Chapter XVI: The Death of Marie Leczinska 269 (6)

The Marquis d’Argenson accuses her of having been occupied with porcelains at a time when people should have been thinking of arms. “Madame de Pompadour,” he writes in 1754, “does nothing but preach up the great advantage it has been to the State to manufacture porcelain like that of Saxony, and even to have surpassed it. A royal warehouse for this porcelain is being established in the rue de la Monnaie. There may be seen a service which the King is about to send to the King of Saxony, as if to brave and provoke him, saying that he has surpassed even his manufactory. At the King’s suppers the Marquise says that it is uncitizenlike not to buy as much of this porcelain as one can pay for. Some one answered her: But while the King has been so liberal in encouraging this manufactory, those of Charleville and Saint-Étienne are abandoned, which are quite differently useful to us, since they concern the defence of the kingdom, and three-quarters of the workmen are passing into foreign countries.” The reflection is, doubtless, just; but a few Saxony or Sèvres porcelains, more or less, would not greatly have altered the situation of France. It was her misfortune to be slumbering in a fatal ease. Voltaire has said: “All Europe never saw happier days than followed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, until toward the year 1755. Commerce flourished from St. Petersburg to Cadiz; the fine arts were everywhere in honor. A mutual confidence existed between all nations. Europe resembled a large family, reunited after its dissensions.” The French allowed themselves to be deceived by this universal lull. Military men and diplomatists felt an exaggerated confidence. In a few years people became so accustomed to peace that they no longer even thought of war. It was the same thing that happened about a century later, at the time of the Universal Exposition of 1867. Peoples who wish to preserve their greatness ought to beware of cosmopolitan theories. While the philosophers were weaving their humanitarian dreams, England was preparing her fleets and Frederick the Great his armies.

A trifling contest between France and England for some wild lands in Canada was the kindling spark of a fire that was to inflame the four quarters of the earth. But this quarrel, insignificant in itself, was not the true cause of the war: it was at most its pretext.

To avoid a struggle with England was well-nigh impossible; but what France might have done, and did not, was to remain faithful to the alliance with Prussia, instead of plunging into one absolutely contrary to every tradition of its foreign policy, the Austrian alliance. What the diplomacy of Louis XV. lacked was consecutiveness. The versatile monarch did not know what he wanted. Sometimes Prussian, sometimes Austrian, he fluctuated between two contradictory systems. The see-saw policy creates only a momentary illusion. It succeeds for a while, but it nearly always leads to ruin. The secret of strong diplomatists is to persevere in one idea, pursue one end, choose one good alliance, and stick to it. Feeble diplomatists, on the contrary, undo to-day what they did yesterday. It is like the web of Penelope. Whoever studies seriously the causes of our reverses, under Napoleonic France as well as under the France of the Bourbons, will easily convince himself that nearly all of them are due to incoherent principles and inconsistent ideas. To preserve a system and follow a tradition gives a real strength. The strength of Prince Bismarck is to have persevered in one idea, that of German unity, and in one alliance, that of Russia.

The policy of the Versailles treaty of 1756, which established an intimate accord between Louis XV. and Maria Theresa, was not in itself a more objectionable policy than another. But if it was desired to adopt it, it ought not to have been necessary to make war with Austria beforehand. Nothing is more dangerous than to place one’s self in a self-contradictory attitude. No confidence is inspired by such variable conduct; one is at the mercy of every incident.

In politics, as in religion and literature, the prime essential is unity. It is the same thing in diplomacy as in style.

“Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement,
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.”[49]

What is required is a true spirit of method, a clear, precise, definite object, straight lines, an absence of tortuous proceedings.

The old maxim, “divide to reign,” the presence in the same ministry of men warring against each other, of secret agents who undo the work of official agents, underhand ways, countermines, politics by double entry,--all this is no sign of strength; it is the expedient of weakness. Occult diplomacy, like that of Louis XV., is suitable to none but governments in extremity. Woe to a sovereign who suspects his own ambassadors! If he has not full confidence in them, let him change them!

What lay at the root of the character of Louis XV. was the habit of dissimulation, the vanity of being considered impenetrable. It was he, not Madame de Pompadour, who had created a government at constant war with the principal agents it made use of. Nor was the Austrian alliance a conception of the favorite’s. Louis XV. did not like Frederick the Great, and he was not less taken with the flatteries of the Empress Maria Theresa than Madame de Pompadour herself. If the adroit sovereign wrote the Marquise a letter in which she treated her as a dear friend, she was careful at the same time to display a passionate admiration, a sort of cult, for Louis XV. Moreover, there was an Austrian party at Versailles. The Marquis d’Argenson wrote in January, 1756: “There is a large party in our court for the court of Vienna. Austria has always had emissaries at our court. I hear these emissaries saying that the house of Austria is no longer what it was, that it has need of us, that we ought to march in close accord with it. I know these insinuations, and it was to opposing them that I owe my disgrace in 1747. They preach to us against the King of Prussia, they say he is all English, and they excite us against him in view of despoiling him, if we are able. Hence we sulk at Spain, we are irritated against Prussia, our veritable and sincere ally, and all this exasperates at court _femineo ululatu_.”

The partisans of the treaty of Versailles (May 1, 1756), by which France and Austria promised each other mutual aid against their enemies, have a right to extenuating circumstances. This passage from Duclos must not be forgotten: “As soon as the treaty was known, there was a sort of inebriation which was increased by the chagrin displayed by the English; every one imagined that the union of the two first powers would make all Europe respectful. Ideas have greatly changed since then.”

The Abbé de Bernis, who had quitted the Venetian embassy to take the portfolio of foreign affairs, and who was one of Madame de Pompadour’s favorites, was charged with drawing up the treaty. “Notwithstanding his first objections as a man of sense, he did not long resist the general movement which carried away all who surrounded him; he was dazzled, and thought he was contributing to the greatest political operation that had been attempted since Richelieu. At first everything seemed to succeed as well as could be desired, and the new alliance so highly vaunted at court seemed to be taken even better still by the public.”[50] The Marquise triumphed. She amused herself by engraving on an agate in onyx an allegory, which represented France and Austria joining hands above the altar of Fidelity, and trampling under foot the mask of Hypocrisy and the torch of Discord.

At the start, people were full of enthusiasm and confidence. The victor of Mahon was esteemed as successful in war as in love. Nothing was dreamed of but mighty feats and conquests. But presently all took on a gloomy look. The convention of Closter-Seven, so imprudently signed by Marshal de Richelieu on September 8, 1757, was the signal for unnumbered catastrophes. “One does not die of grief,” wrote Bernis to Choiseul, December 13 of the same year, “for I am still alive after September 8. Since that epoch, faults have been accumulated in a fashion one can hardly explain, without supposing bad intentions. I have spoken with the greatest force to God and His saints. I excite pulses a little, and then the lethargy recommences; people open big eyes, and that is all there is about it.... It seems to me as if I were minister of foreign affairs in Limbo. Try, my dear count, if you can excite more than I the spirit of life which is becoming extinct in us; for my part, I have dealt all my great blows, and have concluded to be in an apoplexy like the others over sentiment, without ceasing to do my duty like a good citizen and an honest man.” The former abbé of the court become a minister, the once superficial man whom Voltaire used to call “Babet, the-bouquet-holder,” was indignant at the general apathy and carelessness. “It is unexampled,” wrote this friend of Madame de Pompadour, “that so great a game should be played with the same indifference as a game of checkers.... Sensitive, and, if I dare say it, sensible as I am, I am dying on the wheel, and my martyrdom is useless to France.... May God send us some will or other, or some one who will have one for us! I would be his valet de chambre if they liked, and with all my heart.”

As soon as the struggle began, unfortunate France was amazed at the illusions she had cherished. The truth appeared to her. Bernis comprehended that the shortest follies are the best. January 6, 1758, he wrote to Choiseul, then Ambassador to Vienna: “My advice would be to make peace, and to begin by a truce on land and sea. When I shall know what the King thinks of this idea, which I have not found in my manner of thinking, but which has been presented to me by good sense, reason, and necessity, I will inform you. Meanwhile, try to make M. de Kaunitz certain of two things that are equally true; namely, that the King will never abandon the Empress, but that it will never do for him to be ruined with her. Our respective faults have made a hopeless wreck of a great project which was infallible in the first days of September. It is a beautiful dream which it would be dangerous to carry further, but which it might some day be possible to resume with better actors and better combined military plans. The more directly I have been charged with this grand alliance, the more ought people to credit me when I counsel peace.”

Unfortunately, Madame de Pompadour was headstrong, which is one of the attributes of mediocrity of mind. Confounding heroism with obstinacy, she thought that to struggle indefinitely against ill fortune, was to display greatness of soul. The more faults a general of her choice committed, the more inveterately did she uphold him. She was like those gamesters who are checked by no ill luck, and who never give up playing until they are ruined. Public opinion condemned such obstinacy. The French do not know how to support reverses. They overwhelmed Soubise, defeated at Rossbach, with sarcasms, and appeared to be infatuated with the victor. People took the fashion of exalting Frederick the Great and of cursing his enemy, Madame de Pompadour, Cotillion IV., as she was called. Soubise was the scape-goat on whom rained all the jests, chansons, and satires:--

“Soubise dit, la lanterne à la main,
J’ai beau chercher, où diable est mon armée?
Elle était là pourtant hier matin,
Me l’a-t-on prise où l’aurais-je égarée?
Ah! je perds tout, je suis un étourdi;
Mais attendons au grand jour, à midi.
Que vois-je? O ciel! Que mon âme est ravie!
Prodige heureux, la voilà, la voilà!--
Ah! ventre bleu! Qu’est-ce donc que cela?
Je me trompais, c’est l’armée ennemie.”[51]

It is not by means of chansons that France can retrieve herself. She plays into the enemy’s hand by showing herself more Prussian than Prussia. Bernis finds himself submerged by this deluge of criticisms and assaults. “I am threatened by anonymous letters,” he wrote again to Choiseul in 1758, “with being presently torn to pieces by the people, and though I do not greatly fear such menaces, it is certain that approaching misfortunes which cannot be foreseen, could easily realize them. Our friend runs at least as much risk.” Ill in body and mind, Bernis could hold out no longer; he handed in his resignation. Louis XV accepted it in a letter dated October 9, 1758, which opened thus: “I am sorry, Monsieur the Abbé-Count, that the affairs you are charged with affect your health to such a point that you can no longer support the burden of the work.... I consent with regret to your turning over the foreign affairs to the hands of the Duke de Choiseul, whom I think to be at present the only suitable person, as I am disinclined to make an absolute change in the system I have adopted, or even to be spoken to about it.”

The three women in coalition against Frederick,--Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, Elisabeth, Empress of Russia, and Madame, the Marquise de Pompadour--carried the war as far as possible. France experienced nothing but reverses in every quarter of the globe. As Voltaire remarked, it seemed more exhausted of men and money by its union with Austria than it had been by two centuries of war against that country.[52] It must be admitted, however, that Madame de Pompadour’s obstinacy was very near succeeding. It is incredible that the King of Prussia, who stood alone on the continent against the forces of Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and half of the Empire, could long have maintained so gigantic a struggle. An unforeseen event, the death of the Empress Elisabeth of Russia, January 6, 1762, saved him. Madame de Pompadour felt that her vengeance was eluding her. It was necessary to renounce all ideas of glory and conquest, and to sign the disastrous treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg (February 10 and 15, 1763). Louis XV. gave up the cities he still possessed in Germany. He restored Minorca to England, and ceded to it Acadia, Canada, Cape Breton, the gulf and river of Saint Lawrence, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Dominique, Tobago, and the Senegal River with its factories. He only regained his Indian colonies on condition of not fortifying or garrisoning them. Finally he undertook to demolish anew the harbor of Dunkirk. The ruin of military prestige, commerce, the navy, and public credit, the loss of two hundred thousand men, several millions of money, and nearly all the colonies,--such is the balance sheet of the fatal war so ardently desired by the Marquise.

Voltaire had good reason to exclaim: “What was the result of this innumerable multitude of combats the tale of which now wearies even those conspicuous in them? What remains from all these efforts? Nothing but blood shed vainly in waste and desolate lands, villages in ruins, families reduced to beggary, and rarely does even a dull rumor of these calamities reach as far as Paris, always profoundly occupied with pleasures or equally frivolous disputes.” Then, returning to the cause or rather to the pretext of the strife, the author of the _Siècle de Louis XV._ says again: “It has been thought that it would have been very easy to prevent such misfortunes by coming to terms with the English concerning a small contested ground near Canada. But certain ambitious persons, to maintain their dignity and render themselves necessary, precipitated France into this fatal war. The same thing had occurred in 1741. The self-love of two or three persons was enough to lay all Europe waste. France needed peace so greatly that she regarded those who concluded it as benefactors of the country.” The Duke de Choiseul remained popular because he had been able to palliate somewhat the impression caused by such reverses by concluding, in August, 1761, the family pact between the Bourbons of France, Spain, and Italy, and had also had tact enough to win the support of the fashionable literary men, the arbiters of renown. But his friend, Madame de Pompadour, was the object of public vindictiveness. Wounded in her ambition, her vanity, and her pride, she could not be consoled.

XII

MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE PHILOSOPHERS

One day some one cited in presence of Louis XV. the example of Frederick the Great, who admitted the philosophers in vogue and famous men of letters to his intimate acquaintance. “That is not the way in France,” said the King, “and as there are a few more wits and great noblemen here than there are in Prussia, I should want a very big table to gather them all around it.” And then he counted on his fingers: “Maupertuis, Fontenelle, La Motte, Voltaire, Piron, Destouches, Montesquieu, Cardinal de Polignac.” His attention was called to the fact that he had forgotten D’Alembert and Clairant.--“And Crébillon,” said he, “and La Chaussée!”--“And Crébillon the younger,” cried some one; “he ought to be more amiable than his father; and then there are the Abbé Prevost, the Abbé d’Olivet.”--“Very well,” replied Louis XV., “for twenty-five years all of that crowd would have dined or supped with me.”

Madame de Pompadour, who was acquainted with the master’s dispositions, would not have made advances to the philosophers had she not been possessed by the passion for flattery. But how was she to resist compliments so well turned as those of Voltaire? This man, who in speaking of the Christian religion cried: “Crush the wretch!” kneeled to a royal mistress while enlarging the boundaries of the most insipid flattery. The censer which he wanted to banish from the churches he seized in order to wave it respectfully before the alcove of a Pompadour!

The Marquise had in her intimacy a man who never quitted her; this was Doctor Quesnay, her familiar, her guest, her confident, her physician, whom she had lodged just above her in an entresol of the château of Versailles. This little entresol, rendezvous of the boldest innovators, the most determined free-thinkers, the most ardent materialists, was the secret workshop of the future Revolution, the laboratory of disorder and destruction. There, talking, dining, declaiming, conspiring together, one met men such as D’Alembert, the chief of the Encyclopedists; Duclos, who said of the nobles who flattered him: “They are afraid of us as robbers are of street lamps with reflectors”; Helvetius, whose whole doctrine is summed up in this monstrous maxim, last word of egotism and immorality: “Man being merely a sensitive being should have but one object: the pleasure of the senses.” Marmontel relates that the Marquise de Pompadour, unable to induce this troop of philosophers to come down to her salon, came to their table instead and chatted with them.

Doctor Quesnay, her physician, was one of those peasants of the Danube, or better, to adopt a happy expression of the De Goncourts, one of those courtiers of the Danube who cloak a refined cleverness under an aspect of rudeness, and who live by the monarchy even while playing to the republicans. Strange Brutuses, contraband Catos, whose beautiful maxims can deceive none but simpletons! Rude democrats in appearance, time-servers in reality, who are proud to dine with great people and whose so-called dignity provokes a smile! Quesnay, this physical confessor, knew both the strong and the weak sides of the Marquise. He knew so well how to take her that he could quietly install in his entresol, just above the favorite’s apartment, the first club, that which agitated for the first time the downfall of the Church and the monarchy.

Madame de Pompadour was full of coquetries and amiability for the most dangerous adversaries of the old régime. La Tour’s pastel, which is at the Louvre, represents her seated in an armchair, her left arm resting on a table whereon are a globe and some books. The largest of these is the fourth volume of the Encyclopedia, that great arsenal of impiety, the prospectus of which had been launched by Diderot in 1750. Louis XV., always undecided, at first tolerated the gigantic collection of writings. Some years later (March, 1759) he revoked the privileges of the editors. A royal declaration of unwonted violence appeared at the same time against the authors, printers, publishers, and colporteurs of writings aimed against religion and royal authority. Almost every line proclaimed a death penalty. But a thousand means of eluding these Draconian laws were found, and most frequently authority closed its eyes.

Voltaire cried enthusiastically: “Long life to the ministry of the Duke de Choiseul!”

Nevertheless, warnings were not lacking to the favorite. She saw as clearly as Louis XV. himself the perils which the doctrines of the Encyclopedia made imminent for all kings. Madame du Hausset relates that a very curious anonymous letter was one day sent to the King and his mistress. As the author was bent on accomplishing his purpose, he had sent one copy to the lieutenant of police, sealed with this address: _For the King_; one with these words: _To Madame de Pompadour_, and still another to M. de Marigny. This letter, which greatly affected Louis XV. and his Marquise, struck them all the more forcibly because it was written in very respectful terms. Among other remarkable passages it contained the following prediction: “The Encyclopedists, under pretext of enlightening men, are sapping the foundations of religion. All sorts of liberty depend upon each other: the philosophers and the Protestants tend to republicanism as well as the Jansenists. The philosophers attack the trunk of the tree, the others some of its branches; but their efforts, without being concerted, will some day bring it down. Add to these the Economists, whose object is political liberty, as that of the others is liberty of worship, and the Government may find itself in twenty or thirty years undermined throughout and falling tumultuously into ruin.”

These prophecies of the coming Revolution are incessantly renewed in the writings of one of the ministers of Louis XV., the Marquis d’Argenson. It is he who writes in January, 1750: “Republicanism is every day gaining on philosophic minds. People take an aversion to monarchism through demonstration. In fact, it is only slaves and eunuchs who aid monarchism by their false wisdom.” And on December 20 of the same year: “See how many philosophic writers there are at present. The wind from England blows over this stuff. It is combustible. Look at the style in which Parliament remonstrances are written. These procureurs general of Parliaments, these State syndics, would at need become great men. All the nation would take fire; the nobility would gain the clergy, and then the third estate. And if necessity should arise for assembling the States-General of the realm to regulate the demands for money, these States would not assemble in vain. One should be careful; all this is very serious.”

It must be owned that D’Argenson is a true prophet. Every day he accentuates his sinister predictions. September 11, 1751, he writes: “We have not, like the Romans, any Visigoths or Saracens who might invade us; but the Government may experience a revolution. Consider that it is no longer either esteemed or respected, and, which is worse, that it is doing all that is needed to ruin itself. The clergy, the army, the Parliaments, the people high and low, are all murmuring, all detaching themselves from the Government, and rightly. Things are going from bad to worse.” He returns to the charge September 9, 1752: “The bad effects of our government by absolute monarchy are resulting in persuading France and all Europe that it is the worst of governments.... A mild but inactive prince allows the abuses to grow which were commenced by the pride of Louis XIV.; no reform when it is necessary, no amelioration, appointments blindly made, prejudices without inquiry; everything shows an increasing tendency toward national ruin. Everything is falling into tatters, and private passions are working underhand to ruin and destroy us.”

Is it not a curious thing to hear, forty years beforehand, the first mutterings of the formidable tempest which was to engulf everything,--nobility, clergy, Parliaments, monarchy? We are in the year 1750. The archers have arrested, as a police measure, certain vagabond children who were begging in Paris. Suddenly a rumor spreads that abductions are multiplying and that no family is any longer in security. Popular imagination is excited, overheated. People say that in order to restore his wasted forces the kingly debauché takes baths of children’s blood, like a new Herod. Madame de Pompadour, who has been imprudent enough to come to Paris, has barely time to escape from being torn to pieces. The people want to go to Versailles and burn the château, built, as they say, at their expense. The exasperated King says that hereafter he will not pass through Paris when going to Compiègne. “What!” he cries, “shall I show myself to these villainous people who say I am a Herod!” And to avoid entering thereafter the capital of which he has conceived a horror, he establishes outside the walls the road which is now called the path of the Revolt.

The tide of anger rises--rises incessantly against the favorite. The people overwhelm her with curses; they call her the _King’s hussy_. The daughters of Louis XV. designate her by a still more vulgar name. In November, 1751, the Dauphin and Dauphiness, on their way to Notre Dame, cross the bridge of the Tournelle. Some two thousand women surround them. “We are dying with hunger!” they say. “Bread! bread!” The Dauphiness trembles like a leaf. The Dauphin causes several louis to be distributed. “Monseigneur,” say the women of the people, “we do not want your money. It is bread we want. We love you much. Let that wretch be sent away who is governing the kingdom and ruining it! If we had hold of her, there would soon be nothing left of her but relics.”

If such were popular impressions before the Seven Years’ War, it is easy to comprehend what they must have been after the national humiliations which overwhelmed unhappy France. Madame de Pompadour thought she could remedy the immense unpopularity which pursued her by flattering still more the philosophers who could blow the trumpet of Renown for her. These singular patriots, who had celebrated the glory of the victor of Rossbach as if he had been a Titus or a Marcus Aurelius, asked only one thing to console them for the afflictions, shames, and miseries of their country: a regular persecution against the Jesuits. Madame de Pompadour was ready to follow Voltaire’s disciples on to this ground. She might have hesitated if the Jesuits had been her flatterers, if they had made a pretence of being her dupes, if they had concluded to play a rôle of complaisance in the comedies of her pretended repentance, if they had seemed to take her for another Maintenon, for a mother in Israel. But she did not forget that when, in 1756, she had been obliged to go to confession in order to be eligible for an appointment as lady of the Queen’s palace, Père de Sacy had refused her absolution, and that when the attempt was made on the King, in 1757, Père Desmarets had nearly obliged her to leave the court. Hence the Jesuits were condemned. A Parliament decree of February 22, 1764, commanded that within eight days they should take an oath not to live any longer according to their institute, to abjure the condemned maxims, and to hold no correspondence with their former superiors. “When the Jesuits were expelled,” says Chateaubriand, “their existence was not dangerous to the State; the past was punished in the present; that often happens among men; the _Provincial Letters_ had deprived the Company of Jesus of its moral force. And yet Pascal is merely a calumniator of genius; he has left us an immortal lie.”

The great crime of the Jesuits was to have displeased the Marquise de Pompadour. One saw holy missionaries, untiring apostles, illustrious professors, men who had honored religion and science, old men surrounded by the esteem of all honest people, driven from their houses, deprived of all resources, expelled from France with a rigor and injustice so cruel that certain philosophers thought they could take up their defence in the name of humanity. Those Jesuits whom Madame de Pompadour was driving out, Frederick the Great was to shelter in his dominions. “They are the best priests I have ever known,” said he. Catherine II. was to welcome them to her vast states and make use of them in founding educational establishments.

Voltaire triumphed. “Ferney was the European court,” says Chateaubriand again in his _Analyse raisonnée de l’Histoire de France_; “this universal homage rendered to the genius who was sapping by redoubled blows the foundations of society as it then existed, is characteristic of the approaching transformation of that society. And nevertheless it is true that if Louis XV. had caressed ever so slightly the flatterer of Madame de Pompadour, if he had treated him as Louis XIV. treated Racine, Voltaire would have abdicated the sceptre, he would have bartered his power against a distinction of the ante-chamber, just as Cromwell was momentarily ready to exchange the place he now holds in history for the garter of Alix of Salisbury; these are mysteries of human vanity.”

Madame de Pompadour had sought the eulogies of Voltaire; she obtained them. From the moment when she persecuted the Jesuits she had a right to his approbation. When she dies, the patriarch of Ferney will be almost affected. He will write to Damilaville: “Consider, dear brother, that true men of letters, true philosophers, should regret Madame de Pompadour. She thought as she ought to; no one knows that better than I. Truly, we have sustained a great loss.” And to Cardinal de Bernis: “I think, Monseigneur, that Madame de Pompadour was sincerely your friend, and if it be permitted me to go further, I think from the depths of my rustic retreat that the King experiences a great privation. He was loved for himself by a soul born sincere, who had justness in the mind and justice in the heart.” Voltaire is always the same. What he lacks is not simply religious faith, but the moral sense.

While the foundations of the monarchy were cracking on every side, the patriarch of Ferney, that ancient courtier of noble lords and sovereigns, was trembling with joy and pride. “All that I see,” he wrote to M. de Chauvelin, April 2, 1762, “is sowing the seeds of a revolution which will infallibly arrive, but which I shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The light is spreading so from place to place, that it will burst out on the first occasion, and then there will be a fine row. The young men are very lucky; they will see many things!” Madman, who regretted not being destined to see the scaffolds of ’93!

Madame de Pompadour also felt that the political, social, and religious edifice would crumble within a few years. But why concern one’s self about the future? Why be saddened by dismal thoughts and gloomy presentiments? What the haughty favorite desired was the ability to retain to her last day, her last hour, her sceptre as queen of the left hand. The rest troubled her little. It was not Louis XV., it was she who said: “After me the deluge!”

XII

THE DEATH OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR

It is a law of Providence that no one can shine without suffering, and that jealous Fortune avenges herself for all the successes that she grants. Women are like conquerors: they always expiate their triumphs. For these queens _à la mode_, these dazzling magicians who appear like meteors and who live amid a cloud of incense, there is after all no alternative but death or dethronement. To die or to grow old, that is the terrible dilemma from which they are unable to extricate themselves. Women whose attractions have not been more than ordinary bend to this common law with sufficient resignation. But the celebrated beauty, the haughty beauty who delights in herself as if her youth were never to end, secretly revolts against cruel destiny and silently endures a real martyrdom. Her shrivelled hand tries to retain the sceptre that is slipping from it. She is unwilling to descend from the throne whence she has been used to survey a crowd of servile adorers. As the changes come on gradually, in a manner hardly perceptible, she has probably failed to notice the precursory symptoms of her decline. She is told on all sides that she is more seductive, more radiant, than ever. Then, in this last blossoming of her departing youth, she experiences that indefinable sentiment, that blending of unquiet joy and voluptuous melancholy, which takes possession of the soul under the light of the last bright days of autumn. When one looks at the azure sky, one cannot realize that winter is so near. But if one drops one’s eyes, the yellowing leaves that cover the ground or are swept away by the wind, remind one that the feast of nature is drawing to a close. The woman who longs most to preserve her illusions concerning the perpetuity of her youth, finds warning accusations which afflict and terrify her. The first wrinkles, the first gray hairs; the color which needs to be touched up, the lips and eyes which call imperiously for paint; the insolent mirror which nevertheless one cannot break because it is in opposition to the flatterers, because in its mute language it brutally declares the truth!

Madame de Pompadour was forty-two years old. Aged prematurely by the unwholesome emotions of intrigue, vanity, and ambition, she was suffering both in body and in mind. Incessant palpitation of the heart disturbed her. Fever was her constant guest. On nearing the end of her career she looked back sadly over the road she had traversed, and comprehended at last the inanity of the things in which she had vainly sought for happiness. But for a true repentance she lacked a religious faith like that of Mademoiselle de La Vallière. In default of faith, the Marquise had great courage. She strove energetically against disease, but she remained worldly and theatrical even in suffering and death. “She would no longer appear in Paris,” says M. Arsène Houssaye; “at court she never showed herself except by lamplight, in the apparel of a queen of Golconda, crowned with diamonds, wearing twenty bracelets, and dragging after her an Indian robe embroidered with gold and silver. It was always the divine Marquise of other days; but presently, when one looked closely, one discovered that it was but a pastel, still charming, but rubbed out here and there. It was at the mouth that her beauty began to fade. She had early contracted the habit of biting her lips, to conceal her emotions. By the time she was thirty, her mouth had lost all its vivid freshness. It was necessary to repaint it after every meal and every kiss!”[53] Her eyes had retained all their brilliancy. But the rest of her person was plainly aging. She tried in vain to conceal her excessive meagreness under the skilful devices of the toilette. She was a woman stricken by death. She fell ill at Choisy, and while there was still time she asked to be taken back to Versailles in order to die as she had lived, amidst the evidences of her power. Her friends had an instant of hope, for a slight amelioration was produced. The poet Favart instantly produced this stanza:--

“Le soleil est malade,
Et Pompadour aussi;
Ce n’est qu’une passade,
L’un et l’autre est guéri;
Le bon Dieu, qui seconde
Nos vœux et notre amour,
Pour le bonheur du monde,
Nous a rendu le jour
Avec Pompadour.”[54]

Palissot sent the following verses to the Marquise:--

“Vous êtes trop chère à la France,
Au dieu des arts et des amours,
Pour redouter du sort la fatale puissance.
Tous les dieux veillaient sur vos jours,
Tous étaient animés du zèle qui m’inspire;
En volant à votre secours
Ils ont affermi leur empire.”[55]

Madame de Pompadour did not allow herself to be deceived by these fallacious hyperboles. All this mythology did not mislead her. She understood very well that there was nothing in common between her and the sun, and felt herself already invaded by the chilly shadows of death.

“It will come at the predestined day; it will come,” as Bossuet said, “this last illness when, amidst an infinite number of friends, doctors, and attendants, you will find yourself without assistance, more forsaken, more abandoned, than the pauper dying on the straw without a sheet for his burial! For of what avail are these friends in this fatal malady? Only to afflict you by their presence; these doctors? only to torment you; these attendants? only to run hither and thither about your house with useless zeal. You need other friends, other servants; these paupers whom you have despised are the only ones capable of assisting you. Why did you not think in time of providing yourself with such friends as would now hold out their arms to receive you into everlasting tabernacles?”[56]

Even on her death-bed Madame de Pompadour, always the slave of the man whose mistress she was called, feared the King more than God himself. They say she sent to Louis XV. to ask if he desired her to go to confession. The King replied affirmatively. A priest from Paris, the curé of the Madeleine, administered the last sacraments to the dying woman. When he was about to withdraw, it is pretended that she retained him with a last smile, and said: “One moment, Monsieur the Curé, we will go away together.” A few minutes before she had caused her will to be read to her, which commenced thus: “I, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, wife separated from the property of Charles Guillaume Lenormand d’Étioles, equerry, have made and written my present testament and ordinance of my last will, which I wish to be executed in its entirety. I recommend my soul to God, entreating Him to have pity on it, to pardon my sins, to grant me the grace to do penance and to die in dispositions worthy of His mercy, hoping to appease His justice by the merits of the precious blood of Jesus Christ my Saviour and by the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin and of all the Saints in Paradise. I desire that my body shall be taken to the Capuchins of the Place Vendôme, at Paris, and buried in the vault of the chapel conceded to me.” As one sees, the Marquise was not so faithless as the Encyclopedists claimed. The poor woman had learned for herself what earthly kings are. Perhaps, at the last hour, she turned her eyes toward the King of Heaven.

She breathed her last April 15, 1764. It was long since Louis XV. had ceased to love her. He merely tolerated her. If he had kept her at court, it was only lest her disgrace should make her die of chagrin.

This premature death was rather a release from embarrassment than an affliction to him. It is said that, seeing from one of the windows of Versailles the carriage starting which was to carry her coffin to Paris during a frightful storm, he said tranquilly: “The Marquise will not have good weather for her journey.” Then, calmly drawing out his watch, he calculated at what hour the funeral would reach its destination--and that was all.

Madame de Pompadour’s existence had been like a parody of real greatness. It was the same with her obsequies. A Capuchin had been appointed to make the funeral oration. He extricated himself from this heavy task like a man of wit. “I receive,” said he, “the body of the very high and powerful lady, the Marquise de Pompadour, lady of the Queen’s palace. She was at the school of all virtues, for Her Majesty is a model of goodness, of modesty, of indulgence.” And thus he went on for a quarter of an hour, making a well-deserved eulogy of the Queen. Marie Leczinska, always so charitable, was struck by the extreme promptness with which the too celebrated favorite was forgotten. “No one has anything more to say here of her who is no more,” she remarked to President Hénault, “than if she had never existed. Such is the world; truly it is worth while to love it!”

Once dead, Madame de Pompadour seemed unworthy even of hatred. Still, the men of letters and the artists who had formerly been protected by her, regretted her somewhat. Voltaire, while remembering with bitterness that she had sustained Crébillon, wrote to M. de Cideville: “I have been much afflicted by the death of Madame de Pompadour. It is ridiculous that an old scribbler on paper, who can scarcely walk, should be still living, and that a beautiful woman should die at forty in the midst of the finest career in the world. Perhaps if she had tasted the repose that I enjoy she would be living still.” Diderot was more severe. He had to give a description of the Salon of 1765, where a picture was exhibited which Vanloo had painted during Madame de Pompadour’s illness, and which represented the afflicted Arts addressing themselves to Destiny to obtain the preservation of her life. “Vanloo’s suppliants,” said the critic, “obtain nothing from Destiny which is more favorable to France than to the Arts. Madame de Pompadour died at a moment when she was thought to be out of danger. Well! what remains of this woman who exhausted us of men and money, deprived us of honor and energy, and upset the political system of Europe? The treaty of Versailles, which will last as long as it can; Bouchardon’s Amour, which will always be admired; several stones sculptured by Guay, which will astonish future antiquaries; a good little picture by Vanloo, which will be looked at sometimes; and a pinch of dust.”

XIII

THE OLD AGE OF MARIE LECZINSKA

When the eyes have been fatigued by the glow of artificial lights, they willingly repose on soft and real daylight. After the haughty favorite, one likes to contemplate the good Queen. Comparisons made between the mistress and the legitimate wife are always to the advantage of the second. To one the agitations of a troubled conscience, to the other peace of heart; to one contempt, to the other respect; scandal to one, edification to the other. The Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes and of President Hénault make us acquainted with the qualities of Marie Leczinska, just as those of Madame du Hausset lay bare the moral plague spots of the Marquise de Pompadour. A solitary conclusion may be drawn from reading all of them; namely, that the Queen, neglected as she was, and in spite of the hidden rôle which contented her modesty, was, notwithstanding, less unhappy than the all-powerful favorite, who disposed of the monarchy as if it were a pension list. Each of them had her chagrins, but God gives us strength to endure the ills He sends us, while those we create for ourselves are intolerable. The heaviest chains are those we forge with our own hands. The list of suicides is a proof in support of this observation. Is there, for example, an affliction more profound than that of a mother who loses her child? Very well! you never hear that a woman has taken her life because she has had a grief like that. On the other hand, how many suicides there are among the victims of pride and sensuality! Religion alleviates the sorrows which are in the nature and order of things. But griefs which are in revolt against Providence, afflictions voluntarily created by criminal caprices, or insensate ambitions, have in them something inconsolable and incurable. Madame de Pompadour vainly sought an asylum for her soul.

The Queen found at the foot of altars such a strength that after kneeling before the image of our Saviour Jesus Christ, she could, on rising, drink the cup of bitterness without its leaving a trace upon her lips.

While the guilty mistress beheld with such spite and vexation the departure of her youth, the virtuous wife experienced neither pain nor regret at growing old. It is the privilege of honest women to accept the laws of our common destiny without a murmur, and not to attempt a foolish struggle against nature in the hope of repairing the irreparable ravages of years. The Marquise loaded her face, withered by anxieties, with rouge and powder, and exhausted all the science of a desperate coquetry in the effort to keep up an illusion. Marie Leczinska, on the contrary, did not entertain for a moment the thought of rejuvenating herself. Casanova, who was present at one of her dinners at Fontainebleau, represents her as “without rouge, simply dressed, her head covered with a large cap, old-looking and devout in aspect.” This wholly Christian simplicity was not without its charm. The Queen possessed not merely goodness but wit, and her qualities were reflected on her spiritual countenance without the least pettiness, venerable with no touch of moroseness. While Louis XV. and his mistresses were so sad, so disillusionized, so disenchanted with everything, though surrounded by all their voluptuous pleasures, Marie Leczinska never uttered a complaint. Gaiety was in reality the basis of her character, not that factitious, turbulent, ephemeral gaiety which vice knows for a moment, but that soft, continuous, unaffected, equable gaiety imparted by a serene disposition and a conscience in repose.

What an expression of soundness, of moral wellbeing! What patience with life, what sympathetic serenity! The Queen is interested in many things; she is fond of honest amusements. Unlike Louis XV., who is bored by everything, she has a taste for music; she paints a little, she embroiders, she plays the guitar, the hurdy-gurdy, the harpsichord; she willingly takes part in games of chance. President Hénault introduces us into the cabinet, whither she withdraws after having dined alone in public, in accordance with the formalities of etiquette: “Here,” he says, “we are in another climate; this is no longer the Queen, but a private person. Here one finds work of all descriptions, tapestry, arts of every sort, and while she is working she kindly tells us what she has been reading; she mentions the parts that have impressed her and appreciates them.”

Look at Latour’s pastel, so admirably described by Sainte-Beuve. “It is a half-length portrait of the Queen. She holds a closed fan in one hand; she turns toward the spectator like some one who is thinking, and who is going to say something arch, some innocent piece of slyness. Her hair is slightly powdered; on her head she wears a point of black lace, a sort of little fichu called a _fanchonnette_; a mantelet of pale blue silk, with puffings or ribbons of grayish white, the shades are so blended that they lose themselves in each other. A tranquil harmony pervades all the tones. The lips delicate, somewhat thin, turning up at the angles; the eye small and brilliant; the nose a trifle saucy,--everything in this countenance breathes gentleness, subtlety, archness. If you know neither her rank nor her name, you will say that this middle-aged person can certainly make a sound and appropriate repartee; that she has the grain of salt without bitterness.”

How many times, at Versailles, I have stopped for a while in the Queen’s bedchamber,[57] in that chamber which was occupied by Marie Leczinska from December 1, 1725, the day of her arrival at the palace of Louis XIV., until June 24, 1768, the day of her death! At the back of the former alcove, on the right, over a door which led to the small apartments of the Queen,[58] now hangs Nattier’s fine portrait of Marie Leczinska. The wife of Louis XV. is sitting down, dressed in a red gown bordered with fur, her arm leaning on a pier-table, on which lie the crown, the royal mantle, and a New Testament. There is nothing studied, nothing theatrical, in either the pose, the countenance, or the costume. It is a blending of kindliness and dignity. It is a queen, but a Christian queen.

After the pencil, the pen; after Nattier, Madame du Deffand. Listen to the famous Marquise, ordinarily so sarcastic:--

“Thémire has much wit, a sensitive heart, a kindly disposition, an interesting face. Her education has imprinted in her soul a piety so veritable that it has become a sentiment, and one which serves her to regulate all others. Thémire loves God, and next to him all that is lovable; she knows how to bring solid matters and agreeable ones into harmony. She occupies herself with each in turn, and sometimes combines them. Her virtues have, so to say, the germ and pungency of passions. To admirable purity of manners she joins extreme sensibility; to the greatest modesty a desire to please which would by itself achieve its object. Her discernment makes her penetrate all caprices and understand all follies; her goodness and charity make her endure them without impatience, and rarely permit her to laugh at them.... The respect she inspires is based rather on her virtues than her dignity. One has entire freedom of mind when with her; one owes it to the penetration and delicacy of hers. She understands so promptly and so subtly that it is easy to communicate to her whatever ideas one desires, without infringing the circumspection demanded by her rank. One forgets, on seeing Thémire, that there can be other grandeurs, other elevations, than those of her sentiments; one almost yields to the illusion that there is no interval between her and us than that of the superiority of her merits; but a fatal awakening acquaints us that this Thémire, so perfect, so amiable, is the Queen.”

No one was a more faithful friend than Marie Leczinska. The little circle amidst which she lived displayed as much affection as respect for her. After supper she went almost every evening to the apartment of the Duchess de Luynes, her lady of honor. There she met, besides the Duke and Duchess, Cardinal de Luynes, the Duke and Duchess de Chevreuse, and President Hénault. This was a time of recreation and pleasant talk. The learned president shone there by his wit. One day he offered the Queen the manuscript of his _Abrégé chronologique_. She returned it with the following words: “I think that M. Hénault, who says so many things in so few words, can hardly like the language of women who talk so much to say so little.” In lieu of signature, she had written: _Devinez qui_ (Guess who). The gallant author replied at once:--

“Ces mots tracés par une main divine
Ne peuvent me causer que trouble et qu’embarras.
C’est trop oser si mon cœur les devine;
C’est être ingrat que ne deviner pas.”[59]

Another time, Fontenelle, then ninety-two years old, had addressed these verses to the President:--

“Il fallait n’être vieux qu’à Sparte,
Disent les anciens écrits.
Grand Dieu! combien je m’en écarte,
Moi qui suis si vieux dans Paris.
O Sparte! ô Sparte! hélas! qu’êtes-vous devenue?
Vous saviez tout le prix d’une tête chenue.

“Plus dans la canicule on était bien fourré,
Plus l’oreille était dure et l’œil mal éclairé,
Plus on déraisonnait dans sa triste famille,
Plus on épiloguait sur la moindre vétille,
Plus on avait de goutte et d’autre béatille,
Plus on avait perdu de dents de leur bon gré,
Plus on marchait courbé sur sa grosse béquille,
Plus on était, enfin, digne d’être enterré,
Et plus dans ses remparts on était honoré.

“O Sparte! ô Sparte! hélas! qu’êtes-vous devenue?
Vous saviez tout le prix d’une tête chenue.”[60]

After reading these verses, the Queen wrote to President Hénault: “Say to Fontenelle that a head like his ought to find Sparta everywhere.” The old man, very much flattered, responded by the following quatrain:--

“Les ans accumulés me poussent trop à bout.
Je ne puis plus, hélas! trouver Sparte partout,
Mais vous, le modèle des reines,
Vous devez bien trouver partout Athènes.”[61]

The kindly, affectionate character of Marie Leczinska is fully displayed in the simple and friendly letters she addressed to the Duchess of Luynes, her lady of honor. We cite several of them taken at hazard:--