Marquise de Ganges

A >> Alexandre Dumas, Pere >> Marquise de Ganges


Things went on in this way for a week. The page no longer raised his
eyes and did not venture to open his mouth, and the marquise was
beginning to regret the time in which he used to look and to speak, when,
one fine day while she was at her toilet, at which she had allowed him to
be present, he seized a moment when the maid had left her alone, to cast
himself at her feet and tell her that he had vainly tried to stifle his
love, and that, even although he were to die under the weight of her
anger, he must tell her that this love was immense, eternal, stronger
than his life. The marquise upon this wished to send him away, as on the
former occasion, but instead of obeying her, the page, better instructed,
took her in his arms. The marquise called, screamed, broke her
bell-rope; the waiting-maid, who had been bought over, according to the
marquis's advice, had kept the other women out of the way, and was
careful not to come herself. Then the marquise, resisting force by force,
freed herself from the page's arms, rushed to her husband's room, and
there, bare-necked, with floating hair, and looking lovelier than ever,
flung herself into his arms and begged his protection against the
insolent fellow who had just insulted her. But what was the amazement of
the marquise, when, instead of the anger which she expected to see break
forth, the marquis answered coldly that what she was saying was
incredible, that he had always found the young man very well behaved, and
that, no doubt, having taken up some frivolous ground of resentment
against him, she was employing this means to get rid of him; but, he
added, whatever might be his love for her, and his desire to do
everything that was agreeable to her, he begged her not to require this
of him, the young man being his friend's son, and consequently his own
adopted child. It was now the marquise who, in her turn, retired
abashed, not knowing what to make of such a reply, and fully resolving,
since her husband's protection failed her, to keep herself well guarded
by her own severity.

Indeed, from that moment the marquise behaved to the poor youth with so
much prudery, that, loving her as he did, sincerely, he would have died
of grief, if he had not had the marquis at hand to encourage and
strengthen him. Nevertheless, the latter himself began to despair, and
to be more troubled by the virtue of his wife than another man might have
been by the levity of his. Finally, he resolved, seeing that matters
remained at the same point and that the marquise did not relax in the
smallest degree, to take extreme measures. He hid his page in a closet
of his wife's bedchamber, and, rising during her first sleep, left empty
his own place beside her, went out softly, double-locked the door, and
listened attentively to hear what would happen.

He had not been listening thus for ten minutes when he heard a great
noise in the room, and the page trying in vain to appease it. The
marquis hoped that he might succeed, but the noise increasing, showed him
that he was again to be disappointed; soon came cries for help, for the
marquise could not ring, the bell-ropes having been lifted out of her
reach, and no one answering her cries, he heard her spring from her high
bed, run to the door, and finding it locked rush to the window, which she
tried to open: the scene had come to its climax.

The marquis decided to go in, lest some tragedy should happen, or lest
his wife's screams should reach some belated passer-by, who next day
would make him the talk of the town. Scarcely did the marquise behold
him when she threw herself into his arms, and pointing to the page,
said:--

"Well, monsieur, will you still hesitate to free me from this insolent
wretch?"

"Yes, madame," replied the marquis; "for this insolent wretch has been
acting for the last three months not only with my sanction but even by my
orders."

The marquise remained stupefied. Then the marquis, without sending away
the page, gave his wife an explanation of all that had passed, and
besought her to yield to his desire of obtaining a successor, whom he
would regard as his own child, so long as it was hers; but young though
she was, the marquise answered with a dignity unusual at her age, that
his power over her had the limits that were set to it by law, and not
those that it might please him to set in their place, and that however
much she might wish to do what might be his pleasure, she would yet never
obey him at the expense of her soul and her honour.

So positive an answer, while it filled her husband with despair, proved
to him that he must renounce the hope of obtaining an heir; but since the
page was not to blame for this, he fulfilled the promise that he had
made, bought him a regiment, and resigned himself to having the most
virtuous wife in France. His repentance was not, however, of long
duration; he died at the end of three months, after having confided to
his friend, the Marquis d'Urban, the cause of his sorrows.

The Marquis d'Urban had a son of marriageable age; he thought that he
could find nothing more suitable for him than a wife whose virtue had
come triumphantly through such a trial: he let her time of mourning pass,
and then presented the young Marquis d'Urban, who succeeded in making his
attentions acceptable to the beautiful widow, and soon became her
husband. More fortunate than his predecessor, the Marquis d'Urban had
three heirs to oppose to his collaterals, when, some two years and a half
later, the Chevalier de Bouillon arrived at the capital of the county of
Venaissin.

The Chevalier de Bouillon was a typical rake of the period, handsome,
young, and well-grown; the nephew of a cardinal who was influential at
Rome, and proud of belonging to a house which had privileges of
suzerainty. The chevalier, in his indiscreet fatuity, spared no woman;
and his conduct had given some scandal in the circle of Madame de
Maintenon, who was rising into power. One of his friends, having
witnessed the displeasure exhibited towards him by Louis XIV, who was
beginning to become devout, thought to do him a service by warning him
that the king "gardait une dent" against him.

[Translator's note.--"Garder une dent," that is, to keep up
a grudge, means literally "to keep a tooth" against him.]

"Pardieu!" replied the chevalier, "I am indeed unlucky when the only
tooth left to him remains to bite me."

This pun had been repeated, and had reached Louis XIV, so that the
chevalier presently heard, directly enough this time, that the king
desired him to travel for some years. He knew the danger of
neglecting--such intimations, and since he thought the country after all
preferable to the Bastille, he left Paris, and arrived at Avignon,
surrounded by the halo of interest that naturally attends a handsome
young persecuted nobleman.

The virtue of Madame d'Urban was as much cried up at Avignon as the
ill-behaviour of the chevalier had been reprobated in Paris. A
reputation equal to his own, but so opposite in kind, could not fail to
be very offensive to him, therefore he determined immediately upon
arriving to play one against the other.

Nothing was easier than the attempt. M. d'Urban, sure of his wife's
virtue, allowed her entire liberty; the chevalier saw her wherever he
chose to see her, and every time he saw her found means to express a
growing passion. Whether because the hour had come for Madame d'Urban,
or whether because she was dazzled by the splendour of the chevalier's
belonging to a princely house, her virtue, hitherto so fierce, melted
like snow in the May sunshine; and the chevalier, luckier than the poor
page, took the husband's place without any attempt on Madame d'Urban's
part to cry for help.

As all the chevalier desired was public triumph, he took care to make the
whole town acquainted at once with his success; then, as some infidels of
the neighbourhood still doubted, the chevalier ordered one of his
servants to wait for him at the marquise's door with a lantern and a
bell. At one in the morning, the chevalier came out, and the servant
walked before him, ringing the bell. At this unaccustomed sound, a great
number of townspeople, who had been quietly asleep, awoke, and, curious
to see what was happening, opened their windows. They beheld the
chevalier, walking gravely behind his servant, who continued to light his
master's way and to ring along the course of the street that lay between
Madame d'Urban's house and his own. As he had made no mystery to anyone
of his love affair, nobody took the trouble even to ask him whence he
came. However, as there might possibly be persons still unconvinced, he
repeated this same jest, for his own satisfaction, three nights running;
so that by the morning of the fourth day nobody had any doubts left.

As generally happens in such cases, M. d'Urban did not know a word of
what was going on until the moment when his friends warned him that he
was the talk of the town. Then he forbade his wife to see her lover
again. The prohibition produced the usual results: on the morrow, as,
soon as M. d'Urban had gone out, the marquise sent for the chevalier to
inform him of the catastrophe in which they were both involved; but she
found him far better prepared than herself for such blows, and he tried
to prove to her, by reproaches for her imprudent conduct, that all this
was her fault; so that at last the poor woman, convinced that it was she
who had brought these woes upon them, burst into tears. Meanwhile, M.
d'Urban, who, being jealous for the first time, was the more seriously
so, having learned that the chevalier was with his wife, shut the doors,
and posted himself in the ante-chamber with his servants, in order to
seize him as he came out. But the chevalier, who had ceased to trouble
himself about Madame d'Urban's tears, heard all the preparations, and,
suspecting some ambush, opened the window, and, although it was one
o'clock in the afternoon and the place was full of people, jumped out of
the window into the street, and did not hurt himself at all, though the
height was twenty feet, but walked quietly home at a moderate pace.

The same evening, the chevalier, intending to relate his new adventure in
all its details, invited some of his friends to sup with him at the
pastrycook Lecoq's. This man, who was a brother of the famous Lecoq of
the rue Montorgueil, was the cleverest eating-house-keeper in Avignon;
his own unusual corpulence commended his cookery, and, when he stood at
the door, constituted an advertisement for his restaurant. The good man,
knowing with what delicate appetites he had to deal, did his very best
that evening, and that nothing might be wanting, waited upon his guests
himself. They spent the night drinking, and towards morning the
chevalier and his companions, being then drunk, espied their host
standing respectfully at the door, his face wreathed in smiles. The
chevalier called him nearer, poured him out a glass of wine and made him
drink with them; then, as the poor wretch, confused at such an honour,
was thanking him with many bows, he said:--

"Pardieu, you are too fat for Lecoq, and I must make you a capon."

This strange proposition was received as men would receive it who were
drunk and accustomed by their position to impunity. The unfortunate
pastry-cook was seized, bound down upon the table, and died under their
treatment. The vice-legate being informed of the murder by one of the
waiters, who had run in on hearing his master's shrieks, and had found
him, covered with blood, in the hands of his butchers, was at first
inclined to arrest the chevalier and bring him conspicuously to
punishment. But he was restrained by his regard for the Cardinal de
Bouillon, the chevalier's uncle, and contented himself with warning the
culprit that unless he left the town instantly he would be put into the
hands of the authorities. The chevalier, who was beginning to have had
enough of Avignon, did not wait to be told twice, ordered the wheels of
his chaise to be greased and horses to be brought. In the interval
before they were ready the fancy took him to go and see Madame d'Urban
again.

As the house of the marquise was the very last at which, after the manner
of his leaving it the day before, the chevalier was expected at such an
hour, he got in with the greatest ease, and, meeting a lady's-maid, who
was in his interests, was taken to the room where the marquise was. She,
who had not reckoned upon seeing the chevalier again, received him with
all the raptures of which a woman in love is capable, especially when her
love is a forbidden one. But the chevalier soon put an end to them by
announcing that his visit was a visit of farewell, and by telling her the
reason that obliged him to leave her. The marquise was like the woman
who pitied the fatigue of the poor horses that tore Damien limb from
limb; all her commiseration was for the chevalier, who on account of such
a trifle was being forced to leave Avignon. At last the farewell had to
be uttered, and as the chevalier, not knowing what to say at the fatal
moment, complained that he had no memento of her, the marquise took down
the frame that contained a portrait of herself corresponding with one of
her husband, and tearing out the canvas, rolled, it up and gave it to the
chevalier. The latter, so far from being touched by this token of love,
laid it down, as he went away, upon a piece of furniture, where the
marquise found it half an hour later. She imagined that his mind being
so full of the original, he had forgotten the copy, and representing to
herself the sorrow which the discovery of this forgetfulness would cause
him, she sent for a servant, gave him the picture, and ordered him to
take horse and ride after the chevalier's chaise. The man took a
post-horse, and, making great speed, perceived the fugitive in the
distance just as the latter had finished changing horses. He made
violent signs and shouted loudly, in order to stop the postillion. But
the postillion having told his fare that he saw a man coming on at full
speed, the chevalier supposed himself to be pursued, and bade him go on
as fast as possible. This order was so well obeyed that the unfortunate
servant only came up with the chaise a league and a half farther on;
having stopped the postillion, he got off his horse, and very
respectfully presented to the chevalier the picture which he had been
bidden to bring him. But the chevalier, having recovered from his first
alarm, bade him go about his business, and take back the portrait--which
was of no use to him--to the sender. The servant, however, like a
faithful messenger, declared that his orders were positive, and that he
should not dare go back to Madame d'Urban without fulfilling them. The
chevalier, seeing that he could not conquer the man's determination, sent
his postillion to a farrier, whose house lay on the road, for a hammer
and four nails, and with his own hands nailed the portrait to the back of
his chaise; then he stepped in again, bade the postillion whip up his
horses, and drove away, leaving Madame d'Urban's messenger greatly
astonished at the manner in which the chevalier had used his mistress's
portrait.

At the next stage, the postillion, who was going back, asked for his
money, and the chevalier answered that he had none. The postillion
persisted; then the chevalier got out of his chaise, unfastened Madame
d'Urban's portrait, and told him that he need only put it up for sale in
Avignon and declare how it had come into his possession, in order to
receive twenty times the price of his stage; the postillion, seeing that
nothing else was to be got out of the chevalier, accepted the pledge,
and, following his instructions precisely, exhibited it next morning at
the door of a dealer in the town, together with an exact statement of the
story. The picture was bought back the same day for twenty-five Louis.

As may be supposed, the adventure was much talked of throughout the town.
Next day, Madame d'Urban disappeared, no one knew whither, at the very
time when the relatives of the marquis were met together and had decided
to ask the king for a 'lettre-de-cachet'. One of the gentlemen present
was entrusted with the duty of taking the necessary steps; but whether
because he was not active enough, or whether because he was in Madame
d'Urban's interests, nothing further was heard in Avignon of any
consequences ensuing from such steps. In the meantime, Madame d'Urban,
who had gone to the house of an aunt, opened negotiations with her
husband that were entirely successful, and a month after this adventure
she returned triumphantly to the conjugal roof.

Two hundred pistoles, given by the Cardinal de Bouillon, pacified the
family of the unfortunate pastry-cook, who at first had given notice of
the affair to the police, but who soon afterwards withdrew their
complaint, and gave out that they had taken action too hastily on the
strength of a story told in joke, and that further inquiries showed their
relative to have died of an apoplectic stroke.

Thanks--to this declaration, which exculpated the Chevalier de Bouillon
in the eyes of the king, he was allowed, after travelling for two years
in Italy and in Germany, to return undisturbed to France.

Thus ends, not the family of Ganges, but the commotion which the family
made in the world. From time to time, indeed, the playwright or the
novelist calls up the pale and bloodstained figure of the marquise to
appear either on the stage or in a book; but the evocation almost always
ceases at her, and many persons who have written about the mother do not
even know what became of the children. Our intention has been to fill
this gap; that is why we have tried to tell what our predecessors left
out, and try offer to our readers what the stage--and often the actual
world--offers; comedy after melodrama.