get a perfect notion of such festivities. “We children of a wretched
and bloody revolution,” as M. Capefigue says, “see these galleries of
glass and gilding inundated with people in rough clothing, with noisy,
hobnailed shoes, like a muddy torrent spreading over a parterre of
tulips and variegated roses.” Let us not forget that there was chivalry
and courage, carelessness and gaiety, animation and native wit, charm
and elegance, in the last fortunate days of the French nobility. If the
men who shone at that period should return, they would find ours mean
and irksome.
The noise of battle succeeds the echoes of the orchestras. Two months
and a half after this fine ball Louis XV. and his son are with the
army. The King wishes that the Dauphin, although but sixteen years
old, should set an example, and at Fontenoy the young man excites the
admiration of old soldiers by his ardor and courage.
Louis XV. is a happy father. His son is a model of filial respect.
His six daughters, Mesdames Elisabeth, Henriette, Adelaide, Victoire,
Sophie, and Louise, all of whom with the exception of Madame Adelaide
were educated in the convent of Fontevrault, have the most religious
sentiments and display profound affection for their father. Only one of
them is married, the eldest, Madame Elisabeth, who espoused in 1739 the
Infant Don Philip, son of the King of Spain, and with whom Louis XV.
did not part without keen sorrow. In 1745 only two of his daughters,
Henriette and Adelaide, are with him. The other three, Victoire,
Sophie, and Louise, are still at Fontevrault, and it is singular that
this king, so affectionate to his children, should leave them in a
convent eighty leagues from Versailles when it would be so easy to
place them, if not close beside him, at least in some neighboring
convent.
In order to complete this sketch of the royal family in 1745, it
remains to say a few words about the Duke d’Orléans and his son, the
Duke de Chartres.
Born in 1703, and widowed since 1726 of a princess of Baden, the Duke
d’Orléans, only son of the regent, seldom shows himself at court. The
premature death of his wife, whom he had the misfortune of losing
after two years of marriage, had inspired him with extremely grave and
Christian reflections. His tastes have become those of an anchorite.
In 1730 he resigned his position as Colonel-general in order to be
more at liberty to make very frequent retreats at the Abbey of Sainte
Geneviève. In 1742 he finally renounced all political action, and
quitted the Council of State in order to install himself definitively
in his dear abbey, where he leads the life of a monk, between prayer
and study. He has left the administration of his property to his
mother, keeping for himself only an income of one million eight hundred
thousand livres, which he spends almost entirely in works of charity.
’Tis a curious type this prince, so little like his father; this
Christian, pious to asceticism, who sleeps on straw, drinks only water,
does without fire in winter, who composes but will not print austere
works, a translation of the Psalms with commentaries, part of the Old
Testament and some of the Epistles of Saint Paul, a treatise against
the theatre, historical and theological dissertations,--a monastic
prince whom the court has inclined to the cloister, who at his death
(February 4, 1752) will bequeath his library to the Dominicans, his
medals to the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève, and whose funeral oration will
be composed by Jean Jacques Rousseau.
His son, the Duke de Chartres, is twenty years old in 1745. A brilliant
and brave young prince, who has distinguished himself as colonel at
the battle of Dettingen, and as lieutenant-general at the siege of
Fribourg. Married in 1743 to Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, he
loves the world as much as his father dislikes it, and he will be one
of the principal actors in the theatre of the little apartments.
So long as the Dauphin has no male children, it is the Orléans branch
which, according to the renunciations of the treaty of Utrecht, must
ascend the throne of France in case of the death of Louis XV. and his
son. But on both sides of the Pyrenees the practical value of these
renunciations is contested. When Louis XV. fell seriously ill before
his marriage, in 1721, Philip V. made ready to reclaim the crown of
France if the young King should die. When the Dauphin, who as yet
has no heir, will himself be in danger of death, Madame du Hausset
will write in her Memoirs: “The King would be in despair at having
a prince of the blood as his recognized successor. He does not like
them, and looks at them so distantly as to humiliate them. When his son
recovered, he said: ‘The King of Spain would have had a good chance.’
It is claimed that he was right in this, and that it would have been
justice; but that if the Duke d’Orléans had had a party, he might have
claimed the throne.”
We have just outlined the portraits of the members of the royal family
in 1745. We are about to study the character of the woman who, issuing
from the middle classes, was to exercise a real domination over the
King and all his court during twenty years.
II
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR
There are names which are the abridgment of an entire society. Such
is that gay name which rhymes so well with “amour,” which seems made
expressly for a _grande dame_ after the manner of Lancret or Watteau,
which would fit so well a comic opera or a pastoral, which is worthy
to figure in the Temple of Cnidos and to be celebrated by the pretty
little verses of the Abbé de Bernis, which evokes so many souvenirs
of immoral elegance and factitious sentimentality of boudoirs and
alcoves, comedies and gewgaws, pleasures and intrigues: the Marquise
de Pompadour. Woman, name, title, all are alike gracious, pretty,
sprightly; but nothing is simple, nothing true. The character is that
of a comedienne perpetually on the stage. The beauty owes a great part
of its prestige to the refinements of luxury and the artifices of the
toilette. The marquisate is a contraband one.
The future favorite seems predestined almost from the cradle to her
part. She is a little marvel, an infant prodigy. She is only nine years
old when a fortune-teller by cards predicts to her that she will be
the mistress of Louis XV. This prediction delights her family; they
believe in it as if it were written in the Gospels, and they decide
to do all in their power to realize it. Aid yourself, and hell will
aid you. She who was one day to call herself Madame the Marquise de
Pompadour was then named Jeanne Antoinette Poisson. Born in Paris,
December 29, 1721, she had a father who was vulgar even to indecency,
François Poisson, former clerk of the Paris brothers, who was condemned
to be hanged in 1726 for malversations, but rehabilitated in 1741
after several years of exile. Her mother was a Demoiselle de la Motte,
daughter of the provision contractor of the Hôtel des Invalides, a
very pretty woman, guilty of many infidelities to her husband, and
very richly subsidized by a gallant farmer-general, M. Lenormand de
Tournehem. The financier imagines, possibly with good reason, that he
is the father of little Antoinette. Hence he gives her the most careful
education. She is taught everything except virtue. Jéliotte teaches her
singing and the harpsichord, Guibaudet dancing, Crébillon declamation.
She is an actress, a musician, an accomplished singer. She imitates la
Gaussin and la Clairon marvellously. She rides admirably. She dresses
ravishingly. She is as pretty as Cupid. Nobody tells a story so well
as she. She is pleasing, amusing, delightful. Her mother, enthusiastic
over such charms, exclaims: “She is a morsel for a king!”
But how to justify the prediction of the sorceress? The place of king’s
mistress is occupied by none but very great ladies: a Countess de
Mailly, a Countess de Vintimille, a Duchess de Châteauroux. Can little
Poisson aspire to the same rôle? If she persists in such schemes, will
not people say that the keg always smells of the herring? Will the
Duke de Richelieu permit a _bourgeoise_ to supplant the nobility
in this fashion? Mademoiselle Poisson does not allow herself to be
discouraged. She has her fixed idea. She believes in what she calls her
star. Her marriage is the first rung of the ambitious ladder. March
9, 1741, she marries a rich young man, M. Lenormand d’Étioles, deputy
farmer-general, nephew of M. Lenormand de Tournehem, Madame Poisson’s
lover. The bride is nineteen, the husband twenty-four years old; he
is madly in love, and as his wife tells him she will never betray him
unless for the King, he mutters: “Then I can be very easy.”
The young wife is presently the fashion. She is the gem of that
financial society which has made such headway since the latter years of
Louis XIV. President Hénault writes to Madame du Deffand, July, 1742:
“At Madame de Montigny’s I met one of the prettiest women I have ever
seen, Madame d’Étioles. She understands music perfectly, sings with all
possible gaiety and taste, knows a hundred ballads, and plays comedy
at Étioles on a stage as fine as that of the Opera, with machinery and
changes of scenes.”
She prepares her success skilfully. The trumpets of fame are at her
disposal. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Fontenelle, the Abbé de Bernis, are
her friends. At Paris, in her house in rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs,
and at Étioles in her château near Corbeil, she leads a life of luxury
and pleasures. She is an enchantress, a siren. But she has only one
desire,--to make the King the objective point of all this magic. She
would scorn any other conquest.
The man she must have is Louis XV. To arrive at this conquest she will
exhaust the resources of feminine coquetry. Never were manœuvres more
persevering, artifices more sagacious. She has to play the enamoured
woman, the passionate woman, to pursue the King when he hunts in the
forest of Sénart, to pass and repass, like a graceful apparition, like
the goddess of the forests, through the midst of the escort with their
dogs and horses, sometimes robed in azure in a rose-colored phaeton,
sometimes in rose in a phaeton of blue. One day she is on horseback;
another day she drives herself, in an elegant conch shell of rock
crystal, two chestnut horses swift as lightning. The King inquires the
name of this elegant and pretty woman. Then he sends her some of his
game. Madame d’Étioles has good hopes. The Duchess de Châteauroux is
dead; she is sure of replacing her.
The masked balls given at the time of the Dauphin’s marriage are
excellent opportunities to display one’s self. At the Hôtel de Ville
ball the prettiest women of the bourgeoisie are grouped together on a
platform hung with velvet, silk, and gold. Madame d’Étioles appears as
Diana the huntress, powdered, the quiver on her shoulder, the silver
arrow in her hand. For an instant she takes off her mask and pretends
to let fly an arrow at the King. “Beautiful huntress,” cries the King,
“the darts you discharge are fatal.” Then she resumes her mask and
slips into the crowd, but dropping her lace handkerchief as she goes.
Louis XV. picks it up and, sultan-like, launches it with a gallant hand
at the beautiful unknown. “The handkerchief is thrown,” people mutter
on all sides.
Madame d’Étioles is about, then, to reach her goal. She has no reproach
to make against her husband, by whom she has had two children: a son
born in 1741, who only lived six months, and a daughter, Alexandrine,
born in 1743, who will live until 1754. This husband is an excellent
man, gentle, affectionate, easy to live with, much in love with his
wife, not at all jealous, happy and proud to be the husband of the
prettiest woman in Paris. But what would you have? Madame d’Étioles has
taken it into her head to be the King’s mistress. ’Tis a fantasy of a
coquettish woman which she must absolutely realize.
Taking advantage of her husband’s stay in the country, and protected by
one of her relatives, Bivet, valet de chambre to the Dauphin, she makes
her way into the palace of Versailles and parades a romantic passion
for Louis XV. She says she is menaced by M. d’Étioles’ vengeance and
begs the King to shelter her. The monarch is affected and installs
her mysteriously in the chamber formerly occupied by Madame de Mailly.
Poor M. d’Étioles, on his return to Paris, learns what has befallen
him. He faints away at the fatal tidings, and afterwards writes his
wife a letter so touching that Louis XV., after reading it, cannot
avoid saying: “Madame, you have a very honest husband.” In despair
at first, the betrayed husband at last resigns himself. He does not
try to contend with a king, and repairs philosophically to the south
of France, to make an inspection into finances which is part of his
official duties as deputy farmer-general.
At court there is great commotion. It seems impossible to imagine
that a woman of the middle classes, _une robine_, as D’Argenson
says, can replace a great lady like the Duchess de Châteauroux. The
Duke de Luynes writes in his Memoirs, March 11, 1745: “All the masked
balls have given occasion for talk concerning the King’s new amours,
and principally of a Madame d’Étioles, who is young and pretty. It is
said that for some time she is nearly always here, and that she is the
King’s choice. If such is the fact, it can hardly be anything more than
a case of gallantry, and not of mistress.”
Louis XV., who is fond of mystery, amuses himself at first by being
discreet. He conceals his new favorite. “It is not known where she is
lodged,” writes the Duke de Luynes, April 23, 1745, “but, nevertheless,
I think it is in a little apartment that Madame de Mailly had, and
which adjoins the little cabinets; she does not live here all the time,
but comes and goes to Paris.”
A few days later, May 5, 1745, the King sets off for the army with
the Dauphin. But Madame d’Étioles has the good sense not to rejoin
him there. Nor does she remain at Versailles, but withdraws to her
château of Étioles, near Corbeil, where Voltaire and the Abbé de Bernis
keep her company. Louis XV., much more occupied with his new mistress
than with the war, writes her letter upon letter. The Abbé de Bernis
counsels the favorite who, with such a secretary, cannot fail to reply
to her royal lover in the most charming and gallantly turned epistles.
We read in the Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes (June 19, 1745): “Madame
d’Étioles is still in the country, near Paris, and has never wanted to
go to Flanders. The King is more in love than ever; he writes and sends
couriers to her at every moment.”
All France uttered a cry of enthusiasm on learning the victory of
Fontenoy (May 11, 1745). But could one believe it? The person first
felicitated by Voltaire on account of that glorious day was neither
Louis XV. nor Marshal de Saxe, but Madame d’Étioles. Before writing his
poem on Fontenoy, the obsequious poet addressed the favorite in these
stanzas:--
“Quand César, ce héros charmant,
Dont tout Rome fut idolâtre,
Gagnait quelque combat brillant,
On en faisait son compliment
À la divine Cléopâtre.
“Quant Louis, ce héros charmant,
Dont tout Paris fait son idole,
Gagne quelque combat brillant,
On doit en faire compliment
À la divine d’Étiole.”[27]
France, always maddened by success, is in a real delirium. The
Parliament of Paris sends a deputation to Lille to felicitate the King
on his victory and entreat him “so far as may be, not to expose in
future his sacred person, on which the welfare and safety of the State
depend.” All the supreme courts of the kingdom imitate that of Paris,
and the first president of the court of taxes exclaims in his address
to the King: “Your Majesty’s conquests are so rapid that the point is
how to safeguard the faith of our descendants and lessen the wonder
of miracles, lest heroes should dispense themselves from following,
and people from believing, in them.” But the conquest which chiefly
preoccupies Louis XV. is that of his new mistress.
In July, 1745, she proudly displays eighty amorous epistles from the
gallant sovereign; the motto on the seal is: _Discreet and faithful_;
one of them is addressed: _À la Marquise de Pompadour_, and contains
the brevet conferring this title. The new marquise instantly discards
the name of Étioles, leaves off her husband’s arms, substitutes
three towers in their place, and puts her servants in grand livery.
This marquisate enchants Voltaire; he has become the official poet,
courtier, and familiar of the favorite, and his complaisant muse thus
celebrates the official accession of the new royal mistress:--
“Il sait aimer, il sait combattre;
Il envoie en ce beau séjour
Un brevet digne d’Henri quatre,
Signé: Louis, Mars et l’Amour.
Mais les ennemis out leur tour,
Et sa valeur et sa prudence
Donnent à Gand, le même jour,
Un brevet de ville de France.
Ces deux brevets, si bien venus,
Vivront tous deux dans la mémoire.
Chez lui, les autels de Vénus
Sont dans le temple de la Gloire.”[28]
The democrats, perhaps, are in a trifle too much of a hurry to erect a
statue to Voltaire.
III
THE NEW MARQUISE
Louis XV. had had enough of glory. Impatient to meet again the
new marquise, he left the army September 1, 1745, and returned
to Versailles, where his mistress awaited him in the apartment
once occupied by the Duchess de Châteauroux. This change of reign
was effected in an official manner. There was no more attempt at
mystery. The Marquise de Pompadour was _presented_ September
15, conformably to the rules of etiquette. Every tongue at court
was wagging over this scandalous and ridiculous ceremony. Every one
wondered how the Queen would look. The King, his wife, and his mistress
thus exposed themselves to public view, and the ancient ceremonial
became merely a parody. The Princess de Conti, whose debts and
prodigalities seemed to condemn her to such complaisant rôles, was the
lady who presented her. The Marquise appeared at first before the King,
whose countenance betrayed an easily comprehended embarrassment. Then
she entered the salon of the Queen and could not hide her confusion.
But Marie Leczinska, good and indulgent even to exaggeration, reassured
her by a gracious reception. Naming one of the few aristocratic women
with whom Madame de Pompadour was connected, she said: “Have you
any news of Madame de Saissac? I have been much pleased to see her
sometimes in Paris.” The Marquise, touched and grateful, know not what
to answer. She reddened and stammered out: “Madame, I have the greatest
passion to please you.”
The Abbé de Bernis celebrated thus the new queen of Cythera:--
“Tout va changer: les crimes d’un volage
Ne seront plus érigés en exploits.
La Pudeur seul obtiendra notre hommage,
L’amour constant rentrera dans ses droits.
L’exemple en est donné par le plus grand des rois,
Et par la beauté la plus sage.”[29]
The choice of Louis XV. was thenceforward settled. The gallant monarch
was about to plume himself on fidelity.
What do you think of this modesty and this discretion? As Sainte-Beuve
says, these poets have a way of taking things which belongs to them
alone.
There was plenty of adulation, but there was also plenty of
fault-finding. The great ladies could not get used to seeing a
_bourgeoise_ occupy the post of King’s mistress. They observed
with malevolent and ever alert attention this improvised marquise who
tried to give herself airs of nobility and grandeur. They recalled
the fact that her grandfather had been provision-contractor for the
Hôtel des Invalides. She is the granddaughter of a butcher, said they;
they jeered pitilessly about meat and fish; they found her awkward in
her part, like a grisette disguised as a marchioness. Exasperated at
seeing at Versailles a royal mistress not of his choosing, the Duke de
Richelieu tried, says Duclos, “to make the King consider her on the
footing of a _bourgeoise_ out of place, a passing gallantry, a
simple amusement not adapted to remain worthily at court.” If anything
in her manners or her language was not perfectly well-bred, the
favorite became the butt of sarcasm as soon as her back was turned.
Louis XV. used to say: “It will amuse me to educate her.”
Madame de Pompadour had at all events the good sense to maintain a
humble and submissive attitude when she appeared before the Queen. The
rank and virtues of Marie Leczinska intimidated her. Here is a curious
passage which occurs in the Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes: “Day before
yesterday, as she was returning from Mass, Madame de Pompadour said to
Madame de Luynes that she was in the keenest anxiety and most bitter
sorrow; that she knew somebody had frightfully aspersed her to the
Queen; and, without explaining to what she referred, said she hoped
greatly that the Queen would not believe it, and that she begged her to
speak about it to her. Madame de Luynes instantly gave an account of
this to the Queen.” Here is the letter written to Madame de Pompadour
by the Duchess de Luynes: “I have just been speaking to the Queen,
Madame, and I earnestly entreated her to tell me frankly if she had
anything against you; she answered in the kindliest way that she had
not, and that she was even very sensible of your efforts to please her
on all occasions; she even desired me to write and tell you so.”
This is the reply of the Marquise: “You bring me to life again, Madame;
for three days I have been in unheard-of pain, as you will believe
without difficulty, knowing as you do my attachment to the Queen. They
have made frightful accusations against me to Monsieur and to Madame
the Dauphiness, who have been kind enough to allow me to prove the
falsity of the horrors they accuse me of. I had been told some days ago
that the Queen had been prejudiced against me; think of my despair,
who would give my life for her, who find her goodness to me every day
more precious. It is certain that the kinder she is to me, the more
will the jealousy of the monsters of this place be employed in abusing
me, unless she is so good as to be on her guard against them and will
kindly let me know of what I am accused. It will not be difficult for
me to justify myself; the tranquillity of my soul on this subject
assures me as much. I hope, Madame, that your friendship for me, and
still more your knowledge of my character, will be the guarantees of
what I am writing you. Doubtless you must be annoyed by such a long
story; but my heart is so full that I cannot conceal it from you. You
know my sentiments toward you, Madame; they will end only with my life”
(February, 1746).
We read again in the Memoirs of the Duke de Luynes (March, 1746):
“Madame de Pompadour, who knows the Queen loves flowers, is so
attentive as to send her bouquets as often as possible; she continues
to seek every occasion to please her.”
The Queen may have reflected that, after all, since a mistress was
inevitable, this one was better than another. Since he had been
directed by Madame de Pompadour, the King seemed in a less sombre
temper and looked a little less bored. But he lost in the favorite’s
society the needful energy to continue the successes of the French
arms, and sign a really glorious peace.
While Louis XV. was thus wasting away in futilities, Marshal Saxe
conquered all Belgium. Louis XV. never made his appearance at the army
from May 4 to the middle of June, 1746. After having made a triumphal
entry at Antwerp he hastened back to Versailles, apparently to be
present when the Dauphiness was delivered, in reality to see Madame de
Pompadour again. The Dauphiness died prematurely in July. D’Argenson
says she had become as good a Frenchwoman as if she had been born at
Versailles. She was regretted, but the hurly-burly of festivities soon
began again, and Louis XV., after a very short mourning, resumed his
accustomed diversions and pretended pleasures.
The successes of his troops were as brilliant as they were rapid. Never
had France held better cards. It was a magnificent occasion to complete
national unity in the North. But though they had known how to conquer
they knew not how to profit by the victory. The King did not comprehend
his mission. He was thinking more about Madame de Pompadour than about
the war, and while his soldiers were fighting so bravely, he, wholly
given up to frivolous trifles, was amusing himself, or, better, he was
trying to do so. This nonchalance became fatal. All the fruits of the
war were lost by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 18, 1748).