Part 7

Marie Leczinska is the only person who maintains at Versailles the ceremonious representation of the court of the great King, not through pride, but out of respect for principles. By eleven o’clock in the morning she has already heard one Mass, seen the King for an instant, received her children and the little entries; at noon the state toilette and the great entries. At one o’clock Marie Leczinska hears a second Mass. At two o’clock she dines in public,[20] served by her maid of honor and four ladies in full dress. A low balustrade separates her from a crowd, always curious to be present at this repast and to contemplate the features of a justly honored queen. Toward six in the evening she plays the game of loto then in fashion, the _Cavagnole_. When the King is present, she never sits down until he bids her do so, and ’tis a wonder if the pair exchange a few syllables. At ten the Queen withdraws, and after supper she sees a very restricted circle: the Duke and Duchess de Luynes, Mesdames de Villars and de Chevreuse, Minister Maurepas, Cardinals de Tencin and de Luynes, President Hénault, Moncrif, and sometimes old Fontenelle. On Sundays the presentation of ladies takes place. It is also the day chosen for the taking of tabourets. The ceremonies occur in the room called the Queen’s Salon,[21] contiguous to the sleeping-chamber. The sovereign’s chair is placed at the back of the room on a platform covered by a canopy.[22] “By a few words, a nod, a glance, a smile, Marie Leczinska knows how to encourage the lady presented, whose embarrassment soon yields to a gentle confidence as the Queen addresses to her one of those remarks which remain engraven in the heart.”[23]

To sum up, neglected as she is by her husband, the Queen is happier than he, because she has the great boon, the supreme good, which he has not: peace of heart. “What comparison is there,” says a great preacher, “between the frightful remorse of conscience, that hidden worm which gnaws incessantly, that sadness of crime which undermines and depresses, that weight of iniquity which crushes, that interior sword which pierces and which we cannot draw out, and the amiable sadness of penitence which works salvation?”[24] This expression “amiable sadness” is most applicable to the Queen. Doubtless she suffers profoundly at seeing Louis XV. throw himself down the declivity of scandal. But, far from recriminating, she offers her sufferings to God. Gentle and pious victim, she finds ineffable consolations at the foot of the altar. Instead of avenging herself on the King by reproaches and bitter speeches, she prays for him. Her calmness, resignation, charity, her Christian virtues, and exquisite affability, make her the object of universal veneration. She is called nothing but the Good Queen.

The Dauphin[25] is not less esteemed than his mother. In 1745 he is sixteen years old. He is a pious, well-taught, well-intentioned young man. He has made serious studies. His favorite reading is Plato, Cicero, Tacitus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, Juvenal. He knows by heart the finest passages of the philosophers and poets of antiquity. For him were made those magnificent editions of the Louvre, _Ad usum Delphini_, one of the most precious monuments of contemporary typography.

Full of respect for his father, he never speaks to him but in the tone of profound submission. He effaces himself, he holds himself in restraint. He says: “A Dauphin should employ one half his mind in concealing the other half.” Louis XV. is suspicious; it is well not to offend him.

The Dauphin marries at Versailles, February 23, 1745, an Infanta of Spain, daughter of Philip V., Marie Thérèse Antoinette Raphaelle, younger sister of that Infanta Marie Anne Victoire whom Louis XV. was to have married. The affront of sending back that princess is thus repaired. The marriage festivities are splendid; no such pomp had ever been seen. “As the King has need of money,” writes Barbier, “especially for the very considerable expenses of the Dauphin’s marriage, a great many tontines are raised.” The day that the Dauphiness arrived at Étampes, the King, who went to meet her, said: “Here is a good day’s work done.” She replied: “Sire, this is not what I dreaded most; I flattered myself you would receive me kindly. I am more afraid of to-morrow and the next day; everybody will be looking at me, and I shall perhaps find less favorable dispositions.” The new Dauphiness is not pretty, but she is sympathetic. Her amiability wins everybody. She says to Madame de Brancas that she does not understand how one can become angry, and that if any possible case arose to make it necessary, she would beg some one the day before to do so in her stead.

This marriage diverts the King, who no longer thinks of the poor Duchess de Châteauroux, who has been dead two months. Pleasures tread on each other’s heels. The court is dazzling. How superb are these Versailles festivities, the last term of elegance and luxury! What a magnificent masked ball[26] in the radiant Gallery of Mirrors, glittering sanctuary of ecstasy and apotheosis, modern Olympus which seems made for goddesses and gods! Imagine that aristocratic crowd which swarms up the Ambassadors’ Staircase, streams through the grand apartments of the King, the halls of Venus, Diana, Mars, Mercury, and Apollo, the War Salon, to be present at the fairy-like ball given in the gallery under the vaulted ceilings decorated by Lebrun’s magic brush! Fancy the animation, the tumult of good company, the harmonious orchestras, the witty or gallant conversations, the bright eyes glowing behind their masks, the colossal mirrors reflecting the richest and most varied costumes: fabulous divinities, great lords and châtelaines of the Middle Ages, Watteau’s shepherds and shepherdesses; chandeliers innumerable, pyramids of candles, baskets of flowers, a rain of diamonds and precious stones, and, to heighten still more the bewildering charm, the mysterious presence of that monarch, the handsomest man in all the kingdom, who hides his royalty under the folds of his domino!

In our civilian and democratic century we find it very difficult to get a perfect notion of such festivities. “We children of a wretched and bloody revolution,” as M. Capefigue says, “see these galleries of glass and gilding inundated with people in rough clothing, with noisy, hobnailed shoes, like a muddy torrent spreading over a parterre of tulips and variegated roses.” Let us not forget that there was chivalry and courage, carelessness and gaiety, animation and native wit, charm and elegance, in the last fortunate days of the French nobility. If the men who shone at that period should return, they would find ours mean and irksome.

The noise of battle succeeds the echoes of the orchestras. Two months and a half after this fine ball Louis XV. and his son are with the army. The King wishes that the Dauphin, although but sixteen years old, should set an example, and at Fontenoy the young man excites the admiration of old soldiers by his ardor and courage.

Louis XV. is a happy father. His son is a model of filial respect. His six daughters, Mesdames Elisabeth, Henriette, Adelaide, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, all of whom with the exception of Madame Adelaide were educated in the convent of Fontevrault, have the most religious sentiments and display profound affection for their father. Only one of them is married, the eldest, Madame Elisabeth, who espoused in 1739 the Infant Don Philip, son of the King of Spain, and with whom Louis XV. did not part without keen sorrow. In 1745 only two of his daughters, Henriette and Adelaide, are with him. The other three, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, are still at Fontevrault, and it is singular that this king, so affectionate to his children, should leave them in a convent eighty leagues from Versailles when it would be so easy to place them, if not close beside him, at least in some neighboring convent.

In order to complete this sketch of the royal family in 1745, it remains to say a few words about the Duke d’Orléans and his son, the Duke de Chartres.

Born in 1703, and widowed since 1726 of a princess of Baden, the Duke d’Orléans, only son of the regent, seldom shows himself at court. The premature death of his wife, whom he had the misfortune of losing after two years of marriage, had inspired him with extremely grave and Christian reflections. His tastes have become those of an anchorite. In 1730 he resigned his position as Colonel-general in order to be more at liberty to make very frequent retreats at the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève. In 1742 he finally renounced all political action, and quitted the Council of State in order to install himself definitively in his dear abbey, where he leads the life of a monk, between prayer and study. He has left the administration of his property to his mother, keeping for himself only an income of one million eight hundred thousand livres, which he spends almost entirely in works of charity.

’Tis a curious type this prince, so little like his father; this Christian, pious to asceticism, who sleeps on straw, drinks only water, does without fire in winter, who composes but will not print austere works, a translation of the Psalms with commentaries, part of the Old Testament and some of the Epistles of Saint Paul, a treatise against the theatre, historical and theological dissertations,--a monastic prince whom the court has inclined to the cloister, who at his death (February 4, 1752) will bequeath his library to the Dominicans, his medals to the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève, and whose funeral oration will be composed by Jean Jacques Rousseau.

His son, the Duke de Chartres, is twenty years old in 1745. A brilliant and brave young prince, who has distinguished himself as colonel at the battle of Dettingen, and as lieutenant-general at the siege of Fribourg. Married in 1743 to Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, he loves the world as much as his father dislikes it, and he will be one of the principal actors in the theatre of the little apartments.

So long as the Dauphin has no male children, it is the Orléans branch which, according to the renunciations of the treaty of Utrecht, must ascend the throne of France in case of the death of Louis XV. and his son. But on both sides of the Pyrenees the practical value of these renunciations is contested. When Louis XV. fell seriously ill before his marriage, in 1721, Philip V. made ready to reclaim the crown of France if the young King should die. When the Dauphin, who as yet has no heir, will himself be in danger of death, Madame du Hausset will write in her Memoirs: “The King would be in despair at having a prince of the blood as his recognized successor. He does not like them, and looks at them so distantly as to humiliate them. When his son recovered, he said: ‘The King of Spain would have had a good chance.’ It is claimed that he was right in this, and that it would have been justice; but that if the Duke d’Orléans had had a party, he might have claimed the throne.”

We have just outlined the portraits of the members of the royal family in 1745. We are about to study the character of the woman who, issuing from the middle classes, was to exercise a real domination over the King and all his court during twenty years.

II

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR

There are names which are the abridgment of an entire society. Such is that gay name which rhymes so well with “amour,” which seems made expressly for a _grande dame_ after the manner of Lancret or Watteau, which would fit so well a comic opera or a pastoral, which is worthy to figure in the Temple of Cnidos and to be celebrated by the pretty little verses of the Abbé de Bernis, which evokes so many souvenirs of immoral elegance and factitious sentimentality of boudoirs and alcoves, comedies and gewgaws, pleasures and intrigues: the Marquise de Pompadour. Woman, name, title, all are alike gracious, pretty, sprightly; but nothing is simple, nothing true. The character is that of a comedienne perpetually on the stage. The beauty owes a great part of its prestige to the refinements of luxury and the artifices of the toilette. The marquisate is a contraband one.

The future favorite seems predestined almost from the cradle to her part. She is a little marvel, an infant prodigy. She is only nine years old when a fortune-teller by cards predicts to her that she will be the mistress of Louis XV. This prediction delights her family; they believe in it as if it were written in the Gospels, and they decide to do all in their power to realize it. Aid yourself, and hell will aid you. She who was one day to call herself Madame the Marquise de Pompadour was then named Jeanne Antoinette Poisson. Born in Paris, December 29, 1721, she had a father who was vulgar even to indecency, François Poisson, former clerk of the Paris brothers, who was condemned to be hanged in 1726 for malversations, but rehabilitated in 1741 after several years of exile. Her mother was a Demoiselle de la Motte, daughter of the provision contractor of the Hôtel des Invalides, a very pretty woman, guilty of many infidelities to her husband, and very richly subsidized by a gallant farmer-general, M. Lenormand de Tournehem. The financier imagines, possibly with good reason, that he is the father of little Antoinette. Hence he gives her the most careful education. She is taught everything except virtue. Jéliotte teaches her singing and the harpsichord, Guibaudet dancing, Crébillon declamation. She is an actress, a musician, an accomplished singer. She imitates la Gaussin and la Clairon marvellously. She rides admirably. She dresses ravishingly. She is as pretty as Cupid. Nobody tells a story so well as she. She is pleasing, amusing, delightful. Her mother, enthusiastic over such charms, exclaims: “She is a morsel for a king!”

But how to justify the prediction of the sorceress? The place of king’s mistress is occupied by none but very great ladies: a Countess de Mailly, a Countess de Vintimille, a Duchess de Châteauroux. Can little Poisson aspire to the same rôle? If she persists in such schemes, will not people say that the keg always smells of the herring? Will the Duke de Richelieu permit a _bourgeoise_ to supplant the nobility in this fashion? Mademoiselle Poisson does not allow herself to be discouraged. She has her fixed idea. She believes in what she calls her star. Her marriage is the first rung of the ambitious ladder. March 9, 1741, she marries a rich young man, M. Lenormand d’Étioles, deputy farmer-general, nephew of M. Lenormand de Tournehem, Madame Poisson’s lover. The bride is nineteen, the husband twenty-four years old; he is madly in love, and as his wife tells him she will never betray him unless for the King, he mutters: “Then I can be very easy.”

The young wife is presently the fashion. She is the gem of that financial society which has made such headway since the latter years of Louis XIV. President Hénault writes to Madame du Deffand, July, 1742: “At Madame de Montigny’s I met one of the prettiest women I have ever seen, Madame d’Étioles. She understands music perfectly, sings with all possible gaiety and taste, knows a hundred ballads, and plays comedy at Étioles on a stage as fine as that of the Opera, with machinery and changes of scenes.”

She prepares her success skilfully. The trumpets of fame are at her disposal. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Fontenelle, the Abbé de Bernis, are her friends. At Paris, in her house in rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, and at Étioles in her château near Corbeil, she leads a life of luxury and pleasures. She is an enchantress, a siren. But she has only one desire,--to make the King the objective point of all this magic. She would scorn any other conquest.

The man she must have is Louis XV. To arrive at this conquest she will exhaust the resources of feminine coquetry. Never were manœuvres more persevering, artifices more sagacious. She has to play the enamoured woman, the passionate woman, to pursue the King when he hunts in the forest of Sénart, to pass and repass, like a graceful apparition, like the goddess of the forests, through the midst of the escort with their dogs and horses, sometimes robed in azure in a rose-colored phaeton, sometimes in rose in a phaeton of blue. One day she is on horseback; another day she drives herself, in an elegant conch shell of rock crystal, two chestnut horses swift as lightning. The King inquires the name of this elegant and pretty woman. Then he sends her some of his game. Madame d’Étioles has good hopes. The Duchess de Châteauroux is dead; she is sure of replacing her.

The masked balls given at the time of the Dauphin’s marriage are excellent opportunities to display one’s self. At the Hôtel de Ville ball the prettiest women of the bourgeoisie are grouped together on a platform hung with velvet, silk, and gold. Madame d’Étioles appears as Diana the huntress, powdered, the quiver on her shoulder, the silver arrow in her hand. For an instant she takes off her mask and pretends to let fly an arrow at the King. “Beautiful huntress,” cries the King, “the darts you discharge are fatal.” Then she resumes her mask and slips into the crowd, but dropping her lace handkerchief as she goes. Louis XV. picks it up and, sultan-like, launches it with a gallant hand at the beautiful unknown. “The handkerchief is thrown,” people mutter on all sides.

Madame d’Étioles is about, then, to reach her goal. She has no reproach to make against her husband, by whom she has had two children: a son born in 1741, who only lived six months, and a daughter, Alexandrine, born in 1743, who will live until 1754. This husband is an excellent man, gentle, affectionate, easy to live with, much in love with his wife, not at all jealous, happy and proud to be the husband of the prettiest woman in Paris. But what would you have? Madame d’Étioles has taken it into her head to be the King’s mistress. ’Tis a fantasy of a coquettish woman which she must absolutely realize.

Taking advantage of her husband’s stay in the country, and protected by one of her relatives, Bivet, valet de chambre to the Dauphin, she makes her way into the palace of Versailles and parades a romantic passion for Louis XV. She says she is menaced by M. d’Étioles’ vengeance and begs the King to shelter her. The monarch is affected and installs her mysteriously in the chamber formerly occupied by Madame de Mailly. Poor M. d’Étioles, on his return to Paris, learns what has befallen him. He faints away at the fatal tidings, and afterwards writes his wife a letter so touching that Louis XV., after reading it, cannot avoid saying: “Madame, you have a very honest husband.” In despair at first, the betrayed husband at last resigns himself. He does not try to contend with a king, and repairs philosophically to the south of France, to make an inspection into finances which is part of his official duties as deputy farmer-general.

At court there is great commotion. It seems impossible to imagine that a woman of the middle classes, _une robine_, as D’Argenson says, can replace a great lady like the Duchess de Châteauroux. The Duke de Luynes writes in his Memoirs, March 11, 1745: “All the masked balls have given occasion for talk concerning the King’s new amours, and principally of a Madame d’Étioles, who is young and pretty. It is said that for some time she is nearly always here, and that she is the King’s choice. If such is the fact, it can hardly be anything more than a case of gallantry, and not of mistress.”

Louis XV., who is fond of mystery, amuses himself at first by being discreet. He conceals his new favorite. “It is not known where she is lodged,” writes the Duke de Luynes, April 23, 1745, “but, nevertheless, I think it is in a little apartment that Madame de Mailly had, and which adjoins the little cabinets; she does not live here all the time, but comes and goes to Paris.”

A few days later, May 5, 1745, the King sets off for the army with the Dauphin. But Madame d’Étioles has the good sense not to rejoin him there. Nor does she remain at Versailles, but withdraws to her château of Étioles, near Corbeil, where Voltaire and the Abbé de Bernis keep her company. Louis XV., much more occupied with his new mistress than with the war, writes her letter upon letter. The Abbé de Bernis counsels the favorite who, with such a secretary, cannot fail to reply to her royal lover in the most charming and gallantly turned epistles. We read in the Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes (June 19, 1745): “Madame d’Étioles is still in the country, near Paris, and has never wanted to go to Flanders. The King is more in love than ever; he writes and sends couriers to her at every moment.”

All France uttered a cry of enthusiasm on learning the victory of Fontenoy (May 11, 1745). But could one believe it? The person first felicitated by Voltaire on account of that glorious day was neither Louis XV. nor Marshal de Saxe, but Madame d’Étioles. Before writing his poem on Fontenoy, the obsequious poet addressed the favorite in these stanzas:--

“Quand César, ce héros charmant, Dont tout Rome fut idolâtre, Gagnait quelque combat brillant, On en faisait son compliment À la divine Cléopâtre.

“Quant Louis, ce héros charmant, Dont tout Paris fait son idole, Gagne quelque combat brillant, On doit en faire compliment À la divine d’Étiole.”[27]

France, always maddened by success, is in a real delirium. The Parliament of Paris sends a deputation to Lille to felicitate the King on his victory and entreat him “so far as may be, not to expose in future his sacred person, on which the welfare and safety of the State depend.” All the supreme courts of the kingdom imitate that of Paris, and the first president of the court of taxes exclaims in his address to the King: “Your Majesty’s conquests are so rapid that the point is how to safeguard the faith of our descendants and lessen the wonder of miracles, lest heroes should dispense themselves from following, and people from believing, in them.” But the conquest which chiefly preoccupies Louis XV. is that of his new mistress.

In July, 1745, she proudly displays eighty amorous epistles from the gallant sovereign; the motto on the seal is: _Discreet and faithful_; one of them is addressed: _À la Marquise de Pompadour_, and contains the brevet conferring this title. The new marquise instantly discards the name of Étioles, leaves off her husband’s arms, substitutes three towers in their place, and puts her servants in grand livery. This marquisate enchants Voltaire; he has become the official poet, courtier, and familiar of the favorite, and his complaisant muse thus celebrates the official accession of the new royal mistress:--

“Il sait aimer, il sait combattre; Il envoie en ce beau séjour Un brevet digne d’Henri quatre, Signé: Louis, Mars et l’Amour. Mais les ennemis out leur tour, Et sa valeur et sa prudence Donnent à Gand, le même jour, Un brevet de ville de France. Ces deux brevets, si bien venus, Vivront tous deux dans la mémoire. Chez lui, les autels de Vénus Sont dans le temple de la Gloire.”[28]

The democrats, perhaps, are in a trifle too much of a hurry to erect a statue to Voltaire.

III

THE NEW MARQUISE