[Illustration: MARIE ANTOINETTE.
Dauphiness of France.]
_WOMEN OF VERSAILLES_
LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV
BY
IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND
_TRANSLATED BY_
ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN
_WITH PORTRAITS_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1893
COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
FIRST PART
THE COURT AND THE CITY AT THE END OF THE
REIGN OF LOUIS XV.
CHAPTER
I. THE KING 9
II. THE NOBILITY 15
III. THE CLERGY 18
IV. THE MAGISTRACY 22
V. THE MIDDLE CLASSES 29
VI. THE PEOPLE 34
VII. POLITICAL WOMEN 40
VIII. LOVE 45
IX. THE FAMOUS SALONS 51
X. THE PHILOSOPHERS 68
SECOND PART
THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES AT THE END OF THE
REIGN OF LOUIS XV.
I. LOUIS XV. IN 1768 79
II. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE COUNTESS DU BARRY 91
III. THE TRIUMPHS OF THE COUNTESS DU BARRY 97
IV. MADAME LOUISE OF FRANCE, CARMELITE NOVICE 105
V. THE CHILDHOOD OF MARIE ANTOINETTE 115
VI. MARIE ANTOINETTE’S ARRIVAL IN FRANCE 125
VII. THE MARRIAGE FESTIVITIES OF MARIE ANTOINETTE 135
VIII. THE DAUPHINESS AND THE ROYAL FAMILY IN 1770 143
IX. MARIE ANTOINETTE AND MADAME DU BARRY 149
X. THE DAUPHINESS AND MARIA THERESA 162
XI. THE PAVILION OF LUCIENNES 177
XII. THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV 188
EPILOGUE
THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BARRY 199
LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV
_INTRODUCTION_
To live the life of the dead, to study an epoch thoroughly, to identify
one’s self with personages and become familiar with their habits, ideas,
passions, tastes, fashions, prejudices, is a sort of metempsychosis, an
incarnation. To attain it, one must isolate himself from his own time,
and, forgetting that he is himself, must imagine that he is another.
At first one lends but slight attention to the details given by the
memoirs of the times to which he wishes to transport himself, to the
minutiæ of every sort which are only seen as through a glass. But after
a while, you begin to be captivated by all these petty facts, this daily
tittle-tattle, and the past assumes a second actuality. It seems as if
you knew intimately the actors in the piece of which you are giving
yourself a representation. You think you hear their voices and watch the
play of their countenances, and you become the courtier of palaces, the
holder of season tickets to theatres, the habitué of the salons you are
seeking to revive.
This is what I should like to attempt for the last years of Louis XV.,
those six years which extend from the death of Marie Leczinska to that
of the sovereign who is no longer styled the Well-Beloved except by
antiphrasis. A period curious by its contrasts, its wavering struggle
between the ancient régime which is approaching extreme old age, and
the new which as yet exists only in embryo! French society, regretting
nothing of the past, fearing nothing from the future, advances singing
toward the abyss.
I fancy that instead of being an obscure man of letters of the nineteenth
century, I am a courtier of the eighteenth; that I am present at Madame
Du Barry’s triumph, when Madame Louise of France takes the veil, and
at the rising of that nascent star which is called Marie Antoinette. I
love Versailles, where the monarchy, spite of its decline, has still
some remaining prestige. But I greatly prefer Paris; Paris, capital of
opinion, Paris, city of luxury, intelligence, pleasures. I live with
the philosophers while mistrustful of their doctrines, whose bearings
they do not comprehend well. The courtier of Louis XV. at Versailles,
I am the familiar of the kings and queens of fashion at Paris. I visit
the Marquise du Deffand without embroiling myself with Mademoiselle de
Lespinasse. At the house of Madame Geoffrin I meet those great nobles,
men of wit and taste, who, mingling with writers and artists, establish
a fusion between aristocracy and literature, those foreign diplomatists
who seem ravished with French and Parisian civilization. I go to those
delightful suppers where one forgets for an instant all that is sad, all
that is morose, in existence, in order to think only of what is amiable
and agreeable. When it suits me, I dabble a little in politics. When
the Duke de Choiseul falls into disgrace, I pose as his courtier and go
to inscribe my name on the Chanteloup column. The quarrels between the
magistracy and royalty interest me, but I do not take them too seriously.
I see a society divided into two camps: the pessimists and the optimists,
those who believe in the social peril and those who disbelieve. But the
latter are in the majority. The former declare that if the altar is no
longer solid, the throne cannot be so either. They regret the Jesuits.
They loudly blame Voltaire. The future looks black to them. They are the
prophets of misfortune.
The second smile if one expresses a fear. When they have pronounced
the words justice, tolerance, equality, liberty, they think they have
said all. They jeer at the Cassandras predicting public calamities, at
the priests lamenting over unbelief, at Louis XV. contemplating with a
sort of anxiety the portrait of Charles I., King of England. How could
a loyal, chivalric nation such as the French make its king ascend a
scaffold? Is not society every day becoming milder, more enlightened,
more tolerant? Are not the old religious quarrels falling into oblivion?
Is not the nobility placing itself at the head of a liberal and
generous movement? Are not the priests becoming as agreeable as worldly
people? Is not instruction making progress daily? When had literature
more prestige? When were liberal ideas, the taste for useful reforms,
civilizing schemes, more fashionable? Is not science, which every day
realizes new prodigies, uniting itself with philosophy to embellish,
pacify, and regenerate the human species? And it is such a time as this
that people would like to signalize as a period doomed to troubles,
anarchy, sanguinary violence! “Away, ye tremblers!” cry the philosophers.
“Away, retrograde men, who want to enchain and degrade humanity! Nothing
will impede the diffusing light! Nothing, no, nothing will thwart the
irresistible movement which is carrying France, and after France all
Europe, toward progress, toward indefinite, illimitable perfection.
Drop these pusillanimous arguments, imaginary alarms, infantine or
senile terrors. The phantoms which disturb you will not frighten us.
Your phantasmagoria makes us laugh. It is useless for you to raise your
voices, and seek to intimidate us by your tragic threats and dismal
predictions. Away, away, ye tremblers! The world moves; you will not stop
it!”
I listen to this flow of fine words. But, I own, it does not quite
convince me. I do not altogether believe in the nearness of the age of
gold. After me the deluge, exclaimed, or so they say, Louis XV. in the
boudoir of the Du Barry. Louis XV. forebodes no good of the future.
Perhaps he is right. And I, who am carried away by the vortex of the
world, I who lead this unquiet, feverish, brilliant life of the city and
the court, of salons and boudoirs, academies and theatres, who go to all
the suppers, all the first nights, all the entertainments, I, the friend
of all the great nobles, all the celebrated men, all the fashionable
beauties, I also, like the old King, have my hours of sadness and
discouragement. At times all these men and women whom I meet seem to me,
as they do to the old Marquise de Deffand, “machines on springs, which
go and come, talk and laugh, without thinking, without reflecting, each
playing his part by mere custom.” Yes, people of the world, impassioned
on the surface, indifferent at heart, malicious conversations which
are the aliment of jealousy and idleness, insipid gallantry the parody
of passion, everlastingly renewed discussions on love and friendship
by persons who have never known and never will know anything but the
theory of either sentiment, artificial, egotistic, glacial combinations
of the life of salons, there are moments when you weary me, when I hold
you in horror. There are moments when I say to myself: What will this
philosophic fury result in? What will be built upon so many ruins? What
will the throne be without the altar, the nobility without the clergy?
How will this Babel which they call the Encyclopedia end? And what real
melancholy lies underneath this apparent gaiety! What inanity, what
wretchedness! What bitterness at the bottom of these cups of crystal!
What thorns among these roses! What cares in these powdered heads!
Brilliant beauties, how your painted cheeks are wrinkling with anxiety!
Eighteenth century, century so proud of thy wit, thine audacity, thy
pretended progress, century of philosophers, of learned ladies, of noble
artists, of all-powerful litterateurs, century of Rousseau and Voltaire,
Diderot and Helvétius, eighteenth century which art approaching thy
term, what will thy closing years be like?... But I will banish gloomy
presentiments. I will exclaim with Horace Walpole: “I laugh, that I may
not weep. I play with monkeys, dogs, and cats, that I may not be devoured
by the beast of Gévaudan.” Let us taste, then, while there still is
time, the sweetness of feeling and living. This society which has so
many defects, so many vices, but also so many charms and attractions,
let us examine it without complaisance and without anger. The court,
the city, the nobility, the clergy, the magistracy, the middle class,
the people, the philosophers, the literary men, the artists, the women,
above all the women, let us watch them filing by in turn, the actors
and supernumeraries of a comedy which will end, and very soon perhaps,
in the most pathetic and lugubrious of all dramas.... The new world is
advancing. Let us cast a final glance at the old one.
FIRST PART
THE COURT AND THE CITY AT THE END OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV.
I
THE KING
At the close of the reign of Louis XV. the court is out of fashion. The
same etiquette, the same names, the same distinctions, are still beheld
there. But the King is old; what is more, the King is ridiculous. His
passion for a nobody, a Du Barry, has something about it that is absurd
and painfully grotesque. Versailles no longer makes people tremble; it
makes them smile. They jeer at the amorous monarch who is playing a
superannuated pastoral with a courtesan. No one now takes seriously the
_Well-Beloved of the Almanac_, as he is still ironically called. A joker
circulated, 1771, the following _pater_, dedicated to His Most Christian
Majesty: “Our father who art at Versailles, hallowed be thy name; thy
kingdom is overcome, thy will is done no more on earth than it is in
heaven. Give us our daily bread which you have taken from us; pardon your
parliaments which have upheld our interests, as you pardon your ministers
who have sold them. Do not succumb to the temptations of the Du Barry,
but deliver us from that devil of a chancellor.”
The scenery of Versailles is not changed, however. The gentlemen on duty
fulfil their functions with as much assiduity as of old. The King’s levee
continues to be a piece in five acts, where the courtiers make their
appearance like ballet dancers of the highest class. There are always
the _familiar entries_, when the just-awakened King is still in his bed;
the _grand entries_, when he has just risen and is in his dressing-gown;
then that which is called the _entry of the chamber_, when he is in his
armchair, in front of his dressing-table; and finally, the _general
entry_, that of the stream of courtiers who have been waiting since
daybreak in the Gallery of Mirrors. Versailles is always that city of
eighty thousand souls which is replenished, peopled, occupied, by the
life of a single man, that essentially royal city which is marvellously
arranged so as to provide for the pleasures, the guard, the society,
and the exhibition of the sovereign. The immortal race of courtiers is
continually recruited by compliant and clever men who, on being presented
at court, have received and obeyed this counsel: “You have only three
things to do: speak well of everybody, ask for everything that is not
taken, and sit down when you can.” But, in spite of their irreproachable
attitude, all these courtiers resemble priests who no longer believe in
their god. They still burn incense at the feet of the idol, as a matter
of custom, but the idol hardly creates the vestige of an illusion.
Etiquette, which subsists in all its rules and its minutiæ, is still in
usage, but it is no longer a religion. Prestige has vanished. One cannot
find another Dangeau, another De Luynes. Money, moreover, that nerve of
courts, is becoming scarcer. Horace Walpole wrote, July 30, 1771:—
“The distress here is incredible, especially at court. The King’s
tradesmen are ruined, his servants starving, and even angels and
archangels cannot get their pensions and salaries, but sing ‘Woe! woe!
woe!’ instead of Hosannahs. Compiègne is abandoned; Villiers Coterêts and
Chantilly[1] crowded, and Chanteloup[2] still more in fashion, whither
everybody goes that pleases; though, when they ask leave, the answer is,
‘Je ne le défends ni le permets.’ This is the first time that ever the
will of a king of France was interpreted against his inclination. Yet,
after annihilating his Parliament, and ruining public credit, he tamely
submits to be affronted by his own servants. Madame de Beauveau, and two
or three high-spirited dames, defy this Czar of Gaul.”
Walpole is careful to add that there is nothing very serious in the
opposition of these ladies. “It must be said, they and their cabals
have as little consistency as their party. They make epigrams, chant
vaudevilles against the favorite, distribute pamphlets against Chancellor
Maupeou, but all that has no more effect than a shot in the air.”
To sum up, people still preserve for the King, if not affection and
respect,—respect and affection ceased to exist long ago,—at least a
certain indulgence. One excuses this old man as one would excuse a
spoiled child. He has done harm, but on the other hand, he has done
good. He has lost the colonies, but he has annexed Lorraine and Corsica
to France. He has resisted powerful coalitions. He is the victor of
Fontenoy. His aged arm has been able to strike the Parliament, and this
_coup d’État_ puts off the cataclysm for several years. Louis XV.,
devotee and debauchee, dissatisfied with others and with himself, a
mixture of feebleness and energy, of heedlessness and judgment,—Louis
XV., possessing still a certain dignity, politeness, and well-bred calm,
a noble and kingly aspect,—Louis XV., perhaps still more to be pitied
than blamed, remains a type of the ancient régime, an incarnation of that
monarchy which, despite its visible decadence, has still its vestiges of
grace and decorum, of force and authority. He is a debauchee. But he is
in fact neither better nor worse than many old Celadons, many veterans
of Cythera, many superannuated seducers who would think themselves
absolutely dead if they had no more mistresses. Learned magistrates
themselves play their pranks. They have their little houses, enlarged
boudoirs, temples of voluptuous pleasure. The epicurean eighteenth
century is only half displeased with royal debauchery. They scoff at it,
and the monarchical principle is stricken far less by violent attacks
than by an arm possibly more to be dreaded,—that of ridicule. When, at
Mass in the chapel of Versailles, I see Louis XV. praying very seriously
in the royal tribune, not far from his unworthy favorite, who is there
without rouge or powder, without even having made her toilette, I can
scarcely keep from shrugging my shoulders.
As to the old King, quite proud of his victory over Parliament, he
thinks this stroke has assured him a long and peaceable old age. In
his previsions he allots himself several more years of pleasure.
Then, he tells himself, will come the time of repentance and penance
and true piety, when he will be the Most Christian King in more than
name. How many old men there are who thus put off the hour of final
conversion, while displaying an interior respect for religion very
slightly hypocritical! This half-piety, this rough sketch of virtue, this
penitence in the shape of contingent future, we find in many souls. What
is feebler, more inconsistent, than human nature? We elbow men like Louis
XV. at every step. All, or nearly all, the lady-killers resemble the
lover of the Du Barry when they grow old, and there are few of them who,
while still retaining their health and plenty of money, consent to become
hermits, no matter what their age.
The dominant sentiment with regard to the King is not hatred, but
indifference. People are going to let him die peaceably, and will behold,
without anger and without emotion, the setting of this wintry sun,
devoid of warmth and radiance. Those who are impatient long for a new
reign. Those who are wiser think the future Louis XVI. too young. After
all, Louis XV., in spite of his errors, faults, and vices, is a man of
experience, a man of government. And when will the Dauphin know anything?
How much time does he not need in order to learn the most elementary
principles of the difficult art of reigning? He may have excellent
intentions, he will be honest and virtuous. But this is not enough.
The task will be too heavy a one for young shoulders. And hence Maria
Theresa, that woman of genius, that sure-eyed sovereign, fears nothing
so much as the death of the decried monarch, Louis XV. As king if not as
man, the old man is still preferable to the child.
II
THE NOBILITY
There are two parties among the nobles: the conservatives and the
liberals, the men of the past and the men of the future. The first
declare for the alliance of the throne and the altar, respect for all
ancient usages, and the absolute maintenance of etiquette. Irreconcilable
adversaries of philosophy, Anglomania, and the Encyclopedia, they regard
the changes in costume, the abandonment of liveries, the vogue of
foreign fashions, with annoyance and contempt. The second, uniting to
the advantages of patrician rank the convenient charms of independence,
joyfully adopt the cabriolets, the frock coats, the simplicity of
English dress. They applaud republican tirades at the theatres, the
subversive discourses of the academies, the anti-Christian theories
of the philosophers. They speak of the old social edifice as Gothic
architecture. Their rank and privileges, the débris of their former
puissance, are being undermined beneath their feet. What of it? This
“little war,” as Count de Ségur says, pleases and diverts them. They do
not feel its attacks as yet; they only see the spectacle. Slaves of
fashion, they go to pay court to D’Alembert, Diderot, Marmontel, Raynal,
a word of praise from whom they prefer to the favor of a prince of the
blood. Equality begins to make its appearance in the world. On many
occasions, literary tables take precedence over those of nobility. In
high society one often sees second or third rate literary men treated
with a consideration and attention not obtained by provincial nobles.
But let no one be deceived—all this democratic, almost republican
machinery, is as yet simply an optical illusion. Ancient usage, as
the same liberal Count de Ségur again affirms, preserves between the
nobility and the middle classes an immense interval which even men of the
most distinguished talents cross in appearance rather than in reality.
There is more familiarity than equality. The great trees which are
unconsciously losing their roots are still very proud of their foliage.
Family splendors, great households, feudal existences, attributes of
power, all seem vivacious and eternal. The classes of the old social
order, with their hierarchy, their luxury, their blazons, their riches
and power, are like “those brilliant pictures formed of a thousand colors
and traced with sand on the crystals of our festivities, wherein one may
admire magnificent castles, gay landscapes, and rich harvests, which the
lightest breath would be enough to efface and cause to disappear.”
Do not believe, moreover, that the nobility, in spite of its decadence,
has lost its former prestige. No, it is still elegant, loyal, full
of courtesy and politeness. The most insignificant of the provincial
gentry preserve their traditions. They have frequented the salons of
the commandant or intendant, they have met on a visit some ladies of
Versailles. Hence they all have some inkling of the changes in dress and
fashion. “The most uncivilized of them accompanies his departing guests,
hat in hand, to the foot of his front steps, thanking them for the honor
they have done him. The most clownish, being near a woman, furbishes up
from the depths of his memory some remnant of chivalrous gallantry. The
poorest and most retired is careful of his coat of ‘king’s-blue’ and
his cross of St. Louis so that he may, on occasion, pay his respects to
the neighboring great lord or the prince on his travels.”[3] The nobles
of the court, too futile, dissipated, and Voltairean, must not cause us
to forget the provincial nobles who live quietly, collected, austere,
respecting principles, usages, and dogmas, enduring an honorable poverty
without complaint, unwilling to go begging favors at Versailles, and
preparing in retreat to support nobly the storms whose approach they
forebode already.
III
THE CLERGY
Just as we find in the ranks of aristocracy, at the side of a court
nobility too often corrupt and frivolous, a provincial nobility which
guards faithfully the traditions of honor and the austere virtues, so
at the side of worldly prelates there are honest, convinced, venerable
priests who continue to edify the country. In the clergy, as in the
nobility, I distinguish the rich and the poor, the unbelieving and the
faithful, the men who give scandal and the men of good will. Doubtless
there are many reforms to make, many abuses to suppress. The princes
of the Church, possessors of feudal rights, heirs or successors of the
ancient prince-sovereigns of the country, the hundred and thirty-one
bishops and archbishops, the seven hundred commendatory abbés, with their
worldly airs, their opulence, their great households, are not all models.
I could name more than one prelate who not only has mistresses, clients,
guests, a levee, an antechamber, ushers, and offices, but who completes
his resemblance to the great nobles by having debts. The Marquis de
Mirabeau wrote in 1766: “It would be an insult to offer a curacy to the
majority of ecclesiastics with pretensions. Revenues and distinction
are for commendatory abbés, for clergymen who have only received the
tonsure, for the numerous chapters.” There are prelates who have an
income of half a million. People talk of one bishop’s hunting-equipage,
of another’s confessionals hung with satin, of the kitchen utensils in
solid silver belonging to a third. In salons and boudoirs I constantly
meet these court abbés, who have nothing of the priest about them but the
habit, and who do not always wear that,—anacreontic abbés, flatterers
of great ladies, admirers of the philosophers, newsmongers, makers of
little verses. But these are not the true clergy. The true clergy are
found in the modest presbyteries of towns, and especially of villages.
Yes, if I know the pompous aristocratic prelate, man of the world, man
of the salon, man of the court, mounting more willingly the marble
staircases of Versailles than the steps of the altar, I also know the
humble, poor, resigned priest, the man of devotion, duty, sacrifice,
abnegation, the man of God. If I meet the bishop proud of his gold cross,
I also salute the country curate who goes, staff in hand, several leagues
on foot through mud and snow. Doubtless there are certain convents of
women whose profane aspect makes them resemble aristocratic circles,
meeting-places for elegant society. But on the other hand there are
veritable convents, holy and religious asylums. One of the daughters
of Louis XV., Madame Louise of France, has become a Carmelite, and the
Carmelites make no compromise with austerity. There exist, I admit it,
certain preachers more intent on the Encyclopedia than on the Gospel,
who resemble academicians more than priests. There are, I am told,
some who forget to make the sign of the cross when they enter the
pulpit, omit all prayer, and turn their sermon into a sort of lecture.
Bachaumont tells us that this is called preaching _à la_ Greek. But,
on the other hand, there are energetic, convinced preachers, in whose
eloquent mouths the sacred terrors of doctrine are not enfeebled, men of
faith and courage who, like the Apostles, exclaim when confronted with
scandal: “It is impossible not to speak.” _Non possumus non loqui._ In
a piously audacious sermon, the Bishop of Alais, dividing society into
two classes, that which has all and that which has nothing, asks why so
enormous a privilege is excused by so little virtue. One day the Abbé de
Beauvais, preaching in the chapel of Versailles in presence of the King,
censures the shameful life of libertines. At the close of the sermon,
Louis XV., apostrophizing Marshal de Richelieu, said to the old coxcomb:
“Eh! Marshal, it seems to me the preacher has been throwing a good many
stones into your garden.”—“Yes, Sire,” returned the sly courtier, “and
some of them even bounced over into the park of Versailles.” Still,
the evangelical tradition continues in spite of everything. Even in
the most relaxed, corrupt, perverse epochs, there are always hidden
treasures, inexhaustible sources of charity and virtue, if not on the
surface at least in the depths of Christianity. No, no, messieurs the
philosophers, do not confound the Church, the holy Church, with certain
simoniacal priests and contraband abbés who are her reproach. Reckon up
how many faithful servants of Christ, helpers of the poor, consolers of
the afflicted, there yet remain in cities and country places, in every
town and village. True, there have been great scandals, abuses from which
Christian souls have suffered profoundly. Nevertheless, when the hour of
supreme crisis shall arrive, you will see how many priests will know how
to die like martyrs, like the early Christians. You who think the clergy
ended, will soon be astonished at the number of its heroic and intrepid
men. When the tempest comes, you will recognize the worth and ability of
this clergy. You think now that the Church has grown old. Well, she will
grow young again if need be, in persecution. She will have her second
baptism, if that is necessary, which will efface all stains; it will be
the baptism of blood!
IV
THE MAGISTRACY
I see the same contrasts in the magistracy as in the nobility and the
clergy. Beside magistrates of the old stamp, grave, austere, preserving
the tradition and sentiment of duty, the consciousness of professional
dignity, I encounter with regret epicurean and Voltairean magistrates,
men of intrigue and pleasure, light, superficial, partisans of
revolutionary ideas, preparing unawares the downfall of the throne as
well as the altar, and not even suspecting the weight of the blows they
are aiming at them. It is only in appearance that they uphold justice.
In reality they are nothing but agents of dissolution. They do not even
trouble themselves to be hypocrites. The same men who break Calas on
the wheel and decapitate La Barre, place Voltaire’s _La Pucelle_ on
the tables of their drawing-rooms, and are the guests and flatterers
of materialists and atheists. If a book is condemned to be burned, the
condemnation makes the magistrates who pronounce it smile. “Injunctions
are decried,” says Bachaumont, “a witticism refutes a sermon, and if
Parliament meddles with it, they glory in the honors of the burning. It
is no longer a punishment, but an advertisement. Moreover, do not fancy
that the executioner of lofty works has permission to throw into the
fire the books whose names appear in the decree of the court. Messieurs
would be very sorry to deprive their libraries of a copy of each of
these works to which they have a legal right, and the clerk of the court
substitutes for them some pettifogging parchments of which there is never
any lack.”[4]
Those members of the judiciary who hold a middle rank between the higher
nobility and the middle classes, who are rich, influential, and allied to
the most powerful families in France; those great nobles of the robe each
of whom has his little Versailles, a fine house between court and garden,
and who are to the magistracy what the prelates are to the clergy; these
parliamentary leaders gradually become the most redoubtable enemies of
the monarchy. Louis XV. has them in horror. Ever since the time of Madame
de Pompadour he has considered them his most dangerous enemies. “Those
long robes and the clergy,” he said one day to the favorite, “are always
at drawn swords; they torment me by their quarrels; but I detest the long
robes far the most. My clergy at bottom are attached to me and loyal;
the others would like to tutor me.... The Regent was much to blame for
giving them the right to make remonstrances; they will end by ruining
the State.”—“Ah! Sire,” remarked M. de Gontaut, “it is rather too strong
for petty lawyers to overthrow.”—“You do not know what they are doing nor
what they can do,” resumed the King; “it is an assembly of republicans.
Enough of that, however. Things will last as long as I do.”[5]
Disorder exists already in the ruling classes. Montesquieu has written
it: “There are three estates in France, the Church, the sword, and the
robe. Each of them has a sovereign contempt for the two others.” One
of Louis XV.’s ministers of foreign affairs, the Marquis d’Argenson,
has foretold what must be the certain end of this régime of divisions
and perpetual conflicts of power. “Who,” he writes, “will decide this
question in the future, to wit, whether despotism will increase or
diminish in France? For my part, I hold for the advent of the second
article, and even for republicanism. Louis XV. has not known how to
govern either tyrannically or like a good republican leader; now, here,
when one takes neither one rôle nor the other, woe to royal authority....
The peoples have grown very fond of parliaments, seeing in them the
only remedy for the vexations they endure from another quarter. All
this points to some revolt which is smouldering under the ashes.” In
1752 the same Marquis d’Argenson had traced these prophetic lines: “The
bad results of our government by absolute monarchy have succeeded in
convincing France and all Europe that it is the very worst kind of
government. I do not mean the same thing as the philosophers, who say
that anarchy itself would be preferable. However, the opinion is growing
and making its way, and that may bring about a national revolution.”
A noisy and active revolution is forming itself against the Church
in the very bosom of Catholicism, and against royalty in that of the
magistracy and the parliamentarian middle classes. A sort of league
is established between all the parliaments of France, which consider
themselves as the different groups of a single assembly, the several
members of an invisible body. Louis XV., energetic at times, awakes from
his torpor and comprehends the necessity of striking a great blow. During
the night of January 19, 1771, all the members of the Paris Parliament
who, through a spirit of opposition, were refusing to render justice,
are arrested in their beds and summoned to give a plain yes or no to an
order requiring them to resume their ordinary functions. They answer
no, and are sent into exile. The people remain quiet, and the dissolved
Parliament gives place without resistance to the new Maupeou Parliament,
so called from the name of the chancellor. Louis XV. thinks himself more
powerful than Louis XIV., the chancellor stronger than Richelieu. Madame
de Pompadour had overthrown the Jesuits. Madame Du Barry has overthrown
the parliamentarians; in other words, the Jansenists. The rival parties,
Jesuits and Jansenists, having disappeared, would not one suppose that
the absolute monarchy would remain standing alone above their ruins?
But that is merely an optical illusion. The Maupeou Parliament is
discredited, and power sustains it but feebly. It allows the affair
of Beaumarchais against Counsellor Goëzman,—an affair so trifling in
itself but so important on account of the noise it makes,—to take truly
incredible proportions. The terrible and dramatic Polish question
preoccupies Versailles and Paris less than the wretched quarrel between
the author of the _Barber of Seville_ and one of his judges, or rather,
the wife of one of them.
What was it all about? To know whether the wife of a counsellor of
Parliament had or had not kept fifteen louis received from a litigant.
Why, then, such passion and excitement in the public? Why this feverish
anxiety, this mad curiosity with which all Paris, all France, follows the
vicissitudes of this trial? Because the affair is symbolical. What is at
stake is less the Goëzman household than the whole Maupeou Parliament.
It is the magistracy that I see on the prisoner’s bench, and not
Beaumarchais. It is the accused who, by an inversion of rôles, appears
as counsel for the King,—what do I say?—as counsel for that new power,
opinion. His statements are the public prosecutor’s speeches. The cause
is as much political as judicial. The old social edifice is cracking and
undermined on every side. All the springs of the old machine are out
of order. And instead of lamenting over this, the privileged classes do
nothing but laugh. The Goëzman trial is a comedy which entertains the
boxes as much as it does the pit. I am not sure that Louis XV. himself,
hard as it is to divert him, is not cheered up by it. It certainly amuses
Madame Du Barry extremely. She has charades at her house in which Madame
Goëzman and Beaumarchais are confronted with each other. Beaumarchais
is the centre of all eyes, the fashionable man, the hero of the day. “I
am afraid,” writes Voltaire, “that this brilliant fellow may be in the
right against everybody.... His naïveté enchants me” (the naïveté of
Beaumarchais!). “I forgive him his imprudence and petulance.”
The conclusion of the most serious act or the most important treaty
of peace would be awaited with less impatience than the issue of this
trial, which preoccupies, if one can believe it, both peoples and
kings,—so entirely does France, in spite of her decline, retain in the
last years of Louis XV. the privilege of concentrating the attention of
all Europe on what is passing within her borders. “Judgment at last!”...
as says the Chicaneau in Racine’s _Plaideurs_. February 26, 1774, after
seven months of waiting, the sentence is pronounced. Madame Goëzman is
condemned to formal censure (_le blâme_) and to the restitution of the
fifteen louis, which are to be distributed among the poor. Beaumarchais
is also condemned to censure. _Le blâme_ is not a slight penalty, but an
infamous one, a penalty which renders him who is stricken by it incapable
of fulfilling any public function; the condemned receives the sentence
kneeling, in presence of the court, while the president says to him: “The
court censures thee and declares thee infamous.” Well! the man whom the
Maupeou Parliament thinks it can thus stamp with infamy, is a victor; all
Paris goes to leave cards at the house of the condemned man. The Prince
de Conti and the Duke de Chartres give him a brilliant entertainment the
day after sentence is decreed. M. de Sartines says to him: “One should be
modest even though one has been censured.” The opposition, silenced for a
moment, starts up anew. A rain of pamphlets and diatribes begins against
this Maupeou Parliament which, by inflicting civil death on a man upheld
by public opinion, has given itself a mortal blow. Its days, like those
of the old King, are numbered. As to Louis XV., judging Beaumarchais from
the address just displayed by this clever man in the Goëzman trial, he
intrusts him with a secret mission to England. When discordances like
these exist in any society, catastrophes are not far distant.
V
THE MIDDLE CLASSES
Curious thing! The revolution does not start from below, but from above.
The classes which suffer and are hungry are resigned and silent. The
privileged classes, those who gorge themselves with gold and pleasures in
the midst of public distress, are those that complain and make an uproar.
The higher up you go on the social ladder, the less faith and virtue
do you find. The people are better than the middle classes, the middle
classes better than the nobility, the provincial nobles better than those
of the court, the lower clergy superior to the prelates. One might say
that, morality being in an inverse ratio to rank, the most dangerous
adversaries of society are the very persons who have most to lose if it
succumbs. The great proprietors are demolishing their houses and castles.
The prelates are sapping the foundations of the churches. The princes
of the blood are shaking down the throne. Thus it is that the so-called
defenders of the social fortress are spiking their cannons, destroying
their ramparts, dampening their powder, breaking their weapons, and will
end by delivering the key of the citadel to the enemy.
A large majority of the middle classes are still resisting the inroads
of impiety. In Paris and the provinces they say: “Without monarchy and
the Church, no government.” In religion and politics, even if they are
on the side of the opposition, they do not go beyond the liberties of
the Gallican Church and the constitutional guaranties demanded by the
parliaments. Even though they have ceased to love and esteem Louis
XV., they continue to respect royalty in his person. Dignified, calm,
reflective, they will neither make war on the nobles nor pay them court.
As to the monarchy, they consider it as a dogma, an article of faith.
Citizen Regnaud thus expresses himself: “It is a law of the State,
consecrated in every age by the Divine law, to respect the sovereign
even when he causes the unhappiness of the peoples confided to him by
Providence. God forbid that I should undertake to infringe this sacred
law in the history I am writing.”[6]
Another citizen, Prosper Hardy, makes the following declaration in
his Memoirs: “Although I have never regarded myself as other than an
atom in society, I think I deserve a distinguished place there by my
inviolable fidelity to my sovereign and my love for his sacred person.
The sentiments I imbibed from books and education will never be effaced
from my heart. Albeit my fortune, by the will of Divine Providence, is of
the most modest sort, a prospective income of a hundred thousand _écus_
would not cause me to forsake a boon which is dear to me and of which I
cannot be deprived; to wit, honor and true patriotism. I shall always
believe it my duty to think concerning the present controversies as the
first magistrates of the realm do and the princes of the royal blood, who
have manifested their sentiments toward our august master in a manner
as authentic as respectful, and in a formal protest to which no good
citizen can avoid paying homage and subscribing with all his soul.”[7]
The opposition still remained dynastic. It enveloped itself in forms
most deferential toward the person and authority of the sovereign. Hardy
blames the ministers for the harm that has been done, without accusing
Louis XV. He complains of despotism, never of the King.
If in the depths of the provinces one finds ancient manors and dungeon
keeps blackened by time wherein dwell austere and worthy nobles,
proud of their ancestors and their poverty, one also finds, even in
worldly, frivolous Paris, old houses which shelter worthy people,
peaceable _bourgeois_, citizens of their quarter, frequenters of their
parish church, members of their corporation, who still lead a calm and
patriarchal existence. Their life glides uniformly by, “developing like
a captive stream its predetermined course, without ever losing sight
of the shadow of the natal bell-tower, the church where rest the pious
souvenirs of the family, and where the same half-open tomb awaits the
generations. Between this ever-present term and this point of departure
which is drawing near, the regulated forms of professional duty take
possession of the man, occupy his soul, and replenish the capacity of his
spirit.”[8]
The religious sentiment is still dominant, even at Paris, in the middle
classes and the people. In February, 1766, Louis XV. is crossing the
Pont-Neuf after leaving a bed of justice he has just held at the
Parliament. A priest carrying the Viaticum passes in front of the
cortège. The King alights from his carriage and kneels down. This mark
of devotion causes enthusiastic admiration in the crowd, and cries of
“Long live the King!” resound from every side with more than ordinary
enthusiasm.
The citizen class is still Christian and royalist. But let no one
be deceived. It also threatens to become revolutionary. Certain
characteristic symptoms are beginning to make their appearance. The law
clerks sometimes assume the aspect of demagogues, and a nameless breath
of democracy often pervades the pits of theatres. I see an impatient
youth springing up amid the middle classes which will bring all the
turmoil of the new spirit into the old settings of a disorganized
society. The opposition will increase by degrees, coming down from one
social layer to another, from the princes of the blood to the popular
masses who are as yet untouched.
VI
THE PEOPLE
Do you see, in country places, a sort of wild animal, male and female,
“black, livid, and scorched by the sun, attached to the earth which
they dig and turn over with invincible obstinacy? They have a kind of
articulate voice, and when they rise to their feet they show a human
face, and in fact they are human beings. At night they retire into dens,
where they live on bread, water, and roots. They spare other men the
trouble of sowing, laboring, and reaping in order to live, and thus
deserve not to lack some of the bread which they have sown.”[9]
Do you see them, notwithstanding, “in frightful misery, without beds
or furniture; the majority of them even lacking that bread of oats and
barley which is their sole nourishment, and which they are obliged
to tear from their own mouths and those of their children to pay the
taxes”?[10] Do you see “these poor slaves, these beasts of burden
fastened to a yoke, and whipped along”?[11] These unfortunates who in
years of famine—years which frequently recur—eat grass like sheep and
die like flies? Well, if one can believe it, they do not complain. They
do not even think of complaining. Their sufferings and privations seem
to them as natural as winter or the hail. They do not complain. Why not?
Because if they have not the bread of the body, they at least have hope,
the bread of the _soul_. Yes, the hope of heaven, the hope of an ideal
world which hovers above the real one like a pavilion of gold above
a filthy sewer, the hope of the true country where there are neither
fatigues, nor tears, nor sorrows,—hope, their support, their consolation,
their future; hope, that supreme good which the philosophers are
determined at any cost to wrench from them! What they have left, and what
the philosophers have no longer, is the sacred poesy of the Church, its
hymns of sadness and of joy, the cycle of its feasts which vary and adorn
the year. They have the steeple of their native village, the graveyard
where their parents sleep and where they offer prayer, the crucifix,
the image of the Man-God whose hands and feet and side they kiss while
weeping. They have what you have not, men of the world and free-thinkers:
the real good, the inestimable treasure, that which subsists entire even
when the bell is ringing for the dying, that which death itself has no
power against: they have faith! The angels of Christ hover over each
thatched cabin, the angels who, when the unfortunates would like to turn
away from the chalice of bitterness, induce them to drink it calmly and
with resignation even to the dregs!
Great lords and ladies, adepts of the Encyclopedia, savants and literary
men, be careful! You mock, perhaps, at these poor people. You criticise
what you call their ignorance, because they still worship as of old,
because, in their simplicity, on All Saints’ Day they lay a plate for the
dead on their wretched tables. You deride them because when they have
saved a few farthings they spend them,—for what? In order to burn some
candles. Take care,—if they did not burn these candles which you sneer
at, they would burn your houses, your castles. Don’t flout these people
who are and have little or nothing, who are the majority, and who would
only have to crowd together in order to stifle you. Great philosophers,
why do you not try to make your discoveries contribute somewhat to
preserve that sacred object, the human soul, to wrest it from misery
and cast it, consoled, pacified, elevated, into the bosom of God? Ah!
why do you belong to that frightful race of men who injure souls? Why
do you discourage the cabin where men die of hunger, the workshop where
the proletarian, become a wheel of flesh in a machine, can no longer
breathe the air of God nor be illumined by His sunshine? Take care! Take
care! What will become of you on the day when these poor people say
to you, nobles: “You are men like others”; to you, prelates: “You are
impostors.” Take care! if your impious doctrines triumph, here are the
workmen, the peasants, all the disinherited of fortune, who will cry to
you in terrible voices: “No more resignation, vengeance! No more tears.
Muskets, and if there are no muskets, pikes! And if there are no pikes,
clubs! Enough of docility! Enough of patience! Enough of humility! Come
on!” Madmen! Fools! It is you who have just said to them: “Poor wretch,
you are awaiting life eternal to find at last a compensation for your
sufferings. There is no eternal life. Poor wretch, you are amassing as
if there were savings, your tears and sorrows, and those of your wife
and your children, in the hope of bringing them after death to the foot
of God’s judgment seat. Well, there is no God!” Admirers of Helvétius,
Baron d’Holbach, Diderot, great philosophic nobles, be on your guard! on
the day when your unbelief shall have spread beyond your salons, your
boudoirs, and academies, into the cabins of your peasantry, tremble, for
that day will be the vengeance of heaven!