The court of Louis XIV

Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER

I. The Chateau of Veksailles 29

Introduction

The gesture was somehow haughtier and more imperious than in less troublous times. Staff in hand, the great King, looking toward Paris, seemed to be saying to the insurgent city, like the marble guest to Don Juan: Repent.

II

The profound impression which was made on me by Versailles during the days of the Commune is far from having been weakened since that moment. Very unlooked-for circumstances caused the Queen's apartments to be occupied more than a year by the political administration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. My modest work-table was placed for a year at the end of the hall of the Grand-Couvert, opposite the picture which represents the Doge Imperiali humbling himself before Louis XIV., and I had time to reflect on the strange vicissitudes, the caprices of destiny, in consequence of which the employees of the Ministry, among whom I was, had been camped, as it were, in the middle of these legendary halls.

The five rooms which compose the Queen's apartment all possess importance from the historic point of view. The most curious souvenirs attach to each of them. You have just ascended the marble staircase. There is a door at your right, which you enter. It is the hall of the Queen's guards. It was here, at six o'clock in the morning of October

6, 1789, that the body-guards, victims of popular fury, defended so courageously the entry to Marie Antoinette's apartment against a band of assassins. The next hall is that of the Grand-Couvert, where the queens dined ceremoniously in company with the kings. These formal banquets took place several times a week, and the public were admitted to be spectators of them.

Marie Antoinette had submitted to this barbarous custom not merely when Queen, but also when Dauphiness. "The Dauphin dined with her," says Madame Campan in her Memoirs, " and each household of the royal family had its public dinner every day. The ushers admitted everybody who was neatly dressed ; this spectacle delighted the provincials ; at the dinner hours one met nobody on the staircases but honest folks who, after having seen the Dauphiness eat her soup, were going to see the princes eat their boiled beef, and who would then run breathlessly to see Mesdames eat their dessert."

Next to the hall of the Grand-Couvert comes the Salon of the Queen. The sovereign's drawing-room was held here, and the presentations made. Her seat was placed at the foot of the hall, on a platform covered with a canopy, the screw-rings of which may still be seen in the cornice opposite the windows. Here shone the famous beauties of the court of Louis XIV. before the King took to confining himself to Madame de Maintenon's apartments. Hither came incessantly President H^nault and the

INTRODUCTION

Duke de Luynes to chat with that amiable and good Marie Leczinska in whom every one took pleasure in recognizing the virtues of a woman of the middle classes, the manners of a great lady, and the dignity of a queen. Here Marie Antoinette, the sovereign with the figure of a nymph, the gait of a goddess on the clouds, the sweet yet imperious aspect befitting the daughter of Caesars, received, with that royal air of protection and benevolence, that enchanting prestige the wondrous memory of which foreigners carried throughout Europe.

The next room is that which evokes more memories than all the others. Perhaps there is in no other palace a hall so adapted to impress the imagination. It is the Queen's bed-chamber, the chamber where two queens have died, Marie Th^rese and Marie Leczinska, and two dauphinesses, the Dauphiness of Bavaria and the Duchess of Burgundy, — the chamber where nineteen princes and princesses of the blood have been born, among them two kings, Philip V., King of Spain, and Louis XV., King of France, — the chamber which for more than a century beheld the great joys and supreme agonies of the ancient monarchy.

This chamber has been occupied by six women: first by the virtuous Marie Th^r^se, who was installed there May 6, 1682, and breathed her last sigh there, July 30, of the following year; afterwards by the wife of the Grand Dauphin, the Bavarian Dauphiness, who died there April 20, 1690, at the age of twenty-nine ; then by the charming Ducliess of Burgundy, who entering it on her arrival at Versailles, brought into the world there three princes of whom only the last one lived and reigned under the title of Louis XV., and died there, February 12, 1712, at the age of twenty-six ; next by Marie Anne Victoire, Infanta of Spain, who was affianced to the young King of France, and who lived there from June, 1722, until April, 1725, when the projected marriage was broken off; next by the pious Marie Leczinska, who was installed in this chamber December 1, 1725, gave birth there to her ten children, lived there during a reign of forty-three years, and died there June 24, 1768, surrounded by universal veneration; and finally by the most poetic of all women, by her who resumes in herself all majesties and all sorrows, all triumphs and all humiliations, all joys and all tears, by her whose very name inspires emotion, tenderness, and respect, — by Marie Antoinette.

During a period of nineteen years, from 1770 to 1789, she occupied this chamber. Here were born her four children. Here she came near dying, December 20, 1778, when bringing her first daughter, the future Duchess of Angouleme, into the world. Custom demanded numerous witnesses at a sovereign's lying-in. An ancient and barbarous etiquette authorized the people to enter the King's palace under such circumstances. From early morning the approaches to the chateau, the gardens, the galleries of the Mirrors and the GEil-de-Bceuf, the Salons, and

INTBODUCTION 11 the very chamber of the Queen, had been invaded by an indiscreet and noisy crowd. Ragged chimneysweepers climbed upon the furniture and clung to the draperies. This tumult increased Marie Antoinette's sufferings. She lost consciousness and for three-quarters of an hour could not be revived. The stifling atmosphere of the room made the danger still greater. The windows had been listed on account of the season. Louis XVI. , with a strength which nothing but his affection for Marie Antoinette could have given him, succeeded in opening them, although they had been fastened together by bands of paper from top to bottom. The Queen came to herself, and her husband presented her the newly born Princess. "Poor little one," she said to her, "you were not desired, but you shall not be less dear. A son would have belonged more especially to the State ; you will be mine, you shall have all my attention ; you will share my happiness and lessen my troubles."

It was here also that the two sons of the Martyr King and Queen saw the light of day: the one, born October 22, 1781, died June 4, 1789, at the beginning of the Revolution; the other, born March 27, 1785, under the title of Duke of Normandy, was afterwards styled Louis XVII.

In this truly memorable chamber began the long death agony of French royalty. Marie Antoinette was sleeping here on the morning of October 6, 1789, when she was awakened by the insurrection. At the further end of the chamber, underneath the panel on

12 THE COUBT OF LOUIS XIV.

which now hangs Madame Lebrun's portrait of the Queen, there is a little door which led, through an anteroom, to the (Eil-de-Bceuf, and thence to the King's apartments. Through it the unhappy Queen, menaced by the rioters who assassinated the body-guards, escaped to seek refuge near Louis XVI. A few minutes later, she left Versailles, never more to see it. Since then, destiny has not permitted any woman to occupy the apartments of the Queen.

The year I spent in these rooms, so full of souvenirs, has left a strong and serious impression on my mind. Many a time, in winter days, at the hour when lights were brought, I seemed to see, like graceful phantoms, the illustrious women who have loved, wept, and suffered in this abode. Between the dead and the living there is more intercourse than people suppose; I have always believed that celebrated personages do not lose sight, from the height of the eternal spheres, of those who evoke their memory while essaying, as it were, to resuscitate them. Then these verses of Lamartine seemed to reach my ears like a faint, mysterious echo : —

1 Ah ! if it be you, dear shades, Far from the crowd, and far from noise, Eeturn thus every night.

And mingle with my reveries.

I recalled likewise the striking words of a priest, P^re Gratry : " Does not the human race permit itself to say at present that the dead address detailed discourses to us by a conventional cipher composed of physical shocks on wood? Shall we not abandon these puerile illusions in order to cling to the sacred foundation of presentiment and faith which lends a certain credit to such chimeras? The human race feels and comprehends that all connection cannot be broken off between us and those who preceded us."

The society of the dead consoles the griefs caused by that of the living, and there are fewer deceptions beyond the tomb than on this side of it. During my stay at Versailles, I became especially impassioned for the two women who had enchanted two different epochs, the Duchess of Burgundy and Marie Antoinette. Both of them paid dear for the brief 6clat of their triumph : one by an untimely death which the affrighted imaginations of her contemporaries were inclined to attribute to the effects of poison; the other by captivit}'- and execution. It seems a law of destiny that all which goes beyond a certain medium in point of grandeur and prestige shall soon be expiated by exceptional calamities. Suffering is the inevitable chastisement of all who become conspicuous, as if the human creature were as little made for glory as for happiness. Ah! how many times I have been charmed, moved, fascinated, by these two dauphinesses who were the ravishing personification of grace and youth and beauty! I seemed to see their faces. I thought I heard their voices. It seemed a salutary proximity.

This kind of dwelling with illustrious shades; this strange and unlooked-for dwelling in rooms forever famous; this long contemplation of a past full of instruction and of charm ; this constant and involuntary evocation of figures poetic beyond all others, — in a word, this whole assemblage of circumstances, both singular and striking, inspired me with the first idea of the work I begin to-day. The advice of my dear master and friend, M. Feuillet de Conches ; my conversations with the eminent curator of the Museum of Versailles, M. Eudore Souli^ ; the assiduous reading of the learned work which this indefatigable investigator has published under the title of Notice^ — all confirmed me in my resolve, and I have attempted to sketch the heroines who may be called the Women of Versailles.

Doubtless their history is known. I have no pretension to write new biographies of Queen Marie Th^r^se, the Marquise de Montespan, Madame de Maintenon, the mother of the regent, the Duchess of Burgundy, the Duchess of Berry, the sisters de Nesle, the Marquise de Pompadour, Madame Dubarry, the Princess de Lamballe, Madame Elisabeth. But I desire, without describing their entire career, to give an account of the part they played at Versailles, to mention with exactness the apartments they occupied there, to outline their daily existence in detail, to restore patiently the minutiae of eti-

INTMODUCTION quette, to indicate what may be termed, to employ one of Saint-Simon's expressions, the mechanism of court life.

What I wish to attempt is the history of the chateau of Versailles by means of the women who dwelt there from 1682, the epoch when Louis XIV. definitely fixed his residence there, until October 6, 1789, the fatal day when Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette left it to return no more. Few periods are so curious to study as this one of a hundred and seven years. The sanctuary of absolute monarchy was to be its tomb, and the theatre of apotheoses was destined to be also that of humiliations and afflictions.

It is not merely the ancient memoirs, those of Dangeau, Saint-Simon, the Princess Palatine, and Madame de Caylus, for the reign of Louis XIV. ; those of the Duke de Luynes, the advocates Barbier and Marais, of Duclos and Madame du Hausset, for that of Louis XV. ; of Baron de Bezenval, Madame Campan, Count de S^gur, and Baroness Oberkirch, for that of Louis XVL, to which we shall recur in this labor. We shall also make use of the patient investigations of modern science, the researches of Sainte-Beuve, De Noailles, Lavall^e, Walckenaer, Feuillet de Conches, Le Roi, Souli^, Rousset, Pierre Clement, Campardon, Goncourt, d'Arneth, Lescure, and many historians, many distinguished critics. Assuredly, there are many persons who are thoroughly acquainted with all these historic treasures. I have no thought of instructing such erudite persons, and I know very well that I am but the obscure disciple of these masters.

But perhaps there are some worldly people who will not blame me for having studied so many works on their behalf, seeking through the women of the courts of three kings the resurrection of a past which present struggles cannot banish from our minds. My desire will be to repeople these deserted halls, to make the procession of the dead file by, to sum up briefly the lessons of morality, history, psychology, and religion which issue from the most grandiose of earthly palaces. May the women of Versailles be to me so many Ariadnes in this marvellous labyrinth !

Ill

Neither Mazarin's nieces nor la grande Mademoiselle, neither Henrietta of England nor the Duchesses of La Vallidre and Fontanges, should be considered as women of Versailles. At the period when these heroines were shining in all their splendor, Versailles was not yet the official residence of the court and the seat of government. We do not begin this study until 1682, the year when Louis XIV., quitting Saint-Germain, his habitual abode, established himself definitively in the residence which he preferred.

During a century — from 1682 to 1789 — how many curious womanly figures will appear upon this radiant scene! Wlio.t vicissitudes in their destinies! What singularities and contrasts in their characters! 'Tis the good Queen Marie Th^r^se, gentle, virtuous, resigned, making herself loved and respected by all honest people. 'Tis the imperious mistress, the proud sultana, the woman of brilliant, mocking, cutting wit, whose court is "the centre of pleasures, of fortune, of hope and of terror to the ministers and generals of the army, and of humiliation to all France," the haughty, the allpowerful Marquise de Montespan.

'Tis the woman whose character is an enigma and whose life a romance, who has known by turns all the extremities of good and evil fortune, and who, with more rectitude than openness of heart, more justice than grandeur, has at least the merit of having reformed the life of a man whose very passions had been extolled as if divine: Madame de Maintenon. 'Tis the Princess Palatine, the wife of Monsieur the King's brother, the mother of the future regent, ugly, correct in morals, cynical in the expressions of her correspondence, a frantic German, railing at her new country, impersonating Satire at the side of Apotheosis, exaggerating in her letters the rage of an Alcestis in petticoats, rustic and almost Biogenic, but witty, more pitiless, more caustic, more vehement than Saint-Simon himself, strange woman of the brusque, impetuous style — the style which, as Sainte-Beuve says, has a beard on its chin, and of which one can hardly say, when it is translated from

German into French, whether it most resembles Rabelais or Luther.

'Tis the Duchess of Burgundy, the sylph, the siren, the enchantress of the old King, the Duchess of Burgundy, whose premature death was the signal for the last agony of a court once so dazzling.

Then, under Louis XV., 'tis the sisters De Nesle who are infuriated for the heart of the young King, and who sometimes wrangle over their conquest, and sometimes unite their forces to reign in common. 'Tis the virtuous, the sympathetic Marie Leczinska who plays the same honorable but minor part with Louis XV. that Marie Th^rdse had done with Louis XIV. 'Tis the Marquise de Pompadour who, in spite of the subtlety of her intelligence and the power of her attractions, always remains a parvenue, a magician accustomed to all the enchantments, all the marvels, all the refinements of elegance, but who, according to Voltaire, her apologist and courtier, is after all nothing more than a sort of grisette made for the opera and the seraglio.

'Tis Madame Dubarry, a low courtesan disguised as a countess, and destined by the irony of fate to shake the foundations of the throne of Saint Louis, of Henry IV., and of Louis XIV. Then, under the reign which is not the epoch of scandal and which is yet that of expiation, 'tis Madame Elisabeth, a nature essentially French, displaying not merely courage but gaiety in the most horrible catastrophes, Madame Elisabeth, the angel that heaven caused tc

INTB OB UCTION 1 9 appear in the revolutionary hell; 'tis the Princess de Lamballe, the gracious and touching heroine of friendship and duty; 'tis Marie Antoinette, whose mere name is more pathetic, more eloquent, than all words.

In the careers of these women what historical instructions, and also what lessons in psychology and morals there are! What could make us better understand the court, "that region where joys are visible but false, and vexations hidden but real," the court "which does not give contentment and which does prevent its being found elsewhere " ? ^ Do not all the women of Versailles say to us: "The condition which is apparently the happiest has secret bitternesses which corrupt all its felicity. The throne is like the lowest place in being the seat of torments ; superb palaces hide cruel anxieties like the roofs of the poor and the laborious, and, lest our exile should become too pleasing to us, we feel everywhere and always that something is wanting to our happiness." ^

A portrait by Mignard, engraved by Nanteuil, represents the Duchess de La Valli^re with her children : Mademoiselle de Blois and the Count de Vermandois. She looks pensive, and is holding in her hand a reed pipe at the end of which floats a soapbubble, with these words : Thus passes the glory of

1 La Bruyere, De la cour.

2 Massillon, Sermon sur les afflictions.

the world. Sic transit gloria mundi. Might not this be the device of all the heroines of Versailles ?

The general impression arising from history is that of melancholy. The life of every celebrated woman is a commentary on Fontaine's line; —

All is brilliant on the surface, all gloomy in the depths. The court beauties cannot dispel black care by waving their fans. There are more lees than nectar in their golden banqueting-cups. Their paint does not hide their pallor, and tears often flow in torrents under their masks. Just as splendid mausoleums hide the worms of the sepulchre beneath their ornaments of bronze and marble, so these sad hearts, garmented with brocade and gold, are abodes of secret tortures and excruciating agonies. They can all say with Madame de Sdvign^, who was nevertheless rich, honored, brilliant, and seemingly happy: "I find death so terrible that I hate life more because it leads me thither than because of the thorns which bestrew it. Will you tell me then that I must wish to live forever ? Not at all ; but if my opinion had been asked, I would much rather have died in my nurse's arms; that would have rid me of many ennuis, and would have given me heaven very surely and very easily. "^

1 Neither gold nor grandeur makes us happy.

2 Madame de S^vig-ne, Letter of March 16, 1672.

Apropos of tlie death of the Queen of Spain, the Princess Palatine, wife of the brother of Louis XIV. , wrote : " I hear and see every day so many villanous things that it disgusts me with life. You have good reason to say that the good Queen is now happier than we are, and if any one would do me, as to her and her mother, the service of sending me in twenty-four hours from this world to the other, I would certainly bear them no ill will." ^

Madame de Montespan was ill at ease even before that hour of great expiations when she was obliged, trembling with rage, to descend the marble staircase of Versailles, never again to mount it. As in the fairy tales, grand palaces, carriages with six horses, diamonds, and splendid attire sprang up under the feet of the resplendent favorite. And yet at the same time, Madame de S^vignd, always a skilled observer, wrote concerning the triumphant mistress who was the object of all favors and idolatries : " The attachment is still extreme, enough has been made of it to annoy the cur^ and every one else, but perhaps not enough for her, for there is something sad underneath her external triumph. "^

The rival who, contrary to all expectation, supplanted Madame de Montespan; the prodigiously clever woman who, according to a very just expression of M. Capefigue, was for so many years the sick-

1 Letters of the Princess Palatine, March 20, 1689, » Madame de S6vign6, Letter of July 31, 1675,

22 TSE COUBT OF LOUIS XIV.

nurse of a soul worn out with pride, love, and glory ; Madame de Maintenon wrote in the midst of her own splendor to Madame de La Maisonfort: "Why cannot I give you my experience ! Why cannot I make you see the ennui which devours the great, and the troubles that fill their days! Do you not see that I am dying of sadness in a fortune which could not be easily imagined? I have been young and pretty; I have enjoyed pleasures; I have spent years in intellectual intercourse ; I have arrived at favor, and I protest to you, my dear child, that all conditions leave a frightful void."

Again it is Madame de Maintenon who said to her brother, Count d'Aubigne: "I can hold out no longer; I would like to be dead." It is she who, summing up all the phases of her surprising career, wrote to Madame de Caylus two years before her death : " One atones heavily for the pleasures and intoxication of youth. I find, in looking back at my life, that, since the age of twenty-two, which was the beginning of my fortune, I have not had a moment free from sufferings, and that they have constantly increased."^

The women of the reign of Louis XV". afford no fewer subjects for philosophical reflections. These pretended mistresses, who in reality are only slaves, seem to present themselves one after another like

1 Letter of Madame de Maintenon to Madame de Caylus, April 19, 1771.

humble penitents who come to make their apologies to history and, like the primitive Christians, to reveal publicly the miseries, vexations, and remorses of their souls. They tell us what their doleful successes amounted to. Even while their triumphal chariot made its way through a crowd of flatterers, their conscience hissed cruel words into their ears. Like actresses before a whimsical and variable public, they were always fearing lest the applause might change into uproar, and it was with terror underlying their apparent coolness that they continued to play their sorry part.

Do not all the favorites seem to unite in repeating to us with Massillon : " Is it not true that the way of the world and the passions is yet more painful than that of the Gospel, and that the kingdom of hell, if one may say so, suffers still more violence than that of heaven?" If, among these mistresses of the King, there were a single one who had enjoyed her shameful triumphs in peace, who had called herself happy in the midst of her luxury and splendor, one might have concluded that, from a merely human point of view, it is possible to find happiness in vice. But no ; there is not even one. The Duchess de Ch^teauroux and the Marquise de Pompadour are not happier than the Duchess de La Valli^re and the Marquise de Montespan. " 'O my God,' cried Saint Augustine, 'Thou hast ordained it, and it has never failed to happen, that every soul that is in disorder shall be its own torment. If we taste in it

24 THE COUBT OF LOUIS XIV.

certain moments of felicity, it is an intoxication which does not last. The worm of conscience is not dead; it is only benumbed. The alienated reason presently returns, and with it return bitter troubles, gloomy thoughts, and cruel anxieties.' "^

Unfortunate victim of a royal caprice, the young Duchess de Chateauroux, who lived but a day, " like the flowers of the field," condenses into her brief but tempestuous career all the miseries and deceptions of vanity, all the tortures and anguish of physical and moral pain. Madame de Pompadour at the height of her favor is steeped in melancholy. Her lady's maid, Madame du Hausset, the confidant of her perpetual anxieties, said to her with sincere commiseration: "I pity you, Madame, while every one else is envying you," and the Marquise, satiated with false pleasures, tormented with real sufferings, remarked bitterly : " The sorceress said I would have time to acknowledge my faults before I die ; I believe it, for I shall perish of nothing but chagrin. "

When she dies she is no more regretted by Louis XV. than Mademoiselle de La Vallidre and Madame de Montespan had been by Louis XIV. From one of the windows of Versailles, during a frightful storm, the King saw the carriage which was taking the favorite's coffin to Paris. " The Marquise will not have fine weather for her journey," said he. Hardly had she gone down into the grave when the

1 Massillon, Panegyrique de Sainte Madeleine.

INTBODUCTION 25 poor dead woman was forgotten by all. The Queen herself remarked it when she wrote to President Henault: "Here there is no more question of her who is no more than if she had never existed. Such is the worlds it is not worth the trouble of loving it." The destinies of the heroines of Versailles are not interesting solely from the moral point of view, as subjects of philosophical study, and sources of Christian reflections. In their historical relations also they have what may be called a symbolical importance. Certain of these women sum up, in fact, a whole society, personify an entire epoch. Madame de Montespan, the superb, luxuriant, ample beauty, good to show to all the ambassadors; Madame de Montespan, the grande dame, proud of her birth, her charms, her wit, her riches, her magnificence; the woman whose terrible railleries made her as much feared as she was admired, so much so, in fact, that the courtiers said they dared not pass under her windows for fear of being shot at; the ostentatious, dazzling mistress whom the ancients would have represented as Cybele, carrying Versailles upon her forehead, is she not the very incarnation of haughty and triumphant France at the culminating point of the reign of Louis XIV., that France which resuscitates the pomps of paganism and envelops the radiant sovereign whom it idolizes in clouds of incense ? But the pride of the favorite will be punished like that of her royal lover, and for her as for him humiliations will succeed to triumphs.

26 THE COUBT OF LOUIS XIV.

The rays of the sun have no longer the same splendor. The royal star which is declining has lost the ardor of its fires. A sincere but sometimes rather narrow devotion comes after those superabundant sins which, to use Tertullian's expression, wish to possess all the light and knowledge of heaven. Madame de Maintenon, with her temperate character and style, her respect for order and the proprieties, her piety which has just a hint of ostentation, is the living symbol of the new court in which religion replaces voluptuousness. But at the side of this wisdom of repentant age, this reaction of austerity against pleasure, there is still the contrast of youth. 'Tis the Duchess of Burgundy who represents this protest of gaiety against sadness, of spring against winter, of freedom of manners against the restrictions of etiquette.

After Louis XIV., the Kegency. After compression, scandal. The new epoch is troublous, licentious, dissolute. Is not the Duchess of Berry, so fantastic, so capricious, so passionate, its very image? As to the favorites of Louis XV., their sad history marks out for us the stages of humiliation and the moral decadence of absolute power. At first the King takes his mistresses from among the great ladies, then from the middle classes, lastly from the women of the people. He descends from the Duchess de Ch^teauroux to the Marquise de Pompadour, from the Marquise de Pompadour to Madame Dubarry. There is a gradual diminutipi^ of prestige and dignity. Adultery derogates. Vice throws off all manner of disguise. And yet, even under the reign of Louis XV., patriarchal manners, honest and truly Christian sentiments, characters which do honor to human nature, may here and there be found. Queen Marie Leczinska is like the epitome of these virtuous types. Her domestic hearth is near the boudoir of the favorites, and it is she who preserves for the court the last traditions of decency and decorum.