The Wandering Jew — Complete
of Madame de Saint-Dizier were sent to Vincennes; but the emperor, who
might have punished her terribly, contented himself with exiling the
princess to one of her estates near Dunkirk.
Upon the Restoration, the persecutions which Madame de Saint-Dizier had
suffered for the Good Cause were entered to her credit, and she acquired
even then very considerable influence, in spite of the lightness of her
behavior. The Marquis d'Aigrigny, having entered the military service of
France, remained there. He was handsome, and of fashionable manners and
address. He had corresponded and conspired with the princess, without
knowing her; and these circumstances necessarily led to a close
connection between them.
Excessive self-love, a taste for exciting pleasures, aspirations
of hatred, pride, and lordliness, a species of evil sympathy, the
perfidious attraction of which brings together perverse natures without
mingling them, had made of the princess and the Marquis accomplices
rather than lovers. This connection, based upon selfish and bitter
feelings, and upon the support which two characters of this dangerous
temper could lend to each other against a world in which their spirit of
intrigue, of gallantry, and of contempt had made them many enemies, this
connection endured till the moment when, after his duel with General
Simon, the Marquis entered a religious house, without any one
understanding the cause of his unexpected and sudden resolution.
The princess, having not yet heard the hour of her conversion strike,
continued to whirl round the vortex of the world with a greedy, jealous,
and hateful ardor, for she saw that the last years of her beauty were
dying out.
An estimate of the character of this woman may be formed from the
following fact:
Still very agreeable, she wished to close her worldly and volatile
career with some brilliant and final triumph, as a great actress knows
the proper time to withdraw from the stage so as to leave regrets
behind. Desirous of offering up this final incense to her own vanity,
the princess skillfully selected her victims. She spied out in the world
a young couple who idolized each other; and, by dint of cunning and
address, she succeeded in taking away the lover from his mistress, a
charming woman of eighteen, by whom he was adored. This triumph being
achieved, Madame Saint-Dizier retired from the fashionable world in the
full blaze of her exploit. After many long conversations with the Abbe
Marquis d'Aigrigny, who had become a renowned preacher, she departed
suddenly from Paris, and spent two years upon her estate near Dunkirk,
to which she took only one of her female attendants, viz., Mrs. Grivois.
When the princess afterwards returned to Paris, it was impossible
to recognize the frivolous, intriguing, and dissipated woman she had
formerly been. The metamorphosis was as complete as it was extraordinary
and even startling. Saint-Dizier House, heretofore open to the banquets
and festivals of every kind of pleasure, became gloomily silent and
austere. Instead of the world of elegance and fashion, the princess now
received in her mansion only women of ostentatious piety, and men of
consequence, who were remarkably exemplary by the extravagant rigor of
their religious and monarchial principles. Above all, she drew around
her several noted members of the higher orders of the clergy. She was
appointed patroness of a body of religious females. She had her own
confessor, chaplin, almoner, and even spiritual director; but this
last performed his functions in partibus. The Marquis-Abbe d'Aigrigny
continued in reality to be her spiritual guide; and it is almost
unnecessary to say that for a long time past their mutual relations as
to flirting had entirely ceased.
This sudden and complete conversion of a gay and distinguished woman,
especially as it was loudly trumpeted forth, struck the greater number
of persons with wonder and respect. Others, more discerning, only
smiled.
A single anecdote, from amongst a thousand, will suffice to show the
alarming influence and power which the princess had acquired since her
affiliation with the Jesuits. This anecdote will also exhibit the deep,
vindictive, and pitiless character of this woman, whom Adrienne de
Cardoville had so imprudently made herself ready to brave.
Amongst the persons who smiled more or less at the conversion of Madame
de Saint-Dizier were the young and charming couple whom she had so
cruelly disunited before she quitted forever the scenes of revelry
in which she had lived. The young couple became more impassioned and
devoted to each other than ever; they were reconciled and married, after
the passing storm which had hurled them asunder; and they indulged in
no other vengeance against the author of their temporary infelicity than
that of mildly jesting at the pious conversion of the woman who had done
them so much injury.
Some time after, a terrible fatality overtook the loving pair. The
husband, until then blindly unsuspicious, was suddenly inflamed by
anonymous communications. A dreadful rupture ensued, and the young wife
perished.
As for the husband, certain vague rumors, far from distinct, yet
pregnant with secret meanings, perfidiously contrived, and a thousand
times more detestable than formal accusations, which can, at least, be
met and destroyed, were strewn about him with so much perseverance, with
a skill so diabolical, and by means and ways so very various, that his
best friends, by little and little, withdrew themselves from him,
thus yielding to the slow, irresistible influence of that incessant
whispering and buzzing, confused as indistinct, amounting to some such
results as this-"Well! you know!" says one.
"No!" replies another.
"People say very vile things about him."
"Do they? really! What then?"
"I don't know! Bad reports! Rumors grievously affecting his honor!"
"The deuce! That's very serious. It accounts for the coldness with which
he is now everywhere received!"
"I shall avoid him in future!"
"So will I," etc.
Such is the world, that very often nothing more than groundless surmises
are necessary to brand a man whose very, happiness may have incurred
envy. So it was with the gentleman of whom we speak. The unfortunate
man, seeing the void around him extending itself,--feeling (so to speak)
the earth crumbling from beneath his feet, knew not where to find or
grasp the impalpable enemy whose blows he felt; for not once had the
idea occurred to him of suspecting the princess, whom he had not seen
since his adventure with her. Anxiously desiring to learn why he was so
much shunned and despised, he at length sought an explanation from
an old friend; but he received only a disdainfully evasive answer;
at which, being exasperated, he demanded satisfaction. His adversary
replied--"If you can find two persons of our acquaintance, I will fight
you!" The unhappy man could not find one!
Finally, forsaken by all, without having ever obtained an explanation of
the reason for forsaking him--suffering keenly for the fate of the
wife whom he had lost, he became mad with grief, rage, and despair, and
killed himself.
On the day of his death, Madame de Saint-Dizier remarked that it was
fit and necessary that one who had lived so shamefully should come to
an equally shameful end, and that he who had so long jested at all laws,
human and divine, could not seemly otherwise terminate his wretched life
than by perpetrating a last crime--suicide! And the friends of Madame de
Saint-Dizier hawked about and everywhere repeated these terrible words
with a contrite air, as if beatified and convinced! But this was not
all. Along with chastisements there were rewards.
Observant people remarked that the favorites of the religious clan of
Madame de Saint-Dizier rose to high distinction with singular rapidity.
The virtuous young men, such as were religiously attentive to tiresome
sermons, were married to rich orphans of the Sacred Heart Convents, who
were held in reserve for the purpose; poor young girls, who, learning
too late what it is to have a pious husband selected and imposed upon
them by a set of devotees, often expiated by very bitter tears the
deceitful favor of thus being admitted into a world of hypocrisy and
falsehood, in which they found themselves strangers without support,
crushed by it if they dared to complain of the marriages to which they
had been condemned.
In the parlor of Madame de Saint-Dizier were appointed prefects,
colonels, treasurers, deputies, academicians, bishops and peers of
the realm, from whom nothing more was required in return for the
all-powerful support bestowed upon them, but to wear a pious gloss,
sometimes publicly take the communion, swear furious war against
everything impious or revolutionary,--and above all, correspond
confidentially upon "different subjects of his choosing" with the Abbe
d'Aigrigny,--an amusement, moreover, which was very agreeable; for the
abbe was the most amiable man in the world, the most witty, and above
all, the most obliging. The following is an historical fact, which
requires the bitter and vengeful irony of Moliere or Pascal to do it
justice.
During the last year of the Restoration, there was one of the mighty
dignitaries of the court a firm and independent man, who did not
make profession (as the holy fathers call it), that is, who did
not communicate at the altar. The splendor amid which he moved was
calculated to give the weight of a very injurious example to his
indifference. The Abbe-Marquis d'Aigrigny was therefore despatched to
him; and he knowing the honorable and elevated character of the non
communicant, thought that if he could only bring him to profess by
any means (whatever the means might be) the effect would be what was
desired. Like a man of intellect, the abbe prized the dogma but cheaply
himself. He only spoke of the suitableness of the step, and of the
highly salutary example which the resolution to adopt it would afford to
the public.
"M. Abbe," replied the person sought to be influenced, "I have a greater
respect for religion than you have. I should consider it an infamous
mockery to go to the communion table without feeling the proper
conviction."
"Nonsense! you inflexible man! you frowning Alcestes," said the Marquis
Abbe, smiling slyly. "Your profits and your scruples will go together,
believe me, by listening to me. In short, we shall manage to make it a
BLANK COMMUNION for you; for after all, what is it that we ask?--only
the APPEARANCE!"
Now, a BLANK COMMUNION means breaking an unconsecrated wafer!
The Abbe-Marquis retired with his offers, which were rejected with
indignation;--but then, the refractory man was dismissed from his place
at court. This was but a single isolated fact. Woe to all who found
themselves opposed to the interest and principles of Madame de Saint
Dizier or her friends! Sooner or later, directly or indirectly, they
felt themselves cruelly stabbed, generally immediately--some in their
dearest connections, others in their credit, some in their honor;
others in their official functions; and all by secret action, noiseless,
continuous, and latent, in time becoming a terrible and mysterious
dissolvent, which invisibly undermined reputations, fortunes, positions
the most solidly established, until the moment when all sunk forever
into the abyss, amid the surprise and terror of the beholders.
It will now be conceived how under the Restoration the Princess de Saint
Dizier had become singularly influential and formidable. At the time of
the Revolution of July (1830) she had "rallied," and, strangely enough,
by preserving some relation of family and of society with persons
faithful to the worship of decayed monarchy, people still attributed to