This story was written by Madame de Lafayette and published anonymouslyin 1662. It is set in a period almost 100 years previously during thesanguinary wars of the counter-reformation, when the Catholic rulers ofEurope, with the encouragement of the Papacy, were bent on extirpatingthe followers of the creeds of Luther and Calvin. I am not qualified toembark on a historical analysis, and shall do no more than say thatmany of the persons who are involved in the tale actually existed, andthe events referred to actually took place. The weak and vicious Kingand his malign and unscrupulous mother are real enough, as is a Duc deMontpensier, a Prince of the Blood, who achieved some notoriety for thecruelty with which he treated any Huguenots who fell into his hands,and for the leadership he gave to the assassins during the atrociousmassacre of St. Bartholomew's day.
He was married and had progeny, but the woman to whom he was marriedwas not the heroine of this romance, who is a fictional character, asis the Comte de Chabannes.
The Duc de Guise of the period whose father had been killed fightingagainst the Protestants, did marry the Princess de Portein, but thiswas for political reasons and not to satisfy the wishes of a Princessde Montpensier.
It will be noticed, I think, that women were traded in marriage withlittle or no regard to their personal emotions, and no doubt, as hasbeen remarked by others, marriages without love encouraged love outsidemarriage. Whatever the reality, the literary conventions of the timeseem to have dictated that we should be treated only to ardent glances,fervent declarations, swoonings and courtly gestures; we are not ledeven to the bedroom door, let alone the amorous couch. I wonder,however, if the reader might not think that this little tale writtenmore than three hundred years ago contains the elements of many of theromantic novels and soap operas which have followed it.
At one level it is a cautionary tale about the consequences of maritalinfidelity; at another it is a story of a woman betrayed, treated as apretty bauble for the gratification of men, and cast aside when she hasserved her purpose, or a butterfly trapped in a net woven by uncaringfate. Her end is rather too contrived for modern taste, but, eventoday, characters who are about to be written out of the plot in soapoperas are sometimes smitten by mysterious and fatal disorders of thebrain.
The unfortunate Comte de Chabannes is the archetypical "decent chap,"the faithful but rejected swain who sacrifices himself for the welfareof his beloved without expectation of reward. In the hands of anotherwriter, with some modification, he could have provided a happy endingin the "Mills and Boon" tradition.
This translation is not a schoolroom exercise, for although I have notaltered the story, I have altered the exact way in which it is told inthe original, with the aim of making it more acceptable to the modernreader. All translation must involve paraphrase, for what sounds wellin one language may sound ridiculous if translated literally intoanother, and it is for the translator to decide how far this processmay be carried. Whether I have succeeded in my task, only the readercan say.