The Queen's Courier
The Queen's Courier is a novel that Gertrud von le Fort published in Munich in 1927 under the pseudonym Petrea Vallerin.
As the queen's loyal follower , the first-person narrator - that's the young gentleman Monsieur de Saint Maure - fights fearlessly, cunningly and finally successfully against evil.
time and place
The action takes place in Paris and Tours from late summer 1637 to spring 1638 . In France, Louis XIII rules . His wife, the Spaniard Anna of Austria from the House of Habsburg , has become enemies with Cardinal Richelieu because he is fighting against Spain.
action
Richelieu has expelled all of the Queen's former Spanish court ladies from France - except for one: the former Donna Maria de Mendoza, now Marquise de Glacy, could not be expelled as the wife of Marshal de Glacy. After the marshal fell, Richelieu made use of Monsieur de Barry - the marshal's younger brother - to take action against the young widow who lived in a castle on the Loire near Tours. The Queen asks her “little viscount ”, as she calls the first-person narrator, who accompanied her to mass every morning in the small monastery church of Val de Grace , to protect her friend Maria. Anna von Österreich tells her confidante that she is expecting her first child. The Marquise de Glacy was probably also in good hope. During the audience with the Queen, the Duchess of Chevreuse Madame de Montbazon , an opponent of the Cardinal, is in the Louvre . The young Dutch painter de Rosa portrays the Queen. De Rosa provided the viscount with false passports for the trip to Tours. Monsieur de Saint Maure could travel as the officer Ulrich Füßli from Switzerland, as a pilot from Brussels or as Monsieur Janvier, a doctor of medicine from Paris. During the journey, the viscount assumes the doctor's identity. But on the way - near Conzière - the traveler is recognized by the Duchess of Chevreuse. The Duchess was exiled to Conzière, but still occasionally goes to Paris. After the conversation with the Duchess, the Viscount knows exactly what dangerous mission he was entrusted with by the Queen: If the Marquise gives birth to a son, Monsieur de Barry loses his right to all the possessions of the fallen brother.
Arriving in the village of Glacy, right next to the castle of the Marquise de Glacy, the little Viscount immediately begins his research. The friends of the pregnant lady of the castle are the village priest Mr Curé and Miss Jacqueline, who is sick in the castle. The latter believes that Monsieur de Barry is trying to kill the mother-to-be. Such an opinion turns out to be life-threatening in that Loire castle. Jacqueline is poisoned. De Barry doesn't get his fingers dirty, he uses two creatures. They are an old herbalist - La Chère and the pretty young maid Demoiselle Ninon. A poison attack on the village pastor fails. Mr. Curé sends the viscount to Tours. Monsieur de Saint Maure is supposed to report the two poisoners. But the Viscount puts Ninon in the picture and lets it be seen that he is not traveling because he "madly love Ninon". It looks as if Ninon believes hypocrisy, because she brings her mistress, the pregnant Marquise de Glacy, at the behest of the hypocrite safe with the Ursulines in Tours in front of de Barry. She was arrested there in the episcopal city and later executed in Paris. The little viscount had ridden to Tours and reported the “mistress”. La Chère is vegetating, hidden in the castle, there, confesses and perishes in the walls. The ancestor is born and apparently remains alive. De Barry - appointed as his agent during the Marshal's lifetime - leaves the dust.
The author offers something like a happy ending. In the spring of 1638, the Viscount met his queen again in the Val de Grace monastery church. The pregnant woman gives him closer acquaintance with the young widow Marquise de Glacy. The marquise visits the viscount with her small child.
shape
The narrator is in a bind in both Glacy and Tours. On the one hand, he understandably wants to protect himself from a wide variety of threats and, on the other hand, he must not reveal the name of his client, the queen. The narrative focus of the novel is not even addressed above under “plot”. Mr Curé postulates that there is something good in every bad person - even in a poisoner. From this perspective, the narrator analyzes his dubious love for the demoiselle Ninon in detail and introspectively. The viscount always buries his hopes for love, but cannot put the subject aside. From a narrative point of view, this seems understandable when it comes to Monsieur de Saint Maure's fatal “love lie”.
The intricate story is interspersed with side stories. For example, Ninon turns out to be the Miss of Chalet. Ninon is hereditary. The mother had been executed for poisoning. The side stories actually all belong in the aforementioned psycho-panorama, which the little Viscount presents to the reader: For example, the story of the young, poor mother Marguerite. Ninon and La Chère want to swap their newborn daughter with the family owner of Glacy Castle .
The viscount tells of the past. Occasionally he looks ahead with oracle.
The text is well constructed for all its intricacies. Threads of action that were initially laid are always dropped, but at least taken up again at the end. A good example of this is the side story by the painter de Rosa. At the beginning he portrays the queen, in the middle of the novel the archbishop of Tours (a plotter that has been left out in this little sketch) and at the end he helps ensure that the happy ending could follow. Sometimes Gertrud von le Fort - probably involuntarily - provides something like comedy. Here are two examples. The first-person narrator hides behind a column so that he can tell the reader malice (des de Barry). Or the painter de Rosa appears in the last quarter of the novel as the commissioner of Cardinal Richelieu. The wind has turned. Richelieu pardons and uses, apparently only for a while, some figures from his opposition.
De Barry cannot be counted among the characters involved. If, for example, the little viscount is knocked down by highwaymen and his three false passports have fallen into de Barry's hands, the nobleman can only be suspected of being the mastermind behind the nightly attack.
reception
Meyerhofer classifies the "historical detective novel" as early bread-and-butter work - written by the author at the same time.
literature
- source
- Petrea Vallerin: The Queen's Courier. Novel . Franz Ehrenwirth, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-431-01829-7
- First edition
- Petrea Vellerin: The Queen's Courier. Novel. With drawings by Rudolf Wirth. Verlag Josef Kösel & Friedrich Pustet, Munich 1927. 201 pages
- Secondary literature
- Nicholas J. Meyerhofer: Gertrud von le Fort . Morgenbuch Verlag Berlin 1993. Heads of the 20th Century, Volume 119. 107 pages, ISBN 3-371-00376-0
Remarks
- ↑ For more than twenty years the war has raged in Germany (edition used, p. 174, 2. Zvo). Anna von Austria's first son, the Dauphin - who later became Louis XIV - was born in the late summer of 1638.
- ↑ There is a river of the same name there .
- ↑ The invisible threads of the net, which are being pulled in the background by some of the great politicians, are more finely meshed than outlined in the article. For example, to the carefree reader it seems a miracle how in the end everything turns out well for the little Viscount. In reality, however, his patrons, such as the Duchess of Chevreuse and the Archbishop of Tours, were active behind the scenes (edition used, p. 128, 9th Zvu, p. 159, 16th Zvu). In this context, the author highlights the protagonist as the plaything of the mighty. When the Viscount finally - tormented by remorse for his betrayal of love - wants to save the poisoner's life, he does not achieve this despite zealous efforts. The moral of the story: A little viscount stands helplessly in front of the rulers (Edition used, p. 169, 17th Zvu).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Edition used, p. 65, 9. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 51, 20. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 86, 16. Zvo; P. 59, 17. Zvo; P. 66, 17th Zvu; P. 66, 11th Zvu; P. 68, 2. Zvu - p. 69, 4. Zvo; P. 155, 14th Zvu; P. 158, 5th Zvu; S. 159, 17. Zvu and S. 159, 3. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 87, 3. Zvo
- ↑ see for example the edition used, p. 104, 14. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 53, 11. Zvu
- ↑ French Bertrand d'Eschaud
- ↑ Edition used, p. 72, 7th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 90, 17th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 129, 9. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 96
- ↑ Meyerhofer, p. 43, middle