Then given up entirely to the exclusive care of repairing his impaired fortune, the Duc d'Orleans constructed the Palais Royal. He changed the noble and spacious gardens of his palace into a market of luxury, devoted by day to traffic, and by night to play and debauchery—a complete sink of iniquities, built in the heart of the capital—a work of cupidity which antique manners never could forgive this prince; and which, being gradually adopted like the forum by the indolence of the Parisian population, was destined to become the cradle of the Revolution. This Revolution was striding onwards. The prince awaited it in supineness, as if liberty of the world had been but one more mistress.
His well-known hatred against the court had naturally drawn into his acquaintance all who desired a change. The Palais Royal was the elegant centre of a conspiracy with open doors, for the reform of government: the philosophy of the age there encountered politics and literature: it was the palace of opinion. Buffon came there constantly to pass the latter evenings of his life. Rousseau there received at a distance the only worship which his proud sensitiveness would accept even from princes. Franklin and the American republicans; Gibbon and the orators of the English opposition, Grimm and the German philosophers, Diderot, Siéyès, Sillery, Laclos, Suard, Florian, Raynal, La Harpe, and all the thinkers or writers who anticipated the new mind, met there with celebrated artists and savans. Voltaire himself, proscribed from Versailles by the human respect of a court, which admired his genius, had arrived thither on his last journey. The prince presented to him his children, one of whom reigns to-day over France. The dying philosopher blessed them, as he did those of Franklin, in the name of reason and liberty.
V.
If the prince himself had not a love of literature and a highly refined mind, he had sufficiently cultivated his mind to appreciate perfectly the pleasures of the understanding; but the revolutionary feeling instinctively counselled him to surround himself with all the strength that might one day serve liberty. Early tired of the beauty and virtue of the Duchesse d'Orleans, he had conceived for a lovely, witty, insinuating woman a sentiment which did not enchain the caprices of his heart, but which controlled his inconsistency and directed his mind. This woman, then seducing and since celebrated, was the Comtess de Sillery-Genlis, daughter of the Marquis Ducret de Saint Aubin, a gentleman of Charolais, without fortune. Her mother, who was still young and handsome, had brought her to Paris, to the house of M. de la Popelinière, a celebrated financier, whose old age she had taken captive. She educated her daughter for that doubtful destiny which awaits women on whom nature has lavished beauty and mind, and to whom society has refused their right position—adventuresses in society, sometimes raised, sometimes degraded.
The first masters formed this child by all the arts of mind and hand—her mother directed her to ambition. The second-rate position of this mother at the house of her opulent protector, formed the child to the plasticity and adulation which her mother's domestic condition required and illustrated. At sixteen years of age her precocious beauty and musical talent caused her to be already sought in the salons. Her mother produced her there in the dubious publicity between the theatre and the world. An artiste for some, she was, with others, a well educated girl; all were attracted by her: old men forgot their age. Buffon called her "ma fille." Her relationship with Madame de Montesson, widow of the Duc d'Orleans, gave her a footing in the house of the young prince. The Comte de Sillery-Genlis fell in love with her, and married her in spite of his family's opposition. Friend and confidant of the Duc d'Orleans, the Comte de Sillery obtained for his wife a place at the court of the Duchesse d'Orleans. Time and her ability did the rest.
The duke attached himself to her with the twofold power of admiration for her beauty and admiration of her superior understanding—the one empire confirmed the other. The complaints of the insulted duchess only made the duke more obstinate in his liking. He was governed, and desirous of having his feelings honoured, he announced it openly, merely seeking to colour it under the pretext of the education of his children. The Comtesse de Genlis followed at the same time the ambition of courts and the reputation of literature. She wrote with elegance those light works which amuse a woman's idle hours, whilst they lead their hearts astray into imaginary amours. Romances, which are to the west what opium is to the Orientals, waking day-dreams, had become necessities and events for the salons. Madame de Genlis wrote in a graceful style, and clothed her characters and ideas with a certain affectation of austerity which gave a becomingness to love: she moreover affected an universal acquaintance with the sciences, which made her sex disappear before the pretensions of her mind, and which recalled in her person those women of Italy who profess philosophy with a veil over their countenances.
The Duc d'Orleans, an innovator in every thing, believed he had found in a woman the Mentor for his sons. He nominated her governor of his children. The duchess, greatly annoyed, protested against this; the court laughed, and the people were amazed. Opinion, which yields to all who brave it, murmured, and then was silent. The future proved that the father was right: the pupils of this lady were not princes but men. She attracted to the Palais Royal all the dictators of public opinion. The first club in France was thus held in the very apartments of a prince of the blood. Literature, concealed from without these meetings as the madness of the first Brutus concealed his vengeance. The duke was not, perhaps, a conspirator, but henceforth there was an Orleans party. Siéyès, the mystic oracle of the Revolution, who seemed to carry it on his pensive front, and brood over it in silence; the Duc de Lauzun, passing from the confidence of Trianon to the consultations of the Palais Royal; Laclos, a young officer of artillery, author of an obscene romance, capable at need of elevating romantic intrigue to a political conspiracy; Sillery, soured against his order, at enmity with the court, an ambitious malcontent, awaiting nothing but what the future might bring forth; and others more obscure, but not less active, and serving as unknown guides for descending from the salons of a prince into the depths of the people: some the head, others the arms, of the duke's ambition, attended these meetings. Perhaps they might be ignorant of the aim, but they placed themselves on the declivity, and allowed Fortune to do as she pleased. Fortune was a revolution. The wonderful, that marvel of the masses, which is to the imagination what calculation is to reason, was not wanting to the Orleans party. Prophecies, those popular presentiments of destiny, domestic prodigies, admitted by the interested credulity of numerous clients of this house, announced the throne shortly to one of these princes. These rumours were rife amongst the people, from themselves, or the skilful insinuations of the partisans of the house of Orleans. In the convocation of States-General, the duke had not hesitated to pronounce in favour of the most popular reforms. The instructions which he had drawn up for the electors of his dominions were the work of the abbé Siéyès. The prince himself intrigued for the name and style of Citoyen. Elected deputy of the noblesse of Paris at Crespy and at Villars-Cotterêts, he selected Crespy, because the electors of this bailiwick were the more patriotic. At the procession of the States-General he left his own place vacant amongst the princes, and walked in the midst of the deputies. This abdication of his dignity near the throne to assume the dignity of a citizen, procured him the applauses of the nation.
VI.
Public favour towards him was such that had he been a Duc de Guise, and Louis XVI. a Henry III., the States-General would have finished, as did those of Blois, by an assassination or usurpation. Uniting with the tiers état, to obtain equality and the friendship of the nation against the nobility, he took the oath of the Tennis Court. He took his place behind Mirabeau, to disobey the king. Nominated president by the National Assembly, he refused this honour in order to remain a citizen. The day on which the dismissal of Necker betrayed the hostile projects of the court, and when the people of Paris named its leaders and defenders by acclamation, the name of the Duc d'Orleans was the first uttered. France took in the gardens of the palace the colours of his livery for a cockade. At the voice of Camille Desmoulins, who uttered the cry of alarm in the Palais Royal, the populace gathered, Legendre and Fréron led them; they placed the bust of the Duc d'Orleans beside that of Necker, covered them with black crape, and promenaded them, bareheaded themselves, in the presence of the silent citizens. Blood flowed; the dead body of one of the citizens who carried the busts, killed by the mob, serving as a standard to the people. The Duc d'Orleans was thus mixed up from his palace—his name and his image—with the first struggle and first murder of liberty. This was enough to make it believed that his hand moved all the threads of events. Whether from lack of boldness or ambition, he never assumed the appearance of the part which public opinion assigned to him. He did not then appear to push things beyond the conquest of a constitution for his country, and the character of a great patriot for himself. He respected or despised the throne. One or other of these feelings gave him importance in the eyes of history. All the world was of his party except himself.
Impartial men did honour to his moderation, the revolutionists imputed shame to his character. Mirabeau, who was seeking a pretender to personify the revolt, had had secret interviews with the Duc d'Orleans; had tested his ambition, to judge if it aspired to the throne. He had left him dissatisfied; he had even betrayed his dissatisfaction by angry phrases. Mirabeau required a conspirator; he had only found a patriot. What he despised in the Duc d'Orleans was not the meditation of a crime, but the refusal to be his accomplice. He had not anticipated such scruples; he revenged himself by terming this carelessness about the throne the cowardice of an ambitious man.