The Court remained at Fontainebleau until the first days of December, when it returned to Versailles, where the young Queen was installed in the apartments formerly occupied by Marie Thérèse of Austria and the Duchesse de Bourgogne. No cloud had as yet troubled the royal honeymoon. The King was quite a devoted husband; he passed every night with his wife; compared her to Queen Blanche, the mother of Saint-Louis, and said to those who drew his attention to the beauty of some lady of the Court: “I find the Queen still more beautiful.”
Monsieur le Duc and Madame de Prie were delighted, believing that from this passion would spring true friendship and confidence; that gradually Marie Leczinska would acquire ascendency over the mind of this young King, half-man, half-child, and that they would be able to govern him through her.
And badly did they stand in need of a support near the throne, for every day the Government of Monsieur le Duc was becoming more unpopular. The cruel edict of May, 1724, against the Protestants, loudly condemned even by many staunch Catholics; the brutal manner in which the laws against mendicity were enforced; the failure of the prosecution of Le Blanc; the restriction of the privileges of the magistracy, in which most people saw only an act of vengeance for the acquittal of the ex-Minister for War; the favour shown to the Pâris brothers, who were generally hated; the sudden alliance of Austria and Spain and the fear that another war was on the point of breaking out; the enormous rise in the price of bread, which, though mainly due to the failure of the harvest of 1725, was attributed by the people to the operations of Madame de Prie and the Pâris brothers; and the ceaseless intrigues of the Orléans faction, had raised against it a perfect tempest of indignation. Riots broke out in several towns, and were with difficulty suppressed; satires and pamphlets against the Government poured from the printing-presses of the capital; more than one Minister talked of resigning his office. Unless Monsieur le Duc could secure the favour and confidence of the King, his Ministry was doomed.
But between Monsieur le Duc and the King stood the figure of Fleury. The prince had now been Prime Minister for two years, yet never had he succeeded in obtaining a single hour’s private conversation with Louis XV. on affairs of State. A score of times when he imagined that he had found a favourable occasion to speak to him on business, the King had immediately turned the conversation to the chase, the play or some kindred subject, on which he continued to talk until Fleury, whom he never failed to summon, entered his cabinet. The previous year, when Louis XV. was at Chantilly and the Bishop of Fréjus had gone to spend a week at the country-house of the Duc de Liancourt, Monsieur le Duc had endeavoured to take advantage of his absence; but the King intimated to him that he would do nothing until the return of his preceptor, and even refused to sign some papers of trifling importance which were awaiting his signature. All his efforts to secure the confidence of the young monarch remained without result; the Bishop of Fréjus perpetually barred the way.
And he could not disguise from himself the fact that Fleury was no longer content to remain neutral. He had become, if not the opponent of Monsieur le Duc himself, at least that of his chief advisers. One day, in the spring of 1726, he drew the prince aside, denounced in the strongest terms the conduct of Madame de Prie and Duverney, whom he stigmatized as enemies of the State, and declared that “the reputation of his Highness imperiously demanded that he should no longer submit to the domination of such unworthy counsellors.” It was practically an ultimatum, or, at any rate, Monsieur le Duc regarded it in that light. If he were willing to dismiss his mistress and Duverney and govern on the advice of Fleury, the latter would graciously permit him to retain the simulacrum of power. If not, the bishop intended to procure the disgrace of all three.
The Prime Minister warmly defended his friends, asserting that they were the victims of envy and prejudice, and ended by declaring that, since he well knew that they were ready to hazard everything for him, even their lives, if they were to fall, he would fall with them. Then, after high words on both sides, the prince and the bishop parted.
When this conversation was reported to Madame de Prie, she at once perceived that there could be no safety for the Ministry of Monsieur le Duc so long as Fleury remained at Court, and she represented to her lover that all their efforts must henceforth be directed to separating him from the King. It was, of course, too much to hope that Louis XV. would ever consent to banish his former preceptor, but the latter might be induced to believe that he had forfeited his Majesty’s confidence and retire of his own accord.
But how was this to be accomplished? Obviously, by means of the Queen. Marie Leczinska, thanks to the efforts of Madame de Prie and the ladies whom the favourite had placed about her, who insinuated that Fleury was jealous of the affection the King entertained for her, was already prejudiced against the bishop; while she naturally felt herself under great obligations to those who had placed the crown matrimonial upon her head.
On 18 December, 1725, it was decided to make an attempt to accustom the King to work with the Prime Minister without the presence of his preceptor. The Queen, after a good deal of hesitation, had consented to lend herself to this intrigue, certain indiscreet words which Fleury had uttered in her presence having dissipated her last scruples.
In accordance with the plan agreed upon, when Louis XV. returned from the chase, she sent to ask him to join her in her cabinet. It was then about an hour before that which he invariably spent in conversation with his preceptor.