Part 6

It was neither of his glory, his people, or of God that Louis XV. was thinking, as he came out of Notre Dame. Madame de Châteauroux still occupied his whole attention. She lived very near the Tuileries, in the rue de Bac. That night, when all was quiet in the palace, he crossed the Pont-Royal, and arrived unattended at the favorite’s house, like a criminal who comes to entreat pardon. Madame de Châteauroux received him with arrogance, and imposed severe conditions before absolving him. Louis XV. was ready to agree to everything except the dismissal of Maurepas, a useful and agreeable minister, who worked as well as amused himself, and who had the gift of making business easy. The King then returned to the Tuileries, and presently it was rumored that the Duchesses of Châteauroux and Lauraguais were about to reappear triumphantly at court. The people, who resemble the chorus in Greek tragedies, at once resumed their anathemas. “Since the King is going to take her back,” cried the market-women, “he will never find another ‘_Pater_’ on the streets of Paris.”

The prudent Duke de Luynes was more circumspect in his speech. He said, apropos of the news of this return to favor: “It has been almost publicly spoken of all over Paris, and Versailles, where little is said ordinarily, has not been absolutely exempt from some remarks concerning it. However, as such remarks serve only to displease, and are moreover useless, those who are wisest have kept silence.”

The thing was done, the arrangement concluded. There had been a compromise between the King and his mistress. Maurepas was not to leave the ministry, but it was he who was charged to bear the King’s excuses to Madame de Châteauroux, rue de Bac, and an invitation to return to Versailles. The minister acquitted himself of this commission November 25. The Duchess, who was sick abed, replied that as soon as she was able to get up she would comply with the King’s orders. That evening she wrote to her friend the Duchess de Boufflers: “I rely too much on your friendship not to acquaint you at once with what concerns me. The King has just sent me word by M. de Maurepas, that he was very much offended by all that occurred at Metz, and the indecency with which I had been treated; that he begged me to forget it, and that, to give him a proof of my having done so, he hoped my sister and myself would have the kindness to resume our apartments at Versailles; that he would give us on all occasions tokens of his protection, his esteem, and his friendship, and that he would restore us to our positions.”

So many emotions had prostrated Madame de Châteauroux. Joy revived her for awhile, but all was over with her; she was never again to see either the palace of Versailles, so greatly longed for, or the King whose love had been so fatal to her. She never left her bed again. A burning fever consumed her; she thought herself poisoned, and suffered horrible tortures in soul and body. Her worst enemies would have pitied her. Her agony lasted eleven days. She had a violent delirium accompanied by convulsive movements, and struggled against death with all the energy of her youth, all the vehemence of her character. In spite of his pretended passion, Louis XV. did not trouble himself to come and bid her adieu. He did not even send directly to inquire about her. Madame de Lauraguais, who had just had a child, was not beside her sister’s bed. The Duchess de Châteauroux died alone, December 8, 1744. The King deserted her; Jesus Christ did not forsake her. At her last hour, she repented like Magdalen, and for the first time in years, the dying sinner knew interior peace. “Père Ségand was with her,” says the Duke de Luynes. “As he was speaking to her of the confidence we ought to have in the Blessed Virgin, she replied that she had always worn a little medal of her, and that she had begged two graces through her intercession,--not to die without the sacraments, and to die on one of her feasts. She had already obtained the first and was presently to obtain the second, for she died on the feast of the Conception.”

At first Louis XV. felt crushed. The Queen herself, who practised on so great a scale the wholly Christian virtue of forgiveness of injuries, the Queen shared sincerely in her husband’s grief. She passed in solitude the evening which had been set apart for a friendly reunion at the house of the Duchess de Luynes. During the night she became frightened, and summoned one of her women: “My God!” cried she, “that poor duchess! If she should return!... I think I see her.”--“Eh! madame,” returned the chambermaid, “if she comes back, it will not be Your Majesty that receives her first visit.”

Barbier in his journal pities, not Madame de Châteauroux, as one might imagine, but Louis XV. He says: “Judicious people praise his sensibility, which is the proof of a good character, but they fear for his health. The common herd are rather pleased than otherwise at this death; they would like to have the King unsentimental and take another one to-morrow.” The Marquis d’Argenson writes to Richelieu: “Our poor master has a look which makes one tremble for his life.” D’Argenson might reassure himself. Louis XV. was far too feeble to suffer a long sorrow. His emotions were keen but transitory. There was but one thing in his character which had any tenacity, and that was ennui. He belonged to the numerous family of egoists. Some of them weep a good deal, but console themselves quickly. Nothing was to be changed in the habits of the master. A few days more and the name of the Duchess de Châteauroux would be no more spoken. There was but one person who truly regretted her, and that was Madame de Mailly, the sister to whom she had shown herself so coldly and pitilessly cruel.

An impression of melancholy and sorrow is what remains from all this. What, in brief, was the fate of the three sisters chosen by royal caprice? One of them, the Countess de Vintimille, died in childbed at the age of twenty-eight, and her death was the direct consequence, the immediate chastisement, of her fault. Another, the Duchess de Châteauroux, breathed her last at the age of twenty-seven, the victim of excessive anguish and humiliation. Her favor, like that of Madame de Vintimille, had lasted only two years. The third, the Countess de Mailly, better treated by Providence, since she had at least time for repentance, lived until she was forty. But her last years were merely one long immolation. She covered herself with ashes; she wore a hair shirt; and if, as she was on her way to church, any passer-by recognized and called her by some insulting name, she would say: “You know me--well, then, pray for me.”

How ephemeral are the pleasures of courts! How sad its sensual enjoyments! How dearly one pays for these swift moments of illegitimate joy and false pride! Ah! I understand why Louis XV. should be dissatisfied with others and with himself. I understand his exhaustion, his discouragement, his remorse, and I am not amazed that, in spite of the clink of glasses, the glitter of chandeliers, and the perfume of flowers, the boudoirs of Versailles sometimes resembled sepulchres.

SECOND PART

[1745–1768]

I

LOUIS XV. AND THE ROYAL FAMILY IN 1745

The tragic end of the Duchess de Châteauroux should have inspired Louis XV. with some sage reflections. It was otherwise. At the end of a few weeks a new favorite installed herself in the apartment left vacant by the defunct. Before narrating the long reign of the Marquise de Pompadour, let us glance at the interior of the royal family at the moment when this woman, who was much rather a minister in petticoats than a mistress, and who unhappily personifies a whole epoch, came into favor.

In 1745 Louis XV. is thirty-five years old. From the physical point of view he is a model sovereign. His handsome face is characterized by an expression of benevolent grandeur and gentle majesty. A fine and sympathetic physiognomy, large blue eyes with an expressive and profound regard, an aquiline nose, a truly royal way of carrying his head, the most dignified attitude without the least appearance of stiffness, manners both elegant and simple, an agreeable and penetrating tone of voice, all contribute to give an exceptional charm to this king whom all France surnames the Well-Beloved. He shows extreme politeness to all who approach him, and one might say that he seems to solicit the affection of those to whom he speaks. An accomplished gentleman, he is always calm, always well-bred. He is never irritated, never raises his voice. His domestics find him the easiest of masters. One day as he is getting ready to mount on horseback, somebody fetches him two boots for the same foot. He sits down quietly and contents himself with saying: “He who made the mistake is more annoyed than I am.”[17] In general he is reserved, taciturn; he does not give himself away, but when he concludes to talk, his conversation is full of ingenious views and judicious remarks; he has wit and good sense.

In religious matters he is not a hypocrite; he belongs to that numerous class of Christians who retain both their vices and the faith. He goes to Mass every day. On Sundays and holy days he is also present at Vespers, Sermon, and Benediction. As the Marquis d’Argenson says, he “mutters his Paternosters and prayers in church with customary decency,” and he is putting off to some future time his perfect conversion. When he is urged to eat meat in Lent for the sake of his health, he answers that one ought not to sin on all sides. At another time he is heard congratulating himself on his rheumatic pains, because, says he, his sufferings are an expiation for his faults. One day when he is sending alms to a poor man, he exclaims: “Let this poor man ask God to show mercy to me, for I greatly need it.” When the feasts of the Church draw near, they occupy his mind and disturb it; when he dares not communicate, through fear of sacrilege, his soul is filled with sadness, and the flatteries of his courtiers cannot give peace to his conscience.

His remorse takes the form of ennui. Dissatisfied with himself, he often reflects that he is endangering his salvation for so-called pleasures from which he frequently gains nothing but physical and moral fatigue, which are still harder to endure. Egotism does not prevent him from yielding to disgust. As is remarked by M. Capefigue himself, great admirer as he is of royal pleasures, the capital defect of the King’s character is to allow the immense ennui which consumes him to become too evident. “He suffers the terrible chastisement imposed by satiety, that cold branding of both soul and body; he experiences the emptiness and impotence of sensuality.”

Such also is the conclusion of the Goncourts in their fine work, _Les Maîtresses de Louis XV._ “Ennui,” they say, “is the sovereign’s evil genius. It strikes with impotence all his fortunate natural endowments; it ages, disarms, extinguishes his will, it stifles his conscience as well as his kingly appetites. Ennui is the private torturer of his sluggish existence, of his heavy hours.... So true is this that the story of a king’s amours is also the story of the ennui of a man.”

The Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes fully confirm this appreciation. He says in them: “The King’s temperament is neither gay nor lively; it is even hypochondriacal. Details concerning maladies, operations, very often matters that concern anatomy, and questions about where one expects to be buried, are, unfortunately, the subjects of his ordinary conversation.” “Where would you like to be buried?” he asks M. de Souvré one day. “At Your Majesty’s feet,” replies the courtier, who is noted for his frankness. Louis XV. remains pensive, because he has just been reminded that kings are not immortal. How well these profound words of Pascal apply to Louis XV.: “It does not require a very lofty soul to understand that there is no true and solid satisfaction here below, that all our pleasures are but vanities, that our woes are infinite, and that in fine death, which threatens us every instant, must put us in a few years, and perchance in a few days, in an eternal state of happiness, or misery, or annihilation. Between us and heaven, hell or nothingness, there is, then, nothing but life, which is the most fragile of all things in the world; and heaven being certainly not for those who doubt whether their soul is immortal, they have nothing to expect but hell or nothingness. Nothing is more real than this, nor more terrible. Do all that the brave demand of us, and yet there is the end which awaits the most beautiful of lives.” Here is the secret of the King’s implacable sadness. Like all men who have but half a religion, he finds in it not consolations, but terrors. The feasts of the Church are not joys but tortures to him.

His monarchical faith is like his religious faith; it disturbs rather than reassures him. He feels himself unworthy to be the anointed of the Lord. His conscience as a king troubles him as much as his conscience as a Christian. He esteems neither himself nor those who surround him. He willingly agrees with his minister of foreign affairs, the Marquis d’Argenson, a monarchist who talks like a republican, that “Numerous and magnificent courts, the bait of fools and the wicked, will never make the splendor of royalty. There will always be display enough in decency.... Be persuaded that the greatest vice of monarchical governments is what is called the court. To begin with the monarch, it is from him that all vices are drawn, and from him that they spread as from the box of Pandora.” But do not exaggerate, do not force the note. Recollect especially that republican courts--and there are such, for democrats in power also have their courtiers--are neither more rigid nor more moral than those of kings and emperors.

It must always be remembered that a real difference exists between the royalty of Louis XIV. and that of Louis XV. Louis XIV. performed his kingly duties with the facility of a great actor playing his part, or, better, with the dignity of an officiating priest. Louis XV., on the contrary, in spite of his noble bearing and the successful beginnings of his reign, is almost ashamed of his royal dignity. He does not like what is grand; what he prefers are small apartments, little suppers, petty conversations. At times the monarch is not even a private gentleman; he is a bourgeois who makes up his own kitchen accounts, who saves candle-ends, who haggles with his domestics, who leads a mean and grovelling existence. It is not he who would have chosen the haughty device of the Sun King: _Nec pluribus impar_. The beams of the royal star dazzle his eyes. What pleases him is not the splendid glittering Gallery of Mirrors, but smart residences, little dwellings hid in verdure; Choisy for example, where, as the Duke de Luynes puts it, he is almost like a private person who takes pleasure in doing the honors of his château.

But neither let us forget that from time to time Louis XV. has inklings of greatness, dreams of glory and power. He is not the sluggard king that badly informed historians portray. Military instincts revive in him. The pride of his race awaked. “The King amidst his troops, becomingly uniformed in white or blue or jonquil, his hat placed coquettishly above his ear, the white cord, the shoulder-knot on his coat, himself starts the gay speeches, the tales of gallantry. The nobleman goes to battle in ruffles and powdered hair, with perfume on his Brussels lace handkerchief; elegance has never done harm to courage, and politeness is nobly allied to bravery.”[18]

1745 is a triumphant year, the year of Fontenoy, one of our greatest national victories. There Louis XV. and the Dauphin behave like sons of Henri IV. Voltaire’s enthusiasm when he celebrates this great day is not made to order, and the advocate Barbier is sincere in exclaiming that the reign of Louis XV. is the finest in all French history.

Nor let us believe that this monarch, over-lauded by his contemporaries but too much decried by history, is as indolent as people like to say. On the contrary, he works, and works a great deal. He not merely presides with the greatest regularity at the ministerial council, but he busies himself in a very special way with military and diplomatic affairs. If he readily agrees with what is proposed by his ministers without troubling himself to contradict them, it is because apart from official politics he has a secret policy whose springs he personally controls.[19] His intentions are good, he loves France sincerely. What then will ruin him? Two defects which are nearly always inseparable: sensuality and indecision.

Sensuality enfeebles, enervates; the man who is its victim can no longer either act or will. In the end he arrives at that commonplace benevolence, that insignificant good nature, that absence of character and energy, those inconsistencies and hesitations which rob sovereigns as well as private individuals of the very notion of just ideas and the courage of salutary resolutions. Louis XV. comes from the arms of his mistresses without force enough left to be a king.

Distrust and timidity form the basis of his character. “He knows he is badly served,” says M. Boutaric; “absolute master, he has only to speak to be obeyed, and, fortified by conscience, he can command, but he is so timid, let us say the word, so pusillanimous, that after having carefully sought the best way and seen it clearly, he nearly always decides, although with regret, for the worst which is proposed to him by his ministers or his mistresses. It is of public notoriety that when the King proposes anything in council, his opinion is always combated, and that, after making a number of objections, the prince always ends by adopting that of his counsellors, knowing, meantime, that he is doing wrong, and muttering to himself, ‘So much the worse; they would have it.’” Thus he illustrates those lines of Horace:--

“Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor.”

There are moments when, to use the expression of Duclos, he affects to regard himself as a disgraced prince of the blood without any credit at court. One day when the Queen is complaining of the opposition made to one of her recommendations by a minister, he says: “Why don’t you do as I do? I never ask anything of those people.” In spite of his omnipotence he feels himself always under the necessity of employing subterfuges and underhand expedients. According to a man who knew him well and saw him every day, Le Roy, master of the hounds, he considered dissimulation the most needful quality for a sovereign. “His hobby,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “is to be impenetrable.” Another of his defects is to consider that very honest men are generally not very able. Hence the great number of disreputable men whom he intrusts with most important positions. With such a system he is doomed to perpetual fluctuations, to that variability which is the sign of weakness. He will hesitate between peace and war, between a Prussian and an Austrian alliance, between the Parliamentarians and their enemies, between the Jesuits and the Jansenists. He has a horror of the philosophers, and he will make Voltaire a gentleman of the chamber and lodge Quesnay in an entresol of the palace of Versailles. He sincerely believes in the truth of the Catholic religion, and he will take as his mistress, counsellor, and directress the friend of the Encyclopedists. By conviction and principle he is essentially conservative, and he will be the precursor of the Revolution.

“Oh! how well the word feebleness,” exclaims D’Argenson, “expresses the passions of certain men endowed with good nature and facility. They see and approve the best and they follow the worst. Their virility is but a prolongation of childhood. Frequently they mistake the shadow of pleasure for pleasure itself. Youthfulness, childishness, self-love without pride, their acts of firmness are but obstinacy and revolt.... With this sad character a prince thinks he governs well when he simply does not govern at all. Every one deceives him, and he is the chief of his own betrayers. He has mistresses for whom he has no predilection, and absolute ministers in whom he does not confide. All the defects of which foreigners accuse Frenchmen are found in him; contrasts everywhere, the effects of a too frivolous imagination which overmasters judgment; wasted talents, good taste which nothing can satisfy, exactness in little things, inconstancy and lack of enthusiasm in great ones ...; memory without remembrance; patience and calm, promptitude and kindness, mystery and indiscretion, avidity for new pleasures, disgust and ennui, momentary sensibility succeeded by general and complete apathy ... total, a good master without humanity.”

Having thus drawn the portrait of Louis XV., D’Argenson says in speaking of the Queen: “She attracts by certain attentions, she repels by making her friendship too common. Her rank is a rallying signal and, since the King has declared mistresses, those who inveigh against scandal attach themselves to her for the sake of displeasing the King and the favorite. Their murmurs are proportioned to the royal patience.”

In 1745 Marie Leczinska, who is the King’s senior by seven years, has arrived at the age of forty-two. When her tenth child was born, July 15, 1737, Madame Louise, who was one day to become a Carmelite, some one asked the King, who already had six living children, if the little princess should be called Madame Seventh. He answered: “Madame Last.” Thenceforward the Queen was neglected. Her husband has treated her with frigid politeness, but has always kept her at a distance; he never speaks to her except before witnesses. On New Year’s day he gives her no presents. Not the least intimacy, the slightest unconstraint. The short daily visits he pays her are matters of decorum, formalities of etiquette. The Queen eats by herself. Between her apartments and those of the King there is a barrier which she never crosses. The familiar life and the cabinet suppers are not for her. Separated from each other by the Peace Salon, the Gallery of Mirrors, and the Council Chamber, each of the spouses has a life apart.