My master would not in his youth give attention to writing and spelling, having more important things to learn, and he had an early quarrel with grammar, which was never made up. Nevertheless, he has written the best book about war yet published—that is to say, he dictated it to me. And the French Academy elected him a member; but he made merry at the expense of the Academicians, saying as he knew not how to spell, much less to write, a seat in the Academy would become him about as well as a ring would become a cat. Also, that if the Academy elected him, it should also elect Marshal Villars, who could neither read nor write; but that I, Babache, was better fitted for an Academician than either.
It is certain, however, that no lady ever refused to accept a love letter from Count Saxe because it was ill spelled and ill written—for that part of his correspondence he attended to strictly himself. I know that certain things concerning the ladies have been urged against him. I know he has been described as “a glorious devil, loving beauty only”—but all I know concerning Count Saxe and the ladies is, the women mobbed him and sent him thousands of love letters. It may be said that I know more than I will admit. Not so. And it may also be said that I could have known all if I had wished. Well, 6 so might I have known astronomy, if I had possessed a taste for the science. But I never liked it. I ever felt small enough anyhow without considering those myriads of suns and worlds which make one feel considerably less than nothing.
One thing I do know about Count Saxe and one lady, in particular; if he had been willing to marry that ugly Duchess of Courland, Anna Iwanowna, now Czarina of Russia, he would have been Duke of Courland de facto as well as de jure; he would have become “cousin” to the Kings of France and Spain; he would have been “most Illustrious” to the Emperor, and “most Illustrious, most Mighty,” to the King of Poland, and what is more, he would have had the right of coining money.
But Count Saxe never put any compulsion on himself in affairs of the heart. And I say this; that with the only two ladies concerning whose relations with him I was familiar—for he was as secretive with me as I could wish about such things—I never knew a man more blameless. And these two ladies were both of them singularly beautiful and charming. One of them was an actress—Mademoiselle Adrienne Lecouvreur, and the other one was Mademoiselle Francezka Capello—that star-like creature whose beauty, whose riches, whose airy high spirit, whose strange, brilliant story, laid her open to peculiar dangers. Yet, toward Mademoiselle Capello, Count Saxe behaved with the most delicate chivalry during the whole of her eventful life. And he forwarded the love of Mademoiselle Capello and Gaston Cheverny with the noblest disinterestedness.
7
Count Saxe had a taste not common among soldiers. He liked to hear sermons read—good sermons, that is, by the great guns of the pulpit, like Bossuet. I often read them to him, and have been compelled to chastise several persons who thought this matter food for mirth.
It seems to me sometimes as if I had never known but one man and one woman in my life—Count Saxe and Francezka Capello; they alone reached the ideal heights, in my mind—for a Tatar prince and the son of a poor notary has his ideals, just the same as a duke and the son of a duke—and the fact that I was a private soldier before I became a Tatar prince and a captain of Uhlans has nothing to do with the matter. It may be that Mademoiselle Capello, who had a combination of Scotch and Spanish pride, won me with the most delicate flattery in the world by honoring me with her regard—and Babache, the Tatar, was often smiled on, when dukes and marquises were scowled at, terribly. Of course, I knew that the very difference in our rank made this possible; and I had a cross eye which stood as a sentinel in my face, to warn Love away.
Only in my dreams, did I breathe of love to Mademoiselle Capello; and in those soft and splendid visions in the mysterious night and under the earnest stars which seemed then so near and so kind, Francezka often smiled upon me—nay, even kissed me.
But it was only a dream. At all times, though, I was hers, soul and body, with a doglike devotion—and in the end, I was given to her, in a singular manner, by Count Saxe. She lavished upon me, from the beginning, many kind and familiar speeches and acts; and I would have died rather than throw away, by so 8 much as one word of folly, the treasure of her confidence and friendship. I took with thankfulness what she gave me—and was not such a fool as to ask for more.
The very first time I saw Mademoiselle Capello was unforgettable for more reasons than one. It was the first and most serious of those adventures into which her spirit, her talents and her beauty were perpetually leading her—and it might have been her destruction.
One afternoon about six o’clock in the first days of May, 1726, I was passing along the tangle of streets back of the Quai des Theatines, when I noticed in the walled garden of the great Hôtel Kirkpatrick one of those cheap, open-air theaters of which the Parisians of the humbler classes are so fond. The place itself was retired enough, and only accessible from the maze of back streets of which I spoke. There was a wide, grassy space in the garden where the theater was set, with its rude appliances. On one side, quite screening it from the formal gardens of the hôtel, was an ancient lilac hedge, a forest of bloom and perfume, in those first days of May. There were great clumps of guelder-roses on each side, and syringas, which had grown to be trees, and looked like fountains of white blossoms.
It was so very sweet and peaceful—it being quite deserted at the time—that I stood, looking through the open grille of the huge gateway, and felt the scent of the lilacs and syringas getting into my blood, as the earth scents and earth sights will; for we are all the children of Nature, the mighty mother, whether we be born with only the tiles between us and the stars, or whether our cradle be the ground itself, and in our mother’s bosom shall we sleep at last; so that is why 9 the green earth is never strange to us, nor any of its sweetness unfamiliar.
No one would have thought that this old garden—this rich, wild, fair, virginal place—was in the heart of Paris. The sun was well in the west, and the shadows on the velvet grass were long. As I meditated I began to wonder how such a thing as a cheap theater should be set up in the grounds of the chatelaine of this splendid hôtel—who was the renowned, the redoubtable and the indomitable Madame Margarita Riano del Valdozo y Kirkpatrick, Countess of Riano, with many other titles, but who was commonly called Scotch Peg, or Peggy Kirkpatrick, and was as well-known in Paris as the statue of Henri Quatre on the Pont Neuf.
Her history was familiar to all Paris. She was the daughter of a poor Scotch Jacobite, as proud as Lucifer and all hell besides. She had married Count Riano, a Spanish nobleman, five times a grandee of Spain, three times a grandee of Portugal, and God knows what else, with more money than any or all of the Kirkpatricks had ever seen in their lives. He was the meekest, the mildest, the least haughty man on earth, having no more pride in him than the kitchen knife. It was known in every street in Paris that from the day the good man married Peggy Kirkpatrick she never allowed him to forget the enormous honor that a daughter of the penniless, bare-legged clan of Kirkpatrick had done him and the kingdom of Spain, in marrying him. The poor man has long been with the saints in heaven, and few of them deserved the martyr’s crown more than he.
Yet Peggy Kirkpatrick was not a bad woman. On 10 the contrary, she was incapable of a mean action, generous with a Spanish, rather than a Scotch, generosity, and although she undoubtedly hastened Count Riano’s death by harping upon the glories of the Kirkpatrick family, she paid him great attention in his last illness. As for his funeral, never was there anything so grand.
In Madrid, whither she carried him, events are still dated from the Count Riano’s funeral. Madame Riano wished to borrow the catafalque under which Louis le Grand had lain, and was mightily offended when it was refused her. The funeral lasted six weeks from Paris to Madrid. The Spanish Court paid the widow much honor, but not giving due space to the Kirkpatricks in some formal letter of condolence, or matter of that kind, Scotch Peg shook the dust of Spain from her feet and returned to Paris to remain, as she said, until Charles Edward Stuart, the English prince, was restored to the throne of his ancestors.
She was a great, tall woman, as red as a cow,