sacrilegious men, who, receiving the Host in their mouths, and thus
“eating and drinking their own damnation,” had fallen stiff and dead.
This made him reflect, and when the grand provost asked whether he
would touch for the king’s evil, which the Kings of France cannot do
until after they have received Communion, he drily answered: No. A
King of France who does not make his Easter duty, a son of St. Louis
who conducts himself like a disciple of Voltaire, what a scandal!
Concerning this, Barbier the advocate, writes in his _Journal_:
“It is dangerous for a king to give such an example to his people; we
are on good enough terms with the Pope for the Son of the Church to
have a dispensation to make his Easter communion, no matter in what
state he is, without sacrilege and with a safe conscience.” Strange
manner of comprehending religion! The impression made on the court
was deplorable in this century apparently so incredulous. D’Argenson
himself affirms this. He says: “They tried to hide the indecency by
a Low Mass which Cardinal de Rohan should say in the cabinet of the
King, Père de Linières being present; the fact that His Majesty had not
presented himself either at the tribunal of Penance or to receive the
Eucharist would be carefully concealed.”
Some months later (September 23, 1739) the King arranged a marriage
for Mademoiselle de Nesle. He had her espouse the Count de Vintimille,
and deigned to give the husband the bridal shirt with his own royal
hand. This was the first time that Louis XV. had thus honored any one.
Madame de Vintimille was the only woman to whom he gave any presents
on New Year’s Day, 1740. But the new favorite was not much the richer
for them. The monarch, afterwards so prodigal, was at this time more
than economical. The countess applied to him at least half of what was
said of the Czar Peter when he was in France: “He makes love like a
street-porter, and pays in the same way.” The Marquis de Nesle, father
of the royal mistresses, remained in a very embarrassed pecuniary
position; in November, 1739, he had been suddenly banished to Lisieux,
in spite of the credit of his daughters, for having spoken scornfully
of “his wretched suit against his wretched creditors.” D’Argenson grows
indignant at such severity. He says: “They will have it that the King
has performed a Roman action, worthy of Manlius Torquatus and Brutus,
in punishing severely his natural and actual father-in-law for a slight
offence given to a simple member of the council. This has astonished
everybody, for, as a matter of fact, one puts himself under obligations
in love, especially when one is king, and has a continuous attachment
for one of his subjects.”
At the close of 1740, Madame de Vintimille became pregnant. People
said that Louis XV. had more than one reason to be interested in the
favorite’s condition. Perhaps he fancied that he was going to taste
family joys along with her. Vain hope. Apart from pure sentiments and
legitimate affections there are only disappointments and chagrins.
Madame de Vintimille was brought to bed with a boy in August, 1741. The
King went three or four times a day to inquire about her. He embraced
the child with transports. The mother seemed at the height of favor.
But the chastisement of Heaven overtook the fault at once. Madame de
Vintimille was seized with miliary fever, and died September 9, in
atrocious torments, without having had time to receive the sacraments.
Louis XV. was dismayed. He felt himself guilty of this death in the
sight of God and men. The lover had involuntarily been the executioner.
He felt himself overwhelmed by the weight of an implacable malediction,
and, horrified at himself, he besought pardon of the dead woman and of
God. If he tried to speak, sobs impeded his utterance and he relapsed
into silence. Sick and despairing in his bed, he had Mass said in his
chamber, and people began to wonder whether he would not seek a remedy
for his remorse in asceticism. Madame de Mailly, forgetting the rival
in the sister, went to pray every day beside Madame de Vintimille’s
tomb, and it was in memory of his second mistress that Louis XV.
returned to the first one. She had the advantage of being able to weep
with him, and he could make her the confidant of his grief.
VII
THE DISGRACE OF THE COUNTESS DE MAILLY
Louis XV. wept for Madame de Vintimille in company with Madame de
Mailly. But those who thought him inconsolable little knew his
character; his schemes of conversion were but passing caprices. He
had not force enough to break the long chain of his iniquities. He
was not merely not recalled to well-doing by the lamentable death of
Madame de Vintimille, but he fell back into the paths of scandal with a
promptitude which had not even the excuse of passion.
Madame de Mailly was still the acknowledged favorite, but the King
had not loved her for a long time. She spent another year at court
after the death of Madame de Vintimille. This was a year of sorrow,
humiliations, and afflictions. Louis XV. caused the poor deserted
woman to drink the chalice of bitterness to the dregs, and made her so
unhappy that even the Queen took pity on her.
What is more lamentable than the last agonies of love? To perceive that
one has been mistaken; that the being one has thought good, generous,
and grateful is wicked, perfidious, and ungrateful; to find hardness
instead of mildness, egotism instead of devotion; what an awakening!
what a torture! And one cannot complain. Morality, decorum, religion,
all command silence. If you groan, the world scoffs at you. Your
afflictions obtain scorn and not compassion. You cannot confess your
sorrow before either God or men. The being who persecutes and outrages
you, who betrays and kills you, is still beloved, and this love, alas!
is only a folly, a weakness. You humble yourself, you crawl, you
cringe. And all that avails you nothing. Your cause is lost. Nothing is
left you but to suffer and to die.
Such was the destiny of Madame de Mailly. To lose the heart of the King
was not enough. It was reserved to her to find not merely a rival but a
persecutor in her own sister, Madame de la Tournelle.
Marie Anne de Mailly-Nesle, afterwards so well-known under the title
of Duchess de Châteauroux, was the fifth and youngest daughter of the
Marquis de Nesle. Born in 1717, she married, in 1734, the Marquis de
la Tournelle, an extremely pious young man, who spent the greater part
of his modest fortune in alms. Becoming a widow in 1740, at the age of
twenty-two, she took refuge with her relative, the Duchess de Mazarin,
lady of the bedchamber to the Queen, who died two years later. Madame
de Tournelle was again on the point of being without an asylum. But the
King had already remarked her beauty. She was appointed lady of the
palace to the Queen (September, 1742). M. de Maurepas and Cardinal
Fleury, who disliked her and already had a presentiment that she would
be their all-powerful enemy, made ruthless war upon her. But she had
for adviser the most audacious and wily of all the courtiers of Louis
XV., the Duke de Richelieu.
The Marquis d’Argenson draws the following portrait of this personage,
so celebrated in the erotic annals of the eighteenth century:--
“He carries too far the opinion one ought to have of the defects of
the monarchy and the feebleness of our epoch.... He has made himself
talked of ever since he was twelve years old. He has been put into the
Bastille three times for three causes capable of making a court hero
illustrious: for having made love to the Dauphiness, the King’s mother;
for a duel, and for a conspiracy against the State. His love for
voluptuous pleasures has ostentation rather than actual enjoyment as
its end.... He is very much the mode among women; the pretensions and
jealousies of coquettes have procured him many favors. There is never
any passion in him but plenty of debauchery. He has betrayed a feeble
sex; he has taken the senses for the heart. He is not fortunate enough
to possess a friend. He is frank through thoughtlessness, suspicious
through subtlety and contempt of mankind, disobliging through
insensibility and misanthropy. Such is the sorry model copied by a gay
and inconsiderate nation like ours.”
The Duke de Richelieu intended to reign under cover of Madame de
la Tournelle, whose guide and inspirer he had become. This affair
roused his enthusiasm. Pushing even to lyricism his sorry rôle of
intermediary, he exclaimed, in an excess of zeal: “I mean that any one
who shall enter Madame de la Tournelle’s ante-chamber shall be more
highly considered than one who might have been in private conversation
with Madame de Mailly.”[13]
The new favorite made conditions before yielding to the King. Proud
and imperious, like most beautiful and flattered women, she required
guarantees, and transformed a so-called affair of the heart into a
diplomatic negotiation. “Love,” says La Rochefoucauld, “lends its name
to an infinite number of relations attributed to it, but with which it
has no more to do than the Doge with what goes on at Venice.” Madame de
la Tournelle did not love, she calculated. More peremptory than Madame
de Vintimille, who had tolerated a partnership with Madame de Mailly,
she determined to reign alone. What she bargained for was not simply
money and consideration but the banishment of her sister. But this was
not easy to be obtained. The idea of quitting Versailles afflicted
Madame de Mailly. She made herself so humble, so modest, so resigned,
so submissive, that Louis XV. felt unable to dismiss her. From time
to time he still felt for her certain returns if not of attachment
at least of compassion. He would have liked to keep near him, as a
faithful servant, this poor woman, whose gentleness and kindness
he could not refuse to acknowledge. But Madame de la Tournelle was
inflexible. She had signified her intention not to become the mistress
of the King until after Madame de Mailly should have been irrevocably
driven from the court.
Weakness makes men cruel. Louis XV., ordinarily affable and kind,
was about to be severe beyond measure towards his former mistress.
She thought to move him by immolating herself, and resigning her
place (November, 1742) as lady of the palace to the Queen in favor of
her sister, Madame de Flavacourt, who stood well with Madame de la
Tournelle. But this sacrifice did not touch the cold heart of the King,
and he took pleasure in reducing to despair the woman whose love had
become embarrassing and tiresome.
The Duke de Luynes does not disguise his sympathy for the fallen
favorite. “Her condition,” he says, “is all the more worthy of
compassion, because she really loves the King, and is as zealous for
his glory as she is attached to his person. She has many friends, and
deservedly, for she has never done any harm, and, on the contrary, has
been anxious to be of service.... They pretend that the King said to
her some days ago: ‘I have promised you to speak plainly with you. I
am madly in love with Madame de la Tournelle.’ Madame de la Tournelle
says she is loved by M. d’Agenois, and that she loves him, and has
no desire to have the King; that he would please her by letting her
alone, and that she will never consent to his proposals but on sure and
advantageous conditions.”
Everybody pitied Madame de Mailly: Cardinal Fleury because she had
never meddled with politics; women because she was not beautiful;
courtiers because she had been serviceable. The Queen was not one of
the least affected. She displayed great good-will toward a mistress who
had had as much modesty as tact. “The Queen,” says the Duke de Luynes,
“seems to sympathize with Madame de Mailly’s situation, and to desire
that she shall be well treated.”
D’Argenson is indignant with the faithless monarch. The previous year
he had been unwilling to believe in the double passion of Louis XV. for
Madame de Mailly and Madame de Vintimille. He wrote at the time: “They
are the two most united sisters that ever were seen.... What likelihood
is there that they could remain friends if they were disputing the
possession of a heart so illustrious and precious?... But people are
never willing to believe anything but evil.” At this period, D’Argenson
did not doubt the sincerity of his master’s remorse. “The death of
Madame de Vintimille,” said he, “will bring back the King to the
practice of religion.... He will come in the end to living with Madame
de Mailly as the Duke, they say, lived with Madame d’Egmont, simply
as a friend, relapsing, if at all, only by accident, and then going
quickly to confession.... He has a heart which makes itself heard. How
few of his subjects have such a one at present! He is grateful for the
sincere attachment shown towards him. He likes kind hearts; he is,
perhaps, destined to be the delight of the world.”
A year later, the Marquis is furious at having been duped. “Great
news!” he exclaims. “The King has dismissed Madame de Mailly in
order to take her sister, Madame de la Tournelle. This was done with
inconceivable harshness on the part of the Most Christian King. It is
the sister who drives away the sister; she demands her exile, and the
taking of this third sister as a mistress makes many people believe
that the second one, Madame de Vintimille, went the same way. I, for
my part, have always maintained that the King’s extreme sensibility at
the death of Madame de Vintimille was a praiseworthy sentiment toward
the sister of his friend, whose marriage he had himself arranged. But
farewell to virtuous sensibility! So he deceived his mistress, he bound
Madame de Vintimille to ingratitude! He considers the child she left
as his son, and often has it brought secretly to his room. It is all
cleared up, then. Who has the third sister must have had the second.”
Madame de Mailly made no further attempt at resistance. “My sacrifices
are consummated,” she exclaimed; “I shall die of them; but this
evening I shall be in Paris.” She actually departed, in tears and
despairing, almost frenzied, in November, 1742. The King wrote letter
after letter to her to tell her--could one believe it?--about his love
for Madame de la Tournelle. This time, he said, he was “fixed forever,
Madame de la Tournelle having all the mind necessary to make her
charming.” The fickle sovereign congratulated himself in this more than
strange correspondence on “the general applause given to his choice.”
The new favorite triumphed with a barbarous joy. The De Goncourt
brothers, in their well-written and interesting book on the
_Mistresses of Louis XV._,[14] have given the curious letter she
wrote at this time to the Duke de Richelieu, her confidant:--
“Surely Meuse must have let you know what trouble I have had to oust
Madame de Mailly; at last I have managed to have her sent away not to
come back again. You fancy perhaps that the affair is ended? Not at
all; he is beside himself with grief, and does not write me a letter
without speaking of it, and begging me to let her return, and he will
never approach her, but only ask me to see her sometimes. I have just
received one in which he says that if I refuse I shall soon be rid of
both her and him; meaning, apparently, that they will both die of
chagrin. As it would by no means suit me to have her here, I mean to
be firm.... The King has sent you word that the affair is concluded
between us, for he tells me, in this morning’s letter, to undeceive
you, because he is unwilling to have you think anything beyond the
truth. It is true that, when he wrote you, he counted on its being
concluded this evening; but I put some difficulties in the way of that
which I do not repent of.”
Before the close of the year, the affair was settled. Madame de Mailly,
after many tears and supplications, recognized that she was beaten. The
King paid her debts, and granted her a pension of ten thousand livres
in addition to the twelve thousand she had already, and furnished
a house for her in Paris, rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, where she
established herself. Thenceforward, Madame de la Tournelle fulfilled,
uncontested and without a rival, the official functions of King’s
mistress.
VIII
THE REIGN OF THE DUCHESS DE CHÂTEAUROUX
If Louis XV. is a degenerate Louis XIV., his mistresses are likewise
inferior to those of the great King. Madame de Mailly, spite of her
mildness and her repentance, is not a La Vallière. Though Madame de
la Tournelle may become Duchess de Châteauroux, she will never be a
Montespan, notwithstanding her ambition and her arrogance. She is
doubtless pretty; her big blue eyes, her dazzling white skin, her
expression both passionate and arch, make a charming woman of her. But
she is not a mistress “thundering and triumphant,” as Madame de Sevigné
said of Madame de Montespan; she is not that type of favorite who is
“good to display before the ambassadors.” In spite of her high birth,
and her schemes for domination, there will always be something mean
about her, and the same is true of Louis XV. himself.
She had scarcely become the royal mistress when Cardinal Fleury died
(January, 1743). When Mazarin died, Louis XIV. had said: At last I
am King. Louis XV. will content himself with saying: Now I am prime
minister. He need no longer dread his former preceptor’s lessons on
morality and parsimony. He is the master. But he does not at once
renounce his economical habits, and at first Madame de la Tournelle
has trouble in extracting money from him. “It must be owned,” writes
the Duke de Luynes in April, 1743, “that the present arrangement does
not resemble what was announced at the commencement of Madame de la
Tournelle’s favor.... They said she would make no engagement unless
she were assured of a house of her own, her provisions, means to
entertain people, and a carriage for her private use, being unwilling
to use those of the King. It is true, she does not use these, but she
has none of her own; hence, she never goes out, though she is fond of
spectacles.”
She ended by making her lover less miserly. In October, 1743, he gave
her an excellent cook, an equerry, a berline, six carriage horses, and,
finally, the title of Duchess de Châteauroux, with an estate bringing
an income of eighty-five thousand livres. The letters patent were
worded as follows: “The right to confer titles of honor and dignity
being one of the most sublime attributes of supreme power, the kings,
our predecessors, have left to us divers monuments of the use they have
made of it in favor of persons whose virtues and merit they desired to
make illustrious.... Considering that our very dear and well-beloved
cousin, Marie Anne de Mailly, widow of the Marquis de la Tournelle,
issues from one of the greatest families of our realm, allied to our
own and to the most ancient in Europe; that for several centuries her
ancestors have rendered great and important services to our crown;
that she is attached as lady of the palace to the Queen, our very dear
companion, and that she joins to these advantages all the virtues and
the most excellent qualities of heart and mind which have gained for
her a just esteem and universal consideration, we have thought proper
to give her the duchy of Châteauroux, with its appurtenances and
dependencies, situated in Berry.”
Parliament was assembled to record these letters patent. “The
assembly,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “has listened gravely to all
these flowers of speech which the monarch presents to his mistress,
and has decided on the registration.” Barbier, that faithful echo of
contemporary public opinion, makes certain observations on the subject
in his journal which are not altogether lacking in malice. “These
letters,” says he, “are very honorable for the Mailly family. The King
declares that it is one of the greatest and finest illustrious houses
of the realm, allied to his own and to the most ancient of Europe.
One reflection occurs at once: it is surprising that no one has yet
decorated the males with the title of duke, and that this celebrity
begins with the women. There might be something to criticise in the
preamble to the letters; present circumstances considered, the author
has not been prudent; the crying them through the streets might also
have been dispensed with, it having given occasion for talk.”
Behold Madame de la Tournelle Duchess de Châteauroux. She is officially
presented in this quality to the Queen, who says to her, in a kindly
way: “Madame, I compliment you on the grace accorded to you by the
King.” The Duke de Richelieu is rewarded for his zeal by the post
of first gentleman of the chamber. The new duchess thrones it at
Versailles. She keeps two of her sisters near her, the Marquise de
Flavacourt, who is, like herself, one of the Queen’s ladies of the
palace, and the Duchess de Lauraguais, of whom she makes an assiduous
companion. Neither of them is pretty enough to make her jealous. She
uses them as allies. Louis XV. isolates himself in the society of these
three women, who have combined to keep him under the yoke. He amuses
himself by giving them nicknames. He calls Madame de Flavacourt the
Hen, on account of her frightened air, and the Duchess de Lauraguais
_la Rue des Mauvaises-Paroles_, on account of her caustic speeches.
Could anything great or noble proceed from this coterie? Is it
true, that, as the Goncourts have said, “Madame de Châteauroux
unites the energies and ambitions of a Longueville to the ardors and
haughty insolence of a Montespan?” Is it true that in her pride, her
impatience, the fever of her desires, the activity of her projects, the
passion of her spirit, she has the fire of a “Fronde as well as the
soul of a great reign?” We do not believe it. To judge from the Memoirs
of the Duke de Luynes, so impartial a witness, so exact a narrator,
the Duchess de Châteauroux was not a political woman, and still less a
heroine. He depicts her as dull, indolent, taciturn, bored. “She and
her sister,” he says, “spend the day in an armchair; and except in
her week, Madame de Lauraguais generally goes out for the first time
at eight or nine o’clock in the evening.... The King is with the two
sisters as often as possible, and it appears that there is never any
question of important matters between the three. Madame de Mailly would
not have been so indifferent.”
And yet France had been at war with Austria since 1741, and England
since 1742, and people were amazed that Louis XV., then in his prime,
had not yet put himself at the head of his troops. One must do him the
justice to admit that he was brave, and that, like all his ancestors,
he had the sentiment of military honor. He comprehended that longer
inaction on his part would be inexcusable, and that his place was with
the army. Marshal de Noailles, whom he had chosen for his private
adviser, at last decided him on making his first campaign. But not
without difficulty. Louis XV. hesitated for more than a year, and the
dread of leaving his mistress for several days was not one of the least
causes of his perplexity. The Marshal tried to appeal to the royal
instincts of his master. “France,” he wrote him, “has never beheld
reigns fortunate for the people nor veritably glorious for the kings,
except those in which they governed by themselves.... A king is never
so great as when he is at the head of his armies.”[15] On his side,
Louis XV. wrote to the Marshal, July 24, 1743: “I can assure you I
have an extreme desire to know for myself a profession my fathers
have practised so well.” And August 9: “If they are going to devour
my country, it will be very hard for me to see it crunched without
personally doing my utmost to prevent it.”
It was believed the King was at last going to set off; but the Duchess
de Châteauroux wanted to be able to follow him. Far from comprehending
how ridiculous the presence of a court of women would seem to the army,
she intrigued to obtain a favorable opinion of the strange desire she
cherished from her friend, the Marshal de Noailles. In a letter dated
September 3, 1743, she said to him: “I agree that the King should
start for the army: there is not a moment to lose, and it should be
done promptly; what is to become of me? Would it be impossible for my
sister and me to follow him, and if we cannot go to the army with him,
at least to post ourselves where we can hear from him every day?... I
think it well to tell you that I have asked the King to let me write
you concerning this, and that I do so with his approbation.”