Marie Leczinska was a tender mother. She surrounded her daughters and her son with the most devoted cares, and knew how to inspire them with Christian sentiments. M. Michelet, who, in his latest works, tried to sully whatever he touched, has tried in vain to cast odious ridicule on the daughters of Louis XV. In spite of his venomous insinuations, his calumnious influence, he has been unable to extinguish the aureole of purity surrounding the brows of these virtuous princesses. The truth may be found in the excellent work of M. Édouard de Barthélemy, an impartial judge, a critic full of sagacity.[62] A curious book, recently published by M. Honoré Bonhomme,[63] has also avenged the memory of the daughters of Louis XV. against attacks which the most bitter adversaries of the monarchy and the most violent of pamphleteers had not permitted themselves.
All of the daughters of the King, with the exception of Madame Adelaide, spent their childhood at the Abbey of Fontevrault. Cardinal Fleury thought the presence of the little princesses at Versailles entailed too much expense, and Louis XV., yielding to the suggestions of his parsimonious minister, regretfully determined on separating himself from his children. Adelaide alone, by dint of prayers and supplications, was able to escape the abbey. On returning from Mass, she threw herself at her father’s feet, and, although only seven years old, succeeded in gaining her cause. The King wept a little, says Barbier, and promised her that she should not go away.
It is easy to comprehend how much the good Queen must have suffered from this parting with her daughters. She wrote to the Duchess de Luynes, October 12, 1747: “The King surprised me by showing me the portraits of my daughters from Fontevrault. I did not know they had been painted. The two eldest are really beautiful, but I have never seen anything so agreeable as the little one. She has an affecting expression, very remote from sadness. I have never seen anything so singular; she is touching, sweet, spiritual. If you find my letter too long, make allowances for the tenderness of a mother and the confidence of a friend.”
The six daughters of Louis XV. were born: the twins, Elisabeth and Henriette in 1727; Adelaide in 1732; Victoire in 1733; Sophie in 1734; Louise, the future Carmelite, in 1737.
The three princesses of whom the Queen speaks in the letter we have just quoted, and who were still at Fontevrault, were Victoire, Sophie, and Louise. The twins, Elisabeth and Henriette, had quitted the convent in 1739, and the former had soon afterwards married the Infant Don Philip, son of Philip V., King of Spain. Thereafter she is designated as Madame Infanta. The six sisters were all spoken of as Mesdames de France. Nevertheless, there was but one of them who married. When she took her departure for Spain, at the age of twelve years (August 31, 1739), the twin sisters exchanged heart-rending farewells. They could not resign themselves to separation. “’Tis forever!” they cried, their voices broken by sobs. Louis XV. accompanied his daughter as far as Plessis-Picquet. The Duke de Luynes relates that while on the road he gave his dear child most pathetic advice concerning the conduct she should observe in her new country, where, said he, her mild temper would infallibly win all hearts. He spoke to her with so much affection and tenderness that all who were in the carriage were melted to tears.
In 1748, the husband of Madame Infanta obtained the sovereignty of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. Before going to their new dominions with her husband, the daughter of Louis XV. came to see her parents at Versailles. This was a delightful moment for the royal family. Princes and princesses made few journeys in the eighteenth century. What joy to embrace a father, mother, brother, sisters, who had never expected to see one again! Marie Leczinska returned thanks to heaven. The little girl of twelve, who had left Versailles, returned thither a young woman in all the brilliancy of her twenty-second year. The Dauphin was beside himself with joy. In the first moment he embraced every one he saw, even the lady’s maids (December, 1748). Sophie and Louise were still at the convent of Fontevrault, but Henriette, Adelaide, and Victoire were at Versailles. Their sister’s arrival was an extreme happiness for them. Madame Infanta, so delighted to be once more with her family, had not courage to leave them. Months passed without her being able to decide on quitting Versailles, where her filial and sisterly heart experienced emotions so sweet. Nevertheless, it was necessary to be resigned. The dreaded moment arrived in October, 1749. The farewells must be spoken. It cost Henriette so much to part with her beloved sister that she fainted several times. The Dauphin was in tears, and Louis XV., who loved his daughters most profoundly, showed by his grief all the strength of his paternal tenderness.
Madame Infanta returned to Versailles some years later, but at that time the joy of her return was not untroubled. The Princess no longer found her twin sister, that dear Henriette whom she regarded, so to say, as the half of her soul.
Henriette had just died at the age of twenty-four (February 10, 1752). This young girl, as unhappy as sympathetic, was certainly one of the most touching figures in the feminine gallery of Versailles. M. Honoré Bonhomme has made an exquisite portrait of her, from both the physical and the moral point of view: “Of a sickly constitution, Madame Henriette had that ivory whiteness of complexion peculiar to the daughters of the North, and which her mother, Polish in blood and race, seemed to have transmitted to her along with life. Delicate, tall, and slender, there was something dreamy and inspired in her person. Her mild, pure features, aristocratic in their outline, charmed and yet inspired respect; her smile was melancholy, and her whole appearance, in which gloom seemed constantly warring against brightness, bore the impress of fatality. It was because she carried in her heart the secret of her destiny. Like pale Ophelia, she was to die while gathering flowers, and like Myrto, the young Tarentine of André Chenier, she was never to cross the threshold of the spouse. For the rest, inwardly animated by the sacred fire, enamored of great things, she possessed all subtleties of the mind as well as all delicacies of the heart. Looking into her great, dreamy eyes, which seemed to reflect the dormant limpidity of deep lakes, one divined what abysses of tenderness and devotion were hidden underneath, and felt a presentiment that her first love would also be her last, that she would die there where her soul had fixed itself.”
That, in fact, is what happened. Madame Henriette had conceived for the young Duke de Chartres, son of the Duke d’Orléans, an affection which was returned. The Marquis d’Argenson wrote, November 30, 1739: “A secret effort is being made to bring about a marriage between the Duke de Chartres and Madame seconde [so Madame Henriette was called; her twin sister, Madame Infanta, was known as Madame première], and it is believed that the King is determined on it and gradually working toward it. Nothing could be more conformable to pacificatory views, for Europe would plainly see from this that the King was disposed to substitute the Orleans branch to the Dauphin, rather than the Spanish one.”
To understand this phrase, it is necessary to recall that the Dauphin was not yet married, and that people often wondered what would happen if this only son of Louis XV. should die without male posterity. Many thought that in such a case the King, in spite of the renunciations of the treaty of Utrecht, would take his heir from the Spanish Bourbons, and not from the Orleans branch. D’Argenson was in favor of the latter branch. Cardinal Fleury, on the contrary, pursued it with hostility, as if he had an insight of the future. The old minister prevailed so far, that the King, who had nevertheless a real liking for the Duke de Chartres, an amiable and estimable young prince, would not give his consent to the projected marriage. One day the Duke was riding beside the King. “Sire,” said he, “I had a great hope. Your Majesty had not taken it from my father.... I could have contributed to the happiness of Madame Henriette, who would have remained in France with Your Majesty. May I still be allowed to hope?” The King inclined toward the Prince and sadly pressed his hand. This beautiful dream of love, so quickly faded, must be renounced. Three years later, the Duke de Chartres espoused the daughter of the Prince de Bourbon-Conté. Madame Henriette had the courage to conceal her immense sorrow. She was present, death in her soul, a smile on her lips, at the marriage of the man she loved (December 9, 1743). From that day she felt herself heart-stricken, and her last days were merely an immolation. Prince Nattier has represented the Princess under the double emblems of Fire and Meditation. She is leaning against a tripod on which half-consumed torches are smoking. These torches are like the image of the nearly extinguished flame of the Prince to whom the young girl would willingly have given her faith. She never uttered a complaint, a murmur. Calm, grave, recollected, she meditated and she prayed. The stay of her twin sister at Versailles was like a break in the darkness of her night. But when this dear companion of her infancy departed, all the wounds of her tender and loyal heart reopened.
The arrival of her three younger sisters, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, who left the convent of Fontevrault at the close of the year 1750, did not console her. Having sacrificed her own happiness, she desired that at least the Duke de Chartres might be happy. But it was not so. The Duke had married a woman whose conduct was said to be anything but exemplary. He could not, then, forget that tender, that virtuous Henriette who seemed to him the image of sadness. The Princess wept silently in her oratory, and offered her sufferings to God. Earth was not worthy of her.
There are characters which can only expand in a better world. Sorrow had undermined the constitution of Madame Henriette. She died February 10, 1752. “Ah! my sister! my dear sister!” were her last words. She died as she had lived: while loving. “Sad sport of fate,” says M. Honoré Bonhomme, “poor saintly girl, virgin and martyr, who spent nine whole years in climbing, step after step, the Calvary where she yielded up her soul.”
After relating this death, the Duke de Luynes adds: “No one can express the sadness into which the King is plunged. The Queen is much afflicted, and also the Dauphin, Madame the Dauphiness, and Mesdames. Madame Adelaide does not weep, but silent griefs are usually the longest. Madame Henriette was much beloved. Her mild character, without ill temper and even without will, rendered her extremely complaisant toward the Dauphin, the Dauphiness, and the ladies, her sisters.”
On receiving tidings of this mournful death, Madame Infanta wrote her father a most touching letter. She said she wished to come and mingle her tears with those of her family. She arrived in France in September, 1752, and remained with her father for a year.
Madame Infanta was not happy. She did not greatly esteem her husband, and that Prince cut a rather sorry figure in the little sovereignty of Parma and Piacenza. He had neither money nor prestige; and his wife, who was very intelligent, his wife, of whom Bernis said that she would make a good minister of foreign affairs, was constantly dreaming of some more considerable establishment for him. She thought by turns of exchanging the Duchy of Parma for Tuscany, or acquisitions in Flanders, Lorraine, or even Corsica. She fancied that, thanks to her father’s affection and the territorial changes in Europe, she would end by obtaining something. The Marquis d’Argenson, who had not much sympathy for her, wrote, September 27, 1753: “It is to be hoped she will never come back to France. Is it just that the State should suffer because she was married so badly? Along with her go a great quantity of chariots loaded with all sorts of things that the King has given her.”
Madame Infanta returned to France a third time, but only to die there. She arrived at the château of Choisy, September 3, 1757. To credit M. Michelet, it was she alone who brought about the Seven Years’ War. But there is no foundation for this assertion of the great writer who, toward the close of his life, created what one might call the school of imaginative history. At the time when she reappeared at court, Madame Infanta was glowing with freshness, brilliancy, and health. No one could have foreseen that her death was so near at hand. One of her last letters was addressed to her son Ferdinand, whom she had left at Parma. It commenced as follows:—
“Life is uncertain, my son, and my character is too sincere for me either to vaunt or even to affect perfect indifference as to the length of mine; but I feel that the wish to see you, to leave you worthy of the name you bear in the world, such, in fine, as I desire you, is one of the ties that attach me most to life, and one of the reasons, perhaps, which will most abridge mine by the continual torments caused me by this desire and the fear of not obtaining it. It will be a great consolation to be able to leave you an avowal of my sentiments if I die before you are in a condition to read it. If I live, it will serve me as a plan whereon to form you; and in either case, it will always be to you a proof of my tenderness and of my care for your welfare at an age when many people do not yet think of it.”
Not many days after writing this letter, Madame Infanta was attacked by small-pox, and died December 6, 1759. The twins, who had loved each other so tenderly, both died prematurely. Madame Henriette had died at the age of twenty-four, Madame Infanta at thirty-two. She was buried at Saint Denis, close to her sister, so that their union lasted even in the tomb.
Marie Leczinska’s heart was broken with grief. But instead of murmuring against Providence, she bent filially beneath the hand of God who smote her. Her five remaining children, the Dauphin, Adelaide, Victoire, Sophie, and Louise, showed her a profound affection. Never was a mother better loved. Louis XV. took pleasure in the society of his daughters. As a father, he had that sort of citizenlike good-nature which is unhappily rare among princes. Mesdames lodged underneath their father, in the former apartment of Madame de Montespan. Madame Adelaide occupied a chamber which communicated by a private staircase with that of her father. “Often,” relates Madame Campan in her Memoirs, “he brought and drank coffee there which he had made himself. Madame Adelaide pulled a bell-rope, which announced the King’s visit to Madame Victoire. On rising to go to her sister, Madame Victoire rang for Madame Sophie, who in her turn rang for Madame Louise.”
In a twinkling the four sisters were gathered around their father. At six in the evening, at the unbooting of the King after the chase, as people said in those days, the princesses came to pay a visit to Louis XV., but this time with a certain etiquette. “The princesses,” says Madame Campan again, “put on an enormous hoop which supported a skirt braided with gold and embroideries. They fastened a long train to their waist, and hid the negligence of the rest of their habiliments by a large cape of black taffeta, which covered them up to the chin. Knights of honor, ladies, pages, equerries, ushers, carrying large torches, accompanied them to the King. In an instant the whole palace, usually solitary, was in movement; the King kissed each princess on her forehead.” In reality, he found more true happiness in the virtuous intimacy of his daughters than in the circle of his courtiers and the arms of his favorites. There were moments when people believed that in growing old the debauchee would become wise. “The King,” wrote D’Argenson, “seems to wish for no society but that of his family, like a patriarch and a good man.”
Marie Leczinska felt thankful to her husband for the affection he had for his daughters. The relations of Mesdames with their mother were full of confidence, sweetness, and gaiety. They liked to enter those little apartments of the Queen, where Marie Leczinska forgot the splendor of the throne to live modestly as a good mother. The little apartments[64] comprised three rooms: a salon, a bathroom, and a studio for painting. Madame the Countess d’Armaillé, whose graceful and solid work we have so often had occasion to quote, has given a charming description of these three rooms in which Marie Leczinska spent the greater portion of her time. “Is it not true,” she says, “that one may divine the character and tastes of a woman by merely inspecting the sanctuary of her private life, or, to speak more simply, that place in the dwelling where she habitually prefers to stay? It matters little whether this room be a garret or a drawing-room. Nothing is so intimate as certain interior arrangements; nothing tells the story of a woman better than the way in which she orders the room she inhabits. In the little apartments of the Queen one found everything which makes the charm of a peaceful existence. Here, pieces of work begun for the poor, or for churches, a whole piece of furniture embroidered by her hand; there, an open harpsichord with Moncrif’s cantatas, Rameau’s operettas, Polish hymns; further away a drawing-table, a spinning-wheel provided with its distaff, frames for embroidering and weaving, a small printing-press; then flowers, paintings, portraits of children, miniatures. On a console, a vase offered by Marshal de Nangis, a manuscript given by Cardinal de Fleury, a porcelain pagoda with verses by Madame de Boufflers; in an embrasure of the window a cabinet containing the Queen’s favorite books, with some verses by the Duchess de Luynes; everywhere souvenirs of friendship, of maternal tenderness, of useful or agreeable occupations.” It was there that, surrounded by her children, the virtuous Queen tasted the joys of the heart, those joys imparted only by a good conscience, and which the mistresses for whom Louis XV. deserted her had never known.