A DAY AT CHANTILLY;

"THE Condés are neither an elder nor a younger branch—but a branch of laurel." Such were the words of Canning when alluding to the glories of the illustrious possessors of Chantilly, now past and gone. The last withered leaf on this branch of laurel did not fall soon enough by the ordination of nature, but was plucked off violently; yet the name of Chantilly is historical, and it behoves us in the present day to gather for the benefit of futurity all floating reminiscences of a spot so illustrious.

I was perfecting a slow convalescence far from the noisy and exciting scenes of the literary arena of Paris, under the fragrant lime-trees of the forest of Chantilly, whither my physicians had despatched me for the salubrity of the air, and the soothing beauty of the scenery, when I met in my daily rambles, a venerable old man leaning on a white stick-such an old man as one never sees in Paris or London, or in any great city— one that Fenelon loved to describe, with white hair, healthy complexion, and forehead free from wrinkles, slightly bowed with years, but strong as a Roman aqueduct, though the arches here and there have yielded to time.

"Monsieur often looks at that name engraven on that fine oak,” said he, one day courteously addressing me.

"It is that of Santeuil; it gives me pleasure to see it here," I replied. "I am almost a contemporary of Santeuil," said my old man.

"Is it possible?" I replied; "you are, I suppose, one of the tenants of Chantilly."

"You are a stranger, I perceive, monsieur," he said, "or you would know by my dress that I am a cadet."

"A cadet?"

"Yes, so they call the pensionaries of the hospital of Chantilly founded by the Great Condé-may his mighty soul rest in peace-the cadets cannot belong to this foundation till they are sixty years of age, and it is sixty years since I first entered the hospital."

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"You are then of the vast age of a hundred and twenty years." "Yes; I told I almost knew M. Santeuil, whose name you this oak." We seated ourselves beneath the oak of Santeuil, and my amiable centigenarian related to me his reminiscences of this celebrated spot. Chantilly existed as a village with its castle as early as the tenth century. It was the principal seat, first of the family of Orgemont, and afterwards of the elder line of Montmorenci. But it owes its celebrity to the illustrious house of Condé, into whose possession it came through Charlotte de Montmorenci, heiress to her brother, Henri duc de Montmorenci, put to death by Louis XIII., or rather by Cardinal Richelieu. In the Huguenot wars it was the baronial residence of the Montmorencies, who were on the liberal side of the question. There is a curious anecdote connected with this era. At the massacre of St. Bartholomew the remains of the great leader of the Protestant cause, Admiral Coligni, were secretly conveyed from their ignominious suspension on the public gallows of Montfaucon, and conveyed by his friends to the chapel of Chantilly Castle,

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where they were interred by his relative and ally the lord of the domain, and after the religious disputes of France were somewhat appeased, transferred by him, with suitable honours, to the parish church.

These proceedings gave rise to a singular error of the peasantry; the women of the neighbourhood resort to this tomb and make their offerings to St. Gaspard de Coligni, thus transforming a Protestant martyr into a Catholic saint. The old castle was pulled down 1718, and a new structure erected by the then Duc de Bourbon. This was, according to the architecture of the times, one of the most splendid edifices in Europe; it was nearly demolished at the revolution, but the magnificent stables, kennels and the lesser château, called the Enghien palace, remain.

Chantilly is connected with the history of literature as well as that of grand historical and political events. There is still to be seen the name of Santeuil, cut by his own hand, on one of the great oaks, a tree enjoying a vigorous maturity, although it has seen, its princes, and their poets, pass away and go down to the dust. It was under this favourite oak, that Santeuil used to retire to compose the fine Latin verses wherein he cele brated the woods of Sylvie, the labyrinth, the fountains, and those renowned jets d'eau, which, according to Bossuet, never were mute neither night or day, and which were erected in rivalry to those of Versailles; nor did Santeuil forget the parterres, the terraces, or the statues,-all were recorded in sonorous Latin verses- -for Latin verses found readers in those days. It was beneath this favourite oak that he retired to vent his rage in Latin epigrams, when Mademoiselle de Clermont, a beautiful princess of the house of Condé (nearly as famous as the Duchesse de Longueville), had affronted him by flinging a glass of water in his face. The traditions of Chantilly still record the paroxysms of rage, with which the poet received this salutation from the fair hand of a beautiful and blue princess. This rage, it is said, he exhaled in the immediate composition of half a dozen Latin epigrams, very biting indeed, as was acknowledged by all those who could read them; but as French princesses, in the seventeenth century, had left off learning Latin, the shafts of the satire never reached the beautiful vixen against whom they were levelled.

* It was from one of the windows of Chantilly that the strange apparition was seen, said to predict the death of the great Condé on the 11th of December, 1687. Madame de Sévigné thus relates it:-"The grief of losing so great a man and so great a hero, whose place whole ages will not be able to supply, has been felt by all ranks. A singular circumstance happened about three weeks ago, a little before the departure of the prince for Fontainebleau. Vernillon, one of his gentlemen, returning from the chase at three o'clock in the afternoon, saw, as he approached the Castle of Chantilly, at one of the windows of the armoury, the apparition of a corpse, that is, of a man who had been buried some time, in his grave clothes. He dismounted, and came nearer; he still saw the sight. His valet, who was still with him, said I see the same, sir, that you see.' Now, Vernillon had been silent that his valet might speak of his own accord. They entered the castle together, and desired the keeper to give them the key of the armoury; the keeper went with them; they found all the windows closed, and a silence reigning around that had not been disturbed for six months. This was told to the prince; he appeared struck with it at first, and afterwards laughed at it. Every person that heard the story trembled for the prince. You see what the event has been. Vernillon is said to be a man of strong mind, and as little a visionary as our friend Corbiniel-and note, the same apparition was seen by his servant. As this story is true, I send it you that you may make your own reflections on it as we have done."-Dec. 15,

1686.

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Another celebrated French author, the Abbé Prevost, was accustomed to haunt the groves of Chantilly. He was born at the village of St. Firmin, within the domain of the Condés. It is said that he was struck with a fatal apoplexy, and died suddenly under one of the large trees of La Sylvie; it is possible that one of those fits, the usual forerunners of death, might have seized him there. Nevertheless, he recovered for a time, and actually died at the village of St. Firmin, whilst he was enjoying a convivial carouse with the curé of that place. The circumstances that connect the memory of Prévost with Chantilly are curious enough, and form an odd chapter in the strange varieties of human character. This extraordinary man, who afterwards became so famous as the author of " Cleveland," of the "Memoirs of Margaret of Anjou," and one of the most vigorous supporters of the "Mercure de France," had in early youth, during a fit of penitence, or of disappointment, taken the vows of a monk in the monastery of St. Firmin; howbeit, he soon repented him of his penitence, and one morning fairly distanced the monks and monastery by running away to Paris. There, under the title of Abbé Prevost, his name soon became famous throughout Europe, for the boldness of his original genius, so different from the rabble of classic imitators that then encumbered literature. Alas, the times had gone by when the monks of St. Firmin could have claimed their own, and dragged their recusant brother back to cell and penance. The French revolution was as yet distant, nevertheless, monkery was in still less esteem than in that era of counter-persecution, when virtuous ecclesiastics won back the good opinion of the public, that the church had lost during the profligate and ribald sway of the Regent Orleans.

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Never in the whole course of his life did the Abbé Prévost avow that he had belonged to the rule of St. Benedict; indeed, among the tumults of his literary and political career, he had, perhaps, even forgotten the circumstance. Not so his brethren at St. Firmin; they remembered it with the slow hatred of the cloister, whether as their glory or their scandal, Prévost still belonged to their order, for the church ever considers the conventual character as indelible. While Europe was filled with the literary renown of Prévost, the proceedings of the brotherhood of St. Firmin were in singular contrast, and though the knowledge of their doings was confined to the petty circles of their own domicile, and haps that of some dependant of the convent in the neighbourhood of Chantilly, yet they never relaxed, during a long course of years, from summoning Prévost by name whenever they assembled at matins, vespers, and refection. At morning prayers, the voice of the porter unfailingly heard to resound through the long corridors, in these words " Frère Antoine-François Prévost, les matins." His name was read on all occasions from the book of affiliation, and the knotted cord called a discipline, that belonged to him, was shown suspended on a nail. If strangers visited the monastery, they were shown his stall in the refectory, above which was carved the European name of the Abbé Prévost. Meantime, years rolled on, many of Prévost's contemporaries died off, still the malignant tradition of St. Firmin remained in full force, and if a singular accident had not occurred, they would have gone on citing him morning and evening to the end of the world, if convents should continue so long. However, the Abbé Prévost grew old like other people; his health became infirm, and the physicians of Paris prescribed his native air of Chantilly. Thither the savant went without troubling himself

with the monks of St. Firmin, or even dreaming that he should be annoyed by them. He was not fond of monastic recluses, and had never spared them in his writings in the "Mercure de France;" he did not, therefore, call at the convent, but limited his acquaintance at Chantilly to the curé of St. Firmin, a young man of talent, whom he had known at Paris, and who was lately appointed to the office, and knew nought of the gossip of the convent.

The arrival of the Abbé Prévost in the neighbourhood had occasioned the greatest joy among the brotherhood of St. Firmin; the old had a vengeance to accomplish, the young had a right to assert. They shook the discipline, they brushed up his hair cloth, and every day they shouted the louder. "Frère Antoine François Prévost, rise! Matins are sounded! Frère Prévost. It is the midnight office! Frère Prévost. To-day is a fast, Frère Prévost !" It was Frére Prévost here and Frére Prévost there,-one would have thought there had not been another brother of the order. All this never reached the ears of the object of their summons; nevertheless, they still waited for their time of retaliation.

One evening, as he departed from the house of the Curé de St. Firmin, he fell at his length across the threshold, seized with one of those fits to which he was subject. His reverend host, greatly alarmed, ran to raise him and carry him into the house to give him assistance. To his consternation he felt a counter resistance pulling at Prévost's feet. It was one of the monks, who were always on the watch for an opportunity of asserting the claims of the convent. "Let my guest alone," said the curé, "what concern have you with him ?”

"He belongs to us," replied the monk, "and I will have him." "You shall not have him," said the curé; "he is no monk."

"He was one," retorted the other; "and once a monk always a monk."

"He is my guest, and is now on the threshold of my door; to whomsoever he belongs, I will have him."

"He is in the street, and his convent claims him," returned the monk. "Then the strongest shall have him," said the curé.

So instead of bleeding the poor creature in the jugular vein, these two priests proceeded to pull him, one by the head and the other by the feet, till every spark of life was extinguished in the struggle; they then tugged the harder to know which should have the corpse. The cure gained the victory; Prévost's shoes alone remained in the hands of the monk, who ran home with them to the convent and told his story.

"Since we dared not claim him living we will have him dead," was the general exclamation of the convent.

The superior himself took the charge of this grand affair; he entered the house of the curé the next evening, where the body was laid out; without having recourse to violence, without speaking a word, he drew a bag of crowns out of his pocket, untied it, and let its contents tumble on the floor, and while the cure was pursuing the rolling coin under the chairs, tables, and drawers, and into the cracks of the floor, the prior threw a monkish robe that he had brought with him over the corpse the poor abbé, and being a strong man, bundled it up in the flowing drapery of St. Benedict, threw it over his shoulders, and fled to the monastery. The joy there was overpowering. Forty years had they waited for this day of triumph, and it had at last arrived. The poor dead abbé

was speedily despoiled of his lay dress and his corpse, attired in the monkish gaberdine, and laid out with all the ceremonies used in convents at the death of a brother. Wax candles dedicated to St. Benedict and St. Firmin were lighted round the coffin, ashes and hair cloth were not forgotten the bell tolled as it tolls for deceased monks-not the least tittle appertaining to priestly obsequies was omitted. The next day the community of St. Firmin interred their renegade brother in the convent cemetery. On his tombstone not one of the works on which are founded his claims to the remembrance of posterity are mentioned. These words are alone inscribed. "Here rests Frére Antoine-François d' Exile Prévost, an unworthy monk of St. Firmin."

It was the curé of St. Firmin himself that related this anecdote, which is certainly a fact. In the Biographie Universelle under the article Prévost, speaking of his death says, that "as the abbé was walking in the forest of Chantilly a sudden stroke of apoplexy seized him, and he fell dead under one of the trees." It is very probable that he was taken with one of his fits in Chantilly forest, but it was not the final attack which assuredly occurred at St. Firmin in the manner described above.

After these two histories, the aged cadet of Chantilly rose and requested to know if I was not curious to see the château, or rather what remained of the ancient seat of the Condés; I assented, and followed his slow steps to the Château de Chantilly. We passed through several ordinary apartments without finding any thing worthy of note, till we came to a little chamber, on whose panels where painted by Watteau (as my cicerone informed me), the loves of Louis XV. and Madame du Barry ;-it is scarcely necessary to point out to the reader the impossibility of Watteau depicting any circumstance concerning Madame du Barry and Louis XV., seeing that the painter died thirty-five years before the lady's preferment, therefore, either the paintings are not by Watteau, or the heroine of them is not du Barry. The known fondness of that woman for apes, makes one think the paintings relate to her, as they are a series of caricatures of a fine lady under the appearance of an ape and she is waited upon by apes, plays at whist with apes, is dressed by apes, goes hunting with apes, and dances in a ball-room a cotillion with a grand ape partner, who in all the scenes represents the King of France. These paintings are of great beauty, and certainly are master-pieces by the hand of Watteau, for there was no painter that came after him that could imitate his best style, therefore du Barry could not have been the person caricatured, but some favourite of royalty whose name has been lost in the revolution. Ever since the time of Henry IV., occasional jealousies and animosities subsisted between the elder and younger royal line of Bourbon, and in some of these seasons of hostility one of the Condés caused these caricatures to be painted by Watteau.

After having traversed two or three saloons gilded in the style of the palace of Versailles, we arrive at the hall of Victory-bow your headlower, if you are a soldier, for here is represented all the battles of the great Condé, here his descendants have united, as if they were scattered pages of some high chronicle, the deeds great in arms of their renowned ancestor, no other achievement finds room in this gallery-all is devoted to the great Condé, a hundred and fifty feet of canvass covered with glory! He is here seen from Rocroi to his defeat at Lerida, every battleJuly.-VOL. LXXI. NO. CCLXXXIII.

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