The Princess de Montpensier | Page 3

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This is a 8 bit file with accents, we will also do a 7 bit without.

The Princess de Montpensier
by Mme. de Lafayette

Introduction By Oliver C. Colt

This story was written by Madame de Lafayette and published
anonymously in 1662. It is set in a period almost 100 years previously
during the sanguinary wars of the counter-reformation, when the
Catholic rulers of Europe, with the encouragement of the Papacy, were
bent on extirpating the followers of the creeds of Luther and Calvin. I
am not qualified to embark on a historical analysis, and shall do no
more than say that many of the persons who are involved in the tale
actually existed, and the events referred to actually took place. The
weak and vicious King and his malign and unscrupulous mother are
real enough, as is a Duc de Montpensier, a Prince of the Blood, who
achieved some notoriety for the cruelty with which he treated any
Huguenots who fell into his hands, and for the leadership he gave to the
assassins during the atrocious massacre of St. Bartholomew's day.
He was married and had progeny, but the woman to whom he was
married was not the heroine of this romance, who is a fictional
character, as is the Comte de Chabannes.
The Duc de Guise of the period whose father had been killed fighting
against the Protestants, did marry the Princess de Portein, but this was
for political reasons and not to satisfy the wishes of a Princess de
Montpensier.

It will be noticed, I think, that women were traded in marriage with
little or no regard to their personal emotions, and no doubt, as has been
remarked by others, marriages without love encouraged love outside
marriage. Whatever the reality, the literary conventions of the time
seem to have dictated that we should be treated only to ardent glances,
fervent declarations, swoonings and courtly gestures; we are not led
even to the bedroom door, let alone the amorous couch. I wonder,
however, if the reader might not think that this little tale written more
than three hundred years ago contains the elements of many of the
romantic novels and soap operas which have followed it.
At one level it is a cautionary tale about the consequences of marital
infidelity; at another it is a story of a woman betrayed, treated as a
pretty bauble for the gratification of men, and cast aside when she has
served her purpose, or a butterfly trapped in a net woven by uncaring
fate. Her end is rather too contrived for modern taste, but, even today,
characters who are about to be written out of the plot in soap operas are
sometimes smitten by mysterious and fatal disorders of the brain.
The unfortunate Comte de Chabannes is the archetypical "decent chap,"
the faithful but rejected swain who sacrifices himself for