If these last words of the King were not exactly a death-warrant, they
were something like a refusal of permission to live. What could a
young man without fortune do, in 1756, whose King would not hear his
name mentioned? He might have looked for a clerkship, or tried to turn
philosopher, or poet, perhaps; but without official dedication, the
trade was worth nothing.
And besides, such was not, by any means, the vocation of the Chevalier
Vauvert, who had written, with tears, the letter which made the King
laugh. At this very moment, alone with his father, in the old château
of Neauflette, his look was desperate and gloomy, even to frenzy, as he
paced to and fro.
“I must go to Versailles,” he said.
“And what will you do there?”
“I know not; but what am I doing here?”
“You keep me company. It certainly can not be very amusing for you, and
I will not in any way seek to detain you. But do you forget that your
mother is dead?”
“No, sir. I promised her to consecrate to you the life that you gave
me. I will come back, but I must go. I really can not stay in this
place any longer.”
“And why, if I may ask?”
“My desperate love is the only reason. I love Mademoiselle d’Annebault
madly.”
“But you know that it is useless. It is only Molière who contrives
successful matches without dowries. Do you forget too the disfavor with
which I am regarded?”
“Ah! sir, that disfavor! Might I be allowed, without deviating from the
profound respect I owe you, to ask what caused it? We do not belong to
the Parliament. We pay the tax; we do not order it. If the Parliament
stints the King’s purse, it is his affair, not ours. Why should M.
l’Abbé Chauvelin drag us into his ruin?”
“Monsieur l’Abbé Chauvelin acts as an honest man. He refuses to approve
the ‘dixiéme’ tax because he is disgusted at the prodigality of the
court. Nothing of this kind would have taken place in the days of
Madame de Chateauroux! She was beautiful, at least, that woman, and
did not cost us anything, not even what she so generously gave. She
was sovereign mistress, and declared that she would be satisfied if
the King did not send her to rot in some dungeon when he should be
pleased to withdraw his good graces from her. But this Étioles, this le
Normand, this insatiable Poisson!”
“What does it matter?”
“What does it matter! say you? More than you think. Do you know that
now, at this very time, while the King is plundering us, the fortune
of this grisette is incalculable? She began by contriving to get an
annuity of a hundred and eighty thousand livres--but that was a mere
bagatelle, it counts for nothing now; you can form no idea of the
startling sums that the King showers upon her; three months of the year
can not pass without her picking up, as though by chance, some five
or six hundred thousand livres--yesterday out of the salt-tax, to-day
out of the increase in the appropriation for the Royal mews. Although
she has her own quarters in the royal residences, she buys La Selle,
Cressy, Aulnay, Brimborion, Marigny, Saint-Remy, Bellevue, and a number
of other estates--mansions in Paris, in Fontainebleau, Versailles,
Compiègne--without counting secret hoards in all the banks of Europe,
to be used in case of her own disgrace or a demise of the crown. And
who pays for all this, if you please?”
“That I do not know, sir, but, certainly, not I.”
“It _is_ you, as well as everybody else. It is France, it is the
people who toil and moil, who riot in the streets, who insult the
statue of Pigalle. But Parliament will endure it no longer, it will
have no more new imposts. As long as there was question of defraying
the cost of the war, our last crown was ready; we had no thought of
bargaining. The victorious King could see clearly that he was beloved
by the whole kingdom, still more so when he was at the point of death.
Then all dissensions, all faction, all ill-feeling ceased. All France
knelt before the sick-bed of the King, and prayed for him. But if we
pay, without counting, for his soldiers and his doctors, we will no
longer pay for his mistresses; we have other things to do with our
money than to support Madame de Pompadour.”
“I do not defend her, sir. I could not pretend to say either that she
was in the wrong or in the right. I have never seen her.”
“Doubtless; and you would not be sorry to see her--is it not so?--in
order to have an opinion on the subject? For, at your age, the head
judges through the eyes. Try it then, if the fancy takes you. But the
satisfaction will be denied you.”
“Why, sir?”
“Because such an attempt is pure folly; because this marquise is as
invisible in her little boudoir at Brimborion as the Grand Turk in
his seraglio; because every door will be shut in your face. What are
you going to do? Attempt an impossibility? Court fortune like an
adventurer?”
“By no means, but like a lover. I do not intend to supplicate, sir, but
to protest against an injustice. I had a well-founded hope, almost a
promise, from M. de Biron; I was on the eve of possessing the object of
my love, and this love is not unreasonable; you have not disapproved of
it. Let me venture, then, to plead my own cause. Whether I shall appeal
to the King or to Madame de Pompadour I know not, but I wish to set
out.”
“You do not know what the court is, and you wish to present yourself
there.”
“I may perhaps be the more easily received for the very reason that I
am unknown there.”
“You unknown, Chevalier! What are you thinking about? With such a name
as yours! We are gentlemen of an old stock, Monsieur; you could not be
unknown.”
“Well, then, the King will listen to me.”
“He will not even hear you. You see Versailles in your dreams, and you
will think yourself there when your postilion stops his horses at the
city gates. Suppose you get as far as the ante-chamber--the gallery,
the Oeil de Bœuf; perhaps there may be nothing between his Majesty and
yourself but the thickness of a door; there will still be an abyss
for you to cross. You will look about you, you will seek expedients,
protection, and you will find nothing. We are relatives of M. de
Chauvelin, and how do you think the King takes vengeance on such as we?
The rack for Damiens, exile for the Parliament, but for us a word is
enough, or, worse still--silence. Do you know what the silence of the
King is, when, instead of replying to you, he mutely stares at you, as
he passes, and annihilates you? After the Grève, and the Bastille, this
is a degree of torture which, though less cruel in appearance, leaves
its mark as plainly as the hand of the executioner. The condemned man,
it is true, remains free, but he must no longer think of approaching
woman or courtier, drawing-room, abbey, or barrack. As he moves about
every door closes upon him, every one who is anybody turns away, and
thus he walks this way and that, in an invisible prison.”
“But I will so bestir myself in my prison that I shall get out of it.”
“No more than any one else! The son of M. de Meynières was no more to
blame than you. Like you, he had received promises, he entertained most
legitimate hopes. His father, a devoted subject of his Majesty, an
upright man if there is one in the kingdom, repulsed by his sovereign,
bowed his gray head before the _grisette_, not in prayer, but
in ardent pleading. Do you know what she replied? Here are her very
words, which M. de Meynières sends me in a letter: ‘The King is the
master, he does not deem it appropriate to signify his displeasure to
you personally; he is content to make you aware of it by depriving
your son of a calling. To punish you otherwise would be to begin an
unpleasantness, and he wishes for none; we must respect his will. I
pity you, however; I realize your troubles. I have been a mother; I
know what it must cost you to leave your son without a profession!’
This is how the creature expresses herself; and you wish to put
yourself at her feet!”
“They say they are charming, sir.”
“Of course they say so. She is not pretty, and the King does not
love her, as every one knows. He yields, he bends before this woman.
She _must_ have something else than that wooden head of hers to
maintain her strange power.”
“But they say she has so much wit.”
“And no heart!--Much to her credit, no doubt.”
“No heart! She who knows so well how to declaim the lines of Voltaire,
how to sing the music of Rousseau! She who plays Alzire and Colette! No
heart! Oh, that can not be! I will never believe it.”
“Go then and see, since you wish it. I advise, I do not command, but
you will only be at the expense of a useless journey.--You love this
D’Annebault young lady very much then?”
“More than my life.”
“_Alors_, be off!”