Letters of 1718-1719.
Saint-Cloud, 1718.
Historians often tell lies. They say in the history of my grandfather, the King of Bohemia, that my grandmother, the queen, carried away by her ambition, never left her husband a moment’s peace until he declared himself king. There is not a single word of truth in all that. The queen thought of nothing but seeing comedies and ballets and reading novels. They also say in the history of the late king that it was from generosity he retired from Holland and consented to make peace. The truth is that Mme. de Montespan, after giving birth to a daughter (now Mme. la Duchesse), had returned to Versailles, and the king longed to see her.
They also attribute the first war in Holland to the king’s ambition, whereas I am positively sure that war was undertaken because M. de Lionne, then minister, was jealous of his wife on account of Prince William of Furstemberg. To get the prince out of France he began the war against Holland and the emperor. If historians lie in that way about things that have passed before our noses, what are we to believe as to the things that are far away from us and happened a great many years ago? I think that histories, except those in Holy Writ, are as false as novels; the only difference is that the latter are more amusing.
Mme. la Duchesse
Nothing new here. I am told that yesterday a man, wanting to beat his wife, with whom he was displeased, prayed thus: “My good God, command that the blows I am about to give thy servant may correct her and make her virtuous.”
I went to Paris yesterday to see my son and his family and be present at the representation of a new play, called “Artaxerxes,” in which there was nothing extraordinary, though there were one or two fine points. On entering my box they gave me your letter of the 7th.
I am so well at Saint-Cloud, where I am tranquil and happy, whereas in Paris I am never allowed an instant of rest; one person brings me a petition, another requests me to use my influence, another solicits an audience, another demands an answer to all the letters he has written, until I really cannot bear it any longer. And then people are surprised that I am not charmed with my fate! In this world great people have their troubles as well as little people; that is not surprising; but what is very annoying for the first is that they are always surrounded by a crowd, so that they cannot hide their griefs nor indulge them in solitude; they are always on exhibition.
My son does not like the country, he cares for nothing but the life of cities. In that he resembles Mme. de Longueville, who was extremely bored in Normandy, where her husband lived. Those about her said, “Good God! madame, ennui is gnawing you to death; why not take some amusement? Here are horses and dogs and forests; will you hunt?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t like hunting.”
“Will you embroider?”
“No, I don’t like embroidery.”
“Will you take a walk, or play at some game?”
“No, I don’t like either.”
“Then what will you do?” some one asked her.
She answered: “I can’t say; but I don’t like innocent pleasures.”
This Duchesse de Longueville was sister of the Prince de Condé. She had led a very irregular life, but afterwards repented and did penance, and never ceased to fast and pray for the rest of her days. She changed so much that no one could imagine she had ever been handsome; her figure alone preserved its grace—but these are old tales.
Saint-Cloud, 1718.
Nothing new, except that my son came here yesterday afternoon and brought me the decree which alters the legal value of the currency. The louis d’or will henceforth be worth thirty-six francs; those who have a great deal of money will profit finely. I am not of that number; it is a long time since money and I have kept company.
You ask me if foreigners professing the Lutheran religion can obtain military employments here. No, they are never admitted except into the Alsace regiment and the Swiss corps.
All parliament is unchained against my son, and it is certainly sustained by the eldest of the bastards [Duc du Maine] and his wife. As soon as any one speaks ill of my son and shows himself dissatisfied, the duchess invites him to Sceaux, cajoles and pities him, and spares nothing to excite him still further against my son. I am amazed at his patience. He has courage, goes his straight road, and does not fret himself about anything. The parliament of Paris has made an appeal to all the other parliaments of France to unite with it; but none as yet have committed that folly; on the contrary, they have shown themselves faithful to my son. Everything has been done to rouse the people against him by spreading libels, but so far without effect; I think more would have been produced if the bastard and his wife had not been mixed up in the matter, because they are detested in Paris. I think what prevents my son from acting with vigour against the Duc du Maine is, first, that he dreads the tears and anger of his wife, and next, that he loves his other brother-in-law, the Comte de Toulouse.
My son will soon find means to pay the debts of the late king, for Law (or Lass as they call him in France) is an Englishman who has great talent. The people are not more pressed than they were in the days of the king, but they are not relieved, and my son’s enemies profit by that unfortunate circumstance to rouse the public hatred against him. It is false that he accumulates money; he has never touched what comes to him as regent. I do not believe there exists in the world a more disinterested being; he is even too much so; he makes beggars of his children. Nearly all the tales told in the gazettes about him are lies.
Saint-Cloud, 1718.
I thought M. Law was an Englishman but it seems he is a Scotchman; and in point of fact horribly ugly; but he appears to be a worthy man and he has much talent; he came near dying yesterday of an attack of colic. Parliament is not quiet yet; it still makes remonstrances. Everything is so horribly ruined in the kingdom that my son will never in all his life have rest or satisfaction again.
The wife of the humpback [Duchesse du Maine] desired to have an interview and explanation with my son. She spoke with emphasis, as she does when she acts comedy, and told him he ought not to believe that the answer to Fitzmaurice’s book emanated from her; that a princess of the blood like herself did not condescend to write libels; that Cardinal de Polignac [her lover] had been employed in far too great affairs to meddle in such trifles; and that M. de Malézieux was too great a philosopher to know about anything but science; and as for herself, she was solely occupied in bringing up her children and making them worthy of the rank of princes of the blood—of which they were unjustly deprived. My son confined himself to saying: “I have reason to believe that those libels were written in your house and for you; persons in your service have sworn that they saw them written; I cannot be made to either believe or disbelieve things.” As to her last words he said nothing in reply, and went away. The lady boasted everywhere of the energy and firmness with which she spoke to him.
Saint-Cloud, 1718.
Parliament thwarts my son and tries more than ever to excite the bourgeoisie and the populace of Paris against him, and great calamities may result. Every night in going to bed I thank God that no evil has happened during the day. Many persons here would like to have the King of Spain for king; he is a weak man and could be managed more easily than my son. Every one thinks solely of his own interest. It is asserted that the King of Spain has rights to the throne of France, and that a great wrong was done when he was induced to renounce his country. All this is said in view of the possible death of the little king. If he should die, my son would be king, but he would not be in greater safety than he is at this moment, and that death would be a great misfortune for him.
I have never known such a summer as this. It has not rained for weeks and the heat increases every day; the leaves on the trees are shrivelled as if a fire had gone over them. There are prophecies that rain will begin to fall on Wednesday. God grant it! but until it rains no one will see me in Paris. We think it is hot here, but every one who comes from Paris exclaims, “Oh! how cool Saint-Cloud is!” Paris is horrible, very hot and stinking; the streets have such a shocking smell one can’t endure it; the extreme heat has made the meat and the fish rot, and that, joined to the crowds of people who relieve themselves in the streets, makes an odour so detestable that it cannot be borne.
Saint-Cloud, August 30, 1718.
Parliament had formed the fine project, if my son had postponed action twenty-four hours, to make the Duc du Maine ruler of France by declaring the king major and giving to the duke the sole direction of affairs. But my son has disconcerted all this by removing the Duc du Maine from the king and degrading him to his proper rank. They say that the president of parliament was so frightened that he sat petrified as if he had seen the head of Medusa. But Medusa herself could not stop the fury of the Duchesse du Maine. She launched into horrible threats, and said publicly she would soon find means to give the regent a fillip that should make him bite the dust. It is thought the old guenipe is intriguing underhand in this matter with her pupil.
I went this morning to Paris where there is great uproar. My son made the king hold a lit de justice, to which the parliament was summoned, and was formally enjoined, in the king’s name, not to meddle with the government, but to keep to its own province, that of judging cases and doing justice. The new Keeper of the Seals was installed in office, and as it was known positively that the Duc du Maine and his wife were exciting parliament against the king and against my son, the superintendence of the king’s education was taken from him and given to M. le Duc; he was also deprived, he and his children, of the right to be treated as princes of the blood; but they maintained the younger brother in all his privileges because he has always conducted himself well.
The parliament people and the Duchesse du Maine are so furious against my son that I am constantly afraid they will assassinate him. The duchess makes the most insulting speeches; she said at table: “They say that I push parliament to revolt against the Duc d’Orléans; but I despise him too much to take such a noble vengeance against him—I shall know how to avenge myself otherwise.” You see what a fury that woman is, and whether I have not good reason to be in a continual agony.
Saint-Cloud, 1718.
I know all about the tragical affair of the czarewitch; an exact account of it has been rendered to my son by the people over there. There are many lies about it in the newspapers; the czar is not as barbarous as he was before he travelled here and to other Courts. The czarewitch had taken part in a plot the object of which was to kill his father; it was from papers written by his own hand that he was condemned to death. He began by denying everything, and they could not have convicted him if his mistress had not betrayed him and given up his papers. My son told me last night at the theatre that the czar had assembled a great Council, in which were the bishops and all the councillors of State. He had his son brought before them, embraced him, and said: “Is it possible that after I spared your life you were trying to assassinate me?” The prince denied everything. Then the czar gave to the Council the letters which had been seized, and said: “I cannot judge my own son; judge him, and let him find mercy and not be proceeded against by the full rigour of the law.” The Council unanimously condemned the prince to death. When the czarewitch heard the sentence he was overcome with emotion and remained some hours without being able to speak. Then he asked to see his father once more before he died. He confessed everything to him and begged his forgiveness with tears. He lived two days after that, and he died in the greatest repentance. Between ourselves, I think they poisoned him, so as not to have the shame of seeing him in the hands of the executioner. It is a dreadful story and has the air of a tragedy; it is like those of Livius Andronicus.
I am still very uneasy on the subject of my son. He has unfortunately many enemies, but still more false friends; everything is to be feared from both. One of my grand-daughters is determined to be a nun, in spite of my wishes and those of her father. The mother has brought her children up in a way that is a matter of derision and shame; I am forced to see it daily; but all that I could say would do no good.
My heart is full when I think that is the day when our poor Mlle. de Chartres is to make her profession. I have represented to her all I could think of to turn her from that cursed resolution, but without result. In convents the nuns take the names of saints; my grand-daughter has taken that of Sister Batilde. No one is afflicted to the point of weeping, which would surely have happened to me had I been present at her profession. I do not know the motives that determined her; she only told me that she felt herself perfectly capable of enduring the life.
Mlle. de Valois, the fourth daughter, is not on good terms with her mother, who tried in vain to make her marry the Prince de Dombes, the eldest son of the Duc du Maine. The mother constantly reproaches the daughter and tells her that if she had married her nephew the misfortune which has fallen upon her brother would never have happened. She is so unwilling to have her daughter before her eyes that she has asked me to keep her for a while with me.
The old guenipe must think herself immortal to still wish to reign though she is eighty-three years old. The blow which struck the Duc du Maine has shaken her roughly. But she has not lost all hope, and she is so little scrupulous as to the means of reaching her ends, that I am very uneasy, for I know what usage she can make of poison. What has happened to the Duc du Maine is a terrible blow to her, and my son is never upon his guard; he goes about the environs at night in strange carriages; he sups in one place and then in another with his companions, among whom are many who are quite worthless; they are clever enough, but have no good quality.
People talk in diverse ways of the Duchesse du Maine. Some people say she beat her husband and broke the mirrors in her room to bits, also everything else that was breakable when she received the news of his overthrow. Others say she never said a word and only wept. M. le Duc is charged with the education of the king. He said that he did not in the beginning ask for that office because he had not reached his majority; but now in the actual state of things he did demand it, and he obtained it.
I must tell you of a most amusing dialogue between Lord Stair and the Spanish ambassador, Prince Cellamare. The latter had reported all over Paris that it was entirely false that the English fleet had beaten the Spanish fleet; and the partisans of Spain who are here managed so well that the news of the defeat was no longer believed, when, suddenly, the son of Admiral Byng arrived, bringing the official account of the action and a list of the ships which the English had captured, burned, or sunk. Lord Stair, having received these documents, said to Prince Cellamare: “Well, monsieur, what do you say now about your fleet?”
“I say,” replied the ambassador, “that the fleet is safely at Cadiz.”
“I am not talking about the fleet at Cadiz,” said Stair. “I mean that of Messina.”
“The fleet of Cadiz and all the galleons richly laden have entered the port of Cadiz,” returned the prince; and no other answer could be got from him.
The little dwarf [Duchesse du Maine] says she has more courage than her husband, her sons, and her brother-in-law, and, like another Jael, she will kill my son by hammering a nail into his head. My son does not trouble himself about her threats. When I tell him he ought to be upon his guard, he laughs and shakes his head as if I were talking nonsense. But the perils that surround my son’s existence make me spend many a sleepless night, and certainly his regency has not been to me a subject of satisfaction.
Paris, 1718.
The affair of the Duc du Maine is not one of those things that can be forgotten, at least not so long as those two old hussies are living [Mme. de Maintenon and the Princesse des Ursins]; for they stir him up, together with his little devil of a wife, to all sorts of secret plotting against my son. Mme. des Ursins has one good thing about her, however: she does not call upon the good God to assist her intrigues. My son is not in safety, and that troubles me extremely. I do my best to be resigned to the divine will and to accept whatever it provides; but the heart of a mother is too tender about an only son.
You may move lions and tigers and all sorts of wild beasts sooner than wicked people when ambition and cupidity are the cause of their enmity. All arguers on the condition of the country do not know the deplorable state in which my son found the kingdom. When the change in the government occurred each person imagined he would grow rich; they praised my son and expected marvels of him; as these marvels have not been realized, because they were impossible, blame is now substituted for praise. There would be little harm if such complaints exhaled in words, but the discontented are forming intrigues and plots. The French will not stop at anything, and they do not know what gratitude is.
Paris, 1718.
When I first came to France I saw here many persons such as one may not find again in centuries. There was Lulli, for music; Beauchamp, for ballets; Corneille and Racine, for tragedy; Molière, for comedy; la Chamelle and Beauval, actresses; Baron, Lafleur, Torilière, and Guérin, actors. All these persons excelled in their vocations. La Duclos and la Raisin were equally good; the latter had a great deal of charm. Her husband was also excellent in comic parts. There was likewise a good harlequin and a capital scaramouch. There were good singers at the opera, Clédière, Pomerueil, Godenarche, Duménil, la Rochechouard, Mauvry, la Saint-Christophe, la Brigogne, la Beaucreux. All that one sees and hears now does not come up to such talents.
Everything goes to beat of drum between my son and his mistresses, without the least gallantry. It reminds me of the old patriarchs who had so many women. My son has a good deal of King David about him; he has courage and spirit, he is a good musician, he is small, brave, and ready to love any woman; he is not particular in that respect; provided they are good-humoured, very shameless, and can eat and drink a great deal, he does not mind about their faces.
The Duc du Maine and his party have let his sister [the Duchesse d’Orléans] know that if my son dies she will be made regent, and they have promised her they would then act in all things by her will, and she would be the greatest figure that there was in the world. They told her they meant no harm to my son, but that he could not live long, his life was so disorderly; that he must die soon, or else become blind, in which case he would consent to her exercising the regency. I heard all this from a person to whom the Duc du Maine himself told it; and when one knows it one is not surprised that Mme. d’Orléans wanted to force her daughter to marry the Duc du Maine’s son.
Saint-Cloud, 1719.
Thank God, my son is now in perfect health; he came here last night and supped and slept, and returned this morning to Paris; he was very gay indeed. He told us that in Spain they have enormous grapes that intoxicate like wine, and that once after eating only one grape his head swam; he went to a convent and said all sorts of foolish things to the nuns, without knowing what he was talking about.
Mme. du Maine is not larger than a child of ten. When she shuts her mouth she is not ugly, but she has villanous, irregular teeth. She is not very plump, has pretty eyes, and is white and fair, but puts on a horrible quantity of rouge. If she was as good as she is bad there would be nothing to say against her; but her malignancy is intolerable. She is easy during the day, which she spends playing cards, but when evening comes the tempers and the follies begin; she torments her husband, her children, and her servants till they do not know how to bear it. She is no beauty, but she has a great deal of intelligence; she is very well educated and can talk on all sorts of subjects, and that attracts to her learned men; she knows how to flatter the discontented and excite them against my son. She is lord and master of her husband. He holds many offices and can give places to a great many persons: in the regiment of the guards, of which he is general; in the artillery, of which he is grand-master; in the carbineers, to which he appoints all officers; he has also his own regiment; and these favours rally to him a great many persons.
Paris, December 18, 1718.
My son has found himself obliged to arrest Prince Cellamare, because they found on his messenger, who was the Abbé Porto-Carrero, letters from the ambassador which revealed a conspiracy against the king and against my son. The ambassador was arrested by two of the Councillors of State. In his secret despatches he warned Alberoni to be very careful not to be on good terms with my son, because as soon as the treaty was signed he meant to poison the little king; the ambassador added that he would see that my son had his hands too full to think of war, for he had brought a number of provinces to promise to revolt; that their party was strong in Paris, and that Alberoni had only to send money and not spare it. I believe the lamester, brother of my daughter-in-law, will be found in this affair. The ambassador has been interrogated by the two Councillors of State, and he admitted, laughing, that he wrote the letters in order to avoid the evils of war, and wanted simply to frighten my son. When they asked him why he had said such infamies of the regent, he replied that he must admit there had been a little poison in his remarks, but that poison was necessary to compose an antidote. What is very strange is that the Maréchal de Noailles, once my son’s sub-governor, is implicated in the plot; that is because he is related to that devil incarnate, the Princesse des Ursins, who will pursue my son to the death,—her sole motive being that he thought her too old to wish to be her lover. Cellamare’s letters have been printed, so that every one can see the thread of the conspiracy.
If the Abbé Dubois were at his first lie he would be dead long ago; he is passed master in the art of lying, above all when it is to his personal advantage; if I wrote down all that I know about that, it would make a long litany. It was he who clandestinely told the king at the time of my son’s marriage what he had better say and do to bring it about; he also had conferences on that subject with the Maintenon. He behaves now as if he thought that he and I were perfectly agreed, and no matter what disagreeable things I say to him, he turns them all into jest. I will do him justice and say he is a man of capacity; he talks well and is good company; but he is false and selfish as the devil; he looks like a fox, his deceitfulness can be read in his eyes. His portrait might be made as a fox crouching on the ground to pounce on a hen. But he can express himself so well as an honest man that I regarded him as such till the marriage of my son; it was then I discovered his trickery. If that abbé were as good a Christian as he is an able man, he would be excellent; but he believes in nothing, and it is that which makes him false and a scoundrel. He is well-informed, no doubt of that, and he gave my son a good education; but I wish he had never seen him, and then this miserable marriage, which I deplore, would never have taken place. Except the Abbé Dubois, no priest has any favour with my son.
Paris, 1719.
It is certain that my son is much to be pitied on account of his wife, and for this, if there were no other reason, I cannot comprehend why he should like the Abbé Dubois as he does; for it was that abbé who persuaded him to consent to the marriage and plunged him into all that affliction. My son sees his wife every day; if she is in a good humour he stays a long time with her; if she is out of temper, which often happens, he goes away and says nothing.
I used to be attached to the Abbé Dubois because I thought that he truly loved my son and only thought of his good and his advantage; but when I found he was a faithless dog looking to nothing but his own interests, and did not care in the least for my son’s honour, but was helping to precipitate him to eternal damnation by letting him plunge into debauchery, all my esteem for that little priest changed to contempt. I heard from my son himself that the abbé met him once as he was about to enter a bad house, and instead of taking him by the arm and leading him away, he only laughed. By such laxity and by my son’s marriage he proved that neither faith, fidelity, nor decency was in him. I am not wrong in suspecting him of taking part in that marriage. What I know I have from my son himself and from the persons around the old vilaine in the days when the abbé went to her secretly at night to help her intrigues and betray the young master whom he sold.
Saint-Cloud, 1719.
I am so troubled that my hand trembles: my son has come to tell me that he has been obliged to decide on arresting his brother-in-law, the Duc du Maine and the duchess. They are the leaders of the shocking Spanish plot. All is discovered; the papers of the ambassador of Spain were seized, the persons arrested have confessed. The duchess, being a princess of the blood [daughter of M. le Prince de Condé], was arrested by four captains of the guard; her husband, who was in the country, by a lieutenant. That makes a great difference between them. The duchess was sent to Dijon, and her husband to Doullens, a little fortress. Their people who were in the plot have been put in the Bastille.
Mme. d’Orléans is much distressed, but is much more reasonable than Mme. la Duchesse. She says that, as her husband was compelled to adopt such rigorous measures against his brother-in-law, there must have been strong reasons.
There is great discord among the clergy. The bishops are disunited; some are for the pope and the doctrine of the Jesuits; others support the Jansenists. I wish that both sides took more care to live like Christians and die well; leaving disputes to those who find them to their taste. I do not trouble myself about either party.
Cardinals cannot be arrested, but you can exile them. Cardinal de Polignac has therefore received orders to retire to one of his abbeys and stay there. Love turned his head. He was formerly a good friend to my son, but he changed as soon as he attached himself to that little frog. Magny is not yet arrested; he is hiding from convent to convent among the Jesuits. My son showed me a letter that Mme. du Maine had written to Cardinal de Polignac, which was seized among his papers. A most virtuous and estimable person she is, truly! In this fine letter she says: “We go to-morrow to the country; I will arrange the apartments so that your room can be near mine; try to manage as well as last time, and we will give ourselves heart-joy.”
Paris, 1719.
I wrote you that the Duc and Duchesse du Maine were the leaders of the plot; since then the proof of the duke’s culpability has been found in a letter to him from Alberoni, in which are these words: “As soon as war is declared, fire all your mines.” Nothing can be clearer. They are great wretches.
Though the treason is discovered, all the traitors are not yet known. My son laughs and says: “I hold the head and tail of the monster, but not its body as yet.” The Duc and Duchesse du Maine have written on all sides to justify themselves. There is such wickedness and falsehood in what they say that I cannot endure the thought of it. No one can imagine the libels they have spread in the provinces about my poor son; they have also sent them to foreign countries.
Parliament is now on good terms with my son, and has rendered a judgment wholly in his favour; that shows how the du Maines had stirred it up against him. The Jesuits may, very likely, be secretly plotting against my son, for all the partisans of the Constitution [bull Unigenitus] are his adversaries; but they keep themselves quiet, and nothing is shown to compromise them. They are clever people. Mme. d’Orléans is beginning to laugh and show satisfaction; which worries me, because I know she has consulted the president of parliament [Mesmes] and other persons to learn whether in case of her husband’s death, she could be appointed regent with her son. The president answered no; that the regency would devolve on M. le Duc, which answer seemed to greatly disturb her.
My son made me laugh yesterday. I asked him how the Maintenon was; he answered, “Wonderfully well.” I said, “How can that be, at her age?” to which he replied: “Don’t you know that the good God to punish the devil makes him stay a very long time in a villanous body?”
Paris, April 20, 1719.
Saturday evening we lost a pious soul at Saint-Cyr, the old Maintenon. The news of the arrest of the Duc du Maine and his wife made her faint away, and it may have been the cause of her death, for from that moment she had no rest. Anger and the loss of the hope to reign through him turned her blood and gave her the measles, and for twenty days she had continual fever. A storm which came up made the disease strike inward, and it stifled her. She was eighty-six years old. I have it in my head that what grieved her most at the last was leaving my son and me behind her in good health.
She died like a young person. She gave herself eighty-two years, but she was really eighty-six. If she had died twenty years ago I should have cordially rejoiced, but now it gives me neither pleasure nor pain. There is nothing to wonder at in her dying like a young person. In the other world, where all are equal and there is no difference in rank, it will be decided whether she stays with the king or the paralytic Scarron; but if the king knows then all that was hidden from him in this world, there is no doubt he will return her very willingly to Scarron.
Paris, 1719.
It appears that the Duc de Richelieu was not in the conspiracy of the Duc and Duchesse du Maine, but had a plot of his own, which has put him in the Bastille. He took it into his head that he was so considerable a person he could not be refused a certain marriage far above his just pretensions. When that hope vanished, he began, in his vexation, to plot. He is an arch-debauchee, and a coward; he believes in neither God nor His word; in all his life he never has done, and never will do a worthy thing; he is ambitious and false as the devil. He is not yet twenty-four years old. I do not think him as handsome as the Court women do, who are mad about him. He has a pretty figure and fine hair, an oval face and very brilliant eyes, but everything about him indicates a rascal; he is graceful and is not without cleverness, but his insolence is great; he is the worst of spoiled youths. The first time he was put in the Bastille was for saying he was an actual lover of the Duchesse de Bourgogne and all her young ladies; which was a horrible lie.
Saint-Cloud, 1719.
You ask me what has recently made me so angry; I cannot tell it in detail, only in the gross. It is the horrible coquetry of Mlle. de Valois with that cursèd Duc de Richelieu, who has shown the letters that he had from her, for he only loves her from vanity. All the young seigneurs of the Court have read the letters in which she assigns him rendezvous. Her mother wanted me to take her here with me, which I refused curtly; but she is now returning to the charge. I am horribly vexed; the human species disgusts me. I cannot endure the idea of having her; but I must, to avoid worse scandal; the very sight of that heedless creature will make me ill. All this is the result of the apathy and nullity of the mother; may God forgive her! but she has brought up her daughters very ill.
The Duc de Richelieu is bold and full of impertinence; he knows the kindness of my son and abuses it; if justice were done he would pay for his manœuvres and his temerity with his head; he has triply deserved it. I am not cruel, but I could see him hanging from a gibbet without a tear. He is now walking about on the rampart of the Bastille, curled and bedecked, while the ladies are standing in the street below to see that beautiful image. Many tears will be shed in Paris, for every woman is in love with him; I don’t know why, for he is a little toad in whom I can see nothing agreeable. He has no courage; he is impertinent, faithless, and indiscreet; he says harm of all his mistresses; and yet a princess of the blood-royal [Mlle. de Charolais, grand-daughter of M. le Prince de Condé] is so in love with him that when he became a widower she wanted to marry him. Her grandmother and brother formally opposed it, and with reason, for independently of the misalliance she would have been, all her life, most unhappy. He has had each of his mistresses painted in the various habits of the religious orders: Mlle. de Charolais as a Franciscan nun,—they say it is an excellent likeness; the Maréchale de Villars and the Maréchale d’Estrées in the Capucin habit.
Saint-Cloud, 1719.
I do not mingle in any way with what is going on in Rome. The pope and I have no relations with each other; therefore no one need address himself to me to get a dispensation.
It is not true that I have changed my name; I cannot be called in France by any other title than that of Madame, for my husband, as brother of the king, bore the title of Monsieur, and I as his wife cannot bear any other than that of Madame. The daughters of the king are also called so, but, to distinguish them, the baptismal name is added; for instance, the three daughters of Henri II. were called: Madame Élisabeth, who became Queen of Spain; Madame Henriette, who became Queen of England; and Madame Christine, who was afterwards Duchesse de Savoie. The daughters of the king’s brother are called Mademoiselle; the eldest bears that title with nothing added to it; the others add the name of their appanage; that is how it is there is a Mademoiselle de Chartres, Mademoiselle de Valois, Mademoiselle de Montpensier. It is the same with the grandsons of the king; they should be called Monsieur with the names of their appanages attached; it was always an abuse to say the Duc de Bourgogne, the Duc de Berry: they ought to have been called Monsieur de Bourgogne, Monsieur de Berry.
I went last Sunday to see the Duchesse de Berry and found her in a sad state. She had such frightful pains in the soles and toes of her feet that the tears came into her eyes. I saw that my presence prevented her from screaming and so I came away. I thought she looked very ill. They have had a consultation of three physicians, who decided on bleeding from the foot. It was difficult to bring her to consent, for the suffering in her feet is so unbearable that she screams if the sheets merely touch them. However, the bleeding succeeded and she has suffered less since. It was gout in both feet.
Saint-Cloud, 1719.
I went yesterday to see the Duchesse de Berry; she is better, thank God, but she cannot walk yet. Two great boils have come upon the soles of her feet, which burn them as if with red-hot iron; it is a very singular illness. Twice a week they give her medicine, and the other days an enema; both do her good. It seems that her illness comes from the frightful gluttony in which she indulged last year.
I told you my son had a fever; he is better now; but I fear a relapse, for he is, to say the least, as much of a glutton as his daughter; and he will not listen to any advice.
The English nation is a wicked nation, false and ungrateful. Most of the persons of rank who were at Saint-Germain, whom the late queen supported (imposing upon herself personally the greatest privations in order to do so) now declaim against her, and tell a thousand lies of that good and virtuous queen. All this fills me with wrath.
My son is really too kind; that little Duc de Richelieu having assured him that he had fully intended to reveal to him the plot, he believed him and has set him at liberty. It is true that the duke’s mistress, Mlle. de Charolais, never left my son a moment’s peace about it. It is a horrible thing for a princess of the blood to declare in the face of all the world that she is as amorous as a cat, and that her passion is for a scoundrel of a rank so beneath her own that she cannot marry him, and who is moreover unfaithful to her, for he is known to have half a dozen other mistresses. When she is told of that she replies: “Pooh! he only has them to sacrifice them to me and to tell me all that passes between them.” It is really an awful thing.
If I believed in sorcery I should say that that duke possessed a supernatural power; for he has never yet found a woman who opposed him the slightest resistance; they all run after him, and it is literally shameful. He is not handsomer than others, and he is so indiscreet and gabbling that he says himself if an empress beautiful as an angel fell in love with him and wished to be his on condition that he would not tell of it, he should prefer to leave her on the spot and never look at her again. He is a great poltroon, but very insolent, without heart or soul. I revolt at the thought that he is the petted darling of women, and I am quite sure he will only show ingratitude for my son’s kindness—but I will not say another word about that personage; he puts me out of all patience.
The harm that is said of M. Law and his bank is the effect of jealousy; for nothing better could be found. He is paying off the fearful debts of the late king, and he has diminished the taxes, lessening in that way the burdens that are weighing down the people; wood does not cost the half of what it did; the duties on wine, meats, in fact, all that is consumed in Paris have been abolished; and that has caused great joy among the people, as you may suppose. M. Law is very polite. I think a great deal of him; he does all he can to be agreeable to me. He does not wish to act secretly, like those who have preceded him in the management of the finances, but publicly, with honour. It is quite false that he has bought a palace from the Duchesse de Berry; she has none to sell; all the houses she has return to the king,—such as Meudon, Châville, and La Muette.
Law is so pursued that he has no peace day or night; a duchess kissed his hands in sight of everybody, and if duchesses kiss his hands, what will not the other women kiss? Impossible to have more capacity than he, but I would not for all the gold in the world be in his place; he is tormented like a lost soul; besides which his enemies are spreading all sorts of wicked tales about him. I am tired out with hearing of nothing but shares and millions, and I cannot hide my ill-humour. People are flocking here from all corners of Europe; during the last month there have been in Paris two hundred and fifty thousand more persons than usual; they have had to make rooms in lofts and barns, and Paris is so full of carriages that there is great difficulty in getting through the streets, and many persons have been crushed. One lady meaning to say to M. Law, “Give me a concession,” called out in a loud voice, “Ah! monsieur, give me a conception;” to which M. Law replied: “Madame, you have come too late; there is no way at present by which you can obtain one.”
Saint-Cloud, 1719.
I am afraid that the excesses of the Duchesse de Berry in eating and drinking will put her underground. The fever never leaves her and she has two paroxysms of it daily. She shows neither impatience nor anger, though she suffered greatly from the emetic they gave her yesterday. She has become as thin and shrunken as she was fat; yesterday she confessed and received the communion.
July 17, 1719.
The Duchesse de Berry died last night between two and three o’clock; her end was very gentle; they say she died as if she fell asleep. My son remained beside her until she had entirely lost consciousness. She was his favourite child.
The poor duchess took her own life as surely as if she had put a pistol to her head; she secretly ate melons, figs, milk; she owned it to me herself, and her physician told me she locked her door against him and all the other doctors for fourteen days in order to do as she liked. When the storm came up, as it did, she turned to death. She said to me last night: “Ah! Madame, that peal of thunder did me great harm,”—and indeed it was very visible. She received the last sacraments with such firmness that it wrung our hearts.
My son has lost the power to sleep; his poor daughter could not have been saved; her head was full of water; she had an ulcer in the stomach, another in the hip, the rest of her inside was like bouillie and the liver attacked. She was taken at night, secretly, with all her household, to Saint-Denis. Such embarrassment was felt about her funeral oration that it was judged best to have none at all. She said she died without regret, because she was reconciled with God, and that if her life were prolonged she might offend Him again. That touched us in a way I cannot express. At heart she was a good person; and if her mother had taken more care of her and had brought her up better there would be nothing but good to say of her. I own that her loss goes to my heart—but let us talk of something else; this is too sad.
The reason you could not read my last letter was that it was partly torn by one of my dogs just as I finished it. I see you do not like dogs, for if you loved them as I do you would forgive their little faults. I have one, named Reine inconnue, which understands as well as a man, and never leaves me an instant without weeping and howling as long as I am out of her sight.
Saint-Cloud, 1719.
Yesterday, directly after my dinner, I went to Paris, and found my poor son in a state to melt a heart of rock. He is afflicted to the soul, and all the more because he sees that if he had not shown such excessive indulgence to his dear daughter, if he had better acted a father’s part, she would now be living and healthy.
With all her revenues she leaves behind her debts amounting to 400,000 francs, for my son to pay. Those people about her robbed and pillaged the poor princess horribly; but that is always the way with a brood of favourites. Her marriage with that toad’s head [Rion] is unhappily but too true. He is not, however, of a bad stock; he is allied to good families; the Duc de Lauzun is his uncle, and Biron his nephew; but, for all that, he was not worthy of the honours that came to him. He was only a captain in the king’s regiment. Women ran after him. I thought him ugly and repulsive, and sickly looking besides. When the news of the Duchesse de Berry’s death reached the army, the Prince de Conti went to find Rion and made him this pretty speech: “She is dead, your milch cow, and you need not talk any more about her.” My son feels rather stung; but he does not wish to seem to know of it.
Saint-Cloud, 1719.
I promised to tell you about my journey to Chelles [to witness the installation of her grand-daughter as abbess of the convent of Chelles]. I started Thursday at seven o’clock, with the Duchesse de Brancas, Mme. de Châteauthiers, and Mme. de Rathsamhausen; we arrived at half-past ten. My grandson, the Duc de Chartres, had already arrived; my son came a few minutes later; then Mlle. de Valois. Mme. d’Orléans had herself bled expressly to be unable to come. She and the abbess are not very good friends; and besides, her extreme laziness would prevent her from getting up so early.
We went to the church. The prie-dieu of the abbess was placed in the nun’s choir; it was violet velvet covered with gold fleur-de-lis; my prie-dieu was against the balustrade; my son and his daughter were behind my chair, because the princes of the blood cannot kneel upon my carpet; that is a right reserved to the grandsons of France. The whole of the king’s band was in the loft. Cardinal de Noailles said mass. The altar is a very fine one of black and white marble with four thick columns of black marble; there are four beautiful statues of sainted abbesses, one so like our own abbess you might think it was her portrait; it was, however, carved before my grand-daughter was born, for she is only twenty-one years old.
Twelve monks of her Order, robed in splendid chasubles, came to serve the mass. After the cardinal had read the epistle, the master of ceremonies entered the nun’s choir and brought out the abbess; she came with a very good air, followed by two abbesses, and half a dozen nuns of her own convent. She made a deep curtsey to the altar, then to me, and knelt down before the cardinal, who was seated in a great armchair before the altar. They brought in state the confession of faith, which she read, and after the cardinal had recited many prayers, he gave her a book containing the rules of the convent. She then returned to her place; and after the Credo and the offertory had been read, she came forward again, accompanied by an abbess and her nuns. Two great wax tapers and two loaves of bread, one gilt, the other silvered, were brought, with which she made her offering. After the cardinal had taken the communion, she again knelt before him and he gave her the crozier. Then he took her to her seat, not at her prie-dieu, but to her seat as abbess, a sort of throne surmounted by the dais of a princess of the blood with the fleurs-de-lis. As soon as she was seated the trumpets and the hautboys sounded, and the cardinal, followed by all his priests, placed himself near the altar on the left side, crozier in hand, and they chanted the Te Deum. Next, all the nuns of the convent came forward, two and two, to testify their submission to their new abbess, making her a deep obeisance. That reminded me of the honours they pay Athys when they make him high priest of Cybele in the opera, and I almost thought they were going to sing, “Before thee all bow down and tremble,” etc.
After the Te Deum, we entered the convent about half-past twelve and sat down to table, my son and I, my grandson, the Duc de Chartres, the Princesse Victoire de Soissons, the young Demoiselle d’Auvergne, daughter of Duc d’Albret, and my three ladies. The abbess went to a table in her refectory with her sister, Mlle. de Valois, the two ladies who accompanied her, twelve abbesses, and all the nuns of the convent. It was droll to see so many black robes round a table. My son’s people served a very fine repast; and after dinner was over they let the people come in and pillage the dessert and confectionery. At a quarter to five my carriage came, and I returned to Saint-Cloud.
You ask me if my Abbé de Saint-Albin and his brother the Chevalier d’Orléans have the same mother; no. The chevalier is legitimatized, but the poor abbé has not been so at all. He has the family look, and strongly resembles the late Monsieur; he is something like his father and is very like Mlle. de Valois. He is some years older than the chevalier and is very grieved to see his younger brother so much above him. The chevalier, who for some time past has been the grand-prior of France in the Order of Malta, is the son of Mlle. de Séry, formerly my maid-of-honour; she now calls herself Mme. d’Argenton. The mother of the abbé is an opera-dancer named Florence. My son has also a daughter by the left hand, whom he does not recognize; he has married her to a Marquis de Ségur; her mother was Desmares, one of the best actresses in the king’s troupe. I love the Abbé de Saint-Albin, and he deserves it. In the first place, he loves me sincerely, and in the next he conducts himself extremely well. He has intellect; he is reasonable, and there is no canting bigotry about him. He is not in as much favour with my son as he deserves, but he is the best young man in the world; well brought-up, pious, and virtuous; he is well educated but has no conceit. He is more like the late Monsieur than he is like his father; but it is plain where he comes from; my son cannot deny him; and it is a great pity that he is not my son’s legitimate child.
The enormous wealth that is now in France is inconceivable. All the talk is in millions. I cannot understand it; but I see plainly that the God Mammon reigns in Paris absolutely. The late king would gladly have employed M. Law in the finances; but as he was not a Catholic the king said he could not trust him. Nothing is now thought of but Law’s bank; a hundred tales are told of it. A lady gave her coachman an order to upset her in front of it, and when M. Law ran out, supposing from the cries that she had broken her neck or legs, she hastened to acknowledge it was only a stratagem to get speech with him. It is certainly a droll thing to see how everybody runs after that man, jostling each other merely to see him or his son.
M. le Duc and his mother have made, they say, two hundred and fifty millions; the Prince de Conti rather less, though people declare his gains amount to many millions; the two cousins never budge from the rue Quincampoix. But the one who has gained the most money is d’Antin, who is terribly grasping.
M. Law has abjured at Melun; he has become a Catholic, and so have his children; his wife is in despair. He is not avaricious; he does much in charity, without letting it be known, and gives away great sums; he helps large numbers of poor people.