Nothing could be a greater proof of favour than to be included in the "list" to Marly. It was an honour more craved for than a ribbon or a place at Court. The names of the distinguished few were written down in the King's own hand (a very bad specimen of calligraphy), after due consultation with Madame de Maintenon. She was fond of Marly, hence its favour as a residence. She had herself superintended the building, seated in her gilt sedan chair, the King, hat in hand, standing by her side. At Marly she could better isolate him than at Versailles. His loneliness threw him more under her influence and under that of the Duc de Maine. These two, pupil and governess, perfectly understand each other. There is to be a codicil to the royal will, virtually passing over the Duc d'Orléans, his nephew, to invest Maine with all the powers of a Regent. Madame de Maintenon represents this hypocritical son of De Montespan as a simple-hearted, unostentatious man, wholly occupied by his attendance on his Majesty and with his classical studies. The King, whose personal activity is diminished, and whose powers of mind are impaired, believes it. Louis, once renowned as the finest horseman, sportsman, runner, dancer, shot, and charioteer, driving four horses with ease and grace, in France, is now stiff and somewhat infirm. Too indolent to move about and inquire for himself, he sees and hears only through Madame de Maintenon. To others he is an unbending autocrat.
If Louis is feared as a parent he is hated as a Sovereign. The denunciations of his ci-devant Protestant wife in the interests of his salvation lash him into inexpressible terror of perdition. She suggests that he can best expiate the excesses of his youth by a holocaust to the Almighty of all the heretics within his realm. The Jesuits press him solely. Terrified by the threats of awful judgments upon impenitent sovereigns, Louis signs the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He expels the Jansenists, destroys their pleasant refuge on a wooded hill near Maintenon, accepts the Bull Unigenitus, exiles the Cardinal de Noailles, and fills the state prisons with recusant bishops.
The whole of France is in indescribable confusion. The south, where the reformed faith prevails, is deluged with blood. Many thousands of industrious and orderly citizens doom themselves to perpetual exile rather than abjure the Protestant faith.
Le Grand Monarque is now a lonely, melancholy old man. Defeat has dogged his armies; the elevation of his grandchild, Philip, to the throne of Spain has well-nigh brought France to destruction. Death has been busy with his family: the Dauphin is dead; his son, the Duc de Bourgogne, is dead; Adelaide de Savoie, his wife, most justly dear to Louis, is also dead; and now there only remains one little life, their son, the infant Duc d'Anjou between himself and the extinction of his direct line. The Court at Marly is as lugubrious and austere as Madame de Maintenon and the Jesuits can make it.
Yet a shadow of the pomp and etiquette of Versailles is still kept up. On certain days after dinner, which takes place at noon, his Majesty receives the royal family. The folding doors of the royal suite are thrown open, and Louis appears. His hat with overtopping feathers is on his head, one hand is placed upon the breast of his coat, the other rests upon an ormolu table. He wears a diamond star; and a blue ribbon is passed across his breast. His coat is of black velvet, his waistcoat of red satin richly wrought with gold; he wears diamonds in his shoe-buckles and in his garters. On his head is a ponderous black wig, raised high on the forehead. This black wig gives his thin, hatchet-shaped face, seamed with wrinkles, a ghastly look. Louis changes his wigs many times each day to suit various occasions. He has wigs for all emergencies. In figure he is much shrunk, and is slightly bent. As he stands, his hand resting on the table for support, every movement is studied to impose silence and awe. To the day of his death he is majestic, and has the grandest manners in the world.
The royal family, conducted through galleries and colonnades lined with exotics and orange-trees (for Louis loves orange-flowers, all other scents and essences, however, are forbidden), pass before him. They wear mantles or mantelets according to their rank. To the obeisances of those who enjoy the honour of the fauteuil his Majesty returns a decided bow. Others who occupy tabourets only, receive but a qualified acknowledgment. People who sit on pliants are not received at Marly at all.
After the reception come the visits. Those who by their rank are entitled to receive as well as to pay visits, flutter backwards and forwards, with painful activity. Madame la Duchesse or Madame la Princesse rushes out of one door and in at another, shouldering her train, to salute a royal personage and return before more company arrive to visit herself. Sometimes a call of ceremony is arranged to Saint-Germain, situated about two miles from Marly, where the unhappy James II. and his Queen, Mary of Modena, reside, as annuitants on the royal bounty. Here the question as to who should wear mantles and who mantelets, who should have fauteuils and who tabourets, complicates itself to such an extent (the etiquette of the English Court having also to be duly considered) that even his Majesty grows embarrassed. He cuts the Gordian knot by not sitting down at all. He exchanges a few casual phrases with the exiled Stuarts standing, and forthwith returns to the rural retreat of Marly.