then exposed him. His operations as a having purchased them! Of course once merchant prospered in his new home; and introduced and tolerated, the evil continued he became there a town-councillor and ad- to assume larger and larger proportions joint of the mayor. His two sons, Gedeon under every successive reign. Under Maand Pierre, carried the rising fortunes of zarin a scheme was invented by virtue of the family to a yet higher point. Associat- which the holders of all these offices were ing with them their brother-in-law, Paul required to pay a heavy sum every ninth Yvon, they established a banking business at year, in consideration of which the offices Bordeaux. Here also the Huguenot family were secured to their families in perpetuity. prospered exceedingly, so much so that This payment was called the "Paulette." Gedeon, the elder brother, purchased an The numbers of these offices, created appointment of secretary to the king, solely for sale, were multiplied to a perLouis XIII., became the farmer of sun- fectly extraordinary degree under Louis dry taxes, and was appointed "Tresorier XIV. And the titles of many of the bodies de l'Epargne " for Navarre. He died in of officers, for they were created in large 1634, leaving behind him a very consider- batches, thus brought into existence, are able fortune. This Gedeon was not the absurdly grotesque. There were "Inspectgrandfather, but the great uncle of Gedeon, ors of Liquors," "Inspectors of Butchers," the jackdaw author, who alone has caused "Inspectors of Pigs," "Stackers of Wood," the family name ever to be mentioned in the "Measurers of Charcoal," nineteenth century. Pierre, the younger Cloth," 66 'Controllers of Fresh Butter." son, was the author's grandfather. He must "Tasters of Salt Butter," "Inspectors of also have been a wealthy man, but his ca- Wigs," "Controllers of Poultry," and a reer seems to have been a less brilliant one vast number more. The Chancellor Pontthan that of his elder brother. This elder chartrain, who was one of the most prolific brother, the senior partner in the Bordeaux inventors in this sort, said that "it seemed bank, the farmer of taxes, and secretary by as if Providence had an especial care for purchase to the king, left a fortune to his France; for scarcely has the king created a son Gedeon, the second, which enabled him new appointment, before God creates on to soar yet higher in the empyrean of finan- the spot a fool to purchase it!" Neverthecial greatness, and as a first step he pur-less, the vanity of a fool was not the only chased an appointment as Counsellor in the Parliament of Paris.

99 66 Measurers of

motive that produced purchasers for all these places. The tenure of them exempted the holders from the tax called the

64

taille;" and as the payment of this was held to be in some sort infamous, as it fell only upon people of peasant race, it was thought a very desirable thing to be freed from liability to it. Besides, many of the " charges " brought in large gains.

This shameful practice of selling appointments to offices of profit and dignity prevailed in France from the time of Louis XII. to within about twenty years before the Revolution. It was a culminating monstrosity of bad government reached by France alone among the Governments of Europe; and suffices to stamp the old Gedeon the second, son of the Bordeaux Bourbon and Valois Government of France banker, became a purchaser of dignities on as the worst of all the oppressive tyrannies a larger scale than his father. As we have under which Europe groaned for so many seen, he bought a place of Counsellor of centuries. It is true that the shame was in the Parliament of Paris, and was installed some degree shared by the Papal Court; for in it on the 10th of June, 1637. And it would be strange, indeed, if any abuse shortly afterwards he married. The richest ever invented had not found a congenial men in France at that day were the “ Inhome there. But even at Rome the evil tendants" of finance. One of these, Puget was not so great and so shameless as at the de Montauron, was noted as a man of imCourt of France. Offices of state and dig- mense wealth. He had an only daughter, nities were sold in vast numbers by the Marie de Montauron. But she was illegitiPontiffs. But Frenchmen alone permitted mate. And the highly respectable Huguetheir lives, and honours, and fortunes to lie not family of the Tallemants were extremely at the mercy of judges who had bought the averse to one of their race marrying a girl right of judging them! Under Louis XII. so disgraced. The Montaurons, on the appointments in the department of finance other hand, would not ally themselves with only were made saleable. Though bad a Huguenot. But the double difficulty did enough, the evil was infinitely less than not avail as any barrier between the new when under Francis I. the administration Counsellor of Parliament and the fortune of justice was entrusted to men whose sole title to their appointments consisted in

of the Intendant's daughter. Gedeon lost no time in conforming to the orthodox faith;

66

and less in laughing to scorn the scruples | he is the same man as you have known him of his provincial relatives. He was married at Paris, except that his expenses are larger to Marie de Montauron, and employed a still! But for Madame l'Intendante, to portion of her dower in purchasing the whisper a secret, she is entirely changed. place of Maitre des Requêtes." Thus Quoique," say the travellers, breaking off the career of the most brilliant and lucrative into verse according to their habit: offices was open to him; and he obtained "Quoique sa beaute soit extreme, first the Intendance" of Orleans, and subsequently, in 1653, that of Guienne.

Gedeon Tallemant was now safe to become one of the richest men in France. He did become so very speedily. But Gedeon the Catholic, grandson of the prudent old Huguenot La Rochelle trader, was one of those men whom no amount of wealth can prevent from ruining themselves. His dissipation was boundless, and of every sort. Perhaps among the least ruinous of his modes of spending money was the gratification of an ambition, at that time much the mode in France, of playing the Mecanas. He permitted whole swarms of needy scribblers, whom the public and the booksellers refused to feed, to live upon him. And some of a different class, who ought to have been above the habitudes, which placed the trade of literature very much upon a level with that of a begging-letter writer, did not scruple to barter their flattery for a portion of the prodigal Intendant's wealth. Among others, Corneille dedicated his "Cinna" to him. According to the account of him given by his nephew in the "historiette " dedicated to him, he must have been a grossly ignorant, and very worthless man. He is represented to have been absurdly, yet not unreasonably, jealous of his wife, who was, according to our author's account, in all respects good for as little as her husband. Here is a picture of the life of an "Intendant de Finance "in the provincial capital of Intendancy," taken from the account given by the two celebrated friends Chapelle and Bachaumont, of a journey by them in the south of France about the year 1656.

his 66

Qu'elle ait toujours ce grand œil bleu Plein de douceur, et plein de feu, Elle n'est pourtant plus la meme; Car nous avons appris qu'elle aime, Et qu'elle aime bien fort - le jeu! She who did not know formerly what cards All the women in the town have become were, now passes her nights at lansquenet. gamblers to please her. They come regularly to her house to divert her, and whoever would see a brilliant assembly has only to pay her a visit. Mademoiselle du Pin," this was an illegitimate sister of the Intendant, those who are not fond of play. "is always there to entertain truth, her conversation is so amusing and And, in the worst off. There Messieurs the Gaswitty, that that part of the company is not cons may take lessons in polite behaviour and fashionable conversation:

66

Mais cette agreable du Pin

Qui dans sa maniere est unique
A l'esprit mechant et bien fin;
Et si jamais Gascon s'en pique
Gascon fera mauvaise fin."

No doubt Bordeaux regretted it, when these "noctes cœnæque deûm" came to an end; and the ruined Intendant had to break up his establishment and return to Paris.

There his first cousin, Pierre Tallemant, the father of the jackdaw author, would have nothing to say to him. But Gedeon, the son of Pierre, undertook to manage his affairs for him, and reconcile him to his (Gedeon's) father, on conditions of amendment and prudence in his mode of life. “I undertook," says the historiette writer, "to "As soon as we had stopped on shore, receive his revenues and give him so much - of the Garonne at Bordeaux, and had a month, on condition that he would respent some time in admiring the situation model his style of living, and lodge himself of the town, we went to the inn of the after my fashion. I made them cry again Chapeau Rouge, where M. Tallemant came and again, both him and his wife. I beto call upon us immediately on our arrival. gan by proposing that he should send away From that moment we returned no more to his cook. All right,' said he; I will our lodgings all the time we were at Bor- send him away in four months!' His wife deaux, except to sleep. The days passed exclaimed, For heaven's sake, cousin, in the pleasantest manner conceivable at the manage to keep me one footman!' And house of M. l'Intendant; for all the good then they deceived me. They took lodg people of the town have no other rendez-ings opposite to them for the servants they vous than his house. He has made the pretended to discharge! In short, finding discovery that most of them are his cousins; them incurable, I gave them up, and would and from his style of life one might take have nothing to say to their affairs! " him for the Premier President of the province rather than the Intendant. In a word,

The Intendant died, leaving his widow and children destitute, in 1668. The eldest

of them, Paul, became an abbé, obtained the Priory of St. Albin, and was made a member of the Academy by the influence of his relations and friends of the family. He produced quantities of occasional verses, idyls, pastorals, words for operas, discourses, panegyrics, funeral orations, and academical harangues, all long since forgotten! When he was made an Academician, neither Quinault nor Racine, nor La Fontaine, nor Boileau, had been found worthy of that honour, though Racine had already produced Andromache," and Boileau had written seven of his immortal "Satires!" Nevertheless, what the abbé gave the world was what the world wanted, and the world in return rewarded him well. He had pensions, and priories, and benefices, and was made by the Minister Colbert Superintendent of the Inscriptions in the Royal Residences! In this capacity, when Le Brun painted the well-known series of pictures in the great gallery at Versailles, the Abbé Tallemant furnished the inscriptions to be placed under them. They were, when they had been so placed, voted to be so bad that they were all cancelled! None the less for that mischance, he remained a favourite with the literary clique of the fashionable world of Paris, and, after a peaceful and prosperous life, died in his 70th year; and has a long, though not altogether accurate, article consecrated to him by Daunou in the "Biographie Universelle."

This rich marriage made the life of leisure passed in all the society of Paris, to which we owe the " Historiettes," possible to Tallemant. But before commencing that Parisian life he made a journey in Italy, together with two of his brothers, and the young Abbé de Retz. The cause of this companionship is characteristic of the times. The young De Retz had been a candidate for some distinction at the Sorbonne, and his principal competitor had been the Abbé de la Mothe Houdancourt, afterwards Bishop of Rennes and Archbishop of Auch, who was the special protégé of the Cardinal de Richelieu. De Retz was the successful candidate; whereupon Richelieu became furious with anger. The Sorbonne humbly represented, not that De Retz had in truth merited the distinction, but that it was impossible for them to pass over the claims of the nephew of the Cardinal di Gondy, who had been a special protector of the Sorbonne. But Richelieu was appeased by no such representations. Was not he also a protector of the Sorbonne? Whom had they to thank for the new buildings even then in course of construction? The angry prelate threatened to make them very sensible to whom they owed their present if not their past "protection," by forthwith causing the new buildings to be razed to the ground! And the all-powerful minister's anger was so hot, that it was deemed expedient to get the obnoxious successful candidate, the young Abbé de Retz out of Pierre Tallemant, the father of our au- the way and out of sight by sending him to thor, also went to Paris; but before he did travel in Italy. Tallemant's appreciation so he had already acquired a very hand- of his young fellow-traveller, thelittle some fortune. He married twice, and had dark man, very near-sighted, ill-made, families by both of his wives, the last of ugly, and awkward in all his actions, and whom was Marie Rambouillet, the sister dirty in his habits, who could neither write of the well-known and enormously wealthy a line straight, nor manage to put his own financier, Nicolas Rambouillet. But in-clothes on,". shows that his talents of asmuch," says his son, the author of the observation, and the habit of recording the Historiettes," ‚"" as he did not seem at all fruit of them, were even at that early age disposed to part with any of his wealth as developed in no ordinary degree. long as he lived, I determined to look out When they arrived at Florence, De Retz for a rich wife who would make me inde- was lodged in the house of his relative, the pendent of my father." Belonging, as he Cavaliere Gondi, who was at that time Secdid, both on his father's and on his mother's retary of State to the Grand Duke of Tusside, to the world of the "haute finance," cany. And the remarks which Tallemant the great farmers of taxes, or partisans "makes thereupon afford an amusing instance as they were called in those days, it was of that inevitable ignorance of Frenchmen not difficult to him to succeed in his pur- respecting everything not French, which pose. Indeed, he had no need to look far- seems to have been as remarkable in the ther than to his own first cousin, Elizabeth seventeenth as in the nineteenth century. Rambouillet, the daughter of his mother's "This Chevalier di Gondy," he writes, brother. The heiress young was only had the portraits of the Gondys of France eleven and a half years old, when her in his salon; for," this "for" is delicousin was betrothed to her; and the mar- cious! they are not such grands seigriage was not solemnized till two years neurs in Italy as they are here. They are, later. however, gentlemen. I saw at Florence

66

66

66

sufficient indications of that. But the question is to know whether they did not become so after the favour of which Albert di Gondy was the object, and whether the Florentine Gondys are of that family. Quillet says that when he asked the Chevalier di Gondi whether the Gondys of France were veritable Gondis, he burst out laughing." As well he might: the Albert above alluded to, who was the ancestor of the French branch of the family, and who came to France with Catherine di Medici, having been a cadet of a family whose ancestors sat as patricians in the Great Council of Florence in the twelfth century! And Tallemant, it must be observed, was here speaking on a subject that was especially his own, and on which he would have been sure to be well informed, if the matter in hand had been exclusively French.

"Tallemant was guided but by one special taste, by one speciality of character. A man of wit after the fashion of our ancestors, curious to a degree that no one is curious nowadays, always on the scent of everything that was said or done around him, informed with the utmost accuracy of all the incidents and all the gossip of society, he records it all; and his record is not so much one of baseness as of drolleries and gaieties."

The English reader, it should be observed, looking at the society photographed by Tallemant des Reaux from an English point of view, would hardly be able to accept the exceeding lenity of this last judg ment of the celebrated critic. The impression produced on the mind of the present writer by a perusal of the Historiettes," is that a more profoundly rotten state of society never existed than that which they describe so vividly.

66

66

On his return from his travels his marriage with his wealthy cousin was completed, "He writes what he knows," continues and his life of a man welcomed in every M. de Sainte-Beuve, "for the pleasure of society in Paris and of jackdaw authorship writing, with the salt of his style, which is began, and continued during the remainder a very good style, and adding to his narraof his life, which came to a close on the 6th tive his own judgment, which is unaffected of November, 1692, in his own house in and active. Such as he is, and so constiParis, near the Porte de Richelieu; tuted, he is, in his own kind, invaluable that is to say, adds his latest editor, about and incomparable. If any one had told that point of the Rue de Richelieu at which Bussy Rabutin, that bel esprit and belle the Rue Neuve Saint Augustin now begins. plume of the army and the court, that he He was thus seventy-three when he died; had in his own day a rival and a master of and had been for a full half-century engaged pointed and naïve narration, in that jeering in piling together that mass of gossip which bourgeois, whom one met everywhere, and now, in the shape of nine goodly octavo vol-who was nowhere out of place, he would, umes, forms one of the most valuable store-assuredly, have been much astonished, and houses of material at the disposition of those would not have believed the fact. who would reconstruct a vivid picture of Tallemant went everywhere, rubbed the Parisian life of the seventeenth century. shoulders with people of the highest rank, It was apropos of the appearance of this and was intimate with people of talent. the third, and by far the best edition, of the His passion was to hear everything;-to "Historiettes," that Sainte-Beuve, the gather up everything, and to make a good most competent critic in France upon such story of everything. He was born an a subject, wrote in the "Moniteur" of ecdotist," as La Fontaine was born a fabthe 19th of January, 1857, an article, enti- ulist.' His friends never ceased saying to tled " Tallemant et Bussy, or the bourgeois him: Come now, write that down!' backbiter, and the backbiter of quality." It He wrote accordingly; and we profit by it. was a happy idea to bring the two men thus Were it not for Tallemant and his indiscretogether; for Bussy Rabutin has also done tions, many special studies of the sevenmuch towards making a reproduction of teenth century would have been well-nigh that strange seventeenth-century life possi- impossible. Through him we are members ble, and was himself one of the most re- of all the coteries in every quarter of the markable and characteristic figures in it. town; we know all the masks, and the And it cannot be denied that both the pa- wearers even in their robes-de-chambre. trician and plebeian scribbler were back-He repeats what was said; he keeps regis biters. ter of current gossip. He tells no lies; but Nevertheless, there does not seem to be he speaks evil with pleasure, and in gaiety any ground for thinking that Tallemant was of heart. What he tells us, however, is not to such a degree, or in such a sense, a back-to be received lightly. For he is natural biter, as to justify us in rejecting his testimony as to facts. Here is a portion of what Sainte-Beuve says of him:

an

and judicious, truthful and penetrating, without affectation, and without pretension. Respecting Henry IV., Sully, Richelieu,

and others, who belonged to the age before | readers into a mistake and a disappointhim, and who were so much greater than he ment, if it were not added, that they will in all respects, he has but picked up the scarcely find in the Historiettes" all that crumbs, which are still, however, crumbs charm which Sainte-Beuve found. On this that have fallen from a good table, - yet side of the Channel the nine volumes of upon such subjects he can be listened to Tallemant's writings may be accepted as an only as an echo, and a picker up of reports. invaluable magazine of materials for the But respecting people whom he has seen student of social changes, and the historian and known, we have something better than who would animate his picture by informthat from him. His authority is as reliable ing it with the life, the flesh, and blood, and as that of any one. He read the physiogno- genuine pulses of the world he wishes to remies around him, and he reproduces them for produce. This the jackdaw author has beus. I am entirely of the opinion of M. P. queathed us; and as is easily understood, Paris," one of the editors of the Histo- the special value of the bequest arises from riettes," that Tallemant's authority is the jackdaw nature which prompted him to not to be lightly esteemed, and that we pick up and hide away whatever no one must accept his testimony, failling proof to else thought worth preserving. the contrary. If you dig down at many points you will find the confirmation of things that he asserts with a mere passing word. And it is not only in painting the bourgeois world that he excels. Tallemant is still the best painter that we have of the Hôtel Rambouillet, and of all that refined society. He judges it with the true French taste of that Augustine age, as befits one who was the friend of Patru, - one who had in him much of a prose La Fontaine, and of Maucroix."

After speaking of Tallemant's portrait of M. de Montausier, M. de Sainte-Beuve continues:

ex

But not one English reader in ten thousand will appreciate the aroma of the style of which M. de Sainte-Beuve speaks so enthusiastically. They will find themselves, moreover, in the midst of a very coarse, a very low-minded, and essentially vulgar world, the study of which is mainly valuable for the sake of the clear views which may be got from it of the normal connection between certain social antecedents and certain social consequences. It is right also to state plainly, in order to prevent mistakes, that the " Historiettes " must remain a sealed book to English ladies, cept, indeed, to the royal, noble and fash"If that is not a masterpiece of lifelike ionable patronesses of Mlle. Schneider's resemblance, where is such to be sought? cancan. Ladies who can enjoy that, will And there are plenty of such in Talemant's find nothing to startle or disgust them in pages. Open them anywhere. What you Tallemant. Others had better content will find is gay, well-told, clear, pleasant, themselves with such reproductions of the well turned out of hand, free from affecta- jackdaw author's materials as the writers of tion of style. He continues without an special "studies" of the old-world personeffort the race of the story-tellers and fable-ages may select, purify, and reproduce for writers, and has frequently a touch of the them. vein of Rabelais. His diction is admirable, In conclusion, it may be interesting to exceedingly happy of phrase, full of idiom, mention in a few words the circumstances familiar, thoroughly Parisian, and imbued of the finding of Tallemant's long-lost manwith the flavour of the soil in which it grew.uscript. The world which Tallemant exhibits to us is the town, properly so called, the town as it was in the days of Mazarin, either before or after the Fronde, and after the minority of Louis XIV., that Paris in which a bourgeoisie, rich, bold, and free, was living a stirring life, the types of which are to be seen in Molière."

This is the judgment of certainly the most competent critic that France has known in the course of this century. And assuredly it does not become an English writer to dispute the entire accuracy of every portion of it, as looked at from a French point of view, and as addressed to Frenchmen of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, there would be risk of leading English

Elizabeth Rambouillet, the wife of our author, survived him, and became sole heiress of the family property. In 1701, she was present at the marriage of her greatniece, Renée Magdaleine de Rambouillet de la Sablière, with M. Trudaine, grandson of Charles Trudaine, who died in 1721, Counsellor of State and Provost of the Merchants. All the Tallemant property came to him by this marriage; and the manuscript of the "Historiettes," together with all the other lumber in the old family residence. The Trudaines possessed a chateau called Montigny Lencoup, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, at a short distance from Montereau; and when at the death of the last of the Trudaines the libra