royal mistress, he decided that he would at once make the new favorite
a married woman and a woman of title. Nothing easier than to find her a
nominal husband who, having received a goodly sum, would quietly retire
behind the scenes and not appear again on the stage. Count Jean Du Barry
could not play this lucrative part himself, seeing that he was already
married. But he had a bachelor brother who seemed made expressly for
the circumstance. This complaisant brother was called Count William Du
Barry. He was a poor officer of marines, who lived at Toulouse, with his
mother. To summon him to Paris, to marry him to the mistress of Louis
XV., to give him a large sum and send him back at once to Toulouse, was
but the affair of a few days. Queen Marie Leczinska had died June 24,
1768. Her husband did not lament her long, for he was smitten the next
month with this so-called Jeanne Gomard de Vaubernier, this Jeanne Bécu,
called l’Ange, who was about to become Madame the Countess Du Barry. The
contract was signed, July 23, in presence of the notaries Du Châtelet
of Paris, and this comedy marriage was celebrated, September 1, at the
church of Saint Laurent, Auteuil. The nuptial benediction once given, the
husband departed for Toulouse, and the wife went to take up her quarters
at Versailles.
Louis XV. congratulated himself on his choice. Madame Du Barry was
neither learned nor witty; she had no relatives well placed at court,
and to the monarch these seemed very great advantages. He did not
want either a great lady, like the Duchess de Châteauroux, who would
have arrived with a cortège of relations and favorites, nor a female
politician, like Madame de Pompadour, who would constantly busy herself
with parliaments and the clergy. What he desired was not a female
adviser, but an amusement.
[Illustration: MADAME DU BARRY.]
III
THE TRIUMPHS OF THE COUNTESS DU BARRY
What would the Countess Du Barry become?
Would she be an ephemeral mistress, like the women of the Deer Park, or
would she have the official position of favorite? This was what everybody
was asking. The important thing to know was whether or not she would be
presented. Bets were openly made on this question at Versailles. The Duke
de Choiseul, hostile to the new countess, was against the presentation.
But the King desired it. His will finally prevailed. He had known Madame
Du Barry since July, 1768, but she was not presented until April 22,
1769. The ceremony took place with the ordinary formalities. After having
received the command of the King, who had already been told the names of
the sponsor, a lady making the presentation, and of her two assistants,
who must always be women of the court, they arrived at the door of the
grand cabinet in full toilette; that is, in robes stretched over hoops
measuring three and a half ells in circumference, a long mantle clasped
at the waist, a suitable bodice, flowing lappets, and as many diamonds
as they had been able to procure. Madame Du Barry’s sponsor was the
Countess de Béarn. Louis XV. looked radiant. He enjoyed the triumph of
the woman he had chosen.
Thenceforward he was settled. Madame Du Barry was sufficient for her
royal lover, who was tired of going clandestinely to the Deer Park,
where he was obliged to hide himself, and was consequently not at ease.
He closed that mysterious establishment and lodged his new mistress in
the château of Versailles, in an apartment on the second story, just
over that which he occupied himself. He could go to her at any hour, and
unobserved, by a staircase leading to the Deer Court. A door opening on
a small landing gave admission to one of the two cabinets situated near
the alcove of the favorite’s chamber. Her apartment formed a suite of
boudoirs each more elegant than another. It was the last word of luxury.
The bedroom clock represented the three Graces supporting a vase in which
was a revolving dial, while above it Love indicated the hours with his
arrow. The most exquisite objects of art, marvels of upholstery, bronzes,
marble, lacquer work, china, statuettes, abounded in this asylum of
voluptuous pleasure.
“It is the senseless dream of a gay woman,” say Messrs. de Goncourt;
“a folly of expenditure, an extravagance of luxury. Millions are flung
away for the caprices of fashion, for rarities in jewelry, point lace,
silk and velvet, a flood of money; the royal treasure flowing through
the hands of a pretty woman upon the world of tailors, milliners,
dressmakers.”
All this life spent in furnishing, in giving orders and commissions,
in toilettes and purchases of every sort, is wholly fantastic and
capricious. Her apartment in the château of Versailles no longer
suffices the Countess. Louis XV. gives her a house in the city, rue de
l’Orangerie,[37] where she installs herself with her attendants and
her equipages. At the beginning of the year 1769, she receives one
hundred thousand livres as a life annuity on the city of Paris, and a
pension of ten thousand livres on the States of Burgundy. July 24 of
the same year, her generous lover, who is more and more contented with
her, compliments her by presenting the beautiful château of Luciennes,
bought from the Duke de Penthièvre. The favorite triumphs; she has the
same retinue, riches, and position as the Marquise de Pompadour. Young,
pretty, seductive, with her blue eyes and brown eyebrows, her fair hair,
her little Grecian nose, her rosy lips and satin skin, her mild yet
roguish expression, she shines with all the splendor of her twenty-five
years. Hers is not a majestic beauty, but a sprightly and frolicsome one
which retains a certain carelessness and negligence even when arrayed in
the most magnificent toilettes. It cannot be denied that she possesses
charm. Louis XV. seems bewitched by her. Marshal de Richelieu, who was
so severe on the Marquise de Pompadour, gives the Countess Du Barry his
entire approbation. The Marquise Du Deffand writes to Horace Walpole,
June 25, 1769:—
“Out in the country, the other day, while the master of the house
(the King) was playing whist, the head of the conspiracy (Marshal de
Richelieu) set up a little game of lansquenet to teach it to the lady
(Madame Du Barry). He lost two hundred and fifty louis. The master of the
house jeered at him, asking him how he could have lost at such a small
game; he answered by a quotation from the opera:—
“‘Le plus sage
S’enflamme et s’engage
Sans savoir comment.’[38]
The master laughed and all the troupe.”
There were people, however, who did not go into ecstasies over the beauty
of the new favorite. In September, 1769, Horace Walpole saw her in the
chapel of the château of Versailles. He did not admire her much, and thus
describes the impression she made on him in a letter to George Montagu:
“A first row in the balconies was kept for us. Madame Du Barry arrived
over against us below, without rouge, without powder, and indeed sans
avoir fait sa toilette; an odd appearance, as she was so conspicuous,
close to the altar, and amidst both court and people. She is pretty,
when you consider her; yet so little striking, that I never should have
asked who she was. There is nothing bold, assuming, or affected in her
manner. Her husband’s sister was along with her. In the Tribune above,
surrounded by prelates, was the amorous and still handsome King. One
could not help smiling at the mixture of piety, pomp, and carnality.”
Madame Du Barry was the first to be astonished by her lot. Her
transformation into a great lady seemed to her a disguise. She was still
more surprised when they tried to make a political woman of her. Devoid
of hatred, ambition, or calculation, she asked for nothing but to occupy
herself with her toilettes and her furniture. Politics seemed to her a
tedious thing. What were parliaments, the clergy, and diplomacy to her?
She had a good many other things to think about. From the time when she
had made her entry at court she had asked for nothing but to live at
peace with all the ministers. She sent word to the Duke de Choiseul that
if he wanted to be friends with her, she would go half way to meet him.
The person who carried this message recalled the fact that mistresses
drive out ministers, and ministers do not drive out mistresses. The Duke
contented himself with replying coldly by a vague promise to grant such
of Madame Du Barry’s demands as he considered just.[39] The enemies
of the minister had the greatest difficulty, notwithstanding their
incessant efforts, in persuading the inoffensive Countess to oppose him.
At first her attacks on him were only skirmishes, or better, mere roguish
tricks. The Marquise Du Deffand wrote to Horace Walpole, November 2,
1769: “The grandpapa” (the nickname given to Choiseul) “daily receives
little affronts, such as not being named or invited for the little
cabinet suppers, and, when visiting Madame Du Barry, grimaces when he is
her partner at whist,—mockeries, shruggings of the shoulders; in fine,
the petty revenges of a schoolgirl.”
Meanwhile the friends of the Duke de Choiseul did not as yet disquiet
themselves, and Madame Du Deffand wrote, to Walpole, January 15, 1770:
“Dame Du Barry has no influence, and there seems no likelihood that she
ever will have any; she has neither affection nor hatred for anybody;
she can say what they make her say, like a parrot, but without design,
interest, or passion; no one contrives to govern with a character like
that.” However, the security of the Marquise as to the fate of the Duke
de Choiseul did not last long: “The controller-general is at the feet of
Madame Du Barry, and does not blush at it,” she wrote, March 3, 1770;
“he says he is following the example of all ministers who want to be
listened to by kings, and even to be useful to them. Just at present our
friend seems well disposed; but I doubt whether the year will end without
a great revolution.” In the same letter she adds: “The King continues
much smitten with his dame, but without showing her much consideration;
he treats her sufficiently like a wench; in fine, she will be good or
bad according to him who rules her; her own character will influence
nothing. She may serve the passions of others, but never with the warmth
and success one has when one shares them; she will repeat her lesson; but
in circumstances where she has not been inspired, her own genius will not
make up for it.”
At this epoch a malicious stanza got into circulation which is quoted in
one of the letters of the Marquise (November 2, 1769). It was considered
to sum up the complaints of the Duke de Choiseul, the friend of Madame de
Pompadour, the enemy of Madame Du Barry. It was sung to the air of _Vive
le Vin, Vive l’Amour_.
“Vive le roi! Foin de l’Amour!
Le drôle m’a joué d’un tour,
Qui peut confondre mon audace.
La Du Barry, pour moi de glace,
Va, dit-on, changer mes destins.
Jadis, je dus ma fortune aux catins;
Je leur devrai donc ma disgrace.”[40]
Madame Du Barry let herself be dragged into the struggle almost against
her will. Three men urged her on: the Duke d’Aiguillon, the Abbé
Terray, the Chancellor Maupeou. Surrounded by this triumvirate, the
Countess smilingly entered the political lists. One can understand what
indignation such an enemy must have caused a man so bold and haughty as
the Duke de Choiseul. He chafed at his bit. His power was only to last
some months longer. But before his downfall he was to see the arrival in
France of the princess whose marriage with the Dauphin he had negotiated,
that charming and poetic young girl who appeared in an aged court like
a beam of pure light, that touching victim of fatality whose suave and
august countenance make a striking contrast with that of the Du Barry,
and whose name cannot be pronounced without an unspeakable blending of
sympathy and compassion, tenderness, and respect,—Marie Antoinette.
At the moment when all minds were occupied with the coming marriage of
the Archduchess with the Prince who was one day to be called Louis XVI.,
a novice was praying in the convent of Carmelites at Saint Denis for the
safety of France, menaced by so many catastrophes. This novice was one
of the daughters of Louis XV. While egotism and voluptuousness dominated
in the palace of Versailles, the spirit of immolation and self-sacrifice
took refuge in a convent, near the last dwelling-place of kings. Madame
Du Barry was scandal; Madame Louise of France, edification.
IV
MADAME LOUISE OF FRANCE, CARMELITE NOVICE
We are in 1770. Madame Louise of France, the youngest of the daughters
of Louis XV., is thirty-two years old. “For some years,” says Madame
Campan, “Madame Louise had led a very retired life; I used to read to
her five hours a day; my voice often betrayed the fatigue of my chest;
the Princess would then prepare sugared water and place it beside me,
excusing herself for making me read so long by saying it was necessary
for her to finish a course of reading she had undertaken.” Why is the
King’s daughter bent on finishing this course so quickly? That is her
secret. In appearance, she is leading a luxurious life. In reality, she
is silently making her mysterious apprenticeship of renunciation and
immolation, accustoming herself to endure excessive cold or heat, and
wearing beneath her linen the serge of the Carmelites. In the evenings,
when she is alone in her room, she extinguishes her wax tapers and lights
candles, so as to habituate herself to the odor of tallow, which at
first had caused her unendurable repugnance. “She had a lofty soul,”
says Madame Campan; “she loved great things; she used often to interrupt
my reading to exclaim: ‘How fine that is! How noble!’ There was but one
brilliant action which she could perform: to quit a palace for a cell,
rich garments for a robe of frieze; she performed it.”
Certain writers who, being devoid of the religious sentiment, persist in
seeing the earth everywhere, and never look at heaven, have insisted on
attributing the holy resolutions of Madame Louise to human motives, and
barely refrained from describing a Carmelite as an ambitious intriguant.
M. Honoré Bonhomme, the author of _Louis XV. et sa famille_, was better
inspired when he wrote: “When the Queen died, Louis XV. had had a
glimmering of repentance. People might have fancied that his morals
were to be more regular; but no! Very speedily a new favorite, the Du
Barry, was presented, and we know the rest. Now, it was after this signal
relapse on her father’s part, when she saw him fall back soul and body,
and deeper than ever, into shameful disorders, that, heartbroken with
sorrow, and deprived of all hope, Madame Louise hastened to demand of
God, in the austerity of the cloister, not pardon for herself,—she did
not need it,—not the calm and repose which were lacking to her,—she had
sacrificed them,—but to ask of God, with tears and fervor, the conversion
of her father, the salvation of the King.”
The Countess Du Barry’s formal presentation at court took place April
22, 1769. January 30, 1770, Madame Louise charged Monseigneur de
Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris, to ask the King to allow her to enter the
religious state. Profoundly surprised by so unexpected a communication,
Louis XV. remained silent for awhile. Then he exclaimed several times:
“This is cruel! this is cruel!” and deferred his reply for a fortnight.
The desired consent was at last obtained. The Abbé du Terney, the
Princess’s confessor, brought her the following letter from the King,
dated February 20, 1770:—
“Monseigneur the Archbishop, my dear daughter, having given me an account
of all that you have said and written to him, will surely have acquainted
you exactly with all I said to him in reply. If it is for God alone, I
cannot oppose myself to His will nor to His determination. You must have
made your reflections; hence, I have nothing more to ask concerning them;
it seems even that your arrangements are made; you can speak of them to
your sisters when you think proper. Compiègne is not possible; you may
choose any other place, and I would be very sorry to prescribe anything
on the subject. I have made some involuntary sacrifices; this one will be
voluntary on your part. God will give you strength to support your new
state, for, the step once taken, there can be no return. I embrace you
with all my heart, my dear daughter, and give you my blessing.”
There was, at Saint Denis, a Carmelite convent, so poor that the
nuns had been obliged to make retrenchments in their food, already so
frugal, and the baker was beginning to refuse them bread. It was this
house, reduced to profound distress and threatened with dissolution for
lack of pecuniary resources, that Madame Louise selected for her final
refuge. At the very time when the nuns were making a novena to entreat
God to provide for the existence of their community, Louis XV. gave his
daughter the permission she had so ardently desired. Madame Louise still
maintained absolute secrecy, especially with her sisters, whose remarks
she may have dreaded. April 5, 1770, she received the following note from
Louis XV., dated at Choisy:—
“I embrace you with all my heart, my dear daughter, and send you the
order you spoke to me about for your departure, and I will execute what
you desire for your domestics, and all your other arrangements. You
will have only a word from me this evening, my little heart, for it is
late.” In the morning of April 11, the Princess entered a carriage, at
Versailles, with a maid of honor and an equerry, and drove to Saint
Denis. She wore a plain silk dress under a large black mantle, and a high
bonnet adorned with a bunch of red ribbons. On reaching Saint Denis,
she said: “To the Carmelites.” The door of the cloister opened, and
Madame Louise disappeared behind it. Her maid of honor, the Princess de
Ghistelles, and her equerry, M. d’Haranguier de Quincerot, thought she
would return after having heard Mass. Their surprise can be imagined
when, summoned within the convent by the Princess, they read the King’s
order.
During the day, the sisters of the novice learned what had occurred. At
first they were in despair; but after the first involuntary anger had
passed away, they felt nothing but respect for so pious a resolution. In
his book on the daughters of Louis XV., which is so full of facts and
documents, M. Édouard de Barthélemy has given the letters written her by
Mesdames Adelaide and Sophie. This is Madame Adelaide’s:—
“Thou canst fancy better than I can express what has passed and is still
passing in my heart. My grief equals my astonishment; but thou art happy,
and that is all I want. Pray God for me, dear heart, thou knowest my
needs; they are more than ever pressing just now. I will certainly go to
see thee as soon as I have strength enough, and thou canst receive me
without feeling disturbed. Adieu, dear heart. I am going to _Tenebræ_,
where I fear I shall be a little distracted. Love me always, and believe
I shall return it well.”
Here is the letter of Madame Sophie:—
“If I never spoke to thee again, dear heart, of the desire I suspected in
thee to become a nun, it is because I thought thou wouldst never carry it
into effect. I pardon thee with all my heart for telling me nothing about
it. Thy sacrifice is beautiful, because it is voluntary. But dost think
that the one thou hast imposed on me, in leaving us, and which is not
voluntary, is not as hard to bear? Be very sure, dear heart, that I love
thee, that I will love thee all my life, and that when thou permittest,
I will go to see thee with much eagerness. I embrace thee with all my
heart.”
A diplomatic circular addressed to the King’s ambassadors at foreign
courts notified them of the “exemplary and affecting event” which had
just occurred, and Pope Clement XIV. addressed to the Most Christian King
a brief which resembled a canticle of thanksgiving.
Madame Campan relates that when she went to see the Princess at the
convent for the first time, she found her coming out of the laundry,
where her king’s daughter’s hands had just been doing the washing. The
novice said to her former reader at this time: “I greatly abused your
young lungs for two years before executing my purpose. I knew I could
read nothing here but books tending to our salvation, and I wanted to
review all the historians who had interested me.” Speaking afterwards of
her religious vocation, she said: “Believe me, the moralists are right
when they say that happiness does not dwell in palaces; I have acquired
a certainty of that. If you wish to be happy, I advise you to come and
enjoy a retreat where the most active mind might find full exercise in
the contemplation of a better world.”
The grating is closed at last upon the daughter of Louis XV. Between her
and the world the gulf has become impassable. What a contrast between
the palace and the cloister! Yesterday, all splendor and magnificence,
radiant galleries, marble staircases, majestic apartments; to-day,
humility, poverty, a monotonous existence, the rigors of enclosure.
Yesterday, robes of gold brocade, laces, precious stones, diadems;
to-day, the frieze habit, the bitter chalice. Yesterday, noise, worldly
animation; to-day, the silence and obscurity of the tomb.
They say that certain courtiers who did not comprehend Madame Louise,
criticised or pitied her; that the Maréchale de Mirepoix called her
“a mad woman, entering the cloister to annoy the court in the name of
Heaven”; that the Duke d’Agen thought he proved his wit by saying: “If
Madame Louise is in such a hurry to go to Paradise, it is because she
wants to be certain of not spending eternity with her family.”
The Marquise Du Deffand, who plays the philosopher, writes in one of her
letters: “This adventure has not made a great sensation. People shrug
their shoulders, pity her weakness of mind, and talk of something else.”
The sarcastic Marquise compassionates a princess who, says she, “makes
herself miserable for chimeras.” Madame Du Deffand is mistaken; with all
her intelligence, she is much more to be pitied than Madame Louise. There
are a good many more chimeras in her salon than in the Carmelite convent.
As to Louis XV., he was profoundly convinced that his daughter was
happy. “But, Sire,” Madame Du Barry said to him one day, “Madame Louise
will have a wretched fate at the convent!”—“Not at all,” he replied, “she
will be the most tranquil one of the family. The devotees did not invent
quietism for nothing.” Perhaps the voluptuous monarch himself felt, at
times, a disgust for his palaces, and what one might call a homesickness
for the cloister. Charles V. is not the only one who has dreamed of the
monastic life. The greatest debauchees sometimes have their moments of
mysticism.
The daughter of an earthly king now confides herself to the King of
Heaven. As she is no longer attached to a perishable throne, but to
the cross, which is immortal, she finds herself more at liberty in her
voluntary captivity than she once was in the whirlpool of the world. She
does not regret the crowd of courtiers who hasten to the Œil-de-Bœuf. She
does not regret that palace inhabited by cares and troubles, wherein, as
La Bruyère puts it, people rise from and lie down on self-interest. She
does not regret those base flatteries, a deafening murmur which fatigues
ear and heart alike; those protestations of zeal which are merely the
calculations of egotism, ambition, and cupidity, that pompous and vain
magnificence which gives not one moment of true happiness. The rules of
the cloister, though hard and austere, seem to her less painful than the
restrictions of etiquette. She prefers one ardent aspiration toward the
Christ, one tear of religious ecstasy, to all earthly treasures. Here
there are no more scandals, no more falsities, no more infamies; here is
repose, here the veritable love!
It is curious to observe that the _angel_ of Madame Louise at the convent
of Saint Denis, that is to say, the nun whose duty it was to initiate her
into the practices and duties of a Carmelite’s life, was Sister Julie, in
the world Julienne de MacMahon, a daughter of that illustrious family to
which belonged the Marshal who was at the head of the French government.