At ninety he himself drove, and sometimes with fiery animals. One day, when he was training a fresh colt in the Bois de Boulogne, the King, Louis XIV., passed. Lauzun executed before him a "hundred capers" and filled the spectators with admiration, by his "address, his strength, and his grace."[316] He still often enjoyed "pretty" moments. But there was a reverse side to the medal: the malignant dwarf "frightened all who approached him with his wicked wit and his hateful tricks." From afar, Lauzun is very amusing under this aspect; he excelled in buffoonery. In extreme age, he suffered from a malady which almost killed him. One day, when he was very ill, he perceived reflected in a mirror the forms of two of his heirs who entered the chamber on tiptoe, fancying themselves concealed behind the curtains, to ascertain with their own eyes how long they were to be forced to wait. Lauzun feigned to perceive nothing and began to pray in a loud voice as one who believes himself alone. He demanded pardon of God for his past life, and lamented that his time for repentance was so short. He exclaimed that there was only a single way to secure his safety, which was to devote the wealth which God had given him to paying for his sins, and this he engaged to do with all his heart. He promised to leave to the hospital all that he possessed, without abstracting a single penny. He made this declaration with so much fervour and with so penetrating an accent that his heirs fled away in despair, to relate the misfortune to Mme. de Lauzun. This scene properly terminates the career of this extraordinary personage, unscrupulous and malignant to the last. Lauzun died in 1723, at over ninety years of age.
Mademoiselle was the last to disappear of the grand figures belonging to the time of the Fronde. Retz, Condé, Turenne, La Rochefoucauld, Mme. de Chevreuse, Mme. de Longueville, had departed before her.
The only one of the ancient rebels which could not perish, the Hôtel de Ville of Paris, had been suppressed from history by royal ordinance for the period corresponding to the Fronde. The accounts of the prosecutions of the Council recorded the revolutionary sentiments which prevailed at the capital during the civil war. The King ordered all the registers[317] to be destroyed, and the destruction included every record relating to public affairs for the years 1646-1653.
It may be said without too much calumniating the heart of Louis XIV. that the death of his cousin afforded a certain relief. She was too lively a reminder of the execrable period which he did his best to banish from his own memory as well as from that of the public. Saint-Simon, newly arrived at the Court at the date of the death of Mademoiselle, had time to convince himself that she was in the eyes of the King always the unpardoned and unpardonable heroine of the combat of the Porte Saint-Antoine. "I heard him reproach his cousin once at supper, joking it is true, but a little roughly, for having turned the cannon of the Bastile upon his troops."
The royal rancour extended to the city of Paris, eternal cradle of French revolutions. Not being able to suppress the capital, Louis XIV. banished himself from its gates. On May 6, 1682, unfortunate date for the French monarchy, the Court installed itself definitely at Versailles, and henceforth left this place only for sojourns at the various country seats, as Fontainebleau and Marly. Paris was abandoned, left to do penance. Not only did Louis XIV. desert this city as a place of residence, but he visited it rarely. It was remarked that he often made long detours rather than to pass through Paris. The nobility and ministers followed the King to Versailles. Royalty and the capital turned their backs on each other.
Another important event influenced the ideas of Court decorum and propriety. The Queen Marie-Thérèse dying in 1683 (July 30), Louis XIV. in the course of the winter following formally married Mme. de Maintenon. The physiognomy of the Court, what Saint-Simon would have called the bark (écorce), entirely changed its character. At the moment of ending this long study it is, then, a different world to which adieu must be said from the one which was found at the beginning, and the transformation did not end with the "bark." The principal cause of the change, the establishment of absolute monarchy, had acted violently upon France in shaking the nation to its depths, as do all changes not developing from national tradition.
Absolute monarchy was not a French tradition. It was an importation from Spain. Anne of Austria, who did not understand any other régime, had educated her son to accept her ideas and habits of thought, and the substitution of king for minister was, at the death of Mazarin, accomplished without shock. It was, however, a real coup d'état.
Before Louis XIV. the royal power, without being submitted to precise limitations, from time to time hurled itself against certain rights, themselves often loosely defined. There existed privileges of the Parliament, others of the State, together with those of the nobles, and others belonging to bodies and individuals, which when united left the King of France in a situation resembling that in which Gulliver found himself, when the Liliputians bound him with hundreds of minute threads. Each single thread was of no consequence; through the compression of all together every movement was paralysed. Louis XIV. resolutely broke the numerous threads which had trammelled the power of his predecessors. He freed himself in suppressing the ancient liberties of France. No student of history can be ignorant of the material results, so splendid at first, so disastrous in the end; but certain moral consequences of his government have been perhaps less clearly remarked.
The French aristocracy ceased from the second generation to be a nursery for men of action. This was the result desired from the policy of keeping it chained to the steps of the throne. The end had been attained at the date of the King's death. Saint-Simon, who cannot be suspected of hostility towards the nobility, certifies to this. When the Duke arrived at power under the Regent, his brain swarming with projects for replacing the aristocrats in positions of importance, and when he sought great names with which to fill great posts, he realised that he was too late. The "nursery" was empty. The difficulty, say the Mémoires
lay in the ignorance, the frivolity, and the lack of application of a nobility which had been accustomed to lives of frivolity and uselessness; a nobility that was good for nothing but to let itself be killed, and that reached the battle-field itself only through the force of heredity. For the remainder of the time, it was content to stagnate in an existence without a purpose. It had delivered itself over to idleness and felt keen disgust for all education, excepting that relating to military matters. The result was a general incapacity and unfitness for affairs.