CHAPTER II

INFLUENCE OF WOMEN

In imposing upon woman the severe and tender duties of motherhood Providence has entitled her to the protection and respect of man. Made subject by Nature itself to the consequence of affections which are her life, she leads her masters by the chains which love provides, and the more fully that she is in conformity with the laws which constitute and also defend her honour the greater is her sway, and the deeper that respect which belongs to her in the sanctuary of the family. To revolt is for her to abdicate, and to tempt her by a pretended emancipation is to recommend her divorce by condemning her beforehand to sterility and disdain. Christianity alone has the power to emancipate woman by calling her to virginity and the glory of sacrifice. Numa foresaw this mystery when he instituted the vestals; but the Druids forestalled Christianity by giving ear to the inspirations of virgins and paying almost divine honours to the priestesses of the island of Sayne.

In Gaul women did not prevail by their coquetry and their vices, but they ruled by their counsels; apart from their concurrence, neither peace nor war were made; the interests of the hearth and family were thus pleaded by mothers and the national pride shone in the light of justice when it was tempered by the maternal love of country.

Chateaubriand calumniated Velleda by representing her as yielding to the love of Eudorus; she lived and died a virgin. When the Romans invaded Gaul, she was already advanced in years and was a species of _Pythia_ who prophesied amidst great solemnities and whose oracles were preserved with veneration. She was clothed in a long black vestment, having no sleeves; her head was covered by a white veil, which came down to her feet; she wore a vervain crown, and a sickle was placed in her girdle; her sceptre was in the form of a distaff; her right foot was shod with a sandal and her left foot wore a kind of _chaussure à poulaine_. At a later period the statues of Velleda were taken for those of Berthe _au grand pied_. The High Priestess bore, as a fact, the insignia of the protecting divinity of the female Druids; she was Hertha, or Wertha, the youthful Gaulish Isis, the Queen of Heaven, the virgin who must bring forth a child. She was depicted with one foot on the earth and the other on the water, because she was queen of initiation and presided over universal science. The foot set upon the water was usually supported by a ship, analogous to the bark or conch of the ancient Isis. She held the distaff of the Fates wound about with a thread, part black, part white, because she presided over all forms and symbols, and it was she who wove the vestment of ideas. She was also given the allegorical form of the syrens, half woman and half fish, or the torso of a beautiful girl whose legs were serpents, signifying the flux of things and the analogical alliance of opposites in the manifestation of all occult forces of Nature. Under this last form Hertha took the name of Melusine or Melosina, the musician, the singer, that is to say, the syren who reveals harmonies. Such is the origin of the legends concerning Queen Bertha and the fairy Melusine. The latter came, it is said, in the eleventh century to a lord of Lusignan; she was loved by him, and their espousals took place on the condition that he did not seek to penetrate certain mysteries of her existence. That promise was given, but jealousy begot curiosity and led to perjury. He spied upon Melusine and surprised her in one of her metamorphoses, for once every week the fairy resumed her serpent legs. He uttered a cry which was answered by one far more despairing and terrible. Melusine disappeared but still returns, making lamentation whenever a member of the house of Lusignan is at the point of death.[157] The legend is imitated from the fable of Psyche and refers, like this, to the dangers of sacrilegious initiations, or profanation of the mysteries of religion and of love; it is borrowed from the traditions of the ancient bards and derives evidently from the learned school of the Druids. The eleventh century took possession of it and brought it into prominence, but it existed from the far past.[158]

In France it would seem that inspiration was attributed more especially to women; elves and fairies preceded saints, and the French saints have almost invariably something of the fairy character in their legend. St. Clothilde made us Christians and St. Geneviève kept us French, repelling—by the force of her virtue and her faith—the threatening invasion of Attila. Joan of Arc is, however, rather of the fairy family than the hierarchy of holy women; she died like Hypatia, the victim of marvellous natural gifts and the martyr of her generous character. We shall speak of her later on. St. Clothilde still performs miracles along the countryside. At Andelys we have seen a crowd of pilgrims thronging about a _piscina_ in which the statue of the saint is immersed annually, and according to popular belief the first diseased person who goes down into the water subsequently is cured at once. Clothilde was a woman of action and a great queen, but she went through many sorrows. Her elder son died after his baptism, and the fatality was ascribed to witchcraft; the second fell ill and reached the point of death. The fortitude of the saint did not yield, and Sicambre when standing one day in need of more than human courage, remembered the God of Clothilde. She became a widow after converting and practically founding a great kingdom, and she saw the two children of Clodomir butchered practically under her eyes. In such sorrows do queens on earth resemble the Queen of Heaven.[159]

After the great and brilliant figure of Clothilde, history presents us with a hideous offset in the baleful personality of Fredegonde, the woman whose glance was witchcraft, the sorceress who slew princes. She accused her rivals of Magic and condemned them to tortures which she alone merited. Chilperic had one remaining son by his first wife; this young prince, who was named Clovis, was attached to a daughter of the people whose mother passed for a sorceress. Mother and daughter were both accused of disturbing the reason of Clovis by means of philtres and with murdering the two children of Fredegonde by magical spells. The unhappy women were arrested; the daughter, Klodswinthe, was beaten with rods, her beautiful hair cut off, and this was hung by Fredegonde on the door of the prince’s chamber. Subsequently Klodswinthe was brought up for sentence. Her firm and simple answers astonished the judges, and the chronicle says that it was proposed to submit her to the test of boiling water. A consecrated ring was placed in a tub set over a great fire and the accused, clothed in white, after having confessed and communicated, had to plunge her arm in the tub, in search of the ring. Her unchanged features made everyone cry out that a miracle had taken place, but there was another cry, which was one of reprobation and horror, when the unhappy child drew forth her arm frightfully burnt. She then asked permission to speak and said to her judges and the people: “You demanded a miracle from God to establish my innocence. God is not to be tempted, and He does not suspend the laws of Nature in response to the caprice of men; but He gives strength to those who believe in Him, and for me has performed a greater wonder than that which He refused to you. This water has burned me, yet have I plunged my whole arm into it and have brought forth the ring. I have neither cried, whitened, nor quivered under this horrible torture. Had I been a magician, as you say, I should have resorted to witchcraft so that I might not be burnt; but I am a Christian and God has given me grace to prove it by the constancy of martyrs.” Such logic was not of the kind that they understood at that barbarous epoch; Klodswinthe was sent back to prison, there to await execution; but God took pity upon her, and the chronicle from which the account is drawn says that He called her to Himself. If it be a legend only, it must be allowed that it is beautiful and deserves to be kept in memory.

Fredegonde lost one of her victims but not the other two. The mother was put to the torture and, overcome by her sufferings, she confessed whatever was required, including the guilt of her daughter and the complicity of Clovis. Armed with these admissions, Fredegonde obtained the surrender of his son by the ferocious Chilperic. The young prince was arrested and stabbed in prison, Fredegonde declaring that he had escaped from remorse by suicide. The corpse of the unhappy Clovis was shewn to his father, with the dagger still in the wound. Chilperic looked on coldly; he was entirely under the rule of Fredegonde, who dishonoured him with effrontery among the officers of the palace, taking so little pains at concealment that the evidence was before his eyes, almost despite himself. Instead of slaying the queen and her accomplice, he departed on a hunt in silence. He might have concluded to suffer the outrage, through his fear of displeasing Fredegonde, but the latter was ashamed on his account, and did him the honour of believing in his wrath, that she might have a pretext for his assassination. He had glutted her with crimes and meanness: she killed him out of disgust.

Fredegonde, who destroyed on the pretext of sorcery the women whose sole guilt was to have displeased her, experimented herself in Black Magic and protected some of those whom she thought were skilled therein. Ageric, bishop of Verdun, had a pythoness arrested who made a great deal of money by recovering stolen objects and identifying the thieves; she was probably a somnambulist. The woman was examined, but the demon refused to go out of her as long as she was chained; if the pythoness were left in a church, unguarded and unwatched, he agreed to leave her. They fell into the trap; it was the woman herself who went out, to take refuge with Fredegonde, who hid her in the palace and ended by saving her from being further exorcised, as also probably from the stake. On this occasion therefore she did good without meaning it, yet it was rather through her pleasure in evil.[160]

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