Chapter XVI: The Death of Marie Leczinska 269 (7)

“December 22, 1750.--Nothing could give me a greater pleasure than your letter, if I did not expect one still more sensible in four weeks, that of seeing you. Nevertheless, it is true, that to give me news of yourself sometimes, if you can do so without injuring yourself, would help to alleviate a time which already seems very long to me. All I ask of you is not to be thankful for my friendship; it is wholly due to you. Your letter affected me to tears. Yes, God will preserve you as long as I live; I ask it of Him with all my heart. When I write to M. de Luynes, I say: ‘I embrace Madame de Luynes,’ but since it is to you for him, I think it more honest to beg you to take the trouble for me. And Monseigneur, what would he like? I think it would be better to enclose all in the benediction I ask for him.”

The Duke de Luynes had once sent the Queen a casket as a New-Year’s gift. Marie Leczinska thanked him in the following note, dated January 1, 1751: “It is useless to say the casket is charming, new in style, in a word, nothing so pretty in the world; one knows all that. But what one doesn’t know is that I am like a child with a plaything that pleases it. It pleases me with the same candor, except that the gratitude proceeds from a person who knows the world a little, and even at her own expense, and whom God has granted the grace of having amiable and estimable friends wholly corrupt though she is.”

Among other things the casket contained a pair of spectacles of which the good Queen’s eyes stood in need. “Here I am gay for the whole day from Madame de Luynes’ good-night,” she wrote to the Duke, January 2, 1751. “Do you know what I was doing when I received Monseigneur’s letter? I was with ... guess who? ... my fine new spectacles (_les beaux yeux de ma cassette_). Never did _l’Avare_ love his own so much. I am hurrying to get to High Mass. I embrace Madame de Luynes, I bow before Monseigneur, and I wish you good-day.”

The Duchess’s shortest absences seemed like an eternity to Marie Leczinska. At such times she wrote letter on letter to her lady of honor, saying that long correspondences are the delights of friendship. Here is a letter which shows what a tender friend the Queen was. On receiving this heartfelt epistle, the Duchess de Luynes must have been profoundly affected:--

“January 23, 1751.--Do you know what pleasure I gave myself last evening? I went to surprise M. de Luynes in his apartment; I found him just as he had finished his supper with Monseigneur (the Bishop of Bayeux), in his pretty little room. I cannot tell you what joy I felt in seeing your apartment again; I rested there a moment in order to preserve it, for, not finding you there yet, I began to be afraid of what might succeed it. Pleasures which are only imaginary need to be taken care of. I impatiently await the real ones.”

To great goodness Marie Leczinska joined solid information. She knew six languages,--Polish, French, Italian, German, Swedish, Latin. Men of letters were struck by the shrewdness of her judgments on the things of the mind. Several of her maxims have been preserved, which attest a lofty soul and a profound knowledge of the human heart. Here are some of them: “We ought not to reflect more on the faults of others than will suffice to preserve ourselves from them.--Human wisdom teaches us to conceal our pride; religion alone destroys it.--To live peaceably in society, we must open our eyes to the qualities which please us, and shut them on the follies and caprices which shock us.--The women who pique themselves most on knowing what it is allowable for them to be ignorant of are those who care least about instructing themselves concerning what it is shameful not to know.--Many princes having regretted, when dying, that they had made war, we never see any who repented of having loved peace.--Good kings are slaves, and their people are free.--The only thing which can make amends for the slavery of the throne is the pleasure of doing some good.--In politics, as in morals, the shortest way to make men happy is to endeavor to make them virtuous.”

The sovereign who expressed such thoughts as these was not an ordinary woman. She surpasses all the favorites of her husband, not merely in heart and virtue, but also in intelligence, knowledge, and wit.

XIV

MARIE LECZINSKA AND HER DAUGHTERS

Marie Leczinska was a tender mother. She surrounded her daughters and her son with the most devoted cares, and knew how to inspire them with Christian sentiments. M. Michelet, who, in his latest works, tried to sully whatever he touched, has tried in vain to cast odious ridicule on the daughters of Louis XV. In spite of his venomous insinuations, his calumnious influence, he has been unable to extinguish the aureole of purity surrounding the brows of these virtuous princesses. The truth may be found in the excellent work of M. Édouard de Barthélemy, an impartial judge, a critic full of sagacity.[62] A curious book, recently published by M. Honoré Bonhomme,[63] has also avenged the memory of the daughters of Louis XV. against attacks which the most bitter adversaries of the monarchy and the most violent of pamphleteers had not permitted themselves.

All of the daughters of the King, with the exception of Madame Adelaide, spent their childhood at the Abbey of Fontevrault. Cardinal Fleury thought the presence of the little princesses at Versailles entailed too much expense, and Louis XV., yielding to the suggestions of his parsimonious minister, regretfully determined on separating himself from his children. Adelaide alone, by dint of prayers and supplications, was able to escape the abbey. On returning from Mass, she threw herself at her father’s feet, and, although only seven years old, succeeded in gaining her cause. The King wept a little, says Barbier, and promised her that she should not go away.

It is easy to comprehend how much the good Queen must have suffered from this parting with her daughters. She wrote to the Duchess de Luynes, October 12, 1747: “The King surprised me by showing me the portraits of my daughters from Fontevrault. I did not know they had been painted. The two eldest are really beautiful, but I have never seen anything so agreeable as the little one. She has an affecting expression, very remote from sadness. I have never seen anything so singular; she is touching, sweet, spiritual. If you find my letter too long, make allowances for the tenderness of a mother and the confidence of a friend.”

The six daughters of Louis XV. were born: the twins, Elisabeth and Henriette in 1727; Adelaide in 1732; Victoire in 1733; Sophie in 1734; Louise, the future Carmelite, in 1737.

The three princesses of whom the Queen speaks in the letter we have just quoted, and who were still at Fontevrault, were Victoire, Sophie, and Louise. The twins, Elisabeth and Henriette, had quitted the convent in 1739, and the former had soon afterwards married the Infant Don Philip, son of Philip V., King of Spain. Thereafter she is designated as Madame Infanta. The six sisters were all spoken of as Mesdames de France. Nevertheless, there was but one of them who married. When she took her departure for Spain, at the age of twelve years (August 31, 1739), the twin sisters exchanged heart-rending farewells. They could not resign themselves to separation. “’Tis forever!” they cried, their voices broken by sobs. Louis XV. accompanied his daughter as far as Plessis-Picquet. The Duke de Luynes relates that while on the road he gave his dear child most pathetic advice concerning the conduct she should observe in her new country, where, said he, her mild temper would infallibly win all hearts. He spoke to her with so much affection and tenderness that all who were in the carriage were melted to tears.

In 1748, the husband of Madame Infanta obtained the sovereignty of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. Before going to their new dominions with her husband, the daughter of Louis XV. came to see her parents at Versailles. This was a delightful moment for the royal family. Princes and princesses made few journeys in the eighteenth century. What joy to embrace a father, mother, brother, sisters, who had never expected to see one again! Marie Leczinska returned thanks to heaven. The little girl of twelve, who had left Versailles, returned thither a young woman in all the brilliancy of her twenty-second year. The Dauphin was beside himself with joy. In the first moment he embraced every one he saw, even the lady’s maids (December, 1748). Sophie and Louise were still at the convent of Fontevrault, but Henriette, Adelaide, and Victoire were at Versailles. Their sister’s arrival was an extreme happiness for them. Madame Infanta, so delighted to be once more with her family, had not courage to leave them. Months passed without her being able to decide on quitting Versailles, where her filial and sisterly heart experienced emotions so sweet. Nevertheless, it was necessary to be resigned. The dreaded moment arrived in October, 1749. The farewells must be spoken. It cost Henriette so much to part with her beloved sister that she fainted several times. The Dauphin was in tears, and Louis XV., who loved his daughters most profoundly, showed by his grief all the strength of his paternal tenderness.

Madame Infanta returned to Versailles some years later, but at that time the joy of her return was not untroubled. The Princess no longer found her twin sister, that dear Henriette whom she regarded, so to say, as the half of her soul.

Henriette had just died at the age of twenty-four (February 10, 1752). This young girl, as unhappy as sympathetic, was certainly one of the most touching figures in the feminine gallery of Versailles. M. Honoré Bonhomme has made an exquisite portrait of her, from both the physical and the moral point of view: “Of a sickly constitution, Madame Henriette had that ivory whiteness of complexion peculiar to the daughters of the North, and which her mother, Polish in blood and race, seemed to have transmitted to her along with life. Delicate, tall, and slender, there was something dreamy and inspired in her person. Her mild, pure features, aristocratic in their outline, charmed and yet inspired respect; her smile was melancholy, and her whole appearance, in which gloom seemed constantly warring against brightness, bore the impress of fatality. It was because she carried in her heart the secret of her destiny. Like pale Ophelia, she was to die while gathering flowers, and like Myrto, the young Tarentine of André Chenier, she was never to cross the threshold of the spouse. For the rest, inwardly animated by the sacred fire, enamored of great things, she possessed all subtleties of the mind as well as all delicacies of the heart. Looking into her great, dreamy eyes, which seemed to reflect the dormant limpidity of deep lakes, one divined what abysses of tenderness and devotion were hidden underneath, and felt a presentiment that her first love would also be her last, that she would die there where her soul had fixed itself.”

That, in fact, is what happened. Madame Henriette had conceived for the young Duke de Chartres, son of the Duke d’Orléans, an affection which was returned. The Marquis d’Argenson wrote, November 30, 1739: “A secret effort is being made to bring about a marriage between the Duke de Chartres and Madame _seconde_ [so Madame Henriette was called; her twin sister, Madame Infanta, was known as Madame _première_], and it is believed that the King is determined on it and gradually working toward it. Nothing could be more conformable to pacificatory views, for Europe would plainly see from this that the King was disposed to substitute the Orleans branch to the Dauphin, rather than the Spanish one.”

To understand this phrase, it is necessary to recall that the Dauphin was not yet married, and that people often wondered what would happen if this only son of Louis XV. should die without male posterity. Many thought that in such a case the King, in spite of the renunciations of the treaty of Utrecht, would take his heir from the Spanish Bourbons, and not from the Orleans branch. D’Argenson was in favor of the latter branch. Cardinal Fleury, on the contrary, pursued it with hostility, as if he had an insight of the future. The old minister prevailed so far, that the King, who had nevertheless a real liking for the Duke de Chartres, an amiable and estimable young prince, would not give his consent to the projected marriage. One day the Duke was riding beside the King. “Sire,” said he, “I had a great hope. Your Majesty had not taken it from my father.... I could have contributed to the happiness of Madame Henriette, who would have remained in France with Your Majesty. May I still be allowed to hope?” The King inclined toward the Prince and sadly pressed his hand. This beautiful dream of love, so quickly faded, must be renounced. Three years later, the Duke de Chartres espoused the daughter of the Prince de Bourbon-Conté. Madame Henriette had the courage to conceal her immense sorrow. She was present, death in her soul, a smile on her lips, at the marriage of the man she loved (December 9, 1743). From that day she felt herself heart-stricken, and her last days were merely an immolation. Prince Nattier has represented the Princess under the double emblems of _Fire_ and _Meditation_. She is leaning against a tripod on which half-consumed torches are smoking. These torches are like the image of the nearly extinguished flame of the Prince to whom the young girl would willingly have given her faith. She never uttered a complaint, a murmur. Calm, grave, recollected, she meditated and she prayed. The stay of her twin sister at Versailles was like a break in the darkness of her night. But when this dear companion of her infancy departed, all the wounds of her tender and loyal heart reopened.

The arrival of her three younger sisters, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, who left the convent of Fontevrault at the close of the year 1750, did not console her. Having sacrificed her own happiness, she desired that at least the Duke de Chartres might be happy. But it was not so. The Duke had married a woman whose conduct was said to be anything but exemplary. He could not, then, forget that tender, that virtuous Henriette who seemed to him the image of sadness. The Princess wept silently in her oratory, and offered her sufferings to God. Earth was not worthy of her.

There are characters which can only expand in a better world. Sorrow had undermined the constitution of Madame Henriette. She died February 10, 1752. “Ah! my sister! my dear sister!” were her last words. She died as she had lived: while loving. “Sad sport of fate,” says M. Honoré Bonhomme, “poor saintly girl, virgin and martyr, who spent nine whole years in climbing, step after step, the Calvary where she yielded up her soul.”

After relating this death, the Duke de Luynes adds: “No one can express the sadness into which the King is plunged. The Queen is much afflicted, and also the Dauphin, Madame the Dauphiness, and Mesdames. Madame Adelaide does not weep, but silent griefs are usually the longest. Madame Henriette was much beloved. Her mild character, without ill temper and even without will, rendered her extremely complaisant toward the Dauphin, the Dauphiness, and the ladies, her sisters.”

On receiving tidings of this mournful death, Madame Infanta wrote her father a most touching letter. She said she wished to come and mingle her tears with those of her family. She arrived in France in September, 1752, and remained with her father for a year.

Madame Infanta was not happy. She did not greatly esteem her husband, and that Prince cut a rather sorry figure in the little sovereignty of Parma and Piacenza. He had neither money nor prestige; and his wife, who was very intelligent, his wife, of whom Bernis said that she would make a good minister of foreign affairs, was constantly dreaming of some more considerable establishment for him. She thought by turns of exchanging the Duchy of Parma for Tuscany, or acquisitions in Flanders, Lorraine, or even Corsica. She fancied that, thanks to her father’s affection and the territorial changes in Europe, she would end by obtaining something. The Marquis d’Argenson, who had not much sympathy for her, wrote, September 27, 1753: “It is to be hoped she will never come back to France. Is it just that the State should suffer because she was married so badly? Along with her go a great quantity of chariots loaded with all sorts of things that the King has given her.”

Madame Infanta returned to France a third time, but only to die there. She arrived at the château of Choisy, September 3, 1757. To credit M. Michelet, it was she alone who brought about the Seven Years’ War. But there is no foundation for this assertion of the great writer who, toward the close of his life, created what one might call the school of imaginative history. At the time when she reappeared at court, Madame Infanta was glowing with freshness, brilliancy, and health. No one could have foreseen that her death was so near at hand. One of her last letters was addressed to her son Ferdinand, whom she had left at Parma. It commenced as follows:--

“Life is uncertain, my son, and my character is too sincere for me either to vaunt or even to affect perfect indifference as to the length of mine; but I feel that the wish to see you, to leave you worthy of the name you bear in the world, such, in fine, as I desire you, is one of the ties that attach me most to life, and one of the reasons, perhaps, which will most abridge mine by the continual torments caused me by this desire and the fear of not obtaining it. It will be a great consolation to be able to leave you an avowal of my sentiments if I die before you are in a condition to read it. If I live, it will serve me as a plan whereon to form you; and in either case, it will always be to you a proof of my tenderness and of my care for your welfare at an age when many people do not yet think of it.”

Not many days after writing this letter, Madame Infanta was attacked by small-pox, and died December 6, 1759. The twins, who had loved each other so tenderly, both died prematurely. Madame Henriette had died at the age of twenty-four, Madame Infanta at thirty-two. She was buried at Saint Denis, close to her sister, so that their union lasted even in the tomb.

Marie Leczinska’s heart was broken with grief. But instead of murmuring against Providence, she bent filially beneath the hand of God who smote her. Her five remaining children, the Dauphin, Adelaide, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, showed her a profound affection. Never was a mother better loved. Louis XV. took pleasure in the society of his daughters. As a father, he had that sort of citizenlike good-nature which is unhappily rare among princes. Mesdames lodged underneath their father, in the former apartment of Madame de Montespan. Madame Adelaide occupied a chamber which communicated by a private staircase with that of her father. “Often,” relates Madame Campan in her Memoirs, “he brought and drank coffee there which he had made himself. Madame Adelaide pulled a bell-rope, which announced the King’s visit to Madame Victoire. On rising to go to her sister, Madame Victoire rang for Madame Sophie, who in her turn rang for Madame Louise.”

In a twinkling the four sisters were gathered around their father. At six in the evening, at the unbooting of the King after the chase, as people said in those days, the princesses came to pay a visit to Louis XV., but this time with a certain etiquette. “The princesses,” says Madame Campan again, “put on an enormous hoop which supported a skirt braided with gold and embroideries. They fastened a long train to their waist, and hid the negligence of the rest of their habiliments by a large cape of black taffeta, which covered them up to the chin. Knights of honor, ladies, pages, equerries, ushers, carrying large torches, accompanied them to the King. In an instant the whole palace, usually solitary, was in movement; the King kissed each princess on her forehead.” In reality, he found more true happiness in the virtuous intimacy of his daughters than in the circle of his courtiers and the arms of his favorites. There were moments when people believed that in growing old the debauchee would become wise. “The King,” wrote D’Argenson, “seems to wish for no society but that of his family, like a patriarch and a good man.”

Marie Leczinska felt thankful to her husband for the affection he had for his daughters. The relations of Mesdames with their mother were full of confidence, sweetness, and gaiety. They liked to enter those little apartments of the Queen, where Marie Leczinska forgot the splendor of the throne to live modestly as a good mother. The little apartments[64] comprised three rooms: a salon, a bathroom, and a studio for painting. Madame the Countess d’Armaillé, whose graceful and solid work we have so often had occasion to quote, has given a charming description of these three rooms in which Marie Leczinska spent the greater portion of her time. “Is it not true,” she says, “that one may divine the character and tastes of a woman by merely inspecting the sanctuary of her private life, or, to speak more simply, that place in the dwelling where she habitually prefers to stay? It matters little whether this room be a garret or a drawing-room. Nothing is so intimate as certain interior arrangements; nothing tells the story of a woman better than the way in which she orders the room she inhabits. In the little apartments of the Queen one found everything which makes the charm of a peaceful existence. Here, pieces of work begun for the poor, or for churches, a whole piece of furniture embroidered by her hand; there, an open harpsichord with Moncrif’s cantatas, Rameau’s operettas, Polish hymns; further away a drawing-table, a spinning-wheel provided with its distaff, frames for embroidering and weaving, a small printing-press; then flowers, paintings, portraits of children, miniatures. On a console, a vase offered by Marshal de Nangis, a manuscript given by Cardinal de Fleury, a porcelain pagoda with verses by Madame de Boufflers; in an embrasure of the window a cabinet containing the Queen’s favorite books, with some verses by the Duchess de Luynes; everywhere souvenirs of friendship, of maternal tenderness, of useful or agreeable occupations.” It was there that, surrounded by her children, the virtuous Queen tasted the joys of the heart, those joys imparted only by a good conscience, and which the mistresses for whom Louis XV. deserted her had never known.

XV

THE DAUPHINESS MARIE JOSÈPHE OF SAXONY

Marie Leczinska was not less happy in her son than in her daughters. The bad examples of the court had not spoiled the upright and honest nature of the Dauphin. As is said by Baron de Gleichen in his Memoirs, the piety of the young prince was enlightened, and his policy foresaw the dangers of irreligion. As son and father, as brother and husband, he never ceased to display the qualities of a good and virtuous heart. He had deeply mourned his first wife, that sympathetic Spanish Infanta, who died in 1746, when hardly twenty years old. Reasons of State demanded that, in spite of his great sorrow, he should promptly contract a second marriage.

Louis XV. selected for his son a princess of the house of Saxony, after Austria and Prussia the most powerful of the Empire. He intended thus to consolidate his German alliances. Marshal Saxe, natural son of Augustus II., King of Saxony, Elector of Poland, and of the beautiful Countess Aurora of Königsmark, was the principal agent of the negotiation which was to form a pact of union between his new country and his old one. A learned Saxon diplomatist, now in the service of Austria, Count Vitzthum, published some years ago an excellent work, based on unpublished documents and letters in the archives of Dresden, on the Marshal and the princess who espoused the Dauphin.

Marie Josèphe of Saxony, daughter of Augustus III., was at this time fifteen years old. She was an agreeable young person, with large blue eyes that were at once keen and gentle. Her countenance was intelligent, her character excellent, her education complete. Marshal Saxe wrote to his brother, Augustus III.: “Sire, what shall I say to you? I find this affair advantageous at all points for your family, and I shall descend without regret to the empire of the shades after I have seen it terminated; I shall have accomplished my career. I have enjoyed the delights of this world; glory has covered me with its benefits; nothing more remained to me but to be useful to you, and all my destiny will have been fulfilled in a most satisfactory manner.”

Marshal Saxe wrote to the wife of Augustus III., mother of the future Dauphiness:--

“Madame, the Most Christian King sent me word yesterday, that he had requested Your Majesty for the hand of the Princess Marie Josèphe for Monseigneur the Dauphin. I flatter myself that this proposition will not displease either the Princess or Your Majesty, for, in truth, Monseigneur the Dauphin is a very good match, and I should like to live long enough to see our divine Princess Queen of France. I think that would suit her very well. She has always been my inclination, and it is long since I destined her for the crown of France, which is a fine enough morsel, and the Prince who will some day wear it is fine also. The Princess Josèphe will have no reason to be bored while she is waiting for it. The kingly father-in-law is charming; he loves his children, and from the caresses he gave the late Dauphiness, I infer those which our Princess will have to endure. This is word for word what the King wrote me in a letter I received yesterday, written by his own hand from one end to the other. ‘You will not be vexed with this marriage, my dear Marshal? Let your Princess be sure that it depends on her alone to make our happiness and the felicity of my people.’”

In the same letter the Marshal gave some very sensible and prudent counsels: “I will say another word to the Princess. To succeed here, neither hauteur nor familiarity is required; hauteur, however, pertaining to dignity, she can more easily incline to that side. The women of the court all have minds like diamonds, and are wicked withal. No one will fail in respect towards her, but they will try to entangle her in their continual quarrels, and at these she must do nothing but laugh and amuse herself. This is what the King does; and if anything displeases her, she must address herself directly to the King: he will advise and conduct her very well. This confidence will please him. He is the only person at court with whom she should have no reserve. She should regard him as her refuge, her father, and tell him everything, good or bad, just as it happens, without disguising anything. With everybody else, reserve. If she does that, he will adore her.”

The formal demand in marriage was made at Dresden, January 7, 1747, by two ambassadors, one extraordinary, the Duke de Richelieu, the other ordinary, the Marquis des Issart. Richelieu wrote to the Count de Loss, apropos of the future Dauphiness: “I find her really charming; nevertheless, she is not a beauty, but she has all the graces imaginable; a large nose, thick, fresh lips, the brightest and most intelligent eyes in the world, and, in fine, I assure that if there were any such at the Opera, they would soon be put up at auction. I do not say too much to you, but I do not say so much to others.”

Marie Josèphe of Saxony left Dresden, January 14, 1747. She saw her betrothed for the first time between Nangis and Corbeil. The nuptial benediction was given to the pair in the chapel of Versailles, February 8, 1747. Four days afterward, Marshal Saxe wrote to Augustus III.: “Sire, I shall have no difficulty in saying agreeable things to Your Majesty about Madame the Dauphiness, and renown will serve as my guaranty. No one could succeed better than this Princess; she is adored by everybody, and the Queen loves her as if she were her own child; the King is enchanted with her, and M. the Dauphin loves her passionately. She has steered her way through all this with all imaginable address; I could not but admire her. At fifteen, according to what they say, there is no such thing as childhood in this society; and, in truth, she has astonished me. Your Majesty could hardly believe with what nobility, what presence of mind, Madame the Dauphiness has conducted herself. M. the Dauphin seems a schoolboy beside her.”

The married pair were installed on the ground floor, in the south wing of the central portion of the palace, under the Queen’s apartments. (The Dauphin’s bedroom, where the Regent died, is now the third hall of the Marshals, No. 46 of M. Eudore Soulié’s _Notice du Musée_. That of the Dauphiness is now the second hall of the Marshals, No. 41 of the _Notice_.) It was in the latter chamber that, according to usage, the ceremonial of the putting to bed took place. In the letter we are about to quote, Marshal Saxe gives his brother an account of this strange custom:--

“Certainly,” he says, “there are moments which call for all the assurance of a person formed to sustain his part with dignity. Among others there is one, that of the bed, whose curtains are opened when the husband and wife have been put into the nuptial bed, which is terrible, because the whole court is in the room; and the King told me to remain near Madame the Dauphiness in order to reassure her. She endured this with a tranquillity which astonished me. The Dauphin drew the coverings over his face; but my Princess never stopped talking to me with a charming ease, paying no more attention to the people of the court than if there had been no one in the chamber. On approaching her, I said the King had ordered me to do so to keep her in countenance, and that all this would only last a moment. She told me I gave her pleasure; and I did not leave her until her women had closed the curtains, and the crowd had gone away. They departed with a sort of sadness, for it looked like a sacrifice, and she has continued to interest everybody in her. Your Majesty will laugh, perhaps, at what I have just said; but the blessing of the bed, the priests, the candles, the brilliant pomp, the beauty and youth of the Princess, in fine, the desire one has that she may be happy,--all these things taken together provoke more thought than laughter.”

This etiquette which weighed upon royal families was a heavy burden, an excessive fatigue. For two days the Dauphiness had eaten nothing. “Her great fatigue is the cause of this,” the Marshal wrote again to Augustus III.; “and I have told the King that if she could not have some rest she would fall ill. Indeed, I don’t know how she can avoid it. I am completely knocked up with following her. It is so hot in all the apartments, what with the quantity of people and the candles in the evening, that it is enough to kill one. And besides that, her clothes are so heavy that I don’t know how she has been able to carry them. What is still more fatiguing are all these endless presentations; and she wishes to remember all the names, which is a terrible task to a mind incessantly occupied, moreover, in trying to please and show attentions. The other day the King made me take up her skirt which lay on a sofa. It weighed, at least, sixty pounds; not one of our cuirasses weighs as much. I don’t know how the Princess could have remained on her feet eight or nine hours with that enormous weight.”

Marie Josèphe knew how to make herself esteemed and loved. A courtier, who admired the graces and virtues of this good and beautiful Dauphiness, said: “Nobody ought to take a wife anywhere but in Saxony; and rather than dispense with a Saxon wife, when there are no more, I will make one out of porcelain.” Marie Leczinska forgot the quarrels that had existed between the house of Saxony and her father for the throne of Poland. She became tenderly attached to her daughter-in-law, and showed her an almost maternal love.

The Dauphiness was delivered, September 13, 1751, of a son, who bore the title of Duke of Burgundy, and who died when nine years old, after long and horrible sufferings which he endured, a precocious Christian, with admirable courage. The Marquis de Pompignan wrote a biography of the little prince. Some years later, another child, likewise fated to undergo tortures, learned to read in this book: it was that most innocent of victims, the future Louis XVII. “How did my little uncle manage to have already so much knowledge and goodness?” cried the compassionate child.

The Duke of Berry was born August 23, 1754; the Count of Provence, November 17, 1755; the Count of Artois, November 9, 1757. These three princes were to be called Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., and Charles X.,--three names which on their first appearance affect the imagination with a nameless trouble, and transport it into an unprecedented world of revolutions and catastrophes.

Marie Josèphe of Saxony had eight children, five only of whom survived her; the three sons, who were all to reign, and two daughters, Madame Clotilde, who was Queen of Sardinia, and another whose mere name evokes the memory of the purest virtues, the profoundest piety, the most sublime sacrifices, the most heroic courage in sufferings, in prisons, on the scaffold: Madame Elisabeth.

The Dauphiness was a perfect wife and mother. Her goodness, sweetness, and charity rendered her at once lovable and worthy of veneration.... One finds consolation for the scandals of the court in contemplating a united household, a Christian household which set an example to France. Unhappily death was soon to break up this virtuous and holy life. The Dauphin, at the age of thirty-six, fell ill in November, 1765.

Had we not good reason to say, at the beginning of this study, that epochs in appearance most scandalous and corrupt contain, like every other, treasures of edification? The admirable death of the son of Louis XV. is a proof of this verity. The agony of the Dauphin was about to commence.

“Thanks be to God,” he said to his confessor, the Jesuit Callet, as soon as he saw him enter, “I have never been dazzled by the splendor of the throne to which I was summoned by my birth; I saw it only from the side of formidable duties by which it is accompanied, and the perils that surround it; I would desire to have a better soul, but I hope in the infinite mercy.” Then, turning towards his sisters and his wife, the good Prince exclaimed: “I cannot tell you how glad I am to be the first to go; I shall be sorry to leave you, but I am well pleased not to remain behind you.” The next day, November 13, the Archbishop of Rheims came to bring the sacraments. Louis XV. was kneeling at the threshold of the chamber, while the Duke of Orleans and the Prince of Condé approached the bed to hold the communion cloth. After the Mass the Dauphin said: “God has made me taste at this moment so sweet a consolation that I have never known one like it.” And as the Queen was speaking of his recovery: “Ah, mamma!” he exclaimed with vivacity, “keep that hope for yourself, for my part I do not desire it at all.”

The Prince, who had one day said, while looking at Paris from the terrace of the Château of Bellevue: “I am thinking of the delight that ought to be experienced by a sovereign in causing the happiness of so many people;” this truly exemplary Prince was taken, December 20, 1765, from the affection of a people, who honored his virtues and his sincere devotion. Nine days afterward, the Dauphiness wrote to her brother, Prince Xavier of Saxony: “The good God has willed that I should survive him for whom I would have given a thousand lives; I hope He will grant me the grace to employ the rest of my pilgrimage in preparing, by sincere penitence, to rejoin his soul in heaven, where I doubt not he is asking the same grace for me.”

Marie Leczinska mourned bitterly for her son, who had always been so good, so tender, and respectful to her. The pious Queen was to undergo new trials. She surrounded her aged father with the most touching attentions, and though far away, busied herself with him as though she were by his side. He was at Nancy, and she had just sent him a wadded dressing-gown for the coming winter. It caught fire while Stanislas was sleeping in his armchair; always amiable and affectionate, he attempted to tranquillize his daughter by a note in which he wrote pleasantly: “What consoles me, daughter, is that I burn for you.” This was the last letter Marie Leczinska was to receive from a father whom she cherished. King Stanislas breathed his last February 24, 1766. His death brought about, according to treaty stipulations, the definitive reunion of the duchies of Lorraine and Bar to France. As the Countess d’Armaillé has said, this was Queen Marie’s last gift to the land of her adoption.

Afflictions succeeded each other with deplorable rapidity. Marie Josèphe of Saxony died fifteen months after her husband, March 12, 1767, recommending her family to Marie Leczinska, who regretted her as much as if she had been her daughter. The Queen bowed to the decrees of Providence. Her soul remained strong, but her body was crushed by sorrow. “Give me back my children,” she said, “and you will cure me.”

XVI

THE DEATH OF MARIE LECZINSKA

At the close of that last dialogue where, in the harbor of Ostia, under a starry sky, overlooking the limpid waves, she aspired to that life eternal which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor the heart of man attained, Saint Monica said to her son: “My child, nothing any longer attaches me to earth. What should I do here? Why am I still here? I have realized all my hopes in this world. One thing there was for which I desired to sojourn awhile in this life,--it was to see thee a Christian before I died. God has given me that joy in over-measure, since I see thee despising all earthly felicity in order to serve Him. What have I to do here any longer?”

What Saint Monica said in the harbor of Ostia, Marie Leczinska could say in the palace of Versailles. She had inspired her children with Christian sentiments. Two of her daughters and her son had expired in the peace of the Lord. The four remaining daughters thought and lived like saints. Her task was accomplished. She thought of nothing now but dying.

The convent of the Carmelites of Compiègne had become her chosen refuge. It was there that, fleeing from grandeurs which had never dazzled her, she humbled herself, annihilated herself before the King of Kings, before Him who strengthens and consoles. This Queen to whom her son had said one day: “Do you know, mamma, you will end by quarrelling with Saint Teresa? Why do you want to be more fervent here than the most fervent Carmelites, and make still longer prayers than theirs?” This Queen, who would willingly have exchanged the royal mantle for a serge habit, had for her oratory a cell in no respect different from that of the nuns. She said she wanted to learn how to die to the world and to herself.

Madame de Campan, who knew the four last daughters of Louis XV. so well, thus describes the salutary influence which the Queen exercised over their destiny: “Mesdames had in their august mother, Marie Leczinska, the noblest model of all the pious and social virtues; by her eminent qualities and her modest dignity, this princess veiled the wrongs with which, but too unfortunately, one was authorized to reproach the King; and so long as she lived, she guarded for the court of Louis XV. that dignified and imposing aspect which alone maintains the respect due to power. The princesses, her daughters, were worthy of her; and if some few vile creatures tried to launch the shafts of calumny against them, they fell at once, repelled by the high idea people entertained of the loftiness of their sentiments and the purity of their conduct.”

The woman who had been able to preserve a remnant of decency in a corrupt society, and had thus saved the remnants of royal prestige, was surrounded by unmixed veneration. At this epoch, as at all others, one encountered types of honor and virtue, patriarchal and truly Christian existences, interiors which were sanctuaries. It will not do to judge the eighteenth century by the court and certain salons. Worthy people were still numerous, especially among the provincial nobility, the middle classes, and the people. In spite of Voltaire’s attacks, in spite of the building of that Tower of Babel called the Encyclopedia, Christianity continued to be what it had been for so many centuries: the soul of France. The attempts of the philosophers to create a morality independent of religion failed miserably, and all good minds recognized that the Voltairian school was leading the nation into ruin.

The life of Marie Leczinska may be called the symbol of the religious and virtuous element. In the face of adultery, the pious sovereign had maintained the sacred rights of the family; in spite of his irregularities, Louis XV. would never have dared, like Louis XIV., to legitimate the children of his debaucheries and declare them eligible to the throne of France. The scandal was in the boudoir of the favorites, the edification by the hearth fire of the Queen.

As greatly as Madame de Pompadour was hated and despised, so greatly was Marie Leczinska loved and respected. Her arrival was a festival, her departure caused general sadness. “Is it not admirable,” she wrote, “that I cannot leave Compiègne without seeing everybody crying? Sometimes I ask myself what I have done to all these people whom I do not know, to be so loved by them. They remember all my wishes.” She gave away all she had, according to her lady of honor, the Maréchale de Mouchy, and when nothing was left, she sold her jewels. One year when the high price of bread had caused more than common distress, she pawned her precious stones and wore false ones. Her charity was as inexhaustible as her kindness. She had the virtues of a woman of the middle classes, the manners of a great lady, the dignity of a queen. The resignation with which she endured her sorrows inspired in every one a sympathy blended with respectful compassion. Public opinion paid her homage, envy and slander were silent in her presence. Even the philosophers honored her.

In a changing epoch, when all minds and hearts were in disorder, she preserved three qualities which are rare in courts,--honesty, tact, and good sense. There was nothing gloomy or morose about her virtue. Her sweet, agreeable devotion recalled that of Saint Francis de Sales, the most lovable of all the saints. She had the gift of making herself beloved by a word, a smile. As has been remarked by the Countess d’Armaillé, there was hardly a salon in France toward the close of the last century, in which one could not meet some old lady always ready to tell about her presentation at Versailles, and to become affected in reciting the compliments which the good Queen Marie had paid her on that memorable evening. Affable by nature and principle, indulgent by instinct and reasoned conviction, Marie Leczinska was distinguished among all the women of the court by a quality which is a force and a charm, a quality still more necessary to sovereigns than to private persons,--benevolence.

When she fell ill, the emotion was general. Every Frenchman entertained for her the sentiments of a brother or a sister. The people besieged the doors of the château of Versailles to get tidings of her. Sometimes Louis XV. gave these himself. The churches of Paris and the provinces were crowded with people praying for the good Queen.

The final moment was drawing near. The four daughters of Marie Leczinska spent the last nights at their mother’s bedside with a devotion which made them resemble Sisters of Charity. At the moment when the death struggle was about to begin, Louis XV. kneeled beside his wife’s bed, and said to her, weeping: “Here are our daughters whom I present to you.” A Christian, the mother understood what these words implied; and raising her eyes to heaven, she gave her children her last blessing.

It is an hour of torture and anguish, a doleful hour, an hour heart-rending above all, when one loses a cherished mother. The grief borders on stupor. One feels one’s self the sport of a bad dream. One cannot grow accustomed to so horrible a thought. Those holy, venerable hands will never again be laid in blessing on your head! Those lips whence issued counsels so wise, words so affectionate, are closed forever! That heart, so warm, so loving, is cold; it beats no more. Again you call to your mother; you call, and for the first time, alas! she does not answer you. Then, all she has done for you, your childhood, your youth, your whole life, rises up before you. Long years of devotion, of sacrifices and tenderness, are concentrated in a single minute. The heart, invaded by memories as by a rising tide, overflows, and you burst into sobs. Oh! woe to him who at this fatal moment believes that all ends here below! Woe to him who has not the conviction that the dead woman is in heaven, that she is watching over her children; that they can still love and implore her; that she will always be their strength, their consoler, their good angel! But happy in the midst of tears, happy amid the most cruel trials, the Christians who then recall the prayer of Saint Louis, lamenting his mother, Blanche of Castile: “I return thee thanks, O my God! Thou hadst lent me a good, an incomparable, mother; but I know well she was not mine! Now, Lord, thou hast withdrawn her to thyself.... Thus has thy Providence determined. It is true that I cherished her beyond all creatures in the world.... Nevertheless, since thou hast thus ordained, may thine adorable will be done! My God! may thy holy name be blessed forever!”

Marie Leczinska died in angelic tranquillity. She was still trying to say her rosary, when death interrupted on earth the prayer which the holy woman was about to resume in heaven. These beautiful words of Massillon were realized for the pious Queen: “The soul of the just, during the days of their mortal life, dare not gaze fixedly upon the profundity of God’s judgments; they work out their salvation with fear and trembling, they shudder at the bare thought of that terrible future where the just themselves will hardly be saved, if they are judged without mercy; but on the bed of death, ah! the God of peace, who manifests Himself, calms their agitations; their fears cease of a sudden and are changed into a sweet hope, their dying eyes pierce the cloud of mortality which still environs them, and see that immortal country after which they have sighed so long, and where they have always dwelt in spirit.” Oh! you who have seen a saintly mother die, you who have in your hearts a regret and an expectation, do not forget!

It was the 24th of June, 1768, when Marie Leczinska yielded her last breath. The very day before she had entered her sixty-eighth year. Her reign had lasted forty-three years, and during that long period she had caused no tears to flow but those of joy and gratitude. Her women, her servants, her poor, collected the least scraps of her clothing to preserve as relics. Her mortal remains, exposed for eight days on a bed of state, was the object of a real cult on the part of the people. The Archbishop of Troyes preached her funeral sermon. “Pontiff of the living God,” said he, addressing himself to the Archbishop of Paris, “fear not to offer above her tomb an incense which may one day be offered above her altars.” Compare this life and death with those of the Marquise de Pompadour, if you wish to know what vice is, and what is virtue.

Marie Leczinska is the last queen who has ended her days upon the throne of France. The women, who for now a century have worn the royal or imperial crown in our unhappy and inconstant land, have all been the innocent victims of the Revolution and the caprices of fate. One perished an august martyr on the scaffold; another died at the moment of the invasion, her heart broken by the afflictions of her vanquished country. A third faded away almost forgotten in the little duchy given her in exchange for the finest empire of the world. A fourth died holily in a foreign land, regretting perhaps that she had been Queen; and there is one who, at this very moment, is sadly rewarded for her charity and courage, her virtue and her patriotism. To-day, above all, might a Bossuet say before Versailles abandoned or the Tuileries in ruins: _Et nunc, reges intelligite! Erudimini, que judicatis terram!_ And now, O Kings, comprehend! Be instructed, O ye who judge the earth!

INDEX

_Abrégé chronologique_, Hénault’s, 238, 239.

Adelaide, Madame, allowed to remain at Versailles, 246;
her apartment, 255.

Aix-la-Chapelle, the peace of, 130, 131.

_Almases_, performed at Versailles, 140.

Austria, France’s alliance with, 203 _et seq._;
an Austrian party at Versailles, 205.

Artois, Count of, 265.

Asturias, Prince of, 19.

Bachelier, the confidant of Louis XV., 51.

Barbier, quoted, 40, 44, 55;
his criticism of Bishop Fitz-James, 80.

Barthélemy, Édouard de, 245.

Beaujolais, Mademoiselle de, her birth, 19;
affianced to Don Carlos, 19;
sent back to France, 20;
later life and death, 21.

Beaumont, Christopher de, summoned to the archbishopric of Paris,
196;
his integrity to the Church, 196, 197;
exiled, 197;
his charge sent from Conflans to Paris, 198, 199;
recalled by the King, 197;
again exiled, 197.

Bellevue, Château of, 145, 146, 151.

Bernis, Abbé de, verses quoted, 126;
his attitude towards Madame de Pompadour, 183, 184, 185;
accused of drawing up the treaty of Versailles, 206;
his words on the convention of Cloister-Seven, 207, 208;
counsels peace, 208, 209;
threatened, 210;
resigns, 210, 211.

Berry, Duke of, 265.

Bonhomme, Honoré, his book on Louis XV. and his family, 245, 246;
his description of Madame Henriette, 249.

Bossuet, quoted, 195, 229.

Bourbon, Duke of, prime minister, 16;
ruled by his mistress, Madame de Prie, 16–18;
his uneasiness at court, 18;
his description of Marie Leczinska, 25;
endeavors to overthrow Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, 34;
his downfall, 34, 35.

Burgundy, Duke of, 264.

Campan, Madame de, quoted, 255;
her words concerning Marie Leczinska, 270.

Carlos, Don, 19.

Charles X., 265.

Charolais, Mademoiselle de, 50.

Chartres, Duchess de, 76, 78.

Chartres, Duke of, sketch of his career, 114, 115;
efforts to effect a marriage between Madame Henriette and, 250,
251;
his marriage, 251;
his unhappiness after marriage, 252.

Chateaubriand, quoted, 222.

Châteauroux, Duchess de, 1, 6;
words of the Goncourts concerning, 71;
wishes to follow the King to the army, 73;
joins the King, 76, 77, 78;
falls sick, 78;
is compelled to leave the King, 79;
her return to Paris, 84–86;
believes she will regain the King’s favor, 84, 86, 87;
the type of the passionate woman, 87;
among the crowd at the King’s triumph, 88;
visited by the King, 88, 89;
invited to return to Versailles, 89, 90;
her final illness and death, 90–92.

Choiseul, Duke de, 211;
his popularity, 213.

Christianity, the soul of France, 271.

Cloister-Seven, the convention of, 207.

Clotilde, Madame, 265.

Coaslin, Madame de, her insolent conduct toward Madame de
Pompadour, 157.

Conti, Princess de, 125.

D’Alembert, 215.

Damiens, wounds Louis XV., 180–182.