Chapter 10

The Dauphin was standing. In a few moments he was apprized that the King had awaked. The tears that he had restrained now rolled from his eyes; he turned round at the news, but said nothing, remaining stock still. His three attendants proposed to him once or twice that he should go to the King. He neither spoke nor stirred. I approached and made signs to him to go, then softly spoke to the same effect. Seeing that he still remained speechless and motionless, I made bold to take his arm, representing to him that sooner or later he must see the King, who expected him, and assuredly with the desire to see and embrace him. He cast upon me a look that pierced my soul and went away. I followed him some few steps and then withdrew to recover breath. I never saw him again. May I, by the mercy of God, see him eternally where God's goodness doubtless has placed him!

The Dauphin reached the chamber of the King, full just then of company. As soon as he appeared the King called him and embraced him tenderly again and again. These first moments, so touching, passed in words broken by sobs and tears. Shortly afterward the King, looking at the Dauphin, was terrified by the same things that had previously struck me with affright. Everybody around was so also, the doctors more than the others. The King ordered them to feel his pulse, that they found bad, so they said afterward; for the time they contented themselves with saying that it was not regular, and that the Dauphin would do wisely to go to bed. The King embraced him again, recommended him very tenderly to take care of himself, and ordered him to go to bed. He obeyed and rose no more!

It was now late in the morning. The King had passed a cruel night and had a bad headache; he saw at his dinner the few courtiers who presented themselves, and then after dinner went to the Dauphin. The fever had augmented, the pulse was worse than before. The King passed into the apartment of Madame de Maintenon, and the Dauphin was left with attendants and his doctors. He spent the day in prayers and holy reading.

On the morrow, Sunday, the uneasiness felt on account of the Dauphin augmented. He himself did not conceal his belief that he would never rise again, and that the plot Pondin had warned him of had been executed. He explained himself to this effect more than once and always with a disdain of earthly grandeur and an incomparable submission and love of God. It is impossible to describe the general consternation. On Monday the 15th the King was bled. The Dauphin was no better than before. The King and Madame de Maintenon saw him separately several times during the day, which was passed in prayers and reading.

On Tuesday, the 16th, the Dauphin was worse. He felt himself devoured by a consuming fire, which the external fever did not seem to justify, but the pulse was very extraordinary and exceedingly menacing. This was a deceptive day. The marks in the Dauphin's face extended all over the body. They were regarded as the marks of measles. Hope arose thereon, but the doctors and the most clear-sighted of the court could not forget that these same marks had shown themselves on the body of the Dauphine, a fact unknown out of her chamber until after death.

On Wednesday, the 17th, the malady considerably increased. I had news at all times of the Dauphin's state from Cheverney, an excellent apothecary of the King and of my family. He hid nothing from us. He had told us what he thought of the Dauphine's illness; he told us now what he thought of the Dauphin's. I no longer hoped therefore, or rather I hoped to the end against all hope.

On Wednesday the pains increased. They were like a devouring fire, but more violent than ever. Very late into the evening the Dauphin sent to the King for permission to receive the communion early the next morning and without display at the mass performed in his chamber. Nobody heard of this that evening; it was not known until the following morning. I was in extreme desolation. I scarcely saw the King once a day. I did nothing but go in quest of news several times a day, and to the house of M. de Chevreuse, where I was completely free. M. de Chevreuse--always calm, always sanguine--endeavored to prove to us by his medical reasonings that there was more reason to hope than to fear; but he did so with a tranquillity that roused my impatience. I returned home to pass a cruel night.

On Thursday morning, the 18th February, I learned that the Dauphin, who had waited for midnight with impatience, had heard mass immediately after the communion, had passed two hours in devout communication with God, and that his reason then became embarrassed. Madame de Saint-Simon told me afterward that he had received extreme unction; in fine that he had died at half-past eight.

These memoirs are not written to describe my private sentiments. But in reading them--if long after me they shall ever appear--my state and that of Madame de Saint-Simon will only too keenly be felt. I will content myself with saying that the first days after the Dauphin's death scarcely appeared to us more than moments; that I wished to quit all, to withdraw from the court and the world, and that I was only hindered by the wisdom, conduct and power over me of Madame de Saint-Simon, who yet had some trouble to subdue my sorrowful desire.

II

THE PUBLIC WATCHING THE KING AND MADAME[35]

The King wished to show the court all the maneuvers of war; the siege of Compiègne was therefore undertaken, according to due form, with lines, trenches, batteries, mines, etc. On Saturday, the 13th of September, the assault took place. To witness it, the King, Madame de Maintenon,[36] all the ladies of the court, and a number of gentlemen, stationed themselves upon an old rampart, from which the plain and all the disposition of the troops could be seen. I was in the half-circle very close to the King. It was the most beautiful sight that can be imagined to see all that army, and the prodigious number of spectators on horse and foot, and that game of attack and defense so cleverly conducted.

[Footnote 35: From the "Memoirs."]

But a spectacle of another sort--that I could paint forty years hence as well as to-day, so strongly did it strike me--was that which from the summit of this rampart the King gave to all his army, and to the innumerable crowd of spectators of all kinds in the plain below. Madame de Maintenon faced the plain and the troops in her sedan-chair, alone, between its three windows drawn up; her porters having retired to a distance. On the left pole in front sat Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne; and on the same side, in a semicircle, standing, were Madame la Duchesse, Madame la Princesse de Conti, and all the ladies--and behind them again, many men. At the right window was the King, standing, and a little in the rear a semicircle of the most distinguished men of the court. The King was nearly always uncovered; and every now and then stooped to speak to Madame de Maintenon, and explain to her what she saw, and the reason of each movement.

[Footnote 36: At the period of which Saint-Simon here writes, Madame de Maintenon had acquired that ascendency over Louis XIV which resulted in her marriage to him. She had been born in a prison, and was three years the senior of the King. Her first husband was the poet Scarron, at whose death, after a marriage of nine years, she had found herself in poverty. She secured a pension from Anne of Austria, the mother of the King, but at the queen-mother's death the pension was discontinued. She was placed in charge of the King's natural son, to whom she became much devoted, and was advanced through the King's favor to various positions at court, receiving in 1678 the title of marquise. Five years later the queen of Louis XIV died, and Louis married Madame de Maintenon, whose influence over him in matters of church and state became thereafter very great. She was a patroness of art and literature, intensely orthodox in religion, and has been held largely responsible for the King's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which occurred during the year of their marriage, tho she opposed the violent persecutions which followed.]

Each time that he did so she was obliging enough to open the window four or five inches, but never half-way; for I noticed particularly, and I admit that I was more attentive to this spectacle than to that of the troops. Sometimes she opened of her own accord to ask some question of him: but generally it was he who, without waiting for her, stooped down to instruct her of what was passing; and sometimes, if she did not notice him, he tapped at the glass to make her open it. He never spoke save to her, except when he gave a few brief orders, or just answered Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne, who wanted to make him speak, and with whom Madame de Maintenon carried on a conversation by signs, without opening the front window, through which the young princess screamed to her from time to time. I watched the countenance of every one carefully: all exprest surprize, tempered with prudence, and shame that was, as it were, ashamed of itself; every one behind the chair and in the semicircle watched this scene more than what was going on in the army. The King often put his hat on the top of the chair in order to get his head in to speak; and this continual exercise tired his loins very much. Monseigneur was on horseback in the plain with the young princes. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon, and the weather was as brilliant as could be desired.

Opposite the sedan-chair was an opening with some steps cut through the wall, and communicating with the plain below. It had been made for the purpose of fetching orders from the King, should they be necessary. The case happened. Crenan, who commanded, sent Conillac, an officer in one of the defending regiments, to ask for some instructions from the King. Conillac had been stationed at the foot of the rampart, where what was passing above could not be seen. He mounted the steps; and as soon as his head and shoulders were at the top, caught sight of the chair, the King, and all the assembled company. He was not prepared for such a scene; and it struck him with such astonishment that he stopt short, with mouth and eyes wide open--surprize painted upon every feature. I see him now as distinctly as I did then. The King, as well as the rest of the company, remarked the agitation of Conillac, and said to him with emotion, "Well, Conillac! come up." Conillac remained motionless, and the King continued, "Come up. What is the matter?" Conillac, thus addrest, finished his ascent, and came toward the King with slow and trembling steps, rolling his eyes from right to left like one deranged. Then he stammered something, but in a tone so low that it could not be heard. "What do you say?" cried the King. "Speak up." But Conillac was unable; and the King, finding he could get nothing out of him, told him to go away. He did not need to be told twice, but disappeared at once. As soon as he was gone, the King looking round said, "I don't know what is the matter with Conillac. He has lost his wits: he did not remember what he had to say to me." No one answered.

Toward the moment of the capitulation, Madame de Maintenon apparently asked permission to go away; for the King cried, "The chairmen of madame!" They came and took her away; in less than a quarter of an hour afterward the King retired also, and nearly everybody else. There was much interchange of glances, nudging with elbows, and then whisperings in the ear. Everybody was full of what had taken place on the ramparts between the King and Madame de Maintenon. Even the soldiers asked what meant that sedan-chair, and the King every moment stooping to put his head inside of it. It became necessary gently to silence these questions of the troops. What effect this sight had upon foreigners present, and what they said of it, may be imagined. All over Europe it was as much talked of as the camp of Compiègne itself, with all its pomp and prodigious splendor.

BARON DE MONTESQUIEU

Born near Bordeaux in 1689, died in Paris in 1755; studied law and became a councilor in 1716; president of the Bordeaux Parliament; devoted himself to a study of literature and jurisprudence; published "Persian Letters" in 1721, which secured him an election to the Academy in 1728; traveled in Austria, Italy, Germany, Holland and England; published "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans" in 1734, and "Spirit of the Laws" in 1748.[37]

I

OF THE CAUSES WHICH DESTROYED ROME[38]

While the sovereignty of Rome was confined to Italy, it was easy for the commonwealth to subsist: every soldier was at the same time a citizen; every Consul raised an army, and other citizens marched into the field under his successor: as their forces were not very numerous, such persons only were received among the troops as had possessions considerable enough to make them interested in the preservation of the city; the Senate kept a watchful eye over the conduct of the generals, and did not give them an opportunity of machinating anything to the prejudice of their country.

[Footnote 37: Montesquieu is declared by Mr. Saintsbury to deserve the title of "the greatest man of letters of the French eighteenth century." He places him above Voltaire because "of his far greater originality and depth of thought."]

[Footnote 38: From the "Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans," of which an English translation was issued as early as 1751.]

But after the legions had passed the Alps and crossed the sea, the soldiers whom the Romans had been obliged to leave during several campaigns in the countries they were subduing, lost insensibly that genius and turn of mind which characterized a Roman citizen; and the generals having armies and kingdoms at their disposal were sensible of their own strength, and would no longer obey.

The soldiers therefore began to acknowledge no superior but their general; to found their hopes on him only, and to view the city as from a great distance: they were no longer the soldiers of the republic, but of Sulla, of Marius, of Pompey, and of Cæsar. The Romans could no longer tell whether the person who headed an army in a province was their general or their enemy.

So long as the people of Rome were corrupted by their tribunes only, on whom they could bestow nothing but their power, the Senate could easily defend themselves, because they acted consistently and with one regular tenor, whereas the common people were continually shifting from the extremes of fury to the extremes of cowardice; but when they were enabled to invest their favorites with a formidable exterior authority, the whole wisdom of the Senate was baffled, and the commonwealth was undone.

The reason why free states are not so permanent as other forms of government is because the misfortunes and successes which happen to them generally occasion the loss of liberty; whereas the successes and misfortunes of an arbitrary government contribute equally to the enslaving of the people. A wise republic ought not to run any hazard which may expose it to good or ill fortune; the only happiness the several individuals of it should aspire after is to give perpetuity to their state.

If the unbounded extent of the Roman empire proved the ruin of the republic, the vast compass of the city was no less fatal to it.

The Romans had subdued the whole universe by the assistance of the nations of Italy, on whom they had bestowed various privileges at different times. Most of those nations did not at first set any great value on the freedom of the city of Rome, and some chose rather to preserve their ancient usages; but when this privilege became that of universal sovereignty--when a man who was not a Roman citizen was considered as nothing, and with this title was everything--the people of Italy resolved either to be Romans or die: not being able to obtain this by cabals and entreaties, they had recourse to arms; and rising in all that part of Italy opposite to the Ionian sea, the rest of the allies were going to follow their example. Rome, being now forced to combat against those who were, if I may be allowed the figure, the hands with which they shackled the universe, was upon the brink of ruin; the Romans were going to be confined merely to their walls: they therefore granted this so much wished-for privilege to the allies who had not yet been wanting in fidelity; and they indulged it, by insensible degrees, to all other nations.

But now Rome was no longer that city the inhabitants of which had breathed one and the same spirit, the same love for liberty, the same hatred of tyranny; a city in which a jealousy of the power of the Senate and of the prerogatives of the great (ever accompanied with respect) was only a love of equality. The nations of Italy being made citizens of Rome, every city brought thither its genius, its particular interests, and its dependence on some mighty protector: Rome, being now rent and divided, no longer formed one entire body, and men were no longer citizens of it but in a kind of fictitious way; as there were no longer the same magistrates, the same walls, the same gods, the same temples, the same burying-places, Rome was no longer beheld with the same eyes; the citizens were no longer fired with the same love for their country, and the Roman sentiments were obliterated.

Cities and nations were now invited to Rome by the ambitious, to disconcert the suffrages, or influence them in their own favor; the public assemblies were so many conspiracies against the state, and a tumultuous crowd of seditious wretches was dignified with the title of Comitia. The authority of the people and their laws--nay, that people themselves--were no more than so many chimeras; and so universal was the anarchy of those times that it was not possible to determine whether the people had made a law or not.

Authors enlarge very copiously on the divisions which proved the destruction of Rome; but their readers seldom discover those divisions to have been always necessary and inevitable. The grandeur of the republic was the only source of that calamity, and exasperated popular tumults into civil wars. Dissensions were not to be prevented; and those martial spirits which were so fierce and formidable abroad could not be habituated to any considerable moderation at home. Those who expect in a free state to see the people undaunted in war and pusillanimous in peace, are certainly desirous of impossibilities; and it may be advanced as a general rule that whenever a perfect calm is visible, in a state that calls itself a republic, the spirit of liberty no longer subsists.

Union, in a body politic, is a very equivocal term: true union is such a harmony as makes all the particular parts, as opposite as they may seem to us, concur to the general welfare of the society, in the same manner as discords in music contribute to the general melody of sound. Union may prevail in a state full of seeming commotions; or in other words, there may be a harmony from whence results prosperity, which alone is true peace; and may be considered in the same view as the various parts of this universe, which are eternally connected by the action of some and the reaction of others.

In a despotic state, indeed, which is every government where the power is immoderately exerted, a real division is perpetually kindled. The peasant, the soldier, the merchant, the magistrate, and the grandee, have no other conjunction than what arises from the ability of the one to oppress the other without resistance; and if at any time a union happens to be introduced, citizens are not then united, but dead bodies are laid in the grave contiguous to each other.

It must be acknowledged that the Roman laws were too weak to govern the republic; but experience has proved it to be an invariable fact that good laws, which raise the reputation and power of a small republic, become incommodious to it when once its grandeur is established, because it was their natural effect to make a great people but not to govern them.

The difference is very considerable between good laws and those which may be called convenient; between such laws as give a people dominion over others, and such as continue them in the possession of power when they have once acquired it.

There is at this time a republic in the world (the Canton of Berne), of which few persons have any knowledge, and which, by plans accomplished in silence and secrecy, is daily enlarging its power. And certain it is that if it ever rises to that height of grandeur for which it seems preordained by its wisdom, it must inevitably change its laws; and the necessary innovations will not be effected by any legislator, but must spring from corruption itself.

Rome was founded for grandeur, and her laws had an admirable tendency to bestow it; for which reason, in all the variations of her government, whether monarchy, aristocracy, or popular, she constantly engaged in enterprises which required conduct to accomplish them, and always succeeded. The experience of a day did not furnish her with more wisdom than all other nations, but she obtained it by a long succession of events. She sustained a small, a moderate, and an immense fortune with the same superiority, derived true welfare from the whole train of her prosperities, and refined every instance of calamity into beneficial instructions.

She lost her liberty because she completed her work too soon.

II

OF THE RELATION OF LAWS TO DIFFERENT HUMAN BEINGS[39]

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws; the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

[Footnote 39: From "The Spirit of Laws." The translation of Thomas Nugent was published in 1756.]

They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?

There is, then, a primitive reason; and laws are the relations subsisting between it and different beings, and the relations of these to one another.

God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves them. He acts according to these rules, because He knows them; He knows them, because He made them; and He made them, because they are relative to His wisdom and power.

Since we observe that the world, tho formed by the motion of matter, and void of understanding, subsists through so long a succession of ages, its motions must certainly be directed by invariable laws; and could we imagine another world, it must also have constant rules, or it would inevitably perish.

Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary net, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without these rules, since without them it could not subsist.

These rules are a fixt and variable relation. In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.