Chapter 1: 1.iii

Viaticum.

For the present, however, the grand question with the Governors
of France is: Shall extreme unction, or other ghostly viaticum
(to Louis, not to France), be administered?

It is a deep question. For, if administered, if so much as spoken
of, must not, on the very threshold of the business, Witch
Dubarry vanish; hardly to return should Louis even recover? With
her vanishes Duke d’Aiguillon and Company, and all their
Armida-Palace, as was said; Chaos swallows the whole again, and
there is left nothing but a smell of brimstone. But then, on the
other hand, what will the Dauphinists and Choiseulists say? Nay
what may the royal martyr himself say, should he happen to get
deadly worse, without getting delirious? For the present, he
still kisses the Dubarry hand; so we, from the ante-room, can
note: but afterwards? Doctors’ bulletins may run as they are
ordered, but it is “confluent small-pox,”—of which, as is
whispered too, the Gatekeeper’s once so buxom Daughter lies ill:
and Louis XV. is not a man to be trifled with in his viaticum.
Was he not wont to catechise his very girls in the
_Parc-aux-cerfs_, and pray with and for them, that they might
preserve their—orthodoxy?[13] A strange fact, not an unexampled
one; for there is no animal so strange as man.

For the moment, indeed, it were all well, could Archbishop
Beaumont but be prevailed upon—to wink with one eye! Alas,
Beaumont would himself so fain do it: for, singular to tell, the
Church too, and whole posthumous hope of Jesuitism, now hangs by
the apron of this same unmentionable woman. But then “the force
of public opinion”? Rigorous Christophe de Beaumont, who has
spent his life in persecuting hysterical Jansenists and
incredulous Non-confessors; or even their dead bodies, if no
better might be,—how shall he now open Heaven’s gate, and give
Absolution with the _corpus delicti_ still under his nose? Our
Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, for his part, will not higgle with a
royal sinner about turning of the key: but there are other
Churchmen; there is a King’s Confessor, foolish Abbé Moudon; and
Fanaticism and Decency are not yet extinct. On the whole, what is
to be done? The doors can be well watched; the Medical Bulletin
adjusted; and much, as usual, be hoped for from time and chance.

The doors are well watched, no improper figure can enter. Indeed,
few wish to enter; for the putrid infection reaches even to the
_Œil-de-Bœuf;_ so that “more than fifty fall sick, and ten die.”
Mesdames the Princesses alone wait at the loathsome sick-bed;
impelled by filial piety. The three Princesses, _Graille, Chiffe,
Coche_ (Rag, Snip, Pig, as he was wont to name them), are
assiduous there; when all have fled. The fourth Princess _Loque_
(Dud), as we guess, is already in the Nunnery, and can only give
her orisons. Poor _Graille_ and Sisterhood, they have never known
a Father: such is the hard bargain Grandeur must make. Scarcely
at the _Débotter_ (when Royalty took off its boots) could they
snatch up their “enormous hoops, gird the long train round their
waists, huddle on their black cloaks of taffeta up to the very
chin;” and so, in fit appearance of full dress, “every evening at
six,” walk majestically in; receive their royal kiss on the brow;
and then walk majestically out again, to embroidery,
small-scandal, prayers, and vacancy. If Majesty came some
morning, with coffee of its own making, and swallowed it with
them hastily while the dogs were uncoupling for the hunt, it was
received as a grace of Heaven.[14] Poor withered ancient women!
in the wild tossings that yet await your fragile existence,
before it be crushed and broken; as ye fly through hostile
countries, over tempestuous seas, are almost taken by the Turks;
and wholly, in the Sansculottic Earthquake, know not your right
hand from your left, be this always an assured place in your
remembrance: for the act was good and loving! To us also it is a
little sunny spot, in that dismal howling waste, where we hardly
find another.

Meanwhile, what shall an impartial prudent Courtier do? In these
delicate circumstances, while not only death or life, but even
sacrament or no sacrament, is a question, the skilfulest may
falter. Few are so happy as the Duke d’Orléans and the Prince de
Condé; who can themselves, with volatile salts, attend the King’s
ante-chamber; and, at the same time, send their brave sons (Duke
de Chartres, _Egalité_ that is to be; Duke de Bourbon, one day
Condé too, and famous among Dotards) to wait upon the Dauphin.
With another few, it is a resolution taken; _jacta est alea_. Old
Richelieu,—when Beaumont, driven by public opinion, is at last
for entering the sick-room,—will twitch him by the rochet, into a
recess; and there, with his old dissipated mastiff-face, and the
oiliest vehemence, be seen pleading (and even, as we judge by
Beaumont’s change of colour, prevailing) “that the King be not
killed by a proposition in Divinity.” Duke de Fronsac, son of
Richelieu, can follow his father: when the Curé of Versailles
whimpers something about sacraments, he will threaten to “throw
him out of the window if he mention such a thing.”

Happy these, we may say; but to the rest that hover between two
opinions, is it not trying? He who would understand to what a
pass Catholicism, and much else, had now got; and how the symbols
of the Holiest have become gambling-dice of the Basest,—must read
the narrative of those things by Besenval, and Soulavie, and the
other Court Newsmen of the time. He will see the Versailles
Galaxy all scattered asunder, grouped into new ever-shifting
Constellations. There are nods and sagacious glances;
go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for
this constellation, sighs for that: there is tremor, of hope or
desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale grinning Shadow
of Death, ceremoniously ushered along by another grinning Shadow,
of Etiquette: at intervals the growl of Chapel Organs, like
prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of horrid diabolic
horse-laughter, _Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!_