The surest way to gain the good graces of the young King was to exploit his passion for the chase. Well, no one was better able to procure him this diversion than Monsieur le Duc. His forests of Chantilly and Halatte abounded in big game, already beginning to fail in those in the vicinity of Versailles, owing to their being too constantly hunted. The hunting establishment of the prince, moreover, enjoyed an almost European reputation, while he himself was a famous man when hounds were running.
At the suggestion of his mistress, Monsieur le Duc proposed to the King that he should honour him by hunting his forests and spend the months of July and August at Chantilly, by which means not only would they have every opportunity of gaining the young monarch’s favour by gratifying his taste for sport and amusement, but he would be removed for a time from the influence of Fleury, and also from that of the Orléans’ faction, which was continually bombarding him with petitions on behalf of Le Blanc and complaints as to the alleged ill-treatment to which the ex-Minister and his fellow-prisoners were being subjected in the Bastille.
Louis XV. received the proposal with delight, and on the last day of June he set out for Chantilly, accompanied by a splendid entourage, from which Monsieur le Duc and Madame de Prie had taken care that every one avowedly hostile to their cause should be excluded, although they had decided to admit several of the more moderate partisans of the Orléans, whom they hoped to win over. The weather was magnificent, and Chantilly had never looked more beautiful. The King “indulged every day in the amusement of the chase, either of the stag or the boar, and appeared very satisfied with the cares which Monsieur le Duc took without ceasing to render his stay at this superb château agreeable.” His Majesty dined daily with the princes and nobles whom he did the honour to select, and in the evening supped with Madame la Duchesse, Mlle. de Clermont, and a few ladies and nobles, whom he named in rotation, his table being served with extreme magnificence. After supper, the company adjourned to a gallery adjoining the King’s apartments, where high play went on until a late hour, to the accompaniment of Monsieur le Duc’s private band.
Thus the days went by, and his Majesty was so delighted with the splendid sport provided for him, and the unceasing efforts of Monsieur le Duc and Madame de Prie to keep him amused, that his former prejudice against them seemed to have disappeared entirely. He laughed and jested with his host, invited the marchioness to sup at his own table and to ride in his carriage to the chase, and, indeed, was so gracious to that lady that a rumour circulated in Paris that she and her fair friends had designs upon the virtue of the young monarch. In short, everything was proceeding as well as could possibly be desired, and the King had even decided to prolong his visit beyond the time he had originally fixed, when a most unexpected and unfortunate event brought it to an abrupt conclusion, and with it all the calculations of Madame de Prie.
On the afternoon of 31 August, the young Duc de Melun, one of the few of his courtiers for whom Louis XV. had shown any partiality, was charged by a stag which he was pursuing, and so badly gored that he died in the early hours of the following morning. This tragedy produced so painful an impression upon the young King that it was only with great difficulty that he could be prevented from returning to Versailles that very evening, and, though he consented to postpone his departure until 3 September, he scarcely left his apartments and refused to share in any amusement. He quitted the splendid residence of Monsieur le Duc with very different feelings from those which he had shown a few days previously, and there could be little doubt that the death of the Duc de Melun had effaced the good impression which the prince and his mistress had been at such infinite pains to create, and that it would be many a long day ere he consented to return to a spot which possessed such dolorous associations.
And so, like the recall of Villeroy, the Chantilly visit had failed to produce the desired effect, though through no fault of those who had planned it; and at the beginning of 1725 the Condé party sustained another check.
On 7 January, the late Minister for War, Le Blanc, was arraigned before the assembled Chambers, charged with being an accomplice of the murders of Gazan de la Combe, Sandrier, and the carter of La Malmaison, and of the attempted assassination of La Guillonière. The trial, into the details of which it is impossible to enter here, lasted a fortnight, but almost from the first day it was evident that the result was a foregone conclusion. The entry of the Duc d’Orléans, the Prince de Conti and their suites into the Grande Chambre was greeted with loud murmurs of approbation; that of the peers of the Condé party, the Ducs de la Feuillade, de Brancas, and de Richelieu, with derisive laughter. The Bishops of Sarlat and Avranches, Le Blanc’s brothers, the Maréchal de Bézons, his brother-in-law, the Chevalier Le Blanc, his son, and other relatives and intimate friends of the accused, sat together in a body and displayed so much emotion that many of the judges could hardly restrain their tears. And the line taken by the defence—that Le Blanc was a victim of party rancour and that the charges against him had been manufactured by the Government—was admirably calculated to appeal to the prejudice of a magistracy which almost invariably found itself in opposition to the Ministry of the day.
CLAUDE LE BLANC
FROM AN ENGRAVING BY P. DREVET, AFTER THE PAINTING BY A. LE PRIEUR