advice from my mother,’ she seemed to say, ‘but to my brother I shall speak my mind.’ The only two men she was ready to listen to were the Comte Mercy-Argenteau and her old tutor, the Abbé Vermond. She was too mindful of the Empress’ advice ever to let Rohan worm his way into her favour.
“Men have, indeed, been driven from Court; and borne it, according to ability,” says Carlyle. “A Choiseul, in these very years, retired Parthian-like, with a smile or scowl, and drew half the Court-host with him. Our Wolsey, though once an
ego et rex meus
, could journey, it is said, without strait-waistcoat, to his monastery, and there, telling beads, look forward to a still longer journey. The melodious, too soft-strung Racine, when his King turned his back on him, emitted one meek wail, and submissively—died. But the case of Coadjutor de Rohan differed from all those. No loyalty was in him that he should die; no self-help, that he should live; no faith, that he should tell beads.” Rohan lived on, to put it in poetical terms, like a winter tree waiting for some fairy-tale spring.
For Rohan—and this really comes as a surprise—was ambitious. Rank and fortune were not enough. He yearned for power. This is particularly surprising because he was clearly not the sort of person for whom power is his natural element, who finds his greatest happiness in determining the fate of others. Had he been that sort of person he would have put his time in Vienna to far better use, and in his role as bishop he would have made his subordinates feel the weight of his authority. But there is no evidence that he did anything of the sort.
What then was the source of this burning ambition? We all live out our lives in terms of roles—or aspire to do so. At the simplest level, this role-play takes an elementary form: a womanmight smile and do her hair in the manner of her favourite actress, and even strive to assume her supposed mental attributes. A man will take on the persona of the distinguished physician, the self-sacrificing paterfamilias, the charming bohemian or some other traditional part. On a higher level, nobler and more complicated souls are tempted by the nobler and more complicated roles offered by history and literature—the Muse, the Martyr, the Poète Maudit, the Great Statesman (like Széchenyi) or Voice of the Revolution (like Peto˝fi). The phantom that hovered so teasingly over Rohan’s consciousness was the gloriously visible one of the all-powerful Cardinal—Wolsey, Richelieu, Mazarin and Fleury. But here the pampered
grand seigneur
, with his tendency to corpulence, was quite out of his depth. Richelieu was a gaunt ascetic, who out of his dreams forged himself a character of bone and steel. Working with his secretary Baron Planta—a Swiss Protestant, no less—he laboured away at his great plans to make his country a happier place, and only when his guests had finally gone to bed, as dawn approached and he had a few brief hours to himself, did he allow himself to dream of ‘taking power’.
To the ‘taking’ of such power, Rohan felt in his more optimistic moments, there was only one obstacle: the Queen’s anger. The King he probably considered a
quantité négligeable
, as he usually was. It was not the King’s favourite but the Queen’s who exercised power. For a child of the age of Pompadour and Du Barry the notion of a favourite carried essentially erotic implications. In France, the real ruler was the person who ruled the Queen’s heart. And why should that not be him, Rohan, the
Belle Eminence
, as his followers called him? Mazarin, with far less manly appeal and
grand-seigneurial
charm, had once ruled his queen, Anne of Austria, and through her, France.
But a person who falls under the spell of erotic dreams does not remain immune to their power for long. Rohan had dreamt for so many years that the Queen was in love with him that he ended up falling desperately in love with her himself. In thishe
“Men have, indeed, been driven from Court; and borne it, according to ability,” says Carlyle. “A Choiseul, in these very years, retired Parthian-like, with a smile or scowl, and drew half the Court-host with him. Our Wolsey, though once an
ego et rex meus
, could journey, it is said, without strait-waistcoat, to his monastery, and there, telling beads, look forward to a still longer journey. The melodious, too soft-strung Racine, when his King turned his back on him, emitted one meek wail, and submissively—died. But the case of Coadjutor de Rohan differed from all those. No loyalty was in him that he should die; no self-help, that he should live; no faith, that he should tell beads.” Rohan lived on, to put it in poetical terms, like a winter tree waiting for some fairy-tale spring.
For Rohan—and this really comes as a surprise—was ambitious. Rank and fortune were not enough. He yearned for power. This is particularly surprising because he was clearly not the sort of person for whom power is his natural element, who finds his greatest happiness in determining the fate of others. Had he been that sort of person he would have put his time in Vienna to far better use, and in his role as bishop he would have made his subordinates feel the weight of his authority. But there is no evidence that he did anything of the sort.
What then was the source of this burning ambition? We all live out our lives in terms of roles—or aspire to do so. At the simplest level, this role-play takes an elementary form: a womanmight smile and do her hair in the manner of her favourite actress, and even strive to assume her supposed mental attributes. A man will take on the persona of the distinguished physician, the self-sacrificing paterfamilias, the charming bohemian or some other traditional part. On a higher level, nobler and more complicated souls are tempted by the nobler and more complicated roles offered by history and literature—the Muse, the Martyr, the Poète Maudit, the Great Statesman (like Széchenyi) or Voice of the Revolution (like Peto˝fi). The phantom that hovered so teasingly over Rohan’s consciousness was the gloriously visible one of the all-powerful Cardinal—Wolsey, Richelieu, Mazarin and Fleury. But here the pampered
grand seigneur
, with his tendency to corpulence, was quite out of his depth. Richelieu was a gaunt ascetic, who out of his dreams forged himself a character of bone and steel. Working with his secretary Baron Planta—a Swiss Protestant, no less—he laboured away at his great plans to make his country a happier place, and only when his guests had finally gone to bed, as dawn approached and he had a few brief hours to himself, did he allow himself to dream of ‘taking power’.
To the ‘taking’ of such power, Rohan felt in his more optimistic moments, there was only one obstacle: the Queen’s anger. The King he probably considered a
quantité négligeable
, as he usually was. It was not the King’s favourite but the Queen’s who exercised power. For a child of the age of Pompadour and Du Barry the notion of a favourite carried essentially erotic implications. In France, the real ruler was the person who ruled the Queen’s heart. And why should that not be him, Rohan, the
Belle Eminence
, as his followers called him? Mazarin, with far less manly appeal and
grand-seigneurial
charm, had once ruled his queen, Anne of Austria, and through her, France.
But a person who falls under the spell of erotic dreams does not remain immune to their power for long. Rohan had dreamt for so many years that the Queen was in love with him that he ended up falling desperately in love with her himself. In thishe
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