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A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.
By M. Guizot
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOLUME VI.
XLIX. LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT
L. LOUIS XIV. AND DEATH. (1711-1715.)
LI. LOUIS XV., THE REGENCY, AND CARDINAL DUBOIS. (1715-1723.)
LII. LOUIS XV., THE MINISTRY OF CARDINAL FLEURY. (1723-1748.)
LIII. LOUIS XV., FRANCE IN THE COLONIES. (1745 -1763.)
LIV. LOUIS XV., THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR. --MINISTRY OF THE DUKE OF
CHOISEUL. (1748-1774.)
LV. LOUIS XV., THE PHILOSOPHERS
LVI. LOUIS XVI., MINISTRY OF M. TURGOT. (1774-1776.)
LVII. LOUIS XVI., FRANCE ABROAD.--THE UNITED STATES' WAR OF
INDEPENDENCE. (17751783.)
LVIII. LOUIS XVI., FRANCE AT HOME.--MINISTRY OF M. NECKER. (1776-1781.)
LIX. LOUIS XVI., M. DE CALONNE, AND THE ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES. (1781-
1787.)
LX. LOUIS XVI., CONVOCATION OF THE STATESGENERAL. (1787-1789.)
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
HOTEL DE VILLE, PARIS FRONTISPIECE.
YPRES 151
BRUSSELS 159
NAMUR 161
ANTWERP 233
LOUIS XVI. 347
MARIE ANTOINETTE 456
LIST OF WOOD-CUT ILLUSTRATIONS.
The Grand Monarch in his State Robes 9
Madame de la Valliere 10
Madame de Montespan 12
The Iron Mask 14
Bed-chamber Etiquette 15
Madame de Maintenon and the Duchess of Burgundy. 27
Death of Madame de Maintenon. 34
The King leaving the Death-bed of Monseigneur 36
Louis XIV. in Old Age 47
The Death-bed of Louis XIV 50
Versailles at Night 52
The Regent Orleans 54
The Bed of Justice 57
John Law 62
La Rue Quincampoix 68
The Duke of Maine 71
The Duchess of Maine 72
Cardinal Dubois 78
Peter the Great and Little Louis XV 82
Belzunce amid the Plague-stricken 96
The Boy King and his People 104
Death of the Regent 107
Louis XV 110
Cardinal Fleury 110
Mary Leczinska 121
Death of Plelo 130
"Moriamur pro rege nostro." 142
Louis XV. and his Councillors 148
Louis XV. and the Ambassador of Holland 151
Marshal Saxe 154
Battle of Fontenoy 157
Arrest of Charles Edward 166
Dupleix 168
La Bourdonnais 170
Dupleix meeting the Soudhabar of the Deccan 174
Death of the Nabob of the Carnatic 174
Lally at Pondicherry 184
Champlain 190
Death of General Braddock 203
Death of Wolfe 209
Madame de Pompadour 215
Attack on Fort St. Philip. 218
Assassination of Louis XV. by Damiens 221
Death of Chevalier D'Assas 233
"France, thy Parliament will cut off thy Head too!" 249
Defeat of the Corsicans at Golo 256
Montesquieu 269
Fontenelle 274
Voltaire 277
The Rescue of "La Henriade." 283
Arrest of Voltaire 298
Diderot 314
Alembert 317
Diderot and Catherine II 321
Buffon 323
Rousseau and Madame D'Epinay 338
Turgot's Dismissal 367
Destruction of the Tea 378
Suffren 413
The Reading of "Paul and Virginia." 427
Necker Hospital 432
"There are my Sledges, Sirs." 458
Lavoisier 465
Cardinal Rohan's Discomfiture 470
Arrest of the Members 502
A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.
CHAPTER XLIX.----LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT.
Louia XIV. reigned everywhere, over his people, over his age, often over
Europe; but nowhere did he reign so completely as over his court. Never
were the wishes, the defects, and the vices of a man so completely a law
to other men as at the court of Louis XIV. during the whole period of his
long life. When near to him, in the palace of Versailles, men lived, and
hoped, and trembled; everywhere else in France, even at Paris, men
vegetated. The existence of the great lords was concentrated in the
court, about the person of the king. Scarcely could the most important
duties bring them to absent themselves for any time. They returned
quickly, with alacrity, with ardor; only poverty or a certain rustic
pride kept gentlemen in their provinces. "The court does not make one
happy," says La Bruyere, "it prevents one from being so anywhere else."
At the outset of his reign, and when, on the death of Cardinal Mazarin,
he took the reins of power in hand, Louis XIV. had resolved to establish
about him, in his dominions and at his court, "that humble obedience on
the part of subjects to those who are set over them," which he regarded
as "one of the most fundamental maxims of Christianity." "As the
principal hope for the reforms I contemplated establishing in my kingdom
lay in my own will," says he in his Memoires, "the first step towards
their foundation was to render my will quite absolute by a line of
conduct which should induce submission and respect, rendering justice
scrupulously to any to whom I owed it, but, as for favors, granting them
freely and without constraint to any I pleased and when I pleased,
provided that the sequel of my acts showed that, for all my giving no
reason to anybody, I was none the less guided by reason."
[Illustration: THE GRAND MONARCH IN HIS STATE ROBES----9]
The principle of absolute power, firmly fixed in the young king's mind,
began to pervade his court from the time that he disgraced Fouquet and
ceased to dissemble his affection for Mdlle. de La Valliere. She was
young, charming, and modest. Of all the king's favorites she alone loved
him sincerely. "What a pity he is a king!" she would say. Louis XIV.
made her a duchess; but all she cared about was to see him and please
him. When Madame de Montespan began to supplant her in the king's favor,
the grief of Madame de La Valliere was so great that she thought she
should die of it. Then she turned to God, in penitence and despair.
Twice she sought refuge in a convent at Chaillot. "I should have left
the court sooner," she sent word to the king on leaving, "after having
lost the honor of your good graces, if I could have prevailed upon myself
never to see you again; that weakness was so strong in me that hardly now
am I capable of making a sacrifice of it to God; after having given you
all my youth, the rest of my life is not too much for the care of my
salvation." The king still clung to her. "He sent M. Colbert to beg her
earnestly to come to Versailles, and that he might speak with her.
M. Colbert escorted her thither; the king conversed for an hour with her,
and wept bitterly. Madame de Montespan was there to meet her with open
arms and tears in her eyes." "It is all incomprehensible," adds Madame
de Sevigne; "some say that she will remain at Versailles, and at court,
others that she will return to Chaillot; we shall see." Madame de La
Valliere remained three years at court, "half penitent," she said humbly,
detained there by the king's express wish, in consequence of the tempers
and jealousies of Madame de Montespan, who felt herself judged and
condemned by her rival's repentance. Attempts were made to turn Madame
de La Valliere from her inclination for the Carmelites: "Madame," said
Madame Scarron to her one day, "here are you one blaze of gold: have you
really considered that at the Carmelites' before long, you will have to
wear serge?" She, however, persisted. She was already practising in
secret the austerities of the convent. "God has laid in this heart the
foundation of great things," said Bossuet, who supported her in her
conflict: "the world puts great hinderances in her way and God great
mercies; I have hopes that God will prevail; the uprightness of her heart
will carry everything."
[Illustration: Madame de la Valliere----10]
"When I am in trouble at the Carmelites'," said Madame de La Valliere, as
at last she quitted the court, "I will think of what those people have
made me suffer." "The world itself makes us sick of the world," said
Bossuet in the sermon he preached on the day of her taking the dress;
"its attractions have enough of illusion, its favors enough of
inconstancy, its rebuffs enough of bitterness, there is enough of
injustice and perfidy in the dealings of men, enough of unevenness and
capriciousness in their intractable and contradictory humors--there is
enough of it all, without doubt, to disgust us." "She was dead to me the
day she entered the Carmelites," said the king, thirty-five years later,
when the modest and fervent nun expired at last, in 1710, at her convent,
without having ever relaxed the severities of her penance. He had
married the daughter she had given him to the Prince of Conti.
"Everybody has been to pay compliments to this saintly Carmelite," says
Madame de Sevigne, without appearing to perceive the singularity of the
alliance between words and ideas; "I was there too with Mademoiselle.
The Prince of Conti detained her in the parlor. What an angel appeared
to me at last! She had to my eyes all the charms we had seen heretofore.
I did not find her either puffy or sallow; she is less thin, though, and
more happy-looking. She has those same eyes of hers, and the same
expression; austerity; bad living, and little sleep have not made them
hollow or dull; that singular dress takes away nothing of the easy grace
and easy bearing. As for modesty, she is no grander than when she
presented to the world a princess of Conti, but that is enough for a
Carmelite. In real truth, this dress and this retirement are a great
dignity for her." The king never saw her again, but it was at her side
that Madame de Montespan, in her turn forced to quit the court, went to
seek advice and pious consolation. "This soul will be a miracle of
grace," Bossuet had said.
[Illustration: Madame de Montespan 12]
It was no longer the time of "this tiny violet that hides itself in the
grass," as Madame de Sevigne used to remark. Madame de Montespan was
haughty, passionate, "with hair dressed in a thousand ringlets, a
majestic beauty to show off to the ambassadors: "she openly paraded the
favor she was in, accepting and angling for the graces the king was
pleased to do her and hers, having the superintendence of the household
of the queen whom she insulted without disguise, to the extent of
wounding the king himself. "Pray consider that she is your mistress," he
said one day to his favorite. The scandal was great; Bossuet attempted
the task of stopping it. It was the time of the Jubilee: neither the
king nor Madame de Montespan had lost all religious feeling; the wrath of
God and the refusal of the sacraments had terrors for them still. Madame
de Montespan left the court after some stormy scenes; the king set out
for Flanders. "Pluck this sin from your heart, Sir," Bossuet wrote to
him; "and not only this sin, but the cause of it; go even to the root.
In your triumphant march amongst the people whom you constrain to
recognize your might, would you consider yourself secure of a rebel
fortress if your enemy still had influence there? We hear of nothing but
the magnificence of your troops, of what they are capable under your
leadership! And as for me, Sir, I think in my secret heart of a war far
more important, of a far more difficult victory which God holds out
before you. What would it avail you to be dreaded and victorious
without, when you are vanquished and captive within?" "Pray God for me,"
wrote the bishop at the same time to Marshal Bellefonds, "pray Him to
deliver me from the greatest burden man can have to bear, or to quench
all that is man in me, that I may act for Him only. Thank God, I have
never yet thought, during the whole course of this business, of my
belonging to the world; but that is not all; what is wanted is to be a
St. Ambrose, a true man of God, a man of that other life, a man in whom
everything should speak, with whom all his words should be oracles of the
Holy Spirit, all his conduct celestial; pray, pray, I do beseech you."
At the bottom of his soul, and in the innermost sanctuary of his
conscience, Bossuet felt his weakness; he saw the apostolic severance
from the world, the apostolic zeal and fervor required for the holy
crusade he had undertaken. "Your Majesty has given your promise to God
and the world," he wrote to Louis XIV. in, ignorance of the secret
correspondence still kept up between the king and Madame de Montespan.
"I have been to see her," added the prelate. "I find her pretty calm;
she occupies herself a great deal in good works. I spoke to her as well
as to you the words in which God commands us to give Him our whole heart;
they caused her to shed many tears; may it please God to fix these truths
in the bottom of both your hearts, and accomplish His work, in order that
so many tears, so much violence, so many strains that you have put upon
yourselves, may not be fruitless."
The king was on the road back to Versailles; Madame de Montespan was to
return thither also, her duties required her to do so, it was said;
Bossuet heard of it; he did not for a single instant delude himself as to
the emptiness of the king's promises and of his own hopes. He
determined, however, to visit the king at Luzarches. Louis XIV. gave him
no time to speak.
"Do not say a word to me, sir," said he, not without blushing, do not say
a word; I have given my orders, they will have to be executed." Bossuet
held his tongue. "He had tried every thrust; had acted like a pontiff of
the earliest times, with a freedom worthy of the earliest ages and the
earliest bishops of the Church," says St. Simon. He saw the inutility of
his efforts; henceforth, prudence and courtly behavior put a seal upon
his lips. It was the time of the great king's omnipotence and highest
splendor, the time when nobody withstood his wishes. The great
Mademoiselle had just attempted to show her independence: tired of not
being married, with a curse on the greatness which kept her astrand, she
had made up her mind to a love-match. "Guess it in four, guess it in
ten, guess it in a hundred," wrote Madame de Sevigne to Madame de
Coulanges: "you are not near it; well, then, you must be told. M. de
Lauzun is to marry on Sunday at the Louvre, with the king's permission,
mademoiselle . . . mademoiselle de . .. mademoiselle, guess the name
. . . he is to marry Mademoiselle, my word! upon my word! my sacred
word! Mademoiselle, the great Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle daughter of the
late Monsieur, Mademoiselle grand-daughter of Henry IV., Mademoiselle
d'Eu, Mademoiselle de Dombes, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Mademoiselle
d' Orleans, Mademoiselle, cousin-german to the king, Mademoiselle
destined to the throne, Mademoiselle, the only match in France who would
have been worthy of Monsieur!" The astonishment was somewhat premature;
Mademoiselle did not espouse Lauzun just then, the king broke off the
marriage. "I will make you so great," he said to Lauzun, "that you shall
have no cause to regret what I am taking from you; meanwhile, I make you
duke, and peer, and marshal of France." "Sir," broke in Lauzun,
insolently, "you have made so many dukes that it is no longer an honor to
be one, and as for the baton of marshal of France, your Majesty can give
it me when I have earned it by my services." He was before long sent to
Pignerol, where he passed ten years. There he met Fouquet, and that
mysterious personage called the Iron Mask, whose name has not yet been
discovered to a certainty by means of all the most ingenious conjectures.
It was only by settling all her property on the Duke of Maine after
herself that Mademoiselle purchased Lauzun's release. The king had given
his posts to the Prince of Marcillac, son of La Rochefoucauld. He at the
same time overwhelmed Marshal Bellefonds with kindnesses.
[Illustration: The Iron Mask----14]
"He sent for him into his study," says Madame de Sevigne,--and said to
him, 'Marshal, I want to know why you are anxious to leave me. Is it a
devout feeling? Is it a desire for retirement? Is it the pressure of
your debts? If the last, I shall be glad to set it right, and enter into
the details of your affairs.' The marshal was sensibly touched by this
kindness: 'Sir,' said he, 'it is my debts; I am over head and ears.
I cannot see the consequences borne by some of my friends who have
assisted me, and whom I cannot pay.' 'Well,' said the king, 'they must
have security for what is owing to them. I will give you a hundred
thousand francs on your house at Versailles, and a patent of retainder
(_brevet de retenue_--whereby the emoluments of a post were not lost to
the holder's estate by his death) for four hundred thousand francs, which
will serve as a policy of assurance if you should die; that being so, you
will stay in my service.' In truth, one must have a very hard heart not
to obey a master who enters with so much kindness into the interests of
one of his domestics; accordingly, the marshal made no objection, and
here he is in his place again, and loaded with benefits."
The king entered benevolently into the affairs of a marshal of France; he
paid his debts, and the marshal was his domestic; all the court had come
to that; the duties which brought servants in proximity to the king's
person were eagerly sought after by the greatest lords. Bontemps, his
chief valet, and Fagon, his physician, as well as his surgeon Marachal,
very excellent men, too, were all-powerful amongst the courtiers. Louis
XIV. had possessed the art of making his slightest favors prized; to hold
the candlestick at bedtime (_au petit coucher_), to make one in the trips
to Marly, to play in the king's own game, such was the ambition of the
most distinguished; the possessors of grand historic castles, of fine
houses at Paris, crowded together in attics at Versailles, too happy to
obtain a lodging in the palace. The whole mind of the greatest
personages, his favorites at the head, was set upon devising means of
pleasing the king; Madame de Montespan had pictures painted in miniature
of all the towns he had taken in Holland; they were made into a book
which was worth four thousand pistoles, and of which Racine and Boileau
wrote the text; people of tact, like M. de Langlee, paid court to the
master through those whom he loved. "M. de Langlee has given Madame de
Montespan a dress of the most divine material ever imagined; the fairies
did this work in secret, no living soul had any notion of it; and it
seemed good to present it as mysteriously as it had been fashioned.
Madame de Montespan's dressmaker brought her the dress she had ordered of
him; he had made the body a ridiculous fit; there was shrieking and
scolding as you may suppose. The dressmaker said, all in a tremble, 'As
time presses, madame, see if this other dress that I have here might not
suit you for lack of anything else.' 'Ah! what material! Does it come
from heaven? There is none such on earth.' The body is tried on; it is
a picture. The king comes in. The dressmaker says, 'Madame, it is made
for you.' Everybody sees that it is a piece of gallantry; but on whose
part? 'It is Langl4e,' says the king; 'it is Langlee.' 'Of course,'
says Madame de Montespan, 'none but he could have devised such a device;
it is Langlee, it is Langlee.' Everybody repeats, 'it is Langlee;' the
echoes are agreed and say, 'it is Langlee;' and as for me, my child, I
tell you, to be in the fashion, 'it is Langlle.' "
[Illustration: Bed-chamber Etiquette----15]
All the style of living at court was in accordance with the magnificence
of the king and his courtiers; Colbert was beside himself at the sums the
queen lavished on play. Madame de Montespan lost and won back four
millions, in one night at bassette; Mdlle. de Fontanges gave away twenty
thousand crowns' worth of New Year's gifts; the king had just
accomplished the dauphin's marriage. "He made immense presents on this
occasion; there is certainly no need to despair," said Madame de Sevigne,
"though one does not happen to be his valet; it may happen that, whilst
paying one's court, one will find one's self underneath what he showers
around. One thing is certain, and that is, that away from him all
services go for nothing; it used to be the contrary." All the court were
of the same opinion as Madame de Sevigne.
A new power was beginning to appear on the horizon, with such modesty and
backwardness that none could as yet discern it, least of all could the
king. Madame de Montespan had looked out for some one to take care of
and educate her children. She had thought of Madame Scarron; she
considered her clever; she was so herself, "in that unique style which
was peculiar to the Mortemarts," said the Duke of St. Simon; she was fond
of conversation; Madame Scarron had a reputation of being rather a
blue-stocking; this the king did not like; Madame de Montespan had her
way; Madame Scarron took charge of the children secretly and in an
isolated house. She was attentive, careful, sensible. The king was
struck with her devotion to the children intrusted to her. "She can
love," he said; "it would be a pleasure to be loved by her." The
confidence of Madame de Montespan went on increasing. "The person of
quality (Madame de Montespan) has no partnership with the person who has
a cold (Madame Scarron), for she regards her as the confidential person;
the lady who is at the head of all (the queen) does the same; she is,
therefore, the soul of this court," writes Madame de Sevigne in 1680.
There were, however, frequent storms; Madame de Montespan was jealous and
haughty, and she grew uneasy at the nascent liking she observed in the
king for the correct and shrewd judgment, the equable and firm temper, of
his children's governess. The favor of which she was the object did not
come from Madame de Montespan. The king had made the Parliament
legitimatize the Duke of Maine, Mdlle. de Nantes, and the Count of Vexin;
they were now formally installed at Versailles. Louis XIV. often chatted
with Madame Scarron. She had bought the estate of Maintenon out of the
king's bounty. He made her take the title. The recollection of Scarron
was displeasing to him. "It is supposed that I am indebted for this
present to Madame de Montespan," she wrote to Madame de St. Geran; "I owe
it to my little prince. The king was amusing himself with him one day,
and, being pleased with the manner with which he answered his questions,
told him that he was a very sensible little fellow. 'I can't help
being,' said the child, 'I have by me a lady who is sense itself.'
'Go and tell her,' replied the king, 'that you will give her this evening
a hundred thousand francs for your sugar-plums.' The mother gets me into
trouble with the king, the son makes my peace with him; I am never for
two days together in the same situation, and I do not get accustomed to
this sort of life, I who thought I could make myself used to anything."
She often spoke of leaving the court. "As I tell you everything
honestly," she wrote in 1675 to her confessor, Abbe Gobelin, "I will not
tell you that it is to serve God that I should like to leave the place
where I am; I believe that I might work out my salvation here and
elsewhere, but I see nothing to forbid us from thinking of our repose,
and withdrawing from a position that vexes us every moment. I explained
myself badly if you understood me to mean that I am thinking of being a
nun; I am too old for a change of condition, and, according to the
property I shall have, I shall look out for securing one full of
tranquillity. In the world, all reaction is towards God; in a convent,
all reaction is towards the world; there is one great reason; that of age
comes next." She did not, however, leave the court except to take to the
waters the little Duke of Maine, who had become a cripple after a series
of violent convulsions. "Never was anything more agreeable than the
surprise which Madame de Maintenon gave the king," writes Madame de
Sdvigne to her daughter. "He had not expected the Duke of Maine till the
next day, when he saw him come walking into his room, and only holding by
the hand of his governess; he was transported with joy. M. do Louvois on
her arrival went to call upon Madame de Maintenon; she supped at Madame
de Richelieu's, some kissing her hand, others her gown, and she making
fun of them all, if she is not much changed; but they say that she is."
The king's pleasure in conversing with the governess became more marked
every day; Madame de Montespan frequently burst out into bitter
complaints. "She reproaches me with her kindnesses, with her presents,
with those of the king, and has told me that she fed me, and that I am
strangling her; you know what the fact is; it is a strange thing that we
cannot live together and that we cannot separate. I love her, and I
cannot persuade myself that she hates me." They found themselves alone
together in one of the court carriages. "Let us not be duped by such a
thing as this," said Madame de Montespan, rudely; "let us talk as if we
had no entanglements between us to arrange; it being understood, of
course," added she, "that we resume our entanglements when we get back."
"Madame de Maintenon accepted the proposal," says Madame de Caylus, who
tells the story, "and they kept their word to the letter." Madame de
Maintenon had taken a turn for preaching virtue. "The king passed two
hours in my closet," she wrote to Madame de St. Geran; "he is the most
amiable man in his kingdom. I spoke to him of Father Bourdaloue. He
listened to me attentively. Perhaps he is not so far from thinking of
his salvation as the court suppose. He has good sentiments and frequent
reactions towards God." "The star of Quanto (Madame de Montespan) is
paling," writes Madame de Sevigne to her daughter; "there are tears,
natural pets, affected gayeties, poutings--in fact, my dear, all is
coming to an end. People look, observe, imagine, believe that there are
to be seen as it were rays of light upon faces which, a month ago, were
thought to be unworthy of comparison with others. If Quanto had hidden
her face with her cap at Easter in the year she returned to Paris, she
would not be in the agitated state in which she now is. The spirit,
indeed, was willing, but great is human weakness; one likes to make the
most of a remnant of beauty. This is an economy which ruins rather than
enriches." "Madame de Montespan asks advice of me," said Madame de
Maintenon; "I speak to her of God, and she thinks I have some
understanding with the king; I was present yesterday at a very animated
conversation between them. I wondered at the king's patience, and at the
rage of that vain creature. It all ended with these terrible words: 'I
have told you already, madame; I will not be interfered with.'"
Henceforth Madame de Montespan "interfered with" the king. He gave the
new dauphiness Madame de Maintenon as her mistress of the robes. "I am
told," writes Madame de Sevigne, "that the king's conversations do
nothing but increase and improve, that they last from six to ten o'clock,
that the daughter-in-law goes occasionally to pay them a shortish visit,
that they are found each in a big chair, and that, when the visit is
over, the talk is resumed. The lady is no longer accosted without awe
and respect, and the ministers pay her the court which the rest do. No
friend was ever so careful and attentive as the king is to her; she makes
him acquainted with a perfectly new line of country--I mean the
intercourse of friendship and conversation, without chicanery and without
constraint; he appears to be charmed with it."
Discreet and adroit as she was, and artificial without being false,
Madame de Maintenon gloried in bringing back the king and the court to
the ways of goodness. "There is nothing so able as irreproachable
conduct," she used to say. The king often went to see the queen; the
latter heaped attentions upon Madame de Maintenon. "The king never
treated me more affectionately than he has since she had his ear," the
poor princess would say. The dauphiness had just had a son. The joy at
court was excessive. "The king let anybody who pleased embrace him,"
says the Abbe de Croisy; "he gave everybody his hand to kiss. Spinola,
in the warmth of his zeal, bit his finger; the king began to exclaim.
'Sir,' interrupted the other, 'I ask your Majesty's pardon; but, if I
hadn't bitten you, you would not have noticed me.' The lower orders
seemed beside themselves, they made bonfires of everything. The porters
and the Swiss burned the poles of the chairs, and even the floorings and
wainscots intended for the great gallery. Bontemps, in wrath, ran and
told the king, who burst out laughing and said, 'Let them be; we will
have other floorings.'"
The least clear-sighted were beginning to discern the modest beams of a
rising sun. Madame de Montespan, who had a taste for intellectual
things, had not long since recommended Racine and Boileau to the king to
write a history of his reign. They had been appointed historiographers.
"When they had done some interesting piece," says Louis Racine in his
Memoires, "they used to go and read it to the king at Madame de
Montespan's. Madame de Maintenon was generally present at the reading.
She, according to Boileau's account, liked my father better than him, and
Madame de Montespan, on the contrary, liked Boileau better than my
father, but they always paid their court jointly, without any jealousy
between them. When Madame de Montespan would let fall some rather tart
expressions, my father and Boileau, though by no means sharp-sighted,
observed that the king, without answering her, looked with a smile at
Madame de Maintenon, who was seated opposite to him on a stool, and who
finally disappeared all at once from these meetings. They met her in the
gallery, and asked her why she did not come any more to hear their
readings. She answered very coldly, 'I am no longer admitted to those
mysteries.' As they found a great deal of cleverness in her, they were
mortified and astonished at this. Their astonishment was very much
greater, then, when the king, being obliged to keep his bed, sent for
them with orders to bring what they had newly written of history, and
they saw as they went in Madame de Maintenon sitting in an arm-chair near
the king's pillow, chatting familiarly with his Majesty. They were just
going to begin their reading, when Madame do Montespan, who had not been
expected, came in, and after a few compliments to the king, paid such
long ones to Madame de Maintenon, that the king, to stop them, told her
to sit down. 'As it would not be fair,' he added, 'to read without you a
work which you yourself ordered.' From this day, the two historians paid
their court to Madame de Maintenon as far as they knew how to do so."
The queen had died on the 30th of July, 1683, piously and gently, as she
had lived. "This is the first sorrow she ever caused me," said the king,
thus rendering homage in his superb and unconscious egotism, to the
patient virtue of the wife he had put to such cruel trials. Madame de
Maintenon was agitated but resolute. "Madame de Montespan has plunged
into the deepest devoutness," she wrote, two months after the queen's
death; "it is quite time she edified us; as for me, I no longer think of
retiring." Her strong common sense and her far-sighted ambition, far
more than her virtue, had secured her against rocks ahead; henceforth she
saw the goal, she was close upon it, she moved towards it with an even
step. The king still looked in upon Madame de Montespan of an evening
on his way to the gaming-table; he only staid an instant, to pass on to
Madame de Maintenon's; the latter had modestly refused to become lady in
attendance upon the dauphiness. She, however, accompanied the king on
all his expeditions, "sending him away always afflicted, but, never
disheartened." Madame de Montespan, piqued to see that the king no
longer thought of anybody but Madame de Maintenon, "said to him one day
at Marly," writes Dangeau, "that she has a favor to ask of him, which was
to let her have the duty of entertaining the second-carriage people and
of amusing the antechamber." It required more than seven years of wrath
and humiliation to make her resolve upon quitting the court, in 1691.
The date has never been ascertained exactly of the king's private
marriage with Madame de Maintenon. It took place, probably, eighteen
months or two years after the queen's death; the king was forty-seven,
Madame de Maintenon fifty.
"She had great remains of beauty, bright and sprightly eyes, an
imcomparable grace," says St. Simon, who detested her; "an air of ease,
and yet of restraint and respect; a great deal of cleverness, with a
speech that was sweet, correct, in good terms, and naturally eloquent and
brief."
Madame do La Valliere had held sway over the young and passionate heart
of the prince, Madame de Montespan over the court, Madame de Maintenon
alone established her empire over the man and the king. "Whilst giving
up our heart, we must remain absolute master of our mind," Louis XIV.
had written, "separate our affections from our resolves as a sovereign,
that she who enchants us may never have liberty to speak to us of our
business or of the people who serve us, and that they be two things
absolutely distinct." The king had scrupulously applied this maxim;
Mdlle. de La Valliere had never given a thought to business; Madame de
Montespan had sought only to shine, disputing the influence of Colbert
when he would have put a limit upon her ruinous fancies, leaning for
support at the last upon Louvois, in order to counterbalance the growing
power of Madame de Maintenon; the latter alone had any part in affairs,
a smaller part than has frequently been made out, but important,
nevertheless, and sometimes decisive. Ministers went occasionally to do
their work in her presence with the king, who would turn to her when the
questions were embarassing, and ask, "What does your Solidity think?"
The opinions she gave were generally moderate and discreet. "I did not
manage to please in my conversation about the buildings," she wrote to
Cardinal Noailles, "and what grieves me is to have caused vexation to no
purpose. Another block of chambers is being built here at a cost of a
hundred thousand francs; Marly will soon be a second Versailles. The
people, what will become of them?" And later on: "Would you think
proper, monsignor, to make out a list of good bishops? You could send it
me, so that, on the occasions which are constantly occurring, I might
support their interests, and they might have the business referred to
them in which they ought to have a hand, and for which they are the
proper persons. I am always spoken to when the question is of them; and
if I were better informed, I should be bolder." "It is said that you
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