CHAPTER VII.

CHRISTIAN IN PARIS.

CAROLINE MATILDA AT HOME--COURT INTRIGUES--FRANCE UNDER MADAME DE POMPADOUR--MANNERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY--THE DUBARRY--FRENCH LADIES--CASANOVA--LOUIS XV. AND CHRISTIAN--FESTIVITIES--POETICAL FLUMMERY--CHRISTIAN'S PRIVATE AMUSEMENTS--THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY--RETURN TO COPENHAGEN.

Before we accompany Christian VII. to the Circæan capital of Europe, it will not be labour ill bestowed to take a glance at the mode of conduct pursued by his wife during his absence. We have seen that her _entourage_ did not suit her, and she therefore lived in the most perfect retirement. Though courted by the conflicting parties which were beginning to be formed, she joined none, and did not show the least ambition for political power. She appeared to feel a truly maternal affection for her child, and, in spite of remonstrances, had the infant and nurse to sleep in her apartment. She sometimes visited, and was visited by, the queen dowager and Prince Frederick, but generally remained in great seclusion. The only occasion on which she took part in public festivities was on the unveiling of the equestrian statue of the late king, which was erected by the India Company. The queens regnant and dowager accepted an invitation from Count Moltke to witness the ceremony from his house, which faced the site of the statue.

The queen had grown in stature, and appeared much more womanly than when she arrived in Denmark. The glow of robust health was on her cheek: she frequently nursed her child, and a more interesting subject for a picture could scarcely be conceived than this healthy and lively young queen playing with her babe. During this state of retirement, Matilda visited the houses of the farmers and peasants who resided near the palace; and though she could not converse fluently with these poor grateful people, she gained their warm hearts by her condescension in visiting their cottages, smiling graciously on their wives and daughters, and distributing useful presents. Thus innocently Matilda passed her time during the travels of her wild and dissipated husband.[74]

Juliana Maria, on her side, lived in great retirement with her son Frederick, at her château of Fredensborg.[75] The small party of courtiers who surrounded her were attached to her more by their salaries than any affection. It is true that the terms on which the two queens notoriously stood to each other attracted the attention of the courtiers; but they were still too vague and undecided for any certain plan to be based on them. The entire decay of the queen dowager's influence on the one hand, and the too little known character of Caroline Matilda on the other, promised them no support, if they declared for either party. The king, on his departure, had displayed neither the sentiments of an obedient son nor the attention of a loving husband, and none of the statesmen at the head of affairs appeared to be in special favour with him. The friendship of the courtiers, which never springs up without selfish views, and cannot last without tangible advantages, hence saw no object that could decide their choice.[76]

One thing appears tolerably certain, that Juliana Maria, while remaining in seclusion, neglected no opportunity for widening the breach between the young couple. Queen Matilda, it is evident, was kept well informed of her husband's transgressions, as the following passage, taken from a letter to her aunt, the Princess Amelia, will show:--

"I wish the king's travels had the same laudable objects as those of Cyrus; but I find that the chief visitors of his Majesty are musicians, fiddlers, and other persons designed for some employments still more inglorious: what a wretched levee! His evenings' amusements are still more disgraceful, since delicacy and sentiment cannot be supposed to dignify such transient gratifications. Had I not already experienced his fickleness and levity at home, I could not have heard without emotion and disquietude of his divers infidelities abroad. But as it is the monarch, not the man, I received injunctions to marry, the consciousness of having strictly adhered to my duty to his Majesty, and the respect I owe to myself, form a secret satisfaction which neither malice nor envy can deprive me of."

On the other hand, it appears tolerably certain that Juliana Maria was a constant correspondent of Christian, and insinuated many things against his wife's conduct. We are told that she went so far as to state that the queen had been too intimate with some of her favourites, and insinuated that several of his most faithful nobles had retired to their estates during his absence, in order to avoid the insults of some new men admitted to the young queen's favour. All these false and malicious insinuations alienated the king's affection still more from his amiable consort, who saw herself surrounded by spies who were devoted to a dangerous enemy.[77]

Had it been possible to corrupt Christian's morals to any greater extent, his short stay in Paris would have effected it. Since 1745, France had been slowly and surely going down the slope that led to revolution. Through internal and external misgovernment she had been driven nearer to moral and social ruin, to a deficit, to utter dislocation and corruption; but, for all that, the fifteenth Louis le Bienaimé was in excellent case. The ancien régime, with its "gabelles," and "tailles," its "pactes de famille" and "acquits de comptant," its "lettres de cachet," its Bastille, and its "cages de fer," with all its frivolity, hardness of heart, shamelessness, and recklessness, was on the point of sinking into the last stage of atrophy; but the royal roué, money clipper, and coffee boiler, continued to find amusement for himself.

What a scene was that presented toward the end of February, 1745, when the Hôtel de Ville of Paris gleamed with a thousand lights, and its halls rang with seductive music! The city gave a ball to the court, as a return for the festivities which had accompanied the marriage of Louis the Dauphin. France was embroiled in an unfortunate war, which paved the way for one still more unfortunate: but the court danced. The king alone, of all the company, seemed absent and sad; while his wife, the poor, good Maria Leczinska, found a motive for living in her phlegm and her piety, his "favorite declarée," the "maîtresse en titre," the Duchesse de Chateauroux, took it into her head to die. The haughty noblesse of France, whom Louis XIV. had tamed, who had been corrupted by the _rouerie_ of the Regent, and degraded by Louis XV. to the duties of the seraglio; the nobility of France, who had accustomed themselves to reckon among their privileges that of supplying royal concubines "du sang et rang," were most anxious to fill up the gap left by the deceased duchesse. But this time even the practised Duc and Maréchal de Richelieu failed, and in vain did that charming creature, the Duchesse de Rochechouart, display all her Hebe-like charms, in the hope of succeeding the Chateauroux. It was decreed that the French aristocracy should lose one of their most precious privileges.

The Hôtel de Ville ball had attained the acme of its splendour. The superbly decorated rooms which a few lustres later were to re-echo saturnalia of a frightfully different nature, were crowded with quaint and graceful maskers. Rococo was present in all the glory and fancifulness of its refined voluptuousness, and a remarkably rich show of feminine charms, heightened by all the coquetry of the toilette, was offered to the choice of the royal purchaser, for the more official object of the ball was to alleviate the "tristesse" of the lord of France, and offer a remedy for his sadness in the form of a lovely duchesse, comtesse, or baronesse.

Poor women of an immoral age! how many a girl, after her maid and milliner had done their utmost, had been instructed by her mother, how many a wife by her husband, how she should behave on this night in order to attract and retain the king's favourable glances! For it was a sign of an utterly corrupted epoch, that mothers considered they fulfilled a duty in teaching their daughters to seek the highest honour in the deepest disgrace.

This time, however, the plebeian rivalry was destined to bear away the prize from the aristocrats. The Heliogabalus of France had really forgotten his melancholy amid this abundance of beauty and seductions. His restless eyes were at length fixed by a tall, graceful, fair-haired girl, masked _en Amazone_, with bow and quiver on her shoulder, with floating hair, and heaving bosom. "Charming huntress!" His most Christian Majesty addressed her: "Happy the man who may be struck by thy arrows." To speak in the style of the Academy, this was a splendid moment to fire a dart into the king's heart; but whether the young Amazon had not been properly trained, or did not take the hint, she disappeared among the crowd of dancers. When on the point of pursuing her, the Bienaimé was impeded by an English country dance, performed by a bevy of young ladies. He devoured this "bouquet," so full of fresh charms, and, as our authority says, "incertain, il eut voulu les posséder toutes." The king went further, and surveyed at the end of the room the amphitheatrical daïs on which "les femmes de médiocre condition" were seated. Here, too, his Majesty found much to look at, much to admire; till a female mask forced her way through the beautiful crowd, and teased the king with masquerade freedom. The graceful coquetry of this teasing attracted Louis's curiosity: there was a grisettish _esprit_ in the words of the beauty, something new and piquant for the worn-out roué. He begged her to unmask, and she did so while flying, and, as she fled, she let her handkerchief fall. The delighted king picked it up, and threw it over the heads of the ladies to its owner. A whisper immediately ran through the hall, "Le mouchoir est jété!"[78]

The sultan had thrown the handkerchief, but not to a perfect stranger. He had met the beauty frequently of late: while hunting in the forest of Sénart, she had passed him, gracefully reclining in her phaeton. Mademoiselle Poisson, now Madame d'Etioles, the daughter of a scoundrel, had been artistically trained by her mother to become an Odalisque. She had so often repeated to her daughter, "Tu es un morceau de roi," that the girl at last believed it, and prepared herself for the honour. In the interim, she married M. d'Etioles, the rich nephew of her mother's lover, which,--such was the nature of court morality at the period,--proved no obstacle, but rather a motive for her future exalted position. Her mother, with this object, negotiated with the king's first valet, Sieur Binet, the notorious predecessor of the more notorious Lebel; and the talent of Madame d'Etioles effected the rest.

The masked ball at the Hôtel de Ville entailed the finale. Ere long, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was invited by his most Christian Majesty "pour souper dans ses petits cabinets et pour coucher avec elle." Immediately after, this woman of one-and-twenty years of age, who had been married four years and borne her husband two children, was solemnly presented at court under the title of a Marquise de Pompadour, to the queen, princes, and princesses, and in due form declared "maîtresse en titre;" that is, as matters stood, the mistress of France. Poor M. d'Etioles, "qui idolâtrait sa femme," tried at first to be disagreeable, but was sent on his travels, and eventually became appeased.

Everybody knows how the marquise governed France: it was she who made the alliance with Austria and sent Prince de Soubise to Rossbach. Under her government, France soon sank to such a point that Chesterfield, writing home in December, 1753, from Paris, declared that he found in that city all the signs of an impending revolution, such as are read of in history. Poisson-Pompadour ruled, and woe to the man who tried to oppose her autocracy: the dungeons of the Bastille or the iron cages of Mont St. Michel received the victims to the revenge of the Babylonish woman. The chanson and the satiric couplet alone dared to flash in the dark, and at times darted their shafts into the innermost apartments of the omnipotent lady.

In order to surround the _blasé_ sultan with all the varying charms of seductiveness, the Pompadour, by Richelieu's advice, erected in the park of Versailles a hermitage, where she tried to arouse the blunted imagination of the roué, who had enjoyed everything and misused everything, by dressing herself as a gardener's wife, or as a milkmaid, or even as a nun. Nay, more: when these lures lost their charm in time, when the mistress heard that his most Christian Majesty was tired of her, and declared that she was as cold as a "macreuse," she assumed even more infamous duties, and with Lebel established the Parc aux Cerfs, which will remain an undying stain on regal France.

But even more horrible, possibly, is it to read, how the desire of imitating the career of the Pompadour--the wish, the hope, the longing to obtain the rank of maîtresse titrée--spread all over France, from the pestilential court atmosphere of Versailles to every point where a pretty girl was growing up. How shamelessly people acted in this respect, is recorded by Casanova, in his account of Mademoiselle Roman-Coupier, of Toulouse, who, however, only succeeded in becoming an untitled concubine. The corruption of kings is everywhere met half way by the villany of the nations. Regarding the matter humanly, this offers a species of palliation for Louis XV. and his co-religionists.

Après nous le déluge! was a fearful remark, which the Pompadour, in the intoxication of her frivolity and might, or perhaps in a moment of agony and desperation, replied to a friend who warned her against the future; and the deluge came, but that of terror was preceded by that of vulgarity. The ancien régime sank, draining the cup of vice to the dregs, from the reign of the Poisson to that of the Dubarry--that Dubarry, who, under the name of Mademoiselle L'Ange, had wallowed in the vicious mud of Paris ere his most Christian Majesty raised her to his couch. The lowest of all Hetæras, stretching herself on a bed of purple silk, and at her feet the King of France, busily engaged in boiling his mistress's coffee, and rewarding with a laugh of pleasure her Billingsgate remarks. What a picture!

Or, take as counterpart, the "maîtresse en titre," conversing with the noblest ladies at court, one of whom, Madame de Beauveau, quietly replied to the Dubarry's remark that they seemed to have a personal hatred for her, "By no means; we should only like to be in your place--that is all." The woman, in whose place the noblest-born ladies wished themselves, dragged the language of the pothouse and the bagnio into the apartments of Versailles; and Louis XV. took such a delight in this mode of conversation, that he christened Mesdames, his four legitimate daughters, the Princesses Sophie, Adelaide, Louise, and Victorine, "graille, chiffe, loque, et coche."

This king even dishonoured and trailed in the mud the prestige of royalty. What his extravagance cost France in ready money, no one has been able to state certainly, but the lowest estimates amount to 200,000,000 of francs; and at that day, when millions could not be conjured as they are now-a-day, a million was a large sum. But while creatures like the Pompadour and the Dubarry had millions lavished on them, the people, from whom the royal forestaller exacted these millions, were starving. One day, while hunting in the forest of Sénart, the "well-beloved" met a peasant carrying a coffin in his cart. "Where are you taking that coffin?"--"To the village of L----." "Is it intended for a man or a woman?"--"For a man." "What did he die of?"--"Starvation." The king drove his spurs into his horse. Did he feel a burning within him like the flames of Hades? I doubt it. He had only a cynical laugh for everything, even for the monkey-tricks performed by his mistress at the council of state. Was it surprising that the most awful things should be believed about such a king?--that a rumour spread among the populace that it was one of the mysteries of the Parc aux Cerfs that the king tried to stimulate his senses by baths of children's blood?

I need hardly stop to discuss the views and morals of French society under such a king; but a man who was a member of this society--a man who did not reproach it, but comfortably swam with the stream of vice--shall tell us something about it. "The gallantry which had prevailed at the court of Louis XIV. became, in the time of the Regency, unbridled sensuality. Under Louis XV., the gentlemen were solely engaged in augmenting the lists of their mistresses, and the ladies in depriving each other of their lovers with marked publicity. Husbands, compelled to suffer what they could not prevent, without making themselves in the highest degree ridiculous, adopted the safe remedy of no longer living with their wives. They only met them at public resorts; but at other times, though living under the same roof, they never came together. Matrimony was regarded as a mere matter of money, and generally as an inconvenience, which could only be avoided by laying aside all the duties it entailed. Morals, it is true, were ruined by this; but good society (_la société_) gained enormously. Freed from the constraint and coldness which the presence of husbands and wives always produces, the liberty was unbounded. The mutual coquetry of gentlemen and ladies enlivened everything, and supplied every day with piquant adventures."[79]

In truth, there was no want of such piquancy as we read of in Suetonius, Petronius, and Juvenal. Princesses behaved at night, in the garden of the Palais Royal, in such a way as to place themselves on a level with its professional _habituées_. Such was the case with the Duchesse de Chartres, mother of Philippe Egalité, who was publicly told by an offended rival: "Je n'ai pas encore éprouvé, madame, qu'on eût besoin d'argent pour trouver des amoureux."

Or take Magdaleine de Villeroy, Duchesse de Boufflers, who contrived to become a woman "qu'il fallait que tout homme de bon air mît sur sa liste." In the life of this woman, perhaps the slightest scandal was that she lived quite openly with the Maréchal de Luxembourg, while the latter, as a compensation, just as openly placed his own wife at the disposal of his mistress's husband. One day the Duc de Durfort, one of this lady's countless admirers, gave her a supper, and, to amuse the company, invited the comedian Chassé. After the lady had imbibed an inordinate quantity of champagne, as was her wont, she so unequivocally revealed her inclinations toward the actor that the host thought it advisable to dismiss him. The duchesse, however, rushed, with flying hair, down the street after him, shrieking, "Je le veux! Je le veux!"

Such were the ladies whom the Prince de Conti was justified in insulting, by saying to Louis XV., when the latter asked him why France produced no more marshals, "C'est qu'aujourd'hui nos femmes ont affaire à leurs laquais." In this circle, which only lived for the lowest sensuality, everything was degraded. Thus there was a Duc de Gesvres, who assumed the manner and avocations of a woman; he rouged himself, wielded the fan, and worked embroidery. Everything was brought low, everything disgraced; and a levity of the most odious nature was displayed in religious matters. What could the Church be and signify with persons who had seen a Dubois made a cardinal? And was not Bernis, too, a cardinal?--the same Bernis, christened "Suzon la Bouquetière," who once preached at the reception of a nun of noble birth, and had the misfortune, while going into the pulpit, to let fall a piece of paper, on which he had written a most scandalous couplet about the novice.

As is usual in such degenerate times, the coarsest superstition was mixed up with the most frivolous free-thinking. The spirit of religious reform, brutally suppressed on its manifestation as Jansenism, had only been able to penetrate the universal rottenness in the caricature of Convulsionism. After the immoral mania of these revivalists went out of fashion, calling up spirits and demons grew popular among the great. At court, Saint Germain, the manufacturer of diamonds and the elixir of life, the predecessor of the clumsy charlatan Cagliostro, was called on to kill time for the yawning king and the Pompadour. In the Palais Royal, Casanova erected his cabalistic pyramids of figures; and for the entire fashionable female world, the coffee-cup of the fortune-teller Bontemps was a Delphic oracle. With extravagance and superstition, their sister, cruelty, naturally went hand in hand. When in March, 1757, Damiens was executed, the fashionable ladies hurried to a nameless act of barbarism, at their head being the pretty wife of Popelinière, the farmer-general, who had gained a great reputation in society by a scandalous intrigue with the sinner of sinners, the Duc de Richelieu. In order to learn what people were capable of in the Paris of that day, the reader ought to be acquainted with the awful sketch drawn by Casanova, the most decried but most masterly painter of the morals of the eighteenth century, of the execution of Damiens.

In the midst of this ocean of _boue de Paris_ there was one source of consolation; in spite of the shame with which Soubise and his consorts had stained the lily banner, the warlike temper of the French was not utterly destroyed. In such an age as the one we are describing, there is something doubly cheering in reading of that well-known trait of French chivalry which characterises an episode of the battle of Fontenoy. The English and French guards marched to meet each other for a combat which would become very murderous. "Messieurs des gardes Françaises," Lord Charles Hay shouted from the English ranks, "tirez!" "Non, my lord," Comte d'Auteroche replied from the French side; "nous ne tirons jamais les prémiers."[80] And there is more than chivalrous courtesy, there is the noblest heroism, in the circumstance that at the surprise, on 16th October, 1760, which the hereditary prince of Brunswick attempted at Kloster Kamp upon the Marquis de Castries, the Chevalier d'Assas, of the Auvergne regiment, when surrounded at the outposts by the enemy, still shouted, under the menace of a hundred bayonets, the warning cry, "A moi, Auvergne, voilá les ennemis!"[81]

Christian landed at Calais, and though he now resumed his incognito, and travelled as a Count of Gottorp, he was everywhere received as king. He reached Paris on the 21st, passing through Saint Omer, Lille, Douai, Valenciennes, and Cambrai, and lodged at the York palace, which had been engaged for his stay in the French capital, and where he was complimented by the Duc de Choiseul, in the name of the absent King Louis XV., and invited to Fontainebleau.

Being now in the country whose language was most fluent and agreeable to him, Christian VII. visited on the day after his arrival, accompanied by the Duc de Duras, who was appointed his chevalier of honour, the Théâtre-Français and the Grand Opéra. On the 23rd, he set out with his whole suite for Fontainebleau, to pay his first visit to King Louis. On his arrival, he was received at the foot of the marble staircase by the Duc d'Orléans, greeted at the top by the Dauphin, and conducted to the door of the royal cabinet. When he presented himself for the first time to Louis XV., that monarch, who had never in his life been able to address a word to a new face, embraced the King of Denmark without saying a word to him, and turned to speak to the Count von Bernstorff, because he had known him formerly during his embassy in France. The King of Denmark, who felt the incongruity of this reception, at once pirouetted on his heel and addressed the Duc de Choiseul, who soon contrived to draw his master into the conversation begun with the young monarch.

While Von Gleichen, the Danish envoy, was negotiating with Choiseul as to the manner in which Christian was to be received, he was urged to obtain leave that the two monarchs should meet alone on the first interview, that when the doors were shut the King of France should give the title of Majesty to him of Denmark, and that afterwards the latter should remain in the strictest incognito. M. de Choiseul answered Gleichen that, "though he had his Majesty's commands to assent to everything requested in the matter of etiquette, he ought to be aware that his demand was impossible, as the King of France had never remained alone for a single moment in his life, not even in his garderobe, and that he had no power to expel from his chamber persons who by right of office had a claim to remain in it." The first interview, therefore, took place in the presence of all the chief personages, but when, on the next day, Louis XV. returned Christian's visit, accompanied by a few princes of the blood and his whole court, the youthful monarch ran to meet the King of France, took his hand, and, walking very quickly, drew him into his cabinet, the door of which he locked. All this was done so promptly, that the Duc d'Orléans, pushed by the crowd who were eager to follow, ran against the door, and thus Louis XV. remained alone with a stranger for the first time in his life. The two monarchs conversed together for some time, and were mutually charmed; but afterwards Christian said to Gleichen, "Do you remember what you wrote us about the impossibility of a King of France remaining alone? I succeeded better than you, for I took a pleasure in it."[82]

During this interview the King of France expressed his regret that the deep mourning for his consort, Maria Leczinska, prevented him from celebrating the visit of his brother, at which he was greatly pleased, by court festivities, but he had taken care that his Danish Majesty's stay in Paris should be rendered as pleasant as possible. As he was aware that his beloved guest was fond of theatres, he had sent his commands both to the Comédie Française and the Opéra, that during the Danish king's presence only such pieces should be performed as his exalted guest wished to see.

Louis XV. conversed with the perfect courtesy of a French courtier. "In the year 1717," he said, "my predecessor on the throne of France had the felicity of seeing Peter the Great here, and I have great pleasure in being able to embrace Christian the amiable. How young you are! I could be your grandfather."

"I should esteem myself most fortunate if I were your grandson," Christian replied.

When the French king introduced his guest to the ladies of the court, he noticed that Christian paid special attention to Madame de Flavecourt. Hence he drew him on one side, and asked him,

"How old do you take that lady to be?"

"Thirty, at the most," Christian remarked.

"She is above forty," said Louis.

"A proof, sire, that people do not grow old at your court," was Christian's flattering answer.

During the four days' stay at Fontainebleau, Struensee visited the Galerie des Cerfs, where the degenerate daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, after her abdication, had her lover Monaldeschi, whom she supposed to be faithless, beheaded by three disguised accomplices. He was induced to pay this visit by a dream, in which he saw an exalted lady, whose name he hardly dared confess. He had returned a long time from the tour, ere he told his brother of this dream, and how it urged him the next day to visit the gallery. "Everything is possible," was the consolatory answer Struensee received.

On November 3, the court celebrated the festival of St. Hubert, in which Christian took part with his suite. The guests arrived in one thousand five hundred carriages, and over three thousand hunters and lackeys were called out. Naturally, Madame de Flavecourt was among the fair Amazons.

On November 13, the Prince de Monaco gave the king a ball, at which the royal guest made the acquaintance of the Duchesse de Nevers, the ex-actress Marie-Anne Quinault, in the dance.

Whenever the king was not impeded by other festivities, he visited the Théâtre-Français, and for every performance sent the troupe 1,000 crowns, so that this amusement alone cost him 20,000 crowns. At the Grand Opéra he was most attracted by the celebrated prima donna Sophie Arnould, whom he requested to hear thrice as Théalire, in Rameau's _Castor and Pollux_. As a return for the pleasure which her singing and acting caused him, he sent her, through Count Holck, an ivory fan, for which he paid Boucher 2,000 livres.

When Christian visited the celebrated porcelain factory at Sèvres, he was shown an entire dinner service which Louis XV. intended to present to him, each piece decorated with the arms of Denmark. On Nov. 20, Christian was present at a sitting of the Academy, where Voisenon received him with a piece of verses, which I will spare the reader, and only say, they are full of the usual fulsome flattery. A resolution was then passed to hang up the king's full-length portrait in the great hall. On the 21st, Christian visited the Academy of Painting, when he was received by the Marquis de Marigny, brother of Madame de Pompadour, with an address, and on the same day the Sorbonne, where the same honours were paid him as to Peter the Great fifty years before.

A few days later, there appeared in the _Mercure_ a versified panegyric on the king by a member of the Académie Française, M. de Bernis, ex-drawing-master, and afterwards archbishop, and favourite of the Pompadour, in which we read the tolerably notorious fact that other princes had visited the banks of the Seine before Christian. The unfortunate James Stuart was regretted; the pious Casimir forgotten; Peter I. admired; "mais vous, Chrétien, vous êtés adoré." In another set of verses, I find four lines which must not be passed over. I regret that I cannot trace their author; but they will be found in the "Almanach des Muses" for 1769:--

"Avec Louis le ciel vous a vu naître, Pour éprouver un bonheur si doux: Ah! Si Bourbon ne regnoit pas sur nous, Nous vous aurions choisi pour maître."

Really, it is difficult to decide whether France would have been a loser by the change.

After so many compliments had been paid him by the servants of Paris, King Christian wished to form the personal acquaintance of the most renowned academicians of the day, and hence invited twenty of them to dinner. Among them were d'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, Marmontel, la Condamine, Voisenon, &c. The king seated himself between Diderot and Helvetius, and spoke in terms of praise of the "Bijoux Indiscrets" of the one, and the "Œuvres Philosophiques" of the other, and delighted all his learned guests by his affability. Struensee was also at table, and through his clever remarks about French literature and the Empress of Russia, more especially attracted the admiration of his immediate neighbours, who were Baron von Grimm, the Saxe-Coburg Envoy and news-writer to Catharine II., the private secretary of the Duc d'Orléans, and the playwright Saurin.

On the 24th, the king visited the parliament, when he was received by the celebrated Advocate-General Séquier with a Latin speech, of which it is doubtful whether he understood much. After this, Christian paid a three days' visit to the Prince of Condé at Chantilly. This entertainment was probably the finest of all those given to Christian. As it was free to all persons, it was computed that there were at least six thousand guests present, and the concourse of nobility and gentry of both sexes to it was so prodigious, that the Rue St. Denis, which is longer than Holborn, was so filled with carriages from end to end, that there was no passage through it. The entertainment continued for three days and nights, during which open house was kept for all comers, without distinction. There was likewise a very grand hunt in the forest by torch-light. After a wild boar had been chased for a long while, a nobleman killed it with a bow and arrow.[83] The cost of this entertainment was defrayed by Louis XV., and a full account of all the festivities that took place was forwarded to the Empress of Russia by Grimm.

Such were Christian's public performances in Paris, but his private ones were of the same nature as in London, so far as the genius of the two countries admitted. Ladies of high rank, flattered by the homage of the monarch, while they despised the man, disputed the unenviable notoriety of his attentions; and in the court of Louis XV., which was immersed in gallantry, Christian found an example and sanction for every excess. The two kings frequently supped together _en partie carrée_, laying aside in mutual freedom and convivial mirth all stateliness and majesty. The time fixed for Christian's departure made him forget the trammels of royalty; and, in taking his leave of the French monarch, he declared Versailles and Paris, under his Majesty's auspices, the favourite abode of Apollo, Venus, and Minerva.[84]

Accompanied by the Comte de Noailles and the Prince de Poix, Christian witnessed, on Dec. 6, the display of the fountains at the royal palaces of Marly, Trianon, and Versailles; and, at the latter, was magnificently entertained by Louis XV. in farewell.

Before he left Paris, Christian VII. offered on his return to his states to raise a new cavalry regiment for the French service, and give the command of it to the Duc de Duras and his descendants _in perpetuum_. When Caroline Matilda heard of this, she wittily remarked that "the king was a very good Frenchman, but a very bad politician." This was communicated to Christian with many aggravating circumstances by the emissaries of the queen dowager. Another observation attributed to the queen on hearing of her husband's successes in Paris, that "if he had travelled _incog._, he would have returned to his dominions with a blank list of _bonnes fortunes_," was doubtless an invention of malice. Probably the offer of the regiment was declined; at any rate, no trace of it is to be found in the Danish archives.

All the poets who sang the praises of Chrétien l'adoré--and among the panegyrics I find the following neat exception to the rule of worthlessness, written by M. de Chamfort:--

"Peuple a qui sa présence est chère, Parmi vous retenez ses pas: Une roi qu'on aime et qu'on révère A des sujets en tous climats. Il a beau parcourir la terre, Il est toujours dans ses états"--

all the artists who had counterfeited him, the sculptors who had represented him, the actors and prima donnas who had amused him, were rewarded with truly royal gifts. Even the Dames de la Halle, who had employed their old privilege of handing a bouquet to crowned heads, and whose leader also requested permission to give him a kiss, were willingly received by the fun-loving youth.[85] When the pretty spokeswoman had expressed her wish, he laughingly offered her first one cheek and then the other, with the words: "Eh bien, madame, choisissez!" The clever Parisienne, however, took the liberty of kissing both cheeks, and received as reward 20 louis d'or. The king left a present of 6,000 livres for the poor of Paris, though his own were starving.

On the last day of his stay in the world's capital, Christian gave the Duc de Duras--in addition to his miniature painted by the Danish artist Jans Juel, and set in diamonds--a gold-mounted sword of honour set with pearls and jewels, valued at 20,000 livres. The duc's wife received a diamond necklace, and Madame de Flavecourt, whose beauty had attracted the king on his first arrival, a valuable suite of pearls.

The king's portrait was displayed in all the windows, and under it could be read the lines:--

"Les roses d'Hymen et le trône des Rois Ne l'ont pas retenu dans leur chaine flatteuse, Il voyage, il instruit sa raison lumineuse Par des tableaux divers et des mœurs et des lois. S'il s'arrête en ces lieux, séduit par notre hommage, Heureux peuple Danois, n'en soyez par jaloux: Le destin l'a formé pour regner parmi vous, Notre art ne peut içi fixer que son image."[86]

It is really a painful task to dispel the favourable opinion expressed of Christian VII. in these verses, but I am bound to be impartial. Reverdil tells us bluntly that in France, in spite of the flattery employed, and the prejudice in the king's favour entertained by those who only caught a transient glance of him, such persons as were in daily intercourse with him, and were able to watch him closely, detected in him an incipience of mania, and heard him make extravagant remarks. They also noticed that in his moments of aberration, a glance from Holck recalled him to his senses.

After a stay of seven weeks, Christian quitted Paris on December 9, in order to return to his own states. At Metz he allowed himself to be detained for three days by all sorts of festivities offered him by Maréchal d'Armentières, and proceeded thence to Strasburg, where he arrived on the 16th, and accepted an invitation from the Elector Carl Theodore of the Palatinate to travel _viâ_ Mannheim. On the 18th he arrived in the latter city, and was received with all imaginable ostentation. After visiting, on the following day, the Electoral Library, Academy of Sciences, Treasury, picture gallery, and cabinet of coins, and being presented by his host with a series of medals of the electors coined in Rhine gold, Christian continued his journey on the 28th to Hanau, in order to visit his two sisters.

After four days' stay here, the king travelled through Cassel and Brunswick, and reached Hamburg on New Year's Day, where he was received with a royal salute. On January 4 he arrived at Altona, the first city in his dominions, and was welcomed by all possible demonstrations of joy. The children of the Orphan Hospital and other charities were ranged in two lines, with wax tapers in their hands, as his Majesty passed to the palace. All the houses were illuminated, and a grand emblematical firework, inscribed _optimo regi_, was played off, which was followed by a grand masked ball. Here, too, Christian received his last heavy discharge of verse, in the shape of a panegyric, from one Madame Wildin of Glückstadt, in which the lady, with extensive view, surveys mankind from Copenhagen to London and Paris. Her account of the English is so droll that room must be made for it:--

"De près vous avez visité Ce peuple penseur et sévère, Qu'entêtent le charbon de terre Et les vapeurs de liberté: Le quakre qui ne sourit guère, Le chapeau cloué sur son front, Découvrant votre esprit profond, Sous des dehors si faits pour plaire, Aura quitté son flegme austère: Le sang, plus qu'à demi gelé Du pâle consomptionaire Tout à coup aura circulé: Vous aurez vu de près ces crises, Ces trois pouvoirs sans cesse aux prises. Le sceptre Anglais est un roseau, Souvent plié par les orages: Qu'aurez vous dit à ce tableau, Vous absolu sur vos rivages?"

From Altona the Danish monarch proceeded to Ahrensburg, and remained for two days on the estate of his marshal of the journey, Baron von Schimmelmann. After this short rest the journey was continued so hurriedly, that, on January 14, after an absence of seven months, he made his festal entry into his capital by the side of Queen Caroline Matilda, who drove out to Roeskilde to meet him. At night the whole city was illuminated, for the nation still expected a fortunate change at any moment, and would not be disabused, although their hope was constantly deceived.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 74: Brown's "Northern Courts," vol. i.]

[Footnote 75: Fredensborg, or the Palace of Peace, was built by Frederick IV., in 1720, in testimony of the pleasure which the peace of Nystadt caused him. The death of Charles XII., that unhappy king, who was possessed by the monomania rather than the genius of war, was considered a blessing throughout the north, which his warlike temper plunged into disorder and ruin.--De Flaux, "Du Danemark."]

[Footnote 76: "Authentische Aufklärungen."]

[Footnote 77: "Memoirs of an Unfortunate Queen."]

[Footnote 78: "Vie privée de Louis XV." London, 1781.]

[Footnote 79: "Mémoires de M. le Baron de Bezenval," vol. i. p. 204.]

[Footnote 80: Although Carlyle has recently thrown a doubt on this anecdote, it is too well established as an historical fact for even that writer absolutely to demolish it.]

[Footnote 81: The sources whence I have drawn the above hasty sketch of Paris in the eighteenth century are--Duclos, Mémoires Secrets--Marmontel, Mémoires--Soulavie, Mémoires de Richelieu--Soulavie, Décadence de la Monarchie Française--Madame du Hausset, Mémoires--Madame de Campan, Mémoires--Bezenval, Mémoires--Dumouriez, Mémoires--Casanova, Mémoires--Vie privée de Louis XV.--Les fastes de Louis XV.--Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XV.--Mémoires Historiques et Anecdotales de la Cour de France--Chesterfield's Letters--Mercier, Tableau de Paris--Lacretelle, Histoire de la France pendant le XVIII. Siècle--Barbier, Journal du Règne de Louis XV.]

[Footnote 82: "Denkwürdigkeiten des Barons von Gleichen," p. 49.]

[Footnote 83: "Annual Register, 1768."]

[Footnote 84: "Memoirs of an Unfortunate Queen."]

[Footnote 85: An amusing counterpart to this had occurred during Christian's stay in London. One day, when his coach drove up to the door of his residence, a fine-looking girl burst through the double line of attendants, caught the King of Denmark in her arms, and, kissing him heartily, said, "Now kill me if you please, I can die contented, since I have kissed the prettiest fellow in the world." The king, far from being offended, gently liberated himself from her embrace, and ran, laughing and skipping, up-stairs.]

[Footnote 86: Written by l'Abbé de Beau de Voisenon, and to be found in the "Almanach des Muses" for 1769.]