the love of domination, were infinitely more active in the soul of Madame
de Pompadour than in that of Madame Du Barry. One was a commercial,
intriguing, calculating woman, mistress of herself, egotistic, haughty,
vindictive. The other was a daughter of the people, not virtuous but
not malicious, not lofty in sentiment but not spiteful, possessing all
the defects of courtesans but also their thoughtlessness, prodigality,
playfulness. In the gallery of the women of Versailles I shall place
Madame Du Barry unhesitatingly above Madame de Pompadour, because the
Countess is credited by all her contemporaries with a quality that was
lacking to the Marquise, a quality which expiates many faults, many
shames, many vices, and without which no woman whatever can awaken
sympathy,—that of good nature.
XII
THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV.
Louis XV. foreboded his approaching death. Like all men who retain
the habit of debauchery until they are old, he found more suffering
than delight in sensual pleasure, more pain than joy. Expiating a few
minutes of false rapture by long hours of ennui and discouragement, he
experienced the painful pressure of fatigue, the remorse of the body, and
of remorse, the fatigue of the soul.
Count de Mercy-Argenteau wrote to Maria Theresa, June 16, 1773: “Although
His Majesty’s health has not grown worse within a month, yet it is
observed that he is becoming more subject to vapors and ennui. His first
liking for the favorite having been weakened by time, and this woman
possessing infinitely few resources of mind or character, the King finds
very slender entertainment with her, and even that is mixed up with
inconveniences whose effects he constantly experiences.”
In his correspondence with his sovereign, the ambassador frequently
returns to this incurable melancholy of Louis XV. He wrote, August 14th
of the same year: “The King is growing old, and from time to time seems
to have regrets. He finds himself isolated, without aid or consolation
from his children, without zeal, attachment, or fidelity from the bizarre
assemblage composing his ministry, his society, his surroundings.” And
February 19, 1774: “From time to time the King begins to make remarks
concerning his age, his health, and the frightful account that must one
day be rendered to the Supreme Being for our employment of the life He
has accorded to us in this world. These reflections, occasioned by the
death of some persons of his own age, who died almost before his eyes,
have greatly alarmed those who retain the monarch in his present errors,
and from that moment, everybody has thought it his duty to conceal such
events as far as possible.” People criticised the actions, the secret
thoughts, of Louis XV., his occasional returns to religious practices,
his more frequent visits to his daughter Louise, the Carmelite, the
humility with which he had listened to a courageous prelate, Monseigneur
Beauvais, Bishop of Senez, saying to him in a sermon delivered before
the whole court: “Solomon, satiated with voluptuousness, tired of having
exhausted, in the endeavor to revive his withered senses, every sort of
pleasures that surround the throne, ended by seeking one of a new kind in
the vile remnants of public license.”
Louis XV. was sixty-four years old. In his last days, as in those of his
early youth, he was hesitating between vice and virtue when, April 28,
1774, he was attacked at the Little Trianon, by a malady which at once
became alarming. The sick man was taken to the château of Versailles,
and at once what has been so well named “the jobbing and traffic in
the King’s conscience” began. The Aiguillonists, the Barriens, as the
partisans of the minister and the favorite were called, maintained that
the illness was not serious, and would not listen to any mention of the
sacraments. The friends of the Duke de Choiseul, on the other hand,
urgently demanded that the King should receive extreme unction, which
must be the signal for the dismissal of his mistress. Concerning this,
the brothers Goncourt have made the judicious remark: “It happened,
strangely enough, that the Aiguillon party, that of the devotees and
the Jesuits, combined to prevent the communion of Louis XV., while the
Choiseul party, that of the philosophers and unbelievers, combined to
force this communion.” The Aiguillonists trembled. The King’s malady was
extremely serious, being smallpox of the most dangerous description. If
the old monarch should die, it was all up with their favor. If he should
recover, he would this time become devout. In either case, Madame Du
Barry would be nobody.
The courtiers, fearing contagion, did not come near the chamber of the
royal invalid without alarm. One of them, M. de Létorières, succumbed for
nothing but opening the door and looking at the King two minutes. More
than fifty persons caught it by merely passing through the gallery. The
daughters of Louis XV., Mesdames Adelaide, Victoire, and Sophie, gave
at this time an admirable example of courage and filial piety. Although
they had never had the smallpox, they heroically braved the scourge.
While the Dauphin and his two brothers, the Counts of Provence and
Artois, prudently withdrew, the three Princesses did not hesitate to shut
themselves up in the chamber[57] of their deserted father. They remained
there from the time his illness began until his death.
The Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Christopher de Beaumont, paid a
visit to the King, May 2. “As they were on the watch for everything,”
says Baron de Besenval in his Memoirs, “as soon as the Archbishop
appeared, people saw Marshal de Richelieu hastily leave the King’s
apartment and go as far as the hall of the guards[58] to meet him;
there, drawing him aside, they sat down on a bench. It was noticed that
the Marshal talked with great vehemence and animated gestures; although
what he said could not be overheard, it was not difficult to see that he
was trying to deter him from proposing to administer the sacraments.”
The King did not make up his mind at once. Meanwhile, the sickness was
growing worse. The physicians used the word “delirium” in the bulletin
of May 3, a piece of frankness which exasperated the Duke d’Aiguillon.
In the evening of May 4, Madame Du Barry was introduced into the sick
man’s chamber. “Madame,” he said to her, “I am ill; I know what I have
to do. I will not renew the scenes of Metz; we shall have to part. Go
to M. d’Aiguillon’s house at Reuil. Be sure that I shall always have
the tenderest affection for you.” The next day, at three o’clock in the
afternoon, the favorite left Versailles, where she was never to reappear.
Behold Louis XV. on his deathbed. In vain he entreats his courageous
daughters to leave him; for the first time in their lives they disobey
him. The old King, as Mercy-Argenteau writes to Maria Theresa, gives
“many signs of repentance and resignation.” He is repairing by a
Christian end the scandals of his long existence. In the night of May
5-6, he asks for the Abbé Mondou, his confessor. He receives absolution,
and at the first glimmer of dawn, May 6, he asks to have the sacraments
brought. Showing extreme impatience for the priest’s arrival, he sends
M. de Beauveau several times to the window to see if the messenger of
God is not on his way. At last the clergy approach with the sacraments.
The royal invalid briskly throws off his bed coverings, and forces
himself into a kneeling posture, leaning against the front of his bed.
As the physicians try to induce him to cover himself up, he says: “When
my great God does a wretch like me the honor to come to him, it is the
least he can do to receive Him with respect.” After the Communion, the
grand almoner, Cardinal de La Roche-Aymon, reads aloud the public apology
made by the sovereign to his people. “Although the King,” exclaims the
Cardinal, “owes an account of his conscience to God alone, he declares
that he repents of having given occasion for scandal to his subjects.” At
these words, the dying man, in a voice broken by the last agony, said:
“Repeat those words, Monsieur the almoner, repeat them.” Let us own that
if Louis XV. did not know how to live, he had at least the merit of
knowing how to die well.
A candle burning in the King’s chamber, which was to be extinguished at
the same moment as the life of the King, was the signal agreed on for
the measures to be taken and the orders given as soon as he should have
breathed his last. The candle was put out at two o’clock in the afternoon
of May 10, 1774. Instantly a great tumult, comparable to a clap of
thunder, shook the arches of Versailles. It was the crowd of courtiers
leaving the antechambers of the dead man and noisily hastening to meet
the new monarch. He who now called himself Louis XVI. threw himself
spontaneously on his knees along with his wife. “My God!” he exclaimed,
“guide us, protect us; we are too young to reign!” At six in the evening
the new King and Queen departed for Choisy. Versailles was now only a
desert.
Count de Ségur says, in his Memoirs, concerning this sudden solitude:
“Dazzled from infancy by the splendor of the throne, the extent of the
royal power, a witness of the apparent zeal, the affected ardor, the
continued eagerness of courtiers and those incessant arts of homage which
resembled a sort of cult, the last agony and the death of the King caused
me to shed tears. What was my surprise when, on hastening to Versailles,
I found myself solitary in the palace, when I saw a general indifference
and even a kind of joy pervading the city and the gardens! The setting
sun was forgotten; all adorations were turning toward the rising one.
Not yet laid in his tomb, the old monarch was already numbered among his
motionless and silent predecessors. From that time his reign was ancient
history, and people concerned themselves only about the future; the old
courtiers thought of nothing but how to keep their credit under the new
reign, and the young ones of how to supplant them. The counterspell for
the enchantments of a court is a change of reigns; then the heart is laid
bare; all illusions end; the dead king is no longer more than a man, and
often less. There is no dramatic stroke more moral than that, nor more
adapted to make one reflect.”
At the moment when Louis XV. was in his agony, the Duke de Liancourt
noticed that a valet of the wardrobe was in tears. “Well,” said the
Duke to him, “are you weeping for your master?” To which the domestic
answered in a loud tone: “Oh! not for that. If I am crying, it is for
my poor comrade, who has never had the smallpox, and who will die of
it.” The corpse, rolled up hastily in the sheets of the bed, was thrown
into a triple coffin of oak and lead. Several priests, in the mortuary
chapel, were the only victims condemned not to abandon the remains of the
miserable King. May 12, the coffin was placed on a large coach. As is
related by Baron de Besenval, “a score of pages and fifty mounted grooms,
carrying torches, but like the carriages, not dressed in black, composed
the entire procession, which set off at full trot at eight o’clock in the
evening, and arrived at Saint Denis at eleven, amidst the gibes of the
curious spectators on either side of the road, and who, under cover of
the darkness, gave full scope to jesting, the dominant characteristic of
the nation. They did not confine themselves to that; epitaphs, placards,
verses, were scattered broadcast, aspersing the memory of the late King.”
A letter written by the Countess de Boufflers to Gustavus III., July
20, 1774, shows what were then the sentiments of a part of the French
nobility. “After his death,” says the Countess, speaking of Louis XV.,
“he was abandoned, as usual, and even in a still more terrible manner
on account of the nature of the disease; he was promptly interred;
his corpse passed through the wood of Boulogne on its way to Saint
Denis, about midnight. Cries of derision were heard as it passed by;
people kept repeating: Taïaut! taïaut! as when a stag is seen, and in
that ridiculous tone in which it is customary to pronounce it. If this
circumstance is true, it shows great cruelty; but nothing is more inhuman
than the indignant Frenchman, and, it must be agreed, he never had more
cause to be so; never have a nation squeamish about honor, and a nobility
naturally proud, received a more signal or less excusable insult than
that given us by the late King when, not contented with the scandal he
had given by his mistresses and his seraglio, at the age of sixty we
saw him draw from the vilest class and the most infamous condition, a
creature of the worst sort, in order to establish her at court, admit
her to his table with his family, make her absolute mistress of favors,
honors, and rewards, of politics and the laws, of which she has been
the ruin,—misfortunes which one can hardly expect will be repaired.
One cannot help regarding this sudden death and the dispersion of this
infamous troupe as a stroke of Providence.”
If the nobility spoke thus, what must the bourgeoisie and the Parisian
population, always so caustic and fault-finding, have said? Satirical
verses in the style of those that follow were published:—
“Te voilà donc, pauvre Louis,
Dans un cercueil, à Saint-Denis!
C’est là que la grandeur expire.
Depuis longtemps, s’il faut le dire,
Inhabile à donner la loi,
Tu portais le vain nom de roi,
Sous la tutelle et sous l’empire
Des tyrans qui régnaient pour toi.
“Étais-tu bon? C’est un problème
Qu’on peut résoudre à peu de frais.
Un bon prince ne fit jamais
Le malheur d’un peuple qui l’aime,
Et l’on ne peut appeler bon
Un roi sans frein et sans raison,
Qui ne vécut que pour lui-même....
“Faible, timide, peu sincère,
Et caressant plus que jamais
Quiconque avait su te déplaire,
Au moment que de ta colère
Il allait ressentir les traits:
Voilà, je crois, ton caractère.
Ami des propos libertins,
Buveur fameux, et roi célèbre
Par la chasse et par les catins:
Voilà ton oraison funèbre.”[59]
O kings! was not Bossuet in the right when he said that although seated
on the throne you were none the less sitting under the hand and the
supreme authority of God? What reflections there are to make over the
inanity of the grandeurs of this world, the miseries of court life, the
recantations and meanness of flatterers, the shameful calculations of
ambition and interest, the ugliness of the human heart! What a lesson!
that frightful, horrible, repulsive death struggle of this sovereign,
who had exhausted all the enjoyments of luxury, all the refinements of
pleasure, all the elegances of voluptuousness! What a contrast between
the boudoirs full of lights and flowers and perfumes, and the coffin
where rotted “that indescribable something for which no language has
a name”! What spectacle is at once more dismal and more instructive
than the lamentable ending of this prince who had once been called the
Well-Beloved?
EPILOGUE
THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BARRY
The fatal year, 1793, has sounded. Nineteen years have elapsed since the
death of Louis XV. How many changes! What revolutions! No throne, no
altars, no aristocracy. Versailles is a solitude. There are sick-beds in
the gilded galleries. Sheep browse in the gardens. Grass grows between
the flagstones of the courtyards. The fountains are dry. The marble
statues, the bronze groups, are thrown down or mutilated. The greatest
crime in all French history has just been accomplished; the head of the
son of Saint Louis, the Most Christian King, has fallen on the scaffold.
What has become of Madame Du Barry in the tempest? Where is that
woman who contributed so greatly to the enfeebling of the monarchical
principle, and, consequently, to the present catastrophes? Since October,
1792, she has been in London. She has not emigrated, and it was only
after having made herself all right with the authorities of the day that
she went to England to prosecute legally the authors of the robberies
committed at Luciennes. The guilty persons have crossed the Channel, and
Madame Du Barry is searching for them.
But before speaking of this pursuit, let us go back a little and recall
the fate of the favorite after the accession of Louis XVI. Exiled at
first to a convent in the suburbs of Metz, the abbey of the Bernardines
of Pont-aux-Dames, she received after a few months an authorization to
return to her dear pavilion of Luciennes. Her affairs, which at first
had been embarrassed on account of enormous debts, were nearly settled.
She always lived in great luxury, with a numerous household. Many of her
relations with the court had remained unbroken, and though it seems that
she gave her royal lover more than one successor, she retained a sort of
mundane veneration for his memory. Distinguished foreigners always made a
point of being presented to the late King’s mistress.
When the Emperor Joseph II. came to pay a visit to his sister, Marie
Antoinette, he went to Luciennes and walked in the garden with the
Countess Du Barry. His Imperial Royal and Apostolic Majesty offered
her his arm. In her later years the Countess had made a conquest of an
accomplished gentleman, the Duke de Cossé-Brissac, a true type of the
great noble, heroically brave and exquisitely courteous. Not merely
did the Duke take Madame Du Barry seriously, but he showed her as much
attention and respect as to the highest placed lady in the kingdom.
To enthusiastic admiration he united the most vivid and profound
attachment. As has been said by MM. de Goncourt, there is in this
attachment of M. de Brissac such a bestowal of himself, such delicate
attentions, such eagerness to oblige, so profound a worship, that it
troubles and disconcerts one’s judgment on the woman esteemed worthy of
such a love. Still beautiful, Madame Du Barry thought herself destined
to a happy and tranquil ending, since she had disarmed her enemies
themselves by her sweetness, gaiety, and good nature. Luciennes was still
a delightful place. But the storm was rumbling in the distance, and the
Countess, always improvident, had reckoned without the revolutionary tide
which was rising, rising incessantly, and which was to submerge all.
Madame Du Barry will abjure neither the court nor the monarchy. The
woman of the people will remain a royalist, not forgetting that she is a
countess and has been the mistress of a king. In 1789, after the October
Days, she had sheltered the body-guards at Luciennes and carefully tended
their wounds. The Queen had thanked her for this courageous act, and
the former favorite of Louis XV. had written to the wife of Louis XVI.
a letter cited in the Memoirs of Count d’Allonville, in which she thus
expressed herself: “These wounded youths have no other regret than that
of not having died for a princess so worthy of all homage as is Your
Majesty. What I have done for these heroes is far less than they deserve.
I console them, and I venerate their wounds when I think, Madame, that
but for their devotion Your Majesty would perhaps be no more.
“Luciennes is yours, Madame; was it not your benevolence which restored
it to me? All that I possess came to me from the royal family: I have
too much gratitude ever to forget it. The late King, by a sort of
presentiment, forced me to accept a thousand precious objects before
removing me from his person. I had the honor to send you this treasure at
the time of the meeting of the notables; I offer it to you again, Madame,
with eagerness. You have so many expenses to provide for, and numberless
benefits to confer!”
In 1791, Madame Du Barry had spent several days in Paris at the house
of the Duke de Brissac. Thieves profited by her absence from Luciennes
to enter the pavilion of the château and possess themselves of the
magnificent gems contained in the jewel cases of the Countess. Then they
had carried their spoil across the Channel. The next year, the Duke
de Brissac had been massacred at Versailles. He left a will in which,
speaking of his daughter, Madame de Mortemart, whom he made his universal
legatee: “I earnestly recommend to her a person who is very dear to
me, and whom the misfortunes of the times may reduce to the greatest
distress. My daughter will have a codicil from me which will indicate to
her what I ordain on this subject.”
The codicil contained an important legacy to Madame Du Barry. “I beg
her,” said the Duke, “to accept this feeble pledge of my sentiments and
my gratitude, for which I am all the more her debtor because I was the
involuntary cause of the loss of her diamonds; and if she ever succeeds
in getting them back from England, those which remain lost, and the cost
of the different journeys rendered necessary by the search for them, in
addition to the reward to be paid, would amount to the actual value of
this legacy. I entreat my daughter to make her accept it. My knowledge of
her heart assures me of the exactitude with which she will acquit herself
of it, whatever may be the charges with which my estate will be burdened
by my testament and my codicil, it being my will that none of my other
legacies shall be paid until this one has been entirely accomplished.”
The theft of the jewels was to prove fatal to the Countess. She had been
so imprudent, in this time of jealousies and hatreds, as to attract
public attention to her riches by posting on the walls of Luciennes
and its environs a bill whereon might be read: “Two thousand louis
reward: diamonds and jewels lost.” Then followed an enumeration of the
diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires. Greed was aroused.
The village of Luciennes had its club; it was claimed there that the
Countess possessed countless treasures, that incalculable riches were
concealed in the pavilion, that it was the mine from which the royalists
drew with full hands, that the Countess was going to direct and pay the
reactionaries.
M. Sardou has said: “When History makes a drama, she makes it well.”
The true historic drama, that which is no fiction but reality, has
its vicissitudes, its contrasts, its gradations. It has above all
its traitors. Do you remember Zamora, that child of Bengal, whom the
mistress of Luciennes had held at the baptismal font and whom she had
overwhelmed with benefits, that little negro who carried a parasol over
the favorite’s head, and whose inky blackness threw into relief the
snowy whiteness of the Countess’s visage? Well, the miserable Zamora is
a traitor. In league with Madame Du Barry’s former steward, he is the
accomplice of one Greive, who styles and signs himself “Official defender
of the brave sans-culottes of Luciennes, friend of Franklin and of Marat,
factionist and anarchist of the first rank, disorganizer of despotism
in the two hemispheres for twenty years.” This hideous crew pursues the
Countess with its hatred. She is a prey that the tigers who scent the
odor of blood will be sure to find the way to devour. Zamora has sworn
that he will make his benefactress ascend the scaffold, and Zamora will
keep his word.
Madame Du Barry had made four journeys to England in pursuit of those
who stole her jewels. Her last stay on the other side of the Channel had
lasted four months and a half, from the middle of October, 1792, to the
beginning of March, 1793. Why did this woman, who certainly did not
shine by her courage, conceive the fatal idea of returning to France? Was
the fear of never seeing again the treasures hidden in the pavilion of
Luciennes stronger than her sentiment of prudence? Or rather, was not the
victim dragged on by a sort of inexplicable fatality, by the vertigo, the
fascination, of the abyss?