Chapter XVI: The Death of Marie Leczinska 269 (2)

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.