but being as perfectly capable of mastering his sensations as the
chevalier was incapable, he merely allowed such words of compliment to
escape him as weigh neither with him who utters nor her who hears them;
and yet, before the close of this first interview, the abbe had decided
in his irrevocable will that this woman should be his.

As for the marquise, although the impression produced by her two
brothers-in-law could never be entirely effaced, the wit of the abbe, to
which he gave, with amazing facility, whatever turn he chose, and the
complete nullity of the chevalier brought her to certain feelings of less
repulsion towards them: for indeed the marquise had one of those souls
which never suspect evil, as long as it will take the trouble to assume
any veil at all of seeming, and which only recognise it with regret when
it resumes its true shape.

Meanwhile the arrival of these two new inmates soon spread a little more
life and gaiety through the house. Furthermore; greatly to the
astonishment of the marquise, her husband, who had so long been
indifferent to her beauty, seemed to remark afresh that she was too
charming to be despised; his words accordingly began little by little to
express an affection that had long since gradually disappeared from them.
The marquise had never ceased to love him; she had suffered the loss of
his love with resignation, she hailed its return with joy, and three
months elapsed that resembled those which had long ceased to be more to
the poor wife than a distant and half-worn-out memory.

Thus she had, with the supreme facility of youth, always ready to be
happy, taken up her gladness again, without even asking what genius had
brought back to her the treasure which she had thought lost, when she
received an invitation from a lady of the neighbourhood to spend some
days in her country house. Her husband and her two brothers-in-law,
invited with her, were of the party, and accompanied her. A great hunting
party had been arranged beforehand, and almost immediately upon arriving
everyone began to prepare for taking part in it.