The court of Louis XV E-Book

Imbert de Saint-Amand

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

France, which insulted the memory of the heroic old man, was on its knees before a child. September 12, an enormous crowd was surging around the palace of the Parliament in Paris. Little Louis XV. alighted from his carriage amidst acclamations, and formally entered the palace. He took off his hat, and then, replacing it on his head, said graciously: “Gentlemen, I have come here to assure you of my affection. Monsieur the Chancellor will acquaint you with my will.” And the first president responded: “We are all eager to contemplate you upon your bed of justice like the image of God on earth.”
“Princes are badly brought up,” says the Marquis d’Argenson. “Nothing flatters and nothing corrects them.” Ought not one to be indulgent toward a prince to whom his governor, Marshal Villeray, kept repeating on the balcony of the Tuileries: “Look, master, look at these people; well! they are all yours, they all belong to you.” The regent said to the little monarch: “I am here only to render you my accounts, to offer matters for your consideration, to receive and execute your orders.” The child thought himself a man already.

Leseprobe

THE COURT OF LOUIS XV.

BY

IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND

TRANSLATED BY

ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385745967

THE COURT OF LOUIS XV.

INTRODUCTION

If you want romance, said M. Guizot one day, why not turn to history? The great author was right. The historical novel is out of fashion at present. People are tired of seeing celebrated people misrepresented, and they agree with Boileau that

“Nothing is so beautiful as the true, the true alone is lovely.”

Are there, in fact, any inventions more striking than reality? Can any novelist, however ingenious, find more varied combinations or more interesting scenes than the dramas of history? Could the most fertile mind imagine any types so curious as, for example, the women of the court of Louis XV.? The eternal womanly, as Goethe said, is all there with its vices and virtues, its pettiness and its grandeur, its weakness and its strength, its egotism and its devotion. What an instructive gallery! What diverse figures, from such a saint as Madame Louise of France, the Carmelite, to Madame Dubarry, the courtesan! In the Countess de Mailly, we have the modest favorite; in the Duchess de Châteauroux, the haughty favorite; in the Marquise de Pompadour, the intriguer, the female minister, the statesman; in Queen Marie Leczinska, the model of conjugal duty and fidelity; in the Dauphiness Marie Antoinette, the resplendent image of grace and youth, of poesy and purity; in the six daughters of the King, Madame the Infanta, so tender toward her father; Madame Henriette, her twin sister, who died of chagrin at twenty-four because she could not marry according to her inclination; Madame Adelaide and Madame Victoire, inseparable in adversity as well as in happier days; Madame Sophie, gentle and timid; Madame Louise, Amazon and Carmelite by turns, who cried in the delirium of her last agony: “To Paradise, quick, quick, to Paradise at full gallop!”

History is the resurrection of the dead, but this resurrection is not an easy matter. To withdraw one’s self from the present in order to live in the past, to display characters, to make audible the words of all these personages who are sleeping their last sleep, to rekindle so many extinct flames, evoke so many vanished shades, is a work that would need the wand of a magician. History interests and impassions only when it penetrates the secret of souls. To make it a painting, in animated tones and warm colors, and not an insignificant monochrome, it is necessary that men and things should reappear as in a mirror that reflects the past.

The preservation of the palace where they passed their existence facilitates the renascence of the women of the court of Louis XV. It is something to be able to say: Here such an event was accomplished, such a remark uttered. Here such a personage rendered her last sigh. The sight of the rooms where so many dramas were unfolded is in itself a fruitful lesson. The theatre remains; the decorations are hardly changed. But this is not all. The dust must be shaken from the costumes; the actors and actresses must be hunted up; the play must begin anew.

There is no lack of materials for this work of reconstruction; they are even rather too abundant: memoirs by Duclos, Marais, Barbier, the Duke de Luynes, Maurepas, Villars, the Marquis d’Argenson, President Hénault, Madame du Hausset, Count de Ségur, Weber, Madame Campan;—histories by Voltaire, M. Henri Martin, Michelet, Jobez;—works by the brothers Goncourt, Sainte-Beuve, M. de Lescure, the Countess d’Armaillé, Boutaric, Honoré Bonhomme, Campardon, Capefigue, Le Roi, Barthélemy;—collections by M. Feuillet de Conches and M. d’Arneth;—the secret correspondence of Louis XV. with his secret diplomatic corps, that of Count Mercy-Argenteau with the Empress Maria Theresa, new editions of ancient books, autographs, recent publications—one is embarrassed by such a mass of riches. Not days, but months and years, are needed to become well acquainted with all these treasures. But life is so short and so preoccupied with affairs that the public, with few exceptions, has neither time nor inclination to study so many volumes. Is it not a critic’s business to spare his readers minute researches, to guide them through the labyrinth, to condense long works, to bring out saliently the most characteristic passages; in a word, to facilitate study and popularize history while scrupulously respecting truth? This is what we shall try to do for Louis XV. and the women of his court.

This much-decried monarch is one of those wavering, inconsequent, bizarre types of whom so many are found in our world of contradictions and miseries. Alas! who has not something of Louis XV. in his own soul? To see the good and do the evil; to believe and not to practise; to vainly seek a remedy for ennui in sensual pleasure; to act against conscience and know self-condemnation, but not amendment; to be dissatisfied with one’s actions and lack strength for true repentance,—is not this the common lot? How many honest citizens are mere repetitions of Louis XV., lacking his crown! They show respect for their wives and affection for their children. They blame free thinkers severely. They speak respectfully of religion. And at the same time they do not observe the maxims of morality which they preach; they keep mistresses, they are guilty of shameful debaucheries. Their life is a series of incongruities; they know neither what they are nor what they desire. Such was Louis XV. His religion was not hypocrisy. His attempts at conversion came to nothing, but they issued from the depths of his troubled conscience. He remained in the mire, but he dreamed of the light. Let us not be pitiless then. Is it graceful in demagogues to display such severity toward kings? Is there more morality under the red liberty caps than above the red-heeled slippers? Louis XV. was not a faithful husband, but he had a great veneration for his wife and a profound affection for his children. In spite of unpardonable scandals he was not so odious a character as he has been painted. Weakness is the word that best characterizes him, not malignity.

Take his favorites from the sovereign, and he might be not simply a worthy man, but a great king. He is intelligent and kindly. His people adore him. Fortune has crowned him. Voltaire goes into ecstasies over the glories of this reign, which the advocate Barbier declares to be the finest epoch in the entire history of France. What compromises, what ruins all this? The great enemy, voluptuousness.

Oh! how swift, how slippery, is the descent into vice! How one fault entails another! During several years (1725–1733) Louis XV. is a model husband. Then he mysteriously commits a first infidelity; afterwards he stops at nothing. He is timid at first; he hides himself, but by degrees he becomes bolder. He declares himself at first with the Countess de Mailly; afterwards with her sister, the Countess de Vintimille; however, he still maintains some restraint. Louis XV. is stingy with the State funds; his old preceptor, Cardinal Fleury, retains some influence over him. But Fleury dies (1743); the King has a mentor no longer; he emancipates himself; the scandal gains strength and is triumphant in the person of a third sister, the Duchess of Châteauroux. Heaven, nevertheless, sends the monarch some severe lessons; Madame de Vintimille had died in childbirth (1741); the King himself came near dying at Metz; the Duchess of Châteauroux dies of chagrin and other emotions at the close of 1744. People think Louis XV. is about to change his ways. ’Tis an error: here comes the minister in petticoats, the Marquise de Pompadour, a queen of the left hand. She, to use Voltaire’s expression, is a sort of grisette made for the opera or the seraglio, who tries to amuse this bored monarch by diversions still more preposterous than his dulness. She dies at the task, and Louis XV. has not even a tear for her. As Rochefoucauld has said: “If a man thinks he loves his mistress for love of her, he is much mistaken.” Louis XV. is growing old. The Queen dies in 1768. He regrets her, and people fancy that at last he is going to follow the wise advice of his surgeon, and not merely rein his horses up, but take them out of the traces. They are reckoning without the woman who is about to bring the slang of Billingsgate to Versailles. After great ladies the great citizeness; after her the woman of the people; the De Nesle sisters are followed by Madame de Pompadour; Madame de Pompadour by Dubarry; Dubarry, the “portiere of the Revolution.”

One thing strikes me in this series of royal mistresses; I see debauchery everywhere, but nowhere love. Love with its refinements, its disinterestedness, its spirit of sacrifice, its mysticism, its poetry—where is it? I perceive not even the least shadow of it. Ah! how right was Rochefoucauld in saying: “It is the same thing with true love as with the apparition of ghosts; everybody talks about, but very few have seen it.” Voluptuousness, on the other hand, is shameless in its cynicism, and when I contemplate this wretched King whom it degrades and corrupts and weakens, who is wearied and complains and is sad unto death, I recall a page from one of the most eloquent of men: “The intoxication once past, there remains in the soul a doleful astonishment, a bitterly experienced void. It may be filled by new agitations; but it is reproduced again vaster than before, and this painful alternation between extreme joys and profound depression, between flashes of happiness and the impossibility of being happy, begets at last a state of continual sadness.... Say no longer to the man attacked by it: See what a fine day! Say no more: Listen to this sweet music! Do not even say: I love you! Light, harmony, love, all that is good and charming can do no more than irritate his secret wound. He is doomed to the Manes, and everything appears to him as if he were in a sepulchre, stifling for want of air and crushed by the weight of marble.... There comes a moment when all the man’s satiated powers give him an invincible certainty of the nothingness of the universe. Once a fleeting smile was all the despairing man needed to open limitless perspectives before him; now the adoration of the world would not affect him. He estimates it at its true value: nothing.”[1]

Is not the profound sadness of Louis XV. a moral lesson as striking as any instruction from the preachers? Here is a sovereign privileged by destiny, handsome, powerful, victorious, surrounded by general admiration, possessor of the first throne of the universe, loved almost to idolatry by his people, having a tender and devoted wife, good and respectful children, soldiers who long to die bravely in his service to the cry of, “Long live the King!” He dwells in splendid palaces; when he pleases, he shakes off the yoke of etiquette and lives like a private gentleman in little residences which are masterpieces of grace and good taste; every one seeks to divine his wishes, his caprices; all the arts are pressed into the service of making life agreeable to him; all pleasures, all elegancies, conspire to charm and entertain him. His health is robust; boon-companion, bold horseman, indefatigable huntsman and lover, he enjoys every pleasure at his will. Well, he is plunged into the depths of ill-humor, the most dismal melancholy, and the sentiment he inspires in those who observe him closely—as every memoir of the time attests—is not envy, but pity.

What conclusion can one draw from this except that neither the dazzle of riches, the prestige of pride, the fumes of incense, the caresses of flattery, the false joys of sensual pleasure, nor the intoxications of power can make man happy! He thirsts in the middle of the fountain; he finds thorns in the crown of roses that encircles his forehead, and a gnawing worm creeps, like Cleopatra’s asp, into the odorous flowers whose perfume he inhales. The lamps of the festival grow dim, the boudoirs look like tombs, and suddenly the Manes, Tekel, Phares, appears in flaming letters on the portals of gold and marble. O King, expect neither truce to thy woes nor distraction from thine ennui, that implacable companion of thy grandeur! Thou art thine own enemy, and all will betray thee, because thou art not reconciled with thyself. Most Christian King, son of Saint Louis, thou dost suffer, and oughtest to suffer, for thou canst neither seat thyself tranquilly upon the throne nor kneel before the altar!

The end of this existence was dismal. Count de Ségur relates that as Louis XV. was going to the chase he met a funeral and approached the coffin. As he liked to ask questions, he inquired who was to be buried. They told him it was a young girl who had died of small-pox. Seized with sudden terror, he returned to his palace of Versailles and was almost instantly attacked by the cruel malady whose very name had turned him pale. Gangrene invaded the body of the voluptuous monarch. People fled from him with terror as if he were plague-stricken. His daughters alone, his daughters, models of courage and devotion, braved the contagion and would not leave his death-bed.

Study history seriously. You fancy you will encounter scandal, but you will find edification. Corrupt epochs are perhaps more fruitful in great lessons than austere ones. It is not virtue, but vice, which cries to us: Vanity, all is vanity. It is the guilty women, the royal mistresses, who issue from their tombs and, striking their breasts, accuse themselves in presence of posterity. These beauties who appear for an instant on the scene and then vanish like shadows, these unhappy favorites who wither in a day like the grass of the field, these wretched victims of caprice and voluptuousness, all speak to us like the sinful woman of the Gospel, and history is thus morality in action.

FIRST PART

[1715–1744]

I

THE INFANTA MARIE ANNE VICTOIRE, BETROTHED OF LOUIS XV.

When Louis XIV. gave up the ghost, Versailles also seemed to die. No one ventured to dwell in the palace of the Sun King. During seven years it was abandoned. September 9, 1715, at the very moment when Louis XV., then five and a half years old, was returning to Vincennes, the body of him who had been Louis XIV. was carried to its last abode, at Saint-Denis. The people danced, sang, drank, and gave themselves up to a scandalous joy. The following epigram got into circulation:—

“Non, Louis n’était pas si dur qu’il le parut,

Et son trépas le justifie,

Puisque, aussi bien que le Messie,

Il est mort pour notre salut.”[2]

Such is the gratitude of peoples! This is what remains of so many flatteries, so much incense! Sic transit gloria mundi.

France, which insulted the memory of the heroic old man, was on its knees before a child. September 12, an enormous crowd was surging around the palace of the Parliament in Paris. Little Louis XV. alighted from his carriage amidst acclamations, and formally entered the palace. He took off his hat, and then, replacing it on his head, said graciously: “Gentlemen, I have come here to assure you of my affection. Monsieur the Chancellor will acquaint you with my will.” And the first president responded: “We are all eager to contemplate you upon your bed of justice like the image of God on earth.”

“Princes are badly brought up,” says the Marquis d’Argenson. “Nothing flatters and nothing corrects them.” Ought not one to be indulgent toward a prince to whom his governor, Marshal Villeray, kept repeating on the balcony of the Tuileries: “Look, master, look at these people; well! they are all yours, they all belong to you.” The regent said to the little monarch: “I am here only to render you my accounts, to offer matters for your consideration, to receive and execute your orders.” The child thought himself a man already.

In 1721 they affianced him to the Infanta Marie Anne Victoire, daughter of Philip V., King of Spain. Louis XV. was not yet eleven years old; the Infanta was only three. They had all the difficulty in the world to induce the monarch to say the necessary yes. His little betrothed arrived in Paris the following year (March 22, 1722). Louis XV. went to meet her at Montrouge. All along the route the houses were decked with hangings and adorned with flowers and foliage. The next day the gazettes informed the public that the Queen—so they called the Infanta—had received from the King a doll worth twenty thousand livres. Three months later (June, 1722), Louis XV. and his betrothed established themselves at Versailles, which again became the political capital of France. The King took possession of the bedchamber of Louis XIV.,[3] which he used until 1738. The Infanta was lodged in the apartment of the Queen, and slept in the chamber[4] that had been occupied by Marie Thérèse, the Bavarian dauphiness, and the Duchess of Burgundy. She made the two youngest daughters of the regent her inseparable companions, treating them as if they were younger than herself, although they were twice her age. She kept them in leading-strings under pretext of preventing them from falling, and as she embraced them on their departure, she would say: “Little princesses, go home now and come to see me every day.”

Louis XV. was crowned at Rheims, October 25, 1722. “People remember,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “how much he resembled Love that morning, with his long coat and silver cap, in the costume of a neophyte or candidate for kingship. I have never seen anything so affecting as his figure at that time. All eyes grew moist with tenderness for this poor little prince, sole scion of a numerous family, all other members of which had perished, not without a suspicion of having been poisoned.” France idolized this little King whose beauty, of a supreme distinction, had somewhat ideal in it; the Emperor of Germany said he was the child of Europe. Having completed his thirteenth year, he was, as usual, proclaimed of age (February, 1723), and that same year, the Duke of Orleans, who had most loyally fulfilled his duties toward his pupil, assumed the functions of prime minister on the death of Cardinal Dubois. He showed profound deference toward the young sovereign, and carried his portfolio to him at five o’clock every afternoon. The King enjoyed this occupation, and always looked forward impatiently to the hour.

When the Duke of Orleans died suddenly at Versailles (December 2, 1723), Louis XV. regretted him sincerely. It was a woman who reigned under cover of the new prime minister, the Duke of Bourbon. She was one of those ambitious creatures to whom the moral sense is lacking, but who possess wit, grace, and charm; one of those enchantresses who, by dint of intrigues, end by falling into their own snares and cruelly expiate their short-lived triumphs. The Marquise de Prie, the all-powerful mistress of the Duke, was twenty-five years old. The daughter of the rich financier Berthelot de Pléneuf, she had married a nobleman whom she managed to have appointed ambassador to Turin. She led a very fast life in that city, and got herself into debt. Her father being unable to maintain her any longer, she was obliged to escape from the courts of justice, and the Marquis de Prie was recalled from his embassy. The young Marquise was not the woman to be discouraged by such reverses. She had only to show herself in order to subjugate the Duke of Bourbon, and assume a princely luxury. “She had a charming face,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “a sharp and crafty wit, a touch of genius, ambition, and recklessness.... The Duke was madly in love with her. I knew their habits, their visits to the opera ball, their little house in the rue Sainte Apolline, their gray-looking hack, which had the appearance of a public conveyance on the outside, but was extremely magnificent within.... She played the queen just as I would make a valet-de-chambre of my lackey.”

When they were carrying the reliquary of Sainte Geneviève in procession in 1725, because the rains had spoilt the crops, she said: “The people are crazy; don’t they know that it is I who make rain and fine weather?”

Violent under an air of gentleness, insatiable for money and power beneath an exterior of careless disinterestedness, a libertine through habit rather than from passion, running after pleasure without seeking love, betraying with impunity her lover who believed what she said against the evidence of his own eyes, Madame de Prie despotically ruled both the Duke of Bourbon and France. But one thing disquieted her: the young King’s health was delicate. If he should die suddenly, the crown would revert to the Orleans branch, between which family and the Duke of Bourbon there existed a thoroughgoing enmity. In 1725 the Infanta, the betrothed of Louis XV., was only seven years old. Several years must elapse, therefore, before the marriage could be consummated. Now, there was no repose possible for the Duke and his favorite so long as the King had no direct heir. The Duke slept at Versailles in an apartment directly under that of the King. One night he thought he heard more noise and movement than usual. He rose precipitately and went up stairs in a great fright and his dressing gown. The first surgeon, Maréchal, astonished to see him appear in this guise, asked the cause of his alarm. The Duke, beside himself, could only stammer: “I heard some noise—the King is sick—what will become of me?” Somewhat reassured by Maréchal, he consented to go down again to his apartment, but he was overheard muttering to himself: “I would never get back here again. If he recovers, we must marry him.” It was resolved to send back the Infanta on account of her youth. Her father, Philip V., was indignant at such an outrage. “There is not blood enough in all Spain to avenge such an insult,” said he. At Madrid the shouting populace were allowed to drag an effigy of Louis XV. through the streets, and the shepherds of the Spanish Pyrenees came into the pasture lands of French valleys to hamstring the cattle.

Two Princesses of Orleans were then in Spain. They were both daughters of the regent, and had been sent to Madrid at the time when Marie Anne Victoire, the betrothed of Louis XV., had come to France.[5] One of them, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, born in 1709, married the Prince of the Asturias, eldest son of Philip V. The other, Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, born in 1714, was affianced to Don Carlos, brother to the Prince of the Asturias. The first was sad, cross, and whimsical; the second, on the contrary, was a delightful child, as pretty as she was intelligent. When she arrived in Spain, she was seven years old, the same age as Don Carlos, and Queen Elizabeth Farnese wrote to the Duke of Orleans: “Her little husband is in transports of joy over her, and is only too happy to have such a charming Princess.”

When Philip V. abdicated in 1724, in favor of the Prince of the Asturias (Louis I.), Mademoiselle de Montpensier became Queen. But the new King died at the end of eight months. Philip V. resumed the crown, and the widow remained without any influence at court. As soon as it was known at Madrid that Louis XV. was not to marry the Infanta, Marie Anne Victoire, it was determined by way of reprisals that the widow of King Louis and Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, the betrothed of Don Carlos, should be immediately sent back to Versailles. Spain saw the Queen, who was not at all sympathetic, depart without regret; but people were grieved at the departure of Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, who at the age of nine years was already charming, and who, appearing like a ray of light in the sombre Escurial, had made herself beloved by her little betrothed.

In France, too, the sending back of the Infanta, who was by anticipation already styled the Queen, did not occur without exciting some regret. The little Princess, now seven years old, had been confided to the care of Madame de Ventadour, the former governess of Louis XV., who loved her fondly. The great-granddaughter of Louis XIV. already knew how to nod graciously in response to the homage of the crowd, and everybody admired her pretty ways. But Louis XV., who was in his sixteenth year, and precocious, was hardly satisfied with so young a fiancée. He was pleased therefore with the breaking off of a marriage whose consummation he must have waited for so long, and, according to Voltaire’s expression, he was like a bird whose cage has been changed when he saw the Infanta depart. Beautiful presents, however, were made to the young Princess, and it was determined that her return should be accomplished with a respectful magnificence and ceremony. She left Versailles April 5, 1725, and on reaching the frontier, she was exchanged at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port for the two Princesses of Orleans (the widow of King Louis and Mademoiselle de Beaujolais). Married in 1729 to Joseph Emanuel, then Prince, afterwards King of Portugal, “she gave that sovereign,” says Voltaire, “the children she was not allowed to give to Louis XV. and was not happier on account of it.” As to the two Princesses of Orleans, their destiny was unhappy: the queen dowager of Spain, who died in 1742, lived in poverty, with a barren title and the simulacrum of a court. Her two families had but one thought,—that of ridding themselves of the support of this unfortunate young woman. Spain showed excessive negligence in the payment of her pension, and after having reigned over one of the principal kingdoms of the world, she was obliged, by economical reasons, to spend three consecutive years with the Carmelites of Paris. Still living, she was treated as if already dead. Her sister, Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, so amiable, sweet, and attractive, retained a tender memory of her former betrothed, Don Carlos (the future Charles III.), who, on his side, did not forget her. Possibly a means of renewing their engagement might have been found. But the young girl died in 1734, carrying her faithful regret with her to the tomb. She was not yet twenty.

The rupture of the marriage of Louis XV. was not a fortunate event. The Prince was only fifteen years old. He might easily have waited several years longer before marrying. His studies and his energy would both have been the gainers by it. Moreover, it was an evil thing to insult a great nation like Spain. It was not alone the Spanish people that were outraged, but the glorious memory of the Infanta’s great-grandfather, the grand King who had said: “There are no more Pyrenees.” A fatal lesson was given to the young sovereign when he was thus taught to violate sworn faith, and habituated from his adolescence to those culpable caprices, those egotistic desertions of which his reign was to afford more than one example.

II

THE MARRIAGE OF MARIE LECZINSKA

In the year 1725, a poor exiled king and his family were living in a dilapidated old commandery in Wissemburg, a little town of Alsace. This king without a kingdom, this fugitive who dignified his poverty by the resignation with which he endured misfortune, was the Pole, Stanislas Leczinski, the protégé of Charles XII. of Sweden. Driven from Poland after a very short reign, Stanislas had found an asylum in France, and lived in Wissemburg in complete retirement with his mother, his wife, his daughter, and several gentlemen who had been faithful to him in misfortune. His daughter, Marie, born in Breslau, June 23, 1703, was at this time twenty-two years old. Pious, gentle, and sympathetic, she was the joy of the exiles. When they spoke to her of projected marriages, she would say to her parents: “Do not think you can make me happy by sending me away; it would be far sweeter to me to share your ill-fortune than to enjoy, at a distance, a happiness which would not be yours.” Her education had been as intelligent as it was austere. She spent the time not occupied in prayer and study in working for the poor of the city or embroidering ornaments for churches. She was a true Christian, one of those admirable young girls whose charm has in it something evangelic, and who make virtue lovable.

One day Stanislas, much moved, entered the room where his wife and daughter were. “Let us kneel down,” he exclaimed, “and return thanks to God!”—“Father,” said Marie, “have you been called back to the throne of Poland?”—“Ah! daughter,” he replied, “Heaven is far more favorable to us than that. You are Queen of France.” It was not a dream. The exile’s daughter, the poor and obscure Princess, living on alms from the French court, who, but the day before, would have been happy to marry one of those who were now to be her principal officials, ascended as if by miracle the greatest throne in the world. How had she happened to be preferred to the ninety-nine marriageable princesses, a list of whom had been drawn up at Versailles? There was but this simple remark below her name in the list: “Nothing disadvantageous is known concerning this family.” Louis XV. who had sent back the daughter of a King of Spain could choose among the wealthiest and most highly placed princesses in Europe. How did they contrive to make him marry this poor Polish girl who brought him no dot and who was seven years his senior (in an inverse sense, the same difference of age that existed between him and the Infanta, his first betrothed)? It is true that a former secretary of embassy, Lozillières, whom the Duke of Bourbon had sent to make inquiries about twenty-seven princesses, had thus drawn the portrait of Marie Leczinska: “This Princess, as simple as the daughter of Alcinoüs, who knows no cosmetics but water and snow, and, seated between her mother and her grandmother, embroiders altar-cloths, recalls to us, in the commandery of Wissemburg, the artlessness of heroic times.” Was it this mythological style which affected sceptical and depraved souls like those of the Duke of Bourbon and his mistress, Madame de Prie?

It was not this, at all events, which chiefly preoccupied them. If they selected Marie Leczinska, it was because they fancied that, owing her elevation solely to their caprice, she would esteem herself in their debt and be their tool. What pleased them in her was that she had no resources; that a price had been set upon her father’s head; that the exile, dispossessed of his throne for thirteen years, had wandered from asylum to asylum, in Turkey, in Sweden, in the principality of Deux-Ponts, and in Alsace; that the young girl was merely agreeable without being beautiful; that she was seven years older than Louis XV.; and that in calling her to the throne in the most unforeseen and inconceivable manner, the Duke and Madame de Prie would create for themselves exceptional claims upon her gratitude.

Louis XV. was at this time the most beautiful youth in the kingdom. An ideal lustre illuminated his charming visage, and when they were praising the graces of her young betrothed to Marie Leczinska: “Alas!” said she, “you redouble my alarms.”

One should read in the sympathetic work of the Countess d’Armaillé,[6] the story of the beginnings of this union which was at first to be so happy. Louis XV. made his official request for the hand of Marie Leczinska through Cardinal de Rohan, Bishop of Strasburg. She contented herself with responding: “I am penetrated with gratitude, Monsieur the Cardinal, for the honor done me by the King of France. My will belongs to my parents, and their consent will be mine.” The marriage by proxy took place at Strasburg, August 14, 1725. The King was represented by the Duke of Orleans. After having received her parents’ blessing, and distributed souvenirs to the faithful companions of her exile, Marie went to join Louis XV. She was greeted everywhere she went with extravagant laudations. “There is nothing which the good French people do not do to divert me,” she wrote at the time to Stanislas Leczinski. “They say the finest things in the world to me, but nobody says that you may be near me. Perhaps they will say so presently, for I am journeying in fairyland, and am veritably under their magical dominion. At every instant I undergo transformations, of which one is more brilliant than the other. Sometimes I am fairer than the Graces; again, I belong to the family of the Nine Sisters; here, I have the virtues of an angel; there, the sight of me makes people happy. Yesterday I was the wonder of the world; to-day I am the lucky star. Every one does his best to deify me, and doubtless I shall be placed among the immortals to-morrow. To dispel the illusion, I lay my hand on my head, and instantly find again her whom you love, and who loves you very tenderly.” The new Queen of France signed this letter with the Polish diminutive of her name: Maruchna.

At Sézanne, September 3, a page, the Prince of Conti, brought her a bouquet from Louis XV. Near Moret, the next day, she saw her husband for the first time. As soon as he appeared she threw herself on her knees on a cushion; the King raised her at once and embraced her affectionately. The royal pair made their entry at Fontainebleau September 5, and were crowned the following day. “The Queen,” wrote Voltaire, “makes a very good appearance, although her face is not at all pretty. Everybody is enchanted with her virtue and her politeness. The first thing she did was to distribute among the princesses and ladies of the palace all the magnificent trinkets composing what is called her corbeille, which consisted of jewels of every sort except diamonds. When she saw the casket in which they had been placed: ‘This is the first time in my life,’ said she, ‘that I have been able to make presents.’ She wore a little rouge on her wedding day, just enough to prevent her from looking pale. She fainted for an instant in the chapel, but only for form’s sake. There was a comedy performed the same day. I had prepared a little entertainment which M. de Mortemart would not execute. In place of it they gave Amphion and Le Médecin malgré lui, which did not seem very appropriate. After supper there were fireworks with many rockets and very little invention and variety.... For the rest, there is a frightful noise, racket, crowd, and tumult here.”

The Queen pleased everybody by her extreme affability. What they admired was neither the magnificence of her costume, the Sancy that sparkled on her corsage, nor the Regent that glittered on her chaste forehead, but her modesty, her benevolence, her gentleness, the grace which is still more beautiful than beauty. Voltaire was in the front rank of the courtiers of this new star which shed so soft a lustre. But he did not find his rôle as flatterer rewarded by sufficient gratuities. Hence he wrote from Fontainebleau: “I have been very well received by the Queen. She wept over Marianne, she laughed over L’Indiscret; she often talks to me, she calls me her poor Voltaire. A blockhead would be satisfied with all this; but, unfortunately, I think soundly enough to feel that praise does not amount to much, and that the rôle of a poet at court always entails upon him something slightly ridiculous. You would not believe, my dear Thiriot, how tired I am of my life as a courtier. Henri IV. is very stupidly sacrificed at the court of Louis XV. I bewail the moments I rob him of. The poor child ought to have appeared already in quarto, with fine paper, fine margins, and fine type. That will surely come this winter, whatever may happen. I think you will find this work somewhat more finished than Marianne. The epic is my forte, or I am very much mistaken.... The Queen is constantly assassinated with Pindaric odes, sonnets, epistles, and epithalamiums. I fancy she takes the poets for court-fools; and in this case she is quite right, for it is great folly for a man of letters to be here. They give no pleasure and receive none.”[7]

By dint of compliments in prose and verse, Voltaire obtained a pension of 1500 livres, which made him write to la présidente de Bernières, November 13, 1725: “I count on the friendliness of Madame de Prie. I no longer complain of court life, I begin to have reasonable expectations.”

Some days afterwards (December 1, 1725), Marie Leczinska left Fontainebleau and went to Versailles. She installed herself in what were called the Queen’s apartments, and slept in the chamber which had been successively occupied by Marie Thérèse, the Bavarian Dauphiness, the Duchess of Burgundy, and the Infanta Marie Anne Victoire. There she brought her ten children into the world, and it was there she was to die.

The early days of the marriage were very happy; at that time Louis XV. was a model youth. The counsels of his former preceptor, the Bishop of Fréjus; the sense of duty; religious beliefs; the timidity inseparable from adolescence,—all these contributed to keep in the paths of wisdom the young monarch who dreamed of being a good husband and father, a good king, and working out his own salvation along with the welfare of his subjects. Naturally inclined to the pleasures of the senses, he attached himself to Marie Leczinska with the ardor of an innocent young man who loves for the first time. Notwithstanding the shamelessness of many of them, the court beauties did not yet venture to raise their eyes toward this royal adolescent, who made even the most audacious respectful, by his gentleness and his reserve. Nothing, at this time, announced the disorders to which the young monarch was one day to yield himself. The roués of the Regency could not console themselves for having so calm and virtuous a master; they awaited with impatience the moment when they could thrust him over the declivity of scandal, and, like real demons, they lay in wait for their prey.

III

THE DISGRACE OF THE MARQUISE DE PRIE

The Marquise de Prie congratulated herself upon having brought Marie Leczinska to the throne. It was, in fact, as D’Argenson has remarked, an excellent choice, according to the views of the Marquise: “Fecundity, piety, sweetness, humanity, and, above all, a great incapacity for affairs. This court policy required, moreover, a woman without attractions and without coquetry, who could only retain her husband through the sense of duty and the necessity of giving heirs to the crown.” The Duke and his favorite had found in the Queen all the gratitude and complaisance they had counted on. As to the King, amused by the chase, festivities, journeys to Marly, Chantilly, and Rambouillet, he occupied himself with politics very little. The prime minister could flatter himself on being a real mayor of the palace. But he had reckoned without a prelate of seventy-four years, to whom ambition had come with age, and who was about to cast down with a breath all this scaffolding of intrigues and calculations.

Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus, the preceptor of Louis XV., was of humble origin, having been the son of a tithe-collector[8] in the diocese of Fréjus. Appointed chaplain to Queen Marie Thérèse in 1680, “he was,” says Saint-Simon, “received at the ministers’ houses where, in fact, he was of as little importance as he was elsewhere, and often supplied the place of a bell before such things had been invented.” He was selected as preceptor for the little Prince, who was to be styled Louis XV., and gained his pupil’s good-will by his easy, gentle, and insinuating character, his perfect calmness, and his mingled veneration and tenderness for a child who, thinking himself always menaced, felt that this assiduous and obsequious devotion protected him. The secret of his affection for Fleury was that Fleury never opposed him. He affected, moreover, an absolute disinterestedness, and seemed to be making a sacrifice to the King by remaining at court instead of taking refuge in a convent. The Bishop was always one of the party when the young King was working, or pretending to work, with his Ministers. In appearance he guarded the most humble, most insignificant attitude; but, in reality, he exerted an influence which exasperated the Duke, and still more Madame de Prie. The Queen herself was jealous of the confidence enjoyed by this silent old man who followed the King like his shadow, and who seemed likely to monopolize everything in spite of his modest airs. The Marquise, who had constant access to the Queen in her capacity as lady of the palace, contrived a real plot with her. It was a question of getting rid of this troublesome third person who was always putting himself between the King and the Prime Minister. “In order to deliver herself from the old Bishop, Madame de Prie devised a scheme by which she might take his place, and enter almost openly into the council of State. She persuaded her lover to induce the King to work in the apartments of the Queen whom he loved, at least with that love which every young man feels for the first woman he possesses. The preceptor, having no lessons to give there, would not follow his pupil, so that, without being pushed too rudely he would slip out of his place, and, naturally, find himself on the ground. Then the Marquise, relying on the good-nature of the Queen, would introduce herself as a fourth, and from that time on would govern the State. Although the plan seemed to her an admirable one, yet its success was not equally so.”[9]

The little conspiracy, however, had been conducted with great vigor. One evening, the Queen, who happened to be with the Duke of Bourbon, sent the King a request to come to her. Louis XV. complied, and the Prime Minister handed him a letter from Cardinal de Polignac containing violent accusations against the Bishop of Fréjus. This was the first time that Fleury had not been present when the King and the Duke were together. Convinced that his exclusion was henceforth determined, he went at once to his own apartment, and after writing a very mournful but tender and respectful letter in which he took leave of his young master, he departed at once for the Sulpician convent at Issy. The Duke and Madame de Prie thought themselves sure of victory, but they were in too great haste to triumph. On reading the letter of his former preceptor the King began to weep. He dared not avow the cause of his chagrin, however, and being always timid and irresolute, he kept silence. His first gentleman, the Duke de Mortemart, at last emboldened him. “What! Sire, are you not the master?” said he. “Have the Duke told to send a messenger at once for Monseigneur de Fréjus, and you will see him again.” This was no sooner said than done. The Bishop returned, and hid his success at first under the appearance of modesty. He pretended to desire nothing for himself, and showed profound deference toward the Duke, but the Prime Minister and his favorite were doomed.