The fays, seeing that their artifices were not succeeding, changed tactics. On the second day they saw in the distance an army that came in good order to form up for battle in a plain. Formosa thought that it was the Apicholes who had come to meet him. He fell upon them. The battle lasted nearly four hours without any sensible advantage.
Formosa, irritated by the stubborn resistance, made one last charge. Embarces seconded him; everything ceded to their efforts. The enemy broke up, the ranks were confused; there was no longer anything but horror and carnage; no one fled, no one wanted to yield, everyone was put to the sword.
The victorious soldiers shivered as they stripped the dead and only found women. And what women! Here the truth ceases to be plausible. The fays, not seeing Pacific return, who always hastened slowly, imagined that he had failed in his negotiations; drawn by a superior force that precipitated them to their ruination, they had made the insensate resolution to disguise themselves in order to oppose Formosa.
Such is the epic of their annihilation. Those who do not know it put them in works every day as existing beings; those who are better informed make vain attempts to resuscitate them, but only substitute abortions and ephemera.
Formosa forbade his historians to mention that expedition; he sensed that it interested his glory. Incredibly, he found the means of being obeyed; and in the secret memoirs that Alexander discovered in the temple of Jupiter Amon, that great event was still unknown.
The Apicholes, too confident of the situation of their country, did not defend the entry; they threw all their troops into fortified places and remained tranquil. Winter was approaching; they did not believe that Formosa would expose his troops to perishing in the impracticable marshes. They were mistaken; their cities were besieged and taken one after another. The last was defended for three months; the Greeks would have spent twenty years in it. It was that siege that Clair-obscur had mentioned to Virtue, where he came in search of his son.
He arrived too late. Formosa had departed by another road in order to go to the Palace of Eventualities. He could not help trembling in examining his works and saying to all the genii in the world that he would have failed in it himself.
For some time, Formosa had felt a secret languor mingled with anxiety, which he strove to hide. No matter what efforts he made, he changed so much that those close to him were alarmed.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he said one day to his dear Embarces. “My conquests no longer flatter me, my glory is a burden; I’m no longer the same. Raised in my childhood with a young princess named Funestine, whom I hated, and I thought I had forgotten, her image persecutes me, I’m burning with the desire to see her. In an involuntary movement is pushing me toward the Palace of Eventualities. What god disposes thus of our hearts? Don’t imagine that it can be Amour; monsters don’t inspire him.
“Let’s go,” he continued, “to where destiny calls us. Men cannot resist me; I cannot resist the gods. Let’s hasten to give the orders necessary to the tranquility of our kingdoms—I say our kingdoms because everything is common between friends. When everything is ready, let’s depart without saying anything.”
The journey was sad; Embarces’ joviality could not extract Formosa from his reverie. They arrived at the Palace of Eventualities almost like a lover and his mistress, one of whom is sulking.
The isle being inaccessible, it is easily imaginable, without my saying so, that Virtue had taken possession of them while they slept and introduced them to it by unknown routes.
“Would you believe,” Formosa said to his friend, “that my father has made all these marvels for a princess that you will not dare to look at? I don’t criticize his idea, but it seems to me that this small building would have sufficed to lodge her. Would you believe, too,” he added, “that he wants me to marry her?”
“You, Sire?” replied Embarces. “You were born to destroy monsters, not to live with them. What have you decided?”
“Never to consent to that marriage,” said Formosa.
“Why, then, do you want to see her?” responded Embarces. “And when you have seen her, what will you do?”
“I don’t know; let’s commence by seeing her, and we’ll decide afterwards,” Formosa continued.
“But what if there is no longer time, sire,” said Embarces. “I fear these involuntary impatiences; they’re a bad augury for an indifferent heart.”
“You’re mocking me,” said Formosa. “I merit it, but spare me.”
“I spare you!” I replied Embarces, laughing. “It’s for me. Sire, to make you that plea; perhaps I’ll need sparing myself. Who knows whether I might also find some Funestine, who will give me the desire to love her and please her?”
Formosa was too agitated to continue that conversation. He quit his friend in order to give his orders in the palace, of which he had put himself in possession by right of conquest or propriety; he regulated everything there with the sovereign air that accompanied him in his smallest actions. Surprised not to see Funestine, he asked for news of her.
“Sire,” said a man of the species who make a feast out of saying what they know and what they do not, “the princess occupied the crystal apartment, but she was so ugly and malevolent that Clair-obscur has put her in a prison in order to do penance there for the rest of her life.”
“She’s no longer on the island, then?”
“Pardon me, Sire, it’s in that little house that she’s imprisoned.”
“Can no one enter it?”
“No, Sire, the door is forbidden to all those who present themselves there, but I don’t believe that it can be refused to Your Majesty. Would you like me to go and ask?”
“No, I’ll go myself.”
Embarces laughed at Formosa’s questions and the courtier’s replies; the former never wearied of interrogating, nor the latter of replying.
Meanwhile, Virtue went to find Funestine; she informed her of the arrival of Formosa and told her to prepare to receive him.
“Your orders are sacred for me,” the princess said to her. “Far from resisting them, I would like to be able to anticipate them. My ugliness gives me no pain, I have no fear showing myself to Formosa, but gods, what an object is Funestine for him!”
“What!” said Virtue. “If he wanted to marry you as you are, would you refuse to consent to it?”
“Would you consent to it yourself, Goddess?” asked Funestine.
Without replying, Virtue went into Rêveuse’s apartment. “Princess,” she said to her, “the loss of a temporary beauty is afflicting you too much. You regard the privation of it as an effect of the wrath of the gods. Disabuse yourself; they destine you for an amiable prince whose happiness you will make, and who will make yours. Soon you will no longer envy the fate of Funestine.”
The princes were walking in the garden of the little house; they perceived in the distance two young women coming to meet them.
“Sire,” said Embarces to Formosa, indicating the more beautiful of the two to him, “there’s an unknown woman who seems to me able to relent your urgency for Funestine. The attention with which you’re looking at her makes me suspect that she will not be indifferent to you for long. Have you ever seen anything that resembles those eyes, those features and that grace? But I’m wrong to depict them for you; you’ve remarked them only too well. Your choice is made, I’m glad of it; it accords with my respect and my amour. The other pleases me; she’s less beautiful than her companion; so much the better, her beauty won’t remind me of that of Néodie, and I don’t want to love anyone who can retrace her image for me.”
The princesses advanced, and could not avoid them; they went past them. Formosa, the intrepid Formosa, remained tongue-tied, bowed to them, and dared not approach them. Funestine recognized him, and mistook his disturbance for a sign of scorn. She sighed; self-esteem, stronger than reflection, drew a few tears that filled her eyes.
Rêveuse did not see anything; she was occupied with the unknown man who had looked
at her in a manner with which she was content. She believed, and not mistakenly, that he was the prince of whom Virtue had spoken.
“What have I just seen?” said Formosa. “If I can believe the simplicity of her clothing, she’s only a servant of Funestine.”
“And the other?” replied Embarces. “For whom do you take her? She’s at least her maid of honor. It would be amusing if amusing if the master of the world only loved a freedwoman, and that his confidant had chosen better than him.
Formosa was not listening. “I’m doing her wrong,” he went on. “I ought to judge by her marvelous beauty, and even more by the impression she has made on my heart, that she was born to command the whole world, since she reigns over me. While he was speaking in that fashion, he was following Funestine with his eyes as she went back into her apartment.
Never has there been a less tranquil night than the one that followed. In order to develop the movements that those four persons experienced, it would be necessary to know all the mechanisms of the heart; it would require more, it would be necessary to have loved.
Formosa adores an unknown woman, but feels, in spite of himself, that his idea cannot drive away that of Funestine, whom he believes that he hates. What bizarrerie of sentiment!
For her part, Funestine is prejudiced in Formosa’s favor by the initial esteem that precedes amour; she cannot doubt that he is prejudiced by hatred for her. What a situation!
Rêveuse hopes, Embarces desires. They are not to be lamented; they are no longer interesting.
Formosa, followed by Embarces, went to Funestine’s house. The first object he encountered was, once again, his unknown woman.
“Madame,” he said to her, in an embarrassed manner, “I have come here to render a visit of propriety; I did not count on...”
“Sire,” the princess interrupted, “I sense what the effort you are making is costing you. Funestine is not a sufficiently agreeable object to merit it.”
“Oh, Madame,” said the prince, who feared what the slightest rumor might have announced to her, “believe...”
“Sire,” Funestine interrupted again, “this visit is as dolorous for her as it is for you, however different the reasons might me. Suffer...” She did not have the strength to finish. “O Virtue!” she cried, as she withdrew. “Is this the last proof to which you will put my heart?”
Formosa found himself alone, and did not know what to do.
Embarces, who had been talking to Rêveuse, came toward him. “Good news, Sire,” he said to him. “You have just been conversing with...”
“With whom?” he demanded, precipitately. “Speak, don’t let me languish.”
“Give me the time to speak,” Embarces said. “The person I love is Princess Rêveuse, Funestine’s sister, and Funestine is your unknown woman.”
“Prince,” replied Formosa, “I am in a state in which anyone other than you would not make fun of me with impunity.”
“Me, Sire?” said Embarces.
“Let’s leave it there,” Formosa went on, without giving his friend the time to disabuse him. “You’re violating the rights of friendship; don’t force me to violate them myself.” With that he quit him, and plunged into a wood in order to meditate at liberty.
Virtue, who wanted to conclude the adventure, had sent in quest of the King of Australia. His extreme old age did not permit him to undertake such a long voyage. Clair-obscur, the queen with whom he was reunited, Amour and Hymen had also been summoned.
Amour arrived first. “You can render Funestine sensible,” the goddess said to him. “I deliver her heart to you; you will not have the time to make great ravages therein; I am only confiding it to you in order to hand it over to your brother this evening.”
She showed herself to Formosa then. “Prince,” she said to him, “I am Virtue. While you were making your name celebrated, I was forming a wife worth of you; your eyes have already responded to her charms, Amour and Hymen will answer to you for her heart. That wife is Funestine. I astonish you; you cannot believe, given the idea that you have formed of her, that she is the same person of whom the sight has given birth in you to such a prompt and violent passion. She does not know herself what she is; I wanted to leave you the pleasure, in telling her that you love her, of informing her that she is beautiful. Receive this mirror; enable her to look at herself in it. It is just that you enjoy the fist transports of her surprise, her joy and her gratitude. Go, Prince, don’t delay your happiness any longer by the thanks of which I dispense you.”
Penetrated by amour, occupied by the most flattering ideas, he flew to Funestine’s house.
“Oh, Madame,” he said, approaching her, “pardon me if I mistook you for someone other than Funestine...”
“What, Sire!” she said, interrupting him. “Am I even more horrible today than I was yesterday?”
“Say rather,” added Formosa, “that you are a thousand times more charming, a thousand times more adorable.”
“Is it thus,” she said, “that the most generous of all men makes a cruel pleasure out of insulting an unfortunate princess? I know that I am ugly; I say it to anyone who wants to hear me; but Sire, I admit my weakness to you: I do not yet have enough virtue to hear you saying it to me. I ought to be less sensitive, or better able to hide my sensibility, but I am complaining to you now in order never to have to complain to you again.”
“This is too much,” said Formosa. “You have been left in ignorance too long of what you are. Take this and judge.”
Funestine looked at herself. “O gods!” she cried. “What do I see?”
The mirror escaped from her hand and shattered into smithereens.
“Prince,” she said, “mirrors are not fortunate with me; I break them out of chagrin or surprise. If it is true that I am such as I have just appeared to myself, it is the work of Virtue; she is the one you ought to thank; she wanted to render me less unworthy of you.”
“And she is the one,” said the prince, kissing her hands, “who is giving you to me.”
“Very good, my children, very good,” said Clair-obscur, coming in. “Embrace me. I doubt that you are as glad as I am; I knew, personally, that I would bring this marriage to a conclusion.” Addressing Formosa’s mother, he said: “Was I wrong, Madame to destine this princess for your son?”
Virtue arrived and said to them: “Prince, everything is ready to unite you. Embarces and Rêveuse are waiting for you in the temple. Live happily, all of you, and never forget me.”
When the ceremony was over, Virtue and Imagination took the road back to Thyas. Docility returned to her dear unfortunates.
I do not know whether those goddesses have rendered themselves invisible, but I have not read in any other story that they have since done for anyone else what they had done for Funestine.
Notes
1 It is pure speculation, but might Mayer not have accidentally transposed the numbers and actually meant to say that Madame de Lintot was 85 rather than 58 in 1786? Mayer gives her maiden name as Caillot, although some later citations substitute Cailleau, but that does not make the individual to whom he is referring any easier to identify using presently-available sources.
2 Accounts of the curious circumstances of the effective interdiction of the genre after a brief burst of fashionability can be found in several other Black Coat collections, most fully and most recently in the anthology The Queen of the Fays, ISBN 978-1-61227-814-8.
3 cf the Black Coat Press volume Florine and Boca by Françoise Le Marchand, ISBN 978-1-61227-810-0.
4 ISBN 978-1-61227-796-7.
5 cf the Black Coat Press collection The Impossible Enchantment by the Comte de Caylus, ISBN 978-1-61227-809-4.
6 cf the introduction to the aforementioned anthology The Queen of the Fays.
7 tr. as The Tyranny of the Fays Abolished, Black Coat Press, ISBN 978-1-61227-792-9.
8 The name of this character is subsequently rendered in the original as Secourable [Helpful], and on grounds of frequency it is p
erhaps the present term that ought to have been altered, but Favorable has a better ring to it.
9 The original text has chat [cat] rather than char [chariot], but it is presumably a misprint, as subsequent reference is made to the char on which the newcomer had arrived. Any reader who prefers to interpret both references as feline is at liberty to make the imaginative substitution.
10 Dévideur is French for “[textile] winder.”
11 Author’s note: “De l’usage des romans.” [i.e., De l’usage des romans, où l’on fait voir leur utilité et leur differens caractères, avec une bibliothèque des romans by Nicolas Lenglet Du Fresnoy, as detailed in the introduction.]
12 This is the first of numerous references in the text to Le Philosophe anglais, ou Histoire de Monsieur Cleveland, fils naturel de Cromwell, by Antoine-François Prévost, whose first four volumes were published in 1731. Bougéant could not know in 1735 that Prévost would eventually add a further three in 1738-9, although he would have been aware of an apocryphal fifth volume, by an unknown hand, published in 1734, which contains attacks on the Jesuits—which, as a Jesuit himself, Bougéant would naturally have resented, and might have assumed, erroneously, to be Prévost’s work.
13 Author’s note: “Cyrano de Bergerac.” As a Jesuit, Bougéant might well have disapproved of Cyrano’s ardent championship in L’Autre monde of the Copernican model of the solar system, rather than the Aristotelian one favored by the Church. There are some things to which one ought not to lend faith, even momentarily, if one is devout.
14 By far the most prolific composer of operas with this initial in the early 1730s was Georg Friedrich Handel.
15 Author’s note: “Roman de l’Astrée.” [i.e. Honoré d’Urfé’s classic pastoral prose epic L’Astrée (1607-27; tr. as Astraea), set on the banks of the River Lignon.]
16 Author’s note: “Cleveland.”
17 Author’s note: “Virgil, Aeneid, Book III.”
18 The references are to the central characters of Artamène, ou le grand Cyrus (1649-53), by Mademoiselle de Scudéry, the great best-seller of its era, and Cléopâtre (1648; abridged version 1667) by Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède, the author of numerous tragedies and tragicomedies.
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