Proud as Madame was, there was nothing for her, after such a step
and such a reconciliation so painful to the core, but to become
henceforth the intimate and cordial friend of Mme. de Maintenon, or
her implacable enemy. The latter sentiment prevailed. In spite of
efforts which may have been for a time sincere, the conditions and the
repugnances were too strong; antipathies rose up once more and carried
all before them.
Madame deserves consideration by more than one claim, and especially
because, having written much, her testimony stands and is invoked
in many cases. When the present edition of letters and fragments of
letters by M. Brunet is exhausted, why should he not undertake to
form a complete collection, leaving nothing out that could enrich
and enlighten it on the German side, and adding only such notes and
French erudition as may be strictly necessary? We should then have,
not exactly an historical document added to so many others, but a
great chronicle of manners and morals, a fiery social gossip, by one
whom we may call the Gui Patin or the Tallemant des Reaux of the end
of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. We
should thus gain a vivid, witty, and ruthless book, which would make a
pendant to Saint-Simon on more than one ground.
Madame and Saint-Simon have this in common--they were two honest
souls at Court, honest souls whom indignation easily roused; often
passionate, prejudiced, and at such times ferocious and pitiless for
the adversary. Saint-Simon--need it be said?--has over Madame all the
superiority of a genius expressly made to sound and fathom hearts,
and to bring back living descriptions, which he gives us in strokes
of flame. Madame, often credulous, looking elsewhere, mixing things
up and little critical in her judgments, nevertheless sees well
what she does see, and renders it forcibly, with a violence which,
though little conformed to French taste, is none the less imprinted
on the memory. They knew each other and esteemed each other. They
had, without suspecting it, the same idiosyncrasies, which they
observed, reciprocally, in each other; one was astride of her rank as
princess and ever on the _qui-vive_ lest it should not be sufficiently
respected; the other, as we know, was intractable and even fanatical
on the chapter of dukes and peers.
Saint-Simon has spoken of Madame with truth and justice, as of a manly
nature somewhat in keeping with his own. All that we read in Madame's
letters, in which she declares herself to every eye, is only a sort of
demonstration and commentary of Saint-Simon's judgment upon her.
Madame was naturally just, humane, compassionate. She was very anxious
about her debts and her creditors, which the great of the earth are
not apt to be, and it was noticed that she was never easy unless she
had secured their payment,--"forestalling demands, sometimes wishes,
and always impatience or complaints." The letters she writes during
the terrible winter of 1709 breathe pity for the poor, who "are dying
of cold like flies." No princess ever had more consideration for
those who surrounded her and served her; "she preferred sometimes to
deprive herself of necessary attentions, rather than require them
when inconvenient to others." She was what is called a good mistress,
and the nearer her people came to her, the more they regretted her.
"Saint-Cloud," she wrote in the autumn of 1717, "is only a house for
summer; many of my people have to lodge in rooms without fireplaces;
they cannot pass the winter here, or I should be the cause of their
deaths, and I am not hard enough for that; the sufferings of others
make me pitiful."
Once only was she pitiless; but she was wounded then in her tenderest
spot. Mme. de Maintenon had imported from Strasburg (_expressly to
annoy me_, thought Madame) two girls of equivocal birth who called
themselves Comtesses Palatine and whom she placed in the suite of her
nieces. The first dauphine (Monseigneur's wife, a Princess of Bavaria)
spoke of this to Madame, weeping, but not daring to resent an affront
which was aimed at both. "Let me settle that," replied Madame. "I'll
manage it; for when I am right nothing frightens me." The next day
she arranged an accidental meeting in the park with one of the two
self-styled Comtesses Palatine, and treated her in such a manner (the
astounding terms have been preserved) that the poor girl was taken
ill, and finally died of it. Louis XIV. contented himself with saying
to Madame, "It is not safe to meddle with you in the matter of your
family--life depends upon it." To which Madame replied, "I don't like
impostors." And she never felt the slightest regret for what she
had done. The trait is characteristic in a nature that was otherwise
essentially kind. All vehement passion easily becomes cruel when face
to face with an object that irritates and braves it. In this case the
execution performed by Madame appeared to her under the form of a
rigorous duty of honour.
The life that Madame led at the Court of France varied, necessarily,
during the fifty and one years that she spent there; she could not
live at the age of sixty as she had done at twenty. But at all times,
before and after the death of Monsieur, she had managed to make
for herself a retreat and a sort of solitude. The exaggerated and
incongruous sides of Madame's nature being now sufficiently visible
and well known, I desire to neglect nothing that will show the firm
and elevated parts of her soul. From Saint-Cloud June 17, 1698, she
writes thus:--
"I do not need much consolation in the matter of death; I do not
desire death, neither do I dread it. There is no need of the Catechism
of Heidelberg to teach us not to be attached to this world; above
all in this country where all things are so full of falseness, envy,
and malignity, where the most unheard-of vices are displayed without
reserve. But to desire death is a thing entirely against nature. In
the midst of this great Court I live retired, as if in solitude; there
are very few persons with whom I have frequent intercourse; I am
whole, long days alone in my cabinet, where I busy myself in reading
and writing. If any one pays me a visit I see them for only a few
moments; I talk of rain and fine weather or the news of the day; and
after that I take refuge in my retreat. Four times a week I send off
my regular letters: Monday, to Savoie; Wednesday, to Modena; Thursday
and Sunday I write very long letters to my aunt in Hanover; from six
to eight o'clock I drive out with Monsieur and my ladies; three times
a week I go to Paris, and every day I write to my friends who live
there; I hunt twice a week; and this is how I pass my time."
When she speaks of solitude we see it is a Court solitude and much
diversified. Still it was remarkable that a woman of so grand a
station and a princess should spend so many hours daily alone in her
cabinet in company with her desk.
After the death of Monsieur, Madame could live more to her liking.
She regretted being obliged to dismiss her maids-of-honour, whose
youth and gayety amused her; but she gave herself a compensation after
her own heart, by taking to herself, without official title, two
friends, the Maréchale de Clérembault and the Comtesse de Beuvron,
both widows, whom Monsieur had dismissed with aversion from the Court
of the Palais-Royal, but to whom Madame had ever remained faithful
in absence. They were the "friends in Paris," to whom she wrote
continually. Becoming free herself, she wanted them near her, and
henceforth enjoyed, almost as a simple private person, that united
constant friendship in which she trusted.
Hunting was long one of Madame's greatest pleasures, or rather
passions. I have said that while a child at Heidelberg she gave
herself up to all manly exercises. Her father, however, forbade her
to hunt or to ride on horseback. It was in France, therefore, that
she served her apprenticeship, and her impetuosity often made it
dangerous. Twenty-six times was she thrown from her horse, without
being frightened or discouraged. "Is it possible," she says, "that you
have never seen a great hunt? I have seen more than a thousand stags
taken, and I have had bad falls; but out of twenty-six times that I
have been thrown from my horse I never hurt myself but once, and then
I dislocated my elbow."
The theatre was another passion, which, in her, was derived from
intelligence and her natural taste for things of the understanding.
It was the only pleasure (except that of writing letters) which
lasted to the end of her life. She was not of the opinion of Bossuet,
Bourdaloue, and other great religious oracles of the day in the matter
of theatres; she forestalled the opinion of the future and that of
the most indulgent moralists. "With regard to the priests who forbid
the theatre," she says, rather irreverently, "I shall say no more,
except this, that if they saw a little further than their own noses
they would understand that the money people spend on going to the
play is not ill-spent; in the first place, the comedians are poor
devils who earn their living that way; and next, comedies inspire joy,
joy produces health, health gives strength, strength produces good
work; therefore comedies should be encouraged, and not forbidden."
She liked to laugh, and the "Malade Imaginaire" diverted her to such
a degree that one might think in reading her letters that she was
trying to imitate all that is most physical and unfit for women in
its style of pleasantry. And yet "the 'Malade Imaginaire' is not the
one of Molière's plays that I like best," she says; "Tartuffe pleases
me better." And in another letter: "I cannot write longer, for I am
called to go to the theatre; I am to see the 'Misanthrope,' the one
of Molière's plays that gives me the most pleasure." She admired
Corneille and quotes the "Death of Pompey." I do not know whether she
liked "Esther," but she must surely have loved Shakespeare. "I have
often heard his Highness, our father," she writes to her half-sister,
"say that there are no comedies in the world finer than those of the
English."
After the death of Monsieur and during the last years of Louis XIV.
she adopted a way of life that was very precise and retired. "I
live here quite deserted (May 3, 1709) for everybody, young and old,
runs after favour. The Maintenon cannot endure me, and the Duchesse
de Bourgogne likes only what that lady likes." She became at last
absolutely a hermit in the midst of the Court. "I consort with no one
here, except my own people; I am as polite as I can be to everybody,
but I contract no intimate relations with any one, and I live alone;
I go to walk, I go to drive, but from two o'clock to half-past nine I
never see a human face; I read, I write, or I amuse myself in making
baskets like the one I sent my aunt." Sometimes, however, to enliven
this long interval from two o'clock to half-past nine, her ladies
would play at _hombre_ or _brelan_ beside her writing-table.
The regency of her son brought the Court again around Madame; and her
more frequent residence in Paris allowed her less retreat than she was
able to make at Versailles. Sometimes, in the morning, half a dozen
duchesses would take up her time and cut short her correspondence. She
detested their conversations of mere politeness, in which they talked
without having anything to say. "I would rather be alone than have to
give myself the trouble of finding something to say to each of them;
for the French think it very bad if you do not talk to them, and go
away discontented; one must therefore take pains to say something to
each; and so I am content and tranquil when they leave me to myself."
She made exception with less annoyance when it was a question of
Germans of high rank, who all wished to be presented to her, and whom
she greeted very well. At times there were as many as twenty-nine
German princes, counts, and gentlemen in her apartment.
One evening she made a scene before all present to the Duchesse de
Berry, her grand-daughter, who had appeared before her in a loose
gown, or rather in fancy dress, intending to go to the Tuileries in
such array. "No, madame," she said, cutting short all explanation,
"nothing excuses you; you might at least dress yourself properly the
few times you do go to see the king; I, who am your grandmother,
dress myself every day. Say honestly it is laziness that prevents you
from doing so; which belongs neither to your age nor to your station.
A princess should be dressed as a princess, and a soubrette as a
soubrette." While saying all this and not listening to the reply of
the Duchesse de Berry, Madame went on writing her letter in German,
her pen never ceasing to scratch the paper. The table on which she
wrote was a secretary somewhat raised, so that in her pausing moments
she could, without rising from her seat, look down upon the game of
the players beside her. "That was her occupation if she ceased to
write, but when any one came in and approached her she would leave
everything to ask them, 'What news?' and as the giving of news made
every one welcome, people invented it when there was none to tell. No
sooner had she heard it than, without examination, she turned to the
letter already begun and wrote down the tale she had just been told."
It is thus that, side by side with things that she sees well and says
well, and which are in truth the expression of her own thought, her
letters contain much else that is simply malignant gossip and trash.
In the days of Louis XIV. letters were unsealed at the post-office,
read, and extracts made and sent to the king, and sometimes to Mme.
de Maintenon. Madame knew that, but went her way in spite of it,
using her privilege as princess to tell truths without reserve, and
even to write insults on those who, unsealing the letters, would find
her opinion of them. "In the days of M. de Louvois," she writes,
"they read all letters just as they do now, but at least they sent
them on in decent time; but now that that toad of a Torcy directs
the post-office, letters are delayed for an interminable length of
time.... As Torcy does not know how to read German he has to have them
translated, and I don't thank him for his attention." M. de Torcy must
have enjoyed that passage.
Among the tastes, or fancies, which together with her letter-writing
served to fill and amuse the long hours of Madame's solitude, we
must reckon two parrots, a canary, and eight little dogs. "After my
dinner I walk my room for half an hour for the sake of digestion,
and play with my little animals." A nobler taste was that of coins,
which Madame had to a high degree. She collected them from all parts
of the world, and no one could pay their court more delicately than
by bringing her a specimen. The collection that she thus formed was
celebrated. She confided the care of it to the learned Baudelot, who
had all the erudition and naïveté of an antiquary, and with whom
she sometimes amused herself. "One study alone," says one of her
eulogists, "attracted her--that of coins. Her series of the emperors
of the upper and lower empire, which she collected with judgment and
arranged with care, placed before her eyes all that was most to be
respected in past ages. While examining the features on the coins she
recalled the salient points of their owners' actions, filling her mind
with noble ideas of Roman greatness." I do not know whether in forming
her cabinet of coins Madame had any such lofty and stern views, but
at any rate, in this most remarkable of her tastes she showed herself
the mother of the regent,--that is to say, of the most brilliant and
best-informed of amateurs.
There is a serious side in the letters of Madame: that by which she
judges the morals, the personages, and the society of the regency.
She had some trouble in breaking herself in to that new style of
life, and to a residence in the city and the Palais-Royal. "I like the
Parisians," she writes, "but I do not like to live in their town."
She had accustomed herself, during her long seasons at Saint-Cloud,
to a measure of retreat, companionship, and liberty which suited
her nature, and I shall even say, her semi-philosophy. When she
returned there she felt herself in her element. "I find myself well
at Saint-Cloud, where I am tranquil (1718); whereas in Paris I am
never left an instant in peace. This one presents me a petition, that
one asks me to interest myself on his behalf, another solicits an
audience, and so forth. In this world great people have their worries
like little ones, which is not surprising; but what makes it worse
for the great is that they are always surrounded by a crowd, so that
they can not hide their griefs, or indulge them in solitude--they are
always on exhibition."
That regret was in her a most sincere one. The power of her son
brought her little influence, and she wanted none, save for the sake
of a few private benefits. She asked him for nothing; she never
meddled in public affairs or politics, and piqued herself on not
understanding them. "I have no ambition," she said (August, 1719);
"I do not wish to govern; I should take no pleasure in it. It is not
so with French women; the lowest servant-woman thinks herself quite
fitted to rule the State. I think it so ridiculous that I am quite
cured of all mania of that kind."
She views like a virtuous woman the debauchery of the period, and that
of her family, and she expresses the deep disgust she feels for it.
The regent has never been better painted than he is by his mother; she
shows him to us with his facile faculties, his interests of all kinds,
his talents, his individual genius, his graces, his indulgence for
all, even for his enemies; she denounces the one great capital fault
that ruined him,--that ardent debauchery at a fixed hour, in which
he buried himself and was lost to sight until the next morning. "All
advice, all remonstrance on that subject," she writes, "are useless;
when spoken to he answers, 'From six o'clock in the morning till night
I am subjected to prolonged and fatiguing labour; if I did not amuse
myself after that I could not bear it, I should die of melancholy.'
I pray God sincerely for his conversion," she adds, "he has no
other fault than that, but that is great." She shows him to us as a
libertine even in matters of science, that is, curious and amorous of
all he saw, but disgusted with all he possessed. "Though he talks of
learned things, I see plainly that instead of giving him pleasure they
bore him. I have often scolded him for this; he answers it is not his
fault; that he does take pleasure in learning all things, but as soon
as he knows them he has no further pleasure in them."
The most characteristic passages in her letters are of things that
cannot be detached and cited singly. Never did the effrontery and
gluttony of women of all ranks, the cupidity of everybody, the
shameless traffic and cynical thirst for gold, find a firmer or
more vigorous hand to catch them in the act and blast them. Madame,
in treating of these excesses, has a species of virtuous immodesty
like that of Juvenal; or rather, issuing from her Bible readings,
she applies to present scandals the energy of the sacred text, and
qualifies them in the language of the patriarchs. "How many times,"
says one of her eulogists whom I like to quote, "how many times she
condemned the bold negligence of attire which favoured corruption, and
the taste for liberty and caprice--the fatal charm which our nation
has criminally invented! Indecent fashions, which ancient decorum
cannot away with, would often bring upon her face and in her eyes the
emotion and fire of outraged modesty." It was not a mere sentiment of
etiquette which made her rebuke her grand-daughter, the Duchesse de
Berry, on her dishabille, but another and a more estimable sentiment.
Even where she is not outraged she gives details which make her smile
with pity. "It is only too true that the women paint themselves blue
veins to make believe their skins are so delicate the veins show
through them."
The Duc de Richelieu, a young dandy who turned all the heads of the
day, and whom our writers, at their wits' end, have lately endeavoured
to restore to fashion in novels and plays, was to Madame an object
of extreme aversion; she paints him with the hand of a master,
as absolutely contemptible, with all his equivocal and frivolous
charms, his varnish of politeness, and his vices. It is a portrait
to read, and I should like to quote it here, but I am restrained
by respect for the great men, and for the honourable men, who have
made that name of Richelieu so French. Without going beyond general
observations what can be more just and more sensible than the
following reflection of Madame, written a few months before her death
(April, 1722)? "Young men, at the epoch in which we live, have but
two objects in view,--debauchery and lucre; the absorption of their
minds on money-getting, no matter by what means, makes them dull
and disagreeable; in order to be agreeable, people must have their
minds free of care, and also have the wish to give themselves up to
amusement in decent company; but these are things that are very far
away from us now-a-days." With a presentiment of her coming end, she
asks of God only his mercy to herself and her children, especially her
son. "May it please God to convert him! that is the sole favour that
I ask of Him. I do not believe that there are in Paris, either among
ecclesiastics or people of the world, one hundred persons who have a
true Christian faith, and really believe in our Saviour; and that
makes me tremble."
The people of Paris recognized in Madame a princess of honour and
integrity, incapable of giving bad advice or employing selfish
influence; consequently, she was in great favour with the Parisians;
more than she deserved, she said, meddling so little as she did in
their affairs. Even amid the riots and the execrations roused by
the catastrophes at the close of Law's system, Madame, as she drove
through the streets, received none but benedictions--which she would
gladly have transferred to her son. She noticed as a mother on that
occasion that if the cries were loud against Law, they were at least
not shouted against the regent. But there were other days when the
murmurs against her son reached her ears, and she complains of the
ingratitude of Frenchmen towards him. She was not, however, without
admitting to herself the element of weakness in his government; she
tells it and repeats it constantly. "It is very true," she says, "that
it is better to be kind than harsh, but justice consists in punishing,
as well as in rewarding; and it is certain that he who does not make
Frenchmen fear him will soon fear them; for they despise those who do
not intimidate them." She knows the nation, and judges it as one who
is not of it.
On one point Madame sacrificed to the spirit of the regency and was in
curious contradiction to herself. She took a great liking to a natural
son of the regent, whom he had by an opera-dancer named Florence;
she said he reminded her of the "late Monsieur," only with a better
figure. In short, she loved the young man, whom she called _her_ Abbé
de Saint-Albin. He was afterwards Archbishop of Cambrai, and when he
made his argument before the Sorbonne (February, 1718) she was present
in great state, thus declaring, and also honouring, the illegitimate
birth of this grandson. Madame deserted on that day all her orthodox
principles about the duties of rank, and allowed herself to follow her
fancies.
She died at the age of seventy at Saint-Cloud, December 8, 1722, ten
days after her faithful friend, the Maréchale de Clérembault, and one
year before her son, the regent. According to her own wish, she was
taken to Saint-Denis without pomp. The obsequies were performed in the
following February. Massillon, whom she knew and loved, pronounced
her funeral oration, which was thought fine. Père Cathalan, a Jesuit,
pronounced another at Laon in March, from which I have taken certain
traits of her character.
Such as she is, with all her coarseness and her contradictions on a
basis of virtue and honour, Madame is a useful, a precious, and an
incomparable witness as to manners and morals. She gives a hand to
Saint-Simon and to Dangeau--nearer, however, to the former than to the
latter. She has heart; do not ask charm of her, but say: "That Court
would have lacked the most original of figures and of voices if Madame
had not been of it." Arriving at Versailles at the moment when the La
Vallière star declined and was eclipsed, and seeing only the last of
the brilliant years, she enters little into that era of refinement
which touches the imagination; but lacking that refinement, and solely
through her frankness, she lays bare to us the second half of Louis
XIV.'s reign under its human, most human, natural, and--to say the
whole truth--its material aspect. She strips that great century of
its idealism, she strips it too much; she goes almost to the point
of degrading it--if we listen to her alone. As time goes on, and the
delicacy and purity of manners and language retire more and more into
Mme. de Maintenon's corner and seek at last a refuge at Saint-Cyr,
Madame holds herself aloof at Saint-Cloud, and again aloof in the
Palais-Royal, and thence--whether at the close of Louis XIV.'s reign
or under the regency--she makes, lance in hand, and her pen behind her
ear, valiant and frequent sorties in that blunt style which is all
her own, which wears a beard upon its chin, and of which we know not
rightly whether it derives from Luther or from Rabelais, though we are
very sure it is the opposite of that of Mme. de Caylus and her like.