veritable lectures, when her pen is like a ferule. One may judge of
them by this letter of September 30, in the same year, wherein, after
complaining especially because the Dauphiness is not gracious enough
toward Madame Du Barry, the imperious sovereign wrathfully exclaims:
“You are so greatly lacking toward your benefactor on the very first
occasion when you can oblige him!... Observe now for whom? By a shameful
wish to please people who have enthralled you by treating you as a child,
by procuring you rides on horseback and on donkeys, with children, with
dogs; such are the great reasons which attach you by preference to
them rather than to your master, and which in the long run will make
you ridiculous, neither loved nor esteemed. You began so well. Your
appearance, your judgment, when not controlled by others, is always
correct and what it should be.... I require you to convince the King of
your respect and tenderness by all your actions, considering on every
occasion what will please him.... Even should you be obliged to embroil
yourself with all the others, you have but one sole aim,—to please the
King and do his will.”
Marie Antoinette, accustomed to respect her mother as much as God
himself, always bends before this authority which admits of no reply.
Sometimes she happens to forget certain recommendations, but she is
assuredly excusable. As Count de Mercy writes the Empress in a letter of
June 16, 1772, “the bad manners of her companions, the habit of receiving
neither reprimand nor contradiction nor even advice from the King, nor
from Monsieur the Dauphin either, and the three hundred leagues which
separate her from you, are doubtless the reasons why severe letters have
not always produced the desired effect.” Moreover, Maria Theresa relents
at times. From the tone of reprimand she passes to that of tenderness.
Occasionally her maternal admiration speaks in accents worthy of Madame
de Sévigné. She writes to her daughter, October 31, 1771: “You have
something so touching in your whole person that it is hard to deny you
anything; this is a gift of God for which you should thank Him, and use
it for His glory and the welfare of others.” It is because she would like
to have her perfect, both physically and morally, that she says in a
letter of December 31, 1772: “What! the Antoinette of twelve or thirteen
years knew how to receive her company very prettily, and say something
polite and gracious to every one; this truth has been evident to all
Vienna, the whole Empire, Lorraine, and France,—and is the Dauphiness now
to be embarrassed by a simple private person? Do not accustom yourself to
these frivolous excuses; embarrassment, fear, timidity, chimeras! People
employ such terms as those without reflection, to excuse a bad habit
of not incommoding themselves. You know how you have gained hearts by
affability; you see the opposite of that daily; can you allow yourself to
neglect this important point. I am ending the old year with my sermons;
you will wrong me if you do not accept them as the greatest mark of my
tenderness and the interest I take in your future welfare, with which I
am continually occupied.”
Marie Antoinette, who is all goodness and sensibility, bears her mother
no ill will for her often severely given counsels, and her filial
piety is never in fault. One should read, in a letter of Count de
Mercy-Argenteau, February 29, 1772, the account of the grief inspired in
this charming Dauphiness by the news that her mother was slightly ill:
“The first word troubled Madame the Dauphiness so greatly that she could
hear nothing further. She returned to her cabinet, dissolved in tears,
and unable to say anything except that she was not in a condition to give
audience. She asked for a rosary Your Majesty had given her, and began to
pray. Monsieur the Dauphin, who did not leave her, seemed to share very
sincerely the grief of his august spouse.”
Maria Theresa sometimes complains that her daughter’s letters are
not long enough. This is because she has not a clear notion of the
difficulties the young Princess encounters when she tries to write to her
in peace. As M. de Mercy-Argenteau tells her, Marie Antoinette always
writes quickly, lest she should be surprised either by her husband or
her aunts, to whom she never shows the letters she addresses to her
mother. Her correspondence is certainly not a masterpiece of style. But,
honestly, could one expect a young German girl to write French like a
member of the Academy? At least, the letters of Marie Antoinette, simple,
natural, and without literary pretension, have the advantage of proving a
good heart, a pure conscience, a character full of frankness.
When one goes to the bottom of history instead of studying nothing
but the surface, what especially strikes one is the slight difference
that exists between sovereigns and ordinary people. Does not the great
Maria Theresa, the illustrious Empress, remind one, in spite of all her
prestige, of those good middle-class women who are constantly telling
their daughters to sit up straight? Palaces, thatched hovels, garrets,
the same joys and sorrows, passions and vexations, are found under the
roof of each.
To sum up, there is nothing grave in the reproaches which Maria Theresa
addresses to her daughter, and at any other epoch the Dauphiness would
have received nothing but praise. But at that time people were inclined
to criticise everything, and the first breath of the Revolution was
agitating French society.
As yet, however, the delightful, the incomparable, Dauphiness is the
idol of the court and the nation. What charm! what brilliancy! what
attractions! How she eclipses all other women! What a difference there
is between her and her sisters-in-law, the Countess de Provence and the
Countess d’Artois! Everywhere and always, Marie Antoinette is the first,
in grace as well as beauty. One would say she is already on the throne.
When, at the beginning of the second act of Gluck’s _Iphigenia_, the
chorus exclaims: “Sing, let us celebrate our queen,” the public turns
toward the Dauphiness and salute her enthusiastically, as if her reign
had already begun. How she animates by her gaiety, how she illumines by
her smile, this grand palace of Versailles which, without her, would be
so dismal! What life there is in the private balls which she gives every
Monday in her apartments! People dance there for the pleasure of dancing,
without ceremony and without etiquette. The ladies come in white dominos,
and the men in their ordinary attire. Here shines one of the most poetic
and sympathetic of women, the Princess de Lamballe, that twenty-year-old
widow who will be Marie Antoinette’s best and most faithful friend; the
Princess de Lamballe, who surrounds with such affectionate cares her
father-in-law, that venerable Duke de Penthièvre, to whom Florian said,
in dedicating to him a Biblical poem:[49]
“Pieux comme Booz, austère avec douceur,
Vous aimez les humains et craignez le Seigneur.
Hélas! un seul soutien manque à votre famille;
Vous n’épousez pas Ruth, mais vous l’avez pour fille.”[50]
At these Monday balls, to which only the élite of the nobility are
admitted, and invitations to which make people so proud and happy, those
young men make their appearance in society who are about to become all
the rage, the great liberal lords, the chevaliers of new France, the
Lafayette, Lauzun, La Marck, Ségur, Dillon, Noailles, Lameth. The Monday
festivities are not enough. Other balls are given on Wednesday, in the
apartment of the Countess de Noailles, Marie Antoinette’s lady of honor.
The Dauphiness comes there for the first time on the arm of her husband,
who says to the Countess on entering: “I hope, Madame, that you will
kindly receive the husband and the wife; we do not come here to cause
embarrassment, but to share your amusements.”[51]
The Dauphin and the Count de Provence dance rather clumsily; on the other
hand, the Count d’Artois, that type of the elegant gentleman, is an
accomplished dancer. As to Marie Antoinette, as graceful as beautiful, as
lively as she is charming, she has the gait of a goddess.
_Et vera incessa patuit dea...._
Her only defect is that of being slightly satirical. Like Count de La
Marck, she makes a jest of what is ugly or unpleasant. She loves young
people, she wishes them to be gay, to amuse themselves and banish gloomy
thoughts. How full of life she is those winters of 1771 and 1772, when,
in company with the Princess de Lamballe, she enjoys her favorite
amusement, those sleigh-rides which are like a vision of Northern
poetry! And how majestic, on the 8th of June, 1773, the day of her
ceremonious entry into Paris, when, in a gala carriage resplendent with
gold and drawn by eight horses, followed by five other equipages not less
magnificent, she goes, in great pomp, first to Notre Dame, afterwards to
the church of Saint Geneviève, and finally to the palace of the Tuileries.
The air is rent with enthusiastic cries, all hats are flung up, all
hearts are enraptured, all hands beat wild applause. The cry, Long live
the Dauphiness! issues from every breast. At every step the Princess
hears them saying: “How pretty she is! How beautiful! How good she
looks!” A rain of flowers descends from every balcony, every window. This
is not merely joy and admiration; it is intoxication, delirium. Moved to
the very depths of her soul, and forgetting this time all her sorrows and
presentiments, Marie Antoinette joyfully describes to her mother this
unparalleled festivity, the remembrance of which will be so sweet.
“On returning from the promenade,” she writes, June 14, 1773, “we climbed
an open terrace (at the Tuileries) and remained there half an hour.
I cannot tell you, my dear mamma, what transports of affection were
displayed for us at this moment. Before leaving it we waved our hands to
the people, which gave them great pleasure. How fortunate we are in our
position to gain the friendship of a whole people so cheaply! And yet
there is nothing so precious; I felt that thoroughly, and shall never
forget it. Another point which caused great pleasure on this beautiful
day was the conduct of Monsieur the Dauphin. He made wonderful replies
to all the addresses, noticed everything that had been done for him, and
especially the joy and eagerness of the people, to whom he displayed
great goodness.... To-morrow we are going to the Opera at Paris; this
is greatly desired, and I even think we shall go two other days to the
French and Italian Comedies. Every day I am more and more sensible of
what my dear mamma has done for my establishment. I was the youngest of
all, and she has treated me as if I were the eldest; hence my soul is
filled with the most tender thankfulness.”
XI
THE PAVILION OF LUCIENNES
Madame Du Barry throned it like a queen. At last she had succeeded in
being able to assume, whenever the notion took her, the manners and
language of the great ladies. Choosing her associates from among women
of the highest rank, a Maréchale de Luxembourg, a Duchess d’Aiguillon,
a Maréchale de Mirepoix, she received dukes and peers, ministers and
ambassadors. When Gustavus III., King of Sweden, came to the court of
France, in 1771, he offered a very rich collar to the favorite’s little
dog. The policy of Madame Du Barry, if one admits that a woman of that
sort can have a policy, was more authoritative, more conservative,
than that of Madame de Pompadour. Madame Du Barry did not rely upon
the philosophers, and always alarming Louis XV. about the danger of
parliaments, she incessantly reminded him of the example of princes
who, like Charles I., allow their royal prerogatives to be attacked. At
the auction of Baron de Thiers’s effects, she bought a portrait of that
unhappy monarch for twenty-four thousand livres, and it is asserted
that, showing this painting to Louis XV., she said to him: “France, do
you see this picture? If you let your Parliament go on, it will cut off
your head, as the English Parliament did to Charles.”
The sense of danger restored to the old sovereign a vigor which assured
his tranquillity so long as he lived. The Parliament had assumed
a factious attitude in consequence of its quarrels with the Duke
d’Aiguillon. Declaring that “its members, in their profound affliction,
found their minds not sufficiently free to give decisions on the
property, life, and honor of the King’s subjects,” it refused to render
justice. Louis XV. destroyed this beginning of revolution in its germ.
During the night of January 17, 1771, all the members of the Parliament
were arrested in their dwellings, and summoned to reply merely yes or
no to an order to resume their functions. All responded negatively.
They were at once declared unseated, and departed into exile. A new
Parliament, called the Maupeou Parliament, after the chancellor who had
advised this coup d’État, took the place of the former one, and showed
itself perfectly docile. As has been remarked by M. Théophile Lavallée,
the wheels of the governmental machine were so worm-eaten that even
the organ of resistance, touched by the finger of a courtesan, a Du
Barry, crumbled into powder. To the people, the magistrates seemed only
privileged persons discredited by the trials of Lalli, Calas, and La
Barre. Maupeou announced that justice would be rendered gratuitously,
that appointments should no longer be hereditary, and that a new
code of civil and criminal procedure would be drawn up. Voltaire,
always the partisan of success, went into ecstasies over the glory of
the chancellor, the author of this stroke, and celebrated it in an
enthusiastic piece of verse:—
“Oui, que Maupeou, tout seul, du dédale des lois
Ait pu retirer la couronne,
Qu’il l’ait seul rapportée au palais de nos rois,
Voila ce que j’ai vu, voila ce qui m’étonne.
J’avoue avec l’antiquité
Que ses héros sont admirables;
Mais, par malheur, ce sont des fables;
Et c’est ici la vérité.”[52]
Madame de Pompadour had overthrown the Jesuits. The Jansenists were
crushed by Madame Du Barry. From his retreat at Ferney, Voltaire
flattered the favorite with those refinements of adulation of which he
had the monopoly. June 20, 1773, he wrote the following letter:—
“MADAME,—M. de Laborde tells me you have ordered him to embrace me on
both cheeks on your account:—
“Quoi! deux baisers sur la fin de ma vie!
Quel passeport vous daignez m’envoyer!
Deux! c’est trop d’un, adorable Egérie,
Je serais mort de plaisir au premier.[53]
“He has shown me your portrait; do not be angry, Madame, if I have taken
the liberty of returning it the two kisses:—
“Vous ne pouvez pas empêcher cet hommage,
Faible tribut de quiconque a des yeux.
C’est aux mortels d’adorer votre image,
L’original était fait pour les dieux.[54]
“I have heard several bits from M. de Laborde’s _Pandora_; they have
seemed to me very well worthy of your protection. The favor shown to the
real fine arts is the only thing which could enhance the brilliancy with
which you shine.
“Deign, Madame, to accept the profound respect of an old solitary whose
heart has no longer hardly any sentiment but that of gratitude.”
Public opinion was less severe on the favorite than might be believed.
People pardoned her fortune, because she was, as they vulgarly said, a
good girl, because “she had in her heart the affections of the common
people, their natural attachments, the sentiment of family.”[55] She went
every fortnight to spend a day with her mother, whom she had transformed
into a Marquise de Montrable, and provided with a lodging at the convent
of Saint Elisabeth, a carriage, a country seat, and a little farm, called
La Maison Rouge, near Lonjumeau.
Madame de Pompadour, the personification of the middle class parvenue,
had excited furious anger in all ranks of society. The Du Barry
displeased less, because she was less haughty. Her triumph, moreover,
was in harmony with an epoch when, as Chateaubriand has said, “court and
city, men of letters, economists and encyclopedists, great lords and
gentlemen, financiers and burghers, resembled each other, as witness the
memoirs they have left us.”
More and more wearied of the rules of etiquette, the aged Louis XV.
thought of nothing but living like a private gentleman, loving women,
hunting, and good cheer as long as possible. All that was grand fatigued
him. Versailles, too vast, too majestic for him, harassed him like a
prison. To the magnificent residence of Louis XIV. he greatly preferred
the little pavilion he had built in 1771, just beside the château of
Luciennes, and which belonged to Madame Du Barry.
There are monuments which are symbols. This palace-boudoir, temple of
a libertine divinity, represents marvellously the close of the reign
of Louis XV. Ledoux was the architect of this little masterpiece, and
its salons were adorned by the brushes of Joseph Vernet, Greuze, and
Fragonard. Situated on an eminence from which one beheld a magnificent
view, this square pavilion, with its five windows fronting in every
direction, resembled a château of Alcina, the abode of an enchantress. It
has a peristyle of four columns in the Grecian style and a Bacchanalian
dance of children in low relief. The entrance is by a vestibule which
served as a dining-room on great days. This is the room reproduced in the
fine water-color of Moreau Jeune, now in possession of the Louvre Museum.
The walls are of white marble. Capitals surrounded by gold display the
united arms of Louis XV. and the favorite. In front of the vestibule are
the tribunes for the Countess’s musicians. This large hall opens on the
square salon; the panels of the door were painted by Fragonard. On either
side of the grand salon is another smaller one. In that on the right
there is a set of four paintings by Vien, representing a symbolic history
of love in the heart of young girls; in that on the left, entirely
adorned by mirrors which reflect a superb mantelpiece of lapis lazuli in
the form of a tripod, Briard has painted on the ceiling the allegory of
love in the country.
When Louis XV. comes to Luciennes, he has no apartments separate from
those of the Countess, with the exception of his dressing-room. Extremely
careful of his person, he needs a private room in which to repair, if
necessary, the little disorders of his toilet, and to have more powder
put on when his hair requires it.
What a little gem, what a charming trifle, is this marvellous pavilion!
Cornices, bas-reliefs, pilasters, bits of jeweller’s work, locks, window
fastenings,—each detail is an object of art, a treasure. What refinements
of luxury! What caprices, what puerilities, what freaks of ornamentation!
Chinese knick-knacks, statuettes in Dresden porcelain, coffers of ebony
and ivory, lacquered furniture, screens covered with birds of paradise
of sparkling plumage, cages of paroquets, aviaries in gold and silver
filigree!
Amidst all these curiosities one perceives a little spaniel, white
as snow, a Brazilian monkey, a small flame-colored parrot, and a
Bengalese child, of a coppery black, with his brilliant eyes and
bizarre accoutrements. This singular negro boy, this living toy, is
Zamora, Zamora whom the Countess held at the baptismal font, with
the Prince de Conti for the other sponsor, and whom Louis XV. amuses
himself by appointing governor of the pavilion of Luciennes, by a
decree countersigned by the Chancellor of France. They change this
negro’s costume as if he were a doll. Sometimes he is dressed as a
savage, with red feathers, variegated garments, necklaces of beads and
coral. Sometimes he puts on a green frock coat, braided with gold, and
accompanies the runner who, squeezed into a polonaise of sky blue cloth,
brandishes, as he runs, a superb cane with a carved head. Sometimes he is
in vest and breeches of pink satin, on those brilliant evenings when from
the tribunes of the vestibule resound the notes of violin, flute, and
hunting-horn; where, amid great ladies in dazzling toilettes and nobles
clad in velvet, precious stones, and blue ribbons, crystals, baskets of
flowers, and innumerable lights, the Countess Du Barry beams as if in an
operatic scene, as in an apotheosis of gallantry and sensual pleasure.
But showy dress is not what best becomes her coquettish and sprightly
person. She is still prettier and more piquant when she puts on the half
feminine, half masculine uniform of the Queen’s light cavalry. Then Dorat
addresses her the following enthusiastic lines:—
“Sur ton double portrait le spectateur perplexe,
Charmante Du Barry, veut t’admirer partout;
A ses yeux changes-tu de sexe,
Il ne fait que changer de goût.
S’il te voit en femme, dans l’âme,
D’être homme il sent tout le plaisir;
Tu deviens homme, et d’être femme
Soudain il sent tout le désir.”[56]
At Luciennes, Louis XV. lives like a banker in a small house. The Most
Christian King has no longer any majesty. He puts on a simple white
vest, and amuses himself, like an honest citizen, in gardening a little.
He likes to walk underneath the lindens, and afterwards to sit on the
terrace whence he can see at his feet the stream, which, making a
double turn, winds like a horseshoe under the hill. On the horizon is
Saint-Germain, the cradle of Louis XIV., Saint Denis, the burial-place of
kings, whither he will presently go to rejoin his ancestors, and, in the
misty distance, Paris, the carping, revolutionary city, which seems to
menace him. Tired of Versailles, Louis XV. breathes the free air on this
terrace and endeavors to forget: to forget the mistakes of his official
and his secret diplomacy, to forget the first partition of Poland which
is going on, the injunctions of England which, preventing France from
aiding the Swedes or the Poles, forbid her fleets to enter either the
Baltic or the Mediterranean; to forget, in fine, his own old age, and
another decline not less afflicting, that of the French monarchy. The
blasé sovereign casts a glance of disenchantment at the present, a glance
of keen anxiety toward the future. But here comes the Countess Du Barry
with her arch face, her provoking smile, her rosy mouth which calls for
kisses. Louis XV. cheers up in an instant.
Was Madame Du Barry more immoral than Madame de Pompadour? I do not
believe it. Was she more detrimental to France? I do not believe that
either. Were the beginnings of the Marquise’s favor more noble than those
of the Countess? Was the first more truly in love, more disinterested,
than the second? For my part, I do not see much difference. Nevertheless,
I am tempted to find Madame de Pompadour more culpable than Madame
Du Barry. Her husband was the better man of the two. M. Lenormand
d’Étioles had not, like M. Du Barry, formed a wretched contract under the
pretext of marriage; he loved his wife, he surrounded her with care and
attentions; he had done absolutely nothing to merit the unjustifiable
abandonment and unexpected treachery of which he was the victim.
M. Du Barry, on the other hand, had willed his own fate. Whatever may
be said about it, the Marquise was not in reality more of a grand lady
than the Countess. One reflects that the aristocracy thought her vulgar.
D’Argenson spoke of her contemptuously; Richelieu saw in her nothing but
a misplaced amusement, “which was not adapted to subsist worthily at
court”; Voltaire, her regularly appointed flatterer, stigmatized her as a
cackler, a grisette created for the opera or the seraglio. The Pompadour
was elegant; the Du Barry was not less so. Each of them contrived to
talk the language of Versailles, and to wear their clothes as well as
the ladies of the highest nobility. D’Aiguillon, the favorite of the
Countess, belonged to a family not less ancient than that of Choiseul,
the favorite of the Marquise. Both of them obliged the aristocracy to
accept their families. If one metamorphosed her brother, Abel Poisson,
into the Marquis de Marigny, the other married her nephew, the Viscount
Adolphe Du Barry, to the daughter of the Marquis de Tournon, a relative
of the Soubises and the Condés. One advantage the Countess certainly had
over the Marquise: no one could lay on her the responsibility for any war
or for the selection of any general.