the Du Barry, that worthless woman who wanted to treat with her as power
to power, that woman whom Maria Theresa, perhaps a trifle too politic,
had ordered her to treat with deference, out of respect for Louis XV.;
that woman who is the enemy of the Duke de Choiseul, the principal
partisan of the Austrian alliance at the court of Versailles. Revolted
in her youthful pride, throwing back her fine and haughty head, the
Dauphiness remembers the blood which flows in her veins, the lightning
which flashes in her eyes, and the daughter of Cæsars conceives disgust
for the favorite who is debasing the throne. She writes to Maria Theresa,
July 9, 1770: “The King shows me a thousand kindnesses, and I love him
tenderly, but it is pitiable to see the weakness he has for Madame Du
Barry, who is the most stupid and impertinent creature imaginable.”
The two women are on opposite sides in politics; one desires Choiseul’s
retention in the ministry, the other his dismissal. Two camps are
formed, the excitement is keen; Madame Du Barry will triumph. The Duke
de Choiseul, intoxicated by success, and long accustomed to vanquish
all obstacles, has come to believe himself not merely necessary, but
indispensable. The powerful minister would have been willing to say of
his enemies just what the Duke de Guise said shortly before he was struck
down: “They would not dare.” The political chessboard was so complicated,
that a man like him, who knew all the pieces so well, believed that
Louis XV. would not have the courage to dismiss him. Baron de Gleichen,
one of Choiseul’s best friends, thought him imprudent to the point of
blundering. “It would have been very easy for him,” says the Baron in his
curious _Souvenirs_, “to come to terms with Madame Du Barry, who would
have asked nothing better than to be delivered from the rapacious and
tyrannous claws of her brother-in-law, her protectors, and all the roués
whose instrument she was. She was a good-natured creature, moreover, who
disliked being employed to do harm, and whose joyous humor would have
made her dote on M. de Choiseul as soon as she began to know him. The
King would certainly have done the impossible to favor and consolidate
the union between his favorite and his minister, whom he was very
sorry to lose; nothing proves this better than a billet he wrote him
towards the last, when they wrote oftener than they saw each other. M.
de Choiseul complaining to his master of a horrible annoyance by which
he was menaced, the latter replied, ‘What you imagine is false; people
deceive you; be on your guard against those who surround you whom I do
not like. You do not know Madame Du Barry; all France would be at her
feet, if.... Signed: Louis.’ Does not this billet, which I have seen,
express the wish for an arrangement, a prayer to lend himself to it, and
the avowal, strange enough from a king, that the simple suffrage of his
minister would do more than all that lay in his royal power?”[47] This
reflection which is added by M. de Gleichen, is in the taste and style
of the eighteenth century: “It is most astonishing that the sensitive
heart of M. de Choiseul could have resisted so much kindness, the desire
to play a trick on his enemies, and the certainty of reigning more
comfortably by the aid of a woman who would have been entirely at his
orders.”
The Duke de Choiseul had been the favorite of the Marquise de Pompadour.
It was not morality, then, which prevented his being on good terms with
the Countess Du Barry, for, from the point of view of scandal, the
two mistresses were on an equality, and from the point of view of the
goodness of character, the Countess was much better than the Marquise.
The great noble, prouder of his person than of his place, the audacious
statesman, more influential, more flattered than his master, and saying
to those about him: “Don’t outbid the King; that is not worth while,”
the brilliant duke and peer who remembered that in former times a man of
his rank would have thought he degraded himself by accepting a place as
secretary of state, and who fancied he was doing a great honor to Louis
XV. in being willing to be his minister, Choiseul, infatuated with his
triumphs, was no longer the skilful courtier of the days of Madame de
Pompadour.
The idea of inclining before an inferior sultana revolted the pride of
this grand vizier who did not dread the bowstring. As has been very well
said by M. Jobez in his book, _La France sous Louis XV._, he was “one
of those men of pleasure who occupy themselves with public affairs as a
diversion agreeable to both their imagination and their vanity.” He would
not endure anything contrary to his convenience or his tastes. Madame Du
Barry displeased him; he defied her. To believe that the minister who had
concluded the family compact and annexed Corsica to France; who had dared
to break a lance in the face of the most powerful of modern associations,
the Jesuits; who was the idol of the nobility, the Parliaments and the
philosophers; who, celebrated in every tone by all the trumpets of Fame,
had been able to make himself feared and admired by Europe,—to believe
that he, the Duke de Choiseul, would be sacrificed to a creature of the
Du Barry sort, seemed to him unlikely and absurd.
It was this, however, which occurred. Let us affirm, for the rest, that
the enmity of the Countess was not the sole cause of the minister’s
downfall. If he was upheld by the Dauphiness, he had an adversary in the
Dauphin, because, several years before, he had said to the father of
this Prince: “Monseigneur, I shall perhaps have some day the misfortune
to be your subject, but I will never have that of being your servant.”
Religious people reproached him with the expulsion of the Jesuits and
the friendship of Voltaire. The conservatives accused him of a weakness
for the Parliaments. The peace party found his foreign policy bungling
and disquieting. They accused him of being on the point of doing what
Louvois had done under the reign of Louis XIV., of setting Europe afire
in order to prove that the Ministry of War had been well conducted. Louis
XV., who grew more timid as he grew older, became frightened, possibly
not without reason. The alliance of the Northern courts already existed
in principle. England was menacing. A conflict between the English and
the Spanish had just broken out in the Falkland Islands. Louis XV. was
persuaded of the imminence of a coalition, and a new Seven Years’ War,
which would be due, said they, to the imprudence and levity of Choiseul.
The enemies of the minister then apprised Madame Du Barry that the time
had come to be done with him. The story-tellers pretend that, tossing up
oranges, she exclaimed, bursting with laughter: “Skip, Choiseul! skip,
Praslin!” They add that, after having announced to Louis XV. that she had
just discharged her cook, she said to her royal lover: “I have got rid of
my Choiseul; when will you get rid of yours?”
December 24, 1770, the minister received the following letter from the
King:—
“My Cousin,—The discontent caused me by your services forces me to exile
you to Chanteloup, whither you will repair within twenty-four hours. I
would have sent you further, if it were not for the particular esteem
I have for Madame the Duchess de Choiseul, whose health interests me
much. Take care that your conduct does not make me take another course.
Whereupon, I pray God, my cousin, that He may have you in His holy
keeping. Signed: Louis.”
Then was seen, as has been remarked by M. Henri Martin, what had
never been seen before,—the court faithful to the person in disgrace.
During the few hours that elapsed before the Duke and Duchess de
Choiseul quitted Paris, an innumerable crowd of great lords and ladies,
magistrates, military men, citizens, men of letters, came to inscribe
their names on the register of his house. The young Duke de Chartres,
that prince who was afterwards to be called Philippe-Égalité, forced his
way in to throw himself into the arms of the exiled minister.[48] The
highest personages solicited the King’s authorization to pay visits to
Chanteloup. Did this signify that human nature was better, more generous,
than at other epochs? Not at all. It was simply that opposition was then
in fashion. It was thought, moreover, that Choiseul would return to
power. Count de Ségur has said in his Memoirs:—
“The King remained almost alone in his mistress’s boudoir. A column put
up at Chanteloup, on which the numerous visitors of the exile inscribed
their names, served as a monument of this new Fronde. The impressions
of youth are keen, and never shall I forget that produced in me by the
pleasure of seeing my father’s name and mine traced on this column of
opposition, the presage of other resistances which afterwards assumed
such grave importance.... From one end of the kingdom to the other,
people made a point of honor of the opposition; to lofty minds it seemed
a duty, to generous men a virtue, to the philosophers a useful weapon to
regain liberty; in fine, a means of becoming conspicuous, and, so to say,
a fashion which the young seized upon with ardor. The Parliaments made
remonstrances, the preachers sermons, the philosophers books, the young
courtiers epigrams. Feeling that the government was in unskilful hands,
everybody defied a government which no longer inspired either confidence
or respect.”
Madame Du Barry, little adapted to political contests, was all surprise
at her victory. Marie Antoinette had seen, and not without keen vexation,
the downfall of a friend devoted to the house of Austria. Alarmed by
this event, Maria Theresa desired her daughter to treat the powerful
favorite with deference. But the disgust which this woman inspired in
the Dauphiness was daily on the increase. Count de Mercy-Argenteau wrote
to the Empress, September 2, 1771: “Your Majesty will have deigned to
observe in my first and very humble report, that Monsieur the Dauphin
had approved of my representations as to the utility it would be to
Madame the Dauphiness not to treat the Countess Du Barry too badly. This
point appears to me more essential than ever, because it is the focus
of all the annoyances and regrettable proceedings into which the King
might allow himself to be drawn in order to show his resentment toward
his children. The occasions which I have had to see this favorite have
given me an opportunity to become acquainted with her; she seems to have
little intelligence, and much levity and vanity, yet without displaying
a wicked or hateful character. It is very easy to make her talk, and in
many cases one can profit largely by her indiscretion. I am certain that
if Madame the Dauphiness could be induced to speak to her only once, it
would then be very easy for me to curb any further pretensions and to
prevent the thousand embarrassments arising from the singular position of
the interior of this court.”
Maria Theresa abounded in the same sense as her ambassador. She wrote a
letter, September 30, 1771, to Marie Antoinette, in which she recommended
her to treat Madame Du Barry as a lady admitted to the court and the
society of the King. Declaring that the Dauphiness, as first subject of
the sovereign, owed obedience and submission to Louis XV., she added:
“You owe the example to the court and the courtiers, that the wishes of
your master should be executed. If base actions or familiarities were
required of you, neither I nor any one else could counsel them to you,
but an indifferent word, certain attentions, not for the lady, but for
your grandfather, your master, your benefactor!” In spite of all Maria
Theresa could say, it was none the less regrettable that a grandfather
should wish to impose such an associate on the wife of his grandson.
This was a real suffering for the legitimate pride of Marie Antoinette.
“The ascendancy taken by the Countess Du Barry over the King’s mind
has scarcely any bounds,” wrote Count de Mercy, December 19, 1771; “it
visibly influences whatever concerns the royal family, and the more the
favorite is mortified by ill treatment, the more use she seeks to make
of advantageous moments to show her resentment.” Count de Mercy, acting
on the instructions of the Empress, did not cease trying to induce the
Dauphiness to be polite to the favorite, and ended by gaining his cause
in a certain measure. He relates it with satisfaction in a letter written
to Maria Theresa, August 14, 1772. He says that Madame Du Barry having
arrived after the King’s Mass, with the Duchess d’Aiguillon, “Madame the
Dauphiness spoke to the latter; turning toward the favorite afterward,
she made some remarks about the weather and the hunting parties, in such
a way that, without directly addressing the Countess Du Barry, the latter
might nevertheless believe that these remarks were made to her as much as
to the Duchess d’Aiguillon. Nothing more was needed to make the favorite
very well contented. The King, apprised of what had passed, seemed much
satisfied with it, and showed as much to Madame the Dauphiness by the
little attentions he paid her the same evening at the state dinner.”
Marie Antoinette, however, in spite of her desire to conform to her
mother’s recommendations, could not conceal the repugnance inspired in
her by the woman whose favor was such a shameful scandal.
In a letter addressed to her mother, January 21, 1772, the Dauphiness
was unable to dissimulate her feelings of revolt against certain
requirements: “Madame my very dear mother,” said she, “you may well
believe that I will always sacrifice my prejudices and repugnances, so
long as nothing ostentatious or contrary to honor is proposed to me. It
would be the unhappiness of my life if misunderstandings arose between my
two families; my heart will always be for my own, my duties here will be
very hard to fulfil. I shudder at this idea.”
Marie Antoinette’s noble candor stung Maria Theresa to the quick. The
Empress, accustomed to domination both as mother and sovereign, replied
to her daughter, February 13: “You have made me laugh by fancying that
either I or my minister could ever give you counsels against honor, or
even against the least decorum. Such traits show what a hold prejudices
and unwise counsels have on your mind. Your agitation after a few words
makes one tremble for you. What interest could I have but your good
and even that of your State, the Dauphin’s happiness and your own, the
critical situation in which you and all the realm and the family find
yourselves, the intrigues and factions? Who can advise you better than my
minister, who knows the kingdom thoroughly and the instruments at work
there.... It is necessary to follow all the counsels, without exception,
which he will give you, and, by a measured and consistent course of
conduct to undertake to satisfy everybody.”
If Maria Theresa insisted with so much vivacity, it was because she knew
that at this very moment the powers hostile to Austria were redoubling
their efforts to conciliate the favorite and break the alliance between
the courts of Vienna and Versailles. “We know for sure,” she wrote to her
ambassador, “that England and the King of Prussia want to gain over the
Du Barry; you ought to know better than I if you think the thing is so.
The King is constant in his friendships, and I dare appeal to his heart;
but he is feeble, his surroundings do not leave him time to think.... If
France smirks with Prussia, which will surely betray her, then I must
tell you that this is the only point where I could not prevent myself
from changing, even to my great regret; but that would be infallible.
To prevent these evils and annoyances for the monarchy and the family
everything must be employed, and there is no one but my daughter, the
Dauphiness, assisted by your counsels and acquaintance with the locality,
who could render this service to her family and her country. Above all,
she must cultivate the good graces of the King by her assiduity and
affection; let her try to divine his thoughts, avoid shocking him in
any way, and treat the favorite well. I do not require base actions,
still less intimacies, but the attentions due in consideration of her
grandfather and master, and of the good which may result for us and
our two courts; perhaps the alliance depends on it.” O nothingness of
human grandeurs! A woman of mind, of heart, of genius, a Maria Theresa,
subordinating the friendships of the most powerful empires on earth, the
maintenance of the general equilibrium, the destinies of Europe, to the
goodwill of a Du Barry! The unfortunate Marie Antoinette, more to be
pitied than envied, in spite of all her éclat, her beauty, and prestige,
began to become what she was to be until her death: the victim of policy.
X
THE DAUPHINESS AND MARIA THERESA
History does not contain a more curious correspondence than that between
the Empress Maria Theresa and her ambassador at Versailles, Count de
Mercy-Argenteau. Never perhaps was the character of a sovereign and
the talent of a diplomatist revealed in a more striking manner. Maria
Theresa shows herself completely in her letters. What we have here is the
political woman accustomed to power and domination; the woman of brains
who sees, knows, and directs everything; the mother who inspires her
children with fear and veneration; the sovereign who occupies herself
with the same solicitude and the same authority in her family and her
empire. Her counsels are like orders, her language is the language of
command. Although her daughter may have become a Frenchwoman, she always
regards her as a German princess, and would like to make of her a sort
of Austrian ambassadress, accredited to Louis XV., but subordinate to
Count de Mercy. Astonished that a young girl of fifteen should not have
the penetration, the experience, the maturity of a matron, the Empress
does not admit the right in Marie Antoinette to have the slightest
imperfection. To her, the Dauphiness always remains the schoolgirl of
Schönbrun and the Burg.
Like all those who govern, Maria Theresa has a passion to be well
informed. The most minute details interest her. She wants to know the
least particulars of the physical and moral life of her daughter. Nothing
escapes her. She thinks of everything: toilettes, reading, conversations,
dances, promenades, all pass under her rigorous, incessant control.
Were she installed in the château of Versailles she could not know all
its detours in a more thorough manner. She does inhabit it in spirit;
she knows all the secrets, all the snares. Take care! she says to her
daughter every minute. Knowing the French character as well as if she
had lived in France all her life, she knows what to think of human
levity, malice, ingratitude, and cowardice, and what a fund of envy and
meanness exists in the character of many courtiers. The Capitol does
not make her forget the Tarpeian rock for her daughter, and at certain
moments she utters such dismal words, she casts such an unquiet look
toward the future, that one might think that, divining the destiny of her
Antoinette, she sees the scaffold in the misty distance.
On his side, the correspondent of the Empress is a model of diplomacy.
Supple, active, reserved, knowing how to put himself on good terms with
all who can be useful to his government, agreeable to Louis XV. and the
royal family, to the Duke de Choiseul and the Duke d’Aiguillon, to the
devotees and to Madame Du Barry, an observer of the first order and an
indefatigable worker, exact to minutiæ, prudent to exaggeration, skilful
in handling all the pieces of the most complicated diplomatic chessboard,
Count de Mercy-Argenteau is in love with his profession. When he
addresses his _very humble reports_ to his sovereign, he brings to them
an excessive care and zeal; if he happens to receive the felicitations
of the _Sacred Majesty_, as he always calls the Empress, he breaks into
transports of joy. The letters he wrote to Maria Theresa independently of
his official despatches, form a veritable journal of the existence of the
Dauphiness. Everything is there with its date and hour. The ambassador
knows what passes in the salons of the Princess, and knows also what does
not pass in her alcove. A chambermaid, a physician, what am I saying? A
confessor would not be better informed.
As to the Dauphiness, she is still a child. Sweet, simple, ingenuous,
incredulous of evil, mocking a little at etiquette, sincerely pious, but
with an always amiable piety, regretting Vienna but loving Versailles,
German by her memories but French by her heart, full of respect and
affection for her august mother but finding her at times a trifle too
severe, the seductive Princess, on account of the inexplicable coldness
of her husband, is still a young girl although a married woman.
If she has some little defects, if from time to time she can be accused
of some trifling imprudences which one day she will expiate in a manner
so cruel, they are the imprudences and defects which have the excuse of
youth and also its charm. Marie Antoinette, and it is this which gives
her physiognomy something so sympathetic and so graciously feminine,
Marie Antoinette has the spirit of her age, its gaiety, sprightliness,
unconcern. This amiable Dauphiness, who calls Louis XV. papa, and who
throws her arms about his neck without asking his permission; who, still
a child herself, takes her chief pleasure in the society of children, and
who, when she sees her lady of honor appear, the severe and punctilious
Countess de Noailles, says with a laugh: “Now let us behave properly;
here comes Madame l’Etiquette;” this Princess, so natural and charming,
contrasts with her surroundings as spring does with winter. She resembles
the young trees full of sap which grow freely in the fields, and not
those puny shrubs in the park of Versailles which cannot grow except
under rule and square. Her simplicity is her most beautiful ornament.
Her richest diadem is her long fair hair. Not one of her jewels can be
compared to the sparkle of her eyes.
Well, if one can believe it, this Princess whose innocence and
gentleness should soften all hearts, is already surrounded by enemies.
Mercy-Argenteau wrote to Maria Theresa, April 16, 1771: “It is almost
impossible that Your Majesty should form a very exact idea of the
horrible confusion prevailing here in everything. The throne is debased
by the extension of the favorite’s credit and the malevolence of her
partisans. The nation vents itself in seditious proposals and indecent
writings in which the person of the monarch is not spared. I have not
hesitated to make these representations to Madame the Dauphiness, and
have frequently called her attention to the fact that the only possible
means of avoiding the inconveniences of a time so critical is to keep
profound silence concerning things as well as persons, and Her Royal
Highness begins to feel the necessity of this method.” The frank and
expansive young girl must conduct herself like an old diplomatist.
She must measure and calculate each gesture, each word, even her very
silence. Everything is noted, commented on, and criticised. Underneath
its majestic exterior this court is a veritable ant-hill of petty
passions, petty intrigues. There is nothing but mines and countermines,
ambushes, coalitions, cabals. There is Madame Du Barry’s camp, which
is that of the ministers, that of Madame Adelaide and her sisters, the
camp of the Duke de Choiseul’s friends, and even that of the Count
de Provence, who, though so young, is already a wily politician. The
Dauphiness is spied upon in the most odious manner. Her letters, her
composition books, are read, and pages of them are torn out, evidently
with a view to imitating her handwriting. It troubles her to find that
there are double keys to her furniture. In order to preserve her mother’s
letters, she is obliged to hide them under her pillows.
Maria Theresa is intensely preoccupied by this whole state of affairs.
She is especially displeased with Mesdames. Although she recognizes
their solid qualities and incontestable virtue, she is jealous of them,
and is constantly criticising them; she will not admit that these
princesses have the right to give their young niece the least advice. “I
own to you,” she writes to Count de Mercy-Argenteau, February 11, 1771,
“that in the stormy circumstances of the court of France, my daughter’s
situation greatly disturbs me. Her nonchalance, her slight inclination
for all serious application, her indiscretion (caused by her youth and
vivacity), her relations with her aunts, and particularly with Madame
Adelaide, who is perhaps the most intriguing and best known of the
sisters, furnish me with more than one subject of fear.” Maria Theresa,
who is German to the ends of her finger-nails, and who has no liking
for the French nation, although she sought the alliance of the court of
Versailles, experiences, moreover, a sort of jealousy of the affection
manifested for her new country by the former Archduchess. “People have
a right to be astonished,” she writes to her, “at the slight cordiality
and interest that you have for Germans. Believe me, the Frenchman will
esteem and rely upon you more if he finds in you the German solidity
and frankness. Don’t be ashamed to be German even to awkwardness.” One
comprehends that a young Dauphiness of France would need a good deal of
filial respect not to become a trifle impatient under this by far too
Germanic advice. The Empress is sounder when, still using severe, but
this time very sensible, language, she writes to her daughter, July 9,
1771: “I expect in vain every month the list of your reading and your
occupations.... At your age, levities and puerilities are easily excused,
but in the long run they tire everybody and you too; they will make you
very uncomfortable.... I cannot conceal from you that people are already
beginning to talk about them, and by that you will lose the grand idea
that has been formed of you, an essential point for us who are on the
theatre of the great world. A life constantly dissipated, without the
slightest serious occupation, will affect even your conscience.”