Leigh Hunt’s London Journal/Volume 2/26 September 1835/Romance of Real Life

by François Richer

ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE.

NO. LXXXVIII.—STORY OF RENEE CORBEAU.

(Translated from the French by Charlotte Smith.)

A young man, a native of Séez in Normandy, of noble parents, studied the law at Angers. He there saw Renée Corbeau, the daughter of a tradesman of the town, and under a promise of marriage seduced her. Her situation was soon such as made it necessray to acquaint her parents with her engagement; who sought for means to oblige her lover to perform those promises which had induced Renée to listen to him.

Doubting that he would, if possible, evade them, the parents thought it might be necessary to employ artifice. They, therefore, pretended to take a journey; and as soon as they believed the lovers were together, returned suddenly upon them, and, reproaching the young man with having seduced their daughter, insisted instantly on his making the only reparation in his power by signing a contract of marriage, with which a notary was prepared, who was ready in the house. The young man signed the deed; but feeling himself unworthily treated, in being thus surprised into an engagement which he had never refused to perform, he went immediately to his father, to whom he related all that had happened. The father, yet more enraged than the son, persuaded him to take priest’s orders, as the only way to avoid completing a marriage so dishonourable, and so contrary to his interest; and this advice he hastily embraced. The unfortunate girl, thus abandoned by her faithless lover, commenced, together with her parents, a suit against him for seduction. He was in consequence arrested, and the affair was brought before the parliament at Paris.

The sentence, after long pleading on both sides, was that the young man should either marry Renée Corbeau or be beheaded: as his being a priest made the former impossible, he was to suffer death.

He was delivered to the executioner; the fatal moment was at hand, and the priest attended to perform the last duties—when Renée Corbeau flew to the place where his judges were yet sitting, and, making her way through the crowd, besought permission to speak, and a moment’s suspension of the dreadful punishment about to be inflicted on her lover.

The judges, struck with her beauty and distress, consented to hear her—and with the simple and affecting eloquence of nature, she pleaded for his life. She represented, that they undoubtedly thought her more unhappy than guilty, since they punished with death him who was supposed to have betrayed her; but that such a sentence, far from repairing her misfortune, would render it irreparable, by taking from her the only person who could restore her honour; and, instead of doing her justice, would condemn her to tears and remorse for the rest of her life; and would leave her to endless regret, when she reflected, that her fatal love had been the occasion of his death, for whom only she wished to live.

She besought those among her judges, who had ever been sensible of the force of love, to put themselves for a moment in her situation, and to reflect what they would themselves suffer, where they to be deprived of the object of their affection, by a cruel death, and to know themselves the occasion of it;—“For it is,” said she, “I who have armed the iron hand of law against him—’tis I who am his executioner—and ’tis I who, infinitely more unhappy than he is, am condemned to exist under infamy, and to carry with me to the grave the dreadful reflection of having murdered him by the excess of my attachment.”

Though the holy orders into which he had entered prevented his marrying her, she represented that they had been compulsive, and made only through fear of a violent and imperious father: but that a dispensation might be obtained to dissolve them. She, therefore, implored the judges to suspend the execution of the sentence for a time, that her lover might take measures to annul his religious vows, and become her husband.

The court, affected by her tears and despair, were induced to grant a respite for six months; and as a legate from the Pope was expected in France, she flattered herself she would obtain from him permission for her lover to renounce the ecclesiastical habit and marry her.

But the Cardinal de Medicis, who was the legate that soon after arrived, was so irritated against the young man, for having sacrilegiously embraced holy orders, only to evade an engagement which his honour and his conscience, as well as every human law, urged him to fulfil, that he absolutely refused to grant the dispensation; and the unhappy Renée Corbeau was again driven to despair. Henry the Fourth, that excellent monarch, was then on the throne; his ears were ever open to the complaints of his subjects; and when youth and beauty pleaded, there was little doubt of redress from his compassion, though his justice was silent. Renée Corbeau threw herself at the King’s feet, and the king, interested by her figure and situation, very soon suffered himself to be prevailed upon. He ordered that a dispensation might be granted; it was immediately expedited, and the lover, thus snatched from impending destruction, was married to his mistress. They lived together many years in the most perfect union; the husband always remembering, with the tenderest gratitude, that he owed his life, and the honour of his family, to the affection and attachment of his wife.