Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
live on this side of Fiesole.
BOSSUET AND THE DUCHESS DE FONTANGES
_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, it is the king's desire that I compliment you
on the elevation you have attained.
_Fontanges._ O monseigneur, I know very well what you mean. His
Majesty is kind and polite to everybody. The last thing he said to me
was, 'Angelique! do not forget to compliment Monseigneur the bishop on
the dignity I have conferred upon him, of almoner to the dauphiness. I
desired the appointment for him only that he might be of rank
sufficient to confess, now you are duchess. Let him be your confessor,
my little girl.'
_Bossuet._ I dare not presume to ask you, mademoiselle, what was your
gracious reply to the condescension of our royal master.
_Fontanges._ Oh, yes! you may. I told him I was almost sure I should
be ashamed of confessing such naughty things to a person of high rank,
who writes like an angel.
_Bossuet._ The observation was inspired, mademoiselle, by your
goodness and modesty.
_Fontanges._ You are so agreeable a man, monseigneur, I will confess
to you, directly, if you like.
_Bossuet._ Have you brought yourself to a proper frame of mind, young
lady?
_Fontanges._ What is that?
_Bossuet._ Do you hate sin?
_Fontanges._ Very much.
_Bossuet._ Are you resolved to leave it off?
_Fontanges._ I have left it off entirely since the king began to love
me. I have never said a spiteful word of anybody since.
_Bossuet._ In your opinion, mademoiselle, are there no other sins than
malice?
_Fontanges._ I never stole anything; I never committed adultery; I
never coveted my neighbour's wife; I never killed any person, though
several have told me they should die for me.
_Bossuet._ Vain, idle talk! Did you listen to it?
_Fontanges._ Indeed I did, with both ears; it seemed so funny.
_Bossuet._ You have something to answer for, then.
_Fontanges._ No, indeed, I have not, monseigneur. I have asked many
times after them, and found they were all alive, which mortified me.
_Bossuet._ So, then! you would really have them die for you?
_Fontanges._ Oh, no, no! but I wanted to see whether they were in
earnest, or told me fibs; for, if they told me fibs, I would never
trust them again.
_Bossuet._ Do you hate the world, mademoiselle?
_Fontanges._ A good deal of it: all Picardy, for example, and all
Sologne; nothing is uglier--and, oh my life! what frightful men and
women!
_Bossuet._ I would say, in plain language, do you hate the flesh and
the devil?
_Fontanges._ Who does not hate the devil? If you will hold my hand the
while, I will tell him so. I hate you, beast! There now. As for flesh,
I never could bear a fat man. Such people can neither dance nor hunt,
nor do anything that I know of.
_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle Marie-Angelique de Scoraille de Rousille,
Duchess de Fontanges! do you hate titles and dignities and yourself?
_Fontanges._ Myself! does any one hate me? Why should I be the first?
Hatred is the worst thing in the world: it makes one so very ugly.
_Bossuet._ To love God, we must hate ourselves. We must detest our
bodies, if we would save our souls.
_Fontanges._ That is hard: how can I do it? I see nothing so
detestable in mine. Do you? To love is easier. I love God whenever I
think of Him, He has been so very good to me; but I cannot hate
myself, if I would. As God hath not hated me, why should I? Beside, it
was He who made the king to love me; for I heard you say in a sermon
that the hearts of kings are in His rule and governance. As for titles
and dignities, I do not care much about them while his Majesty loves
me, and calls me his Angelique. They make people more civil about us;
and therefore it must be a simpleton who hates or disregards them, and
a hypocrite who pretends it. I am glad to be a duchess. Manon and
Lisette have never tied my garter so as to hurt me since, nor has the
mischievous old La Grange said anything cross or bold: on the
contrary, she told me what a fine colour and what a plumpness it gave
me. Would not you rather be a duchess than a waiting-maid or a nun, if
the king gave you your choice?
_Bossuet._ Pardon me, mademoiselle, I am confounded at the levity of
your question.
_Fontanges._ I am in earnest, as you see.
_Bossuet._ Flattery will come before you in other and more dangerous
forms: you will be commended for excellences which do not belong to
you; and this you will find as injurious to your repose as to your
virtue. An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest
reproof. If you reject it, you are unhappy; if you accept it, you are
undone. The compliments of a king are of themselves sufficient to
pervert your intellect.
_Fontanges._ There you are mistaken twice over. It is not my person
that pleases him so greatly: it is my spirit, my wit, my talents, my
genius, and that very thing which you have mentioned--what was it? my
intellect. He never complimented me the least upon my beauty. Others
have said that I am the most beautiful young creature under heaven; a
blossom of Paradise, a nymph, an angel; worth (let me whisper it in
your ear--do I lean too hard?) a thousand Montespans. But his Majesty
never said more on the occasion than that I was _imparagonable!_ (what
is that?) and that he adored me; holding my hand and sitting quite
still, when he might have romped with me and kissed me.
_Bossuet._ I would aspire to the glory of converting you.
_Fontanges._ You may do anything with me but convert me: you must not
do that; I am a Catholic born. M. de Turenne and Mademoiselle de Duras
were heretics: you did right there. The king told the chancellor that
he prepared them, that the business was arranged for you, and that you
had nothing to do but get ready the arguments and responses, which you
did gallantly--did not you? And yet Mademoiselle de Duras was very
awkward for a long while afterwards in crossing herself, and was once
remarked to beat her breast in the litany with the points of two
fingers at a time, when every one is taught to use only the second,
whether it has a ring upon it or not. I am sorry she did so; for
people might think her insincere in her conversion, and pretend that
she kept a finger for each religion.
_Bossuet._ It would be as uncharitable to doubt the conviction of
Mademoiselle de Duras as that of M. le Marechal.
_Fontanges._ I have heard some fine verses, I can assure you,
monseigneur, in which you are called the conqueror of Turenne. I
should like to have been his conqueror myself, he was so great a man.
I understand that you have lately done a much more difficult thing.
_Bossuet._ To what do you refer, mademoiselle?
_Fontanges._ That you have overcome quietism. Now, in the name of
wonder, how could you manage that?
_Bossuet._ By the grace of God.
_Fontanges._ Yes, indeed; but never until now did God give any
preacher so much of His grace as to subdue this pest.
_Bossuet._ It has appeared among us but lately.
_Fontanges._ Oh, dear me! I have always been subject to it dreadfully,
from a child.
_Bossuet._ Really! I never heard so.
_Fontanges._ I checked myself as well as I could, although they
constantly told me I looked well in it.
_Bossuet._ In what, mademoiselle?
_Fontanges._ In quietism; that is, when I fell asleep at sermon time.
I am ashamed that such a learned and pious man as M. de Fenelon should
incline to it,[1] as they say he does.
_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, you quite mistake the matter.
_Fontanges._ Is not then M. de Fenelon thought a very pious and
learned person?
_Bossuet._ And justly.
_Fontanges._ I have read a great way in a romance he has begun, about
a knight-errant in search of a father. The king says there are many
such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before.
The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written
out in a charming hand, as much as the copy-book would hold; and I got
through, I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the
grotto, I never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his
own story, and left them at once; in a hurry (I suppose) to set out
upon his mission to Saintonge in the _pays de d'Aunis_, where the king
has promised him a famous _heretic hunt_. He is, I do assure you, a
wonderful creature: he understands so much Latin and Greek, and knows
all the tricks of the sorceresses. Yet you keep him under.
_Bossuet._ Mademoiselle, if you really have anything to confess, and
if you desire that I should have the honour of absolving you, it would
be better to proceed in it, than to oppress me with unmerited eulogies
on my humble labours.
_Fontanges._ You must first direct me, monseigneur: I have nothing
particular. The king assures me there is no harm whatever in his love
toward me.
_Bossuet._ That depends on your thoughts at the moment. If you
abstract the mind from the body, and turn your heart toward Heaven----
_Fontanges._ O monseigneur, I always did so--every time but once--you
quite make me blush. Let us converse about something else, or I shall
grow too serious, just as you made me the other day at the funeral
sermon. And now let me tell you, my lord, you compose such pretty
funeral sermons, I hope I shall have the pleasure of hearing you
preach mine.
_Bossuet._ Rather let us hope, mademoiselle, that the hour is yet far
distant when so melancholy a service will be performed for you. May he
who is unborn be the sad announcer of your departure hence![2] May he
indicate to those around him many virtues not perhaps yet full-blown
in you, and point triumphantly to many faults and foibles checked by
you in their early growth, and lying dead on the open road, you shall
have left behind you! To me the painful duty will, I trust, be
spared: I am advanced in age; you are a child.
_Fontanges._ Oh, no! I am seventeen.
_Bossuet._ I should have supposed you younger by two years at least.
But do you collect nothing from your own reflection, which raises so
many in my breast? You think it possible that I, aged as I am, may
preach a sermon at your funeral. We say that our days are few; and
saying it, we say too much. Marie-Angelique, we have but one: the past
are not ours, and who can promise us the future? This in which we live
is ours only while we live in it; the next moment may strike it off
from us; the next sentence I would utter may be broken and fall
between us.[3] The beauty that has made a thousand hearts to beat at
one instant, at the succeeding has been without pulse and colour,
without admirer, friend, companion, follower. She by whose eyes the
march of victory shall have been directed, whose name shall have
animated armies at the extremities of the earth, drops into one of its
crevices and mingles with its dust. Duchess de Fontanges! think on
this! Lady! so live as to think on it undisturbed!
_Fontanges._ O God! I am quite alarmed. Do not talk thus gravely. It
is in vain that you speak to me in so sweet a voice. I am frightened
even at the rattle of the beads about my neck: take them off, and let
us talk on other things. What was it that dropped on the floor as you
were speaking? It seemed to shake the room, though it sounded like a
pin or button.
_Bossuet._ Leave it there!
_Fontanges._ Your ring fell from your hand, my lord bishop! How quick
you are! Could not you have trusted me to pick it up?
_Bossuet._ Madame is too condescending: had this happened, I should
have been overwhelmed with confusion. My hand is shrivelled: the ring
has ceased to fit it. A mere accident may draw us into perdition; a
mere accident may bestow on us the means of grace. A pebble has moved
you more than my words.
_Fontanges._ It pleases me vastly: I admire rubies. I will ask the
king for one exactly like it. This is the time he usually comes from