The Salt Smugglers (14 page)

The illness of La Corbinière was such that he resolved to return to Italy, — except that he forgot to take his passport with him. « We were quite at a loss, Angélique notes, when we got to a fortress called Reistre where they refused to allow us to continue on our way and detained my husband despite his ailment. » But being still free to move about, she managed to reach Innsbruck and throw herself at the feet of the archduchess Leopold to request a pardon for La Corbinière, — who, one assumes, might have been attempting to desert, even though his wife makes no mention of it.

Armed with a pardon signed by the archduchess, Angélique returned to the place where her husband was being held. She inquired of the people of this town of Reitz whether they had any information about a French gentleman who had been taken prisoner. She discovered where he was being held, found him half-dead near a stove, — and whisked him off to Verona.

There she again contacted M. de la Tour (of Périgord) and reproached him for having induced her husband to sell his commission to him, which was the cause of all their misfortunes. « I don't know, she adds, whether it was because he still loved me or because he took pity on me, but he sent me twenty pistoles and the furnishings for an entire household, a household where my husband conducted himself so poorly that in no time he had run through all our possessions. »

He was now more or less back in good health and was living a life of debauchery with his two chums, M. de la Perle and M. Escutte. His wife's affection for him, however, did not diminish. She decided « in order to make both ends meet, to take in
lodgers
», — and the venture seemed to be succeeding, except that La Corbinière was spending all their earnings during his nights out on the town « which pained me so much that it nearly proved the death of me. » In the end, he sold off all their furniture, — which meant they could no longer take in lodgers.

« Despite all this, the poor woman says, I continued to love him as deeply as I did when we left France. It is true that after having received my mother's first letter, my heart was torn in two ... But I must admit that the love I felt for this man far exceeded my affection for my parents ... »

The National Archives manuscript in Angélique's hand breaks off here.

But the folder continues with a series of notations made by her cousin, the Celestine monk Goussencourt. They lack the grace of Angélique de Longueval's narrative, but at least they are marked by a genuine naïveté.

THE MONK GOUSSENCOURT. — DEATH OF LA CORBINIÈRE. — WALTER SCOTT DIALOGUE. — A SUSPECT ARCHAEOLOGIST CORRESPONDENCE

Here is a passage drawn from the observations of Goussencourt, the Celestine monk:

« Circumstances made innkeepers of them. The French soldiers who went to eat and drink in their establishment so respected her that they did not want to be served by her. She sewed heavy cotton collars
for which she earned only eight sous a day, whereas he spent most of his time in the cellar, carousing with the guests and becoming all blotchy with drink in the end.

« One day she was at the door and a captain passed by and bowed in her direction and she returned the greeting, — which was seen by her jealous husband ... He calls her over and grabs her by the throat. She manages to cry out. The carousers rush over and find her stretched on the floor, half-dead. He had kicked her in the ribs and knocked the wind out of her and, to justify himself, he said that he had forbidden her to speak to that man and that had she so much as uttered a word he would have run her through with his sword. »

The more he drank the skinnier he became. It was around this time that she wrote her mother to ask her forgiveness. Her mother replied that she forgave her and advised her to return, adding that she would not forget her in her will.

This will was preserved at the church of Neuville-en-Hez and contains a legacy of eight thousand pounds.

During Angélique de Longueval's absence, a young lady from Picardy turned up, pretending she was Angélique in order to usurp her rightful inheritance. — This young lady even had the audacity to present herself to Angélique's mother, Mme d'Haraucourt, who of course maintained she was not her daughter. But the imposter trumped up so many stories that several members of the family eventually imagined she was the person she pretended to be ...

Her cousin the Celestine monk wrote her to return at once. — But La Corbinière wanted to hear nothing about this, being afraid that he would be arrested and executed if he returned to France. Things were not going very well for him either; — after Angélique had eloped with him, M. d'Haraucourt had expelled his mother and his brothers from Clermont-sur-Oise, « where they lived from the proceeds of their pork butcher business ».

When Mme d'Haraucourt was finally laid to rest in December, 1636 at Neuville-en-Hez (M. d'Haraucourt had died in 1632), their daughter did everything in her power to convince her husband to return to France.

By the time they reach Ferrara, both of them are grievously ill, which delays them twelve days before they catch a boat from Livorno and then arrive in Avignon, where they continue to be sick. — La Corbinière dies there the 5th of August, 1642. He lies buried at Sainte-Madeleine, having died with great remorse for having treated her so poorly and saying to her: « Whenever you feel too sad, just remember how badly I treated you. »

« At that moment, the monk continues, she was in such dire straits that she told me she would have surely died had not the Celestines come to her aid.

« She arrived in Paris by coach on Sunday the 19th of November and sent for her great friend Mme Boulogne to come fetch her. The latter was not home, so her major-domo came instead. The following day after dinner, she came to see me with the aforementioned Mme Boulogne and her mother-in-law, that is, the mother of La Corbinière, now a kitchen maid at the house of M. Ferrant, an occupation she had been reduced to after having been banished from Clermont on account of her son.

« The first thing she did was to throw herself at my feet, her hands clasped in prayer, asking for my forgiveness, which brought tears to the women's eyes. I told her that I could not forgive her (which caused her to sigh and heave her breast, when she heard the rest) because she had not in fact sinned against me. Taking her by the hand, I said to her: “Get up”; and I sat her down by my side, where she again repeated to me what she had so often said to me by letter: namely, that after God and her mother, she owed her life to me. »

Four years later, she had retired to Nivilliers in a very unhappy state, having no shirt on her back, as the following letter indicates.

2 January, 1646.

My dearest Father (it was thus she addressed the Celestine),

I most humbly entreat you not to ascribe my silence to any lack of gratitude I might feel for everything you have done for me, but rather to the shame I continue to harbor because I can only show my deep appreciation by means of words. I continue to be pursued by ill luck, to the extent that I do not even have a shirt on my back. These misfortunes have until now held me back from writing to you and to Madame Boulogne, for it seems to me that you should receive as much satisfaction from hearing from me as I formerly received from the two of you. My misfortunes, not my intentions, are at fault here; therefore, my dear father, do me the honor of letting me hear from you.

Your most humble servant,

A. DE LONGUEVAL

 

(To M. de Goussencourt, Celestine Monk, Paris)

This is the last one hears of her. — As for Goussencourt, his simple imagination unable to accept his cousin's love for a
pork butcher boy
, he therefore concluded some magic potion must have been involved. — Here are his speculations:

« They left on the night of the first Sunday of Lent in 1632 and returned in 1642, also during Lent. — Their love for each other began some three years before they eloped. — In order to cause her to fall in love with him, he gave her some sweets which he had had made up in Clermont and which contained Spanish fly, but these only served to inflame the girl and not to make her fall in love with him; then he gave her some cooked quince, which did the trick quite nicely. »

There is no proof whatsoever that brother Goussencourt gave his cousin a shirt. — Angélique certainly did not enjoy an odor of sanctity among her family, — which is borne out by the fact that she is not even named in its genealogy which mentions the names of Jacques-Annibal de Longueval, governor of Clermont-en-Beauvoisis, and of Suzanne d'Arquenvilliers, dame of Saint-Rimault. This couple left behind two Hannibals, the younger of whom, surnamed Alexander, was the same child who didn't want his sister
to steal from mother and father
. There were two more boys as well. — But there is no mention of a daughter.

Rest assured that I would not be so persistent in my pursuit of the various heroes of this family whose various branches, — the de Longueval, — the d'Haraucourt, — and the de Bucquoy, — are torturing my imagination, were I not completely immersed in historical sources and had I not committed myself to the historical method, ever since it has become illegal to write novels.

All nations are curious to make the mental journey back into their origins and into the memories of their past; — this explains the success of Walter Scott in England and that of Augustin Thierry, Monteil, and a number of others in France. The history of France has been cruelly disfigured for more than two centuries now, thanks to the partisan support for the principle of absolute monarchy which the descendents of the Béarnais have attempted to enforce. — Historians in France were forced to follow this particular party line, or else go abroad to do their writing. — In the end, the writers remained in France, while the absolute monarchs emigrated.

The Academy recently awarded a prize to an author who had come up with the idea of painting the portrait of«a province during the reign of Louis XIV » ... My ambition is less grand. — All I wanted to do was paint one of those clans from the provinces who within the historical totality of a nation constitute a kind of collective individual entity unto itself, an entity which it is most interesting to study, given the light it casts on other such individuals.

Unfortunately the minute I stray from the straight and narrow path of history, I am liable to fall back into the historical novel, — and my uncompromising critics would therefore consider everything I have just written a pale imitation of those long prefaces in which the author of
Waverley
sets up dialogues between captain Clutterbuck and the reverend Jedidiah Cleisbotham.

I understand the ploy of using dialogue to set up the ensuing narrative ... This is why I never travel through this region without my friend and escort whom I shall refer to by his first name, Sylvain.

This name is a very common one in this province, — “Sylvie” is its graceful feminine form, — a name made famous by the bower in the forest of Chantilly to which the poet Théophile de Viau often used to repair to dream.

I said to Sylvain, « Shall we go to Chantilly? »

He replied, « No ... You said yesterday that we'd have to go to Ermenonville and then cut over to Soissons in order to visit the ruins of the Longueval castle over toward Champagne.

— You're right, I answered; last night I had gotten completely intrigued with the lovely Angélique de Longueval and I wanted to see the castle from which she eloped with La Corbinière, — on horseback and dressed as a man.

— Are you sure this is the real Longueval? After all, there are Longuevals and Longuevilles everywhere ... just as there are Bucquoys everywhere ...

— I'm not so sure about the latter; but read this passage of Angélique's manuscript: « When the day arrived on which he was to come fetch me at night, I said to one of the grooms by the name of Breteau: “I would be most grateful if you could lend me a horse. I need to send for some taffeta at Soissons tonight. I promise I'll have the
horse back to you by the morning, before mother gets up ...”»

— Which would seem to prove, — Sylvain said to me, that the Longueval castle was located not far from Soissons, so this is obviously not the moment to change directions for Chantilly. The last time you changed directions, you almost got yourself arrested, — after all, people who suddenly change their ideas tend to be suspicious characters ... »

As a matter of fact, a gendarme had paid a visit to my hotel during my last visit to Senlis, — I believe I informed you of this detail, — having learned that, — although not in possession of a passport, — I had initially announced that I was traveling in the direction of Ermenonville but instead had taken my place in a coach going to Chantilly. Understandably suspicious, he threatened my hotel-keeper with a fine of twenty-five francs ... But let's let dead dogs lie.