weapon. A veritable magician, she transformed herself at will. As
mobile as the clouds, as changeful as the wave, she renewed and
metamorphosed herself incessantly. No actress knew better than she how
to compose an attitude or a countenance. In her whole person there was
an exquisite grace, an exceptional charm, a taste, an elegance which
amounted to subtlety. La Tour, the pastel painter, is he who has best
reproduced her animated, spirituelle, triumphant physiognomy, the eyes
full of intelligence and audacity, the satin skin, the supple figure,
the general harmony, the charming and coquettish whole.
All the splendors of luxury were like a frame to the picture. A new
Danaë, the Marquise disappeared under a shower of gold. It is known
exactly what she cost France from September 9, 1745, the time when
her favor began, until April 15, 1764, the day of her death. M. Le
Roy has discovered an authentic document,[36] containing an account
of the favorite’s expenses during this period of nearly twenty years.
The total is 35,924,140 livres. In this list of expenses is found the
pension granted to Madame Lebon for having predicted to the Marquise,
then only nine years old, that she would one day be the mistress of
Louis XV.
Nothing seemed fine enough for Madame de Pompadour, either in dress,
lodgings, or furniture. At Versailles she secured for herself on
the ground floor, on the terrace looking toward the parterre on the
north, the magnificent apartments occupied by the Duke and Duchess
de Penthièvre.[37] (Part of the ministry of foreign affairs is
established there at present. The minister’s study is the same as that
of Madame de Pompadour. Her bedchamber is now the thirteenth hall of
the marshals, her ante-chamber the hall of famous warriors.)
The favorite bought a superb house in the city communicating by a
passage with the apartments of the palace (it is now the hôtel des
Réservoirs). In 1748 she acquired the château of Ciécy and the estate
of Aunay, and in 1749 the château of La Celle, near Versailles. In
1750 she inaugurated, on the hill commanding the Seine, between Sèvres
and Meudon, that enchanting abode of Bellevue, where all the arts
rivalled each other to create a magic entity. The ante-chamber with
statues by Adam and Falconnet; the dining-room with paintings of game
and fish by Oudry; the salon decorated by Vanloo; the apartment of
the Marquise, hung with Boucher’s glowing pictures; the park with its
parterres of rare flowers, its fine trees, grottos, and fountains,
its statues by Pigalle and Coustou, its varied perspectives, its
immense horizons,--all made of Bellevue a real palace of Armida. At
Versailles, the Marquise obtained from the King a portion of the
little park wherein to construct a gem of architecture, which she
called the Hermitage; it cloaked extreme elegance under an appearance
of simplicity. It had fine Persian hangings, panelled wainscotings
decorated by the most skilful painters, thickets of myrtles, lilacs,
and roses. This habitation is no longer in existence; a part of its
site is occupied by the rue de l’Ermitage at Versailles. The Marquise
had a house at Compiègne and a lodge at Fontainebleau. At Paris she
bought, for seven hundred and thirty thousand livres, the hôtel
d’Evreux, which is now the Élysée.
At the Trianon her apartment was on the same floor with that of Louis
XV. At Clécy she received as if in a royal château. The King’s visits
to this splendid residence used to last three or four days, and cost
about one hundred thousand livres.
A woman so influential could not fail to have a swarm of flatterers.
The resources of fawning and hyperbole were exhausted in her favor. The
most exaggerated of her sycophants was Voltaire--Voltaire to whom the
republicans are nowadays raising statues. He treated the Marquise as
a superior being, a goddess, and pushed his flattery to absurdity, to
platitude. In 1745, the moment when the reign of the favorite began, he
sent her this compliment:--
“Sincère et tendre Pompadour
(Car je peux vous donner d’avance
Ce nom qui rime avec l’amour
Et qui sera bientôt le plus beau nom de France),
Ce tokai dont Votre Excellence
Dans Étioles me régala,
N’a-t-il pas quelque ressemblance
Avec le roi qui le donna?
Il est, comme lui, sans mélange;
Il unit, comme lui, la force à la douceur,
Plaît aux yeux, enchante le cœur,
Fait du bien et jamais ne change.”[38]
In 1746, when Marshal de Lowendal had just taken Berg-Op-Zoom, it
was Madame de Pompadour whom Voltaire felicitated on the victory, in
strains like these:--
“Les esprits, et les cœurs, et les remparts terribles,
Tout cède à ses efforts, tout fléchit sous sa loi,
Et Berg-Op-Zoom et vous, vous êtes invincibles;
Vous n’avez cédé qu’à mon roi.
Il vole dans vos bras du sein de la Victoire,
Le prix de ses travaux n’est que dans votre cœur.
Rien ne peut augmenter sa gloire,
Et vous augmentez son bonheur.”[39]
The Marquise rewarded Voltaire at the end of the same year by producing
the _Enfant prodigue_ in the theatre of the little cabinets, and
taking the part of Lise herself. It was then that the poet, beside
himself with joy, addressed the beautiful actress the following lines,
which exasperated the daughters of Louis XV. and dissatisfied the King
himself:--
“Ainsi donc, vous réunissez
Tous les arts, tous les dons de plaire;
Pompadour, vous embellissez
La cour, le Parnasse et Cythère.
Charme de tous les yeux, trésor d’un seul mortel,
Que votre amour soit éternel!
Que tous vos jours soient marqués par des fêtes!
Que de nouveaux succès marquent ceux de Louis!
Vivez tous deux sans ennemis
Et gardez tous deux vos conquêtes!”[40]
So many madrigals were not enough. Both verse and prose were needed. In
addressing to the Marquise a copy of the _Précis du siècle de Louis
XV._ Voltaire inserted in it a passage, gravely congratulating her
upon that treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle which had so grievously offended
the national sentiment:--
“It must be owned that Europe may date its felicity from the day of
this peace. People will learn with surprise that it was the result of
the urgent counsels of a young lady of high rank, celebrated for her
charms, her singular talents, her wit, and an envied position. It was
the destiny of Europe in this long quarrel that a woman began it and a
woman ended it. The second has bestowed as many benefits as the first
caused harm.”
Can one be surprised, after this, that Madame de Pompadour should
have been persuaded of her own merit, wit, and even genius; that she
cherished strange illusions concerning her rôle and her character; that
she took herself seriously, even tragically; that she regarded any
adverse criticism of her as high treason against beauty and majesty?
With such an array of luxury and power, such a mass of riches, jewels,
objects of art, such a court of ingenious and amiable courtiers, with
all that could soothe her vanity, coquetry, and pride, with the ability
to realize all her fancies and caprices, one might perhaps think the
favorite was happy. Well! no.
VI
THE GRIEFS OF THE MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR
“I pity you much, Madame, while all the world envies you.” The person
who addressed this just remark to the Marquise de Pompadour was her
inseparable confidant, her lady’s maid, Madame du Hausset, the woman
to whom she told everything, whom she always kept near her, and to
whom she said: “The King and I rely on you so fully that we pay no
more attention to you than to a cat or dog, but go right on talking.”
The Marquise recognized the truth of her confidant’s melancholy words:
“Ah!” she answered, “my life is like that of a Christian: a perpetual
combat.” Strange comparison! Most inexact comparison! for the Christian
combats for God, while the favorite was combating for the devil. This,
in fact, was the cause of her sadness. The love of God consoles one for
all sacrifices; but woe to the woman who makes herself the slave of a
man! Madame de Pompadour placed no confidence in Louis XV., and she
was right. The Maréchale de Mirepoix said to her one day: “It is your
staircase that the King likes; he is used to going up and down it. But
if he found another woman to whom he could talk about his hunting and
his affairs, it would be all the same to him at the end of three days.”
Listen to Madame du Hausset. She says in her Memoirs: “Madame
experienced many tribulations amidst all her grandeurs. Anonymous
letters were often written her containing threats to poison or
assassinate her; but what affected her most was the dread of being
supplanted by a rival. I never saw her in greater vexation than one
evening on her return from the salon of Marly. On entering, she
spitefully threw down her muff and mantle, and undressed with extreme
haste; then, sending away her other women, she said to me after they
went out: ‘I don’t believe anything can be more insolent than that
Madame de Coaslin. I had to play _brelan_ at the same table
with her this evening, and you cannot imagine what I suffered. The
men and women seemed to take turns in coming to examine us. Two or
three times Madame de Coaslin said, looking at me: “_Va tout_,”
in the most insulting manner, and I thought I should be ill when she
said in a triumphant tone: “I have played kings!” I wish you had seen
her courtesy on quitting me!’” Thereupon Madame du Hausset inquired
what the master’s attitude had been. “You don’t know him, my dear,”
replied the Marquise; “if he were going to put her in my apartment
this evening he would treat her coldly before people, and me with the
greatest affection.” The favorite was in constant alarm and anxiety.
She believed in neither the loyalty, the love, nor the friendship of
the King. Thus, as has been wittily said by M. Paul de Saint-Victor:
“She spent her life in the attitude of Scheherezade, sitting beside
the bed where the caliph slept, his sabre at hand. Like the head of
the sultana, her favor depended on a caprice of the master, on the gay
or tiresome story which she was about to tell him. And what happens in
the thousand and one nights of the harem from which she is excluded?
Who knows whether a firman scrawled by a grisette may not exile her
to-morrow to the depths of a province?” In spite of her knowledge of
frivolous trifles and her array of seductions, the Marquise could not
succeed in diverting Louis XV. It is again Madame du Hausset who tells
us as much: “The King was habitually very dismal and liked everything
which recalled the thought of death, even though he feared it very
much.” This melancholy humor of the monarch distressed his mistress.
“What a singular pleasure,” said she, “to occupy one’s self with things
the very notion of which ought to be banished, especially when one
leads such a happy life!” Madame de Pompadour did not reflect when
she talked like this. She forgot that a debauchee can never be happy
long. The sovereign and his favorite were both suffering from the same
malady; their consciences were not at rest. To both of them might be
applied the verses addressed by Lucretius to the Epicurean youth of
Rome, which we translate as follows: “They inhale sweet perfumes; they
deck themselves with wreaths and garlands; but from the middle of the
fount of pleasures rises bitterness, and sharp thorns pierce through
the flowers; remorse rebukes them from the depths of their soul and
reproaches them with days lost in idleness.”
Of what use then were luxury and splendor to her? The Marquise was
greeted by adulations in all her châteaux, all her houses. Nowhere
did she find esteem. To tell the truth, all this array of factitious
grandeur, all this pretence at decorum, was but a parody. Do what she
might, the mistress of Louis XV. was in reality nothing but the first
kept woman in the kingdom. Loaded and overwhelmed with proofs of royal
munificence, she never called herself satisfied; ambition, like sensual
pleasure, is insatiable. The love of money and the love of flattery
never say: “It is enough!”
The sumptuous abodes the favorite found means to acquire were, after
all, but monuments of her shame. Her house at Paris (now the Élysée)
was styled the palace of the queen of courtesans, _ædes reginæ
meretricum_. When the equestrian statue of Louis XV., with its
four allegorical figures sculptured by Pigalle, was set up in the
Place Louis XV., the crowd pointing out to each other these emblems of
Force, Prudence, Justice, Love of Peace, said they were the four most
famous mistresses of the monarch: Mesdames de Mailly, de Vintimille, de
Châteauroux, and de Pompadour, and a paper containing these verses was
posted on the statue itself:--
“Grotesque monument, infâme piédestal;
Les Vertus sont à pied, et le vice à cheval.”[41]
The honors heaped on her family by the all-powerful Marquise were
not taken seriously. When her mother, Farmer-General Lenormand de
Tournehem’s mistress, died, this quatrain was circulated:--
“Ci-gît qui, sortant d’un fumier,
Pour faire sa fortune entière,
Vendit son honneur au fermier
Et sa fille au propriétaire.”[42]
When her brother, Abel Poisson, metamorphosed into Marquis de Marigny
and superintendent of the crown buildings, had received the blue ribbon
of the Holy Spirit, people said the fish was turning blue.
In 1754 Madame de Pompadour had the misfortune of losing her only
daughter, Alexandrine d’Étioles, who was only eleven years old. She
would have liked to marry her to young De Vintimille, who passed as the
son of Louis XV. One day she brought the two children together, as if
accidentally, at Bellevue, and showing them to the King, said to him:
“That would be a fine couple.” Louis XV. received this overture more
than coldly. Madame de Pompadour said afterwards to Madame du Hausset:
“If he were a Louis XIV., he would make a Duke du Maine of the child,
but I do not ask so much as that; a position and a ducal title is very
little for his son, and it is because he is his son that I prefer him,
my dear, to all the little dukes of the court. My grandchildren would
share a resemblance to both grandfather and grandmother, and this
blending which I expect to see will one day be my happiness.”--“Tears
came to her eyes in saying these words,” adds Madame du Hausset.
Sainte-Beuve has poured witty contempt on this adulterous dream. “It
seems to me,” says the prince of critics, “that one lights unexpectedly
on the perverted but persistent bourgeois vein in this wish of Madame
de Pompadour; she brings ideas of affection and family arrangements
even into her adulterous combinations. She has sentiments; she thinks
of herself already as a most affectionate grandmother. A picture, which
I would call a Greuze-Pompadour, might be made of this scene, the
Marquise tearfully pointing out the two children to the King.”
The favorite found it hard to renounce her cherished project of
this alliance. Afterwards she thought of the young Duke de Fronsac,
Richelieu’s son, as a husband for her daughter. She caused overtures
to be made to the celebrated courtier. He answered by a disguised
refusal. “My son,” said he, “has the honor of belonging, on his
mother’s side, to the house of Lorraine; hence I cannot dispose of him
without the consent of that family, but I shall proceed to demand it
urgently if the Marquise still persists in her intentions.”
Madame de Pompadour understood, and insisted no further. She planned
another marriage for her daughter, who was promised to the young Duke
de Pecquigny, son of the Duke de Chaulnes of the De Luynes family.
But Mademoiselle d’Étioles died prematurely at the very time when the
marriage was about to be contracted. She was buried in the sepulchre
her mother had bought from an illustrious family. “The bones of the
La Trémoille,” said the Princess de Talmond, “must have been must
astonished at finding fish bones (_les arêtes des Poisson_) near
them.”
We have seen the disgusting flatteries of which the Marquise was
the object. These hyperboles of interested praise had a terrible
counterpart. While the court was obsequious, Paris remained
implacable. There was an incessant succession of sneers, satires, and
invectives. There had been _mazarinades_ of old; now there were
_poissonades_. Minister Maurepas was the instigator and often
the author of these violent rhymed diatribes, which made people say
France was an absolute monarchy tempered by ballads. The masses avenged
themselves by refrains of more than Gallic animation. We cite one
among a thousand. It was sung to the air _Trembleurs d’Isis_:--
“Les grands seigneurs s’avilissent,
Les financiers s’enrichissent,
Et les Poissons s’agrandissent;
C’est le règne des vauriens.
On épuise la finance,
En bâtiments, on dépense,
L’État tombe en décadence,
Le roi ne met ordre à rien.
“Une petite bourgeoise,
Élevée à la grivoise,
Mesurant tout à sa toise,
Fait de la cour un taudis;
Louis, malgré son scrupule,
Froidement pour elle brûle,
Et son amour ridicule
A fait rire tout Paris....
“La contenance éventée,
Et chaque dent tachetée,
La peau jaune et truitée,
Les yeux froids et le cou long,
Sans esprit, sans caractère,
L’âme vile et mercenaire,
Les propos d’une commère,
Tout est bas chez la Poisson.
“Si dans les beautés choisies
Elle était des plus jolies,
On pardonne des folies,
Quand l’objet est un bijou.
Mais pour sotte créature
Et pour si plate figure
Exciter tant de murmure,
Chacun juge le roi fou.”[43]
Nor did people content themselves with ballads. They likewise produced
long pieces of emphatic verse, distilling venom and hatred. More or
less skilful imitators of Juvenal composed satires full of gall and
bitterness. What specially excited the indignation of the authors of
these diatribes were the representations at the theatre of the little
cabinets. One of them, addressing himself to Madame de Pompadour,
exclaimed:--
“Parmi ces histrions qui règnent avec toi,
Qui pourra désormais reconnaître son roi?”[44]
Another thus expressed himself:--
“Sur le trône français on fait regner l’amour.
La fureur du théâtre assassine la cour.
Les palais de nos rois jadis si respectables,
Perdent tout leur éclat, deviennent méprisables;
Ils ne sont habités que par des baladins!...”[45]
A pamphlet entitled “The School of Man, or parallel between
contemporary portraits and those of Holy Writ,” contained attacks of
this sort against Louis XV.: “Too much incommoded by his greatness
to take a girl from the green room, Lindor satisfied himself in
true princely style: he had a large house with a theatre in it built
expressly for him, where his mistress became a danseuse by title and
office; men infatuated by the vanity of dancing women, insensate
imitators of Candaules, do not fancy that the last Gyges died in Lydia.”
One should read the Memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson and those of
Barbier the advocate in order to get a just notion of the hatred felt
for the Marquise by both the aristocracy and the middle classes. The
people despised her quite as much, and held her solely responsible
for all wretchedness and every disaster. The luxury of this parvenu
irritated them, and they detested her profoundly. The following
quatrain expressed the popular sentiment:--
“Fille d’une sangsue et sangsue elle-même,
Poisson d’une arrogance extrême,
Étale en ce château, sans crainte et sans effroi,
La substance du peuple et la honte du roi.”[46]
For those who knew how to listen, the Revolutionary storm was already
rumbling in the distance.
Madame de Pompadour could not rely on her flatterers themselves.
Voltaire, who had burned so much incense at the adored feet of the
Marquise, who at Versailles had been her most zealous, ardent,
enthusiastic courtier, forgot all that in his retreat at Ferney. He
chaffed at his former idol and drew a most malicious portrait of her in
his poem _La Pucelle_.
Thoroughly acquainted with the tone of public opinion, since she had
her own police and an arrangement with the director of the post-office,
who violated the secret of letters for her, Madame de Pompadour was in
despair at so many attacks. Uneasy, feverish, dissatisfied with the
King and the kingdom, considering herself as a victim of destiny, a
woman unjustly dealt with by fortune, spitefully angry at Frederick
the Great, who scoffed at her; at Louis XV., who neglected her for the
young girls of the Deer Park; at the clergy, who regarded her as a tool
of hell; at the Parliaments, which disdained her; at the nobility, who
saw nothing in her but an ambitious _bourgeoise_; at the middle
classes, who reproached her for being immoral; at all France, which
scorned her,--she suffered as much in her vanity as in her pride, and
said to her confidant, Madame du Hausset: “The sorceress told me I
should have time to repent before dying; I believe it, for I shall die
of nothing but chagrin.”
VII
MADAME DE POMPADOUR, LADY OF THE QUEEN’S PALACE
Madame de Pompadour was ready to play all parts in order to preserve
her empire. To be an actress and a political woman was not enough; she
willingly consented to become by turns, and simultaneously if need
were, a devotee and a procuress, to favorize now the Church and now the
Deer Park, to submit to every transformation, every servitude: _Omnia
serviliter pro dominatione_. Never did any minister cling more
firmly to his portfolio, never had any ambitious man a greater thirst
for power.
Louis XV. had a substratum of religion which made the favorite uneasy.
The day he insisted on her reading one of Bourdaloue’s sermons she was
frightened. With all her audacity she never dared to criticise the
Church in the presence of the Most Christian King; for irregular as
his own conduct was, he would not suffer the faith of his fathers to
be insulted in his hearing. To keep her place, the Marquise would have
asked nothing better than to assume the austere demeanor of a Madame
de Maintenon; but she was married, unfortunately, and so was the King,
and Catholicism has never compromised with concubinage or adultery.
Hence Madame de Pompadour sought to avert the difficulty. She put on
a half-way devotion which was wholly worldly, made for show, a sort
of compromise between God and the devil, between the Church and the
boudoir, the oratory and the alcove, a spurious, derisory, hypocritical
devotion, examples of which are given by many women of our own century
as well as of the last.
She had determined to make a figure in the Versailles chapel from the
time her favor began. She meant to shine everywhere, even before the
altars. It was this that made her request the Queen’s authorization
to carry one of the basins at the ceremony of feet washing on Maundy
Thursday, and collect the offerings at the High Mass on Easter Sunday.
But easy as she was where no one but herself was concerned, Marie
Leczinska became severe where God was in question: she refused.
The Jubilee of 1751 redoubled the anxieties of the Marquise. D’Argenson
wrote, February 2: “People assert that the King will gain his Jubilee
and make his Easter Communion. The Marquise says there is no longer
anything but friendship between the King and her, and that they will
put a fortnight’s retreat and truce even to this friendship.” The
attitude of a repentant Magdalen would not have suited a woman like
Madame de Pompadour. She was willing enough for a little devotion,
but of an elegant and worldly sort, ostentatious and luxurious.
The theatre, in a word, pleased her much better than the church.
D’Argenson wrote again, February 6: “All Paris has been talking of the
representation of _Thétis et Pélée_, eight days ago, at which the
Marquise de Pompadour was present. The actors addressed her directly
in the gallant parts, such as, ‘Reign, beautiful Thetis!’ This she
received with a triumphant air which a woman of different extraction
would not have assumed; for some feed their vanity on what others could
not endure without shame.” But what afflicted the haughty favorite was
the thought that all this success might topple over in an instant, like
a house of cards. At the very time when, always an actress, even under
the deceptive appearances of her so-called repentance, she was having a
statue of herself as the goddess of Friendship made for Bellevue, she
had several attacks of fever--people called it the Jubilee fever.