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Matilda Betham-Edwards - East of Paris
the great Gascon, Henri IV., thus portrayed by one whose tongue was as sharp as his sword: "Gaston of
Orleans," wrote Richelieu, "engaged in every enterprise because he had not the will to resist persuasion,
dishonourably drawing back from want of courage to support his associates."
In the conspiracy of Montmorency, Gaston had played the part of instigator, leaving the other to his fate
as soon as the situation became perilous. Every effort was made to save the duke, but in vain, and at the
age of thirty-seven he ended a brilliant, adventuresome life on the scaffold at Toulouse.
One thought was uppermost in my mind when, a few years ago, I visited that city, the only French city
that welcomed the Inquisition. As I stood in the elegant Capitol, musing on Montmorency's story, it
occurred to me how few of us realise what a respecter of persons was French law under the ancien
regime. Hard as seems the fate of this dashing young duke, we must remember what would have been his
punishment, but for his titles of nobility. Death swift and sudden, in other words, by decapitation, was the
choicest prerogative of the nobility; tortures before and after condemnation, breaking on the wheel,
burning alive, and other hideous ends, being the lot of the people.
This monument, so noteworthy alike from a historic and artistic point of view, was saved from
destruction by ready wit. When, in the ferment of revolution, the iconoclastic spirit had got the upper
hand, a citizen of Moulins met a mob, bent on destroying what they supposed to be the tomb of some
hated grand seigneur, oppressor of the poor. Following the rabble to the convent, no sooner did he see the
mallet and hammer raised than this worthy bourgeois, who himself deserves a monument, shouted,
"Hands off, citizens! Yonder reposes no aristocrat, but as good a citizen as any man-jack of you, aye,
who had the honour of losing his head for having conspired against a King."
The crowd melted away without a word, the monument remains intact, and generations have had
bequeathed to them an example of what presence of mind may effect, not with nerve, sinew, or bodily
prowess, but with the tongue. The Convent of the Visitation, to which Montmorency's widow retired, and
in the chapel of which she raised this memorial, is now converted into a Lycee. It is a handsome building
and was built by Madame de Chantal, foundress of the Order of Visitadines, or nuns whose office it was
to visit the sick. This pious lady, the friend of St. Francois de Sales, and herself canonised by Pope
Benoit XIV., was the bosom friend of Felicia Orsini, Montmorency's wife, who succeeded her as
Superior of the convent on her death.
But even an abbess, who had taken the veil, could not refuse visits, some of which must have been as a
second entering of iron into this proud woman's soul. The coward Gaston, when passing through
Moulins, sought an interview. Richelieu, also, whose emissary received the following message: "Tell
your master, that my tears reply for me and that I am his humble servant." Years after, Louis XIV. visited
the once beautiful and high-spirited Italian, now an aged abbess occupying a bare cell and from his lips,
despot and voluptuary though he was, might always be expected the right word in the right place.
"Madame," he said, on taking leave, "we may learn something here. I need not ask you to pray for the
King."
But interest in personalities is leading me from what I have set myself to describe, namely, portraiture in
marble. For this magnificent work thus perpetuates the last of the Montmorencys and his wife as they
were when separated for ever in their prime. Imposing although the monument is as a whole, these two
figures in white marble, standing out against a dark background, engross attention. The entire work
covers the wall behind the high altar, the sculptures being in pure white marble, the framework in black.
Dismissing the niched Mars and Hercules on the one side, the allegorised Religion and Charity on the
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