At home as well as abroad, in parliamentary and clerical quarrels, as in questions of external politics, Madame de Pompadour’s ideas were always undecided, inconsistent, variable. For that matter, it is not easy to find in a pretty woman the qualities needful to manage public affairs well. With very few exceptions, fashionable women are fickle, wilful, excessively impressionable, capricious, like nearly all persons who are flattered. If they meddle with government, their half-knowledge is more dangerous than complete ignorance. They have infatuations, foregone determinations; their mania for protecting makes them obstinate in sustaining undeserving favorites. Their most serious determinations often depend on trifles. A well-turned compliment influences them more than a good reason; they are the dupes of any one who knows how to flatter them without seeming to do so, and who can find more or less ingenious pretexts for justifying their whims or palliating their faults. Such was Madame de Pompadour.

Is it not curious to see this futile woman leaving her gimcracks and gewgaws to interfere in the most arduous theological or governmental questions, to pose as an arbiter between the magistracy and the clergy, the throne and the altar? “Certes,” writes D’Argenson in a style well worthy of the epoch, “it is better to see a beautiful nymph at the helm than a villainous crouching ape such as the late Cardinal Fleury. But these fair ladies are as capricious as white cats, which caress you at first and afterwards scratch and bite you.” Madame de Pompadour acted like that with the Parliament; sometimes she caressed, sometimes she clawed it.

The interminable struggle between secular jurisdiction and ecclesiastical discipline had all the ruthlessness, all the asperity, of a civil war. A society at once incredulous and fanatical grew excited over theological questions worthy of Byzantium, and even in the heart of the Seven Years’ War there were at Paris, as Voltaire remarks, fifty thousand fanatics who did not know in what country flowed the Danube and the Elbe, and who thought the universe turned upside down by the contradictory propositions of the adepts of Jansenism and the disciples of Molina.[48]

The question, however, was more serious than one might be inclined to believe. Jansenism, that third estate of religion, as it has been so justly called, was nothing more or less than a preliminary step toward republican doctrines. “Do not believe,” said Bossuet, apropos of the English revolution, “that it is simply the quarrel of the Episcopate, or some intrigues against the Anglican liturgy which have moved the common people. These disputes were as yet only feeble commencements whereby turbulent spirits made a trial of their liberty; but something more violent was stirring in the depths of men’s hearts; it was a secret disgust for all that had been authority, and an itching to innovate incessantly after the first example had been seen.”

French Jansenism had the haughty chagrin, the indocile curiosity, the spirit of revolt, which characterized the Protestantism of England. Louis XIV., so jealous of his royal prerogatives, had seen this at once. He felt that discipline is as indispensable to the Church as to the barracks, and comprehended that the throne has the same foundations as the altar. The thing aimed at by the bull Unigenitus of 1713 was to re-establish unity in doctrines; and when the Jansenists refused to submit to the decree of the Sovereign Pontiff, the great King said that this rebellion against the Pope would give rise to attacks against the monarchical principle. He was not mistaken. If the Parliament showed itself favorable to Jansenism, it was far less on account of such or such ideas on free will or grace, than by instinctive liking for the revolutionary spirit which existed in germ in the new sect. Religious controversies were to lead by slow degrees to political controversies. The Parliament led to parliamentarism. People began by contemning the episcopal jurisdiction of an archbishop in order to end by braving the authority of a king.

Christopher de Beaumont, that convinced priest, that austere and inflexible prelate, so firm against the temptation of grandeurs that Louis XV. had been obliged to summon him thrice in order to make him leave his diocese of Vienne, in Dauphiny, and accept the archbishopric of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont was faithful to the traditions of the Church when he denied all competence over matters purely religious, such as the administration of sacraments, to the Parliament. His doctrine was after all only that of the separation of the powers. Louis XV. inclined to the views of the Archbishop, whose virtues he appreciated. Like Louis XIV., he recognized the bull Unigenitus, and treated Jansenism as a heresy. Like Louis XIV., he suspected, not without reason, both the Parliament and the Parisian population. “I know the people of Paris,” said he; “they must have remonstrances and shows, and perhaps worse than that some day.” Madame de Pompadour would have taken the part of the Archbishop, as the King wished to do, if the Archbishop had been a courtier; but Christopher de Beaumont would rather have died than compromise with concubinage and adultery. He could not understand a prelate’s stooping before a royal favorite, and the idea of soliciting a Pompadour would have made him blush. He preferred to be twice exiled. “The Queen,” wrote D’Argenson in December, 1754, “Monseigneur the Dauphin, and all the royal family are greatly troubled by the exile of the Archbishop of Paris; the Queen weeps over it every day.” Christopher de Beaumont received numerous visits in his exile at Conflans. The orthodox considered him the upholder of the faith. The King admired the Archbishop, but did not sustain him. D’Argenson wrote, March 6, 1756:—

“The motto Dividatur might be recommended for the personal government of Louis XV. He received this spirit of compromise from Cardinal Fleury. All his forces run to that.... Hence, doing good only half way, he also does evil half way, which produces a chaotic state of things, and the worst effect.” With this system the monarch dissatisfied the magistracy and the clergy at the same time. By turns he banished the Parliament and the Archbishop. The curés continued to refuse the sacraments to the Jansenists. The magistrates sent their bailiffs’ men and caused the sick to be communicated surrounded by bayonets. The Eucharist was abandoned to derision by the parties to the strife. The court fluctuated between the two opinions. After having sent the Archbishop of Paris to Conflans, Louis XV., although leaving him in disgrace, pronounced in his favor.

In a bed of justice held December 13, 1756, the King forbade the Parliament to decree the administration of the sacraments, to convene general assemblies, to interfere with the course of justice, to suspend the registration of edicts. He suppressed the chambers of inquests, and declared that he would punish any who would not obey. One hundred and fifty members of the Parliament sent in their resignations. All Paris was in commotion. A riot was momentarily expected. Nothing was heard but oaths and curses. The Parliament and Jansenistic diatribes had the result of exciting Damiens to the insanity of fanaticism. He thought that in striking Louis XV. he was acting for God and the people. Madame de Pompadour, still more versatile than the King, was at this time the enemy of the Parliament. However, the exile of the Archbishop continued, because nothing could induce him to curry-favor with the favorite. The charge which he sent from Conflans to Paris displeased the Marquise.

“Let us enter into our own selves, my dear brethren,” said he, “and see whether the aberrations of our own minds and hearts have not drawn upon us so terrible an effect of the divine wrath. Examine without prejudice what has been deserved by so many errors diffused among the public, so much license in speech, such blasphemies against God and His Christ, such disputing against the known truth, such scandals in every condition and of all kinds; observe, in particular, whether, since the weakening of faith among us, a multitude of principles tending to disobedience and even to rebellion against the sovereign and his laws have not insinuated themselves into men’s minds and books. It would be easy for us to remind you of the maxims of the holy doctors which have never ceased to inspire those sentiments of fidelity that are due to earthly princes; the decisions of councils which have anathematized every doctrine capable of revolting peoples against the sovereign; the perpetual instructions of pastors, who have always said with the great Apostle: Obey your temporal masters in all things.... What are we to think of the execrable crime which has been conceived in the bosom of the country and executed under our eyes? What must be our indignation at the memory of a treasonable attempt, deliberately planned, and made in that palace where everything announces the majesty of the sovereign?”

This truly evangelical language was the admiration of the Queen, the Dauphin, and all pious people. But it seemed like a satire to the protectress of the philosophers, the friend of Voltaire and Quesnay, the patroness of the Encyclopedia. Louis XV. was in reality of the Archbishop’s opinion. He recalled him in October, 1757. But, faithful to his system of compromises, he permitted those members of the Parliament who had resigned to resume their functions. The Archbishop, constantly pursued by the animadversions of the favorite, was exiled a second time, from January, 1758, to October, 1759. The inflexible prelate conceded nothing in point of doctrine. “Let them erect a scaffold in the midst of the court,” he exclaimed; “I would ascend it to maintain my rights, fulfil my duties, and obey the laws of my conscience.”

The quarrels over the bull Unigenitus were at last appeased; but religious authority was weakened at the same time as royal authority. Emboldened by their polemics, the members of the Parliament began gradually to pose as protectors of liberties and censors of absolute monarchy. Some of the nobles, on the lookout for popularity, such as D’Argenson, Choiseul, and other disciples of Voltaire, fancied that the aristocracy could retain their privileges if the clergy lost theirs. Louis XV., who foresaw the coming cataclysms, was under no such illusion: at bottom he was inimical to the Parliament and friendly to the Church. If the Most Christian King sometimes showed himself indulgent toward the philosophers, it was because they flattered his mistress and sought to stupefy him while lulling his remorse.