scandalous life, was at this time at her last extremity. One reads
in the Memoirs of the Marquis d’Argenson, under date of March 27,
1751: “Madame de Mailly, former mistress of the King, is dying. It
was thought she was better, but the inflammation of the lungs is
increasing, and she has a hopeless fever. The King has not even
once sent openly to make inquiries, but the Marquis de Gontaud has
bulletins four times a day and transmits them to the King, who is
afraid of offending Madame de Pompadour. I am convinced he will be
much affected by her death. The pious people, those who believe in
Providence, remark that, the King having had the three sisters, they
have all died young. This one, who was the first, and not incestuous,
is dying piously and the death of the just: it is even through her
religious practices that she contracted her malady; apparently she will
have a holy death. The other two died in horrible anguish, and much
younger. People reflect also that God is so desirous of the King’s
conversion, that this death happens just in the Jubilee time, so as to
touch His Majesty, already prepared by sermons and disposed to make his
Jubilee sincerely. However, in the cabinets, divertisements and ballets
are still going on secretly.”
In Barbier’s journal are encountered similar reflections on the terrors
of the Marquise: “Everybody,” he writes, “is carefully watching
for what will happen at the Jubilee. They say Madame de Pompadour
dreads the results of it. There are many at the court, not merely
ecclesiastics, but men and women who are expecting this event to ruin
the Marquise, whose abuse of her position has for some time gained her
the hatred of all the nobles. The King can hardly remain at Versailles
without making his Jubilee. Public prejudice is carried to the point
of respecting the Jubilee more than the Easter duties which are of
obligation. If he makes his Jubilee, he cannot well return to the
château of Bellevue a fortnight later, and a month’s absence would be
dangerous. There are lovers of the court who are now forming a plan to
find a new mistress for the King after the Jubilee; for, melancholy as
it may be, he must have some diversion; and if he should altogether
fear the devil and decide on amendment, this would be not at all
amusing for the nobles. This event, then, which is not far distant, is
what is agitating the public high and low.”
Madame de Mailly breathed her last March 30. In her will she had asked
to be buried in the cemetery, among the poor, and to have a wooden
cross. The Marquis d’Argenson writes: “These austerities, penances,
and poverty increase the adverse opinion against her who now occupies
her former place and whose conduct is so very different. It is also
remarked, for the honor of religion, that Madame de Mailly, who was
often subject to fits of ill temper, which was the cause of her being
banished by the King, had become as mild and equable as possible.
People say that if she was not holy, no other woman ever will be.”
But Madame de Pompadour was once more victorious. The King did not
allow himself to be touched by the death of his former mistress, and,
spite of the warnings of heaven, he did not make his Jubilee. Still
the Marquise was not tranquil. D’Argenson wrote, December 11, 1752:
“Madame de Pompadour has been spitting blood since her youth. _Et
in peccato concepit eam mater sua._ She is becoming as dry as a
stick, and one can see her growing thin with jealousy.” And September
17, 1753: “The King is becoming superstitiously devout, respecting the
clergy more than morals. Marshal de Richelieu said to me in a jesting
way: ‘The King shows angelic devotion. He won’t do anything without the
episcopate in the affairs of Languedoc.’”
Madame de Pompadour no longer appealed to the senses of Louis XV.
Sensuality failing her, she would have liked to be able to press
religion into her service. She sought to create a new rôle for herself
as favorite, more minister than mistress; to legitimate by duration as
well as by a certain decorum her liaison with the King; to assume, in
brief, an attitude as friend, counsellor, I might almost say matron.
Negotiating her conversion with the Jesuits as if it were a diplomatic
affair, she demanded as a condition _sine quâ non_, that she
should remain at Versailles. But here was the difficult point. The
clergy, even at a period of abasement, retained their principles,
and the Church would not be the dupe of a woman. But one thing, the
absolution of a priest, was needful to enable her to go on playing her
part as companion to the King, female minister, peacemaker between
the King and the royal family, the Crown and the Parliaments, the
clergy and the philosophers. All she had to do to merit and obtain
this absolution was to withdraw from the court. But the Marquise would
have preferred death to retreat. The atmosphere of Versailles was
indispensable to her. Far from the scene of her sorry triumphs she
would have expired in rage and despair. Louis XV. well knew that to
dismiss her would be to kill her. Therefore he kept her near him, but
solely through compassion.
Madame de Pompadour had put herself in communication with a Jesuit,
Père de Sacy, whom she had formerly known, and from whom she hoped
to gain, not only absolution, but permission to remain at the palace
of Versailles. As, in the preceding reign, the “mistress thundering
and triumphant,” Madame de Montespan, had been seen to humble herself
before a simple curé, the all-powerful Marquise de Pompadour was now
seen humbly soliciting a Jesuit. Père de Sacy remained firm: he would
not let himself be moved by the fine protestations of the Marquise.
It was in vain to show him that the communications between the
apartments of the King and the favorite were now walled up; useless
for the partisans of loose morality and worldly religion to say to him
that he must not discourage repentance; that too much severity would
spoil all; that the Church had need of Madame de Pompadour against
the Encyclopedists; in a word, that there ought to be such a thing as
compromising with heaven. The Jesuit rejected this theory of relaxation
and culpable condescension. He reminded his pretended penitent that she
had a husband still living,--a husband of whom she could not complain,
and that her place was not at the palace of Versailles, but at the
side of M. Lenormand d’Étioles. This annoying souvenir exasperated the
favorite, infuriated by the conjugal phantom that rose before her,
and thwarted all her plans. When she was convinced that, in spite of
her feminine tricks, she could never bend Père de Sacy, she dismissed
him;[47] and undoubtedly the admirable conduct of the Jesuits was one
of the causes which brought about the expulsion of the order a few
years later. Madame de Pompadour was vindictive. She never pardoned any
one who had the audacity to displease her.
Could one believe it? The favorite pushed her assurance to the point
of posing as a victim. To credit her, people were unjustly opposing
obstacles to her conversion and that of the King. Priests who refused
absolution in this way were enemies of the throne and the altar. At the
same time, she shamelessly solicited a place as lady of the Queen’s
palace. Marie Leczinska’s obligingness had already been carried too
far. This time the good Queen made some observations. To receive to a
place of honor a woman separated from her husband, a person who could
not even claim to receive the benefits of the general communion, was an
ignominy to which Louis XV. could not really wish to condemn a Queen
of France. Accomplished intriguer as she was, Madame de Pompadour was
not yet discouraged. She declared her willingness to be reconciled
with her husband, at the same time secretly acquainting M. Lenormand
d’Étioles that he would do well to refrain from accepting such an
offer. The letter she wrote him was replete with the finest sentiments.
As much as she had scandalized society by her separation, so much she
promised to edify it hereafter by an irreproachable union with her
husband. But this promise was only a feint. Moreover, M. d’Étioles was
hardly anxious to take back his wife. He might have applied to her the
idea expressed in this line of a modern tragedy:--
_Et mon indifférence a tué mon mépris._
And my indifference has slain my scorn.
It was long since the woman who had ceased to bear his name and whose
desertion had once rendered him so unhappy, had excited in him either
anger or resentment. He had wept for Madame d’Étioles. But Madame
d’Étioles had been dead more than ten years, and he did not know
Madame the Marquise de Pompadour. Nor had he any desire to know her.
What he was told about her in nowise tempted him. He greatly preferred
a former dancer at the opera, Mademoiselle Rem, with whom he lived
maritally, and for whose sake he had refused the embassy from France to
Constantinople.
Madame de Pompadour triumphed. The really guilty person, said she, was
her husband. He and he alone committed the sin, he who refused to open
his arms to a repentant spouse. She could not re-enter the conjugal
abode by force. Hence the Queen could have no complaint against her,
and no opposition could be made against her obtaining, after having
received absolution, that place as lady of the palace, which was the
height of her desires. She formally received her Easter communion at
the church of Saint Louis, Versailles. But it was not Père de Sacy who
heard her confession, but another priest.
“I had been surprised,” writes Madame du Hausset, “for some time past
to see the Duchess de Luynes coming secretly to Madame. Afterwards
she came openly; and one evening, Madame having gone to bed, called
me and said: ‘My dear, you are going to be very well contented, the
Queen is giving me a place as lady of the palace; to-morrow I am to be
presented; you must make me look very handsome.’ I knew that the King
was not quite so much at his ease about it; he was afraid of scandal
and that people might think he had forced the Queen to make this
nomination. But there was nothing of that sort. It was represented to
the Princess that it would be an heroic act on her part to forget the
past; that all scandal would be obliterated when it was seen that an
honorable position was what retained Madame at court, and that this
would be the best proof that nothing but friendship existed any longer
between the King and his favorite. The Queen received her very well.
The pious sort flattered themselves that they would be protected by
Madame, and for some time sang her praises.... This was the time when
Madame appeared to me the most contented. The devotees made no scruples
about visiting her and did not forget themselves when opportunity
offered.... The doctor (Quesnay) laughed at this change of scenes and
made merry at the expense of the devotees. ‘And yet,’ I said to him,
‘they are consistent and may be in good faith.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘but
they ought not to ask for anything.’”
The Marquise de Pompadour, who had had the tabouret and the honors of a
duchess since 1752, received her brevet as lady of the Queen’s palace
February 7, 1756. She began the next day her week of attendance on
Marie Leczinska, at the state dinner in a superb costume.
D’Argenson, whose morality is often peculiar, finds the thing natural
enough. He approves rather than criticises. “Sunday evening,” he
writes, “the Marquise de Pompadour was declared at Versailles lady of
the Queen’s palace, whence it is conjectured that she is no longer the
King’s mistress. It is even said that she begins to talk devotion and
Molinism, and is going to try and please the Queen as much as she has
the King. All this confidence which has been evident during the three
years since the King began to have new mistresses is merely the reward
of the sweetness and humility with which she has accepted her lover’s
infidelities. This is only precarious and mere pretence, or, rather, it
comes from a sentiment of friendship, good taste, and gratitude, and
a good-nature in which love counts for nothing. But these reasonable
sentiments can accomplish much in a sensible and well-ordered heart
like that of the King.” Here one gets the sum of the morality of the
eighteenth century. What could be expected of a society in which even
worthy men could use such language and show such complaisance?
VIII
MADAME DE POMPADOUR AND THE ATTEMPT OF DAMIENS
Madame de Pompadour was destined to “live in the midst of alarms.” For
nearly a year she had been congratulating herself on the cleverness
with which she had carried by assault the post of lady of the Queen’s
palace, and had dismissed the confessors, of whom she thought she had
no more need, when an unforeseen event was very near making her lose
all the ground she had so painfully acquired.
Toward six o’clock in the evening of January 5, 1757, Louis XV. had
just come down the little staircase leading from his apartments to a
vestibule facing the marble court, and was about to enter a carriage,
when he was struck by a penknife in the hand of a person named Damiens,
who, either through folly or fanaticism, wished not to kill him, but
to give him a warning. The King thought himself mortally wounded.
He belonged to that category of Christians who are never pious but
when they are sick. When in good health they say: “There is always
time to repent.” But if danger threatens them, they tremble, they go
to confession, they become saints for the time being, reserving the
privilege of resuming their vicious habits as soon as their health
returns. When he thought death was facing him, Louis XV. expressed
himself in terms worthy of the Most Christian King. At Metz he had
been sublime. He was not less eloquent at Versailles. The noblest
maxims were on his lips, the most beautiful sentiments in his heart.
He named his son lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and said to him
with emotion: “I leave you a very disturbed realm; I hope that you may
govern it better than I have done.” He melted into tears of edification
and admiration all those who came near him. This was no longer the man
of the Deer Park; it was the son of Saint Louis.
One of his first words after being struck was a cry for a priest. His
Jesuit confessor, Père Desmarets, was not just then at Versailles. A
priest of the Grand-Commun was summoned (the ecclesiastics who acted as
chaplains to those persons in the King’s service who were lodged in the
apartments called Grand-Commun). Louis XV. made his confession first to
this priest, and again to Père Desmarets, who arrived in great haste
from Paris.
Louis XV. had received only a trifling wound. Damiens, who might have
killed him, had not wished to do so. He had two blades on one handle,
a large one and a small one, and had used only the latter. The doctor
said that if the wounded man were not a king, he might go about his
affairs the next day. But the imagination of Louis XV. was easily
excited. When the wound had been probed, and he was assured that it
was not very deep, he exclaimed: “It is deeper than you think, for it
goes clear to the heart.” Baron de Besenval relates in his Memoirs that
when the doctors had no longer the least anxiety, that of the King was
such that, believing himself dying, he made the Abbé de Rochecour, the
chaplain of the neighborhood, give him absolution every moment.
Louis the Well-Beloved was not as yet Louis the Well-Hated. Barbier
says there was general consternation at Paris; everybody lamented.
The archbishop commanded the devotions of the forty hours in all the
churches. The priests and monks, suffocated by emotion, could hardly
intone the _Domine salvum fac regem_.
What was happening to Madame de Pompadour all this time? She remained
in her apartment in the palace of Versailles, but she had not even
dared solicit the favor of seeing the royal sufferer. She knew that
Louis XV. was no longer the same man when he was ill, and that it took
him only a moment to become once more a devotee. Remembering what had
happened at Metz at the time of the ignominious banishment of the
Duchess de Châteauroux, she was convinced that she was about to go into
exile, and nearly everybody believed the same.
“The people,” says Madame du Hausset, “received the news of the assault
on the King with furious cries and the utmost despair; one could hear
them crying under the windows from Madame’s apartment. They came in
crowds, and Madame dreaded the fate of Madame de Châteauroux. Her
friends came constantly with tidings. For that matter, her apartment
was like a church, which everybody thought he had a right to enter.
They came to see how she took it, under pretence of interest, and
Madame did nothing but weep and faint away. Doctor Quesnay never left
her, nor I either.”
What was at this moment the attitude of the three principal ministers,
Count d’Argenson (brother of the author of the Memoirs), Minister of
War, M. de Machault, Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, and Abbé
de Bernis, who had been appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs three
days before the assault? The first was the sworn enemy of the Marquise.
He caught at the chance for vengeance. The second was under obligations
to the Marquise, but, believing she would henceforth be powerless, he
declared against her in order to salute the Dauphin’s rising sun. The
third did not abandon the woman to whom he owed the portfolio he had
just obtained. He wrote to M. de Choiseul this singular letter, in
which the words “honor” and “virtue” are employed strangely enough:
“The King has been assassinated, and all that the court has seen
in this frightful event is a favorable moment for driving away our
friend. Every intrigue has been brought to play on the confessor.
There is a tribe at court who are always awaiting the Extreme Unction
in order to try to augment their importance. Why should devotion be
separated so from virtue? Our friend can no longer scandalize any one
but fools and knaves. It is of public notoriety that friendship has
supplanted gallantry these five years back. It is pure bigotry to go
back into the past to impugn the innocence of the actual connection.
This is founded upon his need of being able to open his heart to a
proved and trusty friend who is, in the divisions of the Ministry, the
sole point of reunion. What ingrates I have seen, my dear Count, and
how corrupt our time is! Perhaps there have never been more virtues in
the world, but there has been more honor.”
Count d’Argenson and M. de Machault did not like each other, but they
were in agreement respecting the Marquise. If Madame de Pompadour was
in nowise astonished by the conduct of the first, whose detestation
of her she had long been aware of, the defection of the second, who
had been her creature, put her beside herself, “Is that a friend?” she
exclaimed in amazement.
On being left alone with M. de Machault, after the dressing of his
wound, Louis XV. charged him, as a friend of his favorite, not to send
her an order to depart, but to personally advise her to do so. The
Keeper of the Seals called therefore on the Marquise. The interview
lasted half an hour. The result was anxiously awaited, and the Abbé de
Bernis had returned to learn what passed. But Madame du Hausset shall
tell the story. Nobody is so interesting as ear and eye witnesses.
“Madame rang; I entered, followed by the Abbé. She was in tears.
‘I have got to go away, my dear Abbé,’ said she. I made her take
some orange flower water in a silver goblet, because her teeth were
chattering. Afterwards she told me to call her equerry, and she gave
him her orders tranquilly enough to have her house at Paris prepared
for her, and to tell all her people to be ready to start, and her
coachmen not to absent themselves. A few minutes later the Maréchale
Mirepoix came in: ‘What are all these trunks for?’ she exclaimed. ‘Your
people say you are going away?’ ‘Alas! my dear friend, the master wills
it, according to what M. de Machault has told me.’--‘And what is his
own opinion?’ said the Maréchale. ‘That I should go without delay.’
During this time I was undressing Madame unaided, she wishing to be
more at ease on her sofa. ‘He wants to be master, your keeper of the
seals,’ said the Maréchale, ‘and he is betraying you; who gives up the
game loses it.’” This language made the clever Marquise thoughtful.
Quesnay came in afterwards, “and with his monkey-like air, having heard
what had been said, he recited the fable of a fox who, dining with some
other animals, persuaded one of them that his enemies were hunting for
him, so as to snatch his part in his absence. I did not see Madame
again until very late, at the hour of her couchee. She was calmer.”
However, it was not yet known whether the favorite would not end by
being disgraced. Her enemy, Count d’Argenson, seemed to possess the
intimate confidence of the sovereign. The King had given him his
keys that he might look for the secret papers at Trianon, and the
Count’s brother, the Marquis d’Argenson, wrote in his Memoirs, January
15, 1757, ten days after the assault: “It is true that since the
assassination of the King, the Marquise has not seen His Majesty for a
single instant. She endures her disgrace by concealing it; but little
by little she will be abandoned. She has neither seen nor received a
billet from His Majesty, who no longer seems to think of her. Meanwhile
the King sees his confessor, Père Desmarets, every day, and has made
declarations of friendship and good conduct to the Queen. All this
smacks of a change at court. M. the Dauphin has entered the Council
and is gaining credit there.’ The former Minister of Foreign Affairs
was deluding himself. On the very day when he wrote these lines, the
Marquise saw Louis XV. again and resumed her former domination, as
the Minister of War was presently to become aware. “The great talent
at court,” says the Baron de Besenval, “is to be a good judge of
circumstances and know how to profit by them. M. d’Argenson deceived
himself in this; he should have reflected that the ill-grounded terror
of the King might pass as quickly as it came, and that he would seek
to resume power as promptly as he had abandoned it. This is the way
with all feeble souls. The minister forgot this truth. In the first
council held after the attempt on the King, M. d’Argenson proposed,
in presence of M. the Dauphin, who presided, that the ministers
should hold their deliberations in the apartments of this prince, as
lieutenant-general of the kingdom, until the complete recovery of the
King. It resulted from this fault that M. the Dauphin, who was not very
susceptible of ambition, was not at all grateful to the minister for
his proposal, and that the King, hardly convalescent as yet, found his
heart again replenished with that displeasure which his son had always
inspired in him; that he withdrew him from affairs and never forgave M.
d’Argenson for the mark of devotion he had given him on this occasion.
When one dares to be ungrateful, he ought at least to be more adroit
about it.”
As Baron de Besenval again remarks, “a mistress removed is not yet to
be despised, and love has its caprices and returns as prompt as those
of fortune.” Madame de Pompadour stayed where she was. The Minister of
War and the Keeper of the Seals were sacrificed to her. The favorite
made a tearful scene in presence of Louis XV. One would have thought
she was going to faint. Madame du Hausset went to fetch her some of
Hoffman’s drops. The King himself arranged the dose with sugar and
presented it to the Marquise in the most gracious manner. She ended by
smiling and kissed the hand of the gallant monarch, who consoled her.
Two days later, Count d’Argenson received the following letter from
the King: “Your service is no longer necessary to me. I order you to
send me your resignation as Secretary of State for War and all which
concerns the employments thereunto adjoined, and to retire to your
estate of Ormes.”