Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise, Yonge [love books to read txt] 📗

If our King succeeded in regaining his crown we could go home, and we both believed that Clement would gladly join us there and become one of us. For the present, Eustace said, I must be patient. Nobody could hinder him from seeing Darpent, and he could make him understand how it all was, and how he must accept the ungrateful rebuffs that he had received from my mother.

No one can tell what that dear brother was to me then. He replied in my name and his own to M. de Poligny, who was altogether at a loss to understand that any reasonable brother should attend to the views of a young girl, when such a satisfactory parti as his son was offered, even though the boy was at least six years younger than I was; and as my mother and Solivet did not fail to set before me, there was no danger of his turning out like that wretch d’Aubepine, as he was a gentle, well-conducted, dull boy, whom I could govern with a silken thread if I only took the trouble to let him adore me. I thanked them, and said that was not exactly my idea of wedded life; and they groaned at my folly.

However, it turned out that M. de Poligny really wished his little Chevalier to finish his education before being married, and had only hastened his proposals because he wished to prevent the suit from coming up to be pleaded, and so it was agreed that the matter should stand over till this precious suitor of mine should have mastered his accidence and grown a little hair on his lip. I believe my mother had such a wholesome dread of me, especially when backed by my own true English brother, that she was glad to defer the tug of war. And as the proces was thus again deferred, I think she hoped that my brother would have no excuse for intercourse with the Darpents. She had entirely broken off with them and had moreover made poor old Sir Francis and Lady Ommaney leave the Hotel de Nidemerle, all in politeness as they told us, but as the house was not her own, I should have found it very hard to forgive their expulsion had I been Margaret.

As for me, my mother now watched over me like any other lady of her nation. She resorted far less to Queen Henrietta than formerly, and always took me with her whenever she went, putting an end now, in my twenty-fourth year, to the freedom I had enjoyed all my life. She did not much like leaving me alone with Eustace, and if it had not been for going to church on Sunday, I should never have gone out with him. He was not strong enough now to go to prayers daily at Sir Richard Browne’s chapel, but he never failed that summer to take me thither on a Sunday, though he held that it would be dishonourable to let this be a way for any other meetings.

My mother had become devout, as the French say. She wore only black, went much more to church, always leaving me in the charge of Madame Croquelebois, whom she borrowed from the d’Aubepines for the purpose, and she set all she could in train for the conversion of my brother and myself. There was the Abbe Walter Montagu, Lord Mandeville’s brother, and one or two others, who had despaired of our Church and joined hers, and she was always inviting them and setting them to argue with us. Indeed, she declared that one chief reason of her desiring this wedding for me was that it would bring me within the fold of the true Church. They told us that our delusion, as they called our Church, was dead; that the Presbyterians and Fifth Monarchy men and all their rabble had stifled the last remnant of life that had been left in her; that the Episcopacy, even if we scouted the Nag’s Head fable, was perishing away, and that England was like Holland or the Palatinate. But Eustace smiled gravely at them, and asked whether the Church had been dead when the Roman Emperors, or the heretic Arians, persecuted her, and said that he knew that, even if he never should see it, she would revive brighter and purer than ever—as indeed it has been given to us to behold. That dear brother, he was so unlike the Calvinists, and held so much in common with the French Church, that the priests always thought they were converting him; but he stood all the firmer for knowing what was truly Catholic. Of course it was no wonder that as Walter Montagu, like all my Lord Mandeville’s sons, had been bred a Puritan, he should have been amazed to perceive that the Roman Catholics were not all that they had been painted, and should find rest in the truths that had been hidden from him; but with us it was quite otherwise, having ever known the best alike of ours and of theirs. The same thing was going on at the Louvre.

Queen Henrietta was bent on converting her son, the Duke of Gloucester. He was a dear good lad of twelve years old, who had just been permitted to join her. I think the pleasantest times I had at all in those days were with him. He clung to us because I had known and loved his sweet sister, the Lady Elisabeth, who had been his companion in his imprisonment, and though he seldom spoke of her it was easy to see that the living with her had left a strong mark on his whole character.

I knew that Eustace had seen the Darpents and made Clement understand that I was faithful, and that he was to believe nothing that he heard of me, except through my brother himself. That helped me to some patience; and I believe poor Clement was so much amazed that his addresses should be tolerated by M. le Baron de Ribaumont that he was quite ready to endure any suspense.

There were most tremendous disturbances going on all the time out of door. Wonderful stories came to us of a fearful uproar in the Parliament between the Prince and the Coadjutor de Gondi, when the Duke of Rochefoucauld got the Coadjutor between two folding-doors, let down the iron bar of them on his neck, and was as nearly as possible the death of him. Then there was a plot for murdering the Prince of Conde in the streets, said to be go up by the Queen-Regent herself, after consulting one of her priests, who told her that she might regard the Prince as an enemy of the State, and that she might lawfully rid herself of him by private means when a public execution was inexpedient. A fine religion that! as I told my mother when M. d’Aubepine came in foaming at the mouth about it; though Eustace would have persuaded me that it was not just to measure a whole Church by one priest. The Prince fortified his house, and lived like a man in a state of siege for some time, and then went off to Chantilly, take d’Aubepine with him—and every one said a new Fronde was beginning, for the Queen-Regent was furious with the Princes, and determined to have Cardinal Mazarin back, and the Prince was equally resolved to keep him out, while as to the Parliament, I had no patience with it; it went on shilly-shallying between the two, and had no substance to do anything by hang on to some selfish Court party.

There were a few who understood their real interests, like the old Premier-President Mathieu Mole, and these hoped that by standing between the two parties they might get the only right thing done, namely, to convoke the States-General, which is what really answers to our own English Parliament. People could do things then in Paris they never dream of now; and Clement Darpent worked hard, getting up meetings among the younger counsellors and advocates, and some of the magistrates, where they made speeches about constitutional liberty, and talked about Ciecero, who was always Clement’s favourite hero. My brother went to hear him sometimes, and said he