As we approached the end of our destination, we talked of the King. On this subject he was jealously cautious. But I gleaned from him, despite of his sagacity, that it was high time to make all use of one’s acquaintance with Madame de Maintenon that one could be enabled to do; and that it was so difficult to guess the exact places in which power would rest after the death of the old King that supineness and silence made at present the most profound policy.
As we alighted from the carriage and I first set my foot within the palace, I could not but feel involuntarily yet powerfully impressed with the sense of the spirit of the place. I was in the precincts of that mighty court which had gathered into one dazzling focus all the rays of genius which half a century had emitted,—the court at which time had passed at once from the morn of civilization into its full noon and glory,—the court of Conde and Turenne, of Villars and of Tourville,—the court where, over the wit of Grammont, the profusion of Fouquet, the fatal genius of Louvois (fatal to humanity and to France), Love, real Love, had not disdained to shed its pathos and its truth, and to consecrate the hollow pageantries of royal pomp, with the tenderness, the beauty, and the repentance of La Valliere. Still over that scene hung the spells of a genius which, if artificial and cold, was also vast, stately, and magnificent,—a genius which had swelled in the rich music of Racine, which had raised the nobler spirit and the freer thought of Pierre Corneille,* which had given edge to the polished weapon of Boileau, which had lavished over the bright page of Moliere,—Moliere, more wonderful than all—a knowledge of the humours and the hearts of men, which no dramatist, save Shakspeare, has surpassed. Within those walls still glowed, though now waxing faint and dim, the fame of that monarch who had enjoyed, at least till his later day, the fortune of Augustus unsullied by the crimes of Octavius. Nine times, since the sun of that monarch rose, had the Papal Chair received a new occupant! Six sovereigns had reigned over the Ottoman hordes! The fourth emperor since the birth of the same era bore sway over Germany! Five czars, from Michael Romanoff to the Great Peter, had held, over their enormous territory, the precarious tenure of their iron power! Six kings had borne the painful cincture of the English crown;** two of those kings had been fugitives to that court; to the son of the last it was an asylum at that moment.
* Rigidly speaking, Corneille belongs to a period later than that of Louis XIV., though he has been included in the era formed by that reign.—ED.
** Besides Cromwell; namely, Charles I., Charles II., James II., William and Mary, Anne, George I.
What wonderful changes had passed over the face of Europe during that single reign! In England only, what a vast leap in the waste of events, from the reign of the first Charles to that of George the First! I still lingered, I still gazed, as these thoughts, linked to one another in an electric chain, flashed over me! I still paused on the threshold of those stately halls which Nature herself had been conquered to rear! Where, through the whole earth, could I find so meet a symbol for the character and the name which that sovereign would leave to posterity as this palace itself afforded? A gorgeous monument of regal state raised from a desert; crowded alike with empty pageantries and illustrious names; a prodigy of elaborate artifice, grand in its whole effect, petty in its small details; a solitary oblation to a splendid selfishness, and most remarkable for the revenues which it exhausted and the poverty by which it is surrounded!
Fleuri, with his usual urbanity—an urbanity that, on a great scale, would have been benevolence—had hitherto indulged me in my emotions: he now laid his hand upon my arm, and recalled me to myself. Before I could apologize for my abstraction, the Bishop was accosted by an old man of evident rank, but of a countenance more strikingly demonstrative of the little cares of a mere courtier than any I ever beheld. “What news, Monsieur le Marquis?” said Fleuri, smiling.
“Oh! the greatest imaginable! the King talks of receiving the Danish minister on Thursday, which, you know, is his day of domestic business! What can this portend? Besides,” and here the speaker’s voice lowered into a whisper, “I am told by the Duc de la Rochefoucauld that the king intends, out of all ordinary rule and practice, to take physic to-morrow: I can’t believe it; no, I positively can’t; but don’t let this go further!”
“Heaven forbid!” answered Fleuri, bowing, and the courtier passed on to whisper his intelligence to others. “Who’s that gentleman?” I asked.
“The Marquis de Dangeau,” answered Fleuri; “a nobleman of great quality, who keeps a diary of all the king says and does. It will perhaps be a posthumous publication, and will show the world of what importance nothings can be made. I dare say, Count, you have already, in England, seen enough of a court to know that there are some people who are as human echoes, and have no existence except in the noise occasioned by another.”
I took care that my answer should not be a witticism, lest Fleuri should think I was attempting to rival him; and so we passed on in an excellent humour with each other.