The War of Women. Volume 1

"Yes, sister; and I believe I have piously profited by that fact."

"No sacrilege, monsieur; do not joke on sacred subjects."

"I am not joking, dear sister; I am simply stating facts. Look you; you sent me to the Minim brethren at Angoulème to prepare for the priesthood."

"Well?"

"I studied diligently there. I know Greek like Homer, Latin like Cicero, and theology like John Huss. Having nothing more to learn among those worthy monks, I left their establishment, still following out your wishes, and went to the Carmelites at Rouen, to make profession of faith."

"You forget to say that I had promised you a yearly allowance of a hundred pistoles, and that I kept my promise. A hundred pistoles for a Carmelite was more than enough, I should say."

"I don't deny it, my dear sister; but the convent always claimed my allowance on the pretext that I was not yet a Carmelite."

"Even so, did you not, when you consecrated your life to the Church, take a vow of poverty?"

"If I did make such a vow, dear sister, I give you my word that I have faithfully lived up to it; no one was ever poorer than I."

"But how did you leave the convent?"

"Ah! there you are! In the same way that Adam left the earthly paradise; it was knowledge that undid me, sister; I knew too much."

"What's that? you knew too much?"

"Yes. Imagine, if you can, that among the Carmelites, who have not the reputation of being Erasmuses or Descartes, I was looked upon as a prodigy, – of learning, be it understood. The result was that when Monsieur le Duc de Longueville came to Rouen to urge that city to declare in favor of the parliament, I was sent to harangue Monsieur de Longueville; the which I did in such elegant and well-chosen language, that Monsieur de Longueville not only expressed himself as well pleased with my eloquence, but asked me if I would be his secretary. This happened just as I was about to take the vows."

"Yes, I remember; and on the pretext that you were saying farewell to the world, you asked me for a hundred pistoles, which were given into your own hands."

"And they are the only ones I received, on the word of a gentleman!"

"But you were to renounce the world."

"Yes, such was my intention; but such was not the intention of Providence, which probably had other plans for me. It made a different disposition of me through the medium of Monsieur de Longueville; it was not its will that I should remain a monk. I therefore conformed to the will of a merciful Providence, and I am free to say that I do not repent having done so."

"Then you are no longer in the Church?"

"No, not for the moment, at least, my dear sister. I do not dare say that I may not return to it some day; for what man can say to-day what he will do to-morrow? Has not Monsieur de Rancé recently founded the Trappist order? Perhaps I shall follow in his footsteps, and found some new order. But for the moment I have dallied with war, you see, and that has made me profane and impure for some time to come; at the first opportunity I shall purify myself."

"You a fighting man!" exclaimed Nanon, with a shrug.

"Why not? Dame! I won't pretend to say that I am a Dunois, a Duguesclin, a Bayard, a knight without fear and without reproach. No, I am not so vainglorious as to claim that I have not some trifling peccadilloes to be ashamed of, nor will I ask, like the famous condottiere Sforza, what fear is. I am a man, and, as Plautus says: 'Homo sum et nihil humani me alienum puto;' which means: 'I am a man, and nothing pertaining to mankind is strange to me.' I do know what fear is, therefore, but that does not prevent my being courageous on occasion. I handle a sword or a pistol prettily enough when I am driven to it. But my real bent, my decided vocation, is diplomacy. Unless I am sadly mistaken, my dear Nanon, I am on the way to become a great politician. A fine career is politics; Monsieur de Mazarin will rise very high if he's not hanged. And I am like Monsieur de Mazarin; so that one of my apprehensions, the greatest of them all, in fact, is, that I may be hanged. Fortunately, I have you, dear Nanon, and that gives me great confidence."

"So you are a warrior?"

"And a courtier, too, at need. Ah! my sojourn with Monsieur de Longueville was of the greatest benefit to me."

"What did you learn when you were with him?"

"What one always learns in the service of princes, – to fight, to intrigue, to betray."

"And those accomplishments – "

"Raised me to the very highest position."

"Which you have lost?"

"Dame! Hasn't Monsieur de Condé lost his? A man can't rule events. Dear sister, I, poor creature that I am, have governed Paris."

"You?"

"Yes, I."

"For how long a time?"

"For an hour and three quarters, watch in hand."

"You governed Paris?"

"With despotic power."

"How did that come about?"

"In the simplest way imaginable. You must know that Monsieur le Coadjuteur, Monsieur de Gondy, the Abbé de Gondy – "

"Well?"

"Was absolute master of the city. Well, at that precise moment, I was in the service of Monsieur le Duc d'Elbœuf; he is a Lorraine prince, and one need not be ashamed to belong to him. For the time being, Monsieur d'Elbœuf was at enmity with the coadjutor. So I led an uprising in favor of Monsieur d'Elbœuf, in the course of which I captured – "

"Whom? the coadjutor?"

"No; I shouldn't have known what to do with him, and should have been much embarrassed. I captured his mistress, Mademoiselle de Chevreuse."

"Why, that was a terrible thing to do!" cried Nanon.

"Isn't it a terrible thing that a priest should have a mistress? At all events, that's what I said to myself. My purpose was, therefore, to carry her away, and carry her so far that he would never see her again. I sent word to him of my purpose; but the devil of a man uses arguments one can't resist; he offered me a thousand pistoles."

"Poor woman! to be thus bargained for!"

"Nonsense! on the contrary, she should have been overjoyed, for that proved how dearly Monsieur de Gondy loved her. None but men of the Church are so devoted as all that to their mistresses. I fancy that it's because they are forbidden to have them."

"You are rich, then?"

"Rich?"

"Of course, after all these acts of brigandage."

"Don't speak of it; look you, Nanon, I was most unlucky. Mademoiselle de Chevreuse's maid, whom no one thought of ransoming, and who consequently remained with me, took the money from me."

"I hope that you retained at least the good-will of those in whose interest you acted in putting this affront upon the coadjutor."