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Madame de Maintenon offered to twine the bridal wreath herself, and give her a few hints as to the duties of a housewife, a subject on which such a poor inexperienced little chit could not be expected to know very much. But, notwithstanding all the jesting and the laughter, when Mademoiselle Scuderi rose to depart, she became very grave again when her hand rested upon the jewel casket.
Mademoiselle Scuderi saw, to her alarm, that the resemblance to La Valliére, advantageous as it had seemed to be at first, had nevertheless changed the King's intention as soon as Madame de Maintenon had spoken of it.
Artamenes, or Le Grand Cyrus, the masterpiece of Mademoiselle Madeleine de Scudéri, is contained in no less than ten volumes, each of which in its turn has many books; it is, in fact, more a collection of romances than a single romance. La Cléopâtre, a similar work, was originally published in twenty-three volumes of twelve parts, each part containing three or four books.
Supposing, then, that God knows on what impulse overpowered by anger, he should have made this murderous attack on his master, what diabolical hyprocrisy it required to conduct himself after the deed as he had done. With the firmest conviction of his innocence, Mademoiselle Scuderi came to the resolution to save Olivier at whatever cost.
At length Mademoiselle Scuderi managed to find out, with D'Andilly's help, that the King had had a long interview with Count Miossens; further, that Bontems, the King's confidential groom of the chamber and secret agent, had been to the Conciergerie, and spoken with Brusson; that, finally, the said Bontems, with several other persons, had paid a long visit to Cardillac's house.
You should have seen how Pierre Corneille, worried and harassed at his first step in the art on account of his marvellous work, Le Cid, struggled under Mairet, Claveret, d'Aubignac and Scudéri! How he denounced to posterity the violent attacks of those men, who, he says, made themselves "all white with Aristotle!"
The dim anticipations which Mademoiselle Scuderi had felt when Olivier first came in had now embodied themselves in actual life in a terrible fashion. The son of her much-loved Anne was, though innocent, implicated in a manner which apparently made it impossible to save him from a shameful death.
Mademoiselle Scuderi emptied the contents of her smelling-bottle out over the fainting La Martinière, who at last opened her eyes, and, shuddering and quaking, clinging convulsively to her mistress, with fear and horror in her pale face, groaned out with difficulty, "For the love of the Virgin, what did that terrible man want? It was he who brought you the jewels on that awful night."
The account of that you will find in a book where you certainly would not look for it, Wagenseil's 'Nuernberg Chronicle. The old gentleman speaks of a visit he made to Mademoiselle Scuderi in Paris, and if I have succeeded in representing her as charming and delightful, I am indebted solely to the distinguished courtoisie with which Wagenseil mentions her."
Voltaire's expression is somewhat strong, when he says that in reading the tragedies which succeeded those of Racine we might fancy ourselves perusing the romances of Mademoiselle Scuderi, which paint citizens of Paris under the names of heroes of antiquity. He alluded herein more particularly to Crebillon.
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