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Title: The court of Louis XV
Author: Imbert de Saint-Amand
Translator: Elizabeth Gilbert Martin
Release date: March 18, 2024 [eBook #73192]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893
Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COURT OF LOUIS XV ***
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT.
From the French of Imbert de Saint-Amand.
_Each with Portrait, 12mo, $1.25._
_THREE VOLUMES ON MARIE ANTOINETTE._
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE END OF THE OLD RÉGIME.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AT THE TUILERIES.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY.
_THREE VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE._
CITIZENESS BONAPARTE.
THE WIFE OF THE FIRST CONSUL.
THE COURT OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.
_FOUR VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE._
THE HAPPY DAYS OF MARIE LOUISE.
MARIE LOUISE AND THE DECADENCE OF THE EMPIRE.
MARIE LOUISE AND THE INVASION OF 1814.
MARIE LOUISE, THE RETURN FROM ELBA, AND THE HUNDRED DAYS.
_TWO VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME._
THE YOUTH OF THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME.
THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME AND THE TWO RESTORATIONS.
_THREE VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF BERRY._
THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF LOUIS XVIII.
THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF CHARLES X.
THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE REVOLUTION OF JULY, 1830.
_Four New Volumes._
_WOMEN OF THE VALOIS AND VERSAILLES COURTS._
WOMEN OF THE VALOIS COURT.
WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV.
WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV. Vol. I.
WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV. Vol. II.
[Illustration: MARIE LECZINSKA.]
_WOMEN OF VERSAILLES_
THE
COURT OF LOUIS XV.
BY
IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND
_TRANSLATED BY_
ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN
_WITH PORTRAITS_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1893
COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
FIRST PART
[1715–1744]
CHAPTER
I. THE INFANTA MARIE ANNE VICTOIRE, BETROTHED OF LOUIS XV 13
II. THE MARRIAGE OF MARIE LECZINSKA 23
III. THE DISGRACE OF THE MARQUISE DE PRIE 31
IV. THE KING FAITHFUL TO THE QUEEN 39
V. THE FAVOR OF THE COUNTESS DE MAILLY 46
VI. THE COUNTESS DE VINTIMILLE 53
VII. THE DISGRACE OF THE COUNTESS DE MAILLY 59
VIII. THE REIGN OF THE DUCHESS DE CHÂTEAUROUX 68
IX. THE JOURNEY TO METZ 75
X. THE DEATH OF THE DUCHESS DE CHÂTEAUROUX 84
SECOND PART
[1745–1768]
I. LOUIS XV. AND THE ROYAL FAMILY IN 1745 97
II. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR 116
III. THE NEW MARQUISE 125
IV. MADAME DE POMPADOUR’S THEATRE 133
V. THE GRANDEURS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR 147
VI. THE GRIEFS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR 156
VII. MADAME DE POMPADOUR, LADY OF THE QUEEN’S PALACE 168
VIII. MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE ATTEMPT OF DAMIENS 180
IX. MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND DOMESTIC POLITICS 193
X. MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR 201
XI. MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE PHILOSOPHERS 214
XII. THE DEATH OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR 225
XIII. THE OLD AGE OF MARIE LECZINSKA 233
XIV. MARIE LECZINSKA AND HER DAUGHTERS 245
XV. THE DAUPHINESS MARIE JOSÈPHE OF SAXONY 258
XVI. THE DEATH OF MARIE LECZINSKA 269
THE COURT OF LOUIS XV.
_INTRODUCTION_
If you want romance, said M. Guizot one day, why not turn to history?
The great author was right. The historical novel is out of fashion at
present. People are tired of seeing celebrated people misrepresented,
and they agree with Boileau that
“Nothing is so beautiful as the true, the true alone is lovely.”
Are there, in fact, any inventions more striking than reality? Can
any novelist, however ingenious, find more varied combinations or
more interesting scenes than the dramas of history? Could the most
fertile mind imagine any types so curious as, for example, the women
of the court of Louis XV.? The eternal womanly, as Goethe said, is
all there with its vices and virtues, its pettiness and its grandeur,
its weakness and its strength, its egotism and its devotion. What an
instructive gallery! What diverse figures, from such a saint as Madame
Louise of France, the Carmelite, to Madame Dubarry, the courtesan! In
the Countess de Mailly, we have the modest favorite; in the Duchess
de Châteauroux, the haughty favorite; in the Marquise de Pompadour,
the intriguer, the female minister, the statesman; in Queen Marie
Leczinska, the model of conjugal duty and fidelity; in the Dauphiness
Marie Antoinette, the resplendent image of grace and youth, of poesy
and purity; in the six daughters of the King, Madame the Infanta, so
tender toward her father; Madame Henriette, her twin sister, who died
of chagrin at twenty-four because she could not marry according to
her inclination; Madame Adelaide and Madame Victoire, inseparable in
adversity as well as in happier days; Madame Sophie, gentle and timid;
Madame Louise, Amazon and Carmelite by turns, who cried in the delirium
of her last agony: “To Paradise, quick, quick, to Paradise at full
gallop!”
History is the resurrection of the dead, but this resurrection is not
an easy matter. To withdraw one’s self from the present in order to
live in the past, to display characters, to make audible the words of
all these personages who are sleeping their last sleep, to rekindle
so many extinct flames, evoke so many vanished shades, is a work that
would need the wand of a magician. History interests and impassions
only when it penetrates the secret of souls. To make it a painting, in
animated tones and warm colors, and not an insignificant monochrome, it
is necessary that men and things should reappear as in a mirror that
reflects the past.
The preservation of the palace where they passed their existence
facilitates the renascence of the women of the court of Louis XV. It
is something to be able to say: Here such an event was accomplished,
such a remark uttered. Here such a personage rendered her last sigh.
The sight of the rooms where so many dramas were unfolded is in
itself a fruitful lesson. The theatre remains; the decorations are
hardly changed. But this is not all. The dust must be shaken from the
costumes; the actors and actresses must be hunted up; the play must
begin anew.
There is no lack of materials for this work of reconstruction; they
are even rather too abundant: memoirs by Duclos, Marais, Barbier,
the Duke de Luynes, Maurepas, Villars, the Marquis d’Argenson,
President Hénault, Madame du Hausset, Count de Ségur, Weber,
Madame Campan;--histories by Voltaire, M. Henri Martin, Michelet,
Jobez;--works by the brothers Goncourt, Sainte-Beuve, M. de Lescure,
the Countess d’Armaillé, Boutaric, Honoré Bonhomme, Campardon,
Capefigue, Le Roi, Barthélemy;--collections by M. Feuillet de Conches
and M. d’Arneth;--the secret correspondence of Louis XV. with his
secret diplomatic corps, that of Count Mercy-Argenteau with the Empress
Maria Theresa, new editions of ancient books, autographs, recent
publications--one is embarrassed by such a mass of riches. Not days,
but months and years, are needed to become well acquainted with all
these treasures. But life is so short and so preoccupied with affairs
that the public, with few exceptions, has neither time nor inclination
to study so many volumes. Is it not a critic’s business to spare his
readers minute researches, to guide them through the labyrinth, to
condense long works, to bring out saliently the most characteristic
passages; in a word, to facilitate study and popularize history while
scrupulously respecting truth? This is what we shall try to do for
Louis XV. and the women of his court.
This much-decried monarch is one of those wavering, inconsequent,
bizarre types of whom so many are found in our world of contradictions
and miseries. Alas! who has not something of Louis XV. in his
own soul? To see the good and do the evil; to believe and not to
practise; to vainly seek a remedy for ennui in sensual pleasure; to
act against conscience and know self-condemnation, but not amendment;
to be dissatisfied with one’s actions and lack strength for true
repentance,--is not this the common lot? How many honest citizens are
mere repetitions of Louis XV., lacking his crown! They show respect for
their wives and affection for their children. They blame free thinkers
severely. They speak respectfully of religion. And at the same time
they do not observe the maxims of morality which they preach; they
keep mistresses, they are guilty of shameful debaucheries. Their life
is a series of incongruities; they know neither what they are nor what
they desire. Such was Louis XV. His religion was not hypocrisy. His
attempts at conversion came to nothing, but they issued from the depths
of his troubled conscience. He remained in the mire, but he dreamed of
the light. Let us not be pitiless then. Is it graceful in demagogues to
display such severity toward kings? Is there more morality under the
red liberty caps than above the red-heeled slippers? Louis XV. was not
a faithful husband, but he had a great veneration for his wife and a
profound affection for his children. In spite of unpardonable scandals
he was not so odious a character as he has been painted. Weakness is
the word that best characterizes him, not malignity.
Take his favorites from the sovereign, and he might be not simply a
worthy man, but a great king. He is intelligent and kindly. His people
adore him. Fortune has crowned him. Voltaire goes into ecstasies over
the glories of this reign, which the advocate Barbier declares to be
the finest epoch in the entire history of France. What compromises,
what ruins all this? The great enemy, voluptuousness.
Oh! how swift, how slippery, is the descent into vice! How one fault
entails another! During several years (1725–1733) Louis XV. is a model
husband. Then he mysteriously commits a first infidelity; afterwards
he stops at nothing. He is timid at first; he hides himself, but by
degrees he becomes bolder. He declares himself at first with the
Countess de Mailly; afterwards with her sister, the Countess de
Vintimille; however, he still maintains some restraint. Louis XV.
is stingy with the State funds; his old preceptor, Cardinal Fleury,
retains some influence over him. But Fleury dies (1743); the King
has a mentor no longer; he emancipates himself; the scandal gains
strength and is triumphant in the person of a third sister, the Duchess
of Châteauroux. Heaven, nevertheless, sends the monarch some severe
lessons; Madame de Vintimille had died in childbirth (1741); the King
himself came near dying at Metz; the Duchess of Châteauroux dies of
chagrin and other emotions at the close of 1744. People think Louis XV.
is about to change his ways. ’Tis an error: here comes the minister in
petticoats, the Marquise de Pompadour, a queen of the left hand. She,
to use Voltaire’s expression, is a sort of grisette made for the opera
or the seraglio, who tries to amuse this bored monarch by diversions
still more preposterous than his dulness. She dies at the task, and
Louis XV. has not even a tear for her. As Rochefoucauld has said: “If a
man thinks he loves his mistress for love of her, he is much mistaken.”
Louis XV. is growing old. The Queen dies in 1768. He regrets her, and
people fancy that at last he is going to follow the wise advice of his
surgeon, and not merely rein his horses up, but take them out of the
traces. They are reckoning without the woman who is about to bring
the slang of Billingsgate to Versailles. After great ladies the great
citizeness; after her the woman of the people; the De Nesle sisters
are followed by Madame de Pompadour; Madame de Pompadour by Dubarry;
Dubarry, the “portiere of the Revolution.”
One thing strikes me in this series of royal mistresses; I see
debauchery everywhere, but nowhere love. Love with its refinements,
its disinterestedness, its spirit of sacrifice, its mysticism, its
poetry--where is it? I perceive not even the least shadow of it. Ah!
how right was Rochefoucauld in saying: “It is the same thing with true
love as with the apparition of ghosts; everybody talks about, but very
few have seen it.” Voluptuousness, on the other hand, is shameless
in its cynicism, and when I contemplate this wretched King whom it
degrades and corrupts and weakens, who is wearied and complains and
is sad unto death, I recall a page from one of the most eloquent of
men: “The intoxication once past, there remains in the soul a doleful
astonishment, a bitterly experienced void. It may be filled by new
agitations; but it is reproduced again vaster than before, and this
painful alternation between extreme joys and profound depression,
between flashes of happiness and the impossibility of being happy,
begets at last a state of continual sadness.... Say no longer to the
man attacked by it: See what a fine day! Say no more: Listen to this
sweet music! Do not even say: I love you! Light, harmony, love, all
that is good and charming can do no more than irritate his secret
wound. He is doomed to the _Manes_, and everything appears to him
as if he were in a sepulchre, stifling for want of air and crushed
by the weight of marble.... There comes a moment when all the man’s
satiated powers give him an invincible certainty of the nothingness
of the universe. Once a fleeting smile was all the despairing man
needed to open limitless perspectives before him; now the adoration
of the world would not affect him. He estimates it at its true value:
nothing.”[1]
Is not the profound sadness of Louis XV. a moral lesson as striking
as any instruction from the preachers? Here is a sovereign privileged
by destiny, handsome, powerful, victorious, surrounded by general
admiration, possessor of the first throne of the universe, loved almost
to idolatry by his people, having a tender and devoted wife, good and
respectful children, soldiers who long to die bravely in his service
to the cry of, “Long live the King!” He dwells in splendid palaces;
when he pleases, he shakes off the yoke of etiquette and lives like a
private gentleman in little residences which are masterpieces of grace
and good taste; every one seeks to divine his wishes, his caprices;
all the arts are pressed into the service of making life agreeable to
him; all pleasures, all elegancies, conspire to charm and entertain
him. His health is robust; boon-companion, bold horseman, indefatigable
huntsman and lover, he enjoys every pleasure at his will. Well, he is
plunged into the depths of ill-humor, the most dismal melancholy, and
the sentiment he inspires in those who observe him closely--as every
memoir of the time attests--is not envy, but pity.
What conclusion can one draw from this except that neither the dazzle
of riches, the prestige of pride, the fumes of incense, the caresses
of flattery, the false joys of sensual pleasure, nor the intoxications
of power can make man happy! He thirsts in the middle of the fountain;
he finds thorns in the crown of roses that encircles his forehead, and
a gnawing worm creeps, like Cleopatra’s asp, into the odorous flowers
whose perfume he inhales. The lamps of the festival grow dim, the
boudoirs look like tombs, and suddenly the _Manes, Tekel, Phares_,
appears in flaming letters on the portals of gold and marble. O King,
expect neither truce to thy woes nor distraction from thine ennui, that
implacable companion of thy grandeur! Thou art thine own enemy, and all
will betray thee, because thou art not reconciled with thyself. Most
Christian King, son of Saint Louis, thou dost suffer, and oughtest to
suffer, for thou canst neither seat thyself tranquilly upon the throne
nor kneel before the altar!
The end of this existence was dismal. Count de Ségur relates that as
Louis XV. was going to the chase he met a funeral and approached the
coffin. As he liked to ask questions, he inquired who was to be buried.
They told him it was a young girl who had died of small-pox. Seized
with sudden terror, he returned to his palace of Versailles and was
almost instantly attacked by the cruel malady whose very name had
turned him pale. Gangrene invaded the body of the voluptuous monarch.
People fled from him with terror as if he were plague-stricken. His
daughters alone, his daughters, models of courage and devotion, braved
the contagion and would not leave his death-bed.
Study history seriously. You fancy you will encounter scandal, but
you will find edification. Corrupt epochs are perhaps more fruitful
in great lessons than austere ones. It is not virtue, but vice, which
cries to us: Vanity, all is vanity. It is the guilty women, the royal
mistresses, who issue from their tombs and, striking their breasts,
accuse themselves in presence of posterity. These beauties who appear
for an instant on the scene and then vanish like shadows, these unhappy
favorites who wither in a day like the grass of the field, these
wretched victims of caprice and voluptuousness, all speak to us like
the sinful woman of the Gospel, and history is thus morality in action.
FIRST PART
[1715–1744]
I
THE INFANTA MARIE ANNE VICTOIRE, BETROTHED OF LOUIS XV.
When Louis XIV. gave up the ghost, Versailles also seemed to die. No
one ventured to dwell in the palace of the Sun King. During seven years
it was abandoned. September 9, 1715, at the very moment when Louis
XV., then five and a half years old, was returning to Vincennes, the
body of him who had been Louis XIV. was carried to its last abode, at
Saint-Denis. The people danced, sang, drank, and gave themselves up to
a scandalous joy. The following epigram got into circulation:--
“Non, Louis n’était pas si dur qu’il le parut,
Et son trépas le justifie,
Puisque, aussi bien que le Messie,
Il est mort pour notre salut.”[2]
Such is the gratitude of peoples! This is what remains of so many
flatteries, so much incense! _Sic transit gloria mundi._
France, which insulted the memory of the heroic old man, was on its
knees before a child. September 12, an enormous crowd was surging
around the palace of the Parliament in Paris. Little Louis XV. alighted
from his carriage amidst acclamations, and formally entered the
palace. He took off his hat, and then, replacing it on his head, said
graciously: “Gentlemen, I have come here to assure you of my affection.
Monsieur the Chancellor will acquaint you with my will.” And the first
president responded: “We are all eager to contemplate you upon your bed
of justice like the image of God on earth.”
“Princes are badly brought up,” says the Marquis d’Argenson. “Nothing
flatters and nothing corrects them.” Ought not one to be indulgent
toward a prince to whom his governor, Marshal Villeray, kept repeating
on the balcony of the Tuileries: “Look, master, look at these people;
well! they are all yours, they all belong to you.” The regent said to
the little monarch: “I am here only to render you my accounts, to offer
matters for your consideration, to receive and execute your orders.”
The child thought himself a man already.
In 1721 they affianced him to the Infanta Marie Anne Victoire,
daughter of Philip V., King of Spain. Louis XV. was not yet eleven
years old; the Infanta was only three. They had all the difficulty in
the world to induce the monarch to say the necessary yes. His little
betrothed arrived in Paris the following year (March 22, 1722). Louis
XV. went to meet her at Montrouge. All along the route the houses
were decked with hangings and adorned with flowers and foliage. The
next day the gazettes informed the public that the Queen--so they
called the Infanta--had received from the King a doll worth twenty
thousand livres. Three months later (June, 1722), Louis XV. and his
betrothed established themselves at Versailles, which again became
the political capital of France. The King took possession of the
bedchamber of Louis XIV.,[3] which he used until 1738. The Infanta
was lodged in the apartment of the Queen, and slept in the chamber[4]
that had been occupied by Marie Thérèse, the Bavarian dauphiness,
and the Duchess of Burgundy. She made the two youngest daughters of
the regent her inseparable companions, treating them as if they were
younger than herself, although they were twice her age. She kept them
in leading-strings under pretext of preventing them from falling,
and as she embraced them on their departure, she would say: “Little
princesses, go home now and come to see me every day.”
Louis XV. was crowned at Rheims, October 25, 1722. “People remember,”
says the Marquis d’Argenson, “how much he resembled Love that morning,
with his long coat and silver cap, in the costume of a neophyte or
candidate for kingship. I have never seen anything so affecting as
his figure at that time. All eyes grew moist with tenderness for
this poor little prince, sole scion of a numerous family, all other
members of which had perished, not without a suspicion of having been
poisoned.” France idolized this little King whose beauty, of a supreme
distinction, had somewhat ideal in it; the Emperor of Germany said he
was the child of Europe. Having completed his thirteenth year, he was,
as usual, proclaimed of age (February, 1723), and that same year, the
Duke of Orleans, who had most loyally fulfilled his duties toward his
pupil, assumed the functions of prime minister on the death of Cardinal
Dubois. He showed profound deference toward the young sovereign, and
carried his portfolio to him at five o’clock every afternoon. The King
enjoyed this occupation, and always looked forward impatiently to the
hour.
When the Duke of Orleans died suddenly at Versailles (December 2,
1723), Louis XV. regretted him sincerely. It was a woman who reigned
under cover of the new prime minister, the Duke of Bourbon. She was
one of those ambitious creatures to whom the moral sense is lacking,
but who possess wit, grace, and charm; one of those enchantresses
who, by dint of intrigues, end by falling into their own snares and
cruelly expiate their short-lived triumphs. The Marquise de Prie, the
all-powerful mistress of the Duke, was twenty-five years old. The
daughter of the rich financier Berthelot de Pléneuf, she had married
a nobleman whom she managed to have appointed ambassador to Turin.
She led a very fast life in that city, and got herself into debt.
Her father being unable to maintain her any longer, she was obliged
to escape from the courts of justice, and the Marquis de Prie was
recalled from his embassy. The young Marquise was not the woman to be
discouraged by such reverses. She had only to show herself in order to
subjugate the Duke of Bourbon, and assume a princely luxury. “She had a
charming face,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “a sharp and crafty wit,
a touch of genius, ambition, and recklessness.... The Duke was madly
in love with her. I knew their habits, their visits to the opera ball,
their little house in the rue Sainte Apolline, their gray-looking hack,
which had the appearance of a public conveyance on the outside, but was
extremely magnificent within.... She played the queen just as I would
make a valet-de-chambre of my lackey.”
When they were carrying the reliquary of Sainte Geneviève in procession
in 1725, because the rains had spoilt the crops, she said: “The people
are crazy; don’t they know that it is I who make rain and fine
weather?”
Violent under an air of gentleness, insatiable for money and power
beneath an exterior of careless disinterestedness, a libertine through
habit rather than from passion, running after pleasure without seeking
love, betraying with impunity her lover who believed what she said
against the evidence of his own eyes, Madame de Prie despotically
ruled both the Duke of Bourbon and France. But one thing disquieted
her: the young King’s health was delicate. If he should die suddenly,
the crown would revert to the Orleans branch, between which family
and the Duke of Bourbon there existed a thoroughgoing enmity. In
1725 the Infanta, the betrothed of Louis XV., was only seven years
old. Several years must elapse, therefore, before the marriage could
be consummated. Now, there was no repose possible for the Duke and
his favorite so long as the King had no direct heir. The Duke slept
at Versailles in an apartment directly under that of the King. One
night he thought he heard more noise and movement than usual. He rose
precipitately and went up stairs in a great fright and his dressing
gown. The first surgeon, Maréchal, astonished to see him appear in this
guise, asked the cause of his alarm. The Duke, beside himself, could
only stammer: “I heard some noise--the King is sick--what will become
of me?” Somewhat reassured by Maréchal, he consented to go down again
to his apartment, but he was overheard muttering to himself: “I would
never get back here again. If he recovers, we must marry him.” It was
resolved to send back the Infanta on account of her youth. Her father,
Philip V., was indignant at such an outrage. “There is not blood
enough in all Spain to avenge such an insult,” said he. At Madrid the
shouting populace were allowed to drag an effigy of Louis XV. through
the streets, and the shepherds of the Spanish Pyrenees came into the
pasture lands of French valleys to hamstring the cattle.
Two Princesses of Orleans were then in Spain. They were both daughters
of the regent, and had been sent to Madrid at the time when Marie Anne
Victoire, the betrothed of Louis XV., had come to France.[5] One of
them, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, born in 1709, married the Prince
of the Asturias, eldest son of Philip V. The other, Mademoiselle de
Beaujolais, born in 1714, was affianced to Don Carlos, brother to the
Prince of the Asturias. The first was sad, cross, and whimsical; the
second, on the contrary, was a delightful child, as pretty as she was
intelligent. When she arrived in Spain, she was seven years old, the
same age as Don Carlos, and Queen Elizabeth Farnese wrote to the Duke
of Orleans: “Her little husband is in transports of joy over her, and
is only too happy to have such a charming Princess.”
When Philip V. abdicated in 1724, in favor of the Prince of the
Asturias (Louis I.), Mademoiselle de Montpensier became Queen. But the
new King died at the end of eight months. Philip V. resumed the crown,
and the widow remained without any influence at court. As soon as it
was known at Madrid that Louis XV. was not to marry the Infanta, Marie
Anne Victoire, it was determined by way of reprisals that the widow of
King Louis and Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, the betrothed of Don Carlos,
should be immediately sent back to Versailles. Spain saw the Queen,
who was not at all sympathetic, depart without regret; but people were
grieved at the departure of Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, who at the age
of nine years was already charming, and who, appearing like a ray of
light in the sombre Escurial, had made herself beloved by her little
betrothed.
In France, too, the sending back of the Infanta, who was by
anticipation already styled the Queen, did not occur without exciting
some regret. The little Princess, now seven years old, had been
confided to the care of Madame de Ventadour, the former governess of
Louis XV., who loved her fondly. The great-granddaughter of Louis XIV.
already knew how to nod graciously in response to the homage of the
crowd, and everybody admired her pretty ways. But Louis XV., who was
in his sixteenth year, and precocious, was hardly satisfied with so
young a _fiancée_. He was pleased therefore with the breaking
off of a marriage whose consummation he must have waited for so long,
and, according to Voltaire’s expression, he was like a bird whose cage
has been changed when he saw the Infanta depart. Beautiful presents,
however, were made to the young Princess, and it was determined that
her return should be accomplished with a respectful magnificence
and ceremony. She left Versailles April 5, 1725, and on reaching
the frontier, she was exchanged at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port for the
two Princesses of Orleans (the widow of King Louis and Mademoiselle
de Beaujolais). Married in 1729 to Joseph Emanuel, then Prince,
afterwards King of Portugal, “she gave that sovereign,” says Voltaire,
“the children she was not allowed to give to Louis XV. and was not
happier on account of it.” As to the two Princesses of Orleans, their
destiny was unhappy: the queen dowager of Spain, who died in 1742,
lived in poverty, with a barren title and the simulacrum of a court.
Her two families had but one thought,--that of ridding themselves of
the support of this unfortunate young woman. Spain showed excessive
negligence in the payment of her pension, and after having reigned
over one of the principal kingdoms of the world, she was obliged,
by economical reasons, to spend three consecutive years with the
Carmelites of Paris. Still living, she was treated as if already
dead. Her sister, Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, so amiable, sweet, and
attractive, retained a tender memory of her former betrothed, Don
Carlos (the future Charles III.), who, on his side, did not forget her.
Possibly a means of renewing their engagement might have been found.
But the young girl died in 1734, carrying her faithful regret with her
to the tomb. She was not yet twenty.
The rupture of the marriage of Louis XV. was not a fortunate event.
The Prince was only fifteen years old. He might easily have waited
several years longer before marrying. His studies and his energy would
both have been the gainers by it. Moreover, it was an evil thing
to insult a great nation like Spain. It was not alone the Spanish
people that were outraged, but the glorious memory of the Infanta’s
great-grandfather, the grand King who had said: “There are no more
Pyrenees.” A fatal lesson was given to the young sovereign when he was
thus taught to violate sworn faith, and habituated from his adolescence
to those culpable caprices, those egotistic desertions of which his
reign was to afford more than one example.
II
THE MARRIAGE OF MARIE LECZINSKA
In the year 1725, a poor exiled king and his family were living in a
dilapidated old commandery in Wissemburg, a little town of Alsace. This
king without a kingdom, this fugitive who dignified his poverty by the
resignation with which he endured misfortune, was the Pole, Stanislas
Leczinski, the protégé of Charles XII. of Sweden. Driven from Poland
after a very short reign, Stanislas had found an asylum in France, and
lived in Wissemburg in complete retirement with his mother, his wife,
his daughter, and several gentlemen who had been faithful to him in
misfortune. His daughter, Marie, born in Breslau, June 23, 1703, was
at this time twenty-two years old. Pious, gentle, and sympathetic,
she was the joy of the exiles. When they spoke to her of projected
marriages, she would say to her parents: “Do not think you can make me
happy by sending me away; it would be far sweeter to me to share your
ill-fortune than to enjoy, at a distance, a happiness which would not
be yours.” Her education had been as intelligent as it was austere. She
spent the time not occupied in prayer and study in working for the
poor of the city or embroidering ornaments for churches. She was a true
Christian, one of those admirable young girls whose charm has in it
something evangelic, and who make virtue lovable.
One day Stanislas, much moved, entered the room where his wife and
daughter were. “Let us kneel down,” he exclaimed, “and return thanks to
God!”--“Father,” said Marie, “have you been called back to the throne
of Poland?”--“Ah! daughter,” he replied, “Heaven is far more favorable
to us than that. You are Queen of France.” It was not a dream. The
exile’s daughter, the poor and obscure Princess, living on alms from
the French court, who, but the day before, would have been happy to
marry one of those who were now to be her principal officials, ascended
as if by miracle the greatest throne in the world. How had she happened
to be preferred to the ninety-nine marriageable princesses, a list
of whom had been drawn up at Versailles? There was but this simple
remark below her name in the list: “Nothing disadvantageous is known
concerning this family.” Louis XV. who had sent back the daughter of a
King of Spain could choose among the wealthiest and most highly placed
princesses in Europe. How did they contrive to make him marry this
poor Polish girl who brought him no dot and who was seven years his
senior (in an inverse sense, the same difference of age that existed
between him and the Infanta, his first betrothed)? It is true that a
former secretary of embassy, Lozillières, whom the Duke of Bourbon
had sent to make inquiries about twenty-seven princesses, had thus
drawn the portrait of Marie Leczinska: “This Princess, as simple as the
daughter of Alcinoüs, who knows no cosmetics but water and snow, and,
seated between her mother and her grandmother, embroiders altar-cloths,
recalls to us, in the commandery of Wissemburg, the artlessness of
heroic times.” Was it this mythological style which affected sceptical
and depraved souls like those of the Duke of Bourbon and his mistress,
Madame de Prie?
It was not this, at all events, which chiefly preoccupied them. If they
selected Marie Leczinska, it was because they fancied that, owing her
elevation solely to their caprice, she would esteem herself in their
debt and be their tool. What pleased them in her was that she had no
resources; that a price had been set upon her father’s head; that the
exile, dispossessed of his throne for thirteen years, had wandered
from asylum to asylum, in Turkey, in Sweden, in the principality of
Deux-Ponts, and in Alsace; that the young girl was merely agreeable
without being beautiful; that she was seven years older than Louis
XV.; and that in calling her to the throne in the most unforeseen and
inconceivable manner, the Duke and Madame de Prie would create for
themselves exceptional claims upon her gratitude.
Louis XV. was at this time the most beautiful youth in the kingdom.
An ideal lustre illuminated his charming visage, and when they were
praising the graces of her young betrothed to Marie Leczinska: “Alas!”
said she, “you redouble my alarms.”
One should read in the sympathetic work of the Countess d’Armaillé,[6]
the story of the beginnings of this union which was at first to be
so happy. Louis XV. made his official request for the hand of Marie
Leczinska through Cardinal de Rohan, Bishop of Strasburg. She contented
herself with responding: “I am penetrated with gratitude, Monsieur the
Cardinal, for the honor done me by the King of France. My will belongs
to my parents, and their consent will be mine.” The marriage by proxy
took place at Strasburg, August 14, 1725. The King was represented
by the Duke of Orleans. After having received her parents’ blessing,
and distributed souvenirs to the faithful companions of her exile,
Marie went to join Louis XV. She was greeted everywhere she went
with extravagant laudations. “There is nothing which the good French
people do not do to divert me,” she wrote at the time to Stanislas
Leczinski. “They say the finest things in the world to me, but nobody
says that you may be near me. Perhaps they will say so presently, for
I am journeying in fairyland, and am veritably under their magical
dominion. At every instant I undergo transformations, of which one is
more brilliant than the other. Sometimes I am fairer than the Graces;
again, I belong to the family of the Nine Sisters; here, I have the
virtues of an angel; there, the sight of me makes people happy.
Yesterday I was the wonder of the world; to-day I am the lucky star.
Every one does his best to deify me, and doubtless I shall be placed
among the immortals to-morrow. To dispel the illusion, I lay my hand
on my head, and instantly find again her whom you love, and who loves
you very tenderly.” The new Queen of France signed this letter with the
Polish diminutive of her name: Maruchna.
At Sézanne, September 3, a page, the Prince of Conti, brought her a
bouquet from Louis XV. Near Moret, the next day, she saw her husband
for the first time. As soon as he appeared she threw herself on her
knees on a cushion; the King raised her at once and embraced her
affectionately. The royal pair made their entry at Fontainebleau
September 5, and were crowned the following day. “The Queen,” wrote
Voltaire, “makes a very good appearance, although her face is not at
all pretty. Everybody is enchanted with her virtue and her politeness.
The first thing she did was to distribute among the princesses and
ladies of the palace all the magnificent trinkets composing what is
called her _corbeille_, which consisted of jewels of every sort
except diamonds. When she saw the casket in which they had been placed:
‘This is the first time in my life,’ said she, ‘that I have been able
to make presents.’ She wore a little rouge on her wedding day, just
enough to prevent her from looking pale. She fainted for an instant in
the chapel, but only for form’s sake. There was a comedy performed the
same day. I had prepared a little entertainment which M. de Mortemart
would not execute. In place of it they gave _Amphion_ and _Le
Médecin malgré lui_, which did not seem very appropriate. After
supper there were fireworks with many rockets and very little invention
and variety.... For the rest, there is a frightful noise, racket,
crowd, and tumult here.”
The Queen pleased everybody by her extreme affability. What they
admired was neither the magnificence of her costume, the Sancy that
sparkled on her corsage, nor the Regent that glittered on her chaste
forehead, but her modesty, her benevolence, her gentleness, the grace
which is still more beautiful than beauty. Voltaire was in the front
rank of the courtiers of this new star which shed so soft a lustre.
But he did not find his rôle as flatterer rewarded by sufficient
gratuities. Hence he wrote from Fontainebleau: “I have been very well
received by the Queen. She wept over _Marianne_, she laughed
over _L’Indiscret_; she often talks to me, she calls me her
poor Voltaire. A blockhead would be satisfied with all this; but,
unfortunately, I think soundly enough to feel that praise does not
amount to much, and that the rôle of a poet at court always entails
upon him something slightly ridiculous. You would not believe, my dear
Thiriot, how tired I am of my life as a courtier. _Henri IV._
is very stupidly sacrificed at the court of Louis XV. I bewail the
moments I rob him of. The poor child ought to have appeared already
in quarto, with fine paper, fine margins, and fine type. That will
surely come this winter, whatever may happen. I think you will find
this work somewhat more finished than _Marianne_. The epic is my
_forte_, or I am very much mistaken.... The Queen is constantly
assassinated with Pindaric odes, sonnets, epistles, and epithalamiums.
I fancy she takes the poets for court-fools; and in this case she is
quite right, for it is great folly for a man of letters to be here.
They give no pleasure and receive none.”[7]
By dint of compliments in prose and verse, Voltaire obtained a pension
of 1500 livres, which made him write to _la présidente_ de
Bernières, November 13, 1725: “I count on the friendliness of Madame de
Prie. I no longer complain of court life, I begin to have reasonable
expectations.”
Some days afterwards (December 1, 1725), Marie Leczinska left
Fontainebleau and went to Versailles. She installed herself in what
were called the Queen’s apartments, and slept in the chamber which had
been successively occupied by Marie Thérèse, the Bavarian Dauphiness,
the Duchess of Burgundy, and the Infanta Marie Anne Victoire. There she
brought her ten children into the world, and it was there she was to
die.
The early days of the marriage were very happy; at that time Louis XV.
was a model youth. The counsels of his former preceptor, the Bishop of
Fréjus; the sense of duty; religious beliefs; the timidity inseparable
from adolescence,--all these contributed to keep in the paths of wisdom
the young monarch who dreamed of being a good husband and father, a
good king, and working out his own salvation along with the welfare of
his subjects. Naturally inclined to the pleasures of the senses, he
attached himself to Marie Leczinska with the ardor of an innocent young
man who loves for the first time. Notwithstanding the shamelessness of
many of them, the court beauties did not yet venture to raise their
eyes toward this royal adolescent, who made even the most audacious
respectful, by his gentleness and his reserve. Nothing, at this time,
announced the disorders to which the young monarch was one day to yield
himself. The _roués_ of the Regency could not console themselves
for having so calm and virtuous a master; they awaited with impatience
the moment when they could thrust him over the declivity of scandal,
and, like real demons, they lay in wait for their prey.
III
THE DISGRACE OF THE MARQUISE DE PRIE
The Marquise de Prie congratulated herself upon having brought
Marie Leczinska to the throne. It was, in fact, as D’Argenson has
remarked, an excellent choice, according to the views of the Marquise:
“Fecundity, piety, sweetness, humanity, and, above all, a great
incapacity for affairs. This court policy required, moreover, a woman
without attractions and without coquetry, who could only retain her
husband through the sense of duty and the necessity of giving heirs
to the crown.” The Duke and his favorite had found in the Queen all
the gratitude and complaisance they had counted on. As to the King,
amused by the chase, festivities, journeys to Marly, Chantilly, and
Rambouillet, he occupied himself with politics very little. The prime
minister could flatter himself on being a real mayor of the palace.
But he had reckoned without a prelate of seventy-four years, to whom
ambition had come with age, and who was about to cast down with a
breath all this scaffolding of intrigues and calculations.
Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, the preceptor of Louis XV., was of humble
origin, having been the son of a tithe-collector[8] in the diocese
of Fréjus. Appointed chaplain to Queen Marie Thérèse in 1680, “he
was,” says Saint-Simon, “received at the ministers’ houses where, in
fact, he was of as little importance as he was elsewhere, and often
supplied the place of a bell before such things had been invented.” He
was selected as preceptor for the little Prince, who was to be styled
Louis XV., and gained his pupil’s good-will by his easy, gentle, and
insinuating character, his perfect calmness, and his mingled veneration
and tenderness for a child who, thinking himself always menaced, felt
that this assiduous and obsequious devotion protected him. The secret
of his affection for Fleury was that Fleury never opposed him. He
affected, moreover, an absolute disinterestedness, and seemed to be
making a sacrifice to the King by remaining at court instead of taking
refuge in a convent. The Bishop was always one of the party when the
young King was working, or pretending to work, with his Ministers. In
appearance he guarded the most humble, most insignificant attitude;
but, in reality, he exerted an influence which exasperated the Duke,
and still more Madame de Prie. The Queen herself was jealous of the
confidence enjoyed by this silent old man who followed the King like
his shadow, and who seemed likely to monopolize everything in spite of
his modest airs. The Marquise, who had constant access to the Queen in
her capacity as lady of the palace, contrived a real plot with her. It
was a question of getting rid of this troublesome third person who was
always putting himself between the King and the Prime Minister. “In
order to deliver herself from the old Bishop, Madame de Prie devised a
scheme by which she might take his place, and enter almost openly into
the council of State. She persuaded her lover to induce the King to
work in the apartments of the Queen whom he loved, at least with that
love which every young man feels for the first woman he possesses. The
preceptor, having no lessons to give there, would not follow his pupil,
so that, without being pushed too rudely he would slip out of his
place, and, naturally, find himself on the ground. Then the Marquise,
relying on the good-nature of the Queen, would introduce herself as a
fourth, and from that time on would govern the State. Although the plan
seemed to her an admirable one, yet its success was not equally so.”[9]
The little conspiracy, however, had been conducted with great vigor.
One evening, the Queen, who happened to be with the Duke of Bourbon,
sent the King a request to come to her. Louis XV. complied, and
the Prime Minister handed him a letter from Cardinal de Polignac
containing violent accusations against the Bishop of Fréjus. This was
the first time that Fleury had not been present when the King and
the Duke were together. Convinced that his exclusion was henceforth
determined, he went at once to his own apartment, and after writing a
very mournful but tender and respectful letter in which he took leave
of his young master, he departed at once for the Sulpician convent at
Issy. The Duke and Madame de Prie thought themselves sure of victory,
but they were in too great haste to triumph. On reading the letter of
his former preceptor the King began to weep. He dared not avow the
cause of his chagrin, however, and being always timid and irresolute,
he kept silence. His first gentleman, the Duke de Mortemart, at last
emboldened him. “What! Sire, are you not the master?” said he. “Have
the Duke told to send a messenger at once for Monseigneur de Fréjus,
and you will see him again.” This was no sooner said than done. The
Bishop returned, and hid his success at first under the appearance
of modesty. He pretended to desire nothing for himself, and showed
profound deference toward the Duke, but the Prime Minister and his
favorite were doomed.
The little King, with his seventeen years, was about to show that he
was master. With that dissimulation which from infancy he had been
accustomed to consider a quality indispensable to princes, he silently
prepared the Duke’s downfall. As he was getting into his carriage
to go to Rambouillet, June 11, 1727, he said to his Prime Minister
with the most gracious air in the world: “I expect you to supper this
evening.” The Duke re-entered the château in perfect confidence. But
what was his surprise when, three hours later, he received a royal
letter in these terms:--
“I order you, under pain of disobedience, to repair to Chantilly, and
to remain there until further orders.” This was a veritable exile.
The Duke submitted without a murmur. At the same time, the Queen
received this laconic billet from Louis XV.: “I beg you, Madame, and if
necessary, I order you, to do all that the Bishop of Fréjus shall tell
you from me as if he were myself.” The poor Queen wept and resigned
herself. As to Madame de Prie, she was struck at the same time as her
lover, and relegated to her estate of Courbépine in Normandy. M. de
Prie was startled at this disgrace. He went about asking people with an
affectation which made everybody smile: “But what is there in common
between the Duke and my wife?” Those who but yesterday were at the
feet of the Duke and his favorite now overwhelmed them with gibes and
sarcasms. The people lighted bonfires, and the walls were covered with
posters whereon might be read: “A hundred pistoles’ reward for whoever
finds a valuable mare accustomed to follow a one-eyed horse.”[10]
M. Michelet, usually so severe and merciless toward the court of Louis
XV., speaks with a certain complacency of the Marquise de Prie. “Though
history ought to be severe toward this female tyrant,” says he, “it
is, nevertheless, a duty to own the vigor with which she supported the
bold attempts of Duverney. This rude government, thoroughly violent and
shameless as it was, had, nevertheless, instincts of life which one
may regret in the mortal torpor of the asphyxia which followed it.”
One hardly comprehends this indulgence, for there was nothing moral,
nothing great in the ephemeral reign of the Duke and his mistress.
It is not an easy thing for a coquettish, ambitious woman, accustomed
to have her caprices accepted as laws, to endure disgrace, humiliation,
and retirement. Madame de Prie was at first under an illusion. She
thought she would be speedily recalled to Versailles, but when she
saw she was mistaken, and that her place as lady of the palace had
been given to the Marquise d’Arlincourt, her disappointment was cruel.
According to M. Michelet: “She devoured her own heart, and could not
conceal it. No caged lion or tiger ever was so restless. She was
furious, and talked nonsense. She hoped to die, and later on she tried
to kill herself by furious excesses; but in vain. She lost nothing by
it but her health, her freshness, and her beauty. _In extremis_
she still retained a lover and a friend in her desert. The latter, very
malicious, very corrupt, a real cat, was Madame du Deffand, and the
two friends scratched each other every day between their caresses. The
lover, a young man of merit, persisted in loving her, bad as she was.
She was hopelessly dried up, and her last punishment was that she could
not resume life through love. She was devoured by pride. She no longer
desired anything but to die like a Roman woman, like Petronia.”
All this seems to us exaggerated. We believe Madame de Prie was too
frivolous to experience such despair. She had not waited for her
exile in order to know those alternations of sadness and folly which
accompany vice even when it has the air of being happy. For some time,
already, the taste for intrigue, the thirst for pleasure, the ardor
of ambition, had kindled in her veins a fever which undermined her
strength. Her plumpness had been succeeded by an excessive lankness.
Struggling against ill-health with extreme energy, she tried to build
herself up, to put a good face on everything, to shake off trouble,
and find amusement. Though her body was so much weakened, says the
Marquis d’Argenson, her mind and temper were still as gay, shrewd,
merry, and frivolous as in the times of her greatest prosperity. Even
in her misfortune she had courtiers who deceived her. She had become
ugly, and her flatterers continued to tell her she was adorable. She
was hopelessly ill, and her physicians told her she was doing very
well. Two days before her death she played in a comedy, and recited
three hundred lines with as much sentiment as memory. Nevertheless,
she had predicted her approaching death. People thought, however, that
this was but a jest, a pleasantry. Hence, when she breathed her last,
October 6, 1728, after such convulsions that her toes were turned
towards her heels, a rumor that she had poisoned herself got abroad.
Such a suicide is improbable, and not easily reconcilable with the
superficial character of Madame de Prie. M. Michelet adds that she made
a farcical confession (_bouffonna une confession_)--these are the
expressions employed by an historian who is often too fanciful. What
can M. Michelet know about it? Why does he affirm that she did not
repent of her faults and errors? Greater sinners than she have been
illuminated at the last moment by a ray of light. It is certain, at
all events, that the sudden and terrible death of this young woman of
only twenty-nine years, who expiated so cruelly her shameful successes,
was a striking lesson for her contemporaries. Was Madame de Prie’s
death-bed conversion sincere? God only knows.
IV
THE KING FAITHFUL TO THE QUEEN
For several years Louis XV. gave no scandal. Faithful to his religious
duties, he lived like a good Christian and good husband. The courtiers,
habituated to the manners of the Regency, did not conceal their
surprise and annoyance. One day, in January, 1729, when there had been
several sleighing excursions, old Marshal de Villars wrote: “These
sleighing parties give the ladies some hopes that things are going to
be rather livelier. There was dancing after supper, and if that happens
often, it is not impossible that some courageous beauty may lay hold of
the King.” But this daring beauty was not to be found. The intimidating
politeness and freezing glance of the young sovereign kept all women
at a distance. Louis XV. did not yield. People wondered whether pride
or timidity, goodness or egotism, wisdom or ennui, was what gave its
predominating character to his attitude of taciturnity and extreme
reserve.
The character of the King, who as yet did not know himself, was an
enigma to the court. Versailles, under the direction of an aged
priest, resembled an Escurial, and the small apartments destined to
so scandalous a future had at this time the tranquillity of a convent
or a sanctuary. If any one mentioned a woman famous for her beauty
to the monarch, he would merely say: “She is not more beautiful than
the Queen.” Marie Leczinska kept her spouse within the bounds of
duty by her exquisite goodness, her remoteness from all intrigue,
her submissive and gentle spirit. Loving neither luxury nor racket,
she lived like a worthy citizeness, charitable, modest, and entirely
occupied with her salvation. She arrived in France in September, 1725,
and for three years she did not see Paris. A sort of votive pilgrimage
took her there for the first time on October 4, 1728. She had brought
twin daughters into the world the previous year, Louise Elizabeth and
Henriette of France; this time she desired a son, and to obtain one
from Heaven she came to invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin
in the Parisian churches. Barbier, the advocate, thus describes in his
_Journal_ Marie Leczinska’s pious excursion:--
“October.--Monday, 4, our good Queen has seen Paris. She came to
Notre Dame to ask a dauphin from the Virgin, and from there she went
to Saint-Geneviève with the same end in view. She made this journey
_incognita_ after a fashion; that is to say, it was not a
formal entry. She had only her usual suite, which consists of four
carriages with eight horses apiece.... As to the person of the Queen,
she is little, rather slender than stout, not pretty without being
disagreeable, and looks good-natured and gentle, which does not impart
the majesty needful in a queen. She went about a good deal in Paris and
saw astonishing crowds of people. They say that money to the extent of
twelve thousand livres was scattered from the door of her carriage.”
Marie Leczinska’s prayer was heard. The next year she had a son
(September 4, 1729). She gave the King ten children in ten years
(1727–1737). And yet there was no real intimacy between the married
pair. During the daytime they scarcely addressed a word to each other.
One might have said they never came together but from a sense of duty,
for the welfare of the State. Cold, polite, reserved, they mutually
intimidated each other.
Was the Queen as clever as she ought to have been in order to keep
Louis XV. in the straight path? One may be permitted to doubt it.
Her frank and simple nature knew neither astuteness nor diplomacy.
The secrets of feminine coquetry were completely foreign to her. If
D’Argenson is to be believed, she was not adroit. He says she was too
prudish with her husband, thinking she had noticed that in France it
was considered in good taste to be so. He accuses her of overdoing
the matter, and then lamenting her mistake with bitter tears when it
was past all remedy. He says, too, that she did not do all that was
in her power to make her society agreeable to her husband. “At the
beginning of his marriage,” he writes, “the King wanted to spend his
evenings in the Queen’s apartments, playing cards and chatting. The
Queen, instead of attracting him thither, putting him at his ease, and
amusing him, played the disdainful. Hence the King grew disgusted,
accustomed himself to pass the evenings in his own apartments, at first
with men and afterwards with women, his cousin Charolais, the Countess
of Toulouse. The King is naturally very timid and seeks for those with
whom he can be at his ease. When he once meets them, it is plain to
what degree he is a man of habitudes.”
The Queen would have tried in vain to use the language of passion to
her husband or treat him to jealous scenes. Louis XV. had a horror
of everything that seemed to him exaggerated. In his wife’s chagrin
he would have seen a freak, a forgetfulness of etiquette, a want
of deference. Already, in 1726, Marshal de Villars had recommended
calmness and resignation to Marie Leczinska. He says in his Memoirs:
“The Queen led me into her cabinet, and spoke to me with keen sorrow
of the changes she observed in the King’s affection. Her tears flowed
abundantly. I replied: ‘I think, Madame, that the King’s heart is far
removed from what is called love; you are not the same with regard to
him; but, believe me, it is best not to display your passion too much;
don’t let any one see that you fear a diminution in his sentiments,
lest the many fine eyes that are ogling him continually should risk
everything in order to profit by this change. For the rest, it is
all the better for you that the King’s heart is not much inclined to
tenderness, because where passion is concerned, natural coldness is
less cruel than abandonment.’”
What is to become of this undecided, timid, vacillating king? In which
direction will this young man go, who, like Hercules in the fable,
is hesitating between Virtue and Pleasure? Will he be a saint or a
debauchee? He wants to do what is right, but will he have the courage?
Everything conspires to thrust him into the evil way. His morality
is begrudged him. The air he breathes is poisonous. The women, who
incessantly provoke him, rival each other in glances and coquetries.
His former preceptor, now become directing minister, dares not venture
a counsel. His first _valet de chambre_, Bachelier, already dreams
of playing the pander, and great lords, with the Duke de Richelieu at
their head, likewise aspire to those sorry but lucrative functions. Who
would dare to reprimand the monarch if he gave a scandalous example?
The clergy hold their peace. The nobles demand but one thing from
the King: to choose his mistress among women of quality. Shame needs
a blazon. The _bourgeoisie_ will be too prudent to meddle with
the secrets of the gods. D’Argenson and Barbier, the nobleman and the
advocate, will rival each other in indulgent judgments on adultery.
In D’Argenson’s eyes the sole fault of favorites is their propensity
to meddle with State affairs. He adds: “I approve of private persons
confiding in a mistress in whose affection they believe; it makes
little scandal, and is even edification and honesty, according to the
present relaxation of manners, which are coming closer and closer
to nature.” Barbier, the lawyer, goes farther still. He says in his
_Journal_, with an astonishing mixture of cynicism and naïveté:
“Fifteen out of twenty nobles of the court do not live with their
wives, and do have mistresses; nothing is so common even among private
persons. It is ridiculous, then, that the King, who is certainly the
master, should be in worse condition than his predecessors.”
The courtiers could not accustom themselves to the absence of a royal
mistress. It seemed to them as if there was a place vacant, a post to
which some one ought to be appointed. How could any one fancy Henri
IV. without _la belle Gabrielle_, Louis XIV. without La Vallière
and Montespan? And what! said they with indignation, shall Louis
XV. confine himself to his wife, that Polish woman without beauty,
and seven years older than himself? In their eyes this would be to
derogate from all the traditions of French gallantry. The military men,
impatient of peace, fancied that a favorite might be an Agnes Sorel,
who would rouse this new Charles VIII. from his torpor, and lead him
to victory. Fashionable young people were persuaded that Versailles
would become animated, that there would be feasts, suppers, diversions,
pleasures of every kind.
The enemies of Cardinal Fleury, all those in search of places, money,
or credit, thought that a mistress would bring about the downfall of
the old minister, so careful of the State funds. Ah! if the monarch
yields, if he succumbs to temptation, the guilty ones will be the
counsellors, the cynical, corrupt egotists, who persuade him to
evil, who deify his caprices, who exalt his adulteries; they will be
Richelieu, the official go-between; Voltaire, the laureate in prose
and verse of the reign of the favorites; the women who entreat the
Christian Sultan to throw them the handkerchief; the entire century,
still more responsible and blameworthy than the King.
V
THE FAVOR OF THE COUNTESS DE MAILLY
There are two kinds of royal favorites: the proud and the humble; those
who make a boast of scandal and those who blush at it. The proud brag
of their shame as if it were a victory; insatiable for money, credit,
pleasures, they are intoxicated with the incense burned at their feet,
and haughtily wave the sceptre of left-handed queens. The humble are
less unreasonable; they voluntarily abase themselves; they try to gain
pardon for a situation whose ignominy they comprehend, and though they
have not sufficient moral sense to be willing to renounce the profits
of their rôle, neither have they the impudence to make an imperious
demand of homage and adulation. At the court of Louis XIV. Madame de
Montespan was the type of the haughty mistress. The first mistress of
Louis XV., the Countess de Mailly, must be classed among the humble
ones.
Louise Julie de Mailly-Nesle, the eldest of five sisters who all played
a part at court, was of the same age as the King: like him she was
born in 1710. Married in 1726 to Count Louis Alexandre de Mailly, her
cousin-german, her fortune was small, and the need of money was said
to be one occasion of her faults. The huntsman Le Roy, that master of
the hunt who was so sagacious an observer, and whom Sainte-Beuve has
qualified as La Bruyère on horseback, thus delineates the portrait
of the countess: “This lady was very far from being pretty; but
her figure and her manners were very graceful, her sensibility was
already recognized, and she had a complaisant character adapted to the
abridgment of formalities. This was essential to vanquish the timidity
of a prince who was still a novice, whom the least reserve would have
abashed. They were sure, moreover, of the disinterestedness of her
who was destined to become the favorite, and of her aversion from all
ambitious schemes. Some difficulty was experienced in establishing
a complete familiarity between a prince excessively timid and a
woman whose birth, at least, obliged her to have some regard for
appearances.” Madame de Mailly was lady of the palace to the Queen.
This facilitated matters. At first everything was managed with the
utmost secrecy. “I have learned,” says the Duke de Luynes in his
Memoirs, “that the commerce of the King with Madame de Mailly commenced
as early as 1783. I know this to be true beyond all doubt, and at that
time no one suspected it.”
The favor of the King’s mistress was not known to the public until
four years later, and the advocate Barbier declared “that there was
nothing to say, the name of De Nesle being one of the first in the
kingdom.” “The Queen,” says D’Argenson, “is in a cruel situation at
present, on account of Madame de Mailly, whom she is obliged to retain
as lady of the palace. During this lady’s weeks she is in a horrible
humor, and all her domestics feel the effects of it. Certainly, to make
a third after supper, between her and Madame de Mailly, is to render
her a great service.” The poor Queen at last resigned herself. When a
woman no longer appeals to either a man’s heart or his senses, what can
she do? One day when Madame de Mailly asked her sovereign’s permission
to go to a pleasure-house where Louis XV. was, Marie Leczinska merely
replied: “You are the mistress.”
Cardinal Fleury did not complain, because the favorite neither meddled
with affairs nor cost the King much. At this time Louis XV. was as
economical as he was timid. Count de Mailly, who had set up an equipage
as soon as his wife came into favor, was soon obliged to sell it again,
and continued to live a needy life.
In 1738, when Madame de Mailly was openly acknowledged as mistress,
Louis XV. changed his bedchamber. He left that where Louis XIV. had
died, and which he had himself occupied since 1722, to install himself
in the chamber contiguous to the Council hall, and which, even in the
time of Louis XIV., had been designated as the billiard room (room No.
126 of the _Notice du Musée de Versailles_, by M. Eudore Soulié).
Louis XV. found this chamber more convenient than the other, because
it opened the series of small rooms called the cabinets (rooms Nos.
126 to 134 of the _Notice_[11]), where Louis XV. admitted a very
small number of courtiers to his intimacy. It was there he hid himself
from the vulgar crowd; there that, living more like a private person
than a king, he spent his time in trifles and futilities unworthy of
a sovereign. There he made tapestry like a woman, or, like a cook,
prepared side-dishes with truffles. There, supping after the chase, he
sought forgetfulness of his remorse in bumpers of champagne. It was
there he sought a remedy for his, alas! incurable melancholy; there
that he allowed himself to be vanquished by his enemy, voluptuousness.
Beneath the King’s chamber lodged the Countess de Toulouse, widowed
within a year of the son of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan. The
countess occupied the apartment called the apartment of the baths,
which, after having been the abode of Madame de Montespan, had been
given to the sons of the celebrated favorite, first to the Duke du
Maine, and afterward to the Count de Toulouse (rooms Nos. 52, 53,
and 54 of the _Notice du Musée_). This apartment had one great
advantage: it communicated by a private staircase with the King’s
study. The Count de Toulouse had the key to this precious staircase.
His widow had sufficient address to induce the King to leave it with
her. She was at this time a woman of about fifty, who no longer wore
rouge, and often spent several hours in a confessional in the chapel,
where she read by the light of a candle. In spite of her austere
appearance, she was the intimate friend of the Countess de Mailly, and
slanderous tongues accused her of facilitating the latter’s meetings
with the King.
Another woman also lived in close friendship with Louis XV. This was
Mademoiselle de Charolais, who was born in 1695 and died in 1758
unmarried. A sister of the Duke of Bourbon, she had the hauteur of the
Condés and the wit of the Mortemarts. She was a type of the extravagant
_grande dame_, a capricious, witty woman, greedy for pleasure,
frolicsome as an elf, and fearless as a page. “This princess is very
accommodating to the King,” says the Marquis d’Argenson; “she keeps
company with Madame de Mailly, and, in the midst of her complaisance,
she sometimes proposes to the King to take a prettier mistress. At
other times she advises Madame de Mailly to profit by her reign, and
secure all the riches and grandeur that she can.... Madame de Mailly
is honest and well-intentioned, and confides in her. This is what
sustains her, in spite of her lightheartedness, her temper, and the
variety of opinions which torment her. But as she is noble in the midst
of her necessities, her demands are not acrimonious nor her intrigues
underhanded and circuitous.”
Among the influential persons surrounding the King let us not forget
his first _valet de chambre_, Bachelier, the master’s confidant;
Bachelier with his occult power, his fifty thousand pounds of income,
his charming property of La Celle, which the sovereign honors by
visiting. Listen again to D’Argenson: “Le sieur Bachelier is a
philosopher, well content with his fortune, which is a good one. He
has an income, a country house, and a mistress. He loves his master
and is loved by him; he desires the public welfare. People of this
character are difficult to displace; it is this also which accounts for
the force and elevation of our cardinal, and, fortunately for France,
the King likes men of this sort. It is true that Bachelier is still
a go-between” (D’Argenson employs a stronger word). “But his office
allows this, just as that of a soldier permits him to be a slayer of
men. Perhaps it is he who prescribed to the King to limit himself to a
single mistress, as he has done up to the present with little Mailly;
or to seldom change them, and not to be prodigal of money or power.”
Nothing great could issue from such a society. This voluptuous
existence, parodied without poetry or enthusiasm from the scenes of
Lancret and Watteau, belittled and atrophied the moral sense of the
King. What could he learn from a futile and idle woman like Madame de
Mailly, entirely devoted to trifles and her toilet? Listening from
morning to night to silly and insignificant tittle-tattle, Louis XV.
himself became womanish. His preoccupations were mean, his ideas
narrow. He interested himself in petty gossip unworthy of a king,
unworthy of a man. Madame de Mailly had neither wit enough to amuse him
nor tact enough to lead him. After awhile she wearied him. He kept her
near him, however, while looking about for her successor.
VI
THE COUNTESS DE VINTIMILLE
In 1738, the Countess de Mailly had been for five years the mistress
of Louis XV., or, rather, his slave. She no longer pleased him, and
only the lingering force of habit made him tolerate her. He was so
bored that Madame de Mailly wished to divert him at any cost. She had
a sister younger than herself, Pauline Félicité, who had completed her
education, but still remained at the convent for economical reasons.
The young girl, who was not at all religiously inclined, considered
herself a prisoner. She champed at her bit. Witty, ambitious, burning
to play a part, the splendors of the chateau of Versailles constantly
appealed to her imagination. “I, also, would like to amuse myself.”
The good-natured Mailly was not alarmed by the thought of a rival.
She supposed her sister would be a precious ally, and that since a
new-comer was absolutely necessary in the cabinets, it would be better
that this new-comer should belong to the De Nesle family. Félicité
would dispel the King’s melancholy. The little suppers would no longer
have a funereal air. Louis XV. would cheer up; the situation would be
saved. Madame de Mailly showed the King the beseeching letters in which
her young sister spoke of Versailles as an Eldorado, the kingdom of
her dreams. To be summoned to court seemed to her supreme happiness.
Louis XV., flattered by so ardent a desire, granted it. Mademoiselle de
Nesle arrived at Versailles in December, 1738, and acted at first as
her sister’s companion. She pleased the King at once by her more than
lively character and her school-girlish good-humor. She was present at
all the parties and suppers, and it appears that Louis XV. made her his
mistress in 1739. He thought afterwards of finding her a husband.
The sovereign who thus glided over the declivity of scandal was,
nevertheless, not without remorse, and his melancholy increased along
with his vices. When the Holy Week of 1739 arrived, he felt a secret
anguish which troubled him profoundly. This remark of Massillon’s was
realized: “The crime which you pursue with such appetite, afterwards
pursues you like a cruel vulture, fastening upon and rending your heart
to punish you for the pleasure it has given you.”[12]
Corrupt as he was, Louis XV. had faith. He suffered, because he acted
against his conscience, and his conscience spoke louder than all his
flatterers. The more adulation they gave him the more dissatisfied
was he with himself. Nothing is so sad as the condition of a man who
believes but does not practise, who is present at divine service, who
kneels before the altar, who prays or tries to pray, and yet who does
not amend his life. The ceremonies of religion, so touching and poetic,
are then no longer consolations. They are torments. Remorse pursues
him everywhere. The chants of the Church, if they are sad, increase
his disquietude. If they are joyous, their gladness brings them into
contrast with the bitterness of his heart. The soul feels that it can
nevermore rejoice. Occasionally he conceives a horror of the woman who
turns him from his duty; she appears to him for what she is: his enemy,
his bad angel. Then the habit of vice resumes its sway. Remorse is
stilled for awhile. Holy Week has gone by. But the wound remains at the
bottom of his heart, profound, incurable.
Louis XV. dared not communicate in 1739. He had been told of
sacrilegious men, who, receiving the Host in their mouths, and thus
“eating and drinking their own damnation,” had fallen stiff and dead.
This made him reflect, and when the grand provost asked whether he
would touch for the king’s evil, which the Kings of France cannot do
until after they have received Communion, he drily answered: No. A
King of France who does not make his Easter duty, a son of St. Louis
who conducts himself like a disciple of Voltaire, what a scandal!
Concerning this, Barbier the advocate, writes in his _Journal_:
“It is dangerous for a king to give such an example to his people; we
are on good enough terms with the Pope for the Son of the Church to
have a dispensation to make his Easter communion, no matter in what
state he is, without sacrilege and with a safe conscience.” Strange
manner of comprehending religion! The impression made on the court
was deplorable in this century apparently so incredulous. D’Argenson
himself affirms this. He says: “They tried to hide the indecency by
a Low Mass which Cardinal de Rohan should say in the cabinet of the
King, Père de Linières being present; the fact that His Majesty had not
presented himself either at the tribunal of Penance or to receive the
Eucharist would be carefully concealed.”
Some months later (September 23, 1739) the King arranged a marriage
for Mademoiselle de Nesle. He had her espouse the Count de Vintimille,
and deigned to give the husband the bridal shirt with his own royal
hand. This was the first time that Louis XV. had thus honored any one.
Madame de Vintimille was the only woman to whom he gave any presents
on New Year’s Day, 1740. But the new favorite was not much the richer
for them. The monarch, afterwards so prodigal, was at this time more
than economical. The countess applied to him at least half of what was
said of the Czar Peter when he was in France: “He makes love like a
street-porter, and pays in the same way.” The Marquis de Nesle, father
of the royal mistresses, remained in a very embarrassed pecuniary
position; in November, 1739, he had been suddenly banished to Lisieux,
in spite of the credit of his daughters, for having spoken scornfully
of “his wretched suit against his wretched creditors.” D’Argenson grows
indignant at such severity. He says: “They will have it that the King
has performed a Roman action, worthy of Manlius Torquatus and Brutus,
in punishing severely his natural and actual father-in-law for a slight
offence given to a simple member of the council. This has astonished
everybody, for, as a matter of fact, one puts himself under obligations
in love, especially when one is king, and has a continuous attachment
for one of his subjects.”
At the close of 1740, Madame de Vintimille became pregnant. People
said that Louis XV. had more than one reason to be interested in the
favorite’s condition. Perhaps he fancied that he was going to taste
family joys along with her. Vain hope. Apart from pure sentiments and
legitimate affections there are only disappointments and chagrins.
Madame de Vintimille was brought to bed with a boy in August, 1741. The
King went three or four times a day to inquire about her. He embraced
the child with transports. The mother seemed at the height of favor.
But the chastisement of Heaven overtook the fault at once. Madame de
Vintimille was seized with miliary fever, and died September 9, in
atrocious torments, without having had time to receive the sacraments.
Louis XV. was dismayed. He felt himself guilty of this death in the
sight of God and men. The lover had involuntarily been the executioner.
He felt himself overwhelmed by the weight of an implacable malediction,
and, horrified at himself, he besought pardon of the dead woman and of
God. If he tried to speak, sobs impeded his utterance and he relapsed
into silence. Sick and despairing in his bed, he had Mass said in his
chamber, and people began to wonder whether he would not seek a remedy
for his remorse in asceticism. Madame de Mailly, forgetting the rival
in the sister, went to pray every day beside Madame de Vintimille’s
tomb, and it was in memory of his second mistress that Louis XV.
returned to the first one. She had the advantage of being able to weep
with him, and he could make her the confidant of his grief.
VII
THE DISGRACE OF THE COUNTESS DE MAILLY
Louis XV. wept for Madame de Vintimille in company with Madame de
Mailly. But those who thought him inconsolable little knew his
character; his schemes of conversion were but passing caprices. He
had not force enough to break the long chain of his iniquities. He
was not merely not recalled to well-doing by the lamentable death of
Madame de Vintimille, but he fell back into the paths of scandal with a
promptitude which had not even the excuse of passion.
Madame de Mailly was still the acknowledged favorite, but the King
had not loved her for a long time. She spent another year at court
after the death of Madame de Vintimille. This was a year of sorrow,
humiliations, and afflictions. Louis XV. caused the poor deserted
woman to drink the chalice of bitterness to the dregs, and made her so
unhappy that even the Queen took pity on her.
What is more lamentable than the last agonies of love? To perceive that
one has been mistaken; that the being one has thought good, generous,
and grateful is wicked, perfidious, and ungrateful; to find hardness
instead of mildness, egotism instead of devotion; what an awakening!
what a torture! And one cannot complain. Morality, decorum, religion,
all command silence. If you groan, the world scoffs at you. Your
afflictions obtain scorn and not compassion. You cannot confess your
sorrow before either God or men. The being who persecutes and outrages
you, who betrays and kills you, is still beloved, and this love, alas!
is only a folly, a weakness. You humble yourself, you crawl, you
cringe. And all that avails you nothing. Your cause is lost. Nothing is
left you but to suffer and to die.
Such was the destiny of Madame de Mailly. To lose the heart of the King
was not enough. It was reserved to her to find not merely a rival but a
persecutor in her own sister, Madame de la Tournelle.
Marie Anne de Mailly-Nesle, afterwards so well-known under the title
of Duchess de Châteauroux, was the fifth and youngest daughter of the
Marquis de Nesle. Born in 1717, she married, in 1734, the Marquis de
la Tournelle, an extremely pious young man, who spent the greater part
of his modest fortune in alms. Becoming a widow in 1740, at the age of
twenty-two, she took refuge with her relative, the Duchess de Mazarin,
lady of the bedchamber to the Queen, who died two years later. Madame
de Tournelle was again on the point of being without an asylum. But the
King had already remarked her beauty. She was appointed lady of the
palace to the Queen (September, 1742). M. de Maurepas and Cardinal
Fleury, who disliked her and already had a presentiment that she would
be their all-powerful enemy, made ruthless war upon her. But she had
for adviser the most audacious and wily of all the courtiers of Louis
XV., the Duke de Richelieu.
The Marquis d’Argenson draws the following portrait of this personage,
so celebrated in the erotic annals of the eighteenth century:--
“He carries too far the opinion one ought to have of the defects of
the monarchy and the feebleness of our epoch.... He has made himself
talked of ever since he was twelve years old. He has been put into the
Bastille three times for three causes capable of making a court hero
illustrious: for having made love to the Dauphiness, the King’s mother;
for a duel, and for a conspiracy against the State. His love for
voluptuous pleasures has ostentation rather than actual enjoyment as
its end.... He is very much the mode among women; the pretensions and
jealousies of coquettes have procured him many favors. There is never
any passion in him but plenty of debauchery. He has betrayed a feeble
sex; he has taken the senses for the heart. He is not fortunate enough
to possess a friend. He is frank through thoughtlessness, suspicious
through subtlety and contempt of mankind, disobliging through
insensibility and misanthropy. Such is the sorry model copied by a gay
and inconsiderate nation like ours.”
The Duke de Richelieu intended to reign under cover of Madame de
la Tournelle, whose guide and inspirer he had become. This affair
roused his enthusiasm. Pushing even to lyricism his sorry rôle of
intermediary, he exclaimed, in an excess of zeal: “I mean that any one
who shall enter Madame de la Tournelle’s ante-chamber shall be more
highly considered than one who might have been in private conversation
with Madame de Mailly.”[13]
The new favorite made conditions before yielding to the King. Proud
and imperious, like most beautiful and flattered women, she required
guarantees, and transformed a so-called affair of the heart into a
diplomatic negotiation. “Love,” says La Rochefoucauld, “lends its name
to an infinite number of relations attributed to it, but with which it
has no more to do than the Doge with what goes on at Venice.” Madame de
la Tournelle did not love, she calculated. More peremptory than Madame
de Vintimille, who had tolerated a partnership with Madame de Mailly,
she determined to reign alone. What she bargained for was not simply
money and consideration but the banishment of her sister. But this was
not easy to be obtained. The idea of quitting Versailles afflicted
Madame de Mailly. She made herself so humble, so modest, so resigned,
so submissive, that Louis XV. felt unable to dismiss her. From time
to time he still felt for her certain returns if not of attachment
at least of compassion. He would have liked to keep near him, as a
faithful servant, this poor woman, whose gentleness and kindness
he could not refuse to acknowledge. But Madame de la Tournelle was
inflexible. She had signified her intention not to become the mistress
of the King until after Madame de Mailly should have been irrevocably
driven from the court.
Weakness makes men cruel. Louis XV., ordinarily affable and kind,
was about to be severe beyond measure towards his former mistress.
She thought to move him by immolating herself, and resigning her
place (November, 1742) as lady of the palace to the Queen in favor of
her sister, Madame de Flavacourt, who stood well with Madame de la
Tournelle. But this sacrifice did not touch the cold heart of the King,
and he took pleasure in reducing to despair the woman whose love had
become embarrassing and tiresome.
The Duke de Luynes does not disguise his sympathy for the fallen
favorite. “Her condition,” he says, “is all the more worthy of
compassion, because she really loves the King, and is as zealous for
his glory as she is attached to his person. She has many friends, and
deservedly, for she has never done any harm, and, on the contrary, has
been anxious to be of service.... They pretend that the King said to
her some days ago: ‘I have promised you to speak plainly with you. I
am madly in love with Madame de la Tournelle.’ Madame de la Tournelle
says she is loved by M. d’Agenois, and that she loves him, and has
no desire to have the King; that he would please her by letting her
alone, and that she will never consent to his proposals but on sure and
advantageous conditions.”
Everybody pitied Madame de Mailly: Cardinal Fleury because she had
never meddled with politics; women because she was not beautiful;
courtiers because she had been serviceable. The Queen was not one of
the least affected. She displayed great good-will toward a mistress who
had had as much modesty as tact. “The Queen,” says the Duke de Luynes,
“seems to sympathize with Madame de Mailly’s situation, and to desire
that she shall be well treated.”
D’Argenson is indignant with the faithless monarch. The previous year
he had been unwilling to believe in the double passion of Louis XV. for
Madame de Mailly and Madame de Vintimille. He wrote at the time: “They
are the two most united sisters that ever were seen.... What likelihood
is there that they could remain friends if they were disputing the
possession of a heart so illustrious and precious?... But people are
never willing to believe anything but evil.” At this period, D’Argenson
did not doubt the sincerity of his master’s remorse. “The death of
Madame de Vintimille,” said he, “will bring back the King to the
practice of religion.... He will come in the end to living with Madame
de Mailly as the Duke, they say, lived with Madame d’Egmont, simply
as a friend, relapsing, if at all, only by accident, and then going
quickly to confession.... He has a heart which makes itself heard. How
few of his subjects have such a one at present! He is grateful for the
sincere attachment shown towards him. He likes kind hearts; he is,
perhaps, destined to be the delight of the world.”
A year later, the Marquis is furious at having been duped. “Great
news!” he exclaims. “The King has dismissed Madame de Mailly in
order to take her sister, Madame de la Tournelle. This was done with
inconceivable harshness on the part of the Most Christian King. It is
the sister who drives away the sister; she demands her exile, and the
taking of this third sister as a mistress makes many people believe
that the second one, Madame de Vintimille, went the same way. I, for
my part, have always maintained that the King’s extreme sensibility at
the death of Madame de Vintimille was a praiseworthy sentiment toward
the sister of his friend, whose marriage he had himself arranged. But
farewell to virtuous sensibility! So he deceived his mistress, he bound
Madame de Vintimille to ingratitude! He considers the child she left
as his son, and often has it brought secretly to his room. It is all
cleared up, then. Who has the third sister must have had the second.”
Madame de Mailly made no further attempt at resistance. “My sacrifices
are consummated,” she exclaimed; “I shall die of them; but this
evening I shall be in Paris.” She actually departed, in tears and
despairing, almost frenzied, in November, 1742. The King wrote letter
after letter to her to tell her--could one believe it?--about his love
for Madame de la Tournelle. This time, he said, he was “fixed forever,
Madame de la Tournelle having all the mind necessary to make her
charming.” The fickle sovereign congratulated himself in this more than
strange correspondence on “the general applause given to his choice.”
The new favorite triumphed with a barbarous joy. The De Goncourt
brothers, in their well-written and interesting book on the
_Mistresses of Louis XV._,[14] have given the curious letter she
wrote at this time to the Duke de Richelieu, her confidant:--
“Surely Meuse must have let you know what trouble I have had to oust
Madame de Mailly; at last I have managed to have her sent away not to
come back again. You fancy perhaps that the affair is ended? Not at
all; he is beside himself with grief, and does not write me a letter
without speaking of it, and begging me to let her return, and he will
never approach her, but only ask me to see her sometimes. I have just
received one in which he says that if I refuse I shall soon be rid of
both her and him; meaning, apparently, that they will both die of
chagrin. As it would by no means suit me to have her here, I mean to
be firm.... The King has sent you word that the affair is concluded
between us, for he tells me, in this morning’s letter, to undeceive
you, because he is unwilling to have you think anything beyond the
truth. It is true that, when he wrote you, he counted on its being
concluded this evening; but I put some difficulties in the way of that
which I do not repent of.”
Before the close of the year, the affair was settled. Madame de Mailly,
after many tears and supplications, recognized that she was beaten. The
King paid her debts, and granted her a pension of ten thousand livres
in addition to the twelve thousand she had already, and furnished
a house for her in Paris, rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, where she
established herself. Thenceforward, Madame de la Tournelle fulfilled,
uncontested and without a rival, the official functions of King’s
mistress.
VIII
THE REIGN OF THE DUCHESS DE CHÂTEAUROUX
If Louis XV. is a degenerate Louis XIV., his mistresses are likewise
inferior to those of the great King. Madame de Mailly, spite of her
mildness and her repentance, is not a La Vallière. Though Madame de
la Tournelle may become Duchess de Châteauroux, she will never be a
Montespan, notwithstanding her ambition and her arrogance. She is
doubtless pretty; her big blue eyes, her dazzling white skin, her
expression both passionate and arch, make a charming woman of her. But
she is not a mistress “thundering and triumphant,” as Madame de Sevigné
said of Madame de Montespan; she is not that type of favorite who is
“good to display before the ambassadors.” In spite of her high birth,
and her schemes for domination, there will always be something mean
about her, and the same is true of Louis XV. himself.
She had scarcely become the royal mistress when Cardinal Fleury died
(January, 1743). When Mazarin died, Louis XIV. had said: At last I
am King. Louis XV. will content himself with saying: Now I am prime
minister. He need no longer dread his former preceptor’s lessons on
morality and parsimony. He is the master. But he does not at once
renounce his economical habits, and at first Madame de la Tournelle
has trouble in extracting money from him. “It must be owned,” writes
the Duke de Luynes in April, 1743, “that the present arrangement does
not resemble what was announced at the commencement of Madame de la
Tournelle’s favor.... They said she would make no engagement unless
she were assured of a house of her own, her provisions, means to
entertain people, and a carriage for her private use, being unwilling
to use those of the King. It is true, she does not use these, but she
has none of her own; hence, she never goes out, though she is fond of
spectacles.”
She ended by making her lover less miserly. In October, 1743, he gave
her an excellent cook, an equerry, a berline, six carriage horses, and,
finally, the title of Duchess de Châteauroux, with an estate bringing
an income of eighty-five thousand livres. The letters patent were
worded as follows: “The right to confer titles of honor and dignity
being one of the most sublime attributes of supreme power, the kings,
our predecessors, have left to us divers monuments of the use they have
made of it in favor of persons whose virtues and merit they desired to
make illustrious.... Considering that our very dear and well-beloved
cousin, Marie Anne de Mailly, widow of the Marquis de la Tournelle,
issues from one of the greatest families of our realm, allied to our
own and to the most ancient in Europe; that for several centuries her
ancestors have rendered great and important services to our crown;
that she is attached as lady of the palace to the Queen, our very dear
companion, and that she joins to these advantages all the virtues and
the most excellent qualities of heart and mind which have gained for
her a just esteem and universal consideration, we have thought proper
to give her the duchy of Châteauroux, with its appurtenances and
dependencies, situated in Berry.”
Parliament was assembled to record these letters patent. “The
assembly,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “has listened gravely to all
these flowers of speech which the monarch presents to his mistress,
and has decided on the registration.” Barbier, that faithful echo of
contemporary public opinion, makes certain observations on the subject
in his journal which are not altogether lacking in malice. “These
letters,” says he, “are very honorable for the Mailly family. The King
declares that it is one of the greatest and finest illustrious houses
of the realm, allied to his own and to the most ancient of Europe.
One reflection occurs at once: it is surprising that no one has yet
decorated the males with the title of duke, and that this celebrity
begins with the women. There might be something to criticise in the
preamble to the letters; present circumstances considered, the author
has not been prudent; the crying them through the streets might also
have been dispensed with, it having given occasion for talk.”
Behold Madame de la Tournelle Duchess de Châteauroux. She is officially
presented in this quality to the Queen, who says to her, in a kindly
way: “Madame, I compliment you on the grace accorded to you by the
King.” The Duke de Richelieu is rewarded for his zeal by the post
of first gentleman of the chamber. The new duchess thrones it at
Versailles. She keeps two of her sisters near her, the Marquise de
Flavacourt, who is, like herself, one of the Queen’s ladies of the
palace, and the Duchess de Lauraguais, of whom she makes an assiduous
companion. Neither of them is pretty enough to make her jealous. She
uses them as allies. Louis XV. isolates himself in the society of these
three women, who have combined to keep him under the yoke. He amuses
himself by giving them nicknames. He calls Madame de Flavacourt the
Hen, on account of her frightened air, and the Duchess de Lauraguais
_la Rue des Mauvaises-Paroles_, on account of her caustic speeches.
Could anything great or noble proceed from this coterie? Is it
true, that, as the Goncourts have said, “Madame de Châteauroux
unites the energies and ambitions of a Longueville to the ardors and
haughty insolence of a Montespan?” Is it true that in her pride, her
impatience, the fever of her desires, the activity of her projects, the
passion of her spirit, she has the fire of a “Fronde as well as the
soul of a great reign?” We do not believe it. To judge from the Memoirs
of the Duke de Luynes, so impartial a witness, so exact a narrator,
the Duchess de Châteauroux was not a political woman, and still less a
heroine. He depicts her as dull, indolent, taciturn, bored. “She and
her sister,” he says, “spend the day in an armchair; and except in
her week, Madame de Lauraguais generally goes out for the first time
at eight or nine o’clock in the evening.... The King is with the two
sisters as often as possible, and it appears that there is never any
question of important matters between the three. Madame de Mailly would
not have been so indifferent.”
And yet France had been at war with Austria since 1741, and England
since 1742, and people were amazed that Louis XV., then in his prime,
had not yet put himself at the head of his troops. One must do him the
justice to admit that he was brave, and that, like all his ancestors,
he had the sentiment of military honor. He comprehended that longer
inaction on his part would be inexcusable, and that his place was with
the army. Marshal de Noailles, whom he had chosen for his private
adviser, at last decided him on making his first campaign. But not
without difficulty. Louis XV. hesitated for more than a year, and the
dread of leaving his mistress for several days was not one of the least
causes of his perplexity. The Marshal tried to appeal to the royal
instincts of his master. “France,” he wrote him, “has never beheld
reigns fortunate for the people nor veritably glorious for the kings,
except those in which they governed by themselves.... A king is never
so great as when he is at the head of his armies.”[15] On his side,
Louis XV. wrote to the Marshal, July 24, 1743: “I can assure you I
have an extreme desire to know for myself a profession my fathers
have practised so well.” And August 9: “If they are going to devour
my country, it will be very hard for me to see it crunched without
personally doing my utmost to prevent it.”
It was believed the King was at last going to set off; but the Duchess
de Châteauroux wanted to be able to follow him. Far from comprehending
how ridiculous the presence of a court of women would seem to the army,
she intrigued to obtain a favorable opinion of the strange desire she
cherished from her friend, the Marshal de Noailles. In a letter dated
September 3, 1743, she said to him: “I agree that the King should
start for the army: there is not a moment to lose, and it should be
done promptly; what is to become of me? Would it be impossible for my
sister and me to follow him, and if we cannot go to the army with him,
at least to post ourselves where we can hear from him every day?... I
think it well to tell you that I have asked the King to let me write
you concerning this, and that I do so with his approbation.”
Evidently Louis XV. was not going to make a campaign without his
mistress. Nevertheless, the Duke de Noailles was frank enough to reply
to the favorite: “I do not think, madame, that you can follow the King
with madame, your sister. You, yourself, feel the inconveniences of
it, since you afterwards reduce your demands to asking whether you
could not come to some town near enough to receive daily news from His
Majesty.... I cannot avoid telling you that both the King and yourself
would need some plausible reason to justify such a step in the eyes
of the public.” The result of this letter was to defer the military
inclinations of the monarch. He gave up the autumn campaign of 1743,
and did not start for the seat of war until the following spring, May
2, 1744.
IX
THE JOURNEY TO METZ
At last Louis XV. is at the head of his troops. There is a burst of
enthusiasm as soon as he appears at the northern frontier. He is
thirty-four years old, has a fine bearing and an expression at once
kindly and dignified. He sits a horse well and makes an excellent
figure in front of the regiments. He is present at the siege of Menin,
and people lavish praises on him. He has gone through the trenches, he
has visited the ambulances, he has tasted the broth of the invalids
and the bread of the soldiers. Everybody cries: “He is a warrior! he
is a father! he is a king!” He has brought his chaplain with him,
Monseigneur de Fitz-James, Bishop of Soissons, to give him the last
sacraments if required, and his confessor, Père Pérusseau, to give him
absolution in case he is in danger of death. There are no women in
camp. The Duchesses of Châteauroux and Lauraguais have shown themselves
at the opera to prove they have not followed the sovereign. Things are
going on well. There is not the least scandal. Menin opens its gates
June 4. Fireworks are set off at the Hôtel-de-Ville in Paris. The
_Te Deum_ is chanted in every church in France. Universal joy and
confidence prevail.
But presently a dark cloud appears in this clear sky. Louis XV. is
bored at the army as he was at Versailles. _Post equitem sedet atra
cura._ He misses Madame de Châteauroux, and prefers the women’s
jokes to the reports of his generals. The favorite is likewise uneasy;
she fancies that the warrior will deteriorate the lover; she fears for
her position. “In truth, dear uncle,” she writes, June 3, to the Duke
de Richelieu, “I was not made for things like these, and from time to
time I am seized by terrible discouragements. I am so naturally averse
to it all that I must have been a great fool to have meddled with it.
However, it is done, and I must have patience; I am persuaded that
everything will turn out according to my wishes.”
Madame de Châteauroux is absolutely determined to rejoin the King. But
how is it to be done? There is not a single woman with the army. If she
should be the first one to arrive, the scandal would be much too great.
A princess of the blood, the Duchess de Chartres, gives the example;
she sets off under pretext of her husband’s fall from a horse. Directly
Mesdames de Châteauroux and de Lauraguais follow suit. June 6 they
have the impudence to come and say good by to the Queen, who carries
long-suffering so far as to invite them both to supper.
“One cannot sufficiently praise,” says the Duke de Luynes in noting
the fact, “the courtesy she displays to all the men and women who come
to pay court to her.”
Two days afterward the pair of duchesses leave Versailles by night.
The King receives them at Lille, and then goes to take the city of
Ypres. Madame de Châteauroux carries fatuity so far as to attribute
this success to herself. June 25 she wrote from Lille to the Duke
de Richelieu: “You know how ready I always am to see everything in
rose-color, and that I think my star, which I rely on, and which is
not a bad one, has influence on everything. It answers instead of
good generals and ministers. He has never done so well as in placing
himself under its direction.” Thus, as is plainly evident, Madame de
Châteauroux considers herself as the King’s directress.
A thing painful to admit, because it shows so clearly the
demoralization of the period, is that the Marquis d’Argenson finds
this ridiculous and scandalous journey quite natural. He writes in his
Memoirs, June 30, 1744: “The King has begun to show himself at the
head of the army. It must be owned that this conduct is in good taste.
Some people claim that it is a stain on his glory to have brought his
mistress to the army, thus dishonoring the princesses and great people
who came with him. Surely there is some prejudice in such a reproach.
For why, in fact, should he deny himself pleasures which harm nobody?
The Flemish are superstitious. They have been told that the King has
had three sisters; they are scandalized to see these two arrive at
Lille. Two hours afterward a barracks took fire, and they said it was
caused by fire from heaven.”
Barbier is not quite so indulgent, but he pleads extenuating
circumstances. “The public,” says he, “does not find this journey to
its taste.... Nevertheless it is just to say that a decent appearance
is given it by the concourse of three princesses of the blood and a
number of ladies who are all supposed to have gone thither to keep
company with Madame the Duchess de Chartres, who had a legitimate
excuse for going to the army.”
The people, who have the veritable moral instinct, are more just
and more severe. They are indignant. The soldiers jeer at the two
duchesses. The Queen is pitied and the favorite detested. While all
this is going on, Alsace is invaded, and Louis XV. goes to Metz,
dragging after him his train of women like an Asiatic monarch. On the
way Madame de Châteauroux falls sick at Rheims. The King thinks she
is going to die, and begins to consider where she shall be buried and
what sort of mausoleum he shall build for her. It is only a vain alarm.
The favorite speedily recovers and goes to join the King at Metz. She
establishes herself and her sister in the Abbey of Saint Arnould, and
a long wooden gallery is constructed to put the abbey in communication
with the palace where Louis XV. is quartered. Four streets are closed
for this purpose. The people murmur. In order to quiet them, an effort
is made to persuade them that the only purpose of this wooden gallery
is to make it easier for the monarch to be present at Mass.
All at once a sinister rumor gets about. The King has fallen ill on
August 4. His life is in danger. He thinks he has but a few moments
before he must appear before God. All his religious sentiments revive.
He wishes to make his confession; but the departure of Madame de
Châteauroux is indispensable for that, and Louis XV., always weak,
has not courage to dismiss her. He adjourns his confession under the
pretext that he needs a little time in which to recollect all his
faults. His mistress approaches his bed. He wants to kiss her hand.
Then, thinking better of it, he says: “Ah! Princess, I think I am
doing wrong; perhaps we shall have to separate.” Madame de Châteauroux
parleys with the Jesuit Pérusseau. She implores him not to have her
driven away. She swears she will no longer be the King’s mistress, but
only his friend. But the Jesuit is firm. Bishop Fitz-James behaves like
an apostle; he says frankly to the King: “Sire, the laws of the Church
and our holy canons forbid us to bring the Viaticum so long as the
concubine is still in the city. I pray Your Majesty to give new orders
for her departure, because there is no time to lose. Your Majesty will
soon die!” Louis XV. hesitates no longer; the libertine disappears; the
devotee alone remains. “I made my first communion twenty-two years
ago,” he says to the Bishop; “I wish to make a good one now and let it
be the last. Ah! how unworthy I have been up to this day of royalty.
What accounts a king must render who is about to appear before God!”
Louis XV. receives extreme unction. Bishop Fitz-James, who administers
it, turns toward the spectators and addresses them in these words:
“Gentlemen the princes of the blood, and you, nobles of the realm, the
King charges Monseigneur the Bishop of Metz and me to acquaint you with
his sincere repentance for the scandal he has caused in his kingdom by
living as he has done with Madame de Châteauroux. He has learned that
she is only three leagues from here, and he orders her not to come
within fifty leagues of the court. His Majesty deprives her of her
post.” “And her sister also,” adds the King.
Could one believe it? This noble and Christian conduct of Bishop
Fitz-James finds detractors. Barbier writes in his journal: “People
hereabouts regard the action of the Bishop of Soissons as the finest
thing in the world. The public often admire the greatest events without
reflection. For my part, I take the liberty of considering this conduct
very indecent, and this public reparation as an open scandal. The
reputation of a king ought to be respected, and he should be allowed
to die with the rites of religion, but with dignity and majesty. What
is the good of this ecclesiastical parade? It was enough for the King
to have interiorly a sincere repentance for what he had done without
making a display of it.”
All France is affected. It is rumored that the King’s malady was caused
by his grief at the invasion of Alsace. His kindness, his repentance,
his courage, his patriotism, are everywhere celebrated. Masses are
said for him in every church in the kingdom. The clergy read from the
pulpits the bulletins from Metz and accounts of the King’s public
penance. People speak of him with tears of tenderness and admiration.
As for his favorite, the “Lady in red,” as the people call her, she is
loaded with maledictions. The Queen is sent for to Metz. She leaves
Versailles August 15, amidst universal emotion. When she reaches her
spouse, he receives her with tenderness. He embraces her and asks
pardon for the pain he has given her.
The next day Louis XV. has Madame de Villais waked up at four o’clock
in the morning. He knows the Queen has great confidence in her, and he
wants her to tell him if Marie Leczinska has really forgiven him. He
expresses the most beautiful sentiments, begging God, as he says, to
withdraw him from the world if his people would be governed better by
some one else. His convalescence begins a few days later. The Queen is
full of joy; she thinks her husband has become a saint. But here we
leave the narrative to the Duchess de Brancas, a witness of the hopes
and the disappointments of Marie Leczinska:--
“The old court,” she says in a curious fragment of Memoirs, “found
small difficulty in convincing itself that God, after striking the
King, would touch his heart. The maid-of-honor was so devoutly
persuaded of this one day that, finding the King in such a condition
that he could give the Queen indubitable marks of a sincere
reconciliation, she had the Queen’s bed changed into a nuptial couch
and put two pillows over the bolster. You can understand what hopes
were revealed, by the joy of some people and the astonishment of
others. The Queen had been wonderfully well dressed since the King’s
convalescence; she wore rose-colored gowns. The old ladies announced
their hopes by green ribbons; in fact, there had been nothing so
spirituelle in toilet adornments seen for a long time; one was
reminded of ancient gallantry by the way in which they were relied
on to announce everything without compromising anybody. But you can
also conceive the pleasure which the Duke de Bouillon and the Duke de
Richelieu took in speaking to the King about what was going on in the
Queen’s palace. He seemed so dissatisfied with it that these gentlemen
thought they would not displease him by notifying the mothers of the
churches that they had been mistaken in getting ready a _Te Deum_
which they would never chant, and that nothing was more uncertain than
the King’s conversion. This was quite enough to decide these ladies to
change their toilette. Some assumed more modest colors, others lowered
their headdresses, still others wore less rouge.”
The Duke de Richelieu, that Mephistopheles of Louis XV., had prophesied
correctly. When he was sick, the King was a saint. When he was well, he
once more became a debauchee. A sort of human respect made him blush
at his momentary conversion to virtue. He felt there was something
ridiculous in his repentance. He bore a grudge against his confessor,
his chaplain, and all those who had given him good advice. The love
of his people, far from touching his heart, dissatisfied him, because
these loyal and faithful subjects had had the audacity not to kneel
before the Duchess de Châteauroux. He took offence at the respect
showed to the Queen, and considered the priests who had prayed so
well for him almost as adversaries of his royal authority. Poor Marie
Leczinska’s illusions were soon dispelled. When Louis XV. was about
to leave Metz, she tremblingly asked his permission to follow him to
Saverne and to Strasburg. “It is not worth while,” he responded in a
dry tone. The Queen went away in despair. The heart she thought she had
regained had finally escaped her.
X
THE DEATH OF THE DUCHESS DE CHÂTEAUROUX
What has become of Madame de Châteauroux? How is she bearing her
humiliations and her disgrace? We left her at Metz at the moment when,
driven away ignominiously by the Bishop of Soissons, treated as an
accursed wretch by the people, overwhelmed by the anathemas of the
public conscience, she with great difficulty procured a carriage from
Marshal de Belle-Isle in which to return to Paris. Her flight had been
painful. She only escaped rough treatment by taking by-roads and going
through several villages in disguise and on foot. However, she had not
yet submitted. From Bar-le-Duc she wrote to M. de Richelieu:[16] “I can
well believe that so long as the King’s head is feeble he will be in a
state of great devotion; but as soon as he is a little better, I bet I
shall trot furiously through his head, and that in the end he will not
be able to resist, and will quietly ask Lebel and Bachelier what has
become of me.”
In the same letter the fallen favorite speaks of herself with admiring
complacency. “So long as the King is living,” she says, “all the
torments they want to inflict on me must be borne with patience. If
he recovers, I shall affect him the more on that account, and he will
feel the more obliged to make me a public reparation. If he dies, I
am not the sort of person to humiliate myself, even if I could gain
the kingdom of France by it. Up to now I have conducted myself with
dignity; I shall always preserve that inclination; it is the only
way to make myself respected, to win back the public and retain the
consideration I deserve.” Can one be amazed at the illusions cherished
by certain kings when a mere royal mistress has her eyes so thickly
bandaged?
Debility succeeded to fever. Sometimes Madame de Châteauroux,
intoxicated with pride and vengeance, fancied she was about to resume
arrogantly the left-handed sceptre which had just slipped through her
fingers; sometimes she cast a disdainful glance at the sorry spectacle
of the human comedy, and talked of abandoning everything. She wrote
from Sainte-Ménehould to the Duke de Richelieu (August 18, 1744): “All
this is very terrible and gives me a furious disgust for the place I
lived in despite myself, and, far from desiring to return there some
day, as you believe, I am persuaded that even if they wished it I could
never consent. All I desire, meanwhile, is that the affront offered me
shall be repaired, and not to be dishonored. That, I assure you, is my
sole ambition.... Ah! my God, what does all this amount to? I give you
my word it is all over so far as I am concerned. I would have to be a
great fool to go into it again; and you know how little I was flattered
and dazzled by all the grandeurs, and that if I had had my own way, I
would not have been there; but the thing is done; I must resign myself
and think no more about it.”
These be sage reflections. But the favorite’s philosophy lasted no
longer than the King’s repentance. La Rochefoucauld says in his maxims:
“The intelligence of the majority of women serves rather to fortify
their folly than their reason.” Hardly had she reached Paris when the
Duchess felt all her ambitious spites and rages rekindle to new life.
She wrote to the Duke de Richelieu: “You have good reason to say it
would be fine to make the day of the Dupes come round again; for me, I
don’t doubt, it is all the same a Thursday; but patience is needed,--in
fact, a great deal of patience. All you have been told about the
remarks made at Paris is very true; you could hardly believe how far
they have gone; if you had been there at the time, you would have
been torn to pieces.... I tell you we shall get through it, and I am
persuaded it will be a very fine moment; I should like to be there now,
as you can easily believe.”
Evidently, renunciation of earthly vanities was already far in the
background. The Duchess wrote again to Richelieu, September 13: “I hope
the King’s sickness has not taken away his memory. No one but me has
known his heart thus far, and I assure you he has a very good one, very
capable of sentiments. I don’t deny that there is something a little
singular along with all that, but it does not get the upper hand. He
will remain devout, but not a bigot; I love him ten times better; I
will be his friend, and then I shall be beyond attack. All that these
scamps have done during his illness will only make my destiny more
fortunate and secure. I shall no longer have to fear either changes,
sickness, or the devil, and we shall lead a delicious life.... Adieu,
dear uncle, keep yourself well. For my part, I am really thinking of
getting a health like a porter’s, so as to enrage our enemies as long
as I can and have time to ruin them; that will happen, you may rely on
it.”
Meanwhile all this was accompanied by moral and physical sufferings,
convulsions, nervous attacks, inquietudes, and agonizing pains. With
her ecstasies and self-abasements, her alternatives of pride and
humility, folly and clear-sightedness, ardor and disgust, illusions and
discouragement, Madame de Châteauroux is the type of the passionate
woman. There is nothing sadder than this correspondence, which is the
confession of a soul. One lacks courage to be angry with these avowals
so naïve in their immorality. To make such scandals possible a whole
century must be corrupted. What one should accuse is not a woman, but
an epoch.
Madame de Châteauroux understood the character of Louis XV. very well.
She knew beforehand that he would come back to her. He had, in fact,
but one idea,--to be reconciled with his mistress. He found camp life
insupportable. He consented to witness the taking of Fribourg, but as
soon as the city surrendered he returned in haste to Paris. He made
his formal entry November 13, 1744, at six in the evening, in one of
the coronation carriages. Triumphal arches had been erected with the
inscription: _Ludovico redivivo et triumphatori_. The houses were
filled to the roofs with applauding spectators. The monarch alighted at
the palace of the Tuileries, where the nobles of the realm were drawn
up in double line awaiting him. The next day he went with all the royal
family to Notre Dame to render thanks to God. Madame de Châteauroux
was hidden amongst the crowd. In the evening she wrote to Richelieu:
“I have seen him; he looked joyful and affected, so he is capable of a
tender sentiment.... A single voice near me recalled my misfortunes by
naming me in a very offensive manner.”
It was neither of his glory, his people, or of God that Louis XV. was
thinking, as he came out of Notre Dame. Madame de Châteauroux still
occupied his whole attention. She lived very near the Tuileries, in the
rue de Bac. That night, when all was quiet in the palace, he crossed
the Pont-Royal, and arrived unattended at the favorite’s house, like a
criminal who comes to entreat pardon. Madame de Châteauroux received
him with arrogance, and imposed severe conditions before absolving
him. Louis XV. was ready to agree to everything except the dismissal
of Maurepas, a useful and agreeable minister, who worked as well as
amused himself, and who had the gift of making business easy. The King
then returned to the Tuileries, and presently it was rumored that
the Duchesses of Châteauroux and Lauraguais were about to reappear
triumphantly at court. The people, who resemble the chorus in Greek
tragedies, at once resumed their anathemas. “Since the King is going
to take her back,” cried the market-women, “he will never find another
‘_Pater_’ on the streets of Paris.”
The prudent Duke de Luynes was more circumspect in his speech. He
said, apropos of the news of this return to favor: “It has been almost
publicly spoken of all over Paris, and Versailles, where little is said
ordinarily, has not been absolutely exempt from some remarks concerning
it. However, as such remarks serve only to displease, and are moreover
useless, those who are wisest have kept silence.”
The thing was done, the arrangement concluded. There had been a
compromise between the King and his mistress. Maurepas was not to leave
the ministry, but it was he who was charged to bear the King’s excuses
to Madame de Châteauroux, rue de Bac, and an invitation to return to
Versailles. The minister acquitted himself of this commission November
25. The Duchess, who was sick abed, replied that as soon as she was
able to get up she would comply with the King’s orders. That evening
she wrote to her friend the Duchess de Boufflers: “I rely too much on
your friendship not to acquaint you at once with what concerns me. The
King has just sent me word by M. de Maurepas, that he was very much
offended by all that occurred at Metz, and the indecency with which I
had been treated; that he begged me to forget it, and that, to give
him a proof of my having done so, he hoped my sister and myself would
have the kindness to resume our apartments at Versailles; that he would
give us on all occasions tokens of his protection, his esteem, and his
friendship, and that he would restore us to our positions.”
So many emotions had prostrated Madame de Châteauroux. Joy revived
her for awhile, but all was over with her; she was never again to see
either the palace of Versailles, so greatly longed for, or the King
whose love had been so fatal to her. She never left her bed again. A
burning fever consumed her; she thought herself poisoned, and suffered
horrible tortures in soul and body. Her worst enemies would have
pitied her. Her agony lasted eleven days. She had a violent delirium
accompanied by convulsive movements, and struggled against death with
all the energy of her youth, all the vehemence of her character. In
spite of his pretended passion, Louis XV. did not trouble himself to
come and bid her adieu. He did not even send directly to inquire about
her. Madame de Lauraguais, who had just had a child, was not beside her
sister’s bed. The Duchess de Châteauroux died alone, December 8, 1744.
The King deserted her; Jesus Christ did not forsake her. At her last
hour, she repented like Magdalen, and for the first time in years, the
dying sinner knew interior peace. “Père Ségand was with her,” says the
Duke de Luynes. “As he was speaking to her of the confidence we ought
to have in the Blessed Virgin, she replied that she had always worn a
little medal of her, and that she had begged two graces through her
intercession,--not to die without the sacraments, and to die on one of
her feasts. She had already obtained the first and was presently to
obtain the second, for she died on the feast of the Conception.”
At first Louis XV. felt crushed. The Queen herself, who practised on so
great a scale the wholly Christian virtue of forgiveness of injuries,
the Queen shared sincerely in her husband’s grief. She passed in
solitude the evening which had been set apart for a friendly reunion
at the house of the Duchess de Luynes. During the night she became
frightened, and summoned one of her women: “My God!” cried she, “that
poor duchess! If she should return!... I think I see her.”--“Eh!
madame,” returned the chambermaid, “if she comes back, it will not be
Your Majesty that receives her first visit.”
Barbier in his journal pities, not Madame de Châteauroux, as one
might imagine, but Louis XV. He says: “Judicious people praise his
sensibility, which is the proof of a good character, but they fear for
his health. The common herd are rather pleased than otherwise at this
death; they would like to have the King unsentimental and take another
one to-morrow.” The Marquis d’Argenson writes to Richelieu: “Our poor
master has a look which makes one tremble for his life.” D’Argenson
might reassure himself. Louis XV. was far too feeble to suffer a long
sorrow. His emotions were keen but transitory. There was but one
thing in his character which had any tenacity, and that was ennui. He
belonged to the numerous family of egoists. Some of them weep a good
deal, but console themselves quickly. Nothing was to be changed in the
habits of the master. A few days more and the name of the Duchess de
Châteauroux would be no more spoken. There was but one person who truly
regretted her, and that was Madame de Mailly, the sister to whom she
had shown herself so coldly and pitilessly cruel.
An impression of melancholy and sorrow is what remains from all this.
What, in brief, was the fate of the three sisters chosen by royal
caprice? One of them, the Countess de Vintimille, died in childbed at
the age of twenty-eight, and her death was the direct consequence,
the immediate chastisement, of her fault. Another, the Duchess de
Châteauroux, breathed her last at the age of twenty-seven, the victim
of excessive anguish and humiliation. Her favor, like that of Madame
de Vintimille, had lasted only two years. The third, the Countess
de Mailly, better treated by Providence, since she had at least time
for repentance, lived until she was forty. But her last years were
merely one long immolation. She covered herself with ashes; she wore
a hair shirt; and if, as she was on her way to church, any passer-by
recognized and called her by some insulting name, she would say: “You
know me--well, then, pray for me.”
How ephemeral are the pleasures of courts! How sad its sensual
enjoyments! How dearly one pays for these swift moments of illegitimate
joy and false pride! Ah! I understand why Louis XV. should be
dissatisfied with others and with himself. I understand his exhaustion,
his discouragement, his remorse, and I am not amazed that, in spite of
the clink of glasses, the glitter of chandeliers, and the perfume of
flowers, the boudoirs of Versailles sometimes resembled sepulchres.
SECOND PART
[1745–1768]
[Illustration: MADAME DE POMPADOUR.]
I
LOUIS XV. AND THE ROYAL FAMILY IN 1745
The tragic end of the Duchess de Châteauroux should have inspired Louis
XV. with some sage reflections. It was otherwise. At the end of a few
weeks a new favorite installed herself in the apartment left vacant
by the defunct. Before narrating the long reign of the Marquise de
Pompadour, let us glance at the interior of the royal family at the
moment when this woman, who was much rather a minister in petticoats
than a mistress, and who unhappily personifies a whole epoch, came into
favor.
In 1745 Louis XV. is thirty-five years old. From the physical point
of view he is a model sovereign. His handsome face is characterized
by an expression of benevolent grandeur and gentle majesty. A fine
and sympathetic physiognomy, large blue eyes with an expressive and
profound regard, an aquiline nose, a truly royal way of carrying
his head, the most dignified attitude without the least appearance
of stiffness, manners both elegant and simple, an agreeable and
penetrating tone of voice, all contribute to give an exceptional
charm to this king whom all France surnames the Well-Beloved. He
shows extreme politeness to all who approach him, and one might say
that he seems to solicit the affection of those to whom he speaks.
An accomplished gentleman, he is always calm, always well-bred. He
is never irritated, never raises his voice. His domestics find him
the easiest of masters. One day as he is getting ready to mount on
horseback, somebody fetches him two boots for the same foot. He sits
down quietly and contents himself with saying: “He who made the mistake
is more annoyed than I am.”[17] In general he is reserved, taciturn;
he does not give himself away, but when he concludes to talk, his
conversation is full of ingenious views and judicious remarks; he has
wit and good sense.
In religious matters he is not a hypocrite; he belongs to that numerous
class of Christians who retain both their vices and the faith. He
goes to Mass every day. On Sundays and holy days he is also present
at Vespers, Sermon, and Benediction. As the Marquis d’Argenson says,
he “mutters his Paternosters and prayers in church with customary
decency,” and he is putting off to some future time his perfect
conversion. When he is urged to eat meat in Lent for the sake of his
health, he answers that one ought not to sin on all sides. At another
time he is heard congratulating himself on his rheumatic pains,
because, says he, his sufferings are an expiation for his faults.
One day when he is sending alms to a poor man, he exclaims: “Let this
poor man ask God to show mercy to me, for I greatly need it.” When the
feasts of the Church draw near, they occupy his mind and disturb it;
when he dares not communicate, through fear of sacrilege, his soul is
filled with sadness, and the flatteries of his courtiers cannot give
peace to his conscience.
His remorse takes the form of ennui. Dissatisfied with himself, he
often reflects that he is endangering his salvation for so-called
pleasures from which he frequently gains nothing but physical and moral
fatigue, which are still harder to endure. Egotism does not prevent him
from yielding to disgust. As is remarked by M. Capefigue himself, great
admirer as he is of royal pleasures, the capital defect of the King’s
character is to allow the immense ennui which consumes him to become
too evident. “He suffers the terrible chastisement imposed by satiety,
that cold branding of both soul and body; he experiences the emptiness
and impotence of sensuality.”
Such also is the conclusion of the Goncourts in their fine work, _Les
Maîtresses de Louis XV._ “Ennui,” they say, “is the sovereign’s evil
genius. It strikes with impotence all his fortunate natural endowments;
it ages, disarms, extinguishes his will, it stifles his conscience as
well as his kingly appetites. Ennui is the private torturer of his
sluggish existence, of his heavy hours.... So true is this that the
story of a king’s amours is also the story of the ennui of a man.”
The Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes fully confirm this appreciation.
He says in them: “The King’s temperament is neither gay nor lively;
it is even hypochondriacal. Details concerning maladies, operations,
very often matters that concern anatomy, and questions about where one
expects to be buried, are, unfortunately, the subjects of his ordinary
conversation.” “Where would you like to be buried?” he asks M. de
Souvré one day. “At Your Majesty’s feet,” replies the courtier, who
is noted for his frankness. Louis XV. remains pensive, because he has
just been reminded that kings are not immortal. How well these profound
words of Pascal apply to Louis XV.: “It does not require a very lofty
soul to understand that there is no true and solid satisfaction here
below, that all our pleasures are but vanities, that our woes are
infinite, and that in fine death, which threatens us every instant,
must put us in a few years, and perchance in a few days, in an eternal
state of happiness, or misery, or annihilation. Between us and heaven,
hell or nothingness, there is, then, nothing but life, which is the
most fragile of all things in the world; and heaven being certainly not
for those who doubt whether their soul is immortal, they have nothing
to expect but hell or nothingness. Nothing is more real than this, nor
more terrible. Do all that the brave demand of us, and yet there is
the end which awaits the most beautiful of lives.” Here is the secret
of the King’s implacable sadness. Like all men who have but half a
religion, he finds in it not consolations, but terrors. The feasts of
the Church are not joys but tortures to him.
His monarchical faith is like his religious faith; it disturbs rather
than reassures him. He feels himself unworthy to be the anointed of the
Lord. His conscience as a king troubles him as much as his conscience
as a Christian. He esteems neither himself nor those who surround him.
He willingly agrees with his minister of foreign affairs, the Marquis
d’Argenson, a monarchist who talks like a republican, that “Numerous
and magnificent courts, the bait of fools and the wicked, will never
make the splendor of royalty. There will always be display enough
in decency.... Be persuaded that the greatest vice of monarchical
governments is what is called the court. To begin with the monarch, it
is from him that all vices are drawn, and from him that they spread as
from the box of Pandora.” But do not exaggerate, do not force the note.
Recollect especially that republican courts--and there are such, for
democrats in power also have their courtiers--are neither more rigid
nor more moral than those of kings and emperors.
It must always be remembered that a real difference exists between the
royalty of Louis XIV. and that of Louis XV. Louis XIV. performed his
kingly duties with the facility of a great actor playing his part, or,
better, with the dignity of an officiating priest. Louis XV., on the
contrary, in spite of his noble bearing and the successful beginnings
of his reign, is almost ashamed of his royal dignity. He does not like
what is grand; what he prefers are small apartments, little suppers,
petty conversations. At times the monarch is not even a private
gentleman; he is a bourgeois who makes up his own kitchen accounts,
who saves candle-ends, who haggles with his domestics, who leads a
mean and grovelling existence. It is not he who would have chosen the
haughty device of the Sun King: _Nec pluribus impar_. The beams of
the royal star dazzle his eyes. What pleases him is not the splendid
glittering Gallery of Mirrors, but smart residences, little dwellings
hid in verdure; Choisy for example, where, as the Duke de Luynes puts
it, he is almost like a private person who takes pleasure in doing the
honors of his château.
But neither let us forget that from time to time Louis XV. has inklings
of greatness, dreams of glory and power. He is not the sluggard king
that badly informed historians portray. Military instincts revive
in him. The pride of his race awaked. “The King amidst his troops,
becomingly uniformed in white or blue or jonquil, his hat placed
coquettishly above his ear, the white cord, the shoulder-knot on his
coat, himself starts the gay speeches, the tales of gallantry. The
nobleman goes to battle in ruffles and powdered hair, with perfume
on his Brussels lace handkerchief; elegance has never done harm to
courage, and politeness is nobly allied to bravery.”[18]
1745 is a triumphant year, the year of Fontenoy, one of our greatest
national victories. There Louis XV. and the Dauphin behave like sons of
Henri IV. Voltaire’s enthusiasm when he celebrates this great day is
not made to order, and the advocate Barbier is sincere in exclaiming
that the reign of Louis XV. is the finest in all French history.
Nor let us believe that this monarch, over-lauded by his contemporaries
but too much decried by history, is as indolent as people like to
say. On the contrary, he works, and works a great deal. He not merely
presides with the greatest regularity at the ministerial council, but
he busies himself in a very special way with military and diplomatic
affairs. If he readily agrees with what is proposed by his ministers
without troubling himself to contradict them, it is because apart from
official politics he has a secret policy whose springs he personally
controls.[19] His intentions are good, he loves France sincerely. What
then will ruin him? Two defects which are nearly always inseparable:
sensuality and indecision.
Sensuality enfeebles, enervates; the man who is its victim can no
longer either act or will. In the end he arrives at that commonplace
benevolence, that insignificant good nature, that absence of character
and energy, those inconsistencies and hesitations which rob sovereigns
as well as private individuals of the very notion of just ideas and the
courage of salutary resolutions. Louis XV. comes from the arms of his
mistresses without force enough left to be a king.
Distrust and timidity form the basis of his character. “He knows he is
badly served,” says M. Boutaric; “absolute master, he has only to speak
to be obeyed, and, fortified by conscience, he can command, but he is
so timid, let us say the word, so pusillanimous, that after having
carefully sought the best way and seen it clearly, he nearly always
decides, although with regret, for the worst which is proposed to him
by his ministers or his mistresses. It is of public notoriety that when
the King proposes anything in council, his opinion is always combated,
and that, after making a number of objections, the prince always ends
by adopting that of his counsellors, knowing, meantime, that he is
doing wrong, and muttering to himself, ‘So much the worse; they would
have it.’” Thus he illustrates those lines of Horace:--
“Video meliora proboque,
Deteriora sequor.”
[Illustration: JEANNE D’ALBRET]
There are moments when, to use the expression of Duclos, he affects to
regard himself as a disgraced prince of the blood without any credit
at court. One day when the Queen is complaining of the opposition made
to one of her recommendations by a minister, he says: “Why don’t you
do as I do? I never ask anything of those people.” In spite of his
omnipotence he feels himself always under the necessity of employing
subterfuges and underhand expedients. According to a man who knew him
well and saw him every day, Le Roy, master of the hounds, he considered
dissimulation the most needful quality for a sovereign. “His hobby,”
says the Marquis d’Argenson, “is to be impenetrable.” Another of his
defects is to consider that very honest men are generally not very
able. Hence the great number of disreputable men whom he intrusts with
most important positions. With such a system he is doomed to perpetual
fluctuations, to that variability which is the sign of weakness. He
will hesitate between peace and war, between a Prussian and an Austrian
alliance, between the Parliamentarians and their enemies, between the
Jesuits and the Jansenists. He has a horror of the philosophers, and
he will make Voltaire a gentleman of the chamber and lodge Quesnay
in an entresol of the palace of Versailles. He sincerely believes in
the truth of the Catholic religion, and he will take as his mistress,
counsellor, and directress the friend of the Encyclopedists. By
conviction and principle he is essentially conservative, and he will be
the precursor of the Revolution.
“Oh! how well the word feebleness,” exclaims D’Argenson, “expresses the
passions of certain men endowed with good nature and facility. They
see and approve the best and they follow the worst. Their virility
is but a prolongation of childhood. Frequently they mistake the
shadow of pleasure for pleasure itself. Youthfulness, childishness,
self-love without pride, their acts of firmness are but obstinacy and
revolt.... With this sad character a prince thinks he governs well
when he simply does not govern at all. Every one deceives him, and he
is the chief of his own betrayers. He has mistresses for whom he has
no predilection, and absolute ministers in whom he does not confide.
All the defects of which foreigners accuse Frenchmen are found in
him; contrasts everywhere, the effects of a too frivolous imagination
which overmasters judgment; wasted talents, good taste which nothing
can satisfy, exactness in little things, inconstancy and lack of
enthusiasm in great ones ...; memory without remembrance; patience and
calm, promptitude and kindness, mystery and indiscretion, avidity for
new pleasures, disgust and ennui, momentary sensibility succeeded by
general and complete apathy ... total, a good master without humanity.”
Having thus drawn the portrait of Louis XV., D’Argenson says in
speaking of the Queen: “She attracts by certain attentions, she repels
by making her friendship too common. Her rank is a rallying signal
and, since the King has declared mistresses, those who inveigh against
scandal attach themselves to her for the sake of displeasing the King
and the favorite. Their murmurs are proportioned to the royal patience.”
In 1745 Marie Leczinska, who is the King’s senior by seven years, has
arrived at the age of forty-two. When her tenth child was born, July
15, 1737, Madame Louise, who was one day to become a Carmelite, some
one asked the King, who already had six living children, if the little
princess should be called Madame Seventh. He answered: “Madame Last.”
Thenceforward the Queen was neglected. Her husband has treated her with
frigid politeness, but has always kept her at a distance; he never
speaks to her except before witnesses. On New Year’s day he gives her
no presents. Not the least intimacy, the slightest unconstraint. The
short daily visits he pays her are matters of decorum, formalities of
etiquette. The Queen eats by herself. Between her apartments and those
of the King there is a barrier which she never crosses. The familiar
life and the cabinet suppers are not for her. Separated from each other
by the Peace Salon, the Gallery of Mirrors, and the Council Chamber,
each of the spouses has a life apart.
Marie Leczinska is the only person who maintains at Versailles the
ceremonious representation of the court of the great King, not
through pride, but out of respect for principles. By eleven o’clock
in the morning she has already heard one Mass, seen the King for an
instant, received her children and the little entries; at noon the
state toilette and the great entries. At one o’clock Marie Leczinska
hears a second Mass. At two o’clock she dines in public,[20] served
by her maid of honor and four ladies in full dress. A low balustrade
separates her from a crowd, always curious to be present at this
repast and to contemplate the features of a justly honored queen.
Toward six in the evening she plays the game of loto then in fashion,
the _Cavagnole_. When the King is present, she never sits down
until he bids her do so, and ’tis a wonder if the pair exchange a few
syllables. At ten the Queen withdraws, and after supper she sees a very
restricted circle: the Duke and Duchess de Luynes, Mesdames de Villars
and de Chevreuse, Minister Maurepas, Cardinals de Tencin and de Luynes,
President Hénault, Moncrif, and sometimes old Fontenelle. On Sundays
the presentation of ladies takes place. It is also the day chosen for
the taking of tabourets. The ceremonies occur in the room called the
Queen’s Salon,[21] contiguous to the sleeping-chamber. The sovereign’s
chair is placed at the back of the room on a platform covered by a
canopy.[22] “By a few words, a nod, a glance, a smile, Marie Leczinska
knows how to encourage the lady presented, whose embarrassment soon
yields to a gentle confidence as the Queen addresses to her one of
those remarks which remain engraven in the heart.”[23]
To sum up, neglected as she is by her husband, the Queen is happier
than he, because she has the great boon, the supreme good, which he has
not: peace of heart. “What comparison is there,” says a great preacher,
“between the frightful remorse of conscience, that hidden worm
which gnaws incessantly, that sadness of crime which undermines and
depresses, that weight of iniquity which crushes, that interior sword
which pierces and which we cannot draw out, and the amiable sadness of
penitence which works salvation?”[24] This expression “amiable sadness”
is most applicable to the Queen. Doubtless she suffers profoundly at
seeing Louis XV. throw himself down the declivity of scandal. But,
far from recriminating, she offers her sufferings to God. Gentle and
pious victim, she finds ineffable consolations at the foot of the
altar. Instead of avenging herself on the King by reproaches and bitter
speeches, she prays for him. Her calmness, resignation, charity, her
Christian virtues, and exquisite affability, make her the object of
universal veneration. She is called nothing but the Good Queen.
The Dauphin[25] is not less esteemed than his mother. In 1745 he is
sixteen years old. He is a pious, well-taught, well-intentioned young
man. He has made serious studies. His favorite reading is Plato,
Cicero, Tacitus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, Juvenal. He knows by heart
the finest passages of the philosophers and poets of antiquity. For
him were made those magnificent editions of the Louvre, _Ad usum
Delphini_, one of the most precious monuments of contemporary
typography.
Full of respect for his father, he never speaks to him but in the
tone of profound submission. He effaces himself, he holds himself in
restraint. He says: “A Dauphin should employ one half his mind in
concealing the other half.” Louis XV. is suspicious; it is well not to
offend him.
The Dauphin marries at Versailles, February 23, 1745, an Infanta of
Spain, daughter of Philip V., Marie Thérèse Antoinette Raphaelle,
younger sister of that Infanta Marie Anne Victoire whom Louis XV. was
to have married. The affront of sending back that princess is thus
repaired. The marriage festivities are splendid; no such pomp had ever
been seen. “As the King has need of money,” writes Barbier, “especially
for the very considerable expenses of the Dauphin’s marriage, a great
many tontines are raised.” The day that the Dauphiness arrived at
Étampes, the King, who went to meet her, said: “Here is a good day’s
work done.” She replied: “Sire, this is not what I dreaded most; I
flattered myself you would receive me kindly. I am more afraid of
to-morrow and the next day; everybody will be looking at me, and I
shall perhaps find less favorable dispositions.” The new Dauphiness
is not pretty, but she is sympathetic. Her amiability wins everybody.
She says to Madame de Brancas that she does not understand how one can
become angry, and that if any possible case arose to make it necessary,
she would beg some one the day before to do so in her stead.
This marriage diverts the King, who no longer thinks of the poor
Duchess de Châteauroux, who has been dead two months. Pleasures tread
on each other’s heels. The court is dazzling. How superb are these
Versailles festivities, the last term of elegance and luxury! What
a magnificent masked ball[26] in the radiant Gallery of Mirrors,
glittering sanctuary of ecstasy and apotheosis, modern Olympus which
seems made for goddesses and gods! Imagine that aristocratic crowd
which swarms up the Ambassadors’ Staircase, streams through the grand
apartments of the King, the halls of Venus, Diana, Mars, Mercury, and
Apollo, the War Salon, to be present at the fairy-like ball given
in the gallery under the vaulted ceilings decorated by Lebrun’s
magic brush! Fancy the animation, the tumult of good company, the
harmonious orchestras, the witty or gallant conversations, the bright
eyes glowing behind their masks, the colossal mirrors reflecting the
richest and most varied costumes: fabulous divinities, great lords and
châtelaines of the Middle Ages, Watteau’s shepherds and shepherdesses;
chandeliers innumerable, pyramids of candles, baskets of flowers, a
rain of diamonds and precious stones, and, to heighten still more
the bewildering charm, the mysterious presence of that monarch, the
handsomest man in all the kingdom, who hides his royalty under the
folds of his domino!
In our civilian and democratic century we find it very difficult to
get a perfect notion of such festivities. “We children of a wretched
and bloody revolution,” as M. Capefigue says, “see these galleries of
glass and gilding inundated with people in rough clothing, with noisy,
hobnailed shoes, like a muddy torrent spreading over a parterre of
tulips and variegated roses.” Let us not forget that there was chivalry
and courage, carelessness and gaiety, animation and native wit, charm
and elegance, in the last fortunate days of the French nobility. If the
men who shone at that period should return, they would find ours mean
and irksome.
The noise of battle succeeds the echoes of the orchestras. Two months
and a half after this fine ball Louis XV. and his son are with the
army. The King wishes that the Dauphin, although but sixteen years
old, should set an example, and at Fontenoy the young man excites the
admiration of old soldiers by his ardor and courage.
Louis XV. is a happy father. His son is a model of filial respect.
His six daughters, Mesdames Elisabeth, Henriette, Adelaide, Victoire,
Sophie, and Louise, all of whom with the exception of Madame Adelaide
were educated in the convent of Fontevrault, have the most religious
sentiments and display profound affection for their father. Only one of
them is married, the eldest, Madame Elisabeth, who espoused in 1739 the
Infant Don Philip, son of the King of Spain, and with whom Louis XV.
did not part without keen sorrow. In 1745 only two of his daughters,
Henriette and Adelaide, are with him. The other three, Victoire,
Sophie, and Louise, are still at Fontevrault, and it is singular that
this king, so affectionate to his children, should leave them in a
convent eighty leagues from Versailles when it would be so easy to
place them, if not close beside him, at least in some neighboring
convent.
In order to complete this sketch of the royal family in 1745, it
remains to say a few words about the Duke d’Orléans and his son, the
Duke de Chartres.
Born in 1703, and widowed since 1726 of a princess of Baden, the Duke
d’Orléans, only son of the regent, seldom shows himself at court. The
premature death of his wife, whom he had the misfortune of losing
after two years of marriage, had inspired him with extremely grave and
Christian reflections. His tastes have become those of an anchorite.
In 1730 he resigned his position as Colonel-general in order to be
more at liberty to make very frequent retreats at the Abbey of Sainte
Geneviève. In 1742 he finally renounced all political action, and
quitted the Council of State in order to install himself definitively
in his dear abbey, where he leads the life of a monk, between prayer
and study. He has left the administration of his property to his
mother, keeping for himself only an income of one million eight hundred
thousand livres, which he spends almost entirely in works of charity.
’Tis a curious type this prince, so little like his father; this
Christian, pious to asceticism, who sleeps on straw, drinks only water,
does without fire in winter, who composes but will not print austere
works, a translation of the Psalms with commentaries, part of the Old
Testament and some of the Epistles of Saint Paul, a treatise against
the theatre, historical and theological dissertations,--a monastic
prince whom the court has inclined to the cloister, who at his death
(February 4, 1752) will bequeath his library to the Dominicans, his
medals to the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève, and whose funeral oration will
be composed by Jean Jacques Rousseau.
His son, the Duke de Chartres, is twenty years old in 1745. A brilliant
and brave young prince, who has distinguished himself as colonel at
the battle of Dettingen, and as lieutenant-general at the siege of
Fribourg. Married in 1743 to Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, he
loves the world as much as his father dislikes it, and he will be one
of the principal actors in the theatre of the little apartments.
So long as the Dauphin has no male children, it is the Orléans branch
which, according to the renunciations of the treaty of Utrecht, must
ascend the throne of France in case of the death of Louis XV. and his
son. But on both sides of the Pyrenees the practical value of these
renunciations is contested. When Louis XV. fell seriously ill before
his marriage, in 1721, Philip V. made ready to reclaim the crown of
France if the young King should die. When the Dauphin, who as yet
has no heir, will himself be in danger of death, Madame du Hausset
will write in her Memoirs: “The King would be in despair at having
a prince of the blood as his recognized successor. He does not like
them, and looks at them so distantly as to humiliate them. When his son
recovered, he said: ‘The King of Spain would have had a good chance.’
It is claimed that he was right in this, and that it would have been
justice; but that if the Duke d’Orléans had had a party, he might have
claimed the throne.”
We have just outlined the portraits of the members of the royal family
in 1745. We are about to study the character of the woman who, issuing
from the middle classes, was to exercise a real domination over the
King and all his court during twenty years.
II
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR
There are names which are the abridgment of an entire society. Such
is that gay name which rhymes so well with “amour,” which seems made
expressly for a _grande dame_ after the manner of Lancret or Watteau,
which would fit so well a comic opera or a pastoral, which is worthy
to figure in the Temple of Cnidos and to be celebrated by the pretty
little verses of the Abbé de Bernis, which evokes so many souvenirs
of immoral elegance and factitious sentimentality of boudoirs and
alcoves, comedies and gewgaws, pleasures and intrigues: the Marquise
de Pompadour. Woman, name, title, all are alike gracious, pretty,
sprightly; but nothing is simple, nothing true. The character is that
of a comedienne perpetually on the stage. The beauty owes a great part
of its prestige to the refinements of luxury and the artifices of the
toilette. The marquisate is a contraband one.
The future favorite seems predestined almost from the cradle to her
part. She is a little marvel, an infant prodigy. She is only nine years
old when a fortune-teller by cards predicts to her that she will be
the mistress of Louis XV. This prediction delights her family; they
believe in it as if it were written in the Gospels, and they decide
to do all in their power to realize it. Aid yourself, and hell will
aid you. She who was one day to call herself Madame the Marquise de
Pompadour was then named Jeanne Antoinette Poisson. Born in Paris,
December 29, 1721, she had a father who was vulgar even to indecency,
François Poisson, former clerk of the Paris brothers, who was condemned
to be hanged in 1726 for malversations, but rehabilitated in 1741
after several years of exile. Her mother was a Demoiselle de la Motte,
daughter of the provision contractor of the Hôtel des Invalides, a
very pretty woman, guilty of many infidelities to her husband, and
very richly subsidized by a gallant farmer-general, M. Lenormand de
Tournehem. The financier imagines, possibly with good reason, that he
is the father of little Antoinette. Hence he gives her the most careful
education. She is taught everything except virtue. Jéliotte teaches her
singing and the harpsichord, Guibaudet dancing, Crébillon declamation.
She is an actress, a musician, an accomplished singer. She imitates la
Gaussin and la Clairon marvellously. She rides admirably. She dresses
ravishingly. She is as pretty as Cupid. Nobody tells a story so well
as she. She is pleasing, amusing, delightful. Her mother, enthusiastic
over such charms, exclaims: “She is a morsel for a king!”
But how to justify the prediction of the sorceress? The place of king’s
mistress is occupied by none but very great ladies: a Countess de
Mailly, a Countess de Vintimille, a Duchess de Châteauroux. Can little
Poisson aspire to the same rôle? If she persists in such schemes, will
not people say that the keg always smells of the herring? Will the
Duke de Richelieu permit a _bourgeoise_ to supplant the nobility
in this fashion? Mademoiselle Poisson does not allow herself to be
discouraged. She has her fixed idea. She believes in what she calls her
star. Her marriage is the first rung of the ambitious ladder. March
9, 1741, she marries a rich young man, M. Lenormand d’Étioles, deputy
farmer-general, nephew of M. Lenormand de Tournehem, Madame Poisson’s
lover. The bride is nineteen, the husband twenty-four years old; he
is madly in love, and as his wife tells him she will never betray him
unless for the King, he mutters: “Then I can be very easy.”
The young wife is presently the fashion. She is the gem of that
financial society which has made such headway since the latter years of
Louis XIV. President Hénault writes to Madame du Deffand, July, 1742:
“At Madame de Montigny’s I met one of the prettiest women I have ever
seen, Madame d’Étioles. She understands music perfectly, sings with all
possible gaiety and taste, knows a hundred ballads, and plays comedy
at Étioles on a stage as fine as that of the Opera, with machinery and
changes of scenes.”
She prepares her success skilfully. The trumpets of fame are at her
disposal. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Fontenelle, the Abbé de Bernis, are
her friends. At Paris, in her house in rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs,
and at Étioles in her château near Corbeil, she leads a life of luxury
and pleasures. She is an enchantress, a siren. But she has only one
desire,--to make the King the objective point of all this magic. She
would scorn any other conquest.
The man she must have is Louis XV. To arrive at this conquest she will
exhaust the resources of feminine coquetry. Never were manœuvres more
persevering, artifices more sagacious. She has to play the enamoured
woman, the passionate woman, to pursue the King when he hunts in the
forest of Sénart, to pass and repass, like a graceful apparition, like
the goddess of the forests, through the midst of the escort with their
dogs and horses, sometimes robed in azure in a rose-colored phaeton,
sometimes in rose in a phaeton of blue. One day she is on horseback;
another day she drives herself, in an elegant conch shell of rock
crystal, two chestnut horses swift as lightning. The King inquires the
name of this elegant and pretty woman. Then he sends her some of his
game. Madame d’Étioles has good hopes. The Duchess de Châteauroux is
dead; she is sure of replacing her.
The masked balls given at the time of the Dauphin’s marriage are
excellent opportunities to display one’s self. At the Hôtel de Ville
ball the prettiest women of the bourgeoisie are grouped together on a
platform hung with velvet, silk, and gold. Madame d’Étioles appears as
Diana the huntress, powdered, the quiver on her shoulder, the silver
arrow in her hand. For an instant she takes off her mask and pretends
to let fly an arrow at the King. “Beautiful huntress,” cries the King,
“the darts you discharge are fatal.” Then she resumes her mask and
slips into the crowd, but dropping her lace handkerchief as she goes.
Louis XV. picks it up and, sultan-like, launches it with a gallant hand
at the beautiful unknown. “The handkerchief is thrown,” people mutter
on all sides.
Madame d’Étioles is about, then, to reach her goal. She has no reproach
to make against her husband, by whom she has had two children: a son
born in 1741, who only lived six months, and a daughter, Alexandrine,
born in 1743, who will live until 1754. This husband is an excellent
man, gentle, affectionate, easy to live with, much in love with his
wife, not at all jealous, happy and proud to be the husband of the
prettiest woman in Paris. But what would you have? Madame d’Étioles has
taken it into her head to be the King’s mistress. ’Tis a fantasy of a
coquettish woman which she must absolutely realize.
Taking advantage of her husband’s stay in the country, and protected by
one of her relatives, Bivet, valet de chambre to the Dauphin, she makes
her way into the palace of Versailles and parades a romantic passion
for Louis XV. She says she is menaced by M. d’Étioles’ vengeance and
begs the King to shelter her. The monarch is affected and installs
her mysteriously in the chamber formerly occupied by Madame de Mailly.
Poor M. d’Étioles, on his return to Paris, learns what has befallen
him. He faints away at the fatal tidings, and afterwards writes his
wife a letter so touching that Louis XV., after reading it, cannot
avoid saying: “Madame, you have a very honest husband.” In despair
at first, the betrayed husband at last resigns himself. He does not
try to contend with a king, and repairs philosophically to the south
of France, to make an inspection into finances which is part of his
official duties as deputy farmer-general.
At court there is great commotion. It seems impossible to imagine
that a woman of the middle classes, _une robine_, as D’Argenson
says, can replace a great lady like the Duchess de Châteauroux. The
Duke de Luynes writes in his Memoirs, March 11, 1745: “All the masked
balls have given occasion for talk concerning the King’s new amours,
and principally of a Madame d’Étioles, who is young and pretty. It is
said that for some time she is nearly always here, and that she is the
King’s choice. If such is the fact, it can hardly be anything more than
a case of gallantry, and not of mistress.”
Louis XV., who is fond of mystery, amuses himself at first by being
discreet. He conceals his new favorite. “It is not known where she is
lodged,” writes the Duke de Luynes, April 23, 1745, “but, nevertheless,
I think it is in a little apartment that Madame de Mailly had, and
which adjoins the little cabinets; she does not live here all the time,
but comes and goes to Paris.”
A few days later, May 5, 1745, the King sets off for the army with
the Dauphin. But Madame d’Étioles has the good sense not to rejoin
him there. Nor does she remain at Versailles, but withdraws to her
château of Étioles, near Corbeil, where Voltaire and the Abbé de Bernis
keep her company. Louis XV., much more occupied with his new mistress
than with the war, writes her letter upon letter. The Abbé de Bernis
counsels the favorite who, with such a secretary, cannot fail to reply
to her royal lover in the most charming and gallantly turned epistles.
We read in the Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes (June 19, 1745): “Madame
d’Étioles is still in the country, near Paris, and has never wanted to
go to Flanders. The King is more in love than ever; he writes and sends
couriers to her at every moment.”
All France uttered a cry of enthusiasm on learning the victory of
Fontenoy (May 11, 1745). But could one believe it? The person first
felicitated by Voltaire on account of that glorious day was neither
Louis XV. nor Marshal de Saxe, but Madame d’Étioles. Before writing his
poem on Fontenoy, the obsequious poet addressed the favorite in these
stanzas:--
“Quand César, ce héros charmant,
Dont tout Rome fut idolâtre,
Gagnait quelque combat brillant,
On en faisait son compliment
À la divine Cléopâtre.
“Quant Louis, ce héros charmant,
Dont tout Paris fait son idole,
Gagne quelque combat brillant,
On doit en faire compliment
À la divine d’Étiole.”[27]
France, always maddened by success, is in a real delirium. The
Parliament of Paris sends a deputation to Lille to felicitate the King
on his victory and entreat him “so far as may be, not to expose in
future his sacred person, on which the welfare and safety of the State
depend.” All the supreme courts of the kingdom imitate that of Paris,
and the first president of the court of taxes exclaims in his address
to the King: “Your Majesty’s conquests are so rapid that the point is
how to safeguard the faith of our descendants and lessen the wonder
of miracles, lest heroes should dispense themselves from following,
and people from believing, in them.” But the conquest which chiefly
preoccupies Louis XV. is that of his new mistress.
In July, 1745, she proudly displays eighty amorous epistles from the
gallant sovereign; the motto on the seal is: _Discreet and faithful_;
one of them is addressed: _À la Marquise de Pompadour_, and contains
the brevet conferring this title. The new marquise instantly discards
the name of Étioles, leaves off her husband’s arms, substitutes
three towers in their place, and puts her servants in grand livery.
This marquisate enchants Voltaire; he has become the official poet,
courtier, and familiar of the favorite, and his complaisant muse thus
celebrates the official accession of the new royal mistress:--
“Il sait aimer, il sait combattre;
Il envoie en ce beau séjour
Un brevet digne d’Henri quatre,
Signé: Louis, Mars et l’Amour.
Mais les ennemis out leur tour,
Et sa valeur et sa prudence
Donnent à Gand, le même jour,
Un brevet de ville de France.
Ces deux brevets, si bien venus,
Vivront tous deux dans la mémoire.
Chez lui, les autels de Vénus
Sont dans le temple de la Gloire.”[28]
The democrats, perhaps, are in a trifle too much of a hurry to erect a
statue to Voltaire.
III
THE NEW MARQUISE
Louis XV. had had enough of glory. Impatient to meet again the
new marquise, he left the army September 1, 1745, and returned
to Versailles, where his mistress awaited him in the apartment
once occupied by the Duchess de Châteauroux. This change of reign
was effected in an official manner. There was no more attempt at
mystery. The Marquise de Pompadour was _presented_ September
15, conformably to the rules of etiquette. Every tongue at court
was wagging over this scandalous and ridiculous ceremony. Every one
wondered how the Queen would look. The King, his wife, and his mistress
thus exposed themselves to public view, and the ancient ceremonial
became merely a parody. The Princess de Conti, whose debts and
prodigalities seemed to condemn her to such complaisant rôles, was the
lady who presented her. The Marquise appeared at first before the King,
whose countenance betrayed an easily comprehended embarrassment. Then
she entered the salon of the Queen and could not hide her confusion.
But Marie Leczinska, good and indulgent even to exaggeration, reassured
her by a gracious reception. Naming one of the few aristocratic women
with whom Madame de Pompadour was connected, she said: “Have you
any news of Madame de Saissac? I have been much pleased to see her
sometimes in Paris.” The Marquise, touched and grateful, know not what
to answer. She reddened and stammered out: “Madame, I have the greatest
passion to please you.”
The Abbé de Bernis celebrated thus the new queen of Cythera:--
“Tout va changer: les crimes d’un volage
Ne seront plus érigés en exploits.
La Pudeur seul obtiendra notre hommage,
L’amour constant rentrera dans ses droits.
L’exemple en est donné par le plus grand des rois,
Et par la beauté la plus sage.”[29]
The choice of Louis XV. was thenceforward settled. The gallant monarch
was about to plume himself on fidelity.
What do you think of this modesty and this discretion? As Sainte-Beuve
says, these poets have a way of taking things which belongs to them
alone.
There was plenty of adulation, but there was also plenty of
fault-finding. The great ladies could not get used to seeing a
_bourgeoise_ occupy the post of King’s mistress. They observed
with malevolent and ever alert attention this improvised marquise who
tried to give herself airs of nobility and grandeur. They recalled
the fact that her grandfather had been provision-contractor for the
Hôtel des Invalides. She is the granddaughter of a butcher, said they;
they jeered pitilessly about meat and fish; they found her awkward in
her part, like a grisette disguised as a marchioness. Exasperated at
seeing at Versailles a royal mistress not of his choosing, the Duke de
Richelieu tried, says Duclos, “to make the King consider her on the
footing of a _bourgeoise_ out of place, a passing gallantry, a
simple amusement not adapted to remain worthily at court.” If anything
in her manners or her language was not perfectly well-bred, the
favorite became the butt of sarcasm as soon as her back was turned.
Louis XV. used to say: “It will amuse me to educate her.”
Madame de Pompadour had at all events the good sense to maintain a
humble and submissive attitude when she appeared before the Queen. The
rank and virtues of Marie Leczinska intimidated her. Here is a curious
passage which occurs in the Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes: “Day before
yesterday, as she was returning from Mass, Madame de Pompadour said to
Madame de Luynes that she was in the keenest anxiety and most bitter
sorrow; that she knew somebody had frightfully aspersed her to the
Queen; and, without explaining to what she referred, said she hoped
greatly that the Queen would not believe it, and that she begged her to
speak about it to her. Madame de Luynes instantly gave an account of
this to the Queen.” Here is the letter written to Madame de Pompadour
by the Duchess de Luynes: “I have just been speaking to the Queen,
Madame, and I earnestly entreated her to tell me frankly if she had
anything against you; she answered in the kindliest way that she had
not, and that she was even very sensible of your efforts to please her
on all occasions; she even desired me to write and tell you so.”
This is the reply of the Marquise: “You bring me to life again, Madame;
for three days I have been in unheard-of pain, as you will believe
without difficulty, knowing as you do my attachment to the Queen. They
have made frightful accusations against me to Monsieur and to Madame
the Dauphiness, who have been kind enough to allow me to prove the
falsity of the horrors they accuse me of. I had been told some days ago
that the Queen had been prejudiced against me; think of my despair,
who would give my life for her, who find her goodness to me every day
more precious. It is certain that the kinder she is to me, the more
will the jealousy of the monsters of this place be employed in abusing
me, unless she is so good as to be on her guard against them and will
kindly let me know of what I am accused. It will not be difficult for
me to justify myself; the tranquillity of my soul on this subject
assures me as much. I hope, Madame, that your friendship for me, and
still more your knowledge of my character, will be the guarantees of
what I am writing you. Doubtless you must be annoyed by such a long
story; but my heart is so full that I cannot conceal it from you. You
know my sentiments toward you, Madame; they will end only with my life”
(February, 1746).
We read again in the Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes (March, 1746):
“Madame de Pompadour, who knows the Queen loves flowers, is so
attentive as to send her bouquets as often as possible; she continues
to seek every occasion to please her.”
The Queen may have reflected that, after all, since a mistress was
inevitable, this one was better than another. Since he had been
directed by Madame de Pompadour, the King seemed in a less sombre
temper and looked a little less bored. But he lost in the favorite’s
society the needful energy to continue the successes of the French
arms, and sign a really glorious peace.
While Louis XV. was thus wasting away in futilities, Marshal Saxe
conquered all Belgium. Louis XV. never made his appearance at the army
from May 4 to the middle of June, 1746. After having made a triumphal
entry at Antwerp he hastened back to Versailles, apparently to be
present when the Dauphiness was delivered, in reality to see Madame de
Pompadour again. The Dauphiness died prematurely in July. D’Argenson
says she had become as good a Frenchwoman as if she had been born at
Versailles. She was regretted, but the hurly-burly of festivities soon
began again, and Louis XV., after a very short mourning, resumed his
accustomed diversions and pretended pleasures.
The successes of his troops were as brilliant as they were rapid. Never
had France held better cards. It was a magnificent occasion to complete
national unity in the North. But though they had known how to conquer
they knew not how to profit by the victory. The King did not comprehend
his mission. He was thinking more about Madame de Pompadour than about
the war, and while his soldiers were fighting so bravely, he, wholly
given up to frivolous trifles, was amusing himself, or, better, he was
trying to do so. This nonchalance became fatal. All the fruits of the
war were lost by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 18, 1748).
People had believed that Louis XV., who was master of all Belgium, of
two Dutch provinces, of Savoy, and the county of Nice, would claim to
retain at least a part of his conquests. But, to the general surprise,
he declared he would not treat as a merchant, but as a king. This
more than amazing phrase signified that France would demand nothing,
nothing for so many dearly bought victories, nothing for the five
hundred thousand men she had sacrificed, nothing for the twelve
hundred millions added to the national debt. Louis XV. restored all
the conquered cities and territories. He engaged not to rebuild the
fortresses of Dunkirk; he recognized the English succession in the
Protestant line and carried complaisance toward the vanquished of
Fontenoy to the point of expelling the Pretender, the heroic Charles
Edward, from France. Add to this that the French navy, like that of
Spain, was half ruined, and that the time was not far distant when
the sailor might salute the ocean as Britannic. It is true that the
Infant Philip, married to the eldest daughter of Louis XV., obtained
the duchies of Parma and Plaisance. But this was but a petty advantage
considered as a recompense for so many sacrifices of men and money.
As might have been expected, the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was
profoundly unpopular. “As stupid as the peace,” people said in Paris.
The odium of it was cast upon the woman who, to play her part as queen
of the left hand, had meddled with diplomacy, finances, and the army.
In 1746 Voltaire had written to Louis XV.:--
“Grand roi, Londres gémit, Vienne pleure et t’admire.
Ton bras va décider du destin de l’Empire.
La Sardaigne balance et Munich se répent,
Le Batave, indécis, au remords est en proie;
Et la France s’écrie au milieu de sa joie:
‘Le plus aimé des rois est aussi le plus grand!’”[30]
Everything was greatly changed in 1748; London no longer groaned, and
Vienna did not admire. There was neither repentance at Munich nor
remorse at Batavia, and very little was said about the greatness of
the best beloved of Kings. The situation already contained in germ the
disasters of the future Seven Years’ War. France, which loves success,
no longer compared Madame de Pompadour to _la belle Gabrielle_.
But the favorite had one grand consolation under the rain of sarcasms
and satires; her theatre of the little Cabinets of Versailles was
succeeding very well; and if she was hissed as a political woman, she
was warmly applauded as an actress.
IV
MADAME DE POMPADOUR’S THEATRE
“I have seen all that is done under the sun, and beheld that all is
vanity and vexation of spirit. I have said within myself: Let us take
all manner of delights and let us enjoy our possessions; and I have
recognized that this too is vanity. I have condemned the laughter of
folly and I have cried unto joy: Why dost thou deceive us vainly?”
What the Preacher thought, Louis XV. thought also. Like Solomon, he was
bored. His ennui was the terror of Madame de Pompadour. The problem she
had to solve was how to entertain a man who could no longer be amused.
The favorite trembled. Here was her favor barely begun, and already
she beheld symptoms of indifference and lassitude in her royal lover.
D’Argenson writes in 1747: “The Pompadour is about to be dismissed.
The King will live with his family.” The Marquise was afraid lest the
sovereign, who really had a badly understood but sincere religion at
bottom, might some day conclude to be truly devout. Hence she desired
at any cost to divert him from serious ideas and plunge him, in his
own despite, into the vortex of false pleasures whose emptiness and
poverty he knew so well.
Even amid the splendors of Versailles, the new Marquise regretted her
successes as a private actress. The echo of the applause she had become
accustomed to in the parlor theatres of M. Lenormand de Tournehem, at
Étioles, and of Madame de Villemur, at Chantemerle, still resounded
in her flattered ears. Those who are habituated to the emotions
and vanities of the stage cannot easily do without them. Madame de
Pompadour was homesick for the footlights and the boards. To play in
comedy is such a fine occasion for a pretty woman to shine! To see all
eyes fixed on her; to put beauty and her toilettes in the best lights;
to be greeted when she appears by a murmur of admiration; to receive
when the play is ended the rain of flowers and garlands that tumble at
her feet; and at last, when the actress resumes the _grande dame_
and re-enters the drawing-room, to glean compliments, madrigals, and
enthusiastic plaudits afresh,--what a triumph for a fashionable woman,
what exquisite joy for a coquette!
Women of the highest social rank are often jealous of actresses. It
annoys them to perceive that they have not that order of charms which
comediennes possess. They envy them the privilege of attracting the
attention of a whole theatre, of being the object of all regards, the
subject of all eulogies, and the ability to say to a lover after a
triumph: “I have played only for you, I have thought of you alone;
these flowers that have been thrown to me I give to you.” They envy
them the excitement of those noisy ovations, in comparison with
which all the flatteries of society seem tame. They envy them above
all that faculty of metamorphosis which transforms the same woman
into a shepherdess or a queen, a nymph or a goddess, so that a man
while adoring a single beauty, but a beauty incessantly changed and
transfigured, finds himself at once faithful and inconstant.
This is why Madame de Pompadour wanted to play comedy at Versailles.
Little by little she accustomed Louis XV. to this idea. Holy Week was
always a sad time for the monarch, who was tortured by remorse and
ashamed of playing so badly his part as eldest son of the Church.
The favorite conceived the notion of enlivening this dreaded week
by interludes, half religious, half profane. Accompanied by actors
and amateurs, she sang pieces of sacred music. This Lent _à la
Pompadour_, this mixture of church and opera, this exchange of
religions for chamber, not to say alcove, music, was very acceptable
to such a character as Louis XV. and a devotion as inconsistent and
spurious as his. The courtiers, of course, went into ecstasies over the
charming voice of the Marquise. They reminded the King of the triumphs
of the little theatres at Étioles and Chantemerle, and pitied him for
not having seen comedy played by so remarkable an actress. Sacred
music had served its time; another sort was now in order.
Madame de Pompadour achieved her purpose. A theatre was constructed
for her at Versailles,--a miniature theatre, an elegant little place,
a perfect gem.[31] The spot chosen was the gallery contiguous to the
former Cabinet of Medals, a dependence of the King’s small apartments
(room No. 137 of the _Notice du Musée de Versailles_, by M. Eudore
Soulié). Nearly one-third of the orchestra was composed of amateurs
belonging to the most illustrious families, the other two-thirds being
professional artists. The chorus singers were selected among the King’s
musicians. The dancers were boys and girls from nine to thirteen years
at most, who, on reaching the latter age, were to enter the ballet
corps of the opera, the Théâtre Français, or the Comédie-Italienne (the
little girls distinguished themselves later on in choregraphic shows
and gallantry). Celebrated painters, Boucher at their head, supplied
the decorations. The _mise en scène_ and the costumes were of
incomparable elegance. As to the actors and actresses, they bore such
names as the Duke de Chartres, the Duke d’Ayen, the Duke de Duras,
the Duke de Nivernais, the Duke de Coigny, the Marquis d’Entraigues,
the Count de Maillebois, the Duchess de Brancas, the Marquise
Livry, the Countess d’Estrades, Madame de Marchais, and finally, the
principal actress, the Armida of all these enchantments, the Marquise
de Pompadour. The Duke de La Vallière was chosen as director of the
troupe; as sub-director _l’historiogriffe_ of cats, Moncrif,
academician and reader to the Queen; as secretary and prompter, the
Abbé de La Garde, librarian to the Marquise. Madame de Pompadour drew
up the regulations for the players. As approved by the King, they
contained ten articles:--
“1. In order to be admitted as an associate, it will be necessary to
prove that this is not the first time that one has acted, so as not to
make one’s novitiate in the troupe.
“2. Every one shall choose his own line of characters.
“3. No one may choose a different line from that for which he has been
accepted, without obtaining the consent of all the associates.
“4. One cannot, in case of absence, appoint his substitute (a right
expressly reserved to the Society which will appoint by an absolute
majority).
“5. On his return, the person replaced will resume his own line.
“6. No associate can refuse a part appropriate to his line under
pretext that such a part is unsuitable to his manner of acting or too
fatiguing.
“7. The actresses alone have the right to select the pieces to be
represented by the troupe.
“8. They shall also have the right to fix the day of representation,
the number of rehearsals, and the days and hours when they shall occur.
“9. Each actor is bound to be present at the precise hour appointed for
the rehearsal under penalty of a fine which the actresses alone shall
determine among themselves.
“10. To the actresses alone a half-hour’s grace is accorded, after
which the fine they will have incurred shall be decided by themselves
only.
“A copy of these statutes will be given to each secretary, who shall be
bound to fetch it to each rehearsal.”
Madame de Pompadour was quite right in drawing up a severe code of
regulations, for it is not an easy thing to establish discipline
in a troupe composed of society people, where the intrigues of the
courtier are added to the vanity of the actor. What petty jealousies,
what mean vanities! What manœuvres to obtain this or that part, what
solicitations and cabals to ensure merely a spectator’s place in the
cœnaculum!
Louis XV. occupied himself seriously with such trifles. The
direction of this miniature theatre gave him no fewer cares than the
government of France. He reserved to himself the right of selecting
the spectators, and it was a signal favor to have been thus chosen.
Notwithstanding their ardent desire to be among the privileged persons,
neither Marshal de Noailles, the Duke de Gesores, nor the Prince
de Conti were admitted to the opening of the theatre. It took place
January 17, 1747. _Tartuffe_ was given. Madame de Pompadour played
Dorine. The first theatrical season of the little cabinets lasted until
March 17.
After having secured applause as an actress in _Tartuffe_, _Les
Trois Cousines_, and _Le Préjugé à la Mode_, the Marquise
triumphed as a cantatrice in _Erigone_: “Madame de Pompadour sang
very well,” says the Duke de Luynes; “her voice has not much volume,
but a very agreeable sound; she knows music well and sings with much
taste.”
The second theatrical season lasted from December 20, 1747, to March
30, 1748. The first representation comprised a comedy, _Le Mariage
fait et rompu_, and a pastoral, _Ismène_, the words by Moncrif.
Voltaire’s _Enfant prodigue_ was given December 20, to the
author’s great joy. Madame de Pompadour had promised Gresset to produce
_Le Merchant_. She kept her word. The play required two months
of study. It was given February 6, 1748, Madame de Pompadour playing
Lisette. The Duke de Nivernais was excellent as Valère, and the Duke
de Chartres took the part of Géronte. The grateful Gresset thanked the
Marquise thus:--
“On ne trace que sur le sable
La parole vague et peu stable
De tous les seigneurs de la cour;
Mais sur le bronze inaltérable
Les Muses ont tracé le nom de Pompadour
Et sa parole invariable.”[32]
Pastorals, opera ballets, comedies, succeeded each other quickly. (The
complete list may be found in the opuscule of M. Adolphe Julien.) The
usual spectators were those of the actors and actresses who were not
playing, Marshal Saxe, Marshal de Duras, all the ministers, President
Hénault, the Abbé de Bernis. The King did not have a fauteuil. He sat
in an ordinary chair and, according to the Duke de Luynes, he seemed to
be amused.
The Marquise was charming in the ballet of _Almases_. She had a
splendid costume: a low-cut corsage of pink taffeta trimmed with silver
wire, a petticoat of the same, pinked out with silver, opening over a
second petticoat of white taffeta pinked out and embroidered in rose
color; the mantle draping the whole was of white taffeta glazed with
silver and embroidered in flowers of their natural color.
The first dancer of the troupe was the Marquis de Courtenvaux; the
second, Count de Langeron. Others were the Duke de Beuvron and Count
de Melfort, to whom were adjoined a ballet corps composed of young
boys and little girls. Mesdemoiselles Gaussin and Dumesnil, of the
Comédie-Française, gave advice to the actresses.
Under the title of _Comédies et ballets des petites apartements_,
a collection was published, bearing on its title-page a notice that it
was “Printed by express command of His Majesty.” Many were displeased
by this, especially the courtiers who were not admitted to the
much-envied entertainments. The Marquis d’Argenson, who for some time
had ceased to be minister of foreign affairs, wrote March 1, 1748, in
his Danubian peasant style: “They have just published a very ridiculous
collection of the divertisements of the theatre of the cabinets or
small apartments of His Majesty,--wretched and flattering lyrics; one
finds in it dancing and singing actors, general officers and buffoons,
great court ladies and theatre girls. In fact, the King spends his time
nowadays in seeing the Marquise and the other personages trained by all
these professional actors, who familiarize themselves with the monarch
in an impious and sacrilegious fashion.”
In October, 1748, France had lost, by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,
an opportunity to enlarge its dominions. Louis XV. consoled himself
by enlarging, if not the realm, at least the theatre of the little
cabinets. A new hall was constructed in the space containing the great
staircase of the Ambassadors,[33] care being taken to injure neither
the marble nor the pictures. The new theatre was movable. Fourteen
hours were necessary to strip it, and twenty-four to set it up again.
It was opened November 27, 1748, by the _Surprises de l’amour_,
a play due to the collaboration of Gentil-Beniard, Moncrif, and De
Rameau. The hall was a masterpiece of elegance. But Louis XV. was not
amused. He yawned. The grand opera of _Tancred_ was given December
10, Madame de Pompadour singing the part of Herminie. Two days later
Quinault’s _Mère coquette_ was played. The really indefatigable
Marquise took the part of Laurette. She made a success, even according
to D’Argenson, her implacable enemy, who wrote, not without vexation:
“The King, who was said to be tired of the favorite sultana, is more
insane than ever about her. She has sung and played so well in the last
ballets at Versailles that the King praised her publicly, and caressing
her before everybody, said to her that she was the most charming woman
in France.”
The beginning of 1749 was signalized by the great quarrel between the
dukes of Richelieu and La Vallière. The Duke de Richelieu was one of
the four first gentlemen of the chamber who, in virtue of their charge,
had the grand apartments of the King under their jurisdiction. Now the
new theatre was constructed in the space occupied by the great stairway
of the Ambassadors, which was considered an integral part of the grand
apartments. Consequently, the first gentlemen of the chamber claimed
that the right to direct the theatre appertained to that one of
themselves who was on duty, and that the Duke de La Vallière infringed
upon this right. The Duke d’Aumont, who was on duty in 1748, raised
the question, but somewhat timidly. Madame de Pompadour mentioned the
matter to Louis XV., who contented himself with replying: “Let His
Excellency” (the title he gave Richelieu) “come. You will see something
quite different.”
His Excellency made his appearance at the beginning of 1749, and as
soon as he took up his functions he began a desperate struggle against
the Duke de La Vallière.
“He made nothing of thwarting little Pompadour,” wrote D’Argenson, “and
treating her like an opera girl, having had great experience with that
sort of women and with all women. Mistress as she is of the King and
the court, he will torment and tire her out.”
But Richelieu went too far. Some days later, D’Argenson wrote in his
journal: “M. de Richelieu is too much attached to the trifles of the
ballet theatre. They say he has behaved like a fool; he was too open in
his antagonism to the mistress, and she has regained the upper hand.
People consider her to count for as much or more than Cardinal Fleury
in the government. Woe to any one who dares to pit himself against
her at present! She unites pleasure to decision, and the suffrages of
the principal ministers to the force of habit which is constantly
gaining strength in a mild and affectionate monarch. But woe to the
state governed in this way by a coquette! People are exclaiming on
all hands. It is kicking against the pricks to revolt in any wise
against her. Richelieu has found that out; he ought to give up this
trifling business of the ballet stage in order to pursue greater, more
important, and more virtuous matters. It would have been enough for him
to absent himself from these operas and to do so from pride, as soon
as his charge was injuriously affected by them. The instructions he
gave the musicians were thus worded: ‘Such a person will be present at
such an hour to play in Madame de Pompadour’s opera.’ He was worsted at
every step. The real friends of those who made any pretensions advised
them strongly to make their way by means of Madame the Marquise; homage
must be paid to her.”
Like the majority of men too much favored by women, Richelieu resembled
a spoiled child. He was stingy, proud, and wilful. However, he ended
by yielding. When this quarrel of etiquette was at its height, Louis
XV. carelessly asked him this simple question: “Richelieu, how many
times have you been at the Bastille?”--“Three times,” responded the
audacious courtier. But he promised himself not to go a fourth time.
He submitted, therefore, and the Duke de La Vallière, who remained
director of the troupe, was rewarded for his patience by the blue
ribbon.
The third theatrical season ended March 22, 1749; it had cost at least
a hundred thousand ecus. Louis XV., who was not always prodigal, began
to find the expenses excessive. He did not get his money’s worth in
amusement. The fourth and last theatrical season of the little cabinets
lasted from December 26, 1749, to April 27, 1750.
Madame de Pompadour had successfully attempted comedy, opera, and
ballet. She wanted to add another gem to her crown. After Thalia,
Euterpe, and Terpsichore, it was now the turn of Melpomene. February
28, 1750, the Marquise played the part of Alzire. Voltaire, enraptured,
went to thank her for her interpretation of his work, as she was at her
toilette, and addressed her in this not very original impromptu:--
“Cette Américaine parfaite
Trop de larmes a fait couler.
Ne pourrai-je me consoler
Et voir Venus à sa toilette?”[34]
The King began to be bored by these incessant spectacles. He decided
that there should be no more comedies, ballets, music, and dancing at
Versailles, and that hereafter the representations should take place
at the Château of Bellevue. The stage of this château was very small,
and did not admit of a brilliant _mise en scène_. The number of
spectators had to be greatly restricted. Accustomed to a real theatre,
splendid decorations, and a numerous audience, the actors and actresses
no longer showed the same enthusiasm. The hour of decadence had come.
However, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s _Devin du Village_ was very
successfully played in 1753. Madame de Pompadour took the part of
Colette. The next day she sent fifty louis to Jean Jacques, who thanked
her in the following letter:--
“Paris, March 7, 1753.--Madame: In accepting this present, which has
been sent me by you, I believe I have testified my respect for the hand
from which it came, and I venture to add that of the two proofs you
have made of my moderation, interest is not the most dangerous. I am
with respect, etc.”
The _Devin du Village_ was the Swan Song. Madame de Pompadour no
longer pleased Louis XV. as an actress. Hence she closed the Bellevue
theatre, and her ambition became, if not to amuse, at least to
interest, as a political woman, the master whose mistress she was said
to be.
V
THE GRANDEURS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR
Louis XV. had made his mistress what one might call a vice-queen. She
had the power, luxury, riches, and adulations of royalty; everything,
in fact, except its moral prestige. Surrounded by a court of ministers,
prelates, and nobles, she throned it in the midst of pomp and opulence.
She was the type of the woman _à la mode_, elegant, coquettish,
absolute, always on show, insatiable for praise and success, thirsting
for dignities, pleasures, and money; playing not merely the great lady,
but the sovereign, having her courtiers, her creatures, her poets,
reigning alike over the King and the kingdom.
M. Arsène Houssaye has said with justice: “Louis XV. had three prime
ministers: Cardinal Fleury, the Duke de Choiseul, the Marquise de
Pompadour.” But the Marquise was not an ordinary prime minister; she
was a prime minister doubled with a mistress. To a woman invested with
this exaggerated rôle, a display of power was necessary. The favorite
set herself to create around her a sort of decorum, etiquette, and
factitious grandeur. Like little women who wear enormously high
heels, she made herself a pedestal. Madame d’Étioles had disappeared;
nothing remained but the Marquise de Pompadour. To be a marchioness
did not satisfy her, and she demanded and obtained the tabouret and
the honors of a duchess. She had a box at the court theatre with a
grating behind which she shut herself up tête-à-tête with the King. In
the chapel a gallery in the grand tribune was reserved for her and her
suite. People waited on her stairway at the hour of her toilette just
as they await a ministerial audience in an ante-chamber. She used to
say to the ministers: “Continue; I am satisfied with you,” and to the
foreign ambassadors: “Observe that on Tuesdays the King cannot see you,
gentlemen, for I think you will hardly follow _us_ to Compiègne.”
One of the cabinets in her apartment was full of petitions. Solicitors
approached her with respectful fear. The ducal mantle and velvet cap
figured on the panels of her carriages. A nobleman carried her mantle
and awaited her coming in the ante-chamber. A man of illustrious
birth, a Chevalier d’Hénen, of the family of the Princes de Chimay,
rode at her carriage door as equerry. She was served at table by a
Chevalier of Saint Louis, her steward Colin, a napkin under his arm.
Her chambermaid was a woman of quality, Madame du Hausset, who has left
such curious Memoirs. The all-powerful favorite had not forgotten her
family. Her father was ennobled in 1747. Her brother, Abel Poisson,
became successively Marquis de Vandières, Marquis de Marigny, Marquis
de Ménars. The marquisate not contenting him, he obtained a place
created for Colbert, that of superintendent of crown buildings. He was
as a patron of artists a Mecænas, an _arbiter elegantiarum_. The
King, who treated him as his brother-in-law, gave him the blue ribbon
and put him on an equality with the greatest nobles of the realm. Young
Alexandrine, the daughter of Madame de Pompadour and M. de Étioles, was
brought up at Paris in the convent of the Assumption.
The nuns showed her the greatest attention. She was addressed by her
baptismal name, as was then the custom for princesses of the blood, and
she was expected to make one of the most brilliant marriages in France.
Madame de Pompadour desired pomp even in death. She bought a splendid
sepulchre in the Capuchin convent in the Place Vendôme, Paris, from the
Trémoille family. There she built a magnificent mausoleum, where her
mother was interred and where she reserved a place for herself.[35]
The favorite had not simply power, but beauty; beauty, that supreme
weapon. A veritable magician, she transformed herself at will. As
mobile as the clouds, as changeful as the wave, she renewed and
metamorphosed herself incessantly. No actress knew better than she how
to compose an attitude or a countenance. In her whole person there was
an exquisite grace, an exceptional charm, a taste, an elegance which
amounted to subtlety. La Tour, the pastel painter, is he who has best
reproduced her animated, spirituelle, triumphant physiognomy, the eyes
full of intelligence and audacity, the satin skin, the supple figure,
the general harmony, the charming and coquettish whole.
All the splendors of luxury were like a frame to the picture. A new
Danaë, the Marquise disappeared under a shower of gold. It is known
exactly what she cost France from September 9, 1745, the time when
her favor began, until April 15, 1764, the day of her death. M. Le
Roy has discovered an authentic document,[36] containing an account
of the favorite’s expenses during this period of nearly twenty years.
The total is 35,924,140 livres. In this list of expenses is found the
pension granted to Madame Lebon for having predicted to the Marquise,
then only nine years old, that she would one day be the mistress of
Louis XV.
Nothing seemed fine enough for Madame de Pompadour, either in dress,
lodgings, or furniture. At Versailles she secured for herself on
the ground floor, on the terrace looking toward the parterre on the
north, the magnificent apartments occupied by the Duke and Duchess
de Penthièvre.[37] (Part of the ministry of foreign affairs is
established there at present. The minister’s study is the same as that
of Madame de Pompadour. Her bedchamber is now the thirteenth hall of
the marshals, her ante-chamber the hall of famous warriors.)
The favorite bought a superb house in the city communicating by a
passage with the apartments of the palace (it is now the hôtel des
Réservoirs). In 1748 she acquired the château of Ciécy and the estate
of Aunay, and in 1749 the château of La Celle, near Versailles. In
1750 she inaugurated, on the hill commanding the Seine, between Sèvres
and Meudon, that enchanting abode of Bellevue, where all the arts
rivalled each other to create a magic entity. The ante-chamber with
statues by Adam and Falconnet; the dining-room with paintings of game
and fish by Oudry; the salon decorated by Vanloo; the apartment of
the Marquise, hung with Boucher’s glowing pictures; the park with its
parterres of rare flowers, its fine trees, grottos, and fountains,
its statues by Pigalle and Coustou, its varied perspectives, its
immense horizons,--all made of Bellevue a real palace of Armida. At
Versailles, the Marquise obtained from the King a portion of the
little park wherein to construct a gem of architecture, which she
called the Hermitage; it cloaked extreme elegance under an appearance
of simplicity. It had fine Persian hangings, panelled wainscotings
decorated by the most skilful painters, thickets of myrtles, lilacs,
and roses. This habitation is no longer in existence; a part of its
site is occupied by the rue de l’Ermitage at Versailles. The Marquise
had a house at Compiègne and a lodge at Fontainebleau. At Paris she
bought, for seven hundred and thirty thousand livres, the hôtel
d’Evreux, which is now the Élysée.
At the Trianon her apartment was on the same floor with that of Louis
XV. At Clécy she received as if in a royal château. The King’s visits
to this splendid residence used to last three or four days, and cost
about one hundred thousand livres.
A woman so influential could not fail to have a swarm of flatterers.
The resources of fawning and hyperbole were exhausted in her favor. The
most exaggerated of her sycophants was Voltaire--Voltaire to whom the
republicans are nowadays raising statues. He treated the Marquise as
a superior being, a goddess, and pushed his flattery to absurdity, to
platitude. In 1745, the moment when the reign of the favorite began, he
sent her this compliment:--
“Sincère et tendre Pompadour
(Car je peux vous donner d’avance
Ce nom qui rime avec l’amour
Et qui sera bientôt le plus beau nom de France),
Ce tokai dont Votre Excellence
Dans Étioles me régala,
N’a-t-il pas quelque ressemblance
Avec le roi qui le donna?
Il est, comme lui, sans mélange;
Il unit, comme lui, la force à la douceur,
Plaît aux yeux, enchante le cœur,
Fait du bien et jamais ne change.”[38]
In 1746, when Marshal de Lowendal had just taken Berg-Op-Zoom, it
was Madame de Pompadour whom Voltaire felicitated on the victory, in
strains like these:--
“Les esprits, et les cœurs, et les remparts terribles,
Tout cède à ses efforts, tout fléchit sous sa loi,
Et Berg-Op-Zoom et vous, vous êtes invincibles;
Vous n’avez cédé qu’à mon roi.
Il vole dans vos bras du sein de la Victoire,
Le prix de ses travaux n’est que dans votre cœur.
Rien ne peut augmenter sa gloire,
Et vous augmentez son bonheur.”[39]
The Marquise rewarded Voltaire at the end of the same year by producing
the _Enfant prodigue_ in the theatre of the little cabinets, and
taking the part of Lise herself. It was then that the poet, beside
himself with joy, addressed the beautiful actress the following lines,
which exasperated the daughters of Louis XV. and dissatisfied the King
himself:--
“Ainsi donc, vous réunissez
Tous les arts, tous les dons de plaire;
Pompadour, vous embellissez
La cour, le Parnasse et Cythère.
Charme de tous les yeux, trésor d’un seul mortel,
Que votre amour soit éternel!
Que tous vos jours soient marqués par des fêtes!
Que de nouveaux succès marquent ceux de Louis!
Vivez tous deux sans ennemis
Et gardez tous deux vos conquêtes!”[40]
So many madrigals were not enough. Both verse and prose were needed. In
addressing to the Marquise a copy of the _Précis du siècle de Louis
XV._ Voltaire inserted in it a passage, gravely congratulating her
upon that treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle which had so grievously offended
the national sentiment:--
“It must be owned that Europe may date its felicity from the day of
this peace. People will learn with surprise that it was the result of
the urgent counsels of a young lady of high rank, celebrated for her
charms, her singular talents, her wit, and an envied position. It was
the destiny of Europe in this long quarrel that a woman began it and a
woman ended it. The second has bestowed as many benefits as the first
caused harm.”
Can one be surprised, after this, that Madame de Pompadour should
have been persuaded of her own merit, wit, and even genius; that she
cherished strange illusions concerning her rôle and her character; that
she took herself seriously, even tragically; that she regarded any
adverse criticism of her as high treason against beauty and majesty?
With such an array of luxury and power, such a mass of riches, jewels,
objects of art, such a court of ingenious and amiable courtiers, with
all that could soothe her vanity, coquetry, and pride, with the ability
to realize all her fancies and caprices, one might perhaps think the
favorite was happy. Well! no.
VI
THE GRIEFS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR
“I pity you much, Madame, while all the world envies you.” The person
who addressed this just remark to the Marquise de Pompadour was her
inseparable confidant, her lady’s maid, Madame du Hausset, the woman
to whom she told everything, whom she always kept near her, and to
whom she said: “The King and I rely on you so fully that we pay no
more attention to you than to a cat or dog, but go right on talking.”
The Marquise recognized the truth of her confidant’s melancholy words:
“Ah!” she answered, “my life is like that of a Christian: a perpetual
combat.” Strange comparison! Most inexact comparison! for the Christian
combats for God, while the favorite was combating for the devil. This,
in fact, was the cause of her sadness. The love of God consoles one for
all sacrifices; but woe to the woman who makes herself the slave of a
man! Madame de Pompadour placed no confidence in Louis XV., and she
was right. The Maréchale de Mirepoix said to her one day: “It is your
staircase that the King likes; he is used to going up and down it. But
if he found another woman to whom he could talk about his hunting and
his affairs, it would be all the same to him at the end of three days.”
Listen to Madame du Hausset. She says in her Memoirs: “Madame
experienced many tribulations amidst all her grandeurs. Anonymous
letters were often written her containing threats to poison or
assassinate her; but what affected her most was the dread of being
supplanted by a rival. I never saw her in greater vexation than one
evening on her return from the salon of Marly. On entering, she
spitefully threw down her muff and mantle, and undressed with extreme
haste; then, sending away her other women, she said to me after they
went out: ‘I don’t believe anything can be more insolent than that
Madame de Coaslin. I had to play _brelan_ at the same table
with her this evening, and you cannot imagine what I suffered. The
men and women seemed to take turns in coming to examine us. Two or
three times Madame de Coaslin said, looking at me: “_Va tout_,”
in the most insulting manner, and I thought I should be ill when she
said in a triumphant tone: “I have played kings!” I wish you had seen
her courtesy on quitting me!’” Thereupon Madame du Hausset inquired
what the master’s attitude had been. “You don’t know him, my dear,”
replied the Marquise; “if he were going to put her in my apartment
this evening he would treat her coldly before people, and me with the
greatest affection.” The favorite was in constant alarm and anxiety.
She believed in neither the loyalty, the love, nor the friendship of
the King. Thus, as has been wittily said by M. Paul de Saint-Victor:
“She spent her life in the attitude of Scheherezade, sitting beside
the bed where the caliph slept, his sabre at hand. Like the head of
the sultana, her favor depended on a caprice of the master, on the gay
or tiresome story which she was about to tell him. And what happens in
the thousand and one nights of the harem from which she is excluded?
Who knows whether a firman scrawled by a grisette may not exile her
to-morrow to the depths of a province?” In spite of her knowledge of
frivolous trifles and her array of seductions, the Marquise could not
succeed in diverting Louis XV. It is again Madame du Hausset who tells
us as much: “The King was habitually very dismal and liked everything
which recalled the thought of death, even though he feared it very
much.” This melancholy humor of the monarch distressed his mistress.
“What a singular pleasure,” said she, “to occupy one’s self with things
the very notion of which ought to be banished, especially when one
leads such a happy life!” Madame de Pompadour did not reflect when
she talked like this. She forgot that a debauchee can never be happy
long. The sovereign and his favorite were both suffering from the same
malady; their consciences were not at rest. To both of them might be
applied the verses addressed by Lucretius to the Epicurean youth of
Rome, which we translate as follows: “They inhale sweet perfumes; they
deck themselves with wreaths and garlands; but from the middle of the
fount of pleasures rises bitterness, and sharp thorns pierce through
the flowers; remorse rebukes them from the depths of their soul and
reproaches them with days lost in idleness.”
Of what use then were luxury and splendor to her? The Marquise was
greeted by adulations in all her châteaux, all her houses. Nowhere
did she find esteem. To tell the truth, all this array of factitious
grandeur, all this pretence at decorum, was but a parody. Do what she
might, the mistress of Louis XV. was in reality nothing but the first
kept woman in the kingdom. Loaded and overwhelmed with proofs of royal
munificence, she never called herself satisfied; ambition, like sensual
pleasure, is insatiable. The love of money and the love of flattery
never say: “It is enough!”
The sumptuous abodes the favorite found means to acquire were, after
all, but monuments of her shame. Her house at Paris (now the Élysée)
was styled the palace of the queen of courtesans, _ædes reginæ
meretricum_. When the equestrian statue of Louis XV., with its
four allegorical figures sculptured by Pigalle, was set up in the
Place Louis XV., the crowd pointing out to each other these emblems of
Force, Prudence, Justice, Love of Peace, said they were the four most
famous mistresses of the monarch: Mesdames de Mailly, de Vintimille, de
Châteauroux, and de Pompadour, and a paper containing these verses was
posted on the statue itself:--
“Grotesque monument, infâme piédestal;
Les Vertus sont à pied, et le vice à cheval.”[41]
The honors heaped on her family by the all-powerful Marquise were
not taken seriously. When her mother, Farmer-General Lenormand de
Tournehem’s mistress, died, this quatrain was circulated:--
“Ci-gît qui, sortant d’un fumier,
Pour faire sa fortune entière,
Vendit son honneur au fermier
Et sa fille au propriétaire.”[42]
When her brother, Abel Poisson, metamorphosed into Marquis de Marigny
and superintendent of the crown buildings, had received the blue ribbon
of the Holy Spirit, people said the fish was turning blue.
In 1754 Madame de Pompadour had the misfortune of losing her only
daughter, Alexandrine d’Étioles, who was only eleven years old. She
would have liked to marry her to young De Vintimille, who passed as the
son of Louis XV. One day she brought the two children together, as if
accidentally, at Bellevue, and showing them to the King, said to him:
“That would be a fine couple.” Louis XV. received this overture more
than coldly. Madame de Pompadour said afterwards to Madame du Hausset:
“If he were a Louis XIV., he would make a Duke du Maine of the child,
but I do not ask so much as that; a position and a ducal title is very
little for his son, and it is because he is his son that I prefer him,
my dear, to all the little dukes of the court. My grandchildren would
share a resemblance to both grandfather and grandmother, and this
blending which I expect to see will one day be my happiness.”--“Tears
came to her eyes in saying these words,” adds Madame du Hausset.
Sainte-Beuve has poured witty contempt on this adulterous dream. “It
seems to me,” says the prince of critics, “that one lights unexpectedly
on the perverted but persistent bourgeois vein in this wish of Madame
de Pompadour; she brings ideas of affection and family arrangements
even into her adulterous combinations. She has sentiments; she thinks
of herself already as a most affectionate grandmother. A picture, which
I would call a Greuze-Pompadour, might be made of this scene, the
Marquise tearfully pointing out the two children to the King.”
The favorite found it hard to renounce her cherished project of
this alliance. Afterwards she thought of the young Duke de Fronsac,
Richelieu’s son, as a husband for her daughter. She caused overtures
to be made to the celebrated courtier. He answered by a disguised
refusal. “My son,” said he, “has the honor of belonging, on his
mother’s side, to the house of Lorraine; hence I cannot dispose of him
without the consent of that family, but I shall proceed to demand it
urgently if the Marquise still persists in her intentions.”
Madame de Pompadour understood, and insisted no further. She planned
another marriage for her daughter, who was promised to the young Duke
de Pecquigny, son of the Duke de Chaulnes of the De Luynes family.
But Mademoiselle d’Étioles died prematurely at the very time when the
marriage was about to be contracted. She was buried in the sepulchre
her mother had bought from an illustrious family. “The bones of the
La Trémoille,” said the Princess de Talmond, “must have been must
astonished at finding fish bones (_les arêtes des Poisson_) near
them.”
We have seen the disgusting flatteries of which the Marquise was
the object. These hyperboles of interested praise had a terrible
counterpart. While the court was obsequious, Paris remained
implacable. There was an incessant succession of sneers, satires, and
invectives. There had been _mazarinades_ of old; now there were
_poissonades_. Minister Maurepas was the instigator and often
the author of these violent rhymed diatribes, which made people say
France was an absolute monarchy tempered by ballads. The masses avenged
themselves by refrains of more than Gallic animation. We cite one
among a thousand. It was sung to the air _Trembleurs d’Isis_:--
“Les grands seigneurs s’avilissent,
Les financiers s’enrichissent,
Et les Poissons s’agrandissent;
C’est le règne des vauriens.
On épuise la finance,
En bâtiments, on dépense,
L’État tombe en décadence,
Le roi ne met ordre à rien.
“Une petite bourgeoise,
Élevée à la grivoise,
Mesurant tout à sa toise,
Fait de la cour un taudis;
Louis, malgré son scrupule,
Froidement pour elle brûle,
Et son amour ridicule
A fait rire tout Paris....
“La contenance éventée,
Et chaque dent tachetée,
La peau jaune et truitée,
Les yeux froids et le cou long,
Sans esprit, sans caractère,
L’âme vile et mercenaire,
Les propos d’une commère,
Tout est bas chez la Poisson.
“Si dans les beautés choisies
Elle était des plus jolies,
On pardonne des folies,
Quand l’objet est un bijou.
Mais pour sotte créature
Et pour si plate figure
Exciter tant de murmure,
Chacun juge le roi fou.”[43]
Nor did people content themselves with ballads. They likewise produced
long pieces of emphatic verse, distilling venom and hatred. More or
less skilful imitators of Juvenal composed satires full of gall and
bitterness. What specially excited the indignation of the authors of
these diatribes were the representations at the theatre of the little
cabinets. One of them, addressing himself to Madame de Pompadour,
exclaimed:--
“Parmi ces histrions qui règnent avec toi,
Qui pourra désormais reconnaître son roi?”[44]
Another thus expressed himself:--
“Sur le trône français on fait regner l’amour.
La fureur du théâtre assassine la cour.
Les palais de nos rois jadis si respectables,
Perdent tout leur éclat, deviennent méprisables;
Ils ne sont habités que par des baladins!...”[45]
A pamphlet entitled “The School of Man, or parallel between
contemporary portraits and those of Holy Writ,” contained attacks of
this sort against Louis XV.: “Too much incommoded by his greatness
to take a girl from the green room, Lindor satisfied himself in
true princely style: he had a large house with a theatre in it built
expressly for him, where his mistress became a danseuse by title and
office; men infatuated by the vanity of dancing women, insensate
imitators of Candaules, do not fancy that the last Gyges died in Lydia.”
One should read the Memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson and those of
Barbier the advocate in order to get a just notion of the hatred felt
for the Marquise by both the aristocracy and the middle classes. The
people despised her quite as much, and held her solely responsible
for all wretchedness and every disaster. The luxury of this parvenu
irritated them, and they detested her profoundly. The following
quatrain expressed the popular sentiment:--
“Fille d’une sangsue et sangsue elle-même,
Poisson d’une arrogance extrême,
Étale en ce château, sans crainte et sans effroi,
La substance du peuple et la honte du roi.”[46]
For those who knew how to listen, the Revolutionary storm was already
rumbling in the distance.
Madame de Pompadour could not rely on her flatterers themselves.
Voltaire, who had burned so much incense at the adored feet of the
Marquise, who at Versailles had been her most zealous, ardent,
enthusiastic courtier, forgot all that in his retreat at Ferney. He
chaffed at his former idol and drew a most malicious portrait of her in
his poem _La Pucelle_.
Thoroughly acquainted with the tone of public opinion, since she had
her own police and an arrangement with the director of the post-office,
who violated the secret of letters for her, Madame de Pompadour was in
despair at so many attacks. Uneasy, feverish, dissatisfied with the
King and the kingdom, considering herself as a victim of destiny, a
woman unjustly dealt with by fortune, spitefully angry at Frederick
the Great, who scoffed at her; at Louis XV., who neglected her for the
young girls of the Deer Park; at the clergy, who regarded her as a tool
of hell; at the Parliaments, which disdained her; at the nobility, who
saw nothing in her but an ambitious _bourgeoise_; at the middle
classes, who reproached her for being immoral; at all France, which
scorned her,--she suffered as much in her vanity as in her pride, and
said to her confidant, Madame du Hausset: “The sorceress told me I
should have time to repent before dying; I believe it, for I shall die
of nothing but chagrin.”
VII
MADAME DE POMPADOUR, LADY OF THE QUEEN’S PALACE
Madame de Pompadour was ready to play all parts in order to preserve
her empire. To be an actress and a political woman was not enough; she
willingly consented to become by turns, and simultaneously if need
were, a devotee and a procuress, to favorize now the Church and now the
Deer Park, to submit to every transformation, every servitude: _Omnia
serviliter pro dominatione_. Never did any minister cling more
firmly to his portfolio, never had any ambitious man a greater thirst
for power.
Louis XV. had a substratum of religion which made the favorite uneasy.
The day he insisted on her reading one of Bourdaloue’s sermons she was
frightened. With all her audacity she never dared to criticise the
Church in the presence of the Most Christian King; for irregular as
his own conduct was, he would not suffer the faith of his fathers to
be insulted in his hearing. To keep her place, the Marquise would have
asked nothing better than to assume the austere demeanor of a Madame
de Maintenon; but she was married, unfortunately, and so was the King,
and Catholicism has never compromised with concubinage or adultery.
Hence Madame de Pompadour sought to avert the difficulty. She put on
a half-way devotion which was wholly worldly, made for show, a sort
of compromise between God and the devil, between the Church and the
boudoir, the oratory and the alcove, a spurious, derisory, hypocritical
devotion, examples of which are given by many women of our own century
as well as of the last.
She had determined to make a figure in the Versailles chapel from the
time her favor began. She meant to shine everywhere, even before the
altars. It was this that made her request the Queen’s authorization
to carry one of the basins at the ceremony of feet washing on Maundy
Thursday, and collect the offerings at the High Mass on Easter Sunday.
But easy as she was where no one but herself was concerned, Marie
Leczinska became severe where God was in question: she refused.
The Jubilee of 1751 redoubled the anxieties of the Marquise. D’Argenson
wrote, February 2: “People assert that the King will gain his Jubilee
and make his Easter Communion. The Marquise says there is no longer
anything but friendship between the King and her, and that they will
put a fortnight’s retreat and truce even to this friendship.” The
attitude of a repentant Magdalen would not have suited a woman like
Madame de Pompadour. She was willing enough for a little devotion,
but of an elegant and worldly sort, ostentatious and luxurious.
The theatre, in a word, pleased her much better than the church.
D’Argenson wrote again, February 6: “All Paris has been talking of the
representation of _Thétis et Pélée_, eight days ago, at which the
Marquise de Pompadour was present. The actors addressed her directly
in the gallant parts, such as, ‘Reign, beautiful Thetis!’ This she
received with a triumphant air which a woman of different extraction
would not have assumed; for some feed their vanity on what others could
not endure without shame.” But what afflicted the haughty favorite was
the thought that all this success might topple over in an instant, like
a house of cards. At the very time when, always an actress, even under
the deceptive appearances of her so-called repentance, she was having a
statue of herself as the goddess of Friendship made for Bellevue, she
had several attacks of fever--people called it the Jubilee fever.
Madame de Mailly, the woman with whom Louis XV. had begun his
scandalous life, was at this time at her last extremity. One reads
in the Memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson, under date of March 27,
1751: “Madame de Mailly, former mistress of the King, is dying. It
was thought she was better, but the inflammation of the lungs is
increasing, and she has a hopeless fever. The King has not even
once sent openly to make inquiries, but the Marquis de Gontaud has
bulletins four times a day and transmits them to the King, who is
afraid of offending Madame de Pompadour. I am convinced he will be
much affected by her death. The pious people, those who believe in
Providence, remark that, the King having had the three sisters, they
have all died young. This one, who was the first, and not incestuous,
is dying piously and the death of the just: it is even through her
religious practices that she contracted her malady; apparently she will
have a holy death. The other two died in horrible anguish, and much
younger. People reflect also that God is so desirous of the King’s
conversion, that this death happens just in the Jubilee time, so as to
touch His Majesty, already prepared by sermons and disposed to make his
Jubilee sincerely. However, in the cabinets, divertisements and ballets
are still going on secretly.”
In Barbier’s journal are encountered similar reflections on the terrors
of the Marquise: “Everybody,” he writes, “is carefully watching
for what will happen at the Jubilee. They say Madame de Pompadour
dreads the results of it. There are many at the court, not merely
ecclesiastics, but men and women who are expecting this event to ruin
the Marquise, whose abuse of her position has for some time gained her
the hatred of all the nobles. The King can hardly remain at Versailles
without making his Jubilee. Public prejudice is carried to the point
of respecting the Jubilee more than the Easter duties which are of
obligation. If he makes his Jubilee, he cannot well return to the
château of Bellevue a fortnight later, and a month’s absence would be
dangerous. There are lovers of the court who are now forming a plan to
find a new mistress for the King after the Jubilee; for, melancholy as
it may be, he must have some diversion; and if he should altogether
fear the devil and decide on amendment, this would be not at all
amusing for the nobles. This event, then, which is not far distant, is
what is agitating the public high and low.”
Madame de Mailly breathed her last March 30. In her will she had asked
to be buried in the cemetery, among the poor, and to have a wooden
cross. The Marquis d’Argenson writes: “These austerities, penances,
and poverty increase the adverse opinion against her who now occupies
her former place and whose conduct is so very different. It is also
remarked, for the honor of religion, that Madame de Mailly, who was
often subject to fits of ill temper, which was the cause of her being
banished by the King, had become as mild and equable as possible.
People say that if she was not holy, no other woman ever will be.”
But Madame de Pompadour was once more victorious. The King did not
allow himself to be touched by the death of his former mistress, and,
spite of the warnings of heaven, he did not make his Jubilee. Still
the Marquise was not tranquil. D’Argenson wrote, December 11, 1752:
“Madame de Pompadour has been spitting blood since her youth. _Et
in peccato concepit eam mater sua._ She is becoming as dry as a
stick, and one can see her growing thin with jealousy.” And September
17, 1753: “The King is becoming superstitiously devout, respecting the
clergy more than morals. Marshal de Richelieu said to me in a jesting
way: ‘The King shows angelic devotion. He won’t do anything without the
episcopate in the affairs of Languedoc.’”
Madame de Pompadour no longer appealed to the senses of Louis XV.
Sensuality failing her, she would have liked to be able to press
religion into her service. She sought to create a new rôle for herself
as favorite, more minister than mistress; to legitimate by duration as
well as by a certain decorum her liaison with the King; to assume, in
brief, an attitude as friend, counsellor, I might almost say matron.
Negotiating her conversion with the Jesuits as if it were a diplomatic
affair, she demanded as a condition _sine quâ non_, that she
should remain at Versailles. But here was the difficult point. The
clergy, even at a period of abasement, retained their principles,
and the Church would not be the dupe of a woman. But one thing, the
absolution of a priest, was needful to enable her to go on playing her
part as companion to the King, female minister, peacemaker between
the King and the royal family, the Crown and the Parliaments, the
clergy and the philosophers. All she had to do to merit and obtain
this absolution was to withdraw from the court. But the Marquise would
have preferred death to retreat. The atmosphere of Versailles was
indispensable to her. Far from the scene of her sorry triumphs she
would have expired in rage and despair. Louis XV. well knew that to
dismiss her would be to kill her. Therefore he kept her near him, but
solely through compassion.
Madame de Pompadour had put herself in communication with a Jesuit,
Père de Sacy, whom she had formerly known, and from whom she hoped
to gain, not only absolution, but permission to remain at the palace
of Versailles. As, in the preceding reign, the “mistress thundering
and triumphant,” Madame de Montespan, had been seen to humble herself
before a simple curé, the all-powerful Marquise de Pompadour was now
seen humbly soliciting a Jesuit. Père de Sacy remained firm: he would
not let himself be moved by the fine protestations of the Marquise.
It was in vain to show him that the communications between the
apartments of the King and the favorite were now walled up; useless
for the partisans of loose morality and worldly religion to say to him
that he must not discourage repentance; that too much severity would
spoil all; that the Church had need of Madame de Pompadour against
the Encyclopedists; in a word, that there ought to be such a thing as
compromising with heaven. The Jesuit rejected this theory of relaxation
and culpable condescension. He reminded his pretended penitent that she
had a husband still living,--a husband of whom she could not complain,
and that her place was not at the palace of Versailles, but at the
side of M. Lenormand d’Étioles. This annoying souvenir exasperated the
favorite, infuriated by the conjugal phantom that rose before her,
and thwarted all her plans. When she was convinced that, in spite of
her feminine tricks, she could never bend Père de Sacy, she dismissed
him;[47] and undoubtedly the admirable conduct of the Jesuits was one
of the causes which brought about the expulsion of the order a few
years later. Madame de Pompadour was vindictive. She never pardoned any
one who had the audacity to displease her.
Could one believe it? The favorite pushed her assurance to the point
of posing as a victim. To credit her, people were unjustly opposing
obstacles to her conversion and that of the King. Priests who refused
absolution in this way were enemies of the throne and the altar. At the
same time, she shamelessly solicited a place as lady of the Queen’s
palace. Marie Leczinska’s obligingness had already been carried too
far. This time the good Queen made some observations. To receive to a
place of honor a woman separated from her husband, a person who could
not even claim to receive the benefits of the general communion, was an
ignominy to which Louis XV. could not really wish to condemn a Queen
of France. Accomplished intriguer as she was, Madame de Pompadour was
not yet discouraged. She declared her willingness to be reconciled
with her husband, at the same time secretly acquainting M. Lenormand
d’Étioles that he would do well to refrain from accepting such an
offer. The letter she wrote him was replete with the finest sentiments.
As much as she had scandalized society by her separation, so much she
promised to edify it hereafter by an irreproachable union with her
husband. But this promise was only a feint. Moreover, M. d’Étioles was
hardly anxious to take back his wife. He might have applied to her the
idea expressed in this line of a modern tragedy:--
_Et mon indifférence a tué mon mépris._
And my indifference has slain my scorn.
It was long since the woman who had ceased to bear his name and whose
desertion had once rendered him so unhappy, had excited in him either
anger or resentment. He had wept for Madame d’Étioles. But Madame
d’Étioles had been dead more than ten years, and he did not know
Madame the Marquise de Pompadour. Nor had he any desire to know her.
What he was told about her in nowise tempted him. He greatly preferred
a former dancer at the opera, Mademoiselle Rem, with whom he lived
maritally, and for whose sake he had refused the embassy from France to
Constantinople.
Madame de Pompadour triumphed. The really guilty person, said she, was
her husband. He and he alone committed the sin, he who refused to open
his arms to a repentant spouse. She could not re-enter the conjugal
abode by force. Hence the Queen could have no complaint against her,
and no opposition could be made against her obtaining, after having
received absolution, that place as lady of the palace, which was the
height of her desires. She formally received her Easter communion at
the church of Saint Louis, Versailles. But it was not Père de Sacy who
heard her confession, but another priest.
“I had been surprised,” writes Madame du Hausset, “for some time past
to see the Duchess de Luynes coming secretly to Madame. Afterwards
she came openly; and one evening, Madame having gone to bed, called
me and said: ‘My dear, you are going to be very well contented, the
Queen is giving me a place as lady of the palace; to-morrow I am to be
presented; you must make me look very handsome.’ I knew that the King
was not quite so much at his ease about it; he was afraid of scandal
and that people might think he had forced the Queen to make this
nomination. But there was nothing of that sort. It was represented to
the Princess that it would be an heroic act on her part to forget the
past; that all scandal would be obliterated when it was seen that an
honorable position was what retained Madame at court, and that this
would be the best proof that nothing but friendship existed any longer
between the King and his favorite. The Queen received her very well.
The pious sort flattered themselves that they would be protected by
Madame, and for some time sang her praises.... This was the time when
Madame appeared to me the most contented. The devotees made no scruples
about visiting her and did not forget themselves when opportunity
offered.... The doctor (Quesnay) laughed at this change of scenes and
made merry at the expense of the devotees. ‘And yet,’ I said to him,
‘they are consistent and may be in good faith.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but
they ought not to ask for anything.’”
The Marquise de Pompadour, who had had the tabouret and the honors of a
duchess since 1752, received her brevet as lady of the Queen’s palace
February 7, 1756. She began the next day her week of attendance on
Marie Leczinska, at the state dinner in a superb costume.
D’Argenson, whose morality is often peculiar, finds the thing natural
enough. He approves rather than criticises. “Sunday evening,” he
writes, “the Marquise de Pompadour was declared at Versailles lady of
the Queen’s palace, whence it is conjectured that she is no longer the
King’s mistress. It is even said that she begins to talk devotion and
Molinism, and is going to try and please the Queen as much as she has
the King. All this confidence which has been evident during the three
years since the King began to have new mistresses is merely the reward
of the sweetness and humility with which she has accepted her lover’s
infidelities. This is only precarious and mere pretence, or, rather, it
comes from a sentiment of friendship, good taste, and gratitude, and
a good-nature in which love counts for nothing. But these reasonable
sentiments can accomplish much in a sensible and well-ordered heart
like that of the King.” Here one gets the sum of the morality of the
eighteenth century. What could be expected of a society in which even
worthy men could use such language and show such complaisance?
VIII
MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE ATTEMPT OF DAMIENS
Madame de Pompadour was destined to “live in the midst of alarms.” For
nearly a year she had been congratulating herself on the cleverness
with which she had carried by assault the post of lady of the Queen’s
palace, and had dismissed the confessors, of whom she thought she had
no more need, when an unforeseen event was very near making her lose
all the ground she had so painfully acquired.
Toward six o’clock in the evening of January 5, 1757, Louis XV. had
just come down the little staircase leading from his apartments to a
vestibule facing the marble court, and was about to enter a carriage,
when he was struck by a penknife in the hand of a person named Damiens,
who, either through folly or fanaticism, wished not to kill him, but
to give him a warning. The King thought himself mortally wounded.
He belonged to that category of Christians who are never pious but
when they are sick. When in good health they say: “There is always
time to repent.” But if danger threatens them, they tremble, they go
to confession, they become saints for the time being, reserving the
privilege of resuming their vicious habits as soon as their health
returns. When he thought death was facing him, Louis XV. expressed
himself in terms worthy of the Most Christian King. At Metz he had
been sublime. He was not less eloquent at Versailles. The noblest
maxims were on his lips, the most beautiful sentiments in his heart.
He named his son lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and said to him
with emotion: “I leave you a very disturbed realm; I hope that you may
govern it better than I have done.” He melted into tears of edification
and admiration all those who came near him. This was no longer the man
of the Deer Park; it was the son of Saint Louis.
One of his first words after being struck was a cry for a priest. His
Jesuit confessor, Père Desmarets, was not just then at Versailles. A
priest of the Grand-Commun was summoned (the ecclesiastics who acted as
chaplains to those persons in the King’s service who were lodged in the
apartments called Grand-Commun). Louis XV. made his confession first to
this priest, and again to Père Desmarets, who arrived in great haste
from Paris.
Louis XV. had received only a trifling wound. Damiens, who might have
killed him, had not wished to do so. He had two blades on one handle,
a large one and a small one, and had used only the latter. The doctor
said that if the wounded man were not a king, he might go about his
affairs the next day. But the imagination of Louis XV. was easily
excited. When the wound had been probed, and he was assured that it
was not very deep, he exclaimed: “It is deeper than you think, for it
goes clear to the heart.” Baron de Besenval relates in his Memoirs that
when the doctors had no longer the least anxiety, that of the King was
such that, believing himself dying, he made the Abbé de Rochecour, the
chaplain of the neighborhood, give him absolution every moment.
Louis the Well-Beloved was not as yet Louis the Well-Hated. Barbier
says there was general consternation at Paris; everybody lamented.
The archbishop commanded the devotions of the forty hours in all the
churches. The priests and monks, suffocated by emotion, could hardly
intone the _Domine salvum fac regem_.
What was happening to Madame de Pompadour all this time? She remained
in her apartment in the palace of Versailles, but she had not even
dared solicit the favor of seeing the royal sufferer. She knew that
Louis XV. was no longer the same man when he was ill, and that it took
him only a moment to become once more a devotee. Remembering what had
happened at Metz at the time of the ignominious banishment of the
Duchess de Châteauroux, she was convinced that she was about to go into
exile, and nearly everybody believed the same.
“The people,” says Madame du Hausset, “received the news of the assault
on the King with furious cries and the utmost despair; one could hear
them crying under the windows from Madame’s apartment. They came in
crowds, and Madame dreaded the fate of Madame de Châteauroux. Her
friends came constantly with tidings. For that matter, her apartment
was like a church, which everybody thought he had a right to enter.
They came to see how she took it, under pretence of interest, and
Madame did nothing but weep and faint away. Doctor Quesnay never left
her, nor I either.”
What was at this moment the attitude of the three principal ministers,
Count d’Argenson (brother of the author of the Memoirs), Minister of
War, M. de Machault, Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, and Abbé
de Bernis, who had been appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs three
days before the assault? The first was the sworn enemy of the Marquise.
He caught at the chance for vengeance. The second was under obligations
to the Marquise, but, believing she would henceforth be powerless, he
declared against her in order to salute the Dauphin’s rising sun. The
third did not abandon the woman to whom he owed the portfolio he had
just obtained. He wrote to M. de Choiseul this singular letter, in
which the words “honor” and “virtue” are employed strangely enough:
“The King has been assassinated, and all that the court has seen
in this frightful event is a favorable moment for driving away our
friend. Every intrigue has been brought to play on the confessor.
There is a tribe at court who are always awaiting the Extreme Unction
in order to try to augment their importance. Why should devotion be
separated so from virtue? Our friend can no longer scandalize any one
but fools and knaves. It is of public notoriety that friendship has
supplanted gallantry these five years back. It is pure bigotry to go
back into the past to impugn the innocence of the actual connection.
This is founded upon his need of being able to open his heart to a
proved and trusty friend who is, in the divisions of the Ministry, the
sole point of reunion. What ingrates I have seen, my dear Count, and
how corrupt our time is! Perhaps there have never been more virtues in
the world, but there has been more honor.”
Count d’Argenson and M. de Machault did not like each other, but they
were in agreement respecting the Marquise. If Madame de Pompadour was
in nowise astonished by the conduct of the first, whose detestation
of her she had long been aware of, the defection of the second, who
had been her creature, put her beside herself, “Is that a friend?” she
exclaimed in amazement.
On being left alone with M. de Machault, after the dressing of his
wound, Louis XV. charged him, as a friend of his favorite, not to send
her an order to depart, but to personally advise her to do so. The
Keeper of the Seals called therefore on the Marquise. The interview
lasted half an hour. The result was anxiously awaited, and the Abbé de
Bernis had returned to learn what passed. But Madame du Hausset shall
tell the story. Nobody is so interesting as ear and eye witnesses.
“Madame rang; I entered, followed by the Abbé. She was in tears.
‘I have got to go away, my dear Abbé,’ said she. I made her take
some orange flower water in a silver goblet, because her teeth were
chattering. Afterwards she told me to call her equerry, and she gave
him her orders tranquilly enough to have her house at Paris prepared
for her, and to tell all her people to be ready to start, and her
coachmen not to absent themselves. A few minutes later the Maréchale
Mirepoix came in: ‘What are all these trunks for?’ she exclaimed. ‘Your
people say you are going away?’ ‘Alas! my dear friend, the master wills
it, according to what M. de Machault has told me.’--‘And what is his
own opinion?’ said the Maréchale. ‘That I should go without delay.’
During this time I was undressing Madame unaided, she wishing to be
more at ease on her sofa. ‘He wants to be master, your keeper of the
seals,’ said the Maréchale, ‘and he is betraying you; who gives up the
game loses it.’” This language made the clever Marquise thoughtful.
Quesnay came in afterwards, “and with his monkey-like air, having heard
what had been said, he recited the fable of a fox who, dining with some
other animals, persuaded one of them that his enemies were hunting for
him, so as to snatch his part in his absence. I did not see Madame
again until very late, at the hour of her couchee. She was calmer.”
However, it was not yet known whether the favorite would not end by
being disgraced. Her enemy, Count d’Argenson, seemed to possess the
intimate confidence of the sovereign. The King had given him his
keys that he might look for the secret papers at Trianon, and the
Count’s brother, the Marquis d’Argenson, wrote in his Memoirs, January
15, 1757, ten days after the assault: “It is true that since the
assassination of the King, the Marquise has not seen His Majesty for a
single instant. She endures her disgrace by concealing it; but little
by little she will be abandoned. She has neither seen nor received a
billet from His Majesty, who no longer seems to think of her. Meanwhile
the King sees his confessor, Père Desmarets, every day, and has made
declarations of friendship and good conduct to the Queen. All this
smacks of a change at court. M. the Dauphin has entered the Council
and is gaining credit there.’ The former Minister of Foreign Affairs
was deluding himself. On the very day when he wrote these lines, the
Marquise saw Louis XV. again and resumed her former domination, as
the Minister of War was presently to become aware. “The great talent
at court,” says the Baron de Besenval, “is to be a good judge of
circumstances and know how to profit by them. M. d’Argenson deceived
himself in this; he should have reflected that the ill-grounded terror
of the King might pass as quickly as it came, and that he would seek
to resume power as promptly as he had abandoned it. This is the way
with all feeble souls. The minister forgot this truth. In the first
council held after the attempt on the King, M. d’Argenson proposed,
in presence of M. the Dauphin, who presided, that the ministers
should hold their deliberations in the apartments of this prince, as
lieutenant-general of the kingdom, until the complete recovery of the
King. It resulted from this fault that M. the Dauphin, who was not very
susceptible of ambition, was not at all grateful to the minister for
his proposal, and that the King, hardly convalescent as yet, found his
heart again replenished with that displeasure which his son had always
inspired in him; that he withdrew him from affairs and never forgave M.
d’Argenson for the mark of devotion he had given him on this occasion.
When one dares to be ungrateful, he ought at least to be more adroit
about it.”
As Baron de Besenval again remarks, “a mistress removed is not yet to
be despised, and love has its caprices and returns as prompt as those
of fortune.” Madame de Pompadour stayed where she was. The Minister of
War and the Keeper of the Seals were sacrificed to her. The favorite
made a tearful scene in presence of Louis XV. One would have thought
she was going to faint. Madame du Hausset went to fetch her some of
Hoffman’s drops. The King himself arranged the dose with sugar and
presented it to the Marquise in the most gracious manner. She ended by
smiling and kissed the hand of the gallant monarch, who consoled her.
Two days later, Count d’Argenson received the following letter from
the King: “Your service is no longer necessary to me. I order you to
send me your resignation as Secretary of State for War and all which
concerns the employments thereunto adjoined, and to retire to your
estate of Ormes.”
Things resumed their customary course. At the end of January, 1757, the
advocate Barbier wrote in his journal: “The King is perfectly well.
Madame the Marquise de Pompadour has not quitted Versailles. A few
days after his recovery the King paid her a visit of a quarter of an
hour, but since he holds his councils as usual he has resumed his own
occupations; he has hunted several times, and the little suppers have
begun again.” The chronicler, often cynical, concludes as follows:
“Notwithstanding the criticisms of evil-minded persons, the best thing
that could happen to both him and us, that is to all good citizens,
would be for him to banish from his mind a misfortune which ought not
to affect one, and continue his ordinary dissipations.”
Baron de Besenval’s conclusion must also be quoted: “Thus in the whole
of this affair, M. d’Argenson had been willing to sacrifice the King
to the Dauphin in order to prolong his own power. The King had been
willing to sacrifice his mistress to public opinion and the terrors
which disturbed his mind. M. de Machault consented to sacrifice Madame
de Pompadour, his friend, by giving her advice which might please
the monarch. And in the end everything was sacrificed to love, which
is what happens and will happen always.” Here the word “love” is not
accurate; “habit” is what he should have said.
Once more the favorite had triumphed; but in her victory she bore a
mortal grudge against the Jesuits who had nearly succeeded in banishing
her. She began that underhand but violent struggle against them which,
a few years later, was to result in the suppression of their order. She
had the audacity to forward secretly to the Pope a note which was a
censure on their conduct and, if one can believe it, a defence of her
own. This note, a copy of which has been discovered in the papers of
the Duke de Choiseul, is a veritable monument of cynicism or else of a
perverted conscience. It proves in the woman who conceived it an entire
lack of moral sense, a forgetfulness of the most elementary decorum,
and of the respect which unbelievers themselves owe to religion.
This curious document opens as follows:--
“At the beginning of 1752, determined by motives which it is useless to
give an account of, to no longer preserve for the King any sentiments
but those of gratitude and the purest attachment, I declared as much to
His Majesty, supplicating him to cause the doctors of the Sorbonne to
be consulted, and to write to his confessor that he might consult with
others, in order that I might be left near his person, since he desired
it, without being exposed to the suspicion of a weakness which I no
longer had.”
So then, to credit Madame de Pompadour, she had become a type of
modesty and Christian renunciation. She adds: “Things remained
in appearance just as they had been until 1755. Then, prolonged
reflections on the evils which had pursued me, even amidst the greatest
good fortune; the certainty of never arriving at happiness by worldly
goods, since none had ever been lacking to me, and yet I had never
attained to happiness; detachment from the things which had most amused
me,--all induced me to believe that the only happiness is in God. I
addressed myself to Père de Sacy as to a man fully penetrated with this
verity; I bared my soul completely to him; he tried me in secret from
September to the end of January, 1756. During this time he proposed
that I should write a letter to my husband, the rough draft of which,
drawn up by himself, I still have. My husband refused ever to see me.”
The Marquise then complained to the Sovereign Pontiff of Père de Sacy,
who, according to her, was the victim of intrigues of every sort, and
guilty of having told her that he would refuse her the sacraments
so long as she did not leave the court. She added, in speaking of
Damiens’s crime: “The abominable 5th January, 1757, arrived, and was
followed by the same intrigues as in the previous year. The King did
all in his power to bring Père Desmarets to the verity of religion. The
same motives being at work, the response was not different; and the
King, who earnestly desired to fulfil his duties as a Christian, was
prevented from doing so, and soon after relapsed into the same errors,
from which he would certainly have been extricated had they acted in
good faith.”
Perhaps all is not hypocrisy in this note. I incline to believe that
in spite of her idolatry for the court, the favorite recognized its
miseries and nothingness. How many persons remain vicious while knowing
well that vice produces their unhappiness! How many passionate people
own to themselves that their passions are killing them! O Ambition!
cries Saint Bernard, by what spell does it happen that, being the
torment of a heart where thou hast taken birth, and where thou
dost exert thine empire, yet there is no person whom thou dost not
please, and who does not allow himself to be taken by surprise by the
flattering attraction thou dost offer him. _O ambitio, quo modo omnes
torquens omnibus places?_
It would have been easy to reply to the Marquise de Pompadour that
if the grandeurs of this world gave her so little satisfaction, all
she had to do was to withdraw from the court. Hence the Pope remained
untouched by all this display of Christian philosophy. He could not
make up his mind to consider the mistress of Louis XV. as a repentant
Magdalen; and, far from blaming the Jesuits who had refused her
absolution, he approved them. The haughty favorite did not admit that
she was beaten. She kept silence, swearing, however, that she would be
avenged.
IX
MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND DOMESTIC POLITICS
At home as well as abroad, in parliamentary and clerical quarrels,
as in questions of external politics, Madame de Pompadour’s ideas
were always undecided, inconsistent, variable. For that matter, it is
not easy to find in a pretty woman the qualities needful to manage
public affairs well. With very few exceptions, fashionable women are
fickle, wilful, excessively impressionable, capricious, like nearly
all persons who are flattered. If they meddle with government, their
half-knowledge is more dangerous than complete ignorance. They have
infatuations, foregone determinations; their mania for protecting makes
them obstinate in sustaining undeserving favorites. Their most serious
determinations often depend on trifles. A well-turned compliment
influences them more than a good reason; they are the dupes of any one
who knows how to flatter them without seeming to do so, and who can
find more or less ingenious pretexts for justifying their whims or
palliating their faults. Such was Madame de Pompadour.
Is it not curious to see this futile woman leaving her gimcracks and
gewgaws to interfere in the most arduous theological or governmental
questions, to pose as an arbiter between the magistracy and the clergy,
the throne and the altar? “Certes,” writes D’Argenson in a style well
worthy of the epoch, “it is better to see a beautiful nymph at the helm
than a villainous crouching ape such as the late Cardinal Fleury. But
these fair ladies are as capricious as white cats, which caress you at
first and afterwards scratch and bite you.” Madame de Pompadour acted
like that with the Parliament; sometimes she caressed, sometimes she
clawed it.
The interminable struggle between secular jurisdiction and
ecclesiastical discipline had all the ruthlessness, all the asperity,
of a civil war. A society at once incredulous and fanatical grew
excited over theological questions worthy of Byzantium, and even in the
heart of the Seven Years’ War there were at Paris, as Voltaire remarks,
fifty thousand fanatics who did not know in what country flowed the
Danube and the Elbe, and who thought the universe turned upside down
by the contradictory propositions of the adepts of Jansenism and the
disciples of Molina.[48]
The question, however, was more serious than one might be inclined to
believe. Jansenism, that third estate of religion, as it has been so
justly called, was nothing more or less than a preliminary step toward
republican doctrines. “Do not believe,” said Bossuet, apropos of the
English revolution, “that it is simply the quarrel of the Episcopate,
or some intrigues against the Anglican liturgy which have moved the
common people. These disputes were as yet only feeble commencements
whereby turbulent spirits made a trial of their liberty; but something
more violent was stirring in the depths of men’s hearts; it was a
secret disgust for all that had been authority, and an itching to
innovate incessantly after the first example had been seen.”
French Jansenism had the haughty chagrin, the indocile curiosity, the
spirit of revolt, which characterized the Protestantism of England.
Louis XIV., so jealous of his royal prerogatives, had seen this at
once. He felt that discipline is as indispensable to the Church as to
the barracks, and comprehended that the throne has the same foundations
as the altar. The thing aimed at by the bull _Unigenitus_ of 1713
was to re-establish unity in doctrines; and when the Jansenists refused
to submit to the decree of the Sovereign Pontiff, the great King said
that this rebellion against the Pope would give rise to attacks against
the monarchical principle. He was not mistaken. If the Parliament
showed itself favorable to Jansenism, it was far less on account of
such or such ideas on free will or grace, than by instinctive liking
for the revolutionary spirit which existed in germ in the new sect.
Religious controversies were to lead by slow degrees to political
controversies. The Parliament led to parliamentarism. People began by
contemning the episcopal jurisdiction of an archbishop in order to end
by braving the authority of a king.
Christopher de Beaumont, that convinced priest, that austere and
inflexible prelate, so firm against the temptation of grandeurs that
Louis XV. had been obliged to summon him thrice in order to make him
leave his diocese of Vienne, in Dauphiny, and accept the archbishopric
of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont was faithful to the traditions of the
Church when he denied all competence over matters purely religious,
such as the administration of sacraments, to the Parliament. His
doctrine was after all only that of the separation of the powers.
Louis XV. inclined to the views of the Archbishop, whose virtues he
appreciated. Like Louis XIV., he recognized the bull _Unigenitus_,
and treated Jansenism as a heresy. Like Louis XIV., he suspected, not
without reason, both the Parliament and the Parisian population. “I
know the people of Paris,” said he; “they must have remonstrances and
shows, and perhaps worse than that some day.” Madame de Pompadour would
have taken the part of the Archbishop, as the King wished to do, if
the Archbishop had been a courtier; but Christopher de Beaumont would
rather have died than compromise with concubinage and adultery. He
could not understand a prelate’s stooping before a royal favorite,
and the idea of soliciting a Pompadour would have made him blush.
He preferred to be twice exiled. “The Queen,” wrote D’Argenson in
December, 1754, “Monseigneur the Dauphin, and all the royal family are
greatly troubled by the exile of the Archbishop of Paris; the Queen
weeps over it every day.” Christopher de Beaumont received numerous
visits in his exile at Conflans. The orthodox considered him the
upholder of the faith. The King admired the Archbishop, but did not
sustain him. D’Argenson wrote, March 6, 1756:--
“The motto _Dividatur_ might be recommended for the personal
government of Louis XV. He received this spirit of compromise from
Cardinal Fleury. All his forces run to that.... Hence, doing good
only half way, he also does evil half way, which produces a chaotic
state of things, and the worst effect.” With this system the monarch
dissatisfied the magistracy and the clergy at the same time. By turns
he banished the Parliament and the Archbishop. The curés continued to
refuse the sacraments to the Jansenists. The magistrates sent their
bailiffs’ men and caused the sick to be communicated surrounded by
bayonets. The Eucharist was abandoned to derision by the parties to the
strife. The court fluctuated between the two opinions. After having
sent the Archbishop of Paris to Conflans, Louis XV., although leaving
him in disgrace, pronounced in his favor.
In a bed of justice held December 13, 1756, the King forbade the
Parliament to decree the administration of the sacraments, to convene
general assemblies, to interfere with the course of justice, to suspend
the registration of edicts. He suppressed the chambers of inquests, and
declared that he would punish any who would not obey. One hundred and
fifty members of the Parliament sent in their resignations. All Paris
was in commotion. A riot was momentarily expected. Nothing was heard
but oaths and curses. The Parliament and Jansenistic diatribes had the
result of exciting Damiens to the insanity of fanaticism. He thought
that in striking Louis XV. he was acting for God and the people.
Madame de Pompadour, still more versatile than the King, was at this
time the enemy of the Parliament. However, the exile of the Archbishop
continued, because nothing could induce him to curry-favor with the
favorite. The charge which he sent from Conflans to Paris displeased
the Marquise.
“Let us enter into our own selves, my dear brethren,” said he, “and
see whether the aberrations of our own minds and hearts have not drawn
upon us so terrible an effect of the divine wrath. Examine without
prejudice what has been deserved by so many errors diffused among the
public, so much license in speech, such blasphemies against God and His
Christ, such disputing against the known truth, such scandals in every
condition and of all kinds; observe, in particular, whether, since the
weakening of faith among us, a multitude of principles tending to
disobedience and even to rebellion against the sovereign and his laws
have not insinuated themselves into men’s minds and books. It would be
easy for us to remind you of the maxims of the holy doctors which have
never ceased to inspire those sentiments of fidelity that are due to
earthly princes; the decisions of councils which have anathematized
every doctrine capable of revolting peoples against the sovereign; the
perpetual instructions of pastors, who have always said with the great
Apostle: Obey your temporal masters in all things.... What are we to
think of the execrable crime which has been conceived in the bosom of
the country and executed under our eyes? What must be our indignation
at the memory of a treasonable attempt, deliberately planned, and made
in that palace where everything announces the majesty of the sovereign?”
This truly evangelical language was the admiration of the Queen, the
Dauphin, and all pious people. But it seemed like a satire to the
protectress of the philosophers, the friend of Voltaire and Quesnay,
the patroness of the Encyclopedia. Louis XV. was in reality of the
Archbishop’s opinion. He recalled him in October, 1757. But, faithful
to his system of compromises, he permitted those members of the
Parliament who had resigned to resume their functions. The Archbishop,
constantly pursued by the animadversions of the favorite, was exiled
a second time, from January, 1758, to October, 1759. The inflexible
prelate conceded nothing in point of doctrine. “Let them erect a
scaffold in the midst of the court,” he exclaimed; “I would ascend
it to maintain my rights, fulfil my duties, and obey the laws of my
conscience.”
The quarrels over the bull _Unigenitus_ were at last appeased; but
religious authority was weakened at the same time as royal authority.
Emboldened by their polemics, the members of the Parliament began
gradually to pose as protectors of liberties and censors of absolute
monarchy. Some of the nobles, on the lookout for popularity, such as
D’Argenson, Choiseul, and other disciples of Voltaire, fancied that
the aristocracy could retain their privileges if the clergy lost
theirs. Louis XV., who foresaw the coming cataclysms, was under no such
illusion: at bottom he was inimical to the Parliament and friendly
to the Church. If the Most Christian King sometimes showed himself
indulgent toward the philosophers, it was because they flattered his
mistress and sought to stupefy him while lulling his remorse.
X
MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR
One of the principal calamities laid to the charge of Madame de
Pompadour, by her contemporaries and by posterity, is the Seven Years’
War. They have resolved to hold her responsible for all the bloodshed,
all the disasters and humiliations, for Rossbach and Crevelt, for the
loss of the colonies and the profound injury done to the military
prestige and naval forces of France. There is some exaggeration in
this, as we believe. It must not be forgotten that the origin of the
Seven Years’ War was an unjustifiable aggression of the English,
who were absolutely bent on complete mastery of the seas. Madame de
Pompadour was certainly not responsible for British ambition. It is
true that France was not ready for strife, and that its marine had been
allowed to fall into decay. But if the favorite was deceived about
the resources of the country, if she cherished illusions which ruined
peoples as well as individuals, she was not the only one.
The Marquis d’Argenson accuses her of having been occupied with
porcelains at a time when people should have been thinking of arms.
“Madame de Pompadour,” he writes in 1754, “does nothing but preach up
the great advantage it has been to the State to manufacture porcelain
like that of Saxony, and even to have surpassed it. A royal warehouse
for this porcelain is being established in the rue de la Monnaie. There
may be seen a service which the King is about to send to the King of
Saxony, as if to brave and provoke him, saying that he has surpassed
even his manufactory. At the King’s suppers the Marquise says that it
is uncitizenlike not to buy as much of this porcelain as one can pay
for. Some one answered her: But while the King has been so liberal in
encouraging this manufactory, those of Charleville and Saint-Étienne
are abandoned, which are quite differently useful to us, since they
concern the defence of the kingdom, and three-quarters of the workmen
are passing into foreign countries.” The reflection is, doubtless,
just; but a few Saxony or Sèvres porcelains, more or less, would not
greatly have altered the situation of France. It was her misfortune to
be slumbering in a fatal ease. Voltaire has said: “All Europe never saw
happier days than followed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, until
toward the year 1755. Commerce flourished from St. Petersburg to Cadiz;
the fine arts were everywhere in honor. A mutual confidence existed
between all nations. Europe resembled a large family, reunited after
its dissensions.” The French allowed themselves to be deceived by
this universal lull. Military men and diplomatists felt an exaggerated
confidence. In a few years people became so accustomed to peace that
they no longer even thought of war. It was the same thing that happened
about a century later, at the time of the Universal Exposition of
1867. Peoples who wish to preserve their greatness ought to beware
of cosmopolitan theories. While the philosophers were weaving their
humanitarian dreams, England was preparing her fleets and Frederick the
Great his armies.
A trifling contest between France and England for some wild lands in
Canada was the kindling spark of a fire that was to inflame the four
quarters of the earth. But this quarrel, insignificant in itself, was
not the true cause of the war: it was at most its pretext.
To avoid a struggle with England was well-nigh impossible; but what
France might have done, and did not, was to remain faithful to the
alliance with Prussia, instead of plunging into one absolutely contrary
to every tradition of its foreign policy, the Austrian alliance. What
the diplomacy of Louis XV. lacked was consecutiveness. The versatile
monarch did not know what he wanted. Sometimes Prussian, sometimes
Austrian, he fluctuated between two contradictory systems. The see-saw
policy creates only a momentary illusion. It succeeds for a while, but
it nearly always leads to ruin. The secret of strong diplomatists is
to persevere in one idea, pursue one end, choose one good alliance,
and stick to it. Feeble diplomatists, on the contrary, undo to-day what
they did yesterday. It is like the web of Penelope. Whoever studies
seriously the causes of our reverses, under Napoleonic France as well
as under the France of the Bourbons, will easily convince himself that
nearly all of them are due to incoherent principles and inconsistent
ideas. To preserve a system and follow a tradition gives a real
strength. The strength of Prince Bismarck is to have persevered in one
idea, that of German unity, and in one alliance, that of Russia.
The policy of the Versailles treaty of 1756, which established an
intimate accord between Louis XV. and Maria Theresa, was not in itself
a more objectionable policy than another. But if it was desired to
adopt it, it ought not to have been necessary to make war with Austria
beforehand. Nothing is more dangerous than to place one’s self in a
self-contradictory attitude. No confidence is inspired by such variable
conduct; one is at the mercy of every incident.
In politics, as in religion and literature, the prime essential is
unity. It is the same thing in diplomacy as in style.
“Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.”[49]
What is required is a true spirit of method, a clear, precise, definite
object, straight lines, an absence of tortuous proceedings.
The old maxim, “divide to reign,” the presence in the same ministry
of men warring against each other, of secret agents who undo the
work of official agents, underhand ways, countermines, politics by
double entry,--all this is no sign of strength; it is the expedient of
weakness. Occult diplomacy, like that of Louis XV., is suitable to none
but governments in extremity. Woe to a sovereign who suspects his own
ambassadors! If he has not full confidence in them, let him change them!
What lay at the root of the character of Louis XV. was the habit of
dissimulation, the vanity of being considered impenetrable. It was he,
not Madame de Pompadour, who had created a government at constant war
with the principal agents it made use of. Nor was the Austrian alliance
a conception of the favorite’s. Louis XV. did not like Frederick the
Great, and he was not less taken with the flatteries of the Empress
Maria Theresa than Madame de Pompadour herself. If the adroit sovereign
wrote the Marquise a letter in which she treated her as a dear friend,
she was careful at the same time to display a passionate admiration, a
sort of cult, for Louis XV. Moreover, there was an Austrian party at
Versailles. The Marquis d’Argenson wrote in January, 1756: “There is a
large party in our court for the court of Vienna. Austria has always
had emissaries at our court. I hear these emissaries saying that the
house of Austria is no longer what it was, that it has need of us, that
we ought to march in close accord with it. I know these insinuations,
and it was to opposing them that I owe my disgrace in 1747. They preach
to us against the King of Prussia, they say he is all English, and they
excite us against him in view of despoiling him, if we are able. Hence
we sulk at Spain, we are irritated against Prussia, our veritable and
sincere ally, and all this exasperates at court _femineo ululatu_.”
The partisans of the treaty of Versailles (May 1, 1756), by which
France and Austria promised each other mutual aid against their
enemies, have a right to extenuating circumstances. This passage from
Duclos must not be forgotten: “As soon as the treaty was known, there
was a sort of inebriation which was increased by the chagrin displayed
by the English; every one imagined that the union of the two first
powers would make all Europe respectful. Ideas have greatly changed
since then.”
The Abbé de Bernis, who had quitted the Venetian embassy to take the
portfolio of foreign affairs, and who was one of Madame de Pompadour’s
favorites, was charged with drawing up the treaty. “Notwithstanding
his first objections as a man of sense, he did not long resist the
general movement which carried away all who surrounded him; he was
dazzled, and thought he was contributing to the greatest political
operation that had been attempted since Richelieu. At first everything
seemed to succeed as well as could be desired, and the new alliance so
highly vaunted at court seemed to be taken even better still by the
public.”[50] The Marquise triumphed. She amused herself by engraving
on an agate in onyx an allegory, which represented France and Austria
joining hands above the altar of Fidelity, and trampling under foot the
mask of Hypocrisy and the torch of Discord.
At the start, people were full of enthusiasm and confidence. The victor
of Mahon was esteemed as successful in war as in love. Nothing was
dreamed of but mighty feats and conquests. But presently all took on
a gloomy look. The convention of Closter-Seven, so imprudently signed
by Marshal de Richelieu on September 8, 1757, was the signal for
unnumbered catastrophes. “One does not die of grief,” wrote Bernis to
Choiseul, December 13 of the same year, “for I am still alive after
September 8. Since that epoch, faults have been accumulated in a
fashion one can hardly explain, without supposing bad intentions. I
have spoken with the greatest force to God and His saints. I excite
pulses a little, and then the lethargy recommences; people open big
eyes, and that is all there is about it.... It seems to me as if I were
minister of foreign affairs in Limbo. Try, my dear count, if you can
excite more than I the spirit of life which is becoming extinct in
us; for my part, I have dealt all my great blows, and have concluded
to be in an apoplexy like the others over sentiment, without ceasing
to do my duty like a good citizen and an honest man.” The former abbé
of the court become a minister, the once superficial man whom Voltaire
used to call “Babet, the-bouquet-holder,” was indignant at the general
apathy and carelessness. “It is unexampled,” wrote this friend of
Madame de Pompadour, “that so great a game should be played with the
same indifference as a game of checkers.... Sensitive, and, if I dare
say it, sensible as I am, I am dying on the wheel, and my martyrdom
is useless to France.... May God send us some will or other, or some
one who will have one for us! I would be his valet de chambre if they
liked, and with all my heart.”
As soon as the struggle began, unfortunate France was amazed at
the illusions she had cherished. The truth appeared to her. Bernis
comprehended that the shortest follies are the best. January 6, 1758,
he wrote to Choiseul, then Ambassador to Vienna: “My advice would be to
make peace, and to begin by a truce on land and sea. When I shall know
what the King thinks of this idea, which I have not found in my manner
of thinking, but which has been presented to me by good sense, reason,
and necessity, I will inform you. Meanwhile, try to make M. de Kaunitz
certain of two things that are equally true; namely, that the King will
never abandon the Empress, but that it will never do for him to be
ruined with her. Our respective faults have made a hopeless wreck of a
great project which was infallible in the first days of September. It
is a beautiful dream which it would be dangerous to carry further, but
which it might some day be possible to resume with better actors and
better combined military plans. The more directly I have been charged
with this grand alliance, the more ought people to credit me when I
counsel peace.”
Unfortunately, Madame de Pompadour was headstrong, which is one of the
attributes of mediocrity of mind. Confounding heroism with obstinacy,
she thought that to struggle indefinitely against ill fortune, was to
display greatness of soul. The more faults a general of her choice
committed, the more inveterately did she uphold him. She was like those
gamesters who are checked by no ill luck, and who never give up playing
until they are ruined. Public opinion condemned such obstinacy. The
French do not know how to support reverses. They overwhelmed Soubise,
defeated at Rossbach, with sarcasms, and appeared to be infatuated with
the victor. People took the fashion of exalting Frederick the Great
and of cursing his enemy, Madame de Pompadour, Cotillion IV., as she
was called. Soubise was the scape-goat on whom rained all the jests,
chansons, and satires:--
“Soubise dit, la lanterne à la main,
J’ai beau chercher, où diable est mon armée?
Elle était là pourtant hier matin,
Me l’a-t-on prise où l’aurais-je égarée?
Ah! je perds tout, je suis un étourdi;
Mais attendons au grand jour, à midi.
Que vois-je? O ciel! Que mon âme est ravie!
Prodige heureux, la voilà, la voilà!--
Ah! ventre bleu! Qu’est-ce donc que cela?
Je me trompais, c’est l’armée ennemie.”[51]
It is not by means of chansons that France can retrieve herself. She
plays into the enemy’s hand by showing herself more Prussian than
Prussia. Bernis finds himself submerged by this deluge of criticisms
and assaults. “I am threatened by anonymous letters,” he wrote again to
Choiseul in 1758, “with being presently torn to pieces by the people,
and though I do not greatly fear such menaces, it is certain that
approaching misfortunes which cannot be foreseen, could easily realize
them. Our friend runs at least as much risk.” Ill in body and mind,
Bernis could hold out no longer; he handed in his resignation. Louis XV
accepted it in a letter dated October 9, 1758, which opened thus: “I am
sorry, Monsieur the Abbé-Count, that the affairs you are charged with
affect your health to such a point that you can no longer support the
burden of the work.... I consent with regret to your turning over the
foreign affairs to the hands of the Duke de Choiseul, whom I think to
be at present the only suitable person, as I am disinclined to make an
absolute change in the system I have adopted, or even to be spoken to
about it.”
The three women in coalition against Frederick,--Maria Theresa, Empress
of Austria, Elisabeth, Empress of Russia, and Madame, the Marquise
de Pompadour--carried the war as far as possible. France experienced
nothing but reverses in every quarter of the globe. As Voltaire
remarked, it seemed more exhausted of men and money by its union
with Austria than it had been by two centuries of war against that
country.[52] It must be admitted, however, that Madame de Pompadour’s
obstinacy was very near succeeding. It is incredible that the King
of Prussia, who stood alone on the continent against the forces of
Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and half of the Empire, could long
have maintained so gigantic a struggle. An unforeseen event, the death
of the Empress Elisabeth of Russia, January 6, 1762, saved him. Madame
de Pompadour felt that her vengeance was eluding her. It was necessary
to renounce all ideas of glory and conquest, and to sign the disastrous
treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg (February 10 and 15, 1763). Louis
XV. gave up the cities he still possessed in Germany. He restored
Minorca to England, and ceded to it Acadia, Canada, Cape Breton, the
gulf and river of Saint Lawrence, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Dominique,
Tobago, and the Senegal River with its factories. He only regained his
Indian colonies on condition of not fortifying or garrisoning them.
Finally he undertook to demolish anew the harbor of Dunkirk. The ruin
of military prestige, commerce, the navy, and public credit, the loss
of two hundred thousand men, several millions of money, and nearly all
the colonies,--such is the balance sheet of the fatal war so ardently
desired by the Marquise.
Voltaire had good reason to exclaim: “What was the result of this
innumerable multitude of combats the tale of which now wearies even
those conspicuous in them? What remains from all these efforts? Nothing
but blood shed vainly in waste and desolate lands, villages in ruins,
families reduced to beggary, and rarely does even a dull rumor of these
calamities reach as far as Paris, always profoundly occupied with
pleasures or equally frivolous disputes.” Then, returning to the cause
or rather to the pretext of the strife, the author of the _Siècle
de Louis XV._ says again: “It has been thought that it would have
been very easy to prevent such misfortunes by coming to terms with the
English concerning a small contested ground near Canada. But certain
ambitious persons, to maintain their dignity and render themselves
necessary, precipitated France into this fatal war. The same thing had
occurred in 1741. The self-love of two or three persons was enough to
lay all Europe waste. France needed peace so greatly that she regarded
those who concluded it as benefactors of the country.” The Duke de
Choiseul remained popular because he had been able to palliate somewhat
the impression caused by such reverses by concluding, in August, 1761,
the family pact between the Bourbons of France, Spain, and Italy, and
had also had tact enough to win the support of the fashionable literary
men, the arbiters of renown. But his friend, Madame de Pompadour, was
the object of public vindictiveness. Wounded in her ambition, her
vanity, and her pride, she could not be consoled.
XII
MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE PHILOSOPHERS
One day some one cited in presence of Louis XV. the example of
Frederick the Great, who admitted the philosophers in vogue and famous
men of letters to his intimate acquaintance. “That is not the way in
France,” said the King, “and as there are a few more wits and great
noblemen here than there are in Prussia, I should want a very big table
to gather them all around it.” And then he counted on his fingers:
“Maupertuis, Fontenelle, La Motte, Voltaire, Piron, Destouches,
Montesquieu, Cardinal de Polignac.” His attention was called to the
fact that he had forgotten D’Alembert and Clairant.--“And Crébillon,”
said he, “and La Chaussée!”--“And Crébillon the younger,” cried some
one; “he ought to be more amiable than his father; and then there are
the Abbé Prevost, the Abbé d’Olivet.”--“Very well,” replied Louis XV.,
“for twenty-five years all of that crowd would have dined or supped
with me.”
Madame de Pompadour, who was acquainted with the master’s dispositions,
would not have made advances to the philosophers had she not been
possessed by the passion for flattery. But how was she to resist
compliments so well turned as those of Voltaire? This man, who in
speaking of the Christian religion cried: “Crush the wretch!” kneeled
to a royal mistress while enlarging the boundaries of the most insipid
flattery. The censer which he wanted to banish from the churches
he seized in order to wave it respectfully before the alcove of a
Pompadour!
The Marquise had in her intimacy a man who never quitted her; this was
Doctor Quesnay, her familiar, her guest, her confident, her physician,
whom she had lodged just above her in an entresol of the château of
Versailles. This little entresol, rendezvous of the boldest innovators,
the most determined free-thinkers, the most ardent materialists,
was the secret workshop of the future Revolution, the laboratory
of disorder and destruction. There, talking, dining, declaiming,
conspiring together, one met men such as D’Alembert, the chief of the
Encyclopedists; Duclos, who said of the nobles who flattered him: “They
are afraid of us as robbers are of street lamps with reflectors”;
Helvetius, whose whole doctrine is summed up in this monstrous maxim,
last word of egotism and immorality: “Man being merely a sensitive
being should have but one object: the pleasure of the senses.”
Marmontel relates that the Marquise de Pompadour, unable to induce this
troop of philosophers to come down to her salon, came to their table
instead and chatted with them.
Doctor Quesnay, her physician, was one of those peasants of the Danube,
or better, to adopt a happy expression of the De Goncourts, one of
those courtiers of the Danube who cloak a refined cleverness under an
aspect of rudeness, and who live by the monarchy even while playing to
the republicans. Strange Brutuses, contraband Catos, whose beautiful
maxims can deceive none but simpletons! Rude democrats in appearance,
time-servers in reality, who are proud to dine with great people and
whose so-called dignity provokes a smile! Quesnay, this physical
confessor, knew both the strong and the weak sides of the Marquise.
He knew so well how to take her that he could quietly install in his
entresol, just above the favorite’s apartment, the first club, that
which agitated for the first time the downfall of the Church and the
monarchy.
Madame de Pompadour was full of coquetries and amiability for the most
dangerous adversaries of the old régime. La Tour’s pastel, which is at
the Louvre, represents her seated in an armchair, her left arm resting
on a table whereon are a globe and some books. The largest of these is
the fourth volume of the Encyclopedia, that great arsenal of impiety,
the prospectus of which had been launched by Diderot in 1750. Louis
XV., always undecided, at first tolerated the gigantic collection of
writings. Some years later (March, 1759) he revoked the privileges of
the editors. A royal declaration of unwonted violence appeared at the
same time against the authors, printers, publishers, and colporteurs
of writings aimed against religion and royal authority. Almost every
line proclaimed a death penalty. But a thousand means of eluding these
Draconian laws were found, and most frequently authority closed its
eyes.
Voltaire cried enthusiastically: “Long life to the ministry of the Duke
de Choiseul!”
Nevertheless, warnings were not lacking to the favorite. She saw as
clearly as Louis XV. himself the perils which the doctrines of the
Encyclopedia made imminent for all kings. Madame du Hausset relates
that a very curious anonymous letter was one day sent to the King and
his mistress. As the author was bent on accomplishing his purpose,
he had sent one copy to the lieutenant of police, sealed with this
address: _For the King_; one with these words: _To Madame de
Pompadour_, and still another to M. de Marigny. This letter, which
greatly affected Louis XV. and his Marquise, struck them all the
more forcibly because it was written in very respectful terms. Among
other remarkable passages it contained the following prediction: “The
Encyclopedists, under pretext of enlightening men, are sapping the
foundations of religion. All sorts of liberty depend upon each other:
the philosophers and the Protestants tend to republicanism as well
as the Jansenists. The philosophers attack the trunk of the tree,
the others some of its branches; but their efforts, without being
concerted, will some day bring it down. Add to these the Economists,
whose object is political liberty, as that of the others is liberty of
worship, and the Government may find itself in twenty or thirty years
undermined throughout and falling tumultuously into ruin.”
These prophecies of the coming Revolution are incessantly renewed
in the writings of one of the ministers of Louis XV., the Marquis
d’Argenson. It is he who writes in January, 1750: “Republicanism is
every day gaining on philosophic minds. People take an aversion to
monarchism through demonstration. In fact, it is only slaves and
eunuchs who aid monarchism by their false wisdom.” And on December
20 of the same year: “See how many philosophic writers there are
at present. The wind from England blows over this stuff. It is
combustible. Look at the style in which Parliament remonstrances are
written. These procureurs general of Parliaments, these State syndics,
would at need become great men. All the nation would take fire; the
nobility would gain the clergy, and then the third estate. And if
necessity should arise for assembling the States-General of the realm
to regulate the demands for money, these States would not assemble in
vain. One should be careful; all this is very serious.”
It must be owned that D’Argenson is a true prophet. Every day he
accentuates his sinister predictions. September 11, 1751, he writes:
“We have not, like the Romans, any Visigoths or Saracens who might
invade us; but the Government may experience a revolution. Consider
that it is no longer either esteemed or respected, and, which is worse,
that it is doing all that is needed to ruin itself. The clergy, the
army, the Parliaments, the people high and low, are all murmuring,
all detaching themselves from the Government, and rightly. Things
are going from bad to worse.” He returns to the charge September 9,
1752: “The bad effects of our government by absolute monarchy are
resulting in persuading France and all Europe that it is the worst of
governments.... A mild but inactive prince allows the abuses to grow
which were commenced by the pride of Louis XIV.; no reform when it
is necessary, no amelioration, appointments blindly made, prejudices
without inquiry; everything shows an increasing tendency toward
national ruin. Everything is falling into tatters, and private passions
are working underhand to ruin and destroy us.”
Is it not a curious thing to hear, forty years beforehand, the
first mutterings of the formidable tempest which was to engulf
everything,--nobility, clergy, Parliaments, monarchy? We are in the
year 1750. The archers have arrested, as a police measure, certain
vagabond children who were begging in Paris. Suddenly a rumor spreads
that abductions are multiplying and that no family is any longer in
security. Popular imagination is excited, overheated. People say that
in order to restore his wasted forces the kingly debauché takes baths
of children’s blood, like a new Herod. Madame de Pompadour, who has
been imprudent enough to come to Paris, has barely time to escape from
being torn to pieces. The people want to go to Versailles and burn
the château, built, as they say, at their expense. The exasperated
King says that hereafter he will not pass through Paris when going to
Compiègne. “What!” he cries, “shall I show myself to these villainous
people who say I am a Herod!” And to avoid entering thereafter the
capital of which he has conceived a horror, he establishes outside the
walls the road which is now called the path of the Revolt.
The tide of anger rises--rises incessantly against the favorite.
The people overwhelm her with curses; they call her the _King’s
hussy_. The daughters of Louis XV. designate her by a still more
vulgar name. In November, 1751, the Dauphin and Dauphiness, on their
way to Notre Dame, cross the bridge of the Tournelle. Some two thousand
women surround them. “We are dying with hunger!” they say. “Bread!
bread!” The Dauphiness trembles like a leaf. The Dauphin causes several
louis to be distributed. “Monseigneur,” say the women of the people,
“we do not want your money. It is bread we want. We love you much. Let
that wretch be sent away who is governing the kingdom and ruining it!
If we had hold of her, there would soon be nothing left of her but
relics.”
If such were popular impressions before the Seven Years’ War, it
is easy to comprehend what they must have been after the national
humiliations which overwhelmed unhappy France. Madame de Pompadour
thought she could remedy the immense unpopularity which pursued her
by flattering still more the philosophers who could blow the trumpet
of Renown for her. These singular patriots, who had celebrated the
glory of the victor of Rossbach as if he had been a Titus or a Marcus
Aurelius, asked only one thing to console them for the afflictions,
shames, and miseries of their country: a regular persecution against
the Jesuits. Madame de Pompadour was ready to follow Voltaire’s
disciples on to this ground. She might have hesitated if the Jesuits
had been her flatterers, if they had made a pretence of being her
dupes, if they had concluded to play a rôle of complaisance in the
comedies of her pretended repentance, if they had seemed to take her
for another Maintenon, for a mother in Israel. But she did not forget
that when, in 1756, she had been obliged to go to confession in order
to be eligible for an appointment as lady of the Queen’s palace, Père
de Sacy had refused her absolution, and that when the attempt was made
on the King, in 1757, Père Desmarets had nearly obliged her to leave
the court. Hence the Jesuits were condemned. A Parliament decree of
February 22, 1764, commanded that within eight days they should take
an oath not to live any longer according to their institute, to abjure
the condemned maxims, and to hold no correspondence with their former
superiors. “When the Jesuits were expelled,” says Chateaubriand, “their
existence was not dangerous to the State; the past was punished in the
present; that often happens among men; the _Provincial Letters_
had deprived the Company of Jesus of its moral force. And yet Pascal is
merely a calumniator of genius; he has left us an immortal lie.”
The great crime of the Jesuits was to have displeased the Marquise de
Pompadour. One saw holy missionaries, untiring apostles, illustrious
professors, men who had honored religion and science, old men
surrounded by the esteem of all honest people, driven from their
houses, deprived of all resources, expelled from France with a rigor
and injustice so cruel that certain philosophers thought they could
take up their defence in the name of humanity. Those Jesuits whom
Madame de Pompadour was driving out, Frederick the Great was to shelter
in his dominions. “They are the best priests I have ever known,” said
he. Catherine II. was to welcome them to her vast states and make use
of them in founding educational establishments.
Voltaire triumphed. “Ferney was the European court,” says Chateaubriand
again in his _Analyse raisonnée de l’Histoire de France_; “this
universal homage rendered to the genius who was sapping by redoubled
blows the foundations of society as it then existed, is characteristic
of the approaching transformation of that society. And nevertheless it
is true that if Louis XV. had caressed ever so slightly the flatterer
of Madame de Pompadour, if he had treated him as Louis XIV. treated
Racine, Voltaire would have abdicated the sceptre, he would have
bartered his power against a distinction of the ante-chamber, just as
Cromwell was momentarily ready to exchange the place he now holds in
history for the garter of Alix of Salisbury; these are mysteries of
human vanity.”
Madame de Pompadour had sought the eulogies of Voltaire; she obtained
them. From the moment when she persecuted the Jesuits she had a right
to his approbation. When she dies, the patriarch of Ferney will be
almost affected. He will write to Damilaville: “Consider, dear brother,
that true men of letters, true philosophers, should regret Madame
de Pompadour. She thought as she ought to; no one knows that better
than I. Truly, we have sustained a great loss.” And to Cardinal de
Bernis: “I think, Monseigneur, that Madame de Pompadour was sincerely
your friend, and if it be permitted me to go further, I think from
the depths of my rustic retreat that the King experiences a great
privation. He was loved for himself by a soul born sincere, who had
justness in the mind and justice in the heart.” Voltaire is always the
same. What he lacks is not simply religious faith, but the moral sense.
While the foundations of the monarchy were cracking on every side,
the patriarch of Ferney, that ancient courtier of noble lords and
sovereigns, was trembling with joy and pride. “All that I see,” he
wrote to M. de Chauvelin, April 2, 1762, “is sowing the seeds of a
revolution which will infallibly arrive, but which I shall not have the
pleasure of witnessing. The light is spreading so from place to place,
that it will burst out on the first occasion, and then there will be
a fine row. The young men are very lucky; they will see many things!”
Madman, who regretted not being destined to see the scaffolds of ’93!
Madame de Pompadour also felt that the political, social, and religious
edifice would crumble within a few years. But why concern one’s self
about the future? Why be saddened by dismal thoughts and gloomy
presentiments? What the haughty favorite desired was the ability to
retain to her last day, her last hour, her sceptre as queen of the left
hand. The rest troubled her little. It was not Louis XV., it was she
who said: “After me the deluge!”
XII
THE DEATH OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR
It is a law of Providence that no one can shine without suffering, and
that jealous Fortune avenges herself for all the successes that she
grants. Women are like conquerors: they always expiate their triumphs.
For these queens _à la mode_, these dazzling magicians who appear
like meteors and who live amid a cloud of incense, there is after
all no alternative but death or dethronement. To die or to grow old,
that is the terrible dilemma from which they are unable to extricate
themselves. Women whose attractions have not been more than ordinary
bend to this common law with sufficient resignation. But the celebrated
beauty, the haughty beauty who delights in herself as if her youth
were never to end, secretly revolts against cruel destiny and silently
endures a real martyrdom. Her shrivelled hand tries to retain the
sceptre that is slipping from it. She is unwilling to descend from the
throne whence she has been used to survey a crowd of servile adorers.
As the changes come on gradually, in a manner hardly perceptible, she
has probably failed to notice the precursory symptoms of her decline.
She is told on all sides that she is more seductive, more radiant,
than ever. Then, in this last blossoming of her departing youth, she
experiences that indefinable sentiment, that blending of unquiet joy
and voluptuous melancholy, which takes possession of the soul under the
light of the last bright days of autumn. When one looks at the azure
sky, one cannot realize that winter is so near. But if one drops one’s
eyes, the yellowing leaves that cover the ground or are swept away by
the wind, remind one that the feast of nature is drawing to a close.
The woman who longs most to preserve her illusions concerning the
perpetuity of her youth, finds warning accusations which afflict and
terrify her. The first wrinkles, the first gray hairs; the color which
needs to be touched up, the lips and eyes which call imperiously for
paint; the insolent mirror which nevertheless one cannot break because
it is in opposition to the flatterers, because in its mute language it
brutally declares the truth!
Madame de Pompadour was forty-two years old. Aged prematurely by
the unwholesome emotions of intrigue, vanity, and ambition, she was
suffering both in body and in mind. Incessant palpitation of the heart
disturbed her. Fever was her constant guest. On nearing the end of
her career she looked back sadly over the road she had traversed,
and comprehended at last the inanity of the things in which she had
vainly sought for happiness. But for a true repentance she lacked a
religious faith like that of Mademoiselle de La Vallière. In default of
faith, the Marquise had great courage. She strove energetically against
disease, but she remained worldly and theatrical even in suffering
and death. “She would no longer appear in Paris,” says M. Arsène
Houssaye; “at court she never showed herself except by lamplight, in
the apparel of a queen of Golconda, crowned with diamonds, wearing
twenty bracelets, and dragging after her an Indian robe embroidered
with gold and silver. It was always the divine Marquise of other days;
but presently, when one looked closely, one discovered that it was but
a pastel, still charming, but rubbed out here and there. It was at
the mouth that her beauty began to fade. She had early contracted the
habit of biting her lips, to conceal her emotions. By the time she was
thirty, her mouth had lost all its vivid freshness. It was necessary
to repaint it after every meal and every kiss!”[53] Her eyes had
retained all their brilliancy. But the rest of her person was plainly
aging. She tried in vain to conceal her excessive meagreness under the
skilful devices of the toilette. She was a woman stricken by death.
She fell ill at Choisy, and while there was still time she asked to
be taken back to Versailles in order to die as she had lived, amidst
the evidences of her power. Her friends had an instant of hope, for a
slight amelioration was produced. The poet Favart instantly produced
this stanza:--
“Le soleil est malade,
Et Pompadour aussi;
Ce n’est qu’une passade,
L’un et l’autre est guéri;
Le bon Dieu, qui seconde
Nos vœux et notre amour,
Pour le bonheur du monde,
Nous a rendu le jour
Avec Pompadour.”[54]
Palissot sent the following verses to the Marquise:--
“Vous êtes trop chère à la France,
Au dieu des arts et des amours,
Pour redouter du sort la fatale puissance.
Tous les dieux veillaient sur vos jours,
Tous étaient animés du zèle qui m’inspire;
En volant à votre secours
Ils ont affermi leur empire.”[55]
Madame de Pompadour did not allow herself to be deceived by these
fallacious hyperboles. All this mythology did not mislead her. She
understood very well that there was nothing in common between her and
the sun, and felt herself already invaded by the chilly shadows of
death.
“It will come at the predestined day; it will come,” as Bossuet said,
“this last illness when, amidst an infinite number of friends, doctors,
and attendants, you will find yourself without assistance, more
forsaken, more abandoned, than the pauper dying on the straw without a
sheet for his burial! For of what avail are these friends in this fatal
malady? Only to afflict you by their presence; these doctors? only to
torment you; these attendants? only to run hither and thither about
your house with useless zeal. You need other friends, other servants;
these paupers whom you have despised are the only ones capable of
assisting you. Why did you not think in time of providing yourself
with such friends as would now hold out their arms to receive you into
everlasting tabernacles?”[56]
Even on her death-bed Madame de Pompadour, always the slave of the
man whose mistress she was called, feared the King more than God
himself. They say she sent to Louis XV. to ask if he desired her to go
to confession. The King replied affirmatively. A priest from Paris,
the curé of the Madeleine, administered the last sacraments to the
dying woman. When he was about to withdraw, it is pretended that she
retained him with a last smile, and said: “One moment, Monsieur the
Curé, we will go away together.” A few minutes before she had caused
her will to be read to her, which commenced thus: “I, Jeanne Antoinette
Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, wife separated from the property of
Charles Guillaume Lenormand d’Étioles, equerry, have made and written
my present testament and ordinance of my last will, which I wish to
be executed in its entirety. I recommend my soul to God, entreating
Him to have pity on it, to pardon my sins, to grant me the grace to
do penance and to die in dispositions worthy of His mercy, hoping to
appease His justice by the merits of the precious blood of Jesus Christ
my Saviour and by the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin and
of all the Saints in Paradise. I desire that my body shall be taken to
the Capuchins of the Place Vendôme, at Paris, and buried in the vault
of the chapel conceded to me.” As one sees, the Marquise was not so
faithless as the Encyclopedists claimed. The poor woman had learned for
herself what earthly kings are. Perhaps, at the last hour, she turned
her eyes toward the King of Heaven.
She breathed her last April 15, 1764. It was long since Louis XV. had
ceased to love her. He merely tolerated her. If he had kept her at
court, it was only lest her disgrace should make her die of chagrin.
This premature death was rather a release from embarrassment than an
affliction to him. It is said that, seeing from one of the windows of
Versailles the carriage starting which was to carry her coffin to Paris
during a frightful storm, he said tranquilly: “The Marquise will not
have good weather for her journey.” Then, calmly drawing out his watch,
he calculated at what hour the funeral would reach its destination--and
that was all.
Madame de Pompadour’s existence had been like a parody of real
greatness. It was the same with her obsequies. A Capuchin had been
appointed to make the funeral oration. He extricated himself from this
heavy task like a man of wit. “I receive,” said he, “the body of the
very high and powerful lady, the Marquise de Pompadour, lady of the
Queen’s palace. She was at the school of all virtues, for Her Majesty
is a model of goodness, of modesty, of indulgence.” And thus he went
on for a quarter of an hour, making a well-deserved eulogy of the
Queen. Marie Leczinska, always so charitable, was struck by the extreme
promptness with which the too celebrated favorite was forgotten. “No
one has anything more to say here of her who is no more,” she remarked
to President Hénault, “than if she had never existed. Such is the
world; truly it is worth while to love it!”
Once dead, Madame de Pompadour seemed unworthy even of hatred. Still,
the men of letters and the artists who had formerly been protected
by her, regretted her somewhat. Voltaire, while remembering with
bitterness that she had sustained Crébillon, wrote to M. de Cideville:
“I have been much afflicted by the death of Madame de Pompadour. It
is ridiculous that an old scribbler on paper, who can scarcely walk,
should be still living, and that a beautiful woman should die at forty
in the midst of the finest career in the world. Perhaps if she had
tasted the repose that I enjoy she would be living still.” Diderot
was more severe. He had to give a description of the Salon of 1765,
where a picture was exhibited which Vanloo had painted during Madame
de Pompadour’s illness, and which represented the afflicted Arts
addressing themselves to Destiny to obtain the preservation of her
life. “Vanloo’s suppliants,” said the critic, “obtain nothing from
Destiny which is more favorable to France than to the Arts. Madame de
Pompadour died at a moment when she was thought to be out of danger.
Well! what remains of this woman who exhausted us of men and money,
deprived us of honor and energy, and upset the political system of
Europe? The treaty of Versailles, which will last as long as it can;
Bouchardon’s Amour, which will always be admired; several stones
sculptured by Guay, which will astonish future antiquaries; a good
little picture by Vanloo, which will be looked at sometimes; and a
pinch of dust.”
XIII
THE OLD AGE OF MARIE LECZINSKA
When the eyes have been fatigued by the glow of artificial lights, they
willingly repose on soft and real daylight. After the haughty favorite,
one likes to contemplate the good Queen. Comparisons made between the
mistress and the legitimate wife are always to the advantage of the
second. To one the agitations of a troubled conscience, to the other
peace of heart; to one contempt, to the other respect; scandal to
one, edification to the other. The Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes and
of President Hénault make us acquainted with the qualities of Marie
Leczinska, just as those of Madame du Hausset lay bare the moral plague
spots of the Marquise de Pompadour. A solitary conclusion may be drawn
from reading all of them; namely, that the Queen, neglected as she
was, and in spite of the hidden rôle which contented her modesty, was,
notwithstanding, less unhappy than the all-powerful favorite, who
disposed of the monarchy as if it were a pension list. Each of them had
her chagrins, but God gives us strength to endure the ills He sends
us, while those we create for ourselves are intolerable. The heaviest
chains are those we forge with our own hands. The list of suicides
is a proof in support of this observation. Is there, for example, an
affliction more profound than that of a mother who loses her child?
Very well! you never hear that a woman has taken her life because she
has had a grief like that. On the other hand, how many suicides there
are among the victims of pride and sensuality! Religion alleviates the
sorrows which are in the nature and order of things. But griefs which
are in revolt against Providence, afflictions voluntarily created by
criminal caprices, or insensate ambitions, have in them something
inconsolable and incurable. Madame de Pompadour vainly sought an asylum
for her soul.
The Queen found at the foot of altars such a strength that after
kneeling before the image of our Saviour Jesus Christ, she could, on
rising, drink the cup of bitterness without its leaving a trace upon
her lips.
While the guilty mistress beheld with such spite and vexation the
departure of her youth, the virtuous wife experienced neither pain
nor regret at growing old. It is the privilege of honest women to
accept the laws of our common destiny without a murmur, and not to
attempt a foolish struggle against nature in the hope of repairing
the irreparable ravages of years. The Marquise loaded her face,
withered by anxieties, with rouge and powder, and exhausted all the
science of a desperate coquetry in the effort to keep up an illusion.
Marie Leczinska, on the contrary, did not entertain for a moment the
thought of rejuvenating herself. Casanova, who was present at one
of her dinners at Fontainebleau, represents her as “without rouge,
simply dressed, her head covered with a large cap, old-looking and
devout in aspect.” This wholly Christian simplicity was not without
its charm. The Queen possessed not merely goodness but wit, and her
qualities were reflected on her spiritual countenance without the least
pettiness, venerable with no touch of moroseness. While Louis XV. and
his mistresses were so sad, so disillusionized, so disenchanted with
everything, though surrounded by all their voluptuous pleasures, Marie
Leczinska never uttered a complaint. Gaiety was in reality the basis of
her character, not that factitious, turbulent, ephemeral gaiety which
vice knows for a moment, but that soft, continuous, unaffected, equable
gaiety imparted by a serene disposition and a conscience in repose.
What an expression of soundness, of moral wellbeing! What patience
with life, what sympathetic serenity! The Queen is interested in
many things; she is fond of honest amusements. Unlike Louis XV.,
who is bored by everything, she has a taste for music; she paints a
little, she embroiders, she plays the guitar, the hurdy-gurdy, the
harpsichord; she willingly takes part in games of chance. President
Hénault introduces us into the cabinet, whither she withdraws after
having dined alone in public, in accordance with the formalities of
etiquette: “Here,” he says, “we are in another climate; this is no
longer the Queen, but a private person. Here one finds work of all
descriptions, tapestry, arts of every sort, and while she is working
she kindly tells us what she has been reading; she mentions the parts
that have impressed her and appreciates them.”
Look at Latour’s pastel, so admirably described by Sainte-Beuve. “It
is a half-length portrait of the Queen. She holds a closed fan in one
hand; she turns toward the spectator like some one who is thinking, and
who is going to say something arch, some innocent piece of slyness. Her
hair is slightly powdered; on her head she wears a point of black lace,
a sort of little fichu called a _fanchonnette_; a mantelet of pale
blue silk, with puffings or ribbons of grayish white, the shades are
so blended that they lose themselves in each other. A tranquil harmony
pervades all the tones. The lips delicate, somewhat thin, turning
up at the angles; the eye small and brilliant; the nose a trifle
saucy,--everything in this countenance breathes gentleness, subtlety,
archness. If you know neither her rank nor her name, you will say that
this middle-aged person can certainly make a sound and appropriate
repartee; that she has the grain of salt without bitterness.”
How many times, at Versailles, I have stopped for a while in the
Queen’s bedchamber,[57] in that chamber which was occupied by Marie
Leczinska from December 1, 1725, the day of her arrival at the palace
of Louis XIV., until June 24, 1768, the day of her death! At the back
of the former alcove, on the right, over a door which led to the small
apartments of the Queen,[58] now hangs Nattier’s fine portrait of
Marie Leczinska. The wife of Louis XV. is sitting down, dressed in a
red gown bordered with fur, her arm leaning on a pier-table, on which
lie the crown, the royal mantle, and a New Testament. There is nothing
studied, nothing theatrical, in either the pose, the countenance, or
the costume. It is a blending of kindliness and dignity. It is a queen,
but a Christian queen.
After the pencil, the pen; after Nattier, Madame du Deffand. Listen to
the famous Marquise, ordinarily so sarcastic:--
“Thémire has much wit, a sensitive heart, a kindly disposition, an
interesting face. Her education has imprinted in her soul a piety so
veritable that it has become a sentiment, and one which serves her to
regulate all others. Thémire loves God, and next to him all that is
lovable; she knows how to bring solid matters and agreeable ones into
harmony. She occupies herself with each in turn, and sometimes combines
them. Her virtues have, so to say, the germ and pungency of passions.
To admirable purity of manners she joins extreme sensibility; to the
greatest modesty a desire to please which would by itself achieve its
object. Her discernment makes her penetrate all caprices and understand
all follies; her goodness and charity make her endure them without
impatience, and rarely permit her to laugh at them.... The respect
she inspires is based rather on her virtues than her dignity. One has
entire freedom of mind when with her; one owes it to the penetration
and delicacy of hers. She understands so promptly and so subtly that
it is easy to communicate to her whatever ideas one desires, without
infringing the circumspection demanded by her rank. One forgets, on
seeing Thémire, that there can be other grandeurs, other elevations,
than those of her sentiments; one almost yields to the illusion that
there is no interval between her and us than that of the superiority of
her merits; but a fatal awakening acquaints us that this Thémire, so
perfect, so amiable, is the Queen.”
No one was a more faithful friend than Marie Leczinska. The little
circle amidst which she lived displayed as much affection as respect
for her. After supper she went almost every evening to the apartment
of the Duchess de Luynes, her lady of honor. There she met, besides
the Duke and Duchess, Cardinal de Luynes, the Duke and Duchess de
Chevreuse, and President Hénault. This was a time of recreation and
pleasant talk. The learned president shone there by his wit. One day he
offered the Queen the manuscript of his _Abrégé chronologique_.
She returned it with the following words: “I think that M. Hénault,
who says so many things in so few words, can hardly like the language
of women who talk so much to say so little.” In lieu of signature, she
had written: _Devinez qui_ (Guess who). The gallant author replied
at once:--
“Ces mots tracés par une main divine
Ne peuvent me causer que trouble et qu’embarras.
C’est trop oser si mon cœur les devine;
C’est être ingrat que ne deviner pas.”[59]
Another time, Fontenelle, then ninety-two years old, had addressed
these verses to the President:--
“Il fallait n’être vieux qu’à Sparte,
Disent les anciens écrits.
Grand Dieu! combien je m’en écarte,
Moi qui suis si vieux dans Paris.
O Sparte! ô Sparte! hélas! qu’êtes-vous devenue?
Vous saviez tout le prix d’une tête chenue.
“Plus dans la canicule on était bien fourré,
Plus l’oreille était dure et l’œil mal éclairé,
Plus on déraisonnait dans sa triste famille,
Plus on épiloguait sur la moindre vétille,
Plus on avait de goutte et d’autre béatille,
Plus on avait perdu de dents de leur bon gré,
Plus on marchait courbé sur sa grosse béquille,
Plus on était, enfin, digne d’être enterré,
Et plus dans ses remparts on était honoré.
“O Sparte! ô Sparte! hélas! qu’êtes-vous devenue?
Vous saviez tout le prix d’une tête chenue.”[60]
After reading these verses, the Queen wrote to President Hénault: “Say
to Fontenelle that a head like his ought to find Sparta everywhere.”
The old man, very much flattered, responded by the following quatrain:--
“Les ans accumulés me poussent trop à bout.
Je ne puis plus, hélas! trouver Sparte partout,
Mais vous, le modèle des reines,
Vous devez bien trouver partout Athènes.”[61]
The kindly, affectionate character of Marie Leczinska is fully
displayed in the simple and friendly letters she addressed to the
Duchess of Luynes, her lady of honor. We cite several of them taken at
hazard:--
“December 22, 1750.--Nothing could give me a greater pleasure than your
letter, if I did not expect one still more sensible in four weeks,
that of seeing you. Nevertheless, it is true, that to give me news of
yourself sometimes, if you can do so without injuring yourself, would
help to alleviate a time which already seems very long to me. All I
ask of you is not to be thankful for my friendship; it is wholly due
to you. Your letter affected me to tears. Yes, God will preserve you
as long as I live; I ask it of Him with all my heart. When I write to
M. de Luynes, I say: ‘I embrace Madame de Luynes,’ but since it is to
you for him, I think it more honest to beg you to take the trouble for
me. And Monseigneur, what would he like? I think it would be better to
enclose all in the benediction I ask for him.”
The Duke de Luynes had once sent the Queen a casket as a New-Year’s
gift. Marie Leczinska thanked him in the following note, dated January
1, 1751: “It is useless to say the casket is charming, new in style,
in a word, nothing so pretty in the world; one knows all that. But
what one doesn’t know is that I am like a child with a plaything that
pleases it. It pleases me with the same candor, except that the
gratitude proceeds from a person who knows the world a little, and
even at her own expense, and whom God has granted the grace of having
amiable and estimable friends wholly corrupt though she is.”
Among other things the casket contained a pair of spectacles of which
the good Queen’s eyes stood in need. “Here I am gay for the whole day
from Madame de Luynes’ good-night,” she wrote to the Duke, January
2, 1751. “Do you know what I was doing when I received Monseigneur’s
letter? I was with ... guess who? ... my fine new spectacles (_les
beaux yeux de ma cassette_). Never did _l’Avare_ love his own
so much. I am hurrying to get to High Mass. I embrace Madame de Luynes,
I bow before Monseigneur, and I wish you good-day.”
The Duchess’s shortest absences seemed like an eternity to Marie
Leczinska. At such times she wrote letter on letter to her lady of
honor, saying that long correspondences are the delights of friendship.
Here is a letter which shows what a tender friend the Queen was. On
receiving this heartfelt epistle, the Duchess de Luynes must have been
profoundly affected:--
“January 23, 1751.--Do you know what pleasure I gave myself last
evening? I went to surprise M. de Luynes in his apartment; I found him
just as he had finished his supper with Monseigneur (the Bishop of
Bayeux), in his pretty little room. I cannot tell you what joy I felt
in seeing your apartment again; I rested there a moment in order to
preserve it, for, not finding you there yet, I began to be afraid of
what might succeed it. Pleasures which are only imaginary need to be
taken care of. I impatiently await the real ones.”
To great goodness Marie Leczinska joined solid information. She knew
six languages,--Polish, French, Italian, German, Swedish, Latin. Men of
letters were struck by the shrewdness of her judgments on the things
of the mind. Several of her maxims have been preserved, which attest a
lofty soul and a profound knowledge of the human heart. Here are some
of them: “We ought not to reflect more on the faults of others than
will suffice to preserve ourselves from them.--Human wisdom teaches us
to conceal our pride; religion alone destroys it.--To live peaceably
in society, we must open our eyes to the qualities which please us,
and shut them on the follies and caprices which shock us.--The women
who pique themselves most on knowing what it is allowable for them to
be ignorant of are those who care least about instructing themselves
concerning what it is shameful not to know.--Many princes having
regretted, when dying, that they had made war, we never see any who
repented of having loved peace.--Good kings are slaves, and their
people are free.--The only thing which can make amends for the slavery
of the throne is the pleasure of doing some good.--In politics, as in
morals, the shortest way to make men happy is to endeavor to make them
virtuous.”
The sovereign who expressed such thoughts as these was not an ordinary
woman. She surpasses all the favorites of her husband, not merely in
heart and virtue, but also in intelligence, knowledge, and wit.
XIV
MARIE LECZINSKA AND HER DAUGHTERS
Marie Leczinska was a tender mother. She surrounded her daughters and
her son with the most devoted cares, and knew how to inspire them with
Christian sentiments. M. Michelet, who, in his latest works, tried to
sully whatever he touched, has tried in vain to cast odious ridicule
on the daughters of Louis XV. In spite of his venomous insinuations,
his calumnious influence, he has been unable to extinguish the aureole
of purity surrounding the brows of these virtuous princesses. The
truth may be found in the excellent work of M. Édouard de Barthélemy,
an impartial judge, a critic full of sagacity.[62] A curious book,
recently published by M. Honoré Bonhomme,[63] has also avenged the
memory of the daughters of Louis XV. against attacks which the
most bitter adversaries of the monarchy and the most violent of
pamphleteers had not permitted themselves.
All of the daughters of the King, with the exception of Madame
Adelaide, spent their childhood at the Abbey of Fontevrault. Cardinal
Fleury thought the presence of the little princesses at Versailles
entailed too much expense, and Louis XV., yielding to the suggestions
of his parsimonious minister, regretfully determined on separating
himself from his children. Adelaide alone, by dint of prayers and
supplications, was able to escape the abbey. On returning from Mass,
she threw herself at her father’s feet, and, although only seven years
old, succeeded in gaining her cause. The King wept a little, says
Barbier, and promised her that she should not go away.
It is easy to comprehend how much the good Queen must have suffered
from this parting with her daughters. She wrote to the Duchess de
Luynes, October 12, 1747: “The King surprised me by showing me the
portraits of my daughters from Fontevrault. I did not know they had
been painted. The two eldest are really beautiful, but I have never
seen anything so agreeable as the little one. She has an affecting
expression, very remote from sadness. I have never seen anything so
singular; she is touching, sweet, spiritual. If you find my letter too
long, make allowances for the tenderness of a mother and the confidence
of a friend.”
The six daughters of Louis XV. were born: the twins, Elisabeth and
Henriette in 1727; Adelaide in 1732; Victoire in 1733; Sophie in 1734;
Louise, the future Carmelite, in 1737.
The three princesses of whom the Queen speaks in the letter we have
just quoted, and who were still at Fontevrault, were Victoire, Sophie,
and Louise. The twins, Elisabeth and Henriette, had quitted the convent
in 1739, and the former had soon afterwards married the Infant Don
Philip, son of Philip V., King of Spain. Thereafter she is designated
as Madame Infanta. The six sisters were all spoken of as Mesdames de
France. Nevertheless, there was but one of them who married. When she
took her departure for Spain, at the age of twelve years (August 31,
1739), the twin sisters exchanged heart-rending farewells. They could
not resign themselves to separation. “’Tis forever!” they cried, their
voices broken by sobs. Louis XV. accompanied his daughter as far as
Plessis-Picquet. The Duke de Luynes relates that while on the road he
gave his dear child most pathetic advice concerning the conduct she
should observe in her new country, where, said he, her mild temper
would infallibly win all hearts. He spoke to her with so much affection
and tenderness that all who were in the carriage were melted to tears.
In 1748, the husband of Madame Infanta obtained the sovereignty of
Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. Before going to their new dominions
with her husband, the daughter of Louis XV. came to see her parents at
Versailles. This was a delightful moment for the royal family. Princes
and princesses made few journeys in the eighteenth century. What joy to
embrace a father, mother, brother, sisters, who had never expected to
see one again! Marie Leczinska returned thanks to heaven. The little
girl of twelve, who had left Versailles, returned thither a young woman
in all the brilliancy of her twenty-second year. The Dauphin was beside
himself with joy. In the first moment he embraced every one he saw,
even the lady’s maids (December, 1748). Sophie and Louise were still
at the convent of Fontevrault, but Henriette, Adelaide, and Victoire
were at Versailles. Their sister’s arrival was an extreme happiness for
them. Madame Infanta, so delighted to be once more with her family,
had not courage to leave them. Months passed without her being able
to decide on quitting Versailles, where her filial and sisterly heart
experienced emotions so sweet. Nevertheless, it was necessary to be
resigned. The dreaded moment arrived in October, 1749. The farewells
must be spoken. It cost Henriette so much to part with her beloved
sister that she fainted several times. The Dauphin was in tears, and
Louis XV., who loved his daughters most profoundly, showed by his grief
all the strength of his paternal tenderness.
Madame Infanta returned to Versailles some years later, but at that
time the joy of her return was not untroubled. The Princess no longer
found her twin sister, that dear Henriette whom she regarded, so to
say, as the half of her soul.
Henriette had just died at the age of twenty-four (February 10,
1752). This young girl, as unhappy as sympathetic, was certainly one
of the most touching figures in the feminine gallery of Versailles.
M. Honoré Bonhomme has made an exquisite portrait of her, from both
the physical and the moral point of view: “Of a sickly constitution,
Madame Henriette had that ivory whiteness of complexion peculiar to the
daughters of the North, and which her mother, Polish in blood and race,
seemed to have transmitted to her along with life. Delicate, tall, and
slender, there was something dreamy and inspired in her person. Her
mild, pure features, aristocratic in their outline, charmed and yet
inspired respect; her smile was melancholy, and her whole appearance,
in which gloom seemed constantly warring against brightness, bore the
impress of fatality. It was because she carried in her heart the secret
of her destiny. Like pale Ophelia, she was to die while gathering
flowers, and like Myrto, the young Tarentine of André Chenier, she was
never to cross the threshold of the spouse. For the rest, inwardly
animated by the sacred fire, enamored of great things, she possessed
all subtleties of the mind as well as all delicacies of the heart.
Looking into her great, dreamy eyes, which seemed to reflect the
dormant limpidity of deep lakes, one divined what abysses of tenderness
and devotion were hidden underneath, and felt a presentiment that her
first love would also be her last, that she would die there where her
soul had fixed itself.”
That, in fact, is what happened. Madame Henriette had conceived for
the young Duke de Chartres, son of the Duke d’Orléans, an affection
which was returned. The Marquis d’Argenson wrote, November 30, 1739: “A
secret effort is being made to bring about a marriage between the Duke
de Chartres and Madame _seconde_ [so Madame Henriette was called;
her twin sister, Madame Infanta, was known as Madame _première_],
and it is believed that the King is determined on it and gradually
working toward it. Nothing could be more conformable to pacificatory
views, for Europe would plainly see from this that the King was
disposed to substitute the Orleans branch to the Dauphin, rather than
the Spanish one.”
To understand this phrase, it is necessary to recall that the Dauphin
was not yet married, and that people often wondered what would happen
if this only son of Louis XV. should die without male posterity. Many
thought that in such a case the King, in spite of the renunciations of
the treaty of Utrecht, would take his heir from the Spanish Bourbons,
and not from the Orleans branch. D’Argenson was in favor of the latter
branch. Cardinal Fleury, on the contrary, pursued it with hostility,
as if he had an insight of the future. The old minister prevailed so
far, that the King, who had nevertheless a real liking for the Duke
de Chartres, an amiable and estimable young prince, would not give
his consent to the projected marriage. One day the Duke was riding
beside the King. “Sire,” said he, “I had a great hope. Your Majesty
had not taken it from my father.... I could have contributed to the
happiness of Madame Henriette, who would have remained in France with
Your Majesty. May I still be allowed to hope?” The King inclined toward
the Prince and sadly pressed his hand. This beautiful dream of love,
so quickly faded, must be renounced. Three years later, the Duke de
Chartres espoused the daughter of the Prince de Bourbon-Conté. Madame
Henriette had the courage to conceal her immense sorrow. She was
present, death in her soul, a smile on her lips, at the marriage of
the man she loved (December 9, 1743). From that day she felt herself
heart-stricken, and her last days were merely an immolation. Prince
Nattier has represented the Princess under the double emblems of
_Fire_ and _Meditation_. She is leaning against a tripod
on which half-consumed torches are smoking. These torches are like
the image of the nearly extinguished flame of the Prince to whom the
young girl would willingly have given her faith. She never uttered a
complaint, a murmur. Calm, grave, recollected, she meditated and she
prayed. The stay of her twin sister at Versailles was like a break in
the darkness of her night. But when this dear companion of her infancy
departed, all the wounds of her tender and loyal heart reopened.
The arrival of her three younger sisters, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise,
who left the convent of Fontevrault at the close of the year 1750,
did not console her. Having sacrificed her own happiness, she desired
that at least the Duke de Chartres might be happy. But it was not so.
The Duke had married a woman whose conduct was said to be anything
but exemplary. He could not, then, forget that tender, that virtuous
Henriette who seemed to him the image of sadness. The Princess wept
silently in her oratory, and offered her sufferings to God. Earth was
not worthy of her.
There are characters which can only expand in a better world. Sorrow
had undermined the constitution of Madame Henriette. She died February
10, 1752. “Ah! my sister! my dear sister!” were her last words. She
died as she had lived: while loving. “Sad sport of fate,” says M.
Honoré Bonhomme, “poor saintly girl, virgin and martyr, who spent nine
whole years in climbing, step after step, the Calvary where she yielded
up her soul.”
After relating this death, the Duke de Luynes adds: “No one can
express the sadness into which the King is plunged. The Queen is much
afflicted, and also the Dauphin, Madame the Dauphiness, and Mesdames.
Madame Adelaide does not weep, but silent griefs are usually the
longest. Madame Henriette was much beloved. Her mild character, without
ill temper and even without will, rendered her extremely complaisant
toward the Dauphin, the Dauphiness, and the ladies, her sisters.”
On receiving tidings of this mournful death, Madame Infanta wrote her
father a most touching letter. She said she wished to come and mingle
her tears with those of her family. She arrived in France in September,
1752, and remained with her father for a year.
Madame Infanta was not happy. She did not greatly esteem her husband,
and that Prince cut a rather sorry figure in the little sovereignty of
Parma and Piacenza. He had neither money nor prestige; and his wife,
who was very intelligent, his wife, of whom Bernis said that she would
make a good minister of foreign affairs, was constantly dreaming of
some more considerable establishment for him. She thought by turns
of exchanging the Duchy of Parma for Tuscany, or acquisitions in
Flanders, Lorraine, or even Corsica. She fancied that, thanks to her
father’s affection and the territorial changes in Europe, she would
end by obtaining something. The Marquis d’Argenson, who had not much
sympathy for her, wrote, September 27, 1753: “It is to be hoped she
will never come back to France. Is it just that the State should suffer
because she was married so badly? Along with her go a great quantity of
chariots loaded with all sorts of things that the King has given her.”
Madame Infanta returned to France a third time, but only to die there.
She arrived at the château of Choisy, September 3, 1757. To credit M.
Michelet, it was she alone who brought about the Seven Years’ War. But
there is no foundation for this assertion of the great writer who,
toward the close of his life, created what one might call the school of
imaginative history. At the time when she reappeared at court, Madame
Infanta was glowing with freshness, brilliancy, and health. No one
could have foreseen that her death was so near at hand. One of her last
letters was addressed to her son Ferdinand, whom she had left at Parma.
It commenced as follows:--
“Life is uncertain, my son, and my character is too sincere for me
either to vaunt or even to affect perfect indifference as to the length
of mine; but I feel that the wish to see you, to leave you worthy of
the name you bear in the world, such, in fine, as I desire you, is
one of the ties that attach me most to life, and one of the reasons,
perhaps, which will most abridge mine by the continual torments caused
me by this desire and the fear of not obtaining it. It will be a great
consolation to be able to leave you an avowal of my sentiments if I die
before you are in a condition to read it. If I live, it will serve me
as a plan whereon to form you; and in either case, it will always be to
you a proof of my tenderness and of my care for your welfare at an age
when many people do not yet think of it.”
Not many days after writing this letter, Madame Infanta was attacked
by small-pox, and died December 6, 1759. The twins, who had loved each
other so tenderly, both died prematurely. Madame Henriette had died at
the age of twenty-four, Madame Infanta at thirty-two. She was buried at
Saint Denis, close to her sister, so that their union lasted even in
the tomb.
Marie Leczinska’s heart was broken with grief. But instead of murmuring
against Providence, she bent filially beneath the hand of God who smote
her. Her five remaining children, the Dauphin, Adelaide, Victoire,
Sophie, and Louise, showed her a profound affection. Never was a
mother better loved. Louis XV. took pleasure in the society of his
daughters. As a father, he had that sort of citizenlike good-nature
which is unhappily rare among princes. Mesdames lodged underneath
their father, in the former apartment of Madame de Montespan. Madame
Adelaide occupied a chamber which communicated by a private staircase
with that of her father. “Often,” relates Madame Campan in her Memoirs,
“he brought and drank coffee there which he had made himself. Madame
Adelaide pulled a bell-rope, which announced the King’s visit to Madame
Victoire. On rising to go to her sister, Madame Victoire rang for
Madame Sophie, who in her turn rang for Madame Louise.”
In a twinkling the four sisters were gathered around their father. At
six in the evening, at the unbooting of the King after the chase, as
people said in those days, the princesses came to pay a visit to Louis
XV., but this time with a certain etiquette. “The princesses,” says
Madame Campan again, “put on an enormous hoop which supported a skirt
braided with gold and embroideries. They fastened a long train to
their waist, and hid the negligence of the rest of their habiliments
by a large cape of black taffeta, which covered them up to the chin.
Knights of honor, ladies, pages, equerries, ushers, carrying large
torches, accompanied them to the King. In an instant the whole palace,
usually solitary, was in movement; the King kissed each princess on her
forehead.” In reality, he found more true happiness in the virtuous
intimacy of his daughters than in the circle of his courtiers and the
arms of his favorites. There were moments when people believed that
in growing old the debauchee would become wise. “The King,” wrote
D’Argenson, “seems to wish for no society but that of his family, like
a patriarch and a good man.”
Marie Leczinska felt thankful to her husband for the affection he had
for his daughters. The relations of Mesdames with their mother were
full of confidence, sweetness, and gaiety. They liked to enter those
little apartments of the Queen, where Marie Leczinska forgot the
splendor of the throne to live modestly as a good mother. The little
apartments[64] comprised three rooms: a salon, a bathroom, and a studio
for painting. Madame the Countess d’Armaillé, whose graceful and solid
work we have so often had occasion to quote, has given a charming
description of these three rooms in which Marie Leczinska spent the
greater portion of her time. “Is it not true,” she says, “that one
may divine the character and tastes of a woman by merely inspecting
the sanctuary of her private life, or, to speak more simply, that
place in the dwelling where she habitually prefers to stay? It matters
little whether this room be a garret or a drawing-room. Nothing is so
intimate as certain interior arrangements; nothing tells the story of
a woman better than the way in which she orders the room she inhabits.
In the little apartments of the Queen one found everything which makes
the charm of a peaceful existence. Here, pieces of work begun for the
poor, or for churches, a whole piece of furniture embroidered by her
hand; there, an open harpsichord with Moncrif’s cantatas, Rameau’s
operettas, Polish hymns; further away a drawing-table, a spinning-wheel
provided with its distaff, frames for embroidering and weaving, a
small printing-press; then flowers, paintings, portraits of children,
miniatures. On a console, a vase offered by Marshal de Nangis, a
manuscript given by Cardinal de Fleury, a porcelain pagoda with verses
by Madame de Boufflers; in an embrasure of the window a cabinet
containing the Queen’s favorite books, with some verses by the Duchess
de Luynes; everywhere souvenirs of friendship, of maternal tenderness,
of useful or agreeable occupations.” It was there that, surrounded by
her children, the virtuous Queen tasted the joys of the heart, those
joys imparted only by a good conscience, and which the mistresses for
whom Louis XV. deserted her had never known.
XV
THE DAUPHINESS MARIE JOSÈPHE OF SAXONY
Marie Leczinska was not less happy in her son than in her daughters.
The bad examples of the court had not spoiled the upright and honest
nature of the Dauphin. As is said by Baron de Gleichen in his Memoirs,
the piety of the young prince was enlightened, and his policy foresaw
the dangers of irreligion. As son and father, as brother and husband,
he never ceased to display the qualities of a good and virtuous
heart. He had deeply mourned his first wife, that sympathetic Spanish
Infanta, who died in 1746, when hardly twenty years old. Reasons of
State demanded that, in spite of his great sorrow, he should promptly
contract a second marriage.
Louis XV. selected for his son a princess of the house of Saxony,
after Austria and Prussia the most powerful of the Empire. He intended
thus to consolidate his German alliances. Marshal Saxe, natural
son of Augustus II., King of Saxony, Elector of Poland, and of the
beautiful Countess Aurora of Königsmark, was the principal agent of the
negotiation which was to form a pact of union between his new country
and his old one. A learned Saxon diplomatist, now in the service of
Austria, Count Vitzthum, published some years ago an excellent work,
based on unpublished documents and letters in the archives of Dresden,
on the Marshal and the princess who espoused the Dauphin.
Marie Josèphe of Saxony, daughter of Augustus III., was at this time
fifteen years old. She was an agreeable young person, with large
blue eyes that were at once keen and gentle. Her countenance was
intelligent, her character excellent, her education complete. Marshal
Saxe wrote to his brother, Augustus III.: “Sire, what shall I say to
you? I find this affair advantageous at all points for your family, and
I shall descend without regret to the empire of the shades after I have
seen it terminated; I shall have accomplished my career. I have enjoyed
the delights of this world; glory has covered me with its benefits;
nothing more remained to me but to be useful to you, and all my destiny
will have been fulfilled in a most satisfactory manner.”
Marshal Saxe wrote to the wife of Augustus III., mother of the future
Dauphiness:--
“Madame, the Most Christian King sent me word yesterday, that he had
requested Your Majesty for the hand of the Princess Marie Josèphe for
Monseigneur the Dauphin. I flatter myself that this proposition will
not displease either the Princess or Your Majesty, for, in truth,
Monseigneur the Dauphin is a very good match, and I should like to
live long enough to see our divine Princess Queen of France. I think
that would suit her very well. She has always been my inclination, and
it is long since I destined her for the crown of France, which is a
fine enough morsel, and the Prince who will some day wear it is fine
also. The Princess Josèphe will have no reason to be bored while she
is waiting for it. The kingly father-in-law is charming; he loves his
children, and from the caresses he gave the late Dauphiness, I infer
those which our Princess will have to endure. This is word for word
what the King wrote me in a letter I received yesterday, written by his
own hand from one end to the other. ‘You will not be vexed with this
marriage, my dear Marshal? Let your Princess be sure that it depends on
her alone to make our happiness and the felicity of my people.’”
In the same letter the Marshal gave some very sensible and prudent
counsels: “I will say another word to the Princess. To succeed here,
neither hauteur nor familiarity is required; hauteur, however,
pertaining to dignity, she can more easily incline to that side. The
women of the court all have minds like diamonds, and are wicked withal.
No one will fail in respect towards her, but they will try to entangle
her in their continual quarrels, and at these she must do nothing but
laugh and amuse herself. This is what the King does; and if anything
displeases her, she must address herself directly to the King: he will
advise and conduct her very well. This confidence will please him. He
is the only person at court with whom she should have no reserve. She
should regard him as her refuge, her father, and tell him everything,
good or bad, just as it happens, without disguising anything. With
everybody else, reserve. If she does that, he will adore her.”
The formal demand in marriage was made at Dresden, January 7, 1747,
by two ambassadors, one extraordinary, the Duke de Richelieu, the
other ordinary, the Marquis des Issart. Richelieu wrote to the
Count de Loss, apropos of the future Dauphiness: “I find her really
charming; nevertheless, she is not a beauty, but she has all the graces
imaginable; a large nose, thick, fresh lips, the brightest and most
intelligent eyes in the world, and, in fine, I assure that if there
were any such at the Opera, they would soon be put up at auction. I do
not say too much to you, but I do not say so much to others.”
Marie Josèphe of Saxony left Dresden, January 14, 1747. She saw her
betrothed for the first time between Nangis and Corbeil. The nuptial
benediction was given to the pair in the chapel of Versailles,
February 8, 1747. Four days afterward, Marshal Saxe wrote to Augustus
III.: “Sire, I shall have no difficulty in saying agreeable things
to Your Majesty about Madame the Dauphiness, and renown will serve
as my guaranty. No one could succeed better than this Princess; she
is adored by everybody, and the Queen loves her as if she were her
own child; the King is enchanted with her, and M. the Dauphin loves
her passionately. She has steered her way through all this with all
imaginable address; I could not but admire her. At fifteen, according
to what they say, there is no such thing as childhood in this society;
and, in truth, she has astonished me. Your Majesty could hardly believe
with what nobility, what presence of mind, Madame the Dauphiness has
conducted herself. M. the Dauphin seems a schoolboy beside her.”
The married pair were installed on the ground floor, in the south wing
of the central portion of the palace, under the Queen’s apartments.
(The Dauphin’s bedroom, where the Regent died, is now the third hall
of the Marshals, No. 46 of M. Eudore Soulié’s _Notice du Musée_.
That of the Dauphiness is now the second hall of the Marshals, No. 41
of the _Notice_.) It was in the latter chamber that, according to
usage, the ceremonial of the putting to bed took place. In the letter
we are about to quote, Marshal Saxe gives his brother an account of
this strange custom:--
“Certainly,” he says, “there are moments which call for all the
assurance of a person formed to sustain his part with dignity. Among
others there is one, that of the bed, whose curtains are opened when
the husband and wife have been put into the nuptial bed, which is
terrible, because the whole court is in the room; and the King told
me to remain near Madame the Dauphiness in order to reassure her.
She endured this with a tranquillity which astonished me. The Dauphin
drew the coverings over his face; but my Princess never stopped
talking to me with a charming ease, paying no more attention to the
people of the court than if there had been no one in the chamber. On
approaching her, I said the King had ordered me to do so to keep her in
countenance, and that all this would only last a moment. She told me I
gave her pleasure; and I did not leave her until her women had closed
the curtains, and the crowd had gone away. They departed with a sort
of sadness, for it looked like a sacrifice, and she has continued to
interest everybody in her. Your Majesty will laugh, perhaps, at what I
have just said; but the blessing of the bed, the priests, the candles,
the brilliant pomp, the beauty and youth of the Princess, in fine, the
desire one has that she may be happy,--all these things taken together
provoke more thought than laughter.”
This etiquette which weighed upon royal families was a heavy burden,
an excessive fatigue. For two days the Dauphiness had eaten nothing.
“Her great fatigue is the cause of this,” the Marshal wrote again to
Augustus III.; “and I have told the King that if she could not have
some rest she would fall ill. Indeed, I don’t know how she can avoid
it. I am completely knocked up with following her. It is so hot in
all the apartments, what with the quantity of people and the candles
in the evening, that it is enough to kill one. And besides that, her
clothes are so heavy that I don’t know how she has been able to carry
them. What is still more fatiguing are all these endless presentations;
and she wishes to remember all the names, which is a terrible task to
a mind incessantly occupied, moreover, in trying to please and show
attentions. The other day the King made me take up her skirt which lay
on a sofa. It weighed, at least, sixty pounds; not one of our cuirasses
weighs as much. I don’t know how the Princess could have remained on
her feet eight or nine hours with that enormous weight.”
Marie Josèphe knew how to make herself esteemed and loved. A courtier,
who admired the graces and virtues of this good and beautiful
Dauphiness, said: “Nobody ought to take a wife anywhere but in Saxony;
and rather than dispense with a Saxon wife, when there are no more, I
will make one out of porcelain.” Marie Leczinska forgot the quarrels
that had existed between the house of Saxony and her father for the
throne of Poland. She became tenderly attached to her daughter-in-law,
and showed her an almost maternal love.
The Dauphiness was delivered, September 13, 1751, of a son, who bore
the title of Duke of Burgundy, and who died when nine years old, after
long and horrible sufferings which he endured, a precocious Christian,
with admirable courage. The Marquis de Pompignan wrote a biography of
the little prince. Some years later, another child, likewise fated
to undergo tortures, learned to read in this book: it was that most
innocent of victims, the future Louis XVII. “How did my little uncle
manage to have already so much knowledge and goodness?” cried the
compassionate child.
The Duke of Berry was born August 23, 1754; the Count of Provence,
November 17, 1755; the Count of Artois, November 9, 1757. These three
princes were to be called Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., and Charles
X.,--three names which on their first appearance affect the imagination
with a nameless trouble, and transport it into an unprecedented world
of revolutions and catastrophes.
Marie Josèphe of Saxony had eight children, five only of whom survived
her; the three sons, who were all to reign, and two daughters, Madame
Clotilde, who was Queen of Sardinia, and another whose mere name evokes
the memory of the purest virtues, the profoundest piety, the most
sublime sacrifices, the most heroic courage in sufferings, in prisons,
on the scaffold: Madame Elisabeth.
The Dauphiness was a perfect wife and mother. Her goodness, sweetness,
and charity rendered her at once lovable and worthy of veneration....
One finds consolation for the scandals of the court in contemplating a
united household, a Christian household which set an example to France.
Unhappily death was soon to break up this virtuous and holy life. The
Dauphin, at the age of thirty-six, fell ill in November, 1765.
Had we not good reason to say, at the beginning of this study, that
epochs in appearance most scandalous and corrupt contain, like every
other, treasures of edification? The admirable death of the son of
Louis XV. is a proof of this verity. The agony of the Dauphin was about
to commence.
“Thanks be to God,” he said to his confessor, the Jesuit Callet, as
soon as he saw him enter, “I have never been dazzled by the splendor of
the throne to which I was summoned by my birth; I saw it only from the
side of formidable duties by which it is accompanied, and the perils
that surround it; I would desire to have a better soul, but I hope in
the infinite mercy.” Then, turning towards his sisters and his wife,
the good Prince exclaimed: “I cannot tell you how glad I am to be the
first to go; I shall be sorry to leave you, but I am well pleased not
to remain behind you.” The next day, November 13, the Archbishop of
Rheims came to bring the sacraments. Louis XV. was kneeling at the
threshold of the chamber, while the Duke of Orleans and the Prince of
Condé approached the bed to hold the communion cloth. After the Mass
the Dauphin said: “God has made me taste at this moment so sweet a
consolation that I have never known one like it.” And as the Queen was
speaking of his recovery: “Ah, mamma!” he exclaimed with vivacity,
“keep that hope for yourself, for my part I do not desire it at all.”
The Prince, who had one day said, while looking at Paris from the
terrace of the Château of Bellevue: “I am thinking of the delight that
ought to be experienced by a sovereign in causing the happiness of so
many people;” this truly exemplary Prince was taken, December 20, 1765,
from the affection of a people, who honored his virtues and his sincere
devotion. Nine days afterward, the Dauphiness wrote to her brother,
Prince Xavier of Saxony: “The good God has willed that I should survive
him for whom I would have given a thousand lives; I hope He will grant
me the grace to employ the rest of my pilgrimage in preparing, by
sincere penitence, to rejoin his soul in heaven, where I doubt not he
is asking the same grace for me.”
Marie Leczinska mourned bitterly for her son, who had always been so
good, so tender, and respectful to her. The pious Queen was to undergo
new trials. She surrounded her aged father with the most touching
attentions, and though far away, busied herself with him as though she
were by his side. He was at Nancy, and she had just sent him a wadded
dressing-gown for the coming winter. It caught fire while Stanislas was
sleeping in his armchair; always amiable and affectionate, he attempted
to tranquillize his daughter by a note in which he wrote pleasantly:
“What consoles me, daughter, is that I burn for you.” This was the last
letter Marie Leczinska was to receive from a father whom she cherished.
King Stanislas breathed his last February 24, 1766. His death brought
about, according to treaty stipulations, the definitive reunion of the
duchies of Lorraine and Bar to France. As the Countess d’Armaillé has
said, this was Queen Marie’s last gift to the land of her adoption.
Afflictions succeeded each other with deplorable rapidity. Marie
Josèphe of Saxony died fifteen months after her husband, March 12,
1767, recommending her family to Marie Leczinska, who regretted her as
much as if she had been her daughter. The Queen bowed to the decrees
of Providence. Her soul remained strong, but her body was crushed by
sorrow. “Give me back my children,” she said, “and you will cure me.”
XVI
THE DEATH OF MARIE LECZINSKA
At the close of that last dialogue where, in the harbor of Ostia, under
a starry sky, overlooking the limpid waves, she aspired to that life
eternal which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man
attained, Saint Monica said to her son: “My child, nothing any longer
attaches me to earth. What should I do here? Why am I still here? I
have realized all my hopes in this world. One thing there was for
which I desired to sojourn awhile in this life,--it was to see thee a
Christian before I died. God has given me that joy in over-measure,
since I see thee despising all earthly felicity in order to serve Him.
What have I to do here any longer?”
What Saint Monica said in the harbor of Ostia, Marie Leczinska could
say in the palace of Versailles. She had inspired her children with
Christian sentiments. Two of her daughters and her son had expired in
the peace of the Lord. The four remaining daughters thought and lived
like saints. Her task was accomplished. She thought of nothing now but
dying.
The convent of the Carmelites of Compiègne had become her chosen
refuge. It was there that, fleeing from grandeurs which had never
dazzled her, she humbled herself, annihilated herself before the
King of Kings, before Him who strengthens and consoles. This Queen
to whom her son had said one day: “Do you know, mamma, you will end
by quarrelling with Saint Teresa? Why do you want to be more fervent
here than the most fervent Carmelites, and make still longer prayers
than theirs?” This Queen, who would willingly have exchanged the royal
mantle for a serge habit, had for her oratory a cell in no respect
different from that of the nuns. She said she wanted to learn how to
die to the world and to herself.
Madame de Campan, who knew the four last daughters of Louis XV. so
well, thus describes the salutary influence which the Queen exercised
over their destiny: “Mesdames had in their august mother, Marie
Leczinska, the noblest model of all the pious and social virtues; by
her eminent qualities and her modest dignity, this princess veiled
the wrongs with which, but too unfortunately, one was authorized to
reproach the King; and so long as she lived, she guarded for the court
of Louis XV. that dignified and imposing aspect which alone maintains
the respect due to power. The princesses, her daughters, were worthy
of her; and if some few vile creatures tried to launch the shafts of
calumny against them, they fell at once, repelled by the high idea
people entertained of the loftiness of their sentiments and the purity
of their conduct.”
The woman who had been able to preserve a remnant of decency in a
corrupt society, and had thus saved the remnants of royal prestige, was
surrounded by unmixed veneration. At this epoch, as at all others, one
encountered types of honor and virtue, patriarchal and truly Christian
existences, interiors which were sanctuaries. It will not do to judge
the eighteenth century by the court and certain salons. Worthy people
were still numerous, especially among the provincial nobility, the
middle classes, and the people. In spite of Voltaire’s attacks, in
spite of the building of that Tower of Babel called the Encyclopedia,
Christianity continued to be what it had been for so many centuries:
the soul of France. The attempts of the philosophers to create a
morality independent of religion failed miserably, and all good minds
recognized that the Voltairian school was leading the nation into ruin.
The life of Marie Leczinska may be called the symbol of the religious
and virtuous element. In the face of adultery, the pious sovereign
had maintained the sacred rights of the family; in spite of his
irregularities, Louis XV. would never have dared, like Louis XIV., to
legitimate the children of his debaucheries and declare them eligible
to the throne of France. The scandal was in the boudoir of the
favorites, the edification by the hearth fire of the Queen.
As greatly as Madame de Pompadour was hated and despised, so greatly
was Marie Leczinska loved and respected. Her arrival was a festival,
her departure caused general sadness. “Is it not admirable,” she
wrote, “that I cannot leave Compiègne without seeing everybody crying?
Sometimes I ask myself what I have done to all these people whom I do
not know, to be so loved by them. They remember all my wishes.” She
gave away all she had, according to her lady of honor, the Maréchale
de Mouchy, and when nothing was left, she sold her jewels. One year
when the high price of bread had caused more than common distress, she
pawned her precious stones and wore false ones. Her charity was as
inexhaustible as her kindness. She had the virtues of a woman of the
middle classes, the manners of a great lady, the dignity of a queen.
The resignation with which she endured her sorrows inspired in every
one a sympathy blended with respectful compassion. Public opinion paid
her homage, envy and slander were silent in her presence. Even the
philosophers honored her.
In a changing epoch, when all minds and hearts were in disorder, she
preserved three qualities which are rare in courts,--honesty, tact,
and good sense. There was nothing gloomy or morose about her virtue.
Her sweet, agreeable devotion recalled that of Saint Francis de Sales,
the most lovable of all the saints. She had the gift of making herself
beloved by a word, a smile. As has been remarked by the Countess
d’Armaillé, there was hardly a salon in France toward the close of the
last century, in which one could not meet some old lady always ready
to tell about her presentation at Versailles, and to become affected
in reciting the compliments which the good Queen Marie had paid her on
that memorable evening. Affable by nature and principle, indulgent by
instinct and reasoned conviction, Marie Leczinska was distinguished
among all the women of the court by a quality which is a force and a
charm, a quality still more necessary to sovereigns than to private
persons,--benevolence.
When she fell ill, the emotion was general. Every Frenchman entertained
for her the sentiments of a brother or a sister. The people besieged
the doors of the château of Versailles to get tidings of her. Sometimes
Louis XV. gave these himself. The churches of Paris and the provinces
were crowded with people praying for the good Queen.
The final moment was drawing near. The four daughters of Marie
Leczinska spent the last nights at their mother’s bedside with a
devotion which made them resemble Sisters of Charity. At the moment
when the death struggle was about to begin, Louis XV. kneeled beside
his wife’s bed, and said to her, weeping: “Here are our daughters whom
I present to you.” A Christian, the mother understood what these words
implied; and raising her eyes to heaven, she gave her children her last
blessing.
It is an hour of torture and anguish, a doleful hour, an hour
heart-rending above all, when one loses a cherished mother. The grief
borders on stupor. One feels one’s self the sport of a bad dream. One
cannot grow accustomed to so horrible a thought. Those holy, venerable
hands will never again be laid in blessing on your head! Those lips
whence issued counsels so wise, words so affectionate, are closed
forever! That heart, so warm, so loving, is cold; it beats no more.
Again you call to your mother; you call, and for the first time,
alas! she does not answer you. Then, all she has done for you, your
childhood, your youth, your whole life, rises up before you. Long
years of devotion, of sacrifices and tenderness, are concentrated in
a single minute. The heart, invaded by memories as by a rising tide,
overflows, and you burst into sobs. Oh! woe to him who at this fatal
moment believes that all ends here below! Woe to him who has not the
conviction that the dead woman is in heaven, that she is watching over
her children; that they can still love and implore her; that she will
always be their strength, their consoler, their good angel! But happy
in the midst of tears, happy amid the most cruel trials, the Christians
who then recall the prayer of Saint Louis, lamenting his mother,
Blanche of Castile: “I return thee thanks, O my God! Thou hadst lent me
a good, an incomparable, mother; but I know well she was not mine! Now,
Lord, thou hast withdrawn her to thyself.... Thus has thy Providence
determined. It is true that I cherished her beyond all creatures in
the world.... Nevertheless, since thou hast thus ordained, may thine
adorable will be done! My God! may thy holy name be blessed forever!”
Marie Leczinska died in angelic tranquillity. She was still trying to
say her rosary, when death interrupted on earth the prayer which the
holy woman was about to resume in heaven. These beautiful words of
Massillon were realized for the pious Queen: “The soul of the just,
during the days of their mortal life, dare not gaze fixedly upon the
profundity of God’s judgments; they work out their salvation with
fear and trembling, they shudder at the bare thought of that terrible
future where the just themselves will hardly be saved, if they are
judged without mercy; but on the bed of death, ah! the God of peace,
who manifests Himself, calms their agitations; their fears cease of a
sudden and are changed into a sweet hope, their dying eyes pierce the
cloud of mortality which still environs them, and see that immortal
country after which they have sighed so long, and where they have
always dwelt in spirit.” Oh! you who have seen a saintly mother die,
you who have in your hearts a regret and an expectation, do not forget!
It was the 24th of June, 1768, when Marie Leczinska yielded her last
breath. The very day before she had entered her sixty-eighth year. Her
reign had lasted forty-three years, and during that long period she
had caused no tears to flow but those of joy and gratitude. Her women,
her servants, her poor, collected the least scraps of her clothing to
preserve as relics. Her mortal remains, exposed for eight days on a
bed of state, was the object of a real cult on the part of the people.
The Archbishop of Troyes preached her funeral sermon. “Pontiff of the
living God,” said he, addressing himself to the Archbishop of Paris,
“fear not to offer above her tomb an incense which may one day be
offered above her altars.” Compare this life and death with those of
the Marquise de Pompadour, if you wish to know what vice is, and what
is virtue.
Marie Leczinska is the last queen who has ended her days upon the
throne of France. The women, who for now a century have worn the royal
or imperial crown in our unhappy and inconstant land, have all been
the innocent victims of the Revolution and the caprices of fate. One
perished an august martyr on the scaffold; another died at the moment
of the invasion, her heart broken by the afflictions of her vanquished
country. A third faded away almost forgotten in the little duchy given
her in exchange for the finest empire of the world. A fourth died
holily in a foreign land, regretting perhaps that she had been Queen;
and there is one who, at this very moment, is sadly rewarded for her
charity and courage, her virtue and her patriotism. To-day, above
all, might a Bossuet say before Versailles abandoned or the Tuileries
in ruins: _Et nunc, reges intelligite! Erudimini, que judicatis
terram!_ And now, O Kings, comprehend! Be instructed, O ye who judge
the earth!
INDEX
_Abrégé chronologique_, Hénault’s, 238, 239.
Adelaide, Madame, allowed to remain at Versailles, 246;
her apartment, 255.
Aix-la-Chapelle, the peace of, 130, 131.
_Almases_, performed at Versailles, 140.
Austria, France’s alliance with, 203 _et seq._;
an Austrian party at Versailles, 205.
Artois, Count of, 265.
Asturias, Prince of, 19.
Bachelier, the confidant of Louis XV., 51.
Barbier, quoted, 40, 44, 55;
his criticism of Bishop Fitz-James, 80.
Barthélemy, Édouard de, 245.
Beaujolais, Mademoiselle de, her birth, 19;
affianced to Don Carlos, 19;
sent back to France, 20;
later life and death, 21.
Beaumont, Christopher de, summoned to the archbishopric of Paris,
196;
his integrity to the Church, 196, 197;
exiled, 197;
his charge sent from Conflans to Paris, 198, 199;
recalled by the King, 197;
again exiled, 197.
Bellevue, Château of, 145, 146, 151.
Bernis, Abbé de, verses quoted, 126;
his attitude towards Madame de Pompadour, 183, 184, 185;
accused of drawing up the treaty of Versailles, 206;
his words on the convention of Cloister-Seven, 207, 208;
counsels peace, 208, 209;
threatened, 210;
resigns, 210, 211.
Berry, Duke of, 265.
Bonhomme, Honoré, his book on Louis XV. and his family, 245, 246;
his description of Madame Henriette, 249.
Bossuet, quoted, 195, 229.
Bourbon, Duke of, prime minister, 16;
ruled by his mistress, Madame de Prie, 16–18;
his uneasiness at court, 18;
his description of Marie Leczinska, 25;
endeavors to overthrow Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, 34;
his downfall, 34, 35.
Burgundy, Duke of, 264.
Campan, Madame de, quoted, 255;
her words concerning Marie Leczinska, 270.
Carlos, Don, 19.
Charles X., 265.
Charolais, Mademoiselle de, 50.
Chartres, Duchess de, 76, 78.
Chartres, Duke of, sketch of his career, 114, 115;
efforts to effect a marriage between Madame Henriette and, 250,
251;
his marriage, 251;
his unhappiness after marriage, 252.
Chateaubriand, quoted, 222.
Châteauroux, Duchess de, 1, 6;
words of the Goncourts concerning, 71;
wishes to follow the King to the army, 73;
joins the King, 76, 77, 78;
falls sick, 78;
is compelled to leave the King, 79;
her return to Paris, 84–86;
believes she will regain the King’s favor, 84, 86, 87;
the type of the passionate woman, 87;
among the crowd at the King’s triumph, 88;
visited by the King, 88, 89;
invited to return to Versailles, 89, 90;
her final illness and death, 90–92.
Choiseul, Duke de, 211;
his popularity, 213.
Christianity, the soul of France, 271.
Cloister-Seven, the convention of, 207.
Clotilde, Madame, 265.
Coaslin, Madame de, her insolent conduct toward Madame de
Pompadour, 157.
Conti, Princess de, 125.
D’Alembert, 215.
Damiens, wounds Louis XV., 180–182.
D’Argenson, quoted, 44, 105, 106, 218;
his attitude towards Madame de Pompadour, 183;
possesses confidence of Louis XV., 186;
misled as to the feelings of the King towards Madame de
Pompadour, 186;
proposes that meetings of the ministers be held in the Dauphin’s
apartments, 187;
dismissed from service, 188;
his words on women in politics, 194;
a true prophet, 218, 219.
Dauphin, the, 109, 110;
marries, 110, 186, 187;
surrounded by the people, 220;
his delight at visit of his sister Elisabeth, 248;
his character, 258;
marries Marie Josèphe of Saxony, 261–263;
falls ill, 265;
his last hours and death, 266, 267.
Dauphiness, the, 220;
see Marie Josèphe.
Deffand, Madame du, 36, 37;
her sketch of Marie Leczinska, 237, 238.
Desmarets, Père, 181, 186.
_Devin du Village, Le_, performed at Bellevue, 146.
Diderot, his words concerning Madame de Pompadour, 232.
Duclos, quoted, 215.
Economists, the, 218.
Elisabeth, Madame, daughter of the Dauphiness, 265.
Elisabeth, Madame, the Infanta, marries, 247;
goes to Spain, 247;
visits her parents at Versailles, 247, 248;
her grief at her sister Henriette’s death, 252, 253;
spends a year at Versailles, 253;
did not esteem her husband, 253;
her ambitions, 253;
her final return to France and death, 253, 254;
accused by Michelet of causing the Seven Years’ War, 253, 254;
a selection from one of her last letters, 254.
Elisabeth of Russia, death of, 211.
Encyclopedia, the, 216, 271.
Encyclopedists, the, 217, 218.
_Enfant prodigue, L’_, performed at Versailles, 139, 154.
_Erigone_, performed at Versailles, 139.
Étioles, Madame d’, Marquise de Pompadour, see Pompadour,
Marquise de.
Étioles, M. Lenormand d’, 118, 120, 121, 175;
not anxious to take back his wife, 176.
Europe, condition of, after treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 202, 203.
Favart, verses by, 228.
Félicité, Pauline, Mademoiselle de Nesle comes to Versailles, 54;
becomes mistress of Louis XV., 54;
marries Count de Vintimille, 56;
see Vintimille, Countess de.
Fitz-James, Bishop, forbids Louis XV. absolution while Madame de
Châteauroux remains with him, 79;
administers extreme unction to the King, 80;
his detractors, 80.
Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, 30;
his origin and advancement, 32;
preceptor of Louis XV., 32;
his influence over Louis XV., 32;
Madame de Prie’s plot to get rid of, 33;
departs from the court, 34;
is recalled by Louis XV., 34;
his death, 68, 246.
Fontanelle, his verses to Marie Leczinska, 239, 240.
Frederick the Great, 205, 214, 222.
Fréjus, Bishop of, see Fleury.
Gresset, 139.
Helvetius, quoted, 215.
Hénault, President, his words concerning Marquise de Pompadour,
118;
offers manuscript of his _Abrégé chronologique_ to Marie
Leczinska, 238;
his verses to Marie Leczinska, 239.
Henriette, Madame, 247, 248;
of her by Honoré Bonhomme, 249;
her death, 248, 249;
her sad love affair, 250, 251;
her death, 252.
Hermitage, the, 151.
Infanta, Madame, see Elisabeth, Madame.
_Ismène_ performed at Versailles, 139.
Issart, Marquis des, 261.
Jansenism, 194, 195.
Jesuits, 173–175, 189–192;
the order condemned, 221, 222.
La Tour, his pastel of Madame de Pompadour, 216;
his pastel Marie Leczinska, 236.
Leczinska, Marie, see Marie Leczinska.
Leczinska, Stanislas, his life of exile, 23;
his death, 266.
Louis XV., women of court of, 1 _et seq._;
daughters of, 2, 112, 113, 245 _et seq._;
his character and career reviewed, 4–10;
his mistresses, 6, 7;
his melancholy, 8, 158;
his death, 10;
beginning of his reign, 14;
affianced to Infanta Marie Anne Victoire, 14, 15;
established at Versailles, 15;
coronation of, 15;
his health delicate, 18;
his marriage to Infanta Marie Anne Victoire broken off, 20, 21;
his beauty, 25;
marries Marie Leczinska, 26;
meets Marie Leczinska, 27;
his early married life exemplary, 30, 39, 40;
his affection for Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, 32;
recalls Fleury, 34;
expels Duke of Bourbon, 34, 35;
his growing indifference towards Marie Leczinska, 42;
influences about him, 43–45;
makes a favorite of Madame de Mailly, 47, 48;
changes his apartments, 48;
his trifling life, 49, 52;
becomes tired of Madame de Mailly, 53, 59;
makes a favorite of Pauline Félicité, 54;
his remorse, 54, 55;
his dismay at death of Countess de Vintimille, 58;
makes a favorite of Madame de la Tournelle, 62 _et seq._;
his severity towards Madame de Mailly, 61;
dismisses Madame de Mailly from court, 65;
his economy, 69;
makes Madame de la Tournelle Duchess of Châteauroux, 69, 70;
isolates himself at court, 71;
hesitates to join his troops, 72–74;
at the head of his troops, 74;
misses Madame de Châteauroux, 76;
receives Madame de Châteauroux at Lille, 77;
goes to Metz, 78;
falls ill, 79;
is compelled to dismiss Madame de Châteauroux, 79;
receives extreme unction, 80;
grief of France at illness of, 81;
his reconciliation with the Queen, 81;
repentant only when sick, 83, 180, 181;
returns to Paris, 88;
visits Madame de Châteauroux, 88, 89;
his neglect of Madame de Châteauroux during her last illness, 90;
his emotions transitory, 92;
his personal attractions, 97;
his religious feelings, 98;
his ennui, 92, 99, 100, 133;
his monarchical faith, 101;
how he differs from Louis XIV., 101, 102;
among his troops, 102;
not as indolent as accused of being, 103;
his sensuality, 103, 104;
his distrust and timidity, 104;
his dissimulation, 105, 205;
his indecision, 105;
D’Argenson’s portrait of, 105, 106;
neglects the Queen, 107;
receives Marie Thérèse Antoinette Raphaelle at Étampes, 110;
his meeting with Madame d’Étioles at the Hôtel de Ville ball,
120;
installs Madame d’Étioles at Versailles, 121;
joins the army, 122;
confers title of Marquise de Pompadour on Madame d’Étioles, 124;
returns to Versailles, 125;
relinquishes his military activity, 129, 130;
his policy in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 130;
yields up the fruit of his conquests, 130, 131;
Voltaire’s lines to, 131;
change of public feeling toward, 132;
his interest in the theatre of Madame de Pompadour, 138;
becomes bored by dramatic spectacles, 145;
transfers performances from Versailles to château of Bellevue,
145, 146;
his conscience uneasy, 158;
equestrian statue of, 159, 160;
public attacks on, 165, 166;
his Jubilee, 169, 171, 172;
his religious tendencies, 166, 173;
retains Madame de Pompadour only through compassion, 174;
wounded by Damiens, 180–182;
public sympathy for, 182;
receives Madame de Pompadour graciously, 187;
his attitude towards Jansenism, 196;
his spirit of compromise, 197;
summons Christopher de Beaumont to the archbishopric of Paris,
196;
sends de Beaumont to Conflans, 197;
recalls de Beaumont, 199;
his enmity to Parliament, 198, 200;
his indecision, 203, 204;
his attitude toward Austria, 205;
accepts resignation of Abbé Bernis, 210, 211;
gives up cities possessed in Germany, 212;
his words concerning famous men of letters of France, 214;
revokes the privileges of editors of the Encyclopedia, 216, 217;
anonymous letter to, 217, 218;
called a Herod by the people, 219, 220;
his words at the funeral of Madame de Pompadour, 231;
fond of the society of his daughters, 255, 256;
selects a second wife for the Dauphin, 258;
at the death-bed of his wife, 273.
Louis XIV., 13, 101;
his attitude towards Jansenism, 195.
Louis XVI., 265.
Louis XVIII., 265.
Louise, Madame, 247, 255.
Luynes, Duchess de, 127, 128;
Marie Leczinska’s letters to, 241, 242;
Marie Leczinska’s friendship for, 241, 242.
Luynes, Duke de, his gift to Marie Leczinska, 241, 242.
Machault, M. de, his attitude towards Madame de Pompadour, 183;
his interview with Madame de Pompadour, 184, 185.
Mailly, Countess de, 1, 46;
her birth and marriage, 47;
description of, by Le Roy, 47;
becomes mistress of Louis XV., 47, 48;
loses affection of the King, 53;
introduces her sister, Pauline Félicité, to the King, 54;
her grief at death of her sister, 58;
dismissed from court, 60 _et seq._;
pitied by every one, 64;
pensioned by the King, 67;
her last years, 93;
her last days and death, 170–172.
_Mariage fait et rompu, Le_, performed at Versailles, 139.
Maria Theresa, 204;
her display of admiration for Louis XV., 205.
Marie Anne Victoire, Infanta, affianced to Louis XIV., 14, 15;
sent back to Spain on account of her youth, 18, 20, 21;
marries Joseph Emanuel, 21.
Marie Antoinette, 2.
Marie Josèphe of Saxony, the Dauphiness, 259;
the marriage of, with the Dauphin, 259 _et seq._;
the Duke de Richelieu’s words concerning, 261;
leaves Dresden for Versailles, 261;
Marshal Saxe’s words concerning, 261, 262;
marries the Dauphin, 261–263;
burdened by court etiquette, 263, 264;
makes herself beloved, 264;
her children, 264, 265;
a perfect wife and mother, 265;
her words at the death of the Dauphin, 267;
her death, 268;
her life a symbol, 271.
Marie Leczinska, 2;
her birth, 23;
her character, 23–25, 272, 273;
Duke of Bourbon’s words concerning, 25;
suddenly called to the throne of France, 24, 25;
her marriage to Louis XV., 26;
her letter to her father concerning her reception by the French
people, 26, 27;
meets Louis XV., 27;
her gifts to the ladies of the court, 27;
pleases every one, 28;
goes to Versailles, 29;
her early married life happy, 30;
jealous of influence of Fleury over Louis XV., 32;
her worthy life, 40;
gives birth to twins, 40;
her pious excursion to Paris, 40, 41;
her children, 41, 245 _et seq._;
her behavior towards Louis XV., 41, 42;
her suffering on account of the favor of Madame de Mailly with
the King, 48;
her sympathy for Madame de Mailly, 64;
visits the King ill at Metz, 81–83;
her disappointment regarding the King’s feelings towards her, 83;
her feelings at the death of Madame de Châteauroux, 91;
D’Argenson’s words concerning, 106;
her tenth child, 106;
neglected by the King, 107;
her daily life, 107, 108;
her peace of heart, 109;
called the “Good Queen,” 109;
her reception of Madame de Pompadour, 126;
her feelings towards Madame de Pompadour, 128;
refuses to permit Madame de Pompadour to take part in religious
service, 169;
her words concerning Madame de Pompadour after the latter’s
death, 231;
compared with Madame de Pompadour, 233–235, 276;
her character, 233 _et seq._;
portrait of, by La Tour, 236;
Nattier’s portrait of, 237;
sketch of, by Madame du Deffand, 237, 238;
her circle of friends, 238;
her words to President Hénault, 239;
President Hénault’s verses to, 239;
Fontanelle’s verses to, 239, 240;
her letters to the Duchess de Luynes, 241, 242;
her friendship for the Duchess de Luynes, 241, 242;
her solid information, 243;
a tender mother, 245, 255;
the daughters of, 245 _et seq._;
her resignation in grief at loss of two of her daughters, 255;
her relations to her children, 255, 256;
her apartments, 256, 257;
her liking for Marie Josèphe, the Dauphiness, 264;
loses her son and father, 266, 267;
crushed by sorrow, 268;
goes to the Carmelite convent of Compiègne, 270;
Madame de Campan’s words concerning, 270;
universally beloved, 272;
falls ill, 273;
her last moments and death, 273–275;
her funeral, 276;
the last Queen who ended her days on the throne of France, 276.
Marie Thérèse Antoinette Raphaelle, her marriage to the Dauphin,
110;
her amiability, 111;
her death, 129, 130, 258.
Massillon, 275.
Maurepas, 89, 90, 162.
Memoirs of court of Louis XV., 3.
_Mère coquette_, performed at Versailles, 142.
Michelet, his words concerning Madame de Prie, 36;
his effort to cast ridicule on the daughters of Louis XV., 245;
accuses Madame Elisabeth of being the cause of the Seven Years’
War, 253, 254.
Montpensier, Mademoiselle, her birth and marriage, 19;
becomes Queen of Spain, 19;
sent back to France, 20;
her later life, 21.
Motte, Mademoiselle de la, 117.
Nattier, his portrait of Marie Leczinska, 237.
Nesle, Mademoiselle de, see Félicité, Pauline.
Nuptial ceremony of putting to bed, described, 262, 263.
Orleans, Duke of, 16;
sketch of his career, 113, 114.
Palissot, verses by, 228.
Parliament, Madame de Pompadour’s conduct towards, 194;
Louis XV.’s attitude towards, 196–198, 200;
one hundred and fifty members of, resign, 198;
members of, pose as protectors of liberty, 200.
Pérusseau, 79.
Philip, Don, son of Philip V. of Spain, marries Madame Elisabeth,
247;
obtains sovereignty of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastella, 247;
not esteemed by his wife, 253.
Philip V. of Spain, 18, 19.
Poisson, Abel, 148, 149, 160.
Poisson, François, 117.
Poisson, Jeanne Antoine, afterwards Marquise de Pompadour, 117;
see Pompadour, Madame de.
Pompadour, Marquise de, 1, 6;
her character, 116, 117;
her birth and early life, 117;
her accomplishments, 117;
her marriage, 118;
President Hénault’s words concerning, 118;
plans to capture the fancy of Louis XV., 119;
appears as Diana at the Hôtel de Ville ball, 119, 120;
her children, 120;
makes her way into Versailles, 120, 121;
concealed by Louis XV., 121;
withdraws to her chateau at Étioles, 122;
receives title of Marquise, 124;
her presentation, 125;
treatment of her by the court, 127;
her attitude toward the Queen, 127–129;
her theatre of the little Cabinets, 132 _et seq._;
her fear of losing the interest of the King, 133;
her successes as an actress, 132, 134, 139, 140, 142, 145;
wants to play comedy at Versailles, 135;
draws up regulations for players at her theatre, 137, 138;
plays and sings, 139;
in the ballet of _Almases_, 140;
her last performance, 146;
Rousseau’s letter to, 146;
her power, pomp, and opulence, 147 _et seq._;
her sepulchre, 149;
her beauty, 149, 150;
what she cost France, 150;
her dwellings and apartments, 150–152;
verses to, by Voltaire, 122–124, 145, 152–154;
her griefs and sadness, 156 _et seq._;
threatened with death, 157;
insulted by Madame de Coaslin, 157;
her lack of confidence in the King, 156, 158;
like Scheherezade, 158;
her desire to marry her daughter Alexandrine, 160–162;
death of her daughter Alexandrine, 160;
verses at death of her mother, 160;
Sainte-Beuve’s words concerning, 161;
Paris implacable towards, 162;
verses abusing her, 163–166;
suffers under public abuse, 167;
ready to do anything to hold her place, 168;
makes a show of devotion, 168–170, 173;
has a statue made of herself, 170;
is attacked by fever, 170;
her feeling of insecurity, 170, 171;
endeavors to obtain absolution from the Jesuits, 173, 174;
refused absolution by Père de Sarcy, 174, 175;
solicits a place as lady of the Queen’s palace, 175;
declares her willingness to be reconciled to her husband, 175,
176;
receives communion, 177;
becomes a lady of the palace, 177, 178;
her conduct when Louis XV. was wounded by Damiens, 182, 183;
attitude of the three principal ministers towards, 183;
interview of M. de Machault with, 184, 185;
meets the King and resumes her domination, 186–189;
her grudge against the Jesuits, 189;
her note to the Pope censuring the Jesuits, 189–192;
her methods in politics, 193, 194;
held responsible for the Seven Years’ War, 201;
her interest in porcelains, 202;
her attitude toward the Austrian alliance, 205 _et seq._;
her obstinacy, 209, 211;
the object of public vindictiveness, 213;
her attitude towards Voltaire, 215;
her attitude towards Quesnay, 215;
her attitude towards the philosophers, 214 _et seq._, 221;
La Tour’s pastel of, 216;
anonymous letters to, 217, 218;
reviled by the people, 220;
effects the expulsion of the Jesuits, 221, 222;
eulogized by Voltaire, 223;
foresees the crumbling of the government, 224;
aged prematurely, 226, 227;
her courage in suffering, 227;
falls ill at Choisy, 227;
feels the coming of death, 229;
fears the King more than God, 229;
her death-bed, 229, 230;
her will, 230;
her death, 230, 231;
funeral service of, 231;
regretted by the men of letters, 232, 233;
compared with Marie Leczinska, 233–235, 276.
Porcelains, Madame de Pompadour’s interest in, 202.
_Précis du siècle de Louis XV._, Voltaire’s, 154.
_Préjugé à la mode, Le_, performed at Versailles, 139.
Prie, Marquise de, mistress of the Duke of Bourbon, 16;
influence of, at court, 16, 18;
her life, 17;
pleased at marriage of Louis XV. to Marie Leczinska, 31;
plots to get rid of Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, 33;
expelled from court by Louis XV., 35;
the bitterness of her last years, 36, 37;
her death, 38;
rumored to have poisoned herself, 38.
Provence, Count of, 265.
Quesnay, 183, 185;
the confidant of Madame de Pompadour, 215;
his character, 216.
Revolution, the, prophecies of, 218, 219, 224.
Richelieu, Duke de, description of, by D’Argenson, 61;
his plan at court, 62;
made first gentleman of the chamber, 71;
his exasperation at the favor of Madame de Pompadour with the
King, 127;
quarrel of, with Duke de la Vallière, 142–144;
his treatment of Madame de Pompadour, 143, 261;
his words concerning Marie Josèphe of Saxony, 259.
Rohan, Cardinal, 26.
Rousseau, his letter to Madame de Pompadour, 146.
Sainte-Beuve, his words concerning Madame de Pompadour, 161;
his description of La Tour’s pastel of Marie Leczinska, 236.
Saint Monica, 269.
Sarcy, Père de, refuses Madame de Pompadour absolution, 174, 175,
190.
Saxe, Marshal, negotiates the marriage of Marie Josèphe of Saxony
with the Dauphin, 258–261;
his words concerning Marie Josèphe, 261, 262;
his description of the ceremonial of putting to bed, 262, 263.
“School of Man, The,” a pamphlet attacking Louis XV., 165, 166.
Seven Years’ War, the, Madame de Pompadour held responsible for,
201;
the results of, 212.
Sophie, Madame, 247, 255.
Soubise, 209.
_Surprises de l’amour, Les_, performed at Versailles, 142.
_Tancred_, performed at Versailles, 142.
_Tartuffe_, performed at Versailles, 139.
Theatre of the little Cabinets, at Versailles, 136, 137 _et seq._;
regulations for players at, 137, 138;
dramatic performances at, 139, 140;
collection of comedies performed at, 141.
_Thétis et Pélée_, performance of, 170.
Toulouse, Countess de, her apartment at Versailles, 49;
accused of aiding the intimacy of Louis XV. and Madame de Mailly,
50.
Tournehem, M. Lenormand de, 117.
Tournelle, Madame de la, her birth and marriage, 60;
appointed lady of the palace, 60;
becomes a favorite of the King, 62;
determines to have Madame de Mailly dismissed from court, 62, 63;
her triumph, 65–67;
inferior to Madame de Montespan, 68;
becomes Duchess of Châteauroux, 69–71;
see Châteauroux, Duchess of.
Tournelle, Marquis de la, 60.
_Trois Cousines, Les_, performed at Versailles, 139.
_Unigenitus_, the bull, 195, 196, 200.
Vallière, Duke de la, quarrel of, with Duke de Richelieu, 142–144.
Vanloo, 232.
Versailles, deserted after death of Louis XIV., 13;
festivities at, 111, 112;
theatre constructed for Madame de Pompadour at, 136;
Madame de Pompadour’s apartments at, 150, 151;
the treaty of, 204, 206;
an Austrian party at, 205.
Victoire, Madame, 247, 255.
Vintimille, Countess de, gives birth to a boy, 57;
her death, 57, 58;
see Félicité, Pauline.
Vitzthum, Count, 259.
Voltaire, his words concerning Marie Leczinska, 27, 28;
his _Henri IV._, 28, 29;
obtains a pension, 29;
with Madame d’Étioles at her château, 122;
his lines to Madame d’Étioles, 122–124;
his lines to Louis XV., 131;
his lines to Madame de Pompadour at her toilet, 145;
his flattery of Madame de Pompadour, 152–155, 215;
his _Enfant prodigue_ produced at Versailles, 139, 154;
turns against Madame de Pompadour, 166, 167, 208;
quoted, 211;
his words concerning Seven Years’ War, 212, 213;
eulogizes Madame de Pompadour, 223;
his pleasure in foreseeing the French Revolution, 224;
his words concerning Madame de Pompadour after the latter’s
death, 232.
Women of court of Louis XV., 1 _et seq._
Norwood Press:
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, PUBLISHERS
Former series of M. Imbert de Saint-Amand’s historical works have
depicted the great French historical epochs of modern times. The
stirring events of the Revolution, of the Consulate and Empire, and of
the Restoration period, ending with the July revolution of 1830 and
the accession of Louis Philippe, are grouped around the attractive
personalities of Marie Antoinette, the Empresses Josephine and Marie
Louise, and the Duchesses of Angoulême and of Berry. The remarkable
and uniform success of these works has induced the publishers to
undertake the translation and publication of a previous series of
M. de Saint-Amand’s volumes which deal with epochs more remote, but
not for that reason less important, interesting, or instructive. The
distinction of the cycle now begun with the “Women of the Valois
Court” and ending with “The Last Years of Louis XV.,” is that, whereas
in former series several volumes have been devoted to the historical
events associated with each of the titular personalities to which
they were closely related, in the present instance a more condensed
method is followed. The color of the present series is more personal,
and therefore more romantic, as is to be expected in the annals of
a period during which the famous women of the French Court were not
only more numerous but more influential than their successors of later
times. The dawn of the modern era, chronicled in M. de Saint-Amand’s
“Marie Antoinette and the End of the Old Régime” was the beginning of
the extinction of the feminine influence that flourished vigorously in
affairs of state from Marguerite of Angoulême to Madame Dubarry. It is
the history of this influence that the author has graphically written
in the four volumes now announced--“Women of the Valois Court,” “The
Court of Louis XIV.,” and “The Court of Louis XV.,” and “The Last Years
of Louis XV.”
The first volume is devoted to Marguerite of Angoulême and Catherine
de’ Medici and their contemporaries at the French court during the
days of the last of the Valois--the most romantic period of royalty
probably in all history. The two principal figures are depicted with
striking vividness,--the half Catholic, half Protestant sister of
Francis I., the grandmother of Henry IV., the author of the famous
“Heptameron,” and one of the most admirable historical figures of any
epoch; and the diplomatic, ambitious, unscrupulous but extremely human
Catherine, universally held responsible for the awful Massacre of Saint
Bartholomew. But the subordinate though scarcely less famous women who
adorned the Valois Court--Diane de Poitiers, the Duchess d’Étampes,
Marguerite of Valois, Marie Stuart, and others--are described with an
equally brilliant and illuminating touch.
The volumes on the women of the great Bourbon epoch, the epoch of
Louis XIV. and Louis XV., when the Bourbon star was in the zenith,
contain a great deal of intimate history as well as setting in relief
the interesting personalities of the famous La Vallière and Montespan
and that perennial historical enigma, Madame de Maintenon, in the
volume devoted to the court of the “Sun King,” and those of Madame de
Pompadour, Madame Dubarry, Queen Marie Leczinska, and other celebrities
who made Versailles what it was during the long and varied reign of
Louis XV. The study of Madame de Maintenon is a real contribution to
history, and the pictures of the clever and dazzling beauties who
controlled so long the destinies not only of France but measurably of
Europe itself from the accession of “le Grand Monarque” to the first
threatenings of the Revolution “deluge” are extremely life-like and
skilfully executed. The historical chronicle of the time is by no
means lost sight of by the author, but in this series even more than
in his works heretofore published in English he appears not only as
an interesting and impartial historian, but as a brilliant historical
portraitist.
FOUR NEW VOLUMES.
WOMEN OF THE VALOIS AND VERSAILLES COURTS.
_Each with Portraits, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $5.00;
half calf, $10.00._
WOMEN OF THE VALOIS COURT.
THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV.
THE COURT OF LOUIS XV.
THE LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV.
VOLUMES PREVIOUSLY ISSUED.
_THREE VOLUMES ON MARIE ANTOINETTE._
_Each with Portrait, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $3.75; half
calf, $7.50._
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE END OF THE OLD RÉGIME.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AT THE TUILERIES.
MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY.
In this series is unfolded the tremendous panorama of political events
in which the unfortunate Queen had so influential a share, beginning
with the days immediately preceding the Revolution, when court life at
Versailles was so gay and unsuspecting, continuing with the enforced
journey of the royal family to Paris, and the agitating months passed
in the Tuileries, and concluding with the abolition of royalty, the
proclamation of the Republic, and the imprisonment of the royal
family,--the initial stage of their progress to the guillotine.
_THREE VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE._
_Each with Portrait, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $3.75; half
calf, $7.50._
CITIZENESS BONAPARTE.
THE WIFE OF THE FIRST CONSUL.
THE COURT OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.
The romantic and eventful period beginning with Josephine’s marriage,
comprises the astonishing Italian campaign, the Egyptian expedition,
the _coup d’état_ of Brumaire, and is described in the first of
the above volumes; while the second treats of the brilliant society
which issued from the chaos of the Revolution, and over which Madame
Bonaparte presided so charmingly; and the third, of the events between
the assumption of the imperial title by Napoleon and the end of 1807,
including, of course, the Austerlitz campaign.
_FOUR VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE._
_Each with Portrait, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $5.00; half
calf, $10.00._
THE HAPPY DAYS OF MARIE LOUISE.
MARIE LOUISE AND THE DECADENCE OF THE EMPIRE.
MARIE LOUISE AND THE INVASION OF 1814.
MARIE LOUISE, THE RETURN FROM ELBA, AND THE HUNDRED DAYS.
The auspicious marriage of the Archduchess Marie Louise to the master
of Europe; the Russian invasion, with its disastrous conclusion a few
years later; the Dresden and Leipsic campaign; the invasion of France
by the Allies, and the marvellous military strategy of Napoleon in
1814, ending only with his defeat and exile to Elba; his life in his
little principality; his romantic escape and dramatic return to France;
the preparations of the Hundred Days; Waterloo and the definitive
restoration of Louis XVIII. closing the era begun in 1789, with “The
End of the Old Régime,”--are the subjects of the four volumes grouped
around the personality of Marie Louise.
_TWO VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME._
_Each with Portrait, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $2.50; half
calf, $5.00._
THE YOUTH OF THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME.
THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULÊME AND THE TWO RESTORATIONS.
The period covered in this first of these volumes begins with the life
of the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette imprisoned in the
Temple after the execution of her parents, and ends with the accession
of Louis XVIII. after the abdication of Napoleon at Fontainebleau.
The first Restoration, its illusions, the characters of Louis XVIII.,
of his brother, afterwards Charles X., of the Dukes of Angoulême and
Berry, sons of the latter, the life of the Court, the feeling of the
city, Napoleon’s sudden return from Elba, the Hundred Days from the
Royalist side, the second Restoration, and the vengeance taken by the
new government on the Imperialists, form the subject-matter of the
second volume.
_THREE VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF BERRY._
_Each with Portrait, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $3.75; half
calf, $7.50._
THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF LOUIS XVIII.
THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF CHARLES X.
THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE REVOLUTION OF JULY, 1830.
The Princess Marie Caroline, of Naples, became, upon her marriage
with the Duke of Berry, the central figure of the French Court during
the reigns of both Louis XVIII. and Charles X. The former of these
was rendered eventful by the assassination of her husband and the
birth of her son, the Count of Chambord, and the latter was from the
first marked by those reactionary tendencies which resulted in the
dethronement and exile of the Bourbons. The dramatic Revolution which
brought about the July monarchy of Louis Philippe, has never been more
vividly and intelligently described than in the last volume devoted to
the Duchess of Berry.
“_In these translations of this interesting series of
sketches, we have found an unexpected amount of pleasure and
profit. The author cites for us passages from forgotten diaries,
hitherto unearthed letters, extracts from public proceedings,
and the like, and contrives to combine and arrange his material
so as to make a great many very vivid and pleasing pictures. Nor
is this all. The material he lays before us is of real value,
and much, if not most of it, must be unknown save to the special
students of the period. We can, therefore, cordially commend
these books to the attention of our readers. They will find them
attractive in their arrangement, never dull, with much variety
of scene and incident, and admirably translated._”--THE
NATION, _of December 19, 1890_.
BRIEF LIST of Books of Fiction Published by Charles Scribner’s
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_William Waldorf Astor._
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_Arlo Bates._
=A Wheel of Fire.= 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.00.
“The novel deals with character rather than incident, and is evolved
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_Hjalmar H. Boyesen._
=Falconberg.= Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50. =Gunnar.= Sq. 12mo,
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_H. C. Bunner._
=The Story of a New York House.= Illustrated by A. B. Frost.
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=Zadoc Pine=, and Other Stories. 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth,
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alone mental discernment, but the artistic appreciation. The author and
the artist both supplement one another in this excellent ‘Story of a
New York House.’”--_The New York Times._
_Frances Hodgson Burnett._
=That Lass O’ Lowrie’s.= Illustrated. Paper, 50 cts.; cloth,
$1.25. =Haworth’s.= Illustrated. 12mo, $1.25. =Through One
Administration.= 12mo, $1.50. =Louisiana.= 12mo, $1.25. =A Fair
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A Love Story. 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25. =Surly Tim=,
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=Little Lord Fauntleroy.= Sq. 8vo, $2.00. =Sara Crewe.= Sq. 8vo,
$1.00. =Little Saint Elizabeth=, and Other Stories. 12mo, $1.50.
Illustrated by R. B. Birch.
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natures--the sweetness that often underlies their bitterness--the soul
of goodness in things evil. She seems to have an intuitive perception
of character.”--RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
_William Allen Butler._
=Domesticus.= A Tale of the Imperial City. 12mo, $1.25.
“Under a veil made intentionally transparent, the author maintains
a running fire of good-natured hits at contemporary social
follies.”--_The New York Journal of Commerce._
_George W. Cable._
=The Grandissimes.= 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25. =Old
Creole Days.= 12mo, cloth, $1.25; also in two parts, paper,
each, 30 cts. =Dr. Sevier.= 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25.
=Bonaventure.= 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; $1.25.
_The set, 4 vols., $5.00._
“There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more
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New York Tribune._
_Rebecca Harding Davis._
=Silhouettes of American Life.= 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth,
$1.00.
“There are altogether thirteen stories in the volume, all written in
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a producer of fiction.”--_Boston Beacon._
_Richard Harding Davis._
=Gallegher=, and Other Stories. 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth,
$1.00.
The ten stories comprising this volume attest the appearance of a new
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well as Dickens did his London.
_Edward Eggleston._
=Roxy.= =The Circuit Rider.= Illustrated. Each, 12mo, $1.50.
“Dr. Eggleston’s fresh and vivid portraiture of a phase of life and
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contrasted characters, and its unconventional, hearty, religious
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Union._
_Erckmann-Chatrian._
=The Conscript.= Illustrated. =Waterloo.= Illustrated. Sequel to
The Conscript. =Madame Thérèse.= =The Blockade of Phalsburg.=
Illustrated. =The Invasion of France in 1814.= Illustrated. =A
Miller’s Story of the War.= Illustrated.
_The National Novels, each, $1.25; the sets, 6 vol., $7.50._
=Friend Fritz.= 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25.
_Eugene Field._
=A Little Book of Profitable Tales.= 16mo, $1.25.
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_Harold Frederic._
=Seth’s Brother’s Wife.= 12mo, $1.25. =The Lawton Girl.= 12mo,
$1.25; paper, 50 cts. =In the Valley.= Illustrated. 12mo, $1.50.
“It is almost reasonable to assert that there has not been since
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_James Anthony Froude._
=The Two Chiefs of Dunboy.= An Irish Romance of the Last
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“The narrative is full of vigor, spirit and dramatic power. It will
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_Robert Grant._
=Face to Face.= 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25. =The
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$1.00.
“In the ‘Reflections,’ Mr. Grant has given us a capital little book
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_Edward Everett Hale._
=Philip Nolan’s Friends.= Illust’d. 12mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth,
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=Free Joe=, and Other Georgian Sketches. 12mo, paper, 50 cts.;
cloth, $1.00.
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=The Governor=, and Other Stories. 12mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50
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_E. T. W. Hoffmann._
=Weird Tales.= With Portrait. 12mo, 2 vols., $3.00.
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=Color Studies, and a Mexican Campaign.= 12mo, paper, 50 cts.;
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=In Blue Uniform.= 12mo, $1.00.
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_Saxe Holm’s Stories._
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lacordaire, 2d Toulouse Conference.
[2]
No, Louis was less harsh than he appeared;
His death has justified him,
Since he, as well as the Messiah,
Has died for our salvation.
[3] Room No. 124 of the _Notice du Musée de Versailles_, by M.
Eudore Soulié.
[4] Room No. 115 of the _Notice du Musée de Versailles_.
[5] See the interesting work by M. Édouard de Barthélemy, _Les filles
du Regent_, 2 vols., Firmin Didot.
[6] _La Reine Leczinska_, by Madame the Countess d’Armaillé, born
De Ségur, 1 vol., Dentu.
[7] Letter to M. Thiriot, October 17, 1725.
[8] _Receveur des décimes_--the tithe formerly paid by the clergy
to the kings of France.
[9] Memoirs of Duclos.
[10] The Duke was blind in one eye.
[11] The chamber of Louis XV. and the cabinets are now used as the
apartment of the President of the National Assembly.
[12] Massillon, Sermon on _l’Evidence de la loi_.
[13] Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes.
[14] _Les Maitresses de Louis XV._, par Edmond et Jules de
Goncourt. 2 vols. Firmin-Didot.
[15] Correspondence of Louis XV. and the Marshal de Noailles, published
by M. Camille Rousset. 2 vols. Dumont.
[16] _Lettres autographes de la duchesse de Châteauroux. Bibliothèque
de Rouen._
[17] Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes.
[18] M. Capefigue, _Madame la Marquise de Pompadour_. 1 vol. Amyot.
[19] M. Boutaric, _Correspondance Secrète de Louis XV._
[20] The dinner took place in the room called the Queen’s Antechamber,
No. 117 of the _Notice du Musée_, by M. Eudore Soulié.
[21] Room No. 116 of the _Notice du Musée_.
[22] The gilted screw-rings which served to support this canopy may
still be seen in the cornice opposite the windows.
[23] _La reine Marie Leczinska_, by Madame the Countess d’Armaillé,
born de Ségur. 1 vol., Didier.
[24] Massillon, _Sermon sur les dégoûts qui accompagnent la piété_.
[25] Born at Versailles, September 4, 1729, died at Fontainebleau,
December 20, 1765. He married a Spanish Infanta in 1745, and in 1747
a princess of Saxony, the mother of Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., and of
Charles X.
[26] February 25, 1745.
[27]
When Cæsar, that charming hero,
Whom all Rome idolized,
Gained some brilliant combat,
People complimented on it
The divine Cleopatra.
When Louis, that charming hero,
Who is the idol of all Paris,
Gains some brilliant combat,
One must compliment on it
The divine D’Étioles.
[28]
He knows how to love and how to fight;
He sends to this fair abode
A brevet worthy of Henry Fourth,
Signed: Louis, Mars, and Love.
But the enemies have their turn,
And his valor and his prudence
Give to Ghent, the same day,
A brevet as a French city.
These two brevets, so welcome,
Will both survive in memory.
With him the altars of Venus
Are in the temple of Glory.
[29]
All is about to change: the crimes of an inconstant
No longer will be vaunted as exploits.
Modesty alone will obtain our homage,
Constant Love will resume his rights.
The example of it is given by the greatest of kings
And the most discreet of beauties.
[30]
Great King, London groans, Vienna weeps and admires thee. Thine
arm is about to decide the fate of the Empire. Sardinia wavers,
and Munich repents; Batavia, undecided, is a prey to remorse;
And France exclaims amidst her joy: “The best loved of Kings is
also the greatest!”
[31] See the accurate and interesting little work by M. Adolphe Julien:
_Histoire du Théâtre de Mme. de Pompadour, dit Théâtre des petits
cabinets_, with an etching by Martial after Boucher.
[32]
One traces but on sand
The vague and unstable promises
Of all the nobles of the court;
But on imperishable bronze
The Muses have traced the name of Pompadour
And her invariable promise.
[33] This staircase, which led to the large apartments of the King, was
destroyed in 1750. The present staircase in the wing of the palace was
constructed on the side of it.
[34]
This perfect American
Has caused too many tears to flow.
Can I not console myself
And see Venus at her toilette?
[35] See the learned and remarkable work of M. Campardon: _Madame de
Pompadour et la cour de Louis XV._, 1 vol., Plon.
[36] _Curiosités historiques_, par M. Le Roy, 1 vol., Plon.
[37] See rooms 56, 57, 58, 59 of M. Soulie’s Notice of the Museum of
Versailles. No. 57 was the bedroom of the Marquise, No. 58 her study.
[38]
Sincere and tender Pompadour
(For I can give you in advance
This name which rhymeth with amour
And soon will be the finest name in France),
This tokay with which Your Excellence
At Étioles regalèd me,
Beareth it not some resemblance
Unto the King who gave it thee?
It is, like him, without melange,
Joins strength to mildness, pleasant art,
Pleases the eyes, enchants the heart,
Does good and never knoweth change.
[39]
Spirits and hearts and ramparts terrible,
All to his efforts yield, all bend beneath his law,
And Berg-Op-Zoom and you, you are invincible;
You have submitted only to my King.
’Tis to your arms he flies from Victory’s breast,
Finds in your heart the guerdon of his toils.
His glory nothing can augment,
And you augment his happiness.
[40]
So then, you reunite
All arts, all gifts to please;
Pompadour, you embellish
The court, Parnassus, and Cythera.
Charm of all eyes, treasure of one alone,
May your love be eternal!
May all your days be marked by festivals!
May new successes mark the days of Louis!
May you both live devoid of enemies
And both preserve your conquests.
[41]
Grotesque monument, infamous pedestal;
The Virtues are on foot, and vice on horseback.
[42]
Here lies she who, starting from a dungheap,
In order to make her fortune complete,
Sold her honor to the farmer,
And her daughter to the proprietor.
[43]
The noble lords abase themselves,
The financiers enrich themselves,
The Poissons aggrandize themselves;
’Tis the reign of good-for-naughts.
They exhaust the treasury,
They waste in buildings,
The State falls into decadence,
The King sets nothing straight.
A little bourgeoise,
Brought up like a wanton,
Measuring all by her own standard,
Makes a kennel of the court;
Louis, in spite of his scruples,
Burns coldly for her,
And his ridiculous amour
Makes all Paris laugh.
A vapid countenance,
And each tooth spotted,
The skin yellow and freckled,
The eyes frigid and the neck long,
Witless and without character,
The soul vile and mercenary,
The tattle of a gossip,
All is low with la Poisson.
If among chosen beauties
She were one of the prettiest,
One pardons follies
When their object is a gem.
But when a ridiculous creature
And so flat a figure
Excites so many murmurs,
Every one thinks the King a fool.
[44]
Who can hereafter recognize his King
Amid these actors who reign with thee?
[45]
Love has been set upon the throne of France.
Theatric rage assassinates the court.
The palaces of our kings, once worthy of respect,
Lose all their éclat, become contemptible;
None but merry-andrews inhabit them!...
[46]
A leech’s daughter and a leech herself,
Fish of an arrogance extreme,
Parades in this château, without fear or dread,
The people’s substance and the monarch’s shame.
[47] _Clément XIV. et les Jésuites_, by M. Crétineau-Joly.
[48] See the very learned and complete work of M. Jobez: _La France
sous Louis XV._ Six vols., Didier.
[49]
What is clearly conceived is clearly expressed,
And the words to say it come easily.
[50] Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du Lundi_, t. viii.
[51]
Soubise says, lantern in hand,
There’s no use looking, where the devil is my army?
It was here yesterday morning, anyhow,
Has some one taken it or have I lost it?
Ah! I lose everything, I am a rattlepate;
But wait till broad daylight, till noon.
What do I see! O heaven! How my soul is enraptured!
Wondrous prodigy, there it is, there it is!--
Ah! zounds! What is that then?
I was mistaken, ’tis the enemy’s army.
[52] Voltaire, _Siècle de Louis XV._
[53] See the witty and interesting work by M. Arsène Houssaye: _Louis
XV._ 1 vol., Dentu.
[54]
The sun is sick,
And so is Pompadour;
’Tis but a transient thing,
For both are cured;
The good God who aids
Our wishes and our love,
For the welfare of the world
Restores to us the day
With Pompadour.
[55]
You are too dear to France,
To the god of arts and loves,
To fear the deadly power of fate.
All the gods watched over your life,
All were animated by the zeal that inspires me;
In flying to your rescue
They have established their empire.
[56] Bossuet. Sermon on Final Impenitence.
[57] Room No. 116 of the _Notice du Musée_, by M. Eudore Soulié.
[58] No. 122 of the _Notice_.
[59]
These lines, traced by a hand divine,
Cannot but cause me trouble and embarrassment.
’Twere too much daring should my heart divine them;
’Twere too ungrateful not to guess them.
[60]
One should not be old except in Sparta,
Say the ancient writings.
Great God! how far I am out of the way,
Who am so old in Paris.
O Sparta! O Sparta! alas! what has become of you?
You knew the full value of a hoary head.
The more one muffled up in dog-days,
The more the ear was deaf and dim the eye,
The more nonsense one talked in his sad family,
The more one criticised the veriest trifle,
The more gout and similar titbits one possessed,
The more teeth one had lost by their good will,
The more one stooped over his heavy crutch,
The more fit, in fact, one was to be buried,
The more within its ramparts one was honored.
O Sparta! O Sparta! alas! what has become of you?
Yon knew the full value of a hoary head.
[61]
Accumulated years have pushed me to extremity.
I cannot longer, alas! find Sparta everywhere,
But you, the model of queens,
Assuredly should find Athens everywhere.
[62] _Mesdames de France, filles de Louis XV._, by Édouard de
Barthélemy. Didier.
[63] _Louis XV. et sa famille_, after unpublished letters and
documents, by Honoré Bonhomme. 1 Vol., Dentu.
[64] No. 122 of _Notice du Musée de Versailles_, by M. Eudore
Soulié.
Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.
2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.
4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
5. Bold script is shown as =xxx=.
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