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"The grand equerry showed a never-changing and very resolute firmness to the death, together with admirable calmness and the constancy and devoutness of a Christian," wrote M. du Marca, councillor of state, to the secretary of state Brionne; and Tallemant des Reaux adds, "He died with astoundingly great courage, and did not waste time in speechifying; he would not have his eyes bandaged, and kept them open when the blow was struck."
By William he had been enriched with great possessions, among which was the island fortress of Brionne in the Risle. The real object of the revolt was the partition of the duchy. William was to be dispossessed; Guy was to be duke in the lands east of Dive; the great lords of Western Normandy were to be left independent.
In those I send you there is not a feature bestowed gratis or exaggerated. For the beauties, of which there are a few considerable, as Mesdames de Brionne, de Monaco, et d'Egmont, they have not yet lost their characters, nor got any. You must not attribute my intimacy with Paris to curiosity alone. An accident unlocked the doors for me.
Mr. Hume, that is the Mode, asked much about your ladyship. I have seen Madame de Monaco, and think her very handsome, and extremely pleasing. The younger Madame d'Egmont, I hear, disputes the palm with her; and Madame de Brionne is not left without partisans. The nymphs of the theatres are laides
The really instructive part of the story deals with two border fortresses on the march of Normandy and Maine. Alencon lay on the Norman side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy. Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy.
Henriette turned her head and then said to me, "Here are mesdames de Brionne and de Grammont." I knew the latter but very slightly, and the former not at all. Certainly she could not have been there by chance; they knew I should be there, and wished to see me closely. Not suspecting what was to follow, I was delighted at the rencontre.
Among the most frequent guests were the charming, witty, and spirituelle Comtesse d'Egmont, daughter of the Duc de Richelieu, who added to the vivacious and elegant manners of her father an indefinable grace of her own, and a vein of sentiment that was doubtless deepened by her sad little romance; the Marquise de Duras, more dignified and discreet; and the beautiful Comtesse de Brionne, "a Venus who resembled Minerva."
And, as the famous one at Brionne, which so long defied the arms of Duke William, is defined as "aula lapidea," it seems implied that a "domus defensabilis" might be only "lignea." To be sure the stone house at Brionne had in the river Rille a ready-made moat in every way better than the ditch that we have stumbled on at Hauteville.
Robert Fitz-Walter, who took the command of their united force, represented both parties equally, for he was sprung from the Norman house of Brionne, while the Justiciar of Henry the Second, Richard de Lucy, had been his grandfather. Edmundsbury, resolute to bear no longer with John's delays.
"She is," answered one of my neighbours, "Madame de Brionne, more remarkable by her virtue even than by her beauty. Not only is there no scandalous story told about her, but she has never given any opportunity to scandal-mongers of inventing any adventure of which she was the heroine." "Perhaps her adventures are not known." "Ah, monsieur! at the court everything is known."
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