It is proper to render to Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar. The effacement of the French aristocracy is not to be laid at the door of the great Revolution, which acted only upon an accomplished fact; it was the personal work of Louis XIV.
The higher classes also, contrary to the generally received opinion, suffered from a serious moral abasement. This fact is the more striking, as at no other period has France possessed so many elements for giving to life decorum and dignity. Through a deplorable misfortune, social groups which ought, through their solid principles, to have served as the support of public morality had incurred, one after the other, the serious displeasure of royalty. Among the Catholics, the disciples of Bérulle and of Vincent de Paul had compromised themselves in the affair of the Compagnie du Saint Sacrement. No government worthy of the name can suffer itself to be led by a secret society, whatever the purpose or character of such society may be. The Jansenists had shared with the reformers in the discontent that the least expression of a desire for independence, no matter in what domain, inspired in Louis XIV.
His distrust even reached the interior life of his subjects. Every one, under penalty of being considered a rebel, must feel and think like the King. This was with Louis a fixed idea, and during his reign gave a peculiar character to the religious persecutions. Jansenists and Protestants were pursued much oftener as enemies of the King than as enemies of God.
The hostility of the Prince to the three principal seats of the French conscience, and the destruction of two of these, left the field clear for the licentiousness which marked the end of the reign. Excessive dissipation is always supposed to belong particularly to the time of the Regency, but the abscess had existed for a long time before the death of Louis XIV. caused it to break. A letter as early as 1680 states, "Our fathers were not more chaste than we are; but ... now the vices are decorated and refined."[318] The evil had made rapid progress under the mantle of hypocrisy, which covered the Court of France from the time of the rule of Mme. de Maintenon. This last well perceived the danger and groaned over it to no purpose. Strangers were struck with the conditions. "All is more concentrated," wrote one of them in 1690, "more reserved, more restrained, than the peculiar genius of the nation can bear."[319]
The real misfortune was that Louis, who had been brought up and matured in an entirely formal religion, had permitted himself to be imposed upon by scoffers, who came disguised as believers, in order to make their court. The King, who had permitted the representation of Tartuffe, had not sufficiently meditated upon its import.
A final misdeed, and not the least for which the absolute régime is responsible, was the launching of the nation in pursuit of one of the most dangerous of political chimeras, that of the need of spiritual unity. Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes in the name of the fetich that a good Frenchman must be of his King's faith. A century later, the Terror cut off heads in the name of a unity of opinion, because a Frenchman ought to be virtuous in the fashion of Rousseau and of Robespierre. The reader may continue for himself the series, and count the acts of oppression committed in the nineteenth century, while even the twentieth century, young as it still is, presents examples of the attempt to enforce upon the nation a uniformity of thought which, if once attained, would signify intellectual death. For in politics, as in religion, as in art, in literature, in all, diversity is life.
It is through this capital error that the reign of Louis XIV., so glorious in many respects, was the precursor of the great Revolution and really made its coming inevitable. The Jacobins are in some measure the heirs of the great King. Fundamentally, the mania for spiritual and moral unity is simply, under a less odious name, the horror of liberty; a sentiment old as the world, but which in the earlier portion of the seventeenth century had been far from dominant. The word "liberty" occurs again and again in the writings of many people of that period, theorists, jurists, and great nobles, at every point in which they touch politics. The expression contained for them nothing revolutionary. What they were demanding was rather a return to past methods, and, above all, it did not enter their thoughts to associate with liberty the word "equality." It is the eighteenth century, more philosophical, if perhaps less reasonable, that first conceived the idea of uniting two really incompatible things, without perceiving that one of the two was destined to annihilate the other.
If absolute royalty had remained at Paris, it would have clearly realised the point at which the nation no longer was in sympathy with its rule. At Versailles it saw nothing; it shut itself up in its own tomb. The divorce was consummated between the Court and the Capital, one contenting itself with being figurative and ornamental, the other actively controlling opinions, since royalty had renounced the office of directing the public mind and thoughts.
It will be recollected that the rôle of universal arbitrator was played by the "young Court," the youthful King at its head, at the time in which there was daily contact with Paris, and when the Court was always in the advance in ideas as in fashions. The residence at Versailles ended the possibility of these times ever returning; there was no longer any bond between the King of France and the merchant of the rue St. Denis. In consequence, Paris employed itself in the eighteenth century in the evolution of minds. The Court had decided upon the success of the plays of Molière, the Parisian parquet criticised those of Beaumarchais.
If it be considered that the interior politics of Louis XIV. were constantly dominated by a horror of the Fronde, it will be recognised that this abortive revolution brought in its train consequences almost as grave as if it had been successful. This is the reason it has seemed permissible to make the history of the ideas and sentiments existing during the wars of the Fronde and the succeeding forty years circle around the incidents in the life of the Grande Mademoiselle. She was a truly representative figure of this generation, and on this account will always merit the attention of historians, and by a double claim, through the interest in her proud conception of life, and through the importance of the evil for which she was partly responsible and by the results of which she was herself overwhelmed. No one possessed in a higher degree than this Princess the great qualities belonging to her epoch, and no one preserved them so intact without thought of the danger after the retaining of such opinions had become a cause of disgrace.
Neither Retz nor the great Condé showed signs in their old age of their characteristics displayed under the Fronde; both had become calmed. The Grande Mademoiselle remained always the Grande Mademoiselle, and this steadfastness, while sometimes a difficulty, was more often her real title to glory.
Absolute monarchy, establishment of, in France, 7, 118, 142;
a Spanish importation, 371
Adickes, Erich, Kant als Mensch by, 220
Aimé-Martin, Essai sur la Vie, by, 365
Aix, Court at, 100-102
Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 258
Albret, Maréchal d', 282
Alceste (Lulli), 218
Alençon, Elisabeth, Mlle, d', daughter of Monsieur, 77, 133, 186;
marriage of, 235, 294
Allier, Raoul, La Cabale des Dévots, by, 83, 85, 157, 181, 198
Alluye, Marquise d', 344
Alphonse VI., King of Portugal, 142-145, 160, 185
Amadis, 216
Amants Magnifiques, Les (Molière), 202
Amaryllis, 18
Ambassadeur de la Fuente au roi d'Espagne, L', 189
Amboise, Château of, 27, 44, 354
Amfreville, M. d', 364
Amiens, 263
"Amours of Hercules," 120
Andilly, Arnauld, d', 79
Angennes, Julie d', 264
Anjou, Philippe, Duc d' (the little Monsieur), proposed marriage of, with Mademoiselle, 59, 73, 272-278;
character of, 74, 102, 105, 152, 196, 261, 262, 271, 272;
becomes Duc d'Orléans, 102;
marries Henrietta of England, 136, 151, 152;
marries Princess Palatine, 156, 315;
daughters of, 277;
opposed to mésalliance of Mlle., 285
Anjou, son of Louis XIV., 285
Anne of Austria, regency of, 1;
education of her sons, 31, 63-65, 74, 371;
relations of, with Mazarin, 62, 63, 82, 112, 304;
reception of Mademoiselle, 57-59, and lack of Court etiquette, 76-79, 82;
member of Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, 87, 103, 148, 158, 198;
prevents marriage of Louis and Marie Mancini, 82, 97;
receives Condé, 100;
interview of, with Philip IV., 108-110;
favours absolute monarchy, 118, 146, 371;
be friends Marie-Thérèse, 118, 149;
detests Madame, 122;
reproaches Louis, 153, 170;
influence of, 153, 159, 192, 194, 195, 208;
illness and death of, 194-197;
effect of death of, 195, 197, 200, 201, 206, 208, 209
Anquetil, Louis XIV., sa Cour et le Régent, by, 349
Archives de la Bastille (Ravaisson), 189, 201, 209, 282, 293, 312, 343, 344
Archives de Chantilly, 117, 174, 175, 186
Archives of Eu. See Eu
Ariane (Monteverde), 214
Armagnac, Louis de Lorraine, Comte d', 237
Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (Scudéry), 11
Astrée, L'(d'Urfé), 11, 14, 80
Aubineau, Léon, 67
Aumale, Duc d', 46
Aumale, Mlle. d', Mémoires of, 291
Auteuil, Comte d', 47
Ayen, Comte d' (Duc de Noailles), 270
Bachaumont, 32
Ballet des Arts, 172
Bartélemy, Eduard de (Honorat de Bueil, Marquis de Racan), editor La Galerie des Portraits, etc., 122, 130
Bastille, Archives de la. See Archives
Bavière, Anne de. See Palatine
Bavière, Elisabeth Charlotte de (Madame). See Palatine
Bavière, Marie Anne Christine de, 347
Bayard, Comtesse de, 365
Bazinière, Sieur de la, 76
Beaufort, Duc de, 185
Bellefonte, Marshal of, 264
Bernières, M. de, 87, 88, 91, 92;
Relations of, 87-90
Berri, government of, 307
Bérulle, 373
Bethléem, Bishop of, 191
Béthune, Comte de, 47
Béthune, Mme. de, 266
Beuvron, Charles d'Harcourt, Comte de, 275
Béziers, M. de, 147
Bezon, M. de, 343
Bielle, Sieur de, 83
Blois, forced sojourn of Monsieur at, 25-35, 39-41, 49-53, 97, 98, 134;
court at, 97
Blois, Mlle. de, marriage of, 337
Bocquet, Mlle. (Agélaste), 124
Bois-le-Vicomte, Château of, 50
Bologna, theatres in, 215
Bordeaux, Court at, 98, 99, 132
Bossuet, Court preacher, 140, 142, 200;
funeral oration of, 152;
at death-bed of Madame, 272, 273
Boucherat, 344
Bougy, Lady de, 211
Bouillon, Duc de, 77
Bouillon, Duchesse de, 344
Bouligneux, M. de, 264
Boult, 89
Bourbon, Henri de. See Montpensier
Bourbon, Marie de, 42
Bourdaloue, Court preacher, 200
Bourgogne, Hôtel de, 227
Bourgogne, province of, 83, 94
Boursault, 225
Boyer, Abbé, tragedies of, 226
Brandenbourg, 374
Brienne, Father, 190
Broglie, Emmanuel de, Saint Vincent de Paul, by, 82, 91
Brunetière, M. F., Les Époques du Théâtre français;
Les Études critiques sur l'Histoire de la Littérature française, by, 223
Bussy-Rabutin, Mémoires of, cited, 32, 55, 61, 147, 148, 160, 248,
337, 342, 343, 345;
letters to, 272, 273, 302, 305,
342, 374;
Correspondance de, 303, 364
Cabale des Dévots, La (Allier), 83, 85, 88, 148, 157, 181, 198, 199
Cahiers de Mlle. d'Aumale, Les, 230, 341
Cambert, Pomone, opera by, 216
Carignan, Princesse de, 291
Carrosse Amarante, 223
Cartwright, Julia, Madame, Memoirs of Henrietta, Duchesse of Orleans, by, 136
Cassandre (La Calprenède), 11
Cato, Mme. de Montespan's maid, 344, 346
Caylus, Mme. de, Souvenirs et Correspondance of, 300;
Souvenirs de, 150, 347
Chaillou des Barres, Baron, Les Châteaux d'Ancy-le-France, de Saint-Fargeau, etc., by, 6
Chalais, 25
Chalon-sur-Saône, 354
Chambre ardente, established by Louis, 204, 343, 344;
suppression of, 347
Champagne, province of, 55, 56, 87, 92, 334
Champigny lawsuit, 49, 50, 125
Chantelauze, Saint Vincent de Paul et les Gondi, by, 82, 112
Chantilly, see Archives of
Chapelle, 32
Charenton, 289
Charles II. (of England), 136
Charles II. (of Spain), marriage of, 277
Châteaux d'Ancy-le-France, de Saint-Fargeau, etc., Les (Chaillou des Barres), 6
Châtelet, the, 211
Châtellerault, duchy of, 49
Châtillon, Duchesse de, 78, 80, 126
Châtrier, Mme. de, 335
Chauvelin, M. de, 347
Chevreuse, Mme. de, 369
Choisy, Mlle.'s mansion at, 357, 359
Choisy, François-Timoléon, Abbé de, Mémoires of, 74, 133, 134, 138, 281, 289, 291, 310, 340
Choisy, Mme. de, 13
Chouquet, Histoire de la Musique dramatique en France, by, 213
Cinq-Mars, 25
Clagny, Château of, 235
Clairvoyants, 201-207
Clamecy, 191
Clément, P., Mme. de Montespan et Louis XIV., by, 282
Cléopâtre (La Calprenède), 11
Colbert, protected by Mademoiselle's escort, 56;
reorganises finances, 141, 171, 177;
letters to, 183, 348;
enemy of Compagnie du Saint Sacrement, 198;
opposes Louvois, 287;
protests against King's extravagance, 332-337;
mediation of, 345, 352
Coligny, Admiral de, 78
Comédie Française, 109
Condé, Prince de (the Great), 3, 56, 117, 256, 377;
alliance of, with Mademoiselle, 3, 16, 17, 33, 45, 56, 369;
defeat of, 20, 23, 54;
letters of, 38-40, 46, 147, 174, 186;
rupture of, with Mlle., 46, 47, 52;
cruelty of army of, 55, 83;
pardoned, 100, 101, 113;
son of, 117;
appreciation of Racine, 229;
opposes Mlle.'s marriage, 285, 291, 292, 296
Condé, Princesse de, 16, 17, 46
Conti, Louis Armand, Prince de, marriage of, 48, 337
Corneille, 80, 81, 129, 223-226, 228, 240, 241
Correspondance de Bussy-Rabutin, 303
Correspondance de Pomponne, La, 297
Correspondant, the, 112
Cotin, Abbé, Œuvres galantes en vers et en prose, by, 220, 223, 226
Coulanges, 287
Country Pleasures, operetta, 19
Court of France, Mademoiselle returns to, 2, 57-59, 72;
in disgrace with, 16, 19, 45, 55;
returns to Paris, 19-21, 65, 110, 281;
Monsieur under protection of, 39, 40, 48;
journeys of, 53, 68, 94-104, 108, 110, 132, 257, 258, 307;
manners and morals of, 76-79, 81, 82, 123-125, 128-131, 338;
etiquette of, 78, 104-111, 233;
occupations of, 103, 230-232;
the young, 148, 174, 224, 229, 376;
brilliancy of, 174, 258-260, 315;
size of, 174, 175, 258;
at Versailles, 174, 176-182, 333, 365, 370, 376;
at Fontainebleau, 182, 184;
literary tastes of, 224, 227, 229, 376;
at Saint-Germain, 269, 353, 354;
changed character of, 370, 371, 374
Court of Saint-Fargeau, 6-10, 17-20, 129-131, 135
Cousin, La Société française au XVIIème siècle, by, 124
Création de Versailles, la (de Nolhac), 176
Crégny, Duc de, 282
Crequi, 297
Crissé, Mme. de, original of Countess de Pimbesche, 191
Crosné, 89
Crussol, Emmanuel II., de. See Uzès
Dafné, musical tragedy, 214
Dames, les (the "ladies"), 315, 334-336
Dauphin, the Grand, 154, 155, 179;
marriage of, 347;
death of, 219
De Chapelain, 226
Déclaration par le Menu du Comté d'Eu, 163
Delamare, Philibert, Mélanges, by, 285, 286, 290, 294, 301
Delaure, Histoire de Paris, by, 21
De La Vallière à Montespan (Lemoine and Lichtenberger), 175, 229, 263, 335
Delort, J., Histoire de la Détention des Philosophes, by, 312
Deltour, F., Les Ennemis de Racine, by, 223, 226
Derby, Lady, 137
Deux Chèvres (La Fontaine), Les, 107
Devineresses, Les (La Fontaine), 203
Dévolution, war of the, 154, 257
Diafoirus, Thomas, 109
Dictionnaire des Précieuses, Le (Somaize), 13
Diderot, 172
Divine Right of Kings, doctrine of, 139-142
Dombes, principality of, 49, 95;
given to Lauzun, 288;
demanded for Duc du Maine, 352