M. de Brisacier and King Casimir.—One Is Never so Well Praised as by Oneself.—He Is Sent to Get Himself Made a Duke Elsewhere.
The Abbe de Brisacier, the famous director of consciences, possessed enough friends and credit to advance young Brisacier, his nephew, to the Queen’s household, to whom he had been made private secretary. Slanderers or impostors had persuaded this young coxcomb that Casimir, the King of Poland, whilst dwelling in Paris in the quality of a simple gentleman, had shown himself most assiduous to Madame Brisacier, and that he, Brisacier of France, was born of these assiduities of the Polish prince.
When he saw the Comte Casimir raised to the elective throne of Poland, he considered himself as the issue of royal blood, and it seemed to him that his position with the Queen, Maria Theresa, was a great injustice of fortune; he thought, nevertheless, that he ought to remain some time longer in this post of inferiority, in order to use it as a ladder of ascent.
The Queen wrote quantities of letters to different countries, and especially to Spain, but never, or hardly ever, in her own hand. One day, whilst handling all this correspondence for the princess’s signature, the private secretary slipped one in, addressed to Casimir, the Polish King.
In this letter, which from one end to the other sang the praises of the Seigneur Brisacier, the Queen had the extreme kindness to remind the Northern monarch of his old liaison with the respectable mother of the young man, and her Majesty begged the prince to solicit from the King of France the title and rank of duke for so excellent a subject.
King Casimir was not, as one knows, distrust and prudence personified; he walked blindfold into the trap; he wrote with his royal hand to his brother, the King of France, and asked him a brevet as duke for young Brisacier. Our King, who did not throw duchies at people’s heads, read and re-read the strange missive with astonishment and suspicion. He wrote in his turn to the suppliant King, and begged him to send him the why and the wherefore of this hieroglyphic adventure. The good prince, ignorant of ruses, sent the letter of the Queen herself.
Had this princess ever given any reason to be talked about, there is no doubt that she would have been lost on this occasion; but there was nothing to excite suspicion. The King, no less, approached her with precaution, in order to observe the first results of her answers.
“Madame,” he said, “are you still quite satisfied with young Brisacier, your private secretary?”
“More or less,” replied the Infanta; “a little light, a little absent; but, on the whole, a good enough young man.”
“Why have you recommended him to the King of Poland, instead of recommending him to me directly?”
“To the King of Poland!—I? I have not written to him since I congratulated him on his succession.”
“Then, madame, you have been deceived in this matter, since I have your last letter in my hands. Here it is; I return it to you.”
The princess read the letter with attention; her astonishment was immense.
“My signature has been used without authority,” she said. “Brisacier alone can be guilty, being the only one interested.”
This new kind of ambitious man was summoned; he was easily confounded. The King ordered him to prison, wishing to frighten him for a punishment, and at the end of some days he was commanded to quit France and go and be made duke somewhere else.
This event threw such ridicule upon pretenders to the ducal state, that I no longer dared speak further to the King of the hopes which he had held out to me; moreover, the things which supervened left me quite convinced of the small success which would attend my efforts.
Compliment from Monsieur to the New Prince de Dombes.—Roman History.—The Emperors Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Verus.—The Danger of Erudition.
Monsieur, having learnt what his cousin of Montpensier had just done for my Duc du Maine, felt all possible grief and envy at it. He had always looked to inherit from her, and the harshest enemy whom M. de Lauzun met with at his wedding was, undoubtedly, Monsieur. When M. le Duc du Maine received the congratulations of all the Court on the ground of his new dignity of Prince de Dombes, his uncle was the last to appear; even so he could not refrain from making him hear these disobliging words,—who would believe it?—“If I, too, were to give you my congratulation, it would be scarcely sincere; what will be left for my children?”
Madame de Maintenon, who is never at a loss, replied: “There will be left always, Monseigneur, the remembrance of your virtues; that is a fair enough inheritance.”
We complained of it to the King; he reprimanded him in a fine fashion. “I gave you a condition so considerable,” said he, “that the Queen, our mother, herself thought it exaggerated and dangerous in your hands. You have no liking for my children, although you feign a passionate affection for their father; the result of your misbehaviour will be that I shall grow cool to your line, and that your daughter, however beautiful and amiable she may be, will not marry my Dauphin.”
At this threat Monsieur was quite overcome, and anxious to make his apologies to the King; he assured him of his tender affection for M. le Duc du Maine, and would give him to understand that Madame de Maintenon had misunderstood him.
“It is not from her that your compliment came to us; it is from M. le Duc du Maine, who is uprightness itself, and whose mouth has never lied.”
Monsieur then started playing at distraction and puerility; the medal-case was standing opened, his gaze was turned to it. Then he came to me and said in a whisper: “I pray you, come and look at the coin of Marcus Aurelius; do you not find that the King resembles that emperor in every feature?”
“You are joking,” I answered him. “His Majesty is as much like him as you are like me.”
He insisted, and his brother, who witnessed our argument, wished to know the reason. When he understood, he said to Monsieur: “Madame de Montespan is right; I am not in the least like that Roman prince in face. The one to whom I should wish to be like in merit is Trajan.”
“Trajan had fine qualities,” replied Monsieur; “that does not prevent me from preferring Marcus Aurelius.”
“On what grounds?” asked his Majesty.
“On the grounds that he shared his throne with Verus,” replied Monsieur, unhesitatingly.
The King flushed at this reply, and answered in few words: “Marcus Aurelius’s action to his brother may, be called generous; it was none the less inconsiderate. By his own confession, the Emperor Verus proved, by his debauchery and his vices, unworthy, of the honour which had been done him. Happily, he died from his excesses during the Pannonian War, and Marcus Aurelius could only do well from that day on.”
Monsieur, annoyed with his erudition and confused at his escapade, sought to change the conversation. The King, passing into his cabinet, left him entirely, in my charge. I scolded him for his inconsequences, and he dared to implore me to put his daughter “in the right way,” to become one day Queen of France by marrying Monsieur le Dauphin, whom she loved already with her whole heart.
The Benedictines of Fontevrault.—The Head in the Basin.—The Unfortunate Delivery.—The Baptism of the Monster.—The Courageous Marriage.—Foundation of the Royal Abbey of Fontevrault.
Two or three days after our arrival at Fontevrault, the King, who loves to know all the geographical details of important places, asked me of the form and particulars of the celebrated abbey. I gave him a natural description of it.
“They are two vast communities,” I told him, “which the founder, for some inexplicable whim, united in one domain, of an extent which astonishes the imagination.”
The Community of Benedictine Nuns is regarded as the first, because of the abbotorial dignity it possesses. The Community of Benedictine Monks is only second,—a fact which surprises greatly strangers and visitors. Both in the monastery and the convent the buildings are huge and magnificent, the courts spacious, the woods and streams well distributed and well kept.
“Every morning you may see a hundred and fifty to two hundred ploughs issue from both establishments; these spread over the plain and till an immense expanse of land. Carts drawn by bullocks, big mules, or superb horses are ceaselessly exporting the products of the fields, the meadows, or the orchards. Innumerable cows cover the pastures, and legions of women and herds are employed to look after these estates.
“The aspect of Fontevrault gives an exact idea of the ancient homes of the Patriarchs, in their remote periods of early civilisation, which saw the great proprietors delighting in their natal hearth, and finding their glory, as well as their happiness, in fertilising or assisting nature.
“The abbess rules like a sovereign over her companion nuns, and over the monks, her neighbours. She appoints their officers and their temporal prince. It is she who admits postulants, who fixes the dates of ordinations, pronounces interdictions, graces, and penances. They render her an account of their administration and the employment of their revenues, from which she subtracts carefully her third share, as the essential right of her crosier of authority.”
“Have you invited the Benedictine Fathers to your fete in the wood?” the King asked me, smiling.
“We had no power, Sire,” I answered. “There are many young ladies being educated with the nuns of Fontevrault. The parents of these young ladies respectful as they are to these monks, would have looked askance at the innovation. The Fathers never go in there. They are to be seen at the abbey church, where they sing and say their offices. Only the three secular chaplains of the abbess penetrate into the house of the nuns; the youngest of the three cannot be less than fifty.
“The night of the feast the monks draw near our cloister by means of a wooden theatre, which forms a terrace, and from this elevation they participate by the eye and ear in our amusements; that is enough.”
“Has Madame de Mortemart ever related to you the origin of her abbey?” resumed the King. “Perhaps she is ignorant of it. I am going to tell you of it, for it is extremely curious; it is not as it is related in the books, and I take the facts from good authority. You must hear of it, and you will see.
“There was once a Comtesse de Poitiers, named Honorinde, to whom fate had given for a husband the greatest hunter in the world. This man would have willingly passed his life in the woods, where he hunted, night and day, what we call, in hunter’s parlance, ‘big game.’ Having won the victory over a monstrous boar, he cut off the head himself, and this quivering and bleeding mask he went to offer to his lady in a basin. The young woman was in the first month of her pregnancy. She was filled with repugnance and fright at the sight of this still-threatening head; it troubled her to the prejudice of her fruit.
“Eight, or seven and a half, months afterwards, she brought into the world a girl who was human in her whole body, but above had the horrible head of a wild boar! Imagine what cries, what grief, what despair! The cure of the place refused baptism, and the Count, broken down and desolate, ordered the child to be drowned.
“Instead of throwing it into the water, his servant scrupulously went straight to the monastery where your sister rules. He laid down his closed packet in the church of the monks, and then returned to his lord, who never had any other child.
“The religious Benedictines, not knowing whence this monster came, believed there was some prodigy in it. They baptised in this little person all that was not boar, and left the surplus to Providence. They brought up the singular creature in the greatest secrecy; it drank and lapped after the manner of its kind. As it grew up it walked on its feet, and that without the least imperfection; it could sit down, go on its knees, and even make a courtesy. But it never articulated any distinct words, and it had always a harsh and rough voice which howled and grunted. Its intelligence never reached the knowledge of reading or writing; but it understood easily all that could be said to it, and the proof was that it replied by its actions.
“The Comte de Poitiers having died whilst hunting, Honorinde learnt of her old serving-man in what refuge, in what asylum, he had long ago deposited the little one. This good mother proceeded there, and the monks, after some hesitation, confessed what had become of it. She wished to see it; they showed it her. At its aspect she felt the same inward commotion which had, years before, perverted nature. She groaned, fainted, burst into tears, and never had the courage and firmness to embrace what she had seen.
“Her gratitude was not less lively and sincere; she handed a considerable sum to the Benedictines of Fontevrault, charging them to continue their good work and charity.
“The reverend Prior, reflecting that his hideous inmate came of a great family, and of a family of great property, resolved to procure it as a wife for his nephew. He sounded the young man, who looked fixedly at his future bride, and avowed that he was satisfied.
“She is a good Christian,” he replied to his uncle, since you have baptised her here. She is of a good family, since Honorinde has recognised her. There are many as ugly as she is to be seen who still find husbands. I will put a pretty mask on her, and the mask will give me sufficient illusion. Benedicte, so far as she goes, is well-made; I hope to have fine children who will talk.
“The Prior commenced by marrying them; he then confided in Honorinde, who, not daring to noise abroad this existence, was compelled to submit to what had been done.
“The marriage of the young she-monster was not happy. She bit her husband from morning to night. She did not know how to sit at table, and would only eat out of a trough. She needed neither an armchair, a sofa, nor a couch; she stretched herself out on the sand or on the pavement.
“Her husband, in despair, demanded the nullification of his marriage; and as the courts did not proceed fast enough for his impatience, he killed his companion, Benedicte, with a pistol-shot, at the moment when she was biting and tearing him before witnesses.
“Honorinde had her buried at Fontevrault, and over her tomb, at the end of the year, she built a convent, to which her immense property was given, where she retired herself as a simple nun, and of which she was appointed first abbess by the Pope who reigned at the time.
“There, madame,” added the King, “is the somewhat singular origin of the illustrious abbey which your sister rules with such eclat. You must have remarked the boar’s head, perfectly imitated in sculpture, in the dome; that mask is the speaking history of the noble community of Fontevrault, where more than a hundred Benedictine monks obey an abbess.”
Fine Couples Make Fine Children.—The Dauphine of Bavaria.—She Displeases Madame de Montespan.—First Debut Relating to Madame de Maintenon, Appointed Lady-in-waiting.—Conversation between the Two Marquises.
The King, in his moments of effusion and abandonment (then so full of pleasantness), had said more than once: “If I have any physical beauty, I owe it to the Queen, my mother; if my daughters have any beauty, they owe it to me: it is only fine couples who get fine children.”
When I saw him decided upon marrying Monseigneur le Dauphin, I reminded him of his maxim. He fell to smiling, and answered me: “Chance, too, sometimes works its miracles. My choice for my son is a decided thing; my politics come before my taste, and I have asked for the daughter of the Elector of Bavaria, whose portrait I will show you. She is not beautiful, like you; she is prettier than Benedicte, and I hope that she will not bite Monseigneur le Dauphin in her capricious transports.”
The portrait that the King showed me was a flattering one, as are, in general, all these preliminary samples. For all that, the Princess seemed to me hideous, and even disagreeable, especially about her eyes, that portion of the face which confirms the physiognomy and decides everything.
“Monseigneur will never love that woman,” I said to the King. “That constrained look in the pupil, those drooping eyes,—they make my heart ache.”
“My son, happily,” his Majesty answered, “is not so difficult as you and I. He has already seen this likeness, and at the second look he was taken; and as we have assured him that the young person is well made, he cries quits with her face, and proposes to love her as soon as he gets her.”
“God grant it!” I added; and the King told me, more or less in detail, of what important personages he was going to compose his household. The eternal Abbe Bossuet was to become first chaplain, as being the tutor-in-chief to the Dauphin; the Duchesse de Richelieu, for her great name, was going to be lady of honour; and the two posts of ladies in waiting were destined for the Marquise de Rochefort, wife of the Marshal, and for Madame de Maintenon, ex-governess of the Duc du Maine. The gesture of disapproval which escaped me gave his Majesty pain.
“Why this air of contempt or aversion?” he said, changing colour. “Is it to the Marechale de Rochefort or the Marquise de Maintenon that you object? I esteem both the one and the other, and I am sorry for you if you do not esteem them too.”
“The Marechale de Rochefort,” I replied, without taking any fright, “is aged, and almost always sick; a lady of honour having her appearance will make a contrast with her office. As to the other, she still has beauty and elegance; but do you imagine, Sire, that the Court of Bavaria and the Court of France have forgotten, in so short a time, the pleasant and burlesque name of the poet Scarron?”
“Every one ought to forget what I have forgotten,” replied the King, “and what my gratitude will not, and cannot forget, I am surprised that you, madame, should take pleasure in forgetting.”
“She has taken care of my children since the cradle, I admit it with pleasure,” said I to his Majesty, without changing my tone; “you have given her a marquisate for recompense, and a superb hotel completely furnished at Versailles. I do not see that she has any cause for complaint, nor that after such bounty there is more to add.”
“Of eight children that you have brought into the world, madame, she has reared and attended perfectly to six,” replied the King. “The estate of Maintenon has, at the most, recompensed the education of the Comtes de Vegin, whose childhood was so onerous. And for the remainder of my little family, what have I yet done that deserves mention?”
“Give her a second estate and money,” I cried, quite out of patience, “since it is money which pays all services of that nature; but what need have you to raise her to great office, and keep her at Court? She dotes, she says, on her old chateau of Maintenon; do not deprive her of this delight. By making her lady in waiting, you would be disobliging her.”
“She will accept out of courtesy,” he said to me, putting on an air of mockery. And as the time for the Council was noted by him on my clock, he went away without adding more.
Since M. le Duc du Maine had grown up, and Mademoiselle de Nantes had been confided to the Marquise de Montchevreuil, Madame de Maintenon continued to occupy her handsome apartment on the Princes’ Court. There she received innumerable visits, she paid assiduous court to the Queen, who had suddenly formed a taste for her, and took her on her walks and her visits to the communities; but this new Marquise saw me rarely. Since the affair of the vine-grower, killed on the road, she declared that I had insulted her before everybody, and that I had ordered her imperiously to return to my carriage, as though she had been a waiting-maid, or some other menial. Her excessive sensibility readily afforded her this pretext, so that she neglected and visibly overlooked me.
As she did not come to me, I betook myself to her at a tolerably early hour, before the flood of visitors, and started her on the history of the lady in waiting.
“His Majesty has spoken of it to me,” she said, “as of a thing possible; but I do not think there is anything settled yet in the matter.”
“Will you accept,” I asked her, “supposing the King to insist?”
“I should like a hundred times better,” she replied, “to go and live in independence in my little kingdom of Maintenon, and with my own hands gather on my walls those velvet, brilliant peaches, which grow so fine in those districts. But if the King commands me to remain at Court, and form our young Bavarian Princess in the manners of this country, have I the right, in good conscience, to refuse?”
“Your long services have gained you the right to desire and take your retirement,” I said to her; “in your place, I should insist upon the necessities of my health. And the Court of France will not fall nor change its physiognomy, even if a German or Iroquois Dauphine should courtesy awry, or in bad taste.”
Madame de Maintenon began to laugh, and assured me that “her post as lady in waiting would be an actual burden, if the King had destined her for it in spite of herself, and there should be no means of withdrawing from it.”
At this speech I saw clearly that things were already fixed. Not wishing to call upon me the reproaches of my lord, I carried the conversation no further.
The “Powder of Inheritance.”—The Chambre Ardente.—The Comtesse de Soissons’s Arrest Decreed.—The Marquise de Montespan Buys Her Superintendence of the Queen’s Council.—Madame de Soubise.—Madame de Maintenon and the King.
At the time of the poisonings committed by Madame de Brinvilliers, the Government obtained evidence that a powder, called “the powder of inheritance,” was being sold in Paris, by means of which impatient heirs shortened the days of unfortunate holders, and entered into possession before their time.
Two obscure women, called La Vigoureuse and La Voisine, were arrested, having been caught redhanded. Submitted to the question, they confessed their crime, and mentioned several persons, whom they qualified as “having bought and made use of the said powder of inheritance.”
We saw suddenly the arrest of the Marechal de Luxembourg, the Princesse de Tingry, and many others. The ‘Chambre Ardente’—[The French Star Chamber.]—issued a warrant also to seize the person of the Duchesse de Bouillon and the Comtesse de Soissons, the celebrated nieces of the Cardinal Mazarin, sisters-in-law, both, of my niece De Nevers, who was dutifully afflicted thereby.
The Comtesse de Soissons had possessed hitherto an important office, whose functions suited me in every respect,—that of the superintendence of the Queen’s household and council. I bought this post at a considerable price. The Queen, who had never cared for the Countess, did me the honour of assuring me that she preferred me to the other, when I came to take my oath in her presence.
Madame la Princesse de Rohan-Soubise had wished to supplant me at that time, and I was aware of her constant desire to obtain a fine post at Court. She loved the King, who had shown her his favours in more than one circumstance; but, as she had a place neither in his esteem nor in his affection, I did not fear her. I despatched to her, very adroitly, a person of her acquaintance, who spoke to her of the new household of a Dauphine, and gave her the idea of soliciting for herself the place of lady in waiting, destined for Madame de Maintenon.
The Princesse de Soubise put herself immediately amongst the candidates. She wrote to the King, her friend, a pressing and affectionate letter, to which he did not even reply. She wrote one next in a more majestic and appropriate style. It was notified to her that she was forbidden to reappear at Court.
The prince had resolutely taken his course. He wished to put Madame de Maintenon in evidence, and what he has once decided he abandons never.
I was soon aware that costumes of an unheard-of magnificence were being executed for the Marquise. Gold, silver, precious stones abounded. I was offered a secret view of her robe of ceremony, with a long mantle train. I saw this extraordinarily rich garment, and was sorry in advance for the young stranger, whose lady in waiting could not fail to eclipse her in everything.
I then put some questions to myself,—asked myself severely if my disapproval sprang from natural haughtiness, which would have been possible, and even excusable, or whether, mingled with all that, was some little agitation of jealousy and emulation.
I collected together a crowd of slight and scattered circumstances; and in this union of several small facts, at first neglected and almost unperceived, I distinguished on the part of the King a gradual and increasing attachment for the governess, and at the same time a negligence in regard to me,—a coldness, a cooling-down, at least, and that sort of familiarity, close parent of weariness, which comes to sight in the midst of courtesies and attentions the most satisfying and the most frequent.
The King, in the old days, never glanced towards my clock till as late as possible, and always at the last moment, at the last extremity. Now he cast his eyes on it a score of times in half an hour. He contradicted me about trifles. He explained to me ingeniously the faults, or alleged faults, of my temper and character. If it was a question of Madame de Maintenon, she was of a birth equal and almost superior to the rest of the Court. He forgot himself so far as to quote before me the subtilty of her answers or the delight of her most intimate conversation. Did he wish to describe a noble carriage, an attitude at once easy and distinguished, it was Madame de Maintenon’s. She possessed this, she possessed that, she possessed everything.
Soon there was not the slightest doubt left to me; and I knew, as did the whole Court, that he openly visited the Marquise, and was glad to pass some moments there.
These things, in truth, never lacked some plausible pretext, and he chose the time when Madame de Montchevreuil and Mademoiselle de Nantes were presenting their homages to Madame de Maintenon.
Marie Louise, Daughter of Henrietta of England, Betrothed to the King of Spain.—Her Affliction.—Jealousy of the King, Her Husband.
The unfortunate lady, Henrietta of England, had left, at her death, two extremely young girls, one of them, indeed, being still in the cradle. The new Madame was seized with good-will for these two orphans to such an extent as to complain to the King. They were brought up with the greatest care; they were, both of them, pretty and charming.
The elder was named Marie Louise. It was this one whom Monsieur destined in his own mind for Monseigneur le Dauphin; and the Princess, accustomed early to this prospect, had insensibly adapted to it her mind and hope. Young, beautiful, agreeable, and charming as her mother, she created already the keenest sensation at Court, and the King felt an inclination to cherish her as much as he had loved Madame. But the excessive freedom which this alliance would not have failed to give his brother, both with his son-in-law and nephew, and with the Ministry, prevented his Majesty from giving way to this penchunt for Marie Louise. On the contrary, he consented to her marriage with the King of Spain, and the news of it was accordingly carried to Monsieur le Duc d’Orleans. He and his wife felt much annoyance at it. But after communications of that kind there was scarcely any course open to be taken than that of acquiescence. Monsieur conveyed the news to his beloved daughter, and, on hearing that she was to be made Queen of Spain, this amiable child uttered loud lamentations.
When she went to Versailles to thank the King, her uncle, her fine eyes were still suffused with tears. The few words which she uttered were mingled with sighing and weeping; and when she saw the indifference of her cousin, who felicitated her like the rest, she almost fainted with grief and regret.
“My dear cousin,” said this dull-witted young lord, “I shall count the hours until you go to Spain. You will send me some ‘touru’, for I am very fond of it?”
The King could not but find this reflection of his son very silly and out of place. But intelligence is neither to be given nor communicated by example. His Majesty had to support to the end this son, legitimate as much as you like, but altogether in degree, and with a person which formed a perpetual contrast with the person of the King. It was my Duc du Maine who should have been in the eminent position of Monseigneur. Nature willed it so. She had proved it sufficiently by lavishing all her favours on him, all her graces; but the laws of convention and usage would not have it. His Majesty has made this same reflection, groaning, more than once.
Marie Louise, having been married by proxy, in the great Chapel of Saint Germain, where the Cardinal de Bouillon blessed the ring in his quality of Grand Almoner of France, left for that Spain which her young heart distrusted.
Her beauty and charms rendered her precious to the monarch, utterly melancholy and devout as he was. He did not delay subjecting her to the wretched, petty, tiresome, and absurd etiquette of that Gothic Court. Mademoiselle submitted to all these nothings, seeing she had been able to submit to separation from France. She condemned herself to the most fastidious observances and the most sore privations, which did not much ameliorate her lot.
A young Castilian lord, almost mad himself, thought fit to find this Queen pretty, and publicly testify his love for her. The jealousy of the religious King flared up like a funeral torch. He conceived a hatred of his wife, reserved and innocent though she was. She died cruelly by poison. And Monseigneur le Dauphin probably cried, after his manner:
“What a great pity! She won’t send me the touru!”
The Dauphine of Bavaria.—The Confessor with Spurs.—Madame de Maintenon Disputes with Bossuet.—He Opposes to Her Past Ages and History.—The Military Absolution.
Eight months after the wedding of Marie Louise, we witnessed the arrival of Anne Marie Christine, Princess of Bavaria, daughter of the Elector Ferdinand. The King and Monseigneur went to receive her at Vitry-le-Francais, and then escorted her to Chalons, where the Queen was awaiting her.
The Cardinal de Bouillon celebrated the marriage in the cathedral church of this third-class town. The festivities and jubilations there lasted a week.
The King had been very willing to charge me with the arrangement of the baskets of presents destined for the Dauphine; I acquitted myself of this commission with French taste and a sentiment of what was proper. When the Queen saw all these magnificent gifts placed and spread out in a gallery, she cried out, and said:
“Things were not done so nobly for me; and yet, I can say without vanity, I was of a better house than she.”
This remark paints the Queen, Maria Theresa, better than anything which could be said. Can one wonder, after that, that she should have brought into the world an hereditary prince who so keenly loves ‘touru’, and asks for it!
Madame de Maintenon and M. Bossuet had gone to receive the Princess of Schelestadt. When she was on her husband’s territory, and it was necessary, to confess her for the sacrament of matrimony, she was strangely embarrassed. They had not remembered to bring a chaplain of her own nation for her; and she could not confess except in the German tongue.
Madame de Maintenon, who is skilled in all matters of religion, said to the prelate: “I really think, monsieur, that, having educated Monsieur le Dauphin, you ought to know a little German,—you who have composed the treatise on universal history.”
The Bishop of Meaux excused himself, saying that he knew Greek, Syriac, and even Hebrew; but that, through a fatality, he was ignorant of the German language. A trumpeter was then sent out to ask if there was not in the country a Catholic priest who was a German, or acquainted with the German tongue. Luckily one was found, and Madame de Maintenon, who is very, pedantic, even in the matter of toilet and ornaments, trembled with joy and thanked God for it. But what was her astonishment when they came to bring her the priest! He was in coloured clothes, a silk doublet, flowing peruke, and boots and spurs. The lady in waiting rated him severely, and was tempted to send him back. But Bossuet—a far greater casuist than she—decided that in these urgent cases one need hold much less to forms. They were contented with taking away the spurs from this amphibious personage; they pushed him into a confessional,—the curtain of which he was careful to draw before himself,—and they brought the Bavarian Princess, who, not knowing the circumstances, confessed the sins of her whole life to this sort of soldier.
Madame de Maintenon always had this general confession on her conscience; she scolded Bossuet for it as a sort of sacrilege, and the latter, who was only difficult and particular with simple folk, quoted historical examples in which soldiers, on the eve of battle, had confessed to their general.
“Yes,” said the King, on hearing these quotations from the imperturbable man; “that must have been to the Bishop of Puy or the Bishop of Orange, who, in effect, donned the shield and cuirass at the time of the crusades against the Saracens; or perhaps, again, to the Cardinal de la Valette d’Epernon, who commanded our armies under Richelieu successfully.”
“No, Sire,” replied the Bishop; “to generals who were simply soldiers.”
“But,” said the King, “were the confessions, then, null?”
“Sire,” added the Bishop of Meaux, “circumstances decide everything. Of old, in the time of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and much later still, confessions of Christians were public,—made in a loud voice; sometimes a number together, and always in the open air. Those of soldiers that I have quoted to madame were somewhat of the kind of these confessions of the primitive Church; and to-day, still, at the moment when battle is announced, a military almoner gives the signal for confession. The regiments confess on their knees before the Most High, who hears them; and the almoner, raised aloft on a pile of drums, holds the crucifix in one hand, and with the other gives the general absolution to eighty thousand soldiers at once.”
This clear and precise explanation somewhat calmed Madame de Maintenon, and Madame la Dauphine,—displeased at what she had done on arriving,—in order to be regular, learned to confess in French.
Pere de la Chaise.—The Jesuits.—The Pavilion of Belleville.—The Handkerchief.
Pere de la Chaise has never done me good or ill; I have no motives for conciliating him, no reason to slander him. I am ignorant if he were the least in the world concerned, at the epoch of the Grand Jubilee, with those ecclesiastical attempts of which Bossuet had constituted himself spokesman. Pere de la Chaise has in his favour a great evenness of temper and character; an excellent tone, which comes to him from his birth; a conciliatory philosophy, which renders him always master of his condition and of his metier. He is, in a single individual, the happy combination of several men, that is to say, he is by turns, and as it may be needful, a man indulgent or severe in his preaching; a man of abstinence, or a good feeder; a man of the world, or a cenobite; a man of his breviary, or a courtier. He knows that the sins of woodcutters and the sins of kings are not of the same family, and that copper and gold are not weighed in the same scales.
He is a Jesuit by his garb; he is much more so than they are by his ‘savoir-vivre’. His companions love the King because he is the King; he loves him, and pities him because he sees his weakness. He shows for his penitent the circumspection and tenderness of a father, and in the long run he has made of him a spoiled child.
This Pere de la Chaise fell suddenly ill, and with symptoms so alarming that the cabals each wished to appropriate this essential post of confessor.
The Jansenists would have been quite willing to lay hold of it. The Jesuits, and principally the cordons bleus, did not quit the pillow of the sick man for an instant.
The King had himself informed of his condition every half-hour. There was a bulletin, as there is for potentates. One evening, when the doctors were grave on his account, I saw anxiety and affliction painted on the visage of his Majesty.
“Where shall I find his like?” said he to me. “Where shall I find such knowledge, such indulgence, such kindness? The Pere de la Chaise knew the bottom of my heart; he knew, as an intelligent man, how to reconcile religion with nature; and when duty brings me to the foot of his tribunal, as a humble Christian, he never forgets that royalty, cannot be long on its knees, and he accompanies with his attentions and with deference the religious commands which he is bound to impose on me.”
“I hope that God will preserve him to you,” I replied to his Majesty; “but let us suppose the case in which this useful and precious man should see his career come to an end; will you grant still this mark of confidence and favour to the Jesuits? All the French being your subjects, would it not be fitting to grant this distinction sometimes to the one and sometimes to the other? You would, perhaps, extinguish by this that hate or animosity by which the Jesuits see themselves assailed, which your preference draws upon them.”
“I do not love the Jesuits with that affection that you seem to suggest,” replied the monarch. “I look upon them as men of instruction, as a learned and well-governed corporation; but as for their attachment for me, I know how to estimate it. This kind of people, strangers to the soft emotions of nature, have no affection or love for anything. Before the triumph of the King my grandfather, they intrigued and exerted themselves to bring about his fall; he opened the gates of Paris, and the Jesuits, like the Capuchins, at once recognised him and bowed down before him. King Henri, who knew what men are, pretended to forget the past; he pronounced himself decidedly in favour of the Jesuits because this body of teachers, numerous, rich, and of good credit, had just pronounced itself in favour of him.
“It was, then, a reconciliation between power and power, and the politics of my grandfather were to survive him and become mine, since the same elements exist and I am encamped on the same ground. If God takes away from me my poor Pere de la Chaise, I shall feel this misfortune deeply, because I shall lose in him, not a Jesuit, not a priest, but a good companion, a trusty and proved friend. If I lose him, I shall assuredly be inconsolable for him; but it will be very necessary for me to take his successor from the Grand Monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine. This community knows me by heart, and I do not like innovations.”
The successor of the Pere de la Chaise was already settled with the Jesuit Fathers; but this man of the vanguard was spared marching and meeting danger. The Court was not condemned to see and salute a new face; the old confessor recovered his health. His Majesty experienced a veritable joy at it, a joy as real as if the Prince of Orange had died.
Wishing to prove to the good convalescent how dear his preservation was to him, the King released him from his function for the rest of the year, and begged him to watch over his health, the most important of his duties and his possessions.
Having learnt that they had neither terraces nor gardens at the grand monastery of the Rue Saint Antoine, his Majesty made a present to his confessor of a very agreeable house in the district of Belleville, and caused to be transported thither all kinds of orange-trees, rare shrubs, and flowers from Versailles. These tasteful attentions, these filial cares, diverted the capital somewhat; but Paris is a rich soil, where the strangest things are easily received and naturalised without an effort.
The Pare de la Chaise had his chariot with his arms on it, and his family livery; and as the income from his benefices remained to him, joined to his office of confessor, he continued to have every day a numerous court of young abbes, priests well on in years, barons, countesses, marquises, magistrates and colonels, who came to Belleville in anxiety about his health, to congratulate themselves upon his convalescence, to ask of him, with submission and reverence, a bishopric, an archbishopric, a cardinal’s hat, an important priory, a canonry, or an abbey.
Having myself to place the three daughters of one of my relatives, I went to see the noble confessor at his pavilion of Belleville. He received me with the most marked distinction, and was lavish in acts of gratitude for all the benefits of the King.
As he crossed his salon, in order to accompany me and escort me out, he let his white handkerchief fall; three bishops at once flung themselves upon it, and there was a struggle as to who should pick it up to give it back to him.
I related to the King what I had seen. He said to me: “These prelates honour my confessor, looking upon him as a second me.” In fact, the sins of the King could only throw his confessor into relief and add to his merit.
Mademoiselle de Fontanges.—The Pavilions of the Garden of Flora.—Rapid Triumph of the Favourite.—Her Retreat to Val-de-grace.—Her Death.
Madame de Maintenon was already forty-four years old, and appeared to be only thirty. This freshness, that she owed either to painstaking care or to her happy and quite peculiar constitution, gave her that air of youth which fascinated the eyes of the courtiers and those of the monarch himself. I wished one day to annoy her by bringing the conversation on this subject, which could not be diverting to her. I began by putting the question generally, and I then named several of our superannuated beauties who still fluttered in the smiling gardens of Flora without having the youth of butterflies.
“There are butterflies of every age and colour in the gardens of Flora,” said she, catching the ball on the rebound. “There are presumptuous ones, whom the first breath of the zephyr despoils of their plumage and discolours; others, more reserved and less frivolous, keep their glamour and prestige for a much longer time. For the rest, the latter seem to me to rejoice without being vain in their advantages. And at bottom, what should any insect gain by being proud?”
“Very little,” I answered her, “since being dressed as a butterfly does not prevent one from being an insect, and the best sustained preservation lasts at most till the day after to-morrow.”
The King entered. I started speaking of a young person, extremely beautiful, who had just appeared at Court, and would eclipse, in my opinion, all who had shone there before her.
“What do you call her?” asked his Majesty. “To what family does she belong?”
“She comes from the provinces,” I continued, “just like silk, silver, and gold. Her parents desire to place her among the maids of honour of the Queen. Her name is Fontanges, and God has never made anything so beautiful.”
As I said these words I watched the face of the Marquise. She listened to this portrayal with attention, but without appearing moved by it, such is her power of suppressing her natural feeling. The King only added these words:
“This young person needs be quite extraordinary, since Madame de Montespan praises her, and praises her with so much vivacity. However, we shall see.”
Two days afterwards, Mademoiselle de Fontanges was seen in the salon of the grand table. The King, in spite of his composure, had looks and attentions for no one else.
This excessive preoccupation struck the Queen, who, marking the blandishments of the young coquette and the King’s response, guessed the whole future of this encounter; and in her heart was almost glad at it, seeing that my turn had come.
Mademoiselle de Fontanges, given to the King by her shameless family, feigned love and passion for the monarch, as though he had returned by enchantment to his twentieth year.
As for him, he too appeared to us to forget all dates. I know that he was only now forty-one years old, and having been the finest man in the world, he could not but preserve agreeable vestiges of a once striking beauty. But his young conquest had hardly entered on her eighteenth year, and this difference could not fail to be plain to the most inattentive, or most indulgent eyes.
The King, with a sort of anticipatory resignation, had for six or seven years greatly simplified his appearance. We had seen him, little by little, reform that Spanish and chivalric costume with which he once embellished his first loves. The flowing plumes no longer floated over his forehead, which had become pensive and quite serious. The diagonal, scarf was suppressed, and the long boots, with gold and silver embroidery, were no longer seen. To please his new divinity, the monarch suddenly enough rejuvenated his attire. The most elegant stuffs became the substance of his garments; feathers reappeared. He joined to them emeralds and diamonds.
Allegorical comedies, concerts on the waters recommenced. Triumphant horse-races set the whole Court abob and in movement. There was a fresh carousal; there was all that resembles the enthusiasms of youthful affection, and the deliriums of youth. The youth alone was not there, at least in proportion, assortment, and similarity.
All that I was soliciting for twelve years, Mademoiselle de Fontanges had only to desire for a week. She was created duchess at her debut; and the lozenge of her escutcheon was of a sudden adorned with a ducal coronet, and a peer’s mantle.
I did not deign to pay attention to this outrage; at least, I made a formal resolution never to say a single word on it.
The King came no less from time to time, to pay me a visit, and to talk to me, as of old, of operas and his hunting. I endured his conversation with a philosophical phlegm. He scarcely suspected the change in me.
At the chase, one day, his nymph, whom nothing could stop, had her knot of riband caught and held by a branch; the royal lover compelled the branch to restore the knot, and went and offered it to his Amazon. Singular and sparkling, although lacking in intelligence, she carried herself this knot of riband to the top of her hair, and fixed it there with a long pin.
Fortune willed it that this coiffure, without order or arrangement, suited her face, and suited it greatly. The King was the first to congratulate her on it; all the courtiers applauded it, and this coiffure of the chase became the fashion of the day.
All the ladies, and the Queen herself, found themselves obliged to adopt it. Madame de Maintenon submitted herself to it, like the others. I alone refused to sacrifice to the idol, and my knee, being once more painful, would not bend before Baal.
With the exception of the general duties of the sovereignty, the prince appeared to have forgotten everything for his flame. The Pere de la Chaise, who had returned to his post, regarded this fresh incident with his philosophic calm, and congratulated himself on seeing the monarch healed of at least one of his passions.
I had always taken the greatest care to respect the Queen; and since my star condemned me to stand in her shoes, I did not spare myself the general attentions which two well-born people owe one another, and which, at least, prove a lofty education.
The Duchesse de Fontanges, doubtless, believed herself Queen, because she had the public homage and the King. This imprudent and conceited schoolgirl had the face to pass before her sovereign without stopping, and without troubling to courtesy.
The Infanta reddened with disapproval, and persuaded herself, by way of consolation, that Fontanges had lost her senses or was on the road to madness.
Beautiful and brilliant as the flowers, the Duchess, like them, passed swiftly away. Her pregnancy, by reason of toilsome rides, hunting parties, and other agitations, became complicated. From the eighth month she fell into a fever, into exhaustion and languor. The terror that took possession of her imagination caused her to desire a sojourn in a convent as a refuge of health, where God would see her nearer and, perhaps, come to her aid.
She had herself transported during the night to the House of the Ladies of Val-de-Grace, and desired that they should place in her chamber several relics from their altars.
Her confinement was not less laboured and sinister. When she saw that all the assistance of art could not stop the bleeding, with which her deep bed was flooded, she caused the King to be summoned, embraced him tenderly, in the midst of sobs and tears, and died in the night, pronouncing the name of God and the name of the King, the objects of her love and of fears.
Madame de Sevigne.—Madame de Grignan.—Madame de Montespan at the Carmelites.—Madame de la Valliere.—These Two Great Ruins Console One Another.—An Angel of Sweetness, Goodness, and Kindness.
Fifteen or twenty days before the death of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, my sister and I were taking a walk in the new woods of Versailles. We met the Marquise de Sevigne near the canal; she was showing these marvellous constructions to her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan. They greeted us with their charming amiability, and, after having spoken of several indifferent matters, the Marquise said to me: “We saw, five or six days ago, a person, madame, of whom you were formerly very fond, and who charged us to recall her to the memory of her friends. You are still of that number,—I like to think so, and our commission holds good where you are concerned, if you will allow it.”
Then she mentioned to me that poor Duchesse de la Valliere, to whom I was once compelled by my unhappy star to give umbrage, and whom, in my fatal thoughtlessness, I had afflicted without desiring it.
Tears came into my eyes; Madame de Sevigne saw them, and expressed her regret at having caused me pain. Madame de Thianges and I asked her if my old friend was much changed. She and Madame de Grignan assured us that she was fresh, in good health, and that her face appeared more beautiful. On the next day I wished absolutely to see her, and drove to the Carmelites.
On seeing my pretty cripple, who hobbled among us with so great a charm, I uttered a cry, which for a moment troubled her. She sank down to salute the crucifix, as custom demands, and, after her short prayer, she came to me. “I did not mention your name to Mesdames de Sevigne,” said she; “but, however, I am obliged to them, since they have been able to procure me the pleasure of seeing you once more.”
“The general opinion of the Court, and in the world, my dear Duchess,” answered I, “is that I brought about your disgrace myself; and the public, that loved you, has not ceased to reproach me with your misfortune.”
“The public is very kind still to occupy itself with me,” she answered; “but it is wrong in that, as in so many other matters. My retirement from the world is not a misfortune, and I never suspected that the soul could find such peace and satisfaction in these silent solitudes.
“The first days were painful to me, I admit it, owing to the inexpressible difference which struck me between what I found here and what I had left elsewhere. But just as the eye accustoms itself, little by little, to the feeble glimmer of a vault, in the same way my body has accustomed itself to the roughness of my new existence, and my heart to all its great privations.
“If life had not to finish, in fulfilment of a solemn, universal, and inevitable decree, the constraint that I have put upon myself might at length become oppressive, and my yoke prove somewhat heavy. But all that will finish soon, for all undertakings come to an end. I left you young, beautiful, adored, and triumphant in the land of enchantments. But six years have passed, and they assure me that your own afflictions have come, and that you, yourself, have been forced to drink the bitter cup of deprivation.”
At these words, pronounced in a melancholy and celestial voice, I felt as though my heart were broken, and burst into tears.
“I pity you, Athenais,” she resumed. “Is, then, what I have been told lightly, and almost in haste, only too certain for you? How is it you did not expect it? How could you believe him constant and immutable, after what happened to me?
“To-day, I make no secret to you of it, and I say it with the peaceful indifference which God has generously granted me, after such dolorous tribulations. I make no secret of it to you, Athenais; a thousand times you plunged the sword and dagger into my heart, when, profiting by my confidence in you, by my sense of entire security, you permitted your own inclination to substitute itself for mine, and a young man seething with desires to be attracted by your charms. These unlimited sufferings exhausted, I must believe, all the sensibility of my soul. And when this corrosive flame had completely devoured my grief, a new existence grew up in me; I no longer saw in the father of my children other than a young prince, accustomed to see his dominating will fulfilled in everything. Knowing how little in this matter he is master of himself, he who knows so well how to be master of himself in everything to do with his numerous inferiors, I deplored the facility he enjoys from his attractions, from his wealth, from his power to dazzle the hearts which he desires to move and subdue.
“Recognise these truths, my dear Marquise,” she added, “and gain, for it is time, a just idea of your position. After the unhappiness I felt at being loved no longer, I should have quitted the Court that very instant, if I had been permitted to bring up and tend my poor children. They were too young to abandon! I stayed still in the midst of you, as the swallow hovers and flits among the smoke of the fire, in order to watch over and save her little ones. Do not wait till disdain or authority mingles in the matter. Do not come to the sad necessity of resisting a monarch, and of detesting to the point of scandal that which you have so publicly loved; pity him, but depart. This kind of intimacy, once broken, cannot be renewed. However skilfully it may be patched up, the rent always reappears.”
“My good Louise,” I replied to the amiable Carmelite, “your wise counsels touch me, persuade me, and are nothing but the truth. But in listening to you I feel overwhelmed; and that strength which you knew how to gain, and show to the world, your former companion will never possess.
“I see with astonished eyes the supernatural calm which reigns in your countenance; your health seems to me a prodigy, your beauty was never so ravishing; but this barbarous garb pierces me to the heart.
“The King does not yet hate me; he shows me even a remnant of respect, with which he would colour his indifference. Permit me to ask from him for you an abbey like that of Fontevrault, where the felicities of sanctuary and of the world are all in the power of my sister. He will ask nothing better than to take you out, be assured.”
“Speak to him of me,” answered Louise; “I do not oppose that; but leave me until the end the role of obedience and humility that his fault and mine impose on me. Why should he wish that I should command others,—I who did not know how to command myself at an epoch when my innocence was so dear to me, and when I knew that, in losing that, one is lost?”
As she said these words two nuns came to announce her Serene Highness, that is to say, her daughter, the Princesse de Conti. I prayed Madame de la Valliere to keep between ourselves the communications that had just taken place in the intimacy of confidence. She promised me with her usual candour. I made a profound reverence to the daughter, embraced the mother weeping, and regained my carriage, which the Princess must have remarked on entering.