Chapter XVI: The Death of Marie Leczinska 269 (5)

The favorite found it hard to renounce her cherished project of this alliance. Afterwards she thought of the young Duke de Fronsac, Richelieu’s son, as a husband for her daughter. She caused overtures to be made to the celebrated courtier. He answered by a disguised refusal. “My son,” said he, “has the honor of belonging, on his mother’s side, to the house of Lorraine; hence I cannot dispose of him without the consent of that family, but I shall proceed to demand it urgently if the Marquise still persists in her intentions.”

Madame de Pompadour understood, and insisted no further. She planned another marriage for her daughter, who was promised to the young Duke de Pecquigny, son of the Duke de Chaulnes of the De Luynes family. But Mademoiselle d’Étioles died prematurely at the very time when the marriage was about to be contracted. She was buried in the sepulchre her mother had bought from an illustrious family. “The bones of the La Trémoille,” said the Princess de Talmond, “must have been must astonished at finding fish bones (_les arêtes des Poisson_) near them.”

We have seen the disgusting flatteries of which the Marquise was the object. These hyperboles of interested praise had a terrible counterpart. While the court was obsequious, Paris remained implacable. There was an incessant succession of sneers, satires, and invectives. There had been _mazarinades_ of old; now there were _poissonades_. Minister Maurepas was the instigator and often the author of these violent rhymed diatribes, which made people say France was an absolute monarchy tempered by ballads. The masses avenged themselves by refrains of more than Gallic animation. We cite one among a thousand. It was sung to the air _Trembleurs d’Isis_:--

“Les grands seigneurs s’avilissent,
Les financiers s’enrichissent,
Et les Poissons s’agrandissent;
C’est le règne des vauriens.
On épuise la finance,
En bâtiments, on dépense,
L’État tombe en décadence,
Le roi ne met ordre à rien.

“Une petite bourgeoise,
Élevée à la grivoise,
Mesurant tout à sa toise,
Fait de la cour un taudis;
Louis, malgré son scrupule,
Froidement pour elle brûle,
Et son amour ridicule
A fait rire tout Paris....

“La contenance éventée,
Et chaque dent tachetée,
La peau jaune et truitée,
Les yeux froids et le cou long,
Sans esprit, sans caractère,
L’âme vile et mercenaire,
Les propos d’une commère,
Tout est bas chez la Poisson.

“Si dans les beautés choisies
Elle était des plus jolies,
On pardonne des folies,
Quand l’objet est un bijou.
Mais pour sotte créature
Et pour si plate figure
Exciter tant de murmure,
Chacun juge le roi fou.”[43]

Nor did people content themselves with ballads. They likewise produced long pieces of emphatic verse, distilling venom and hatred. More or less skilful imitators of Juvenal composed satires full of gall and bitterness. What specially excited the indignation of the authors of these diatribes were the representations at the theatre of the little cabinets. One of them, addressing himself to Madame de Pompadour, exclaimed:--

“Parmi ces histrions qui règnent avec toi,
Qui pourra désormais reconnaître son roi?”[44]

Another thus expressed himself:--

“Sur le trône français on fait regner l’amour.
La fureur du théâtre assassine la cour.
Les palais de nos rois jadis si respectables,
Perdent tout leur éclat, deviennent méprisables;
Ils ne sont habités que par des baladins!...”[45]

A pamphlet entitled “The School of Man, or parallel between contemporary portraits and those of Holy Writ,” contained attacks of this sort against Louis XV.: “Too much incommoded by his greatness to take a girl from the green room, Lindor satisfied himself in true princely style: he had a large house with a theatre in it built expressly for him, where his mistress became a danseuse by title and office; men infatuated by the vanity of dancing women, insensate imitators of Candaules, do not fancy that the last Gyges died in Lydia.”

One should read the Memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson and those of Barbier the advocate in order to get a just notion of the hatred felt for the Marquise by both the aristocracy and the middle classes. The people despised her quite as much, and held her solely responsible for all wretchedness and every disaster. The luxury of this parvenu irritated them, and they detested her profoundly. The following quatrain expressed the popular sentiment:--

“Fille d’une sangsue et sangsue elle-même,
Poisson d’une arrogance extrême,
Étale en ce château, sans crainte et sans effroi,
La substance du peuple et la honte du roi.”[46]

For those who knew how to listen, the Revolutionary storm was already rumbling in the distance.

Madame de Pompadour could not rely on her flatterers themselves. Voltaire, who had burned so much incense at the adored feet of the Marquise, who at Versailles had been her most zealous, ardent, enthusiastic courtier, forgot all that in his retreat at Ferney. He chaffed at his former idol and drew a most malicious portrait of her in his poem _La Pucelle_.

Thoroughly acquainted with the tone of public opinion, since she had her own police and an arrangement with the director of the post-office, who violated the secret of letters for her, Madame de Pompadour was in despair at so many attacks. Uneasy, feverish, dissatisfied with the King and the kingdom, considering herself as a victim of destiny, a woman unjustly dealt with by fortune, spitefully angry at Frederick the Great, who scoffed at her; at Louis XV., who neglected her for the young girls of the Deer Park; at the clergy, who regarded her as a tool of hell; at the Parliaments, which disdained her; at the nobility, who saw nothing in her but an ambitious _bourgeoise_; at the middle classes, who reproached her for being immoral; at all France, which scorned her,--she suffered as much in her vanity as in her pride, and said to her confidant, Madame du Hausset: “The sorceress told me I should have time to repent before dying; I believe it, for I shall die of nothing but chagrin.”

VII

MADAME DE POMPADOUR, LADY OF THE QUEEN’S PALACE

Madame de Pompadour was ready to play all parts in order to preserve her empire. To be an actress and a political woman was not enough; she willingly consented to become by turns, and simultaneously if need were, a devotee and a procuress, to favorize now the Church and now the Deer Park, to submit to every transformation, every servitude: _Omnia serviliter pro dominatione_. Never did any minister cling more firmly to his portfolio, never had any ambitious man a greater thirst for power.

Louis XV. had a substratum of religion which made the favorite uneasy. The day he insisted on her reading one of Bourdaloue’s sermons she was frightened. With all her audacity she never dared to criticise the Church in the presence of the Most Christian King; for irregular as his own conduct was, he would not suffer the faith of his fathers to be insulted in his hearing. To keep her place, the Marquise would have asked nothing better than to assume the austere demeanor of a Madame de Maintenon; but she was married, unfortunately, and so was the King, and Catholicism has never compromised with concubinage or adultery. Hence Madame de Pompadour sought to avert the difficulty. She put on a half-way devotion which was wholly worldly, made for show, a sort of compromise between God and the devil, between the Church and the boudoir, the oratory and the alcove, a spurious, derisory, hypocritical devotion, examples of which are given by many women of our own century as well as of the last.

She had determined to make a figure in the Versailles chapel from the time her favor began. She meant to shine everywhere, even before the altars. It was this that made her request the Queen’s authorization to carry one of the basins at the ceremony of feet washing on Maundy Thursday, and collect the offerings at the High Mass on Easter Sunday. But easy as she was where no one but herself was concerned, Marie Leczinska became severe where God was in question: she refused.

The Jubilee of 1751 redoubled the anxieties of the Marquise. D’Argenson wrote, February 2: “People assert that the King will gain his Jubilee and make his Easter Communion. The Marquise says there is no longer anything but friendship between the King and her, and that they will put a fortnight’s retreat and truce even to this friendship.” The attitude of a repentant Magdalen would not have suited a woman like Madame de Pompadour. She was willing enough for a little devotion, but of an elegant and worldly sort, ostentatious and luxurious. The theatre, in a word, pleased her much better than the church. D’Argenson wrote again, February 6: “All Paris has been talking of the representation of _Thétis et Pélée_, eight days ago, at which the Marquise de Pompadour was present. The actors addressed her directly in the gallant parts, such as, ‘Reign, beautiful Thetis!’ This she received with a triumphant air which a woman of different extraction would not have assumed; for some feed their vanity on what others could not endure without shame.” But what afflicted the haughty favorite was the thought that all this success might topple over in an instant, like a house of cards. At the very time when, always an actress, even under the deceptive appearances of her so-called repentance, she was having a statue of herself as the goddess of Friendship made for Bellevue, she had several attacks of fever--people called it the Jubilee fever.

Madame de Mailly, the woman with whom Louis XV. had begun his scandalous life, was at this time at her last extremity. One reads in the Memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson, under date of March 27, 1751: “Madame de Mailly, former mistress of the King, is dying. It was thought she was better, but the inflammation of the lungs is increasing, and she has a hopeless fever. The King has not even once sent openly to make inquiries, but the Marquis de Gontaud has bulletins four times a day and transmits them to the King, who is afraid of offending Madame de Pompadour. I am convinced he will be much affected by her death. The pious people, those who believe in Providence, remark that, the King having had the three sisters, they have all died young. This one, who was the first, and not incestuous, is dying piously and the death of the just: it is even through her religious practices that she contracted her malady; apparently she will have a holy death. The other two died in horrible anguish, and much younger. People reflect also that God is so desirous of the King’s conversion, that this death happens just in the Jubilee time, so as to touch His Majesty, already prepared by sermons and disposed to make his Jubilee sincerely. However, in the cabinets, divertisements and ballets are still going on secretly.”

In Barbier’s journal are encountered similar reflections on the terrors of the Marquise: “Everybody,” he writes, “is carefully watching for what will happen at the Jubilee. They say Madame de Pompadour dreads the results of it. There are many at the court, not merely ecclesiastics, but men and women who are expecting this event to ruin the Marquise, whose abuse of her position has for some time gained her the hatred of all the nobles. The King can hardly remain at Versailles without making his Jubilee. Public prejudice is carried to the point of respecting the Jubilee more than the Easter duties which are of obligation. If he makes his Jubilee, he cannot well return to the château of Bellevue a fortnight later, and a month’s absence would be dangerous. There are lovers of the court who are now forming a plan to find a new mistress for the King after the Jubilee; for, melancholy as it may be, he must have some diversion; and if he should altogether fear the devil and decide on amendment, this would be not at all amusing for the nobles. This event, then, which is not far distant, is what is agitating the public high and low.”

Madame de Mailly breathed her last March 30. In her will she had asked to be buried in the cemetery, among the poor, and to have a wooden cross. The Marquis d’Argenson writes: “These austerities, penances, and poverty increase the adverse opinion against her who now occupies her former place and whose conduct is so very different. It is also remarked, for the honor of religion, that Madame de Mailly, who was often subject to fits of ill temper, which was the cause of her being banished by the King, had become as mild and equable as possible. People say that if she was not holy, no other woman ever will be.”

But Madame de Pompadour was once more victorious. The King did not allow himself to be touched by the death of his former mistress, and, spite of the warnings of heaven, he did not make his Jubilee. Still the Marquise was not tranquil. D’Argenson wrote, December 11, 1752: “Madame de Pompadour has been spitting blood since her youth. _Et in peccato concepit eam mater sua._ She is becoming as dry as a stick, and one can see her growing thin with jealousy.” And September 17, 1753: “The King is becoming superstitiously devout, respecting the clergy more than morals. Marshal de Richelieu said to me in a jesting way: ‘The King shows angelic devotion. He won’t do anything without the episcopate in the affairs of Languedoc.’”

Madame de Pompadour no longer appealed to the senses of Louis XV. Sensuality failing her, she would have liked to be able to press religion into her service. She sought to create a new rôle for herself as favorite, more minister than mistress; to legitimate by duration as well as by a certain decorum her liaison with the King; to assume, in brief, an attitude as friend, counsellor, I might almost say matron.

Negotiating her conversion with the Jesuits as if it were a diplomatic affair, she demanded as a condition _sine quâ non_, that she should remain at Versailles. But here was the difficult point. The clergy, even at a period of abasement, retained their principles, and the Church would not be the dupe of a woman. But one thing, the absolution of a priest, was needful to enable her to go on playing her part as companion to the King, female minister, peacemaker between the King and the royal family, the Crown and the Parliaments, the clergy and the philosophers. All she had to do to merit and obtain this absolution was to withdraw from the court. But the Marquise would have preferred death to retreat. The atmosphere of Versailles was indispensable to her. Far from the scene of her sorry triumphs she would have expired in rage and despair. Louis XV. well knew that to dismiss her would be to kill her. Therefore he kept her near him, but solely through compassion.

Madame de Pompadour had put herself in communication with a Jesuit, Père de Sacy, whom she had formerly known, and from whom she hoped to gain, not only absolution, but permission to remain at the palace of Versailles. As, in the preceding reign, the “mistress thundering and triumphant,” Madame de Montespan, had been seen to humble herself before a simple curé, the all-powerful Marquise de Pompadour was now seen humbly soliciting a Jesuit. Père de Sacy remained firm: he would not let himself be moved by the fine protestations of the Marquise. It was in vain to show him that the communications between the apartments of the King and the favorite were now walled up; useless for the partisans of loose morality and worldly religion to say to him that he must not discourage repentance; that too much severity would spoil all; that the Church had need of Madame de Pompadour against the Encyclopedists; in a word, that there ought to be such a thing as compromising with heaven. The Jesuit rejected this theory of relaxation and culpable condescension. He reminded his pretended penitent that she had a husband still living,--a husband of whom she could not complain, and that her place was not at the palace of Versailles, but at the side of M. Lenormand d’Étioles. This annoying souvenir exasperated the favorite, infuriated by the conjugal phantom that rose before her, and thwarted all her plans. When she was convinced that, in spite of her feminine tricks, she could never bend Père de Sacy, she dismissed him;[47] and undoubtedly the admirable conduct of the Jesuits was one of the causes which brought about the expulsion of the order a few years later. Madame de Pompadour was vindictive. She never pardoned any one who had the audacity to displease her.

Could one believe it? The favorite pushed her assurance to the point of posing as a victim. To credit her, people were unjustly opposing obstacles to her conversion and that of the King. Priests who refused absolution in this way were enemies of the throne and the altar. At the same time, she shamelessly solicited a place as lady of the Queen’s palace. Marie Leczinska’s obligingness had already been carried too far. This time the good Queen made some observations. To receive to a place of honor a woman separated from her husband, a person who could not even claim to receive the benefits of the general communion, was an ignominy to which Louis XV. could not really wish to condemn a Queen of France. Accomplished intriguer as she was, Madame de Pompadour was not yet discouraged. She declared her willingness to be reconciled with her husband, at the same time secretly acquainting M. Lenormand d’Étioles that he would do well to refrain from accepting such an offer. The letter she wrote him was replete with the finest sentiments. As much as she had scandalized society by her separation, so much she promised to edify it hereafter by an irreproachable union with her husband. But this promise was only a feint. Moreover, M. d’Étioles was hardly anxious to take back his wife. He might have applied to her the idea expressed in this line of a modern tragedy:--

_Et mon indifférence a tué mon mépris._
And my indifference has slain my scorn.

It was long since the woman who had ceased to bear his name and whose desertion had once rendered him so unhappy, had excited in him either anger or resentment. He had wept for Madame d’Étioles. But Madame d’Étioles had been dead more than ten years, and he did not know Madame the Marquise de Pompadour. Nor had he any desire to know her. What he was told about her in nowise tempted him. He greatly preferred a former dancer at the opera, Mademoiselle Rem, with whom he lived maritally, and for whose sake he had refused the embassy from France to Constantinople.

Madame de Pompadour triumphed. The really guilty person, said she, was her husband. He and he alone committed the sin, he who refused to open his arms to a repentant spouse. She could not re-enter the conjugal abode by force. Hence the Queen could have no complaint against her, and no opposition could be made against her obtaining, after having received absolution, that place as lady of the palace, which was the height of her desires. She formally received her Easter communion at the church of Saint Louis, Versailles. But it was not Père de Sacy who heard her confession, but another priest.

“I had been surprised,” writes Madame du Hausset, “for some time past to see the Duchess de Luynes coming secretly to Madame. Afterwards she came openly; and one evening, Madame having gone to bed, called me and said: ‘My dear, you are going to be very well contented, the Queen is giving me a place as lady of the palace; to-morrow I am to be presented; you must make me look very handsome.’ I knew that the King was not quite so much at his ease about it; he was afraid of scandal and that people might think he had forced the Queen to make this nomination. But there was nothing of that sort. It was represented to the Princess that it would be an heroic act on her part to forget the past; that all scandal would be obliterated when it was seen that an honorable position was what retained Madame at court, and that this would be the best proof that nothing but friendship existed any longer between the King and his favorite. The Queen received her very well. The pious sort flattered themselves that they would be protected by Madame, and for some time sang her praises.... This was the time when Madame appeared to me the most contented. The devotees made no scruples about visiting her and did not forget themselves when opportunity offered.... The doctor (Quesnay) laughed at this change of scenes and made merry at the expense of the devotees. ‘And yet,’ I said to him, ‘they are consistent and may be in good faith.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but they ought not to ask for anything.’”

The Marquise de Pompadour, who had had the tabouret and the honors of a duchess since 1752, received her brevet as lady of the Queen’s palace February 7, 1756. She began the next day her week of attendance on Marie Leczinska, at the state dinner in a superb costume.

D’Argenson, whose morality is often peculiar, finds the thing natural enough. He approves rather than criticises. “Sunday evening,” he writes, “the Marquise de Pompadour was declared at Versailles lady of the Queen’s palace, whence it is conjectured that she is no longer the King’s mistress. It is even said that she begins to talk devotion and Molinism, and is going to try and please the Queen as much as she has the King. All this confidence which has been evident during the three years since the King began to have new mistresses is merely the reward of the sweetness and humility with which she has accepted her lover’s infidelities. This is only precarious and mere pretence, or, rather, it comes from a sentiment of friendship, good taste, and gratitude, and a good-nature in which love counts for nothing. But these reasonable sentiments can accomplish much in a sensible and well-ordered heart like that of the King.” Here one gets the sum of the morality of the eighteenth century. What could be expected of a society in which even worthy men could use such language and show such complaisance?

VIII

MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE ATTEMPT OF DAMIENS

Madame de Pompadour was destined to “live in the midst of alarms.” For nearly a year she had been congratulating herself on the cleverness with which she had carried by assault the post of lady of the Queen’s palace, and had dismissed the confessors, of whom she thought she had no more need, when an unforeseen event was very near making her lose all the ground she had so painfully acquired.

Toward six o’clock in the evening of January 5, 1757, Louis XV. had just come down the little staircase leading from his apartments to a vestibule facing the marble court, and was about to enter a carriage, when he was struck by a penknife in the hand of a person named Damiens, who, either through folly or fanaticism, wished not to kill him, but to give him a warning. The King thought himself mortally wounded. He belonged to that category of Christians who are never pious but when they are sick. When in good health they say: “There is always time to repent.” But if danger threatens them, they tremble, they go to confession, they become saints for the time being, reserving the privilege of resuming their vicious habits as soon as their health returns. When he thought death was facing him, Louis XV. expressed himself in terms worthy of the Most Christian King. At Metz he had been sublime. He was not less eloquent at Versailles. The noblest maxims were on his lips, the most beautiful sentiments in his heart. He named his son lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and said to him with emotion: “I leave you a very disturbed realm; I hope that you may govern it better than I have done.” He melted into tears of edification and admiration all those who came near him. This was no longer the man of the Deer Park; it was the son of Saint Louis.

One of his first words after being struck was a cry for a priest. His Jesuit confessor, Père Desmarets, was not just then at Versailles. A priest of the Grand-Commun was summoned (the ecclesiastics who acted as chaplains to those persons in the King’s service who were lodged in the apartments called Grand-Commun). Louis XV. made his confession first to this priest, and again to Père Desmarets, who arrived in great haste from Paris.

Louis XV. had received only a trifling wound. Damiens, who might have killed him, had not wished to do so. He had two blades on one handle, a large one and a small one, and had used only the latter. The doctor said that if the wounded man were not a king, he might go about his affairs the next day. But the imagination of Louis XV. was easily excited. When the wound had been probed, and he was assured that it was not very deep, he exclaimed: “It is deeper than you think, for it goes clear to the heart.” Baron de Besenval relates in his Memoirs that when the doctors had no longer the least anxiety, that of the King was such that, believing himself dying, he made the Abbé de Rochecour, the chaplain of the neighborhood, give him absolution every moment.

Louis the Well-Beloved was not as yet Louis the Well-Hated. Barbier says there was general consternation at Paris; everybody lamented. The archbishop commanded the devotions of the forty hours in all the churches. The priests and monks, suffocated by emotion, could hardly intone the _Domine salvum fac regem_.

What was happening to Madame de Pompadour all this time? She remained in her apartment in the palace of Versailles, but she had not even dared solicit the favor of seeing the royal sufferer. She knew that Louis XV. was no longer the same man when he was ill, and that it took him only a moment to become once more a devotee. Remembering what had happened at Metz at the time of the ignominious banishment of the Duchess de Châteauroux, she was convinced that she was about to go into exile, and nearly everybody believed the same.

“The people,” says Madame du Hausset, “received the news of the assault on the King with furious cries and the utmost despair; one could hear them crying under the windows from Madame’s apartment. They came in crowds, and Madame dreaded the fate of Madame de Châteauroux. Her friends came constantly with tidings. For that matter, her apartment was like a church, which everybody thought he had a right to enter. They came to see how she took it, under pretence of interest, and Madame did nothing but weep and faint away. Doctor Quesnay never left her, nor I either.”

What was at this moment the attitude of the three principal ministers, Count d’Argenson (brother of the author of the Memoirs), Minister of War, M. de Machault, Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, and Abbé de Bernis, who had been appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs three days before the assault? The first was the sworn enemy of the Marquise. He caught at the chance for vengeance. The second was under obligations to the Marquise, but, believing she would henceforth be powerless, he declared against her in order to salute the Dauphin’s rising sun. The third did not abandon the woman to whom he owed the portfolio he had just obtained. He wrote to M. de Choiseul this singular letter, in which the words “honor” and “virtue” are employed strangely enough: “The King has been assassinated, and all that the court has seen in this frightful event is a favorable moment for driving away our friend. Every intrigue has been brought to play on the confessor. There is a tribe at court who are always awaiting the Extreme Unction in order to try to augment their importance. Why should devotion be separated so from virtue? Our friend can no longer scandalize any one but fools and knaves. It is of public notoriety that friendship has supplanted gallantry these five years back. It is pure bigotry to go back into the past to impugn the innocence of the actual connection. This is founded upon his need of being able to open his heart to a proved and trusty friend who is, in the divisions of the Ministry, the sole point of reunion. What ingrates I have seen, my dear Count, and how corrupt our time is! Perhaps there have never been more virtues in the world, but there has been more honor.”

Count d’Argenson and M. de Machault did not like each other, but they were in agreement respecting the Marquise. If Madame de Pompadour was in nowise astonished by the conduct of the first, whose detestation of her she had long been aware of, the defection of the second, who had been her creature, put her beside herself, “Is that a friend?” she exclaimed in amazement.

On being left alone with M. de Machault, after the dressing of his wound, Louis XV. charged him, as a friend of his favorite, not to send her an order to depart, but to personally advise her to do so. The Keeper of the Seals called therefore on the Marquise. The interview lasted half an hour. The result was anxiously awaited, and the Abbé de Bernis had returned to learn what passed. But Madame du Hausset shall tell the story. Nobody is so interesting as ear and eye witnesses.

“Madame rang; I entered, followed by the Abbé. She was in tears. ‘I have got to go away, my dear Abbé,’ said she. I made her take some orange flower water in a silver goblet, because her teeth were chattering. Afterwards she told me to call her equerry, and she gave him her orders tranquilly enough to have her house at Paris prepared for her, and to tell all her people to be ready to start, and her coachmen not to absent themselves. A few minutes later the Maréchale Mirepoix came in: ‘What are all these trunks for?’ she exclaimed. ‘Your people say you are going away?’ ‘Alas! my dear friend, the master wills it, according to what M. de Machault has told me.’--‘And what is his own opinion?’ said the Maréchale. ‘That I should go without delay.’ During this time I was undressing Madame unaided, she wishing to be more at ease on her sofa. ‘He wants to be master, your keeper of the seals,’ said the Maréchale, ‘and he is betraying you; who gives up the game loses it.’” This language made the clever Marquise thoughtful. Quesnay came in afterwards, “and with his monkey-like air, having heard what had been said, he recited the fable of a fox who, dining with some other animals, persuaded one of them that his enemies were hunting for him, so as to snatch his part in his absence. I did not see Madame again until very late, at the hour of her couchee. She was calmer.”

However, it was not yet known whether the favorite would not end by being disgraced. Her enemy, Count d’Argenson, seemed to possess the intimate confidence of the sovereign. The King had given him his keys that he might look for the secret papers at Trianon, and the Count’s brother, the Marquis d’Argenson, wrote in his Memoirs, January 15, 1757, ten days after the assault: “It is true that since the assassination of the King, the Marquise has not seen His Majesty for a single instant. She endures her disgrace by concealing it; but little by little she will be abandoned. She has neither seen nor received a billet from His Majesty, who no longer seems to think of her. Meanwhile the King sees his confessor, Père Desmarets, every day, and has made declarations of friendship and good conduct to the Queen. All this smacks of a change at court. M. the Dauphin has entered the Council and is gaining credit there.’ The former Minister of Foreign Affairs was deluding himself. On the very day when he wrote these lines, the Marquise saw Louis XV. again and resumed her former domination, as the Minister of War was presently to become aware. “The great talent at court,” says the Baron de Besenval, “is to be a good judge of circumstances and know how to profit by them. M. d’Argenson deceived himself in this; he should have reflected that the ill-grounded terror of the King might pass as quickly as it came, and that he would seek to resume power as promptly as he had abandoned it. This is the way with all feeble souls. The minister forgot this truth. In the first council held after the attempt on the King, M. d’Argenson proposed, in presence of M. the Dauphin, who presided, that the ministers should hold their deliberations in the apartments of this prince, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom, until the complete recovery of the King. It resulted from this fault that M. the Dauphin, who was not very susceptible of ambition, was not at all grateful to the minister for his proposal, and that the King, hardly convalescent as yet, found his heart again replenished with that displeasure which his son had always inspired in him; that he withdrew him from affairs and never forgave M. d’Argenson for the mark of devotion he had given him on this occasion. When one dares to be ungrateful, he ought at least to be more adroit about it.”

As Baron de Besenval again remarks, “a mistress removed is not yet to be despised, and love has its caprices and returns as prompt as those of fortune.” Madame de Pompadour stayed where she was. The Minister of War and the Keeper of the Seals were sacrificed to her. The favorite made a tearful scene in presence of Louis XV. One would have thought she was going to faint. Madame du Hausset went to fetch her some of Hoffman’s drops. The King himself arranged the dose with sugar and presented it to the Marquise in the most gracious manner. She ended by smiling and kissed the hand of the gallant monarch, who consoled her.

Two days later, Count d’Argenson received the following letter from the King: “Your service is no longer necessary to me. I order you to send me your resignation as Secretary of State for War and all which concerns the employments thereunto adjoined, and to retire to your estate of Ormes.”

Things resumed their customary course. At the end of January, 1757, the advocate Barbier wrote in his journal: “The King is perfectly well. Madame the Marquise de Pompadour has not quitted Versailles. A few days after his recovery the King paid her a visit of a quarter of an hour, but since he holds his councils as usual he has resumed his own occupations; he has hunted several times, and the little suppers have begun again.” The chronicler, often cynical, concludes as follows: “Notwithstanding the criticisms of evil-minded persons, the best thing that could happen to both him and us, that is to all good citizens, would be for him to banish from his mind a misfortune which ought not to affect one, and continue his ordinary dissipations.”

Baron de Besenval’s conclusion must also be quoted: “Thus in the whole of this affair, M. d’Argenson had been willing to sacrifice the King to the Dauphin in order to prolong his own power. The King had been willing to sacrifice his mistress to public opinion and the terrors which disturbed his mind. M. de Machault consented to sacrifice Madame de Pompadour, his friend, by giving her advice which might please the monarch. And in the end everything was sacrificed to love, which is what happens and will happen always.” Here the word “love” is not accurate; “habit” is what he should have said.

Once more the favorite had triumphed; but in her victory she bore a mortal grudge against the Jesuits who had nearly succeeded in banishing her. She began that underhand but violent struggle against them which, a few years later, was to result in the suppression of their order. She had the audacity to forward secretly to the Pope a note which was a censure on their conduct and, if one can believe it, a defence of her own. This note, a copy of which has been discovered in the papers of the Duke de Choiseul, is a veritable monument of cynicism or else of a perverted conscience. It proves in the woman who conceived it an entire lack of moral sense, a forgetfulness of the most elementary decorum, and of the respect which unbelievers themselves owe to religion.

This curious document opens as follows:--

“At the beginning of 1752, determined by motives which it is useless to give an account of, to no longer preserve for the King any sentiments but those of gratitude and the purest attachment, I declared as much to His Majesty, supplicating him to cause the doctors of the Sorbonne to be consulted, and to write to his confessor that he might consult with others, in order that I might be left near his person, since he desired it, without being exposed to the suspicion of a weakness which I no longer had.”

So then, to credit Madame de Pompadour, she had become a type of modesty and Christian renunciation. She adds: “Things remained in appearance just as they had been until 1755. Then, prolonged reflections on the evils which had pursued me, even amidst the greatest good fortune; the certainty of never arriving at happiness by worldly goods, since none had ever been lacking to me, and yet I had never attained to happiness; detachment from the things which had most amused me,--all induced me to believe that the only happiness is in God. I addressed myself to Père de Sacy as to a man fully penetrated with this verity; I bared my soul completely to him; he tried me in secret from September to the end of January, 1756. During this time he proposed that I should write a letter to my husband, the rough draft of which, drawn up by himself, I still have. My husband refused ever to see me.”

The Marquise then complained to the Sovereign Pontiff of Père de Sacy, who, according to her, was the victim of intrigues of every sort, and guilty of having told her that he would refuse her the sacraments so long as she did not leave the court. She added, in speaking of Damiens’s crime: “The abominable 5th January, 1757, arrived, and was followed by the same intrigues as in the previous year. The King did all in his power to bring Père Desmarets to the verity of religion. The same motives being at work, the response was not different; and the King, who earnestly desired to fulfil his duties as a Christian, was prevented from doing so, and soon after relapsed into the same errors, from which he would certainly have been extricated had they acted in good faith.”

Perhaps all is not hypocrisy in this note. I incline to believe that in spite of her idolatry for the court, the favorite recognized its miseries and nothingness. How many persons remain vicious while knowing well that vice produces their unhappiness! How many passionate people own to themselves that their passions are killing them! O Ambition! cries Saint Bernard, by what spell does it happen that, being the torment of a heart where thou hast taken birth, and where thou dost exert thine empire, yet there is no person whom thou dost not please, and who does not allow himself to be taken by surprise by the flattering attraction thou dost offer him. _O ambitio, quo modo omnes torquens omnibus places?_

It would have been easy to reply to the Marquise de Pompadour that if the grandeurs of this world gave her so little satisfaction, all she had to do was to withdraw from the court. Hence the Pope remained untouched by all this display of Christian philosophy. He could not make up his mind to consider the mistress of Louis XV. as a repentant Magdalen; and, far from blaming the Jesuits who had refused her absolution, he approved them. The haughty favorite did not admit that she was beaten. She kept silence, swearing, however, that she would be avenged.

IX

MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND DOMESTIC POLITICS

At home as well as abroad, in parliamentary and clerical quarrels, as in questions of external politics, Madame de Pompadour’s ideas were always undecided, inconsistent, variable. For that matter, it is not easy to find in a pretty woman the qualities needful to manage public affairs well. With very few exceptions, fashionable women are fickle, wilful, excessively impressionable, capricious, like nearly all persons who are flattered. If they meddle with government, their half-knowledge is more dangerous than complete ignorance. They have infatuations, foregone determinations; their mania for protecting makes them obstinate in sustaining undeserving favorites. Their most serious determinations often depend on trifles. A well-turned compliment influences them more than a good reason; they are the dupes of any one who knows how to flatter them without seeming to do so, and who can find more or less ingenious pretexts for justifying their whims or palliating their faults. Such was Madame de Pompadour.

Is it not curious to see this futile woman leaving her gimcracks and gewgaws to interfere in the most arduous theological or governmental questions, to pose as an arbiter between the magistracy and the clergy, the throne and the altar? “Certes,” writes D’Argenson in a style well worthy of the epoch, “it is better to see a beautiful nymph at the helm than a villainous crouching ape such as the late Cardinal Fleury. But these fair ladies are as capricious as white cats, which caress you at first and afterwards scratch and bite you.” Madame de Pompadour acted like that with the Parliament; sometimes she caressed, sometimes she clawed it.

The interminable struggle between secular jurisdiction and ecclesiastical discipline had all the ruthlessness, all the asperity, of a civil war. A society at once incredulous and fanatical grew excited over theological questions worthy of Byzantium, and even in the heart of the Seven Years’ War there were at Paris, as Voltaire remarks, fifty thousand fanatics who did not know in what country flowed the Danube and the Elbe, and who thought the universe turned upside down by the contradictory propositions of the adepts of Jansenism and the disciples of Molina.[48]

The question, however, was more serious than one might be inclined to believe. Jansenism, that third estate of religion, as it has been so justly called, was nothing more or less than a preliminary step toward republican doctrines. “Do not believe,” said Bossuet, apropos of the English revolution, “that it is simply the quarrel of the Episcopate, or some intrigues against the Anglican liturgy which have moved the common people. These disputes were as yet only feeble commencements whereby turbulent spirits made a trial of their liberty; but something more violent was stirring in the depths of men’s hearts; it was a secret disgust for all that had been authority, and an itching to innovate incessantly after the first example had been seen.”

French Jansenism had the haughty chagrin, the indocile curiosity, the spirit of revolt, which characterized the Protestantism of England. Louis XIV., so jealous of his royal prerogatives, had seen this at once. He felt that discipline is as indispensable to the Church as to the barracks, and comprehended that the throne has the same foundations as the altar. The thing aimed at by the bull _Unigenitus_ of 1713 was to re-establish unity in doctrines; and when the Jansenists refused to submit to the decree of the Sovereign Pontiff, the great King said that this rebellion against the Pope would give rise to attacks against the monarchical principle. He was not mistaken. If the Parliament showed itself favorable to Jansenism, it was far less on account of such or such ideas on free will or grace, than by instinctive liking for the revolutionary spirit which existed in germ in the new sect. Religious controversies were to lead by slow degrees to political controversies. The Parliament led to parliamentarism. People began by contemning the episcopal jurisdiction of an archbishop in order to end by braving the authority of a king.

Christopher de Beaumont, that convinced priest, that austere and inflexible prelate, so firm against the temptation of grandeurs that Louis XV. had been obliged to summon him thrice in order to make him leave his diocese of Vienne, in Dauphiny, and accept the archbishopric of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont was faithful to the traditions of the Church when he denied all competence over matters purely religious, such as the administration of sacraments, to the Parliament. His doctrine was after all only that of the separation of the powers. Louis XV. inclined to the views of the Archbishop, whose virtues he appreciated. Like Louis XIV., he recognized the bull _Unigenitus_, and treated Jansenism as a heresy. Like Louis XIV., he suspected, not without reason, both the Parliament and the Parisian population. “I know the people of Paris,” said he; “they must have remonstrances and shows, and perhaps worse than that some day.” Madame de Pompadour would have taken the part of the Archbishop, as the King wished to do, if the Archbishop had been a courtier; but Christopher de Beaumont would rather have died than compromise with concubinage and adultery. He could not understand a prelate’s stooping before a royal favorite, and the idea of soliciting a Pompadour would have made him blush. He preferred to be twice exiled. “The Queen,” wrote D’Argenson in December, 1754, “Monseigneur the Dauphin, and all the royal family are greatly troubled by the exile of the Archbishop of Paris; the Queen weeps over it every day.” Christopher de Beaumont received numerous visits in his exile at Conflans. The orthodox considered him the upholder of the faith. The King admired the Archbishop, but did not sustain him. D’Argenson wrote, March 6, 1756:--

“The motto _Dividatur_ might be recommended for the personal government of Louis XV. He received this spirit of compromise from Cardinal Fleury. All his forces run to that.... Hence, doing good only half way, he also does evil half way, which produces a chaotic state of things, and the worst effect.” With this system the monarch dissatisfied the magistracy and the clergy at the same time. By turns he banished the Parliament and the Archbishop. The curés continued to refuse the sacraments to the Jansenists. The magistrates sent their bailiffs’ men and caused the sick to be communicated surrounded by bayonets. The Eucharist was abandoned to derision by the parties to the strife. The court fluctuated between the two opinions. After having sent the Archbishop of Paris to Conflans, Louis XV., although leaving him in disgrace, pronounced in his favor.

In a bed of justice held December 13, 1756, the King forbade the Parliament to decree the administration of the sacraments, to convene general assemblies, to interfere with the course of justice, to suspend the registration of edicts. He suppressed the chambers of inquests, and declared that he would punish any who would not obey. One hundred and fifty members of the Parliament sent in their resignations. All Paris was in commotion. A riot was momentarily expected. Nothing was heard but oaths and curses. The Parliament and Jansenistic diatribes had the result of exciting Damiens to the insanity of fanaticism. He thought that in striking Louis XV. he was acting for God and the people. Madame de Pompadour, still more versatile than the King, was at this time the enemy of the Parliament. However, the exile of the Archbishop continued, because nothing could induce him to curry-favor with the favorite. The charge which he sent from Conflans to Paris displeased the Marquise.

“Let us enter into our own selves, my dear brethren,” said he, “and see whether the aberrations of our own minds and hearts have not drawn upon us so terrible an effect of the divine wrath. Examine without prejudice what has been deserved by so many errors diffused among the public, so much license in speech, such blasphemies against God and His Christ, such disputing against the known truth, such scandals in every condition and of all kinds; observe, in particular, whether, since the weakening of faith among us, a multitude of principles tending to disobedience and even to rebellion against the sovereign and his laws have not insinuated themselves into men’s minds and books. It would be easy for us to remind you of the maxims of the holy doctors which have never ceased to inspire those sentiments of fidelity that are due to earthly princes; the decisions of councils which have anathematized every doctrine capable of revolting peoples against the sovereign; the perpetual instructions of pastors, who have always said with the great Apostle: Obey your temporal masters in all things.... What are we to think of the execrable crime which has been conceived in the bosom of the country and executed under our eyes? What must be our indignation at the memory of a treasonable attempt, deliberately planned, and made in that palace where everything announces the majesty of the sovereign?”

This truly evangelical language was the admiration of the Queen, the Dauphin, and all pious people. But it seemed like a satire to the protectress of the philosophers, the friend of Voltaire and Quesnay, the patroness of the Encyclopedia. Louis XV. was in reality of the Archbishop’s opinion. He recalled him in October, 1757. But, faithful to his system of compromises, he permitted those members of the Parliament who had resigned to resume their functions. The Archbishop, constantly pursued by the animadversions of the favorite, was exiled a second time, from January, 1758, to October, 1759. The inflexible prelate conceded nothing in point of doctrine. “Let them erect a scaffold in the midst of the court,” he exclaimed; “I would ascend it to maintain my rights, fulfil my duties, and obey the laws of my conscience.”

The quarrels over the bull _Unigenitus_ were at last appeased; but religious authority was weakened at the same time as royal authority. Emboldened by their polemics, the members of the Parliament began gradually to pose as protectors of liberties and censors of absolute monarchy. Some of the nobles, on the lookout for popularity, such as D’Argenson, Choiseul, and other disciples of Voltaire, fancied that the aristocracy could retain their privileges if the clergy lost theirs. Louis XV., who foresaw the coming cataclysms, was under no such illusion: at bottom he was inimical to the Parliament and friendly to the Church. If the Most Christian King sometimes showed himself indulgent toward the philosophers, it was because they flattered his mistress and sought to stupefy him while lulling his remorse.

X

MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR

One of the principal calamities laid to the charge of Madame de Pompadour, by her contemporaries and by posterity, is the Seven Years’ War. They have resolved to hold her responsible for all the bloodshed, all the disasters and humiliations, for Rossbach and Crevelt, for the loss of the colonies and the profound injury done to the military prestige and naval forces of France. There is some exaggeration in this, as we believe. It must not be forgotten that the origin of the Seven Years’ War was an unjustifiable aggression of the English, who were absolutely bent on complete mastery of the seas. Madame de Pompadour was certainly not responsible for British ambition. It is true that France was not ready for strife, and that its marine had been allowed to fall into decay. But if the favorite was deceived about the resources of the country, if she cherished illusions which ruined peoples as well as individuals, she was not the only one.