Never did man give with better grace than Louis XIV., or augmented so
much, in this way, the price of his benefits. Never did man sell to
better profit his words, even his smiles,--nay, his looks. Never did
disobliging words escape him; and if he had to blame, to reprimand, or
correct, which was very rare, it was nearly always with goodness, never,
except on one occasion (the admonition of Courtenvaux, related in its
place), with anger or severity. Never was man so naturally polite, or of
a politeness so measured, so graduated, so adapted to person, time, and
place. Towards women his politeness was without parallel. Never did he
pass the humblest petticoat without raising his hat; even to chamber-
maids, that he knew to be such, as often happened at Marly. For ladies
he took his hat off completely, but to a greater or less extent; for
titled people, half off, holding it in his hand or against his ear some
instants, more or less marked. For the nobility he contented himself by
putting his hand to his hat. He took it off for the Princes of the
blood, as for the ladies. If he accosted ladies he did not cover himself
until he had quitted them. All this was out of doors, for in the house
he was never covered. His reverences, more or less marked, but always
light, were incomparable for their grace and manner; even his mode of
half raising himself at supper for each lady who arrived at table.
Though at last this fatigued him, yet he never ceased it; the ladies who
were to sit down, however, took care not to enter after supper had
commenced.
If he was made to wait for anything while dressing, it was always with
patience. He was exact to the hours that he gave for all his day, with a
precision clear and brief in his orders. If in the bad weather of
winter, when he could not go out, he went to Madame de Maintenon's a
quarter of an hour earlier than he had arranged (which seldom happened),
and the captain of the guards was not on duty, he did not fail afterwards
to say that it was his own fault for anticipating the hour, not that of
the captain of the guards for being absent. Thus, with this regularity
which he never deviated from, he was served with the utmost exactitude.
He treated his valets well, above all those of the household. It was
amongst them that he felt most at ease, and that he unbosomed himself the
most familiarly, especially to the chiefs. Their friendship and their
aversion have often had grand results. They were unceasingly in a
position to render good and bad offices: thus they recalled those
powerful enfranchised slaves of the Roman emperors, to whom the senate
and the great people paid court and basely truckled. These valets during
Louis XIV.'s reign were not less courted. The ministers, even the most
powerful, openly studied their caprices; and the Princes of the blood,
nay, the bastards,--not to mention people of lower grade, did the same.
The majority were accordingly insolent enough; and if you could not avoid
their insolence, you were forced to put up with it.
The King loved air and exercise very much, as long as he could make use
of them. He had excelled in dancing, and at tennis and mall. On
horseback he was admirable, even at a late age. He liked to see
everything done with grace and address. To acquit yourself well or ill
before him was a merit or a fault. He said that with things not
necessary it was best not to meddle, unless they were done well. He was
very fond of shooting, and there was not a better or more graceful shot
than he. He had always, in his cabinet seven or eight pointer bitches,
and was fond of feeding them, to make himself known to them. He was very
fond, too, of stag hunting; but in a caleche, since he broke his arm,
while hunting at Fontainebleau, immediately after the death of the Queen.
He rode alone in a species of "box," drawn by four little horses--with
five or six relays, and drove himself with an address and accuracy
unknown to the best coachmen. His postilions were children from ten to
fifteen years of age, and he directed them.
He liked splendour, magnificence, and profusion in everything: you
pleased him if you shone through the brilliancy of your houses, your
clothes, your table, your equipages. Thus a taste for extravagance and
luxury was disseminated through all classes of society; causing infinite
harm, and leading to general confusion of rank and to ruin.
As for the King himself, nobody ever approached his magnificence. His
buildings, who could number them? At the same time, who was there who
did not deplore the pride, the caprice, the bad taste seen in them? He
built nothing useful or ornamental in Paris, except the Pont Royal, and
that simply by necessity; so that despite its incomparable extent, Paris
is inferior to many cities of Europe. Saint-Germain, a lovely spot, with
a marvellous view, rich forest, terraces, gardens, and water he abandoned
for Versailles; the dullest and most ungrateful of all places, without
prospect, without wood, without water, without soil; for the ground is
all shifting sand or swamp, the air accordingly bad.
But he liked to subjugate nature by art and treasure.
He built at Versailles, on, on, without any general design, the beautiful
and the ugly, the vast and the mean, all jumbled together. His own
apartments and those of the Queen, are inconvenient to the last degree,
dull, close, stinking. The gardens astonish by their magnificence, but
cause regret by their bad taste. You are introduced to the freshness of
the shade only by a vast torrid zone, at the end of which there is
nothing for you but to mount or descend; and with the hill, which is very
short, terminate the gardens. The violence everywhere done to nature
repels and wearies us despite ourselves. The abundance of water, forced
up and gathered together from all parts, is rendered green, thick, muddy;
it disseminates humidity, unhealthy and evident; and an odour still more
so. I might never finish upon the monstrous defects of a palace so
immense and so immensely dear, with its accompaniments, which are still
more so.
But the supply of water for the fountains was all defective at all
moments, in spite of those seas of reservoirs which had cost so many
millions to establish and to form upon the shifting sand and marsh. Who
could have believed it? This defect became the ruin of the infantry
which was turned out to do the work. Madame de Maintenon reigned. M. de
Louvois was well with her, then. We were at peace. He conceived the
idea of turning the river Eure between Chartres and Maintenon, and of
making it come to Versailles. Who can say what gold and men this
obstinate attempt cost during several years, until it was prohibited by
the heaviest penalties, in the camp established there, and for a long
time kept up; not to speak of the sick,--above all, of the dead,--that
the hard labour and still more the much disturbed earth, caused? How
many men were years in recovering from the effects of the contagion! How
many never regained their health at all! And not only the sub-officers,
but the colonels, the brigadiers and general officers, were compelled to
be upon the spot, and were not at liberty to absent themselves a quarter
of an hour from the works. The war at last interrupted them in 1688, and
they have never since been undertaken; only unfinished portions of them
exist which will immortalise this cruel folly.
At last, the King, tired of the cost and bustle, persuaded himself that
he should like something little and solitary. He searched all around
Versailles for some place to satisfy this new taste. He examined several
neighbourhoods, he traversed the hills near Saint-Germain, and the vast
plain which is at the bottom, where the Seine winds and bathes the feet
of so many towns, and so many treasures in quitting Paris. He was
pressed to fix himself at Lucienne, where Cavoye afterwards had a house,
the view from which is enchanting; but he replied that, that fine
situation would ruin him, and that as he wished to go to no expense, so
he also wished a situation which would not urge him into any. He found
behind Lucienne a deep narrow valley, completely shut in, inaccessible
from its swamps, and with a wretched village called Marly upon the slope
of one of its hills. This closeness, without drain or the means of
having any, was the sole merit of the valley. The King was overjoyed at
his discovery. It was a great work, that of draining this sewer of all
the environs, which threw there their garbage, and of bringing soil
thither! The hermitage was made. At first, it was only for sleeping in
three nights, from Wednesday to Saturday, two or three times a-year, with
a dozen at the outside of courtiers, to fill the most indispensable
posts.
By degrees, the hermitage was augmented, the hills were pared and cut
down, to give at least the semblance of a prospect; in fine, what with
buildings, gardens, waters, aqueducts, the curious and well known
machine, statues, precious furniture, the park, the ornamental enclosed
forest,--Marly has become what it is to-day, though it has been stripped
since the death of the King. Great trees were unceasingly brought from
Compiegne or farther, three-fourths of which died and were immediately
after replaced; vast spaces covered with thick wood, or obscure alleys,
were suddenly changed into immense pieces of water, on which people were
rowed in gondolas; then they were changed again into forest (I speak of
what I have seen in six weeks); basins were changed a hundred times;
cascades the same; carp ponds adorned with the most exquisite painting,
scarcely finished, were changed and differently arranged by the same
hands; and this an infinite number of times; then there was that
prodigious machine just alluded to, with its immense aqueducts, the
conduit, its monstrous resources solely devoted to Marly, and no longer
to Versailles; so that I am under the mark in saying that Versailles,
even, did not cost so much as Marly.
Such was the fate of a place the abode of serpents, and of carrion, of
toads and frogs, solely chosen to avoid expense. Such was the bad taste
of the King in all things, and his proud haughty pleasure in forcing
nature; which neither the most mighty war, nor devotion could subdue!