Chapter XVI: The Death of Marie Leczinska 269 (3)

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]

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.”

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.