Marquise de Ganges | Page 5

wife, or widow? This is for
the past.
"Shall I marry, or marry again? Shall I live long, or shall I die young?
This is for the future."
Then, stretching out her hand to the soothsayer, she asked--

"What am I to do now with this?"
"Roll that letter around this ball," answered the other, handing to the
unknown a little ball of virgin wax. "Both ball and letter will be
consumed in the flame before your eyes; the spirit knows your secrets
already. In three days you will have the answer."
The unknown did as the sibyl bade her; then the latter took from her
hands the ball and the paper in which it was wrapped, and went and
threw both into the chafing pan.
" And now all is done as it should be," said the soothsayer. "Comus!"
The dwarf came in.
"See the lady to her coach."
The stranger left a purse upon the table, and followed Comus. He
conducted her and her companion, who was only a confidential maid,
down a back staircase, used as an exit, and leading into a different
street from that by which the two women had come in; but the
coachman, who had been told beforehand of this circumstance, was
awaiting them at the door, and they had only to step into their carriage,
which bore them rapidly away in the direction of the rue Dauphine.
Three days later, according to the promise given her, the fair unknown,
when she awakened, found on the table beside her a letter in an
unfamiliar handwriting; it was addressed "To the beautiful Provencale,"
and contained these words--
"You are young; you are beautiful; you are a widow. This is for the
present.
"You will marry again; you will die young, and by a violent death. This
is for the future. THE SPIRIT."
The answer was written upon a paper like that upon which the
questions had been set down.
The marquise turned pale and uttered a faint cry of terror; the answer
was so perfectly correct in regard to the past as to call up a fear that it
might be equally accurate in regard to the future.
The truth is that the unknown lady wrapped in a mantle whom we have
escorted into the modern sibyl's cavern was no other than the beautiful
Marie de Rossan, who before her marriage had borne the name of
Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc, from that of an estate belonging to her
maternal grandfather, M. Joannis de Nocheres, who owned a fortune of
five to six hundred thousand livres. At the age of thirteen--that is to say,

in 1649--she had married the Marquis de Castellane, a gentleman of
very high birth, who claimed to be descended from John of Castille, the
son of Pedro the Cruel, and from Juana de Castro, his mistress. Proud
of his young wife's beauty, the Marquis de Castellane, who was an
officer of the king's galleys, had hastened to present her at court. Louis
XIV, who at the time of her presentation was barely twenty years old,
was struck by her enchanting face, and to the great despair of the
famous beauties of the day danced with her three times in one evening.
Finally, as a crowning touch to her reputation, the famous Christina of
Sweden, who was then at the French court, said of her that she had
never, in any of the kingdoms through which she had passed, seen
anything equal to "the beautiful Provencale." This praise had been so
well received, that the name of "the beautiful Provencale" had clung to
Madame de Castellane, and she was everywhere known by it.
This favour of Louis XIV and this summing up of Christina's had been
enough to bring the Marquise de Castellane instantly into fashion; and
Mignard, who had just received a patent of nobility and been made
painter to the king, put the seal to her celebrity by asking leave to paint
her portrait. That portrait still exists, and gives a perfect notion of the
beauty which it represents; but as the portrait is far from our readers'
eyes, we will content ourselves by repeating, in its own original words,
the one given in 1667 by the author of a pamphlet published at Rouen
under the following title: True and Principal Circumstances of the
Deplorable Death of Madame the Marquise de Ganges:
[Note: It is from this pamphlet, and from the Account of the Death of
Madame the Marquise de Ganges, formerly Marquise de Castellane,
that we have borrowed the principal circumstances of this tragic story.
To these documents we must add--that we may not be constantly
referring our readers to original sources--the Celebrated Trials by
Guyot de Pitaval, the Life of Marie de Rossan, and the Lettres galantes
of Madame Desnoyers.]
"Her