Love affairs of the Courts of Europe by Thornton Hall

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She was now in the very prime of her beauty, and a Queen in all but the
name. Between her and her full Queendom were but two obstacles--her
lover's plain, unattractive wife, and her own worthless husband; and of
these obstacles one was soon to be removed from her path.

Pietro, who had been made chamberlain to the Tuscan Court, was more
than content that his wife should go her own way, so long as he was
allowed to go his. He was kept very agreeably occupied with love affairs
of his own. The richest widow in Florence, Cassandra Borgianni, was
eager to lavish her smiles and favours on him; and the knowledge that
two of his predecessors in her affection had fallen under the assassin's
knife only lent zest to a love adventure which was after his heart.
Warnings of the fate that might await him in turn fell on deaf ears.
When his wife ventured to point out the danger he retorted, "If you say
another word I will cut your throat." The following night as he was
returning from a visit to the widow, a dagger was sheathed in his heart,
and Pietro's amorous race was run.

Such was the end of the bank-clerk and his eleventh-hour glories and
love adventures. Now only Giovanna remained to block the way to the
pinnacle of Bianca's ambition; and her health was so frail that the
waiting might not be long. Giovanna had provided no successor to her
husband (who had now succeeded to his Grand Dukedom); if Bianca could
succeed where the Grand Duchess had failed, she could at least ensure
that a son of hers would one day rule over Tuscany.

Thus one August day in 1576 the news flashed round Florence that a male
child had been born in the palace on the Via Maggiore. Francesco was in
the "seventh heaven" of delight. Here at last was the long-looked-for
inheritor of his honours--the son who was to perpetuate the glories of
the Medici and to thwart his brother, the Cardinal, who had so
confidently counted on the succession for himself. And Madame Bianca
professed herself equally delighted, although her pleasure was qualified
by fear.

She had played her part with consummate cleverness; but there were two
women who knew the true story of the birth of the child, which had been
smuggled into the palace from a Florence slum. One was the changeling's
mother, a woman of the people, whom a substantial bribe had induced to
part with her new-born infant; the other was Bianca's waiting woman.
These witnesses to the imposture must be silenced effectually.

Hired assassins made short work of the mother. The waiting-maid was
"left for dead" in a mountain-pass, to which she had been lured; but she
survived long enough at least to communicate her secret to the Grand
Duke's brother, the Cardinal Ferdinand de Medici.

Bianca was now in a parlous plight. At any moment her enemy, the
Cardinal, might betray her to her lover, and bring the carefully planned
edifice of her fortunes tumbling about her ears. But she proved equal
even to this emergency. Taking her courage in both hands, she herself
confessed the fraud to the Grand Duke, who not only forgave her (so
completely was he under the spell of her beauty) but insisted on calling
the gutter-child his son.

The tables, however, were soon to be turned on her, for Giovanna, who
had long despaired of providing an heir to her husband, gave birth a
few months later to a male child. Florence was jubilant, for the Grand
Duchess was as beloved as her rival was detested; and the christening of
the heir was made the occasion of festivities and rejoicing. Bianca's
day of triumph seemed at last to be over. For a time she left Florence
to hide her humiliation; but within a year she was back again, to be
received with open arms of welcome by the Duke. During her absence she
had made peace with her family, and when her father and brother came to
Florence to visit her, they were received by Francesco with regal
entertainments, and sent away loaded with presents and honours.

Bianca had now reached the zenith of her power and splendour. Before she
had been back many months the Grand Duchess died, to the undisguised
relief of her husband, who hastened from her funeral to the arms of her
rival. Her position was now secure, unassailable; and before Giovanna
had been two months in the family vault, Bianca was secretly married to
her Grand ducal lover.

Florence was furious. But what mattered that? The Venetian Senate had
recognised Bianca as a true daughter of the Republic. She was the legal
wife of the ruler of Tuscany. She was Grand Duchess at last, and she
meant all the world to know it. That she was cordially hated by her
husband's subjects, that the air was full of stories of her
extravagance, her intemperance, and her cruelty, gave her no moment's
unhappiness. For eight years she reigned as Queen, wielding the sceptre
her husband's hands were too weak or indifferent to hold. Giovanna's
son had followed his mother to the grave; and the child of the slums,
who had been so fruitlessly smuggled into her palace, had been
legitimated.

The only thorn now left in her bed of roses was the enmity of the Grand
Duke's brother, the Cardinal; and her greatest ambition was to win him
to her side. In the autumn of 1787 he was invited to Florence, and as
the culmination of a series of festivities, a grand banquet was given,
at which he had the place of honour, at her right hand. The feast was
drawing near to its end. Bianca, with sparkling eyes and flushed face,
looking lovelier than she had ever looked before, was at her happiest,
for the Cardinal had at last succumbed to her bright eyes and honeyed
words. It was the crowning moment of her many triumphs, when life left
nothing more to desire.

Then it was, at the supreme moment, that tragedy in its most terrible
form fell on the scene of festivity and mirth. While Bianca was smiling
her sweetest on the Cardinal she was seized by violent pains, "her mouth
foams, her face is distorted by agony; she shrieks aloud that she is
dying. Francesco tries to go to her aid, but his steps are suddenly
arrested. He too is seized by the same terrible anguish. A few hours
later both she and he breathe their last breath."

"Poison" was the word which ran through the palace and soon through
Florence from blanched lips to blanched lips. Some said it was the
Cardinal who had done the deed; others whispered stories of a poisoned
tart designed by Bianca for the Cardinal, who refused to be tempted.
Whereupon the Grand Duke had eaten of it, and Bianca, "seeing that her
plot had so tragically miscarried, seized the tart from her husband's
hand and ate what was left of it."

The truth will never be known. What we do know is that within a few
hours of the last joke and the last drained glass of that fatal banquet
the bodies of Francesco and Bianca were lying in death side by side in
an adjacent room, the door of which was locked against the eyes of the
curious--even against the physicians.

In the solemn lying-in-state that followed Bianca had no place.
Francesco alone, by his brother's orders, wore his crown in death. As
for Bianca, her body was hurried away and flung into the common vault of
San Lorenzo, with the light of two yellow wax torches to bear it
company, and the jibes and jeers of Florence for its only requiem.

CHAPTER XVII

RICHELIEU, THE ROUE

In the drama of the French Court many a fine-feathered villain "struts
his brief hour" on the stage, dazzling eyes by his splendour, and
shocking a world none too easily shocked in those days of easy morals by
his profligacy; but it would be difficult among all these gilded rakes
to find a match for the Duc de Richelieu, who carried his villainies
through little less than a century of life.

Born in 1696, when Louis XIV. had still nearly twenty years of his long
reign before him, Louis Francois Armand Duplessis, Duc de Richelieu,
survived to hear the rumblings which heralded the French Revolution
ninety-two years later; and for three-quarters of a century to be known
as the most accomplished and heartless roue in all France. Bearer of a
great name, and inheritor of the splendours and riches of his
great-uncle, the Cardinal, who was Louis XII.'s right-hand man, and, in
his day, the most powerful subject in Europe, the Duc was born with the
football of fortune at his feet; and probably no man who has ever lived
so shamefully prostituted such magnificent opportunities and gifts.

As a boy, still in his teens, he had begun to play the role of Don Juan
at the Court of the child-King, Louis XV. The most beautiful women at
the Court, we are told, went crazy over the handsome boy, who bore the
most splendid name in France; and thus early his head was turned by
flatteries and attentions which followed him almost to the grave.

The young Duchesse de Bourgogne, the King's mother, made love to him, to
the scandal of the Court; and from Princesses of the Blood Royal to the
humblest serving-maid, there was scarcely a woman at Court who would not
have given her eyes for a smile from the Duc de Fronsac, as he was then
known.

How he revelled in his conquests he makes abundantly clear in the
Memoirs he left behind him--surely the most scandalous ever written--in
which he recounts his love affairs, in long sequence, with a
cold-blooded heartlessness which shocks the reader to-day, so long after
lover and victims have been dust. He revels in describing the artifices
by which he got the most unassailable of women into his power--such as
the young and beautiful Madame Michelin, whose religious scruples proved
such a frail barrier against the assaults of the young Lothario. He
chuckles with a diabolical pride as he tells us how he played off one
mistress against another; how he made one liaison pave the way to its
successor; and how he abandoned each in turn when it had served its
purpose, and betrayed, one after another, the women who had trusted to
his nebulous sense of honour.

A profligate so tempted as the Duc de Richelieu was from his earliest
years, one can understand, however much we may condemn; but for the man
who conducted his love affairs with such heartlessness and dishonour no
language has words of execration and contempt to describe him.

From his earliest youth there was no "game" too high for our Don Juan to
fly at. Long before he had reached manhood he counted his lady-loves by
the score; and among them were at least three Royal Princesses,
Mademoiselle de Charolais, and two of the Regent's own daughters, the
Duchesse de Berry and Mademoiselle de Valois, later Duchess of Modena,
who, in their jealousy, were ready to "tear each other's eyes out" for
love of the Duc. Quarrels between the rival ladies were of everyday
occurrence; and even duels were by no means unknown.

When, for instance, the Duc wearied of the lovely Madame de Polignac,
this lady was so inflamed by hatred of her successor in his affections,
the Marquise de Nesle, that she challenged her to a duel to the death in
the Bois de Boulogne. When Madame de Polignac, after a fierce exchange
of shots, saw her rival stretched at her feet, she turned furiously on
the wounded woman. "Go!" she shrieked. "I will teach you to walk in the
footsteps of a woman like me! If I had the traitor here, I would blow
his brains out!" Whereupon, Madame de Nesle, fainting as she was from
loss of blood, retorted that her lover was worthy that even more noble
blood than hers should be shed for him. "He is," she said to the few
onlookers who had hurried to the scene on hearing the shots, "the most
amiable _seigneur_ of the Court. I am ready to shed for him the last
drop of blood in my veins. All these ladies try to catch him, but I hope
that the proofs I have given of my devotion will win him for myself
without sharing with anyone. Why should I hide his name? He is the Duc
de Richelieu--yes, the Duc de Richelieu, the eldest son of Venus and
Mars!"

Such was the devotion which this heartless profligate won from some of
the most beautiful and highly placed ladies of France. What was the
secret of the spell he cast over them it is difficult to say. It is true
that he was a handsome man, as his portraits show, but there were men
quite as handsome at the French Court; he was courtly and accomplished,
but he had many rivals as clever and as skilled in courtly arts as
himself. His power must, one thinks, have lain in that strange magnetism
which women seem so powerless to resist in men, and which outweighs all
graces of mind and physical perfections.

The Duc's career, however, was not one unbroken dallying with love.
Thrice, at least, he was sent to cool his ardour within the walls of the
Bastille--on one occasion as the result of a duel with the Comte de
Gace. His lady-loves were desolate at the cruel fate which had overtaken
their idol. They fell on their knees at the Regent's feet, and, with
tears streaming down their pretty cheeks, pleaded for his freedom. Two
of the Royal Princesses, both disguised as Sisters of Charity, visited
the prisoner daily in his dungeon, carrying with them delicacies to
tempt his appetite, and consolation to cheer his captivity.

In vain did Duc and Comte both declare that they had never fought a
duel; and when, in the absence of proof, the Regent insisted that their
bodies should be examined for the convicting wounds, the impish
Richelieu came triumphantly through the ordeal as the result of having
his wounds covered with pink taffeta and skilfully painted!

It was a more serious matter that sent him again to the Bastille in
1718. False to his country as to the victims of his fascinations, he had
been plotting with Spain, France's bitterest enemy, for the seizure of
the Regent and the carrying him off across the Pyrenees; and certain
incriminating letters sent to him by Cardinal Alberoni had been
intercepted, and were in the Regent's hands. The Regent's daughter,
Mademoiselle de Valois, warned her lover of his danger, but too late.
Before he could escape, he was arrested, and with an escort of archers
was safely lodged in the Bastille.

Our Lothario was now indeed in a parlous plight. Lodged in the deepest
and most loathsome dungeon of the Bastille--a dungeon so damp that
within a few hours his clothes were saturated--without even a chair to
sit on or a bed to lie on, with legions of hungry rats for company, he
was now face to face with almost certain death. The Regent, whose love
affairs he had thwarted a score of times, and who thus had no reason to
love the profligate Duc, vowed that his head should pay the price of his
treason.

Once more the Court ladies were reduced to hysterics and despair, and
forgot their jealousies in a common appeal to the Regent for clemency.
Mademoiselle de Valois was driven to distraction; and when tears and
pleadings failed to soften her father's heart, she declared in the
hearing of the Court that she would commit suicide unless her lover was
restored to liberty. In company with her rival, Mademoiselle de
Charolais, she visited the dungeon in the dark night hours, taking flint
and steel, candles and bonbons, to weep with the captive.

She squandered two hundred thousand livres in attempts to bribe his
guards, but all to no purpose: and it was not until after six months of
durance that the Regent at last yielded--moved partly by his daughter's
tears and threats and partly by the pleadings of the Cardinal-Archbishop
of Paris--and the prisoner was released, on condition that the Cardinal
and the Duchesse de Richelieu would be responsible for his custody and
good behaviour.

A few days later we find the irresponsible Richelieu climbing over the
garden-walls of his new "prison" at Conflans, racing through the
darkness to Paris behind swift horses, and making love to the Regent's
own mistresses and his daughter!

But such facilities for dalliance with the Regent's daughter were soon
to be brought to an end. Mademoiselle de Valois, in order to ensure her
lover's freedom, had at last consented to accept the hand of the Duke of
Modena, an alliance which she had long fought against; and before the
Duc had been a free man again many weeks she paid this part of his
ransom by going into exile, and to an odious wedded life, in a far
corner of Italy--much, it may be imagined, to the Regent's relief, for
his daughters and their love affairs were ever a thorn in his side.

It was not long, however, before the new Duchess of Modena began to sigh
for her distant lover, and to bombard him with letters begging him to
come to her. "I cannot live without your love," she wrote. "Come to
me--only, come in disguise, so that no one can recognise you."

This was indeed an adventure after the Lothario Duc's heart--an
adventure with love as its reward and danger as its spur. And thus it
was that, a few weeks after the Duchess had sent her invitation, two
travel-stained pedlars, with packs on their backs, entered the city of
Modena to find customers for their books and phamphlets. At the small
hostelry whose hospitality they sought the hawkers gave their names as
Gasparini and Romano, names which masked the identities of the
knight-errant Duc and his friend, La Fosse, respectively.

The following morning behold the itinerant hawkers in the palace
grounds, their wares spread out to tempt the Court ladies on their way
to Mass, when the Duchess herself passed their way and deigned to stop
to converse graciously with the strangers. To her inquiries they
answered that they came from Piedmont; and their curious jargon of
French and Italian lent support to the story. After inspecting their
wares she asked for a certain book. "Alas! Madame," Gasparini answered,
"I have not a copy here, but I have one at my inn." And bidding him
bring the volume to her at the palace, the great lady resumed her devout
journey to Mass.

A few hours later Gasparini presented himself at the palace with the
required volume, and was ushered into the august presence of the
Duchess. A moment later, on the closing of the door, the Royal lady was
in the "hawker's" arms, her own flung around his neck, as with tears of
joy she welcomed the lover who had come to her in such strange guise and
at such risk.

A few stolen moments of happiness was all the lovers dared now to allow
themselves. The Duke of Modena was in the palace, and the situation was
full of danger. But on the morrow he was going away on a hunting
expedition, and then--well, then they might meet without fear.

On the following day, the coast now clear, behold our "hawker" once more
at the palace door, with a bundle of books under his arm for the
inspection of Her Highness, and being ushered into the Duchess's
reading-room, full of souvenirs of the happy days they had spent
together in distant Paris and Versailles. Among them, most prized of
all, was a lock of his own hair, enshrined on a small altar, and
surmounted by a crown of interlocked hearts. This lock, the Duchess told
him, she had kissed and wept over every day since they had parted.

Each day now brought its hours of blissful meeting, so seemingly short
that the Princess would throw her arms around her "hawker's" neck and
implore him to stay a little longer. One day, however, he tarried too
long; the Duke returned unexpectedly from his hunting, and before the
lovers could part, he had entered the room--just in time to see the
pedlar bowing humbly in farewell to his Duchess, and to hear him assure
her that he would call again with the further books she wished to see.

Certainly it was a strange spectacle to greet the eyes of a home-coming
Duke--that of his lady closeted with a shabby pedlar of books; but at
least there was nothing suspicious in it, and, getting into conversation
with the "hawker," the Duke found him quite an entertaining fellow, full
of news of what was going on in the world outside his small duchy.

In his curious jargon of French and Italian, Gasparini had much to tell
His Highness apart from book-talk. He entertained him with the latest
scandals of the French Court; with gossip about well-known personages,
from the Regent to Dubois. "And what about that rascal, the Duc de
Richelieu?" asked the great man. "What tricks has he been up to lately?"
"Oh," answered Gasparini, with a wink at the Duchess, who was crimson
with suppressed laughter, "he is one of my best customers. Ah, Monsieur
le Duc, he is a gay dog. I hear that all the women at the Court are
madly in love with him; that the Princesses adore him, and that he is
driving all the husbands to distraction."

"Is it as bad as that?" asked the Duke, with a laugh. "He is a more
dangerous fellow even than I thought. And what is his latest game?"

"Oh," answered the hawker, "I am told that he has made a wager that he
will come to Modena, in spite of you; and I shouldn't be at all
surprised if he does!"

"As for that," said the Duke, with a chuckle, "I am not afraid. I defy
him to do his worst; and I am willing to wager that I shall be a match
for him. However," he added, "you're an entertaining fellow; so come and
see me again whenever you please."

And thus, by the wish of the Duchess's husband himself, the ducal
"hawker" became a daily visitor at the palace, entertaining His Highness
with his chatter, and, when his back was turned, making love to his
wife, and joining her in shrieks of laughter at his easy gullibility.

Thus many happy weeks passed, Gasparini, the pedlar, selling few
volumes, but reaping a rich harvest of stolen pleasure, and revelling in
an adventure which added such a new zest to a life sated with more
humdrum love-making. But even the Duchess's charms began to pall; the
ladies he had left so disconsolate in Paris were inundating him with
letters, begging him to return to them--letters, all forwarded to him
from his chateau at Richelieu, where he was supposed to be in retreat.
The lure was too strong for him; and, taking leave of the Duchess in
floods of tears, he returned to his beloved Paris to fresh conquests.

And thus it was with the gay Duc until the century that followed that of
his birth was drawing to its close; until its sun was beginning to set
in the blood of that Revolution, which, if he had lived but one year
longer, would surely have claimed him as one of its first victims.
Three wives he led to the altar--the last when he had passed into the
eighties--but no marital duty was allowed to interfere with the amours
which filled his life; and to the last no pity ever gave a pang to the
"conscience" which allowed him to pick and fling away his flowers at
will, and to trample, one after another, on the hearts that yielded to
his love and trusted to his honour.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE INDISCRETIONS OF A PRINCESS

It was an ill fate that brought Caroline, Princess of
Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel to England to be the bride of George, Prince of
Wales, one April day in the year 1795; although probably no woman has
ever set forth on her bridal journey with a lighter or prouder heart,
for, as she said, "Am I not going to be the wife of the handsomest
Prince in the world?" If she had any momentary doubt of this, a glance
at the miniature she carried in her bosom reassured her; for the
pictured face that smiled at her was handsome as that of an Apollo.

No wonder the Princess's heart beat high with pride and pleasure during
that last triumphal stage of her journey to her husband's arms; for he
was not only the handsomest man, with "the best shaped leg in Europe,"
he was by common consent the "greatest gentleman" any Court could show.
Picture him as he made his first appearance at a Court ball. "His coat,"
we are told, "was of pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat of white
silk, embroidered with various-coloured foil and adorned with a
profusion of French paste. And his hat was ornamented with two rows of
steel beads, five thousand in number, with a button and a loop of the
same metal, and cocked in a new military style." See young "Florizel" as
he makes his smiling and gracious progress through the avenues of
courtiers; note the winsomeness of his smiles, the inimitable grace of
his bows, his pleasant, courtly words of recognition, and say if ever
Royalty assumed a form more agreeable to the eye and captivating to the
senses.

"Florizel" was indeed the most splendid Prince in the world, and the
most "perfect gentleman." He was also, though his bride-to-be little
knew it, the most dissolute man in Europe, the greatest gambler and
voluptuary--a man who was as false to his friends as he was traitor to
every woman who crossed his path, a man whom no appeal of honour or
mercy could check in his selfish pursuit of pleasure.

"I look through all his life," Thackeray says, "and recognise but a bow
and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings,
padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue
ribbon, a pocket handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's
best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black
stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then--nothing.
French ballet-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons,
procuresses, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel and
gimcrack-merchants--these were his real companions."

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