French Life (Dodo Press)

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

  The Abbé and the Chevalier, hearing of their sister-in-law's party, and the entertainment that was going on, came into the chamber uninvited, and made themselves very agreeable. By-and-by, the neighbours went away; it was still early in the afternoon; and the Abbé and Chevalier accompanied the good ladies to the great hall, and Madame was left alone in bed. Presently back came the Abbé, with a terrible face; he brought a pistol, a sword, and a cup of poison — a greater choice of deaths than that offered to Fair Rosamond; but, all the same, the Marquise must die by either fire, steel, or poison. With quick presence of mind she chose to drink the latter; and after doing so, she turned round as in writhing agony, and spat out the contents of her mouth into the pillow. Her skin was blackened by the burning drops that fell upon it, and her mouth was horribly burnt; and no wonder, for the deposition says that the drink was made of arsenic and corrosive sublimate, mixed up in aqua-fortis. There was evidently no idea of doing things by halves in those days! She left the thick part of the liquid in the bottom of the glass; but the Chevalier, who by this time had come up to see if he could render himself useful in the business, stirred up the sediment and made her drink it. Then she begged hard to have a priest to shrive her soul; and, as they felt pretty secure that no help could now avail her, they went away, and sent the household chaplain, le Prêtre Perrette, who was also curé of the village, to give her what spiritual aid he could. He had lived in the de Gauge family for five-and-twenty years, and was ready to connive at any wickedness which they might plan.

  Now, while they went to find this worthy chaplain, the poor lady was left alone in her bed-chamber, and looked about for means of escape. There was none, except jumping from the window into the great enclosed court-yard, twenty feet below, and all paved with flags; but that risk was better than remaining where she was; so she took courage, and was on the point of throwing herself out, when Perrette, the chaplain, came in with the viaticum. He ran to the window, and tried to pluck her back; but the petticoat which he caught hold of gave way, and only a fragment of it remained in his hand. She was down below, pushing her long black hair down her throat, and thus, with wonderful presence of mind, trying to make herself sick; in which attempt she succeeded. Then she went round the court-yard, trying all the doors with trembling haste but they were all locked; and that wicked chaplain in the chateau above was hastening to find the relentless brothers-in-law and to tell them Of her escape. She ran round and round the enclosure, beating and striving at the doors; and at length a groom came out of the stables which were at one end of the yard, whom she implored to let her out by the stable-door into the street or road; saying she had swallowed some poison by mistake, and must find an antidote without loss of time.

  When she was once out of the accursed premises, she went to the house of the Sieur des Prats, who lived in the village. He was absent; but many of the good women of the place were assembled there on a visit to his wife. We may judge of the rank of the company by the fact that, in the depositions, all the married women are called "Mademoiselle," e.g., "Mademoiselle Brunel, wife of the Huguenot minister," &c.; and in the Traité sur la maniére d'Ecrire des Lettres, par Grimarest, 1667, the rules for the addresses to letters are these: — If a letter is to a lady of quality, she is to be called "Madame" in the address, and the letter is to be tied up with silk, and sealed with three seals; if the correspondent is only la femme d'un gentilhome, her titles on the superscription must be "Mademoiselle Mademoiselle," so and so; but if she is merely the wife of a bourgeois, simple "Mademoiselle" is all that is to be accorded to her.

  Now all the ladies assembled at the Sieur des Prats were Mademoiselles; but they were brave women, as we shall see. In amongst this peaceful company, enjoying an afternoon's gossip, burst the lady of the Château de Gange; her dress (that which she had worn in bed) torn and disordered; her hair hanging about her; her face in all probability livid with mortal terror and the effects of the fierce poison. She had hardly had time to give any explanation of her appearance, when the Chevalier de Gange rushed into the room in search of his half-killed victim; the Abbé remained below, guarding the door of the house. The Chevalier walked up and down the room, saying that Madame was mad; that she must return with him, and uttering angry menaces. While his back was turned, Mademoiselle Brunel, wife of the Huguenot minister of the village, gave Madame de Gange small pieces of orvietan out of a box which she carried in her pocket. Orvietan, be it remembered, was considered a sovereign remedy against all kinds of poisons; and the fact of the minister's wife carrying this antidote about in her pocket, wherever she went, tells a good deal as to the insecurity of life at that period. Madame de Gange managed to swallow a number of pieces of orvietan, unperceived by the Chevalier; but when one of the ladies, pitying her burning thirst, went and brought her a glass of water, he perceived the kindness, and broke out afresh, dashing the glass from Madame's mouth, and bidding all present to leave the room instantly, as he did not like witnesses to his sister-in-law's madness. He drove them out, indeed, but they only went as far as the next room, where they huddled together in affright, wondering what they could do for the poor lady. She, meanwhile, begged for mercy in the most touching manner; she promised that she would forgive all, if he would but spare her life: but at these words he ran at her with his sword; holding it short, so that it could serve him as a dagger and give the surer stabs. She ran to the door, and clung to it, crying out afresh for pity, for mercy, for help. He stabbed her five times before his weapon broke in her shoulder.

  Then the ladies burst in to the assistance of Madame, who was lying on the floor bathed in blood. Some ran to her help; others called through the window to the passers-by to fetch the surgeon quickly. Hearing their cry through the window, the Abbé came up; and, finding his sister-in-law not yet dead, he began to hit her with the butt-end of his pistol, till brave Mademoiselle Brunel caught hold of his arm, and hung all her weight upon it. He struck her over and over again, to make her let go; but she would not; and all the women flew upon him "like lionesses," and dragged him by main force out of the house, and turned him into the village-street. One of the ladies, who was skilled in surgery, returned to the room where Madame de Gange lay; and at her desire she put her knee against the wounded shoulder of Madame, and pulled out the broken point of the sword by main force. Then she staunched the blood, and bound up the wounds. The Chevalier had been in too blind a passion, apparently, to think of stabbing any vital part; and, in spite of poison, and the heavy fall on the paved court-yard, and the five stabs, there seemed yet a chance for Madame de Gange's life. That long and terrible May afternoon was now drawing to a close; and the Abbé and the Chevalier thought it well to take advantage of the coming darkness to ride off to Auberas, an estate of their brother's, about a league from La Gange. There they quarrelled with each other, because their work was left incomplete, and were on the point of fighting, when it seems as if they thought it better to take again to flight. After the steed was stolen, every one bethought him of locking the stable door. The «consuls», as the magistrates of the district were called, came to offer their services to Madame de Gange, who was lying between life and death. The neighbouring barons paid her visits of condolence; one of them was practical enough to think of securing the assassins; but two or three days had then elapsed, and the Abbé and Chevalier had embarked at Ogde, a small port on the Mediterranean.

  Her husband, the Marquis, took the affair very coolly. He heard of it at Avignon one morning; but he did not mention it to any friends whom he met in the street, nor did he set off to see his wife till the afternoon of the following day. But he had the will, which his wife had been compelled to make at La Gange, safe with him at Avignon; and before he left the city, he went to see the Vice-Legate, with a view to this document, by which his wife bequeathed him all in case of her death. The Vice-Legate refused to recognise it, and then first informed him of the will by which Madame de Gange had left her property to her mother, and which rendered null any testament made after tha
t date. The Marquis was not induced by this information to be more tender towards his poor wounded wife. He found her lying at the house of the Sieur des Prats, in the most dangerous state. At first she reproached him a little for leaving her at the mercy of his brothers; but almost directly she begged his pardon for what she had said, and was most tender and sweet in her conversation with him. He thought he could take advantage of her gentle frame of mind, and urged her to revoke her declaration about the perpetual legality of the Avignon will; but his pertinacity on this point at such a time opened her eyes, and henceforward she had no hope of touching his stony heart. Her mother, Madame de Ropace, came to see her; but she was so disgusted at seeing the Marquis's pretended affection and assumption of watchful care over his wife, that she left at the close of three days. It was evident now to all that the end was drawing near; the wounds did not touch life, but enough of the poison had been swallowed to destroy any constitution. Madame de Gauge begged to have the extreme unction administered; but the monks in attendance said that, before that could be done, she must forgive all her enemies. She was too gentle to harbour revenge; but when Perrette, the chaplain, and the accomplice of her assassins, came in his sacred vestments to administer the last sacrament, it did cost her a severe struggle to receive the wafer from his hands. But she forgave him, too, as completely as the rest; and, fearing that her little son might at some future time think it his duty to avenge her death, she sent for him, and tried to make him understand the Christian duty of forgiveness. Meanwhile, the report of her assassination had spread far and wide, and the Parliament of Toulouse despatched Monsieur de Catelan to La Gange to take her evidence as that of a dying woman. When he first came, she was in a state of stupor; but the next day she rallied and saw him alone. A fresh terror had seized upon her, and she believed herself not safe at La Gauge, and entreated him to take her to Montpellier; but it was too late then, and in the afternoon she died, nineteen days after the attack upon her life.

  Monsieur de Gange now became alarmed, and pretended to be in the deepest distress, and that his grief could only be alleviated by the discovery and punishment of the murderers of his dear wife. But the unmoved M. de Catelan arrested him, and took the charge of prosecution and punishment for the crime upon himself, in the name of the Parliament of Toulouse. The effects of the Marquis were sealed up, and he was to be conveyed to the prison at Montpellier: but he could not arrive there before night for some reason; and the inhabitants of the town illuminated it in order that the populace might see the face of the accused criminal, as he came slowly up the street. The ladies of Avignon, and those of Montpellier, put on mourning for the murdered Madame de Gange, as if she had been a near relation. Her mother, of whom we hear very little until now, led the chorus of feminine indignation. She vowed vengeance against the Marquis, and swore that she would pursue him through every court of justice in the kingdom, till her daughter was avenged. She published a pamphlet on the case, to which M. de Gange replied, saying that her statements were all based on presumption. But the stern hand of the law was upon him, and from it he could not so easily escape. M. de Catelan twice interrogated the Marquis, the last time for eleven hours; the basis on which he founded his questions being not "presumptions," but the evidence which the lawyer had obtained from the dying Madame de Gange in that interview which they two had had alone. On the 21st of August, 1667, judgment was given through the mouth of the President of the Parliament of Toulouse. It was always supposed by the public that the powerful relations of the Marquis had used unfair means to mitigate the severity of the sentence. But it was severe enough, if only it had been carried into execution. The Abbé and the Chevalier de Gauge were to be broken alive upon the wheel. The Marquis was to be banished for life, to be degraded from his rank, and to have all his lands, goods, and property confiscated to the use of the king. The chaplain, Perrette, was to be deprived of ecclesiastical orders, and to become a galley-slave for life.

  The ladies of Avignon and Montpellier were indignant that the Marquis de Gange was not to be broken on the wheel as well as his brothers. But where were these three guilty men? The Abbé and the Chevalier had escaped by sea, months ago; and now the Marquis had made his way out of the prison of Toulouse; prison doors, in those days, had a fatal facility in opening before rank or wealth. The Marquis and the Chevalier met in Venice — escaped felons as they were. But they took service for the Republic; and, being good Christians, they went to fight the heathen Turks in Candia, where they met an honourable death in 1669. The Abbé, superior in intellect to the others, lived a longer and more eventful life. He fled into Holland, and after some wanderings about he met with an old acquaintance, who was unscrupulous, or perhaps was ignorant of his crime, and who introduced him to the Count de la Lippe, sovereign prince of Viane, about two leagues from Utrecht. To him the Abbé de Gauge was presented as the Sieur de la Martellière, a Frenchman of extraordinary learning and merit, of the Huguenot or Protestant religion, who was consequently under social disadvantages in his own country. The Count was pleased with the appearance and manners of the so-called Sieur de la Martellière, and appointed him governor, or tutor, to his son, a little boy of nine or ten years old.

  But by-and-by the persecution of the French Huguenots began, and hundreds of them were leaving France, some one of whom might recognise the former Abbé de Gange, in the Protestant Sieur de la Martellière; so he opposed the settlement of French refugees in the neighbourhood of Viane on purely political reasons. He had been governor to the son of the Count de la Lippe for several years, when he fell desperately in love with a beautiful young girl, a distant relation of the Countess's, who lived with her. His poverty and his dependent position were no obstacles to his marriage with the lovely portionless maiden; but the obscurity of his supposed birth made a marriage between them impossible. He presumed on his services to the Count, and on the years of moral conduct which he had passed under the Count's own eyes. He wrote an eloquent letter, in which he confessed himself to be that Abbé de Gange for whom the kingdom of France had been ransacked in vain; pleading false witness, perjury, passion, whatever you will, in extenuation of the crime of which he was accused; but proving his sixteen quarterings through it all. He spoke of his many years' life of pure morality, such as the Count de la Lippe himself could bear witness to; of his conversion to the faith which the sovereign Prince of Viane held himself, and of his zeal in its interests: had he not advised the Huguenot refugees not to tarry where the long arm of France might reach them, but to fly further east?

  His eloquence was all in vain. The Count de la Lippe seems to have been shocked beyond measure at finding out that in the tutor of his little boy — his growing lad — he had been harbouring the profligate, terrible, and infamous Abbé de Gange, with whose crimes all civilised Europe had been made acquainted. The Sieur de la Martellière was ordered to leave the dominions of the Count de la Lippe without delay. He went to Amsterdam, and thither also, without delay, the young girl — the poor, pretty relation of Madame la Comtesse — followed him, and became his wife. His pupil, the young Count, now growing up to manhood, although told by his father what an infamous criminal he had had for tutor, persevered in sending help to the Sieur de la Martellière and his wife at Amsterdam; until some unexpected fortune from one of Madame's relations put them at ease, as far as regarded money. M. de la Martellière bore so high a character that he was admitted into the Consistory of Protestants at Amsterdam. But, wherever he went — at church or) at synod, in market or alone with his wife in their most humble secret privacy, he was haunted by the face of Madame de Gange. That was said at the time; that is believed still.

  The poor lady's daughter did not do her much credit, and I will say nothing about her. The son, whom she had taught forgiveness on her death-bed, became a captain of dragoons; and, when at Metz, suppressing the Huguenots (perhaps he had never been told of Mademoiselle Brunel, and how she had helped and defended his mother in her great strait), he fell in love with the beautiful wife
of a goldsmith. The dragoons were billeted at her house, and tried to force her, at the point of the bayonet, to go to mass. Apparently, her religion was dearer to her than her virtue; for she sent for the captain, and said to him: — "Monsieur, vous m'avez dit que vous m'aimez; voulez-vous me le prouver? donnez-moi les moyens de sortir du royaume; et pour récompense de ce service, que votre amour s'imagine le prix." "Non, Madame," said the Marquis, "je ne me prévaudrai point de votre situation; je serais au comble de mes voeux si vous accordiez à ma tendresse ce que je pourrais obtenir où vous êtes, mais je me reprocherais toute ma vie d'abuser de votre état; je vais vous en délivrer; je ne vous demande pour récompense que la grâce de penser quelquefois à moi." After that, he sent her secretly across the frontier.

  I shut up my landlady's books, and prepared to go to bed. I am alone in the lofty salon, which was perhaps in existence when Madame de Gauge used to reside in Avignon; the fire is gone out, the lamp flickers. The ever-persistent wind is tearing round the house. Mary and Irene are fast asleep in the chambers beyond. The quietness of all things, the dead stillness of the hour, has made me realise all the facts deposed to, as if they had only happened to-day. Tomorrow we will go to Ville-Neuve, and see the portrait of the murdered lady.

  March 16th. - Though the mistral has but little abated, we went across to Ville-Neuve this morning. Irene was not well enough to go; so Mary and I, attended by Demetrius, our courier, made the expedition. Demetrius has no fancy for excursions off the common route, and only went with us, because he thought himself bound in duty to humour our eccentricity. The suspension-bridge over the Rhone was shaking and trembling with the wind as we crossed it; and our struggle in that long exposure was so exhausting, that when we were once in the comparative tranquillity of the other side, we stood still and looked about us for some time before going on. The colour of the landscape on each side of the rushing river was a warm grey; rocks, soil, buildings, all the same. There was but little vegetation to be seen; a few olive-trees, of a moonlight green, grew in sheltered places. We thought it must be like the aspect of Palestine, from Stanley's account; and Demetrius, who had been several times in the Holy Land, confirmed this notion of ours; but then he was rather apt to confirm all our notions, provided they did not occasion him extra trouble. After we had crossed the bridge, we turned to the right, and went along a steep rocky road to the summit of the hill, above Ville-Neuve. Below us lay the town founded by Philippe le Bel, but completed by the Popes resident at Avignon, and fallen to comparative decay ever since the papal seat was re-established at Rome.