Alexandre Dumas - The War of Women. Volume 1

Something less than a year later (February, 1651) the queen regent was forced to set the princes free, and to banish her first minister from the kingdom. Mazarin himself went to Havre, where the princes were then confined, and restored their liberty. "He was received by them," says Voltaire, "with the contempt he should have expected."

Condé returned to Paris, where his presence gave new life to the cabals and dissensions, and once more it was found that the step which was expected to put an end to the commotion, gave the signal for a renewal of the conflict with more bitterness than ever.

The character of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, author of the celebrated "Maxims," in which he attributes the noblest actions of mankind to self-esteem, has baffled more than one chronicler, – among the rest, Cardinal de Retz, with whom he was always at enmity.

"There has always been something very mysterious in M. de La Rochefoucauld," says the coadjutor. "He never was fit for war, though an excellent soldier; neither was he ever of himself a good courtier, although he always had a great inclination to be so; he never was a good party-man, although all his life long involved in party conflicts."

Pierre Lenet, councillor of State, and procureur-général to the Parliament of Dijon, was the author of Memoirs, – "not so well known as their interest entitles them to be," says Voltaire, – in which he gave the history of the Prince de Condé from his birth in 1627 to the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659.

The non-historical characters in the "War of Women," introduced to embellish and impart romantic flavor to a plot founded upon an incident which is in itself by no means devoid of the element of romance, include some of the most interesting and attractive of all Dumas' creations. Cauvignac, the Gascon adventurer, is, in respect to the qualities supposed to be most characteristic of the natives of Gascony, a worthy compeer of the immortal D'Artagnan. The lovely, high-spirited, and virtuous Vicomtesse de Cambes, and the equally lovely and high-spirited favorite of the Duc d'Épernon, meet upon common ground in their rivalry for the affection of Canolles. In Nanon de Lartigues, as in Olympe de Clèves, Dumas has shown that we need not always look in vain among women whose virtue is not without stain, for qualities of mind and heart deserving of respect.

Period, 1650.

ANNE OF AUSTRIA, Regent of France.

LOUIS XIV.

CARDINAL MAZARIN.

MARÉCHAL DE LA MEILLERAIE.

MADAME DE FRONSAC.

DUC D'ÉPERNON.

M. GUITAUT, Captain of the Queen's Guards.

Frondeurs:

PRINCE DE CONDÉ.

CLAIRE-CLÉMENCE DE MAILLÉ, PRINCESSE DE CONDÉ, his wife.

DUC D'ENGHIEN, son of the Prince de Condé.

CHARLOTTE DE MONTMORENCY, the Dowager Princesse de Condé.

PRINCE DE CONTI.

PRINCE DE LONGUEVILLE.

DUC DE BOUILLON.

DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

MARQUISE DE TOURVILLE.

CLAUDE RAOUL DE LESSAC, Comte de Clermont.

LOUIS-FERDINAND DE LORGES, Comte de Duras.

PIERRE LENET.

GÉRARD DE MONTALERT.

MONSIEUR RICHON, a soldier of fortune.

ESPAGNET, a Councillor of Parliament.

BARON DE RAVAILLY.

M. DE VIALAS, equerry to Princesse de Condé.

CLAIRE, Vicomtesse de Cambes.

BARON DE CANOLLES, Governor of the Île Saint-Georges.

M. DE VIBRAC, lieutenant to Canolles.

NANON DE LARTIGUES.

FRANCINETTE, her maid.

ROLAND CAUVIGNAC, Nanon's brother, captain of a troop of adventurers.

FERGUZON, his lieutenant.

BARRABAS, his sub-lieutenant.

ZÉPHÉRIN CARROTEL, sergeant in Cauvignac's troops.

BOURDELOT, physician to the Dowager Princesse de Condé.

POMPÉE, intendant to Princesse de Condé.

LA ROUSSIÈRE, captain of the hunt to Princesse de Condé.

M. LAVIE, Avocat-Général at Bordeaux.

MADAME LAVIE, his wife.

MASTER RABODIN, an attorney.

FRICOTIN} Rabodin's clerks

CHALUMEAU}

CASTORIN, servant to Canolles.

COURTAVAUX, servant to le Duc d'Épernon.

MASTER BISCARROS, landlord of the Golden Calf.

PIERROT, foster-brother to Duc d'Enghien.

THE GOVERNOR of Château-Trompette Prison.

M. D'ORGEMONT, his lieutenant.

At a short distance from Libourne, the bright and bustling city mirrored in the swift waters of the Dordogne, between Fronsac and Saint-Michel-la-Rivière, once stood a pretty little white-walled, red-roofed village, half-hidden by sycamores, lindens, and beeches. The high-road from Libourne to Saint-André-de-Cubzac passed through the midst of its symmetrically arranged houses, and formed the only landscape that they possessed. Behind one of the rows of houses, distant about a hundred yards, wound the river, its width and swiftness at this point indicating the proximity of the sea.

But the civil war passed that way; first of all it up-rooted the trees, then depopulated the houses, which, being exposed to all its capricious fury, and being unable to fly like their occupants, simply crumbled and fell to pieces by the roadside, protesting in their way against the savagery of intestine warfare. But little by little the earth, which seems to have been created for the express purpose of serving as the grave of everything upon it, covered the dead bodies of these houses, which were once filled with joyous life; lastly, the grass sprang up in this artificial soil, and the traveller who to-day wends his way along the solitary road is far from suspecting, as he sees one of the vast flocks which one encounters at every turn in the South cropping the grass upon the uneven surface, that sheep and shepherd are walking over the burial-place of a whole village. But, at the time of which we are speaking, that is to say about the month of May, 1650, the village in question lay along both sides of the road, which, like a mammoth artery, nourished it with luxuriant vegetation and overflowing life. The stranger who happened to pass along the road at that epoch would have taken pleasure in watching the peasants harness and unharness the horses from their carts, the fishermen along the hank pulling in their nets wherein the white and red fish of the Dordogne were dancing about, and the smiths striking sturdy blows upon the anvil, and sending forth at every stroke of the hammer a shower of sparks which lighted up the forge. However, the thing which would most have delighted his soul, especially if his journeying had given him that appetite which has become a proverbial attribute of travellers, would have been a long, low building, about five hundred yards outside the village, a building consisting of a ground-floor and first floor only, exhaling a certain vapor through its chimney, and through its windows certain odors which indicated, even more surely than the figure of a golden calf painted upon a piece of red iron, which creaked upon an iron rod set at the level of the first floor, that he had finally reached one of those hospitable establishments whose proprietors, in consideration of a certain modest recompense, undertake to restore the vigor of the tired wayfarer.

Will some one tell me why this hostelry of the Golden Calf was located five hundred yards from the village, instead of taking up its natural position amid the smiling houses grouped on either side of the road?

In the first place, because the landlord, notwithstanding the fact that his talents were hidden in this out-of-the-way corner of the world, was in culinary matters an artist of the first rank. Now, if he displayed his sign at any point between the beginning and the end of the two long lines of houses which formed the village, he ran the risk of being confounded with one of the wretched pot-house keepers whom he was forced to acknowledge as his confrères, but whom he could not bring himself to regard as his equals; while, on the contrary, by isolating himself he more easily attracted the notice of connoisseurs, who, having once tasted the delicacies that came from his kitchen, would say to others: —