Arvède Barine

“ Corneille was "of the Court" by all his feelings and by all his prejudices, and he shared Mademoiselle's belief that there is a natural difference between the man of quality and the man below the quality, because generous virtues are mingled with the blood which runs in noble veins, while the blood of the man of lower birth is mingled with lower passions. Being a true courtier, Corneille believed that above the two varieties of the human kind—the quality and the lesser people—Providence set the order of Princes who are of an essence apart, elect, and quasi-divine. ”

“ By the favour of the leader of the tradesmen the gates of Paris had opened to let pass the high nobility. Paris enjoyed the spectacle. The ramparts swarmed with sightseers; and Louis XIV., guarded by Mazarin, looked down upon them all from the heights of Charonne.
The soldiers of the Fronde had had enough! Crying, "Let the chiefs march!" they broke ranks. So it came to pass that all who fought that day were nobles. The faubourg saw battalions formed of princes and seigniors, and the infantry who manned the barricades bore the mighty names of ancient France. ”

“ Books and plays were not the only subjects of discussion; in the Blue Room letters from the absent were read to the company, verses were improvised and declaimed, plays were enacted, and delicately refined expressions were sought with which to clothe the sentiment and the passion of love. Great progress was made in the exercise of wit, and at times the Circle, excited by the clash of mind with mind, exhibited the effervescent joy of children at play when fun runs riot in the last moment of recess, before the bell rings to recall them to the schoolroom. ”

“ Dead cars bring about a constantly recurring block, and more than an hundred personages of more or less importance stop the way by their gallant intrigues. The romance mirrors the passing loves and the fevered and passionate life of the be-ribanded people who hung up their small arms in their panoplies, twisted their lances into pruning-hooks, and replaced the pitiless art of war by the political arts of peace. Honoré d'Urfé's heroes appear to be more jealously careful of their fine sentiments than of the sword-thrusts lavishly distributed by the lords and gentlemen of their days. ”

“ In the great world, the world of the great and the noble, love was mentioned only as Corneille regarded it in his plays. Every one was in love,—or feigned to be in love; on all hands were heard twitterings as of birds in the springtime; but the pretty music ceased when marriage was suggested, for no one had thought of founding a domestic hearth on a sentiment as personal and as ephemeral as love. It was understood that the collective body came first, that the youth—man or maid—belonged to the family, not to self. ”

“ They who were masters of the art of death looked on disease with curiosity; they knew that they could lop off the heads of the fine lords whose grandeur embittered the lives of the peasants and the workmen as easily as they could beat down nuts from trees; yet there lay the real King of France in his doll's house, and he could neither live nor die,—that was droll! ”

“ The nobility, jealous of the "long robes," had directly addressed the nation's depths: the bourgeoisie and the mobility.
Retz had supreme hope: to be a Cardinal. Condé hoped to be Prime Minister. Gaston had staked a throw on all the games. Mme. de Longueville dreamed of new adventures; and the Queen, still guided by her far-off lover, laboured in her own blind way upon a plan to benefit her little brood. She looked upon France, upon the people, and upon the Court as enemies; she had concentrated her mind upon one object; she meant to deceive them all and turn events to her own advantage. ”

“ La Feuillade said that there were but four words in the French language: "The Queen is good!"
So many cases of private and individual happiness gave the impression of public and general happiness. Paris expressed its satisfaction by entering heart and soul into its amusements. It played by day and it played by night, exhibiting the extraordinary appetite for pleasure which has always distinguished it.
"All, both the little and the great, are happy," [249] said Saint Evremond; "the very air they breathe is charged with amusement and with love." ”

“ A great political party composed of women from all parts of France arose to champion Condé, and still the bravest of all women, La Grande [379] Mademoiselle, sat with head bowed, deep in grief; her father's cowardice had drained life of its joy.
Having aroused the wrath of France by adventures which were the scandal of their hour, Mme. de Longueville had taken refuge in a foreign land and formed an alliance with Spain. France looked on bewildered by the turn of events; Mme. de Chevreuse and the Princess Palatine were in active life regarded as equals of men of State, consulted, and obeyed. ”

“ Not long before the beginning of the Fronde, the fine world of Paris, stirred to action by the spectacle of the royal infatuation and by the subjection of the national welfare to the suppositive exigencies of "the foreigner," embraced the theory of Opposition, and to be of the Opposition was the fashion of the hour. All who aspired to elegance wore their rebellion as a badge, unless they had private reasons for appearing as the friends of Mazarin. The women who were entering politics found it to their interest to join the opposing body. ”

“ Despite the fact that his importance and the terror he inspired had increased tenfold, he also had become tainted by the insignificance of the royal family. But to all the people he seemed the ogre dreaded by Mademoiselle in her infancy, though indisputedly an unnatural ogre, possessing genius far beyond the reach of the normal man. He was universally looked upon as a leader of priceless value to a country in its hour of crisis, and as a companion everything but desirable. He appalled the people. His first interviews with Gaston after the young Prince's return to France were terrible. ”

“ Certain of the men of France had been faithful to the country from the beginning; the nation's statesmen, notably the magistrates, had acted for the public good; but in the general accusation Parliament, like all the other factors of the Government, was branded; its motives were questioned, and the names of honest men were made a by-word.
Passing and repassing, in and out of all the groups and among all the coteries, glided the Archbishop's coadjutor; now in the costume of a cavalier, bedizened with glittering tinsel, now in the lugubrious habit of his office. ”

“ By the advice of the angry Queen, Monsieur waited one day longer; then word was sent to Mademoiselle that she was free and that she might receive visits, and in an hour all the people of the under-world of Paris were hurrying to the palace, laughing, shouting, crying to each other in broken voices. They surged past the sentinel and entered the courtyard; men wept, women, holding their children above their heads, pointed to the open window [269] where Mademoiselle, emaciated by her ten days' trial, but still haughty and determined, looking down into the upturned faces, smiled a welcome. ”

“ The rear of the palace looked out upon a parterre; beyond the parterre lay a chaos from which the Carrousel was not wholly delivered until the Second Empire. There stood the famous Hôtel de Rambouillet, close to the hotel of Madame de Chevreuse, confidential friend of Anne of Austria and interested enemy of Richelieu. There were other hotels, entangled with churches, with a hospital, a "Court of Miracles," gardens, and wild lands overgrown with weeds and grasses. There were shops and stables; and away at the far end of the settlement stood the Louvre, closing the perspective. ”

“ Love had triumphed in the Cid, but that day was past; in Horace it struggled for existence; in Polyeucte it was vanquished, though not before it had opposed sturdy resistance. It was weak enough in Cinna. After the arrival of Pompée it gave up the struggle, though it was heard piteously murmuring at intervals. When Pompée appeared the ladies disappeared from the drama as if by magic; hardly a woman worthy of the name could be found in literature: a few beings there were draped with the time-worn title, but they were as virile as wild Indians.
A little hardness sets so well upon great souls! ”

“ The people whose past life had prepared them for anything but good works sprang with ardour upon the road opened by the gentle saint who had taught France the way of mercy. Even the great essayed to be like Père Vincent; every one, high and low, each in his own way and to the extent of his power, followed the unique example. Saint Vincent became the national standard; the nobles pressed forward in his footsteps, concerning themselves with the sick and the poor and trying to do the work of priests. ”

“ As Mademoiselle ran through the streets the bourgeois, who had gathered in groups to give each other countenance, begged her for passports; they were ready to leave the city.
A half-starved, ragged mob filled the Place de Grève; the canaille blocked the adjoining streets. The palace was like an abandoned barrack. The sunlight fell upon the polished locks of the old muskets of the League, and not a head dared approach the windows. Mademoiselle ran through the mob and entered the Hôtel de Ville. Let her tell her errand in her own way:
They were all there ”

“ The idea that woman is a creature possessing a claim upon herself, with the right to love, to be happy, and to seat herself upon the steps of the throne, or even upon the throne, is a purely modern conception. The day when that mediocre thought first germinated in the brain of the noblewoman marked a date in the history of royalty, and it may be that no surer sign was given to warn the nations of contemporary Europe of the decay of the monarchical idea.
La Grande Mademoiselle had faith in the old traditions. ”

“ Her leaders were strong men. In 1651 she had her Marats and her Héberts, who used their pens to incite France to massacre; and her Maillards, who urged her on to pillage the homes of the nobility and to fell, as an ox is felled in the shambles, all, however innocent, whom it served their purpose to call suspicious. Such men did bloody work, and they did not ask what the nobles thought of it. Insolent, on fire with hate, lords of a day! they sprang from the slimy ooze with the first menace of Revolution to vanish with the Revolution when the last head rolled in the sawdust ”

“ Our comedies are considered commendable according to their manners of discussing love; the divers beauties of our dramas consist in their various exposures of the intimate effects of love. Love is the theme, and the mind must either accept it and work upon it or rest unemployed; there is no choice; no other theme is given. When love is not the chief agent, it serves as an irritant to draw out some other passion and to make sensuous display not only possible but cogent, if not imperatively necessary; be the play what it may, love is represented as the "passion ruling the heart." ”

“ In our day men do not enter active life until they have been aged and fatigued by the march of years. The time of entrance upon the career of life ought not to be a matter of indifference to a people. At the age of thirty years a man no longer thinks and feels as he thought and felt at the age of twenty. His manner of making war is different; and there is even more difference in his political action. He has different ambitions. His inclinations lead him into different adventures. The moments of history, when the agitators of the nation were young men, glow with the light of no other epoch. ”