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"Condemned is the word; for I will never solicit him who left my mother and sister to die with cold and hunger the daughter and grand-daughter of Henry IV. if M. de Retz and the parliament had not sent them wood and bread." "To die?" murmured Louis XIV.
De Retz too, notwithstanding the superiority of his intellect, allowed himself to give way, through his inclination for the fair sex, to the commission of indiscretions and imprudences which often placed his life in danger, and caused his best-concerted measures to prove abortive.
Such unjust judgment would most probably be formed by accepting anecdotes, like those contained in Tallemant's scandalous chronicle or Bussy Rabutin's "Letters," as historic truths; or by placing implicit faith in every statement made by De Retz or La Rochefoucauld, given as both were to exaggeration and over-colouring, and whose object, moreover, was not so much to tell the truth as always to exalt themselves, sometimes by its suppression, at others by downright falsification.
Guise, with a dignified air, "saluted and delighted everybody," says a witness, "with eye, and gesture, and speech." "By his side," said Madame de Retz, "the other princes are commoners." "The Huguenots," said another, "become Leaguers at the very sight of him."
Every one might not penetrate it: the isle, of an extent of six leagues in length, and six in breadth, was a seignorial property, which the people had for a long time respected, covered as it was with the name of Retz, so redoubtable in the country. Shortly after the erection of this seignory into a marquistate, Belle-Isle passed to M. Fouquet.
I thought I had 4,000,000, and was just securing one of the Dutch pinks, which are always in the road of Retz, when the following accident happened, which broke all my measures.
The Marshal de Retz smiled, if indeed the contraction of muscles which revealed a line of white teeth can be called by that name. In the sense in which Astarte would have smiled upon a defenceless sheepfold, so Gilles de Retz might have been said to smile at his visitor.
By God I will go! he added abruptly and fiercely. 'I will live to ruin Retz yet! Where is your lodging? I told him, wondering much at this flash of the old spirit, which twenty years before had won him a reputation his later life did nothing to sustain. 'Do you know, he asked, speaking with sustained energy and clearness, 'the door by which M. de Rosny entered to talk with me?
Laurence leaned against the wall with his face in his hands. He dared not look within. Then he lifted his head, and lo! in the gloom it seemed as if the huge image had turned towards him, and in a pleased, confidential way were nodding approval of his presence. He heard the voice of the Marshal de Retz again this time kindly, and even affectionate. Some one was not to be frightened.
The soldiers of the Duke of Brittany stood with bared swords and deadly pikes around the Marshal de Retz and those of his servants who had been taken that is to say, round Poitou, Clerk Henriet, Blanquet, and Robin Romulart.
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