But when Voltaire came to the Court, Catherine had been nearly a year in her grave. King Stanislas' immediate entourage, it is true, was still wholly Jesuit—the French governor, Galaizière; the King's intendant, Alliot; his father-confessor, Menoux; his useful secretary, de Solignac; Bathincourt, Thiange, and Madame de Grafigny's "Panpan," De Vaux. But otherwise a decided change had come over the scene. The lady head of the Court now was the peculiarly attractive Marquise de Boufflers, a declared philosophe, and, in virtue of her birth, the powerful leader of the Lorrain faction. She was a Beauvau, the daughter of that lovely Princesse de Craon who had ruled the heart of the late Duke Leopold. Her husband (who had not stood seriously in the way of her amours) was dead; and she was therefore quite free to give herself up to her liaison with Stanislas, who had formally installed her in some of the best apartments in the palace, in a suite adjoining his own, and handed over to her the management of the Court. She must have been a remarkably fascinating woman. We find Voltaire, in his courtly way, writing of her:
Vos yeux sont beaux, mais votre âme est plus belle,
Vous êtes simple et naturelle,
Et sans prétendre à rien, vous triomphez de tous.
Si vous eussiez vécu du temps de Gabrielle,
Je ne sais ce qu'on eût dit de vous,
Mais l'on n'aurait point parlé d'elle.
She is described as possessing a fine girlish figure, a peculiarly clear and delicate complexion, exceptionally beautiful hair, and neat hands (which made de Tressan enamoured of her "comme un fou") and, moreover, a charming lightness and grace of movement and manner—endowments of nature which scarcely needed a fine discriminating taste and more than average intellectual powers to render effective. She sang, played, painted pastel, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of tact and self-command. Whenever she happened to be absent from the Court, de Tressan writes to Devaux, "Je me meurs, je péris d'ennui. On ne joue point, la société est décousue." Her nickname at Court was "La Dame de Volupté," which, as is shown by the following lines, composed by herself for her epitaph, she accepted good-humouredly:—
Ci gît, dans une paix profonde,
Cette Dame de Volupté,
Qui, pour plus grande sûreté,
Fit son paradis dans ce monde.
To the priests her relations with Stanislas constituted a serious stumbling-block, and many a lecture had the king to listen to from his confessor, Menoux. He accepted it submissively, and even performed the penances which on the score of Madame de Boufflers the Jesuit decreed. But discard her he would not, on any consideration. Just as little, on the other hand, would he discard the Jesuit, however good-humouredly he might listen to Madame de Boufflers' rather violent abuse of him.
Menoux was now trembling for his authority. Madame de Boufflers' influence appeared to him to be growing too formidable. They were curious relations which subsisted between Voltaire and the priest. With de Tressan and other Academicians Menoux was at open and embittered feud. Voltaire was more of a statesman. To their faces the two opponents invariably professed the sincerest friendship and the warmest admiration. Even many years after we find Voltaire, when writing to Menoux, declaring to him his unaltered love and attachment, while at the same time paying the Abbé delicate compliments on the score of his esprit: "Je voudrais que vous m'aimassiez, car je vous aime." Behind their backs they called each other names. Menoux was by no means a mere hierophantic prig or sacerdotal oaf. Voltaire calls him "le plus intrigant et le plus hardi prêtre que j'ai jamais connu," and adds that he had "milked" Stanislas to the extent of a full million. D'Almbert describes him as the type of a Court divine—"habitué au meilleur monde," without any "rigidité claustrale"—"homme d'infiniment d'esprit, fin, délicat, intelligent, subtile, ayant heureusement cultivé les lettres et en conservant les grâces et la fraicheur sans la moindre trace de pédanterie." Between him and Boufflers there was continual warfare—above-ground and below-ground, by open hostilities and by schemes and intrigues. It was with a view to checkmating Boufflers, so Voltaire relates, that Menoux first suggested an invitation to Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet to come to the Court. Madame du Châtelet was to become the favourite's rival. To this theory French writers object that, as du Châtelet was some years older than Boufflers, not nearly as good-looking, certainly not dévote, and another man's property already, the scheme was absurd. In the result Menoux certainly showed himself to have made a mistake; but that was owing to a circumstance which neither he nor any one else could have foreseen. Otherwise the scheme cannot be pronounced bad. To literary-minded Stanislas, at his time of life, the intellectual graces of du Châtelet might well balance the greater personal attractions of Boufflers. Besides, Menoux did not look for an actual ally so much as for a rival to the favourite. Even to lessen her absolute authority would be quite enough for his purpose. He travelled all the way to Cirey to sound the two, and, finding them willing, pressed their invitation upon Stanislas.
Stanislas was, as Menoux had foreseen, only too eager to accept the suggestion. He had had more than one taste of the pleasures of playing the Mæcenas. Montesquieu had been at his Court, working there at his Esprit des Lois, and Madame de Grafigny, Helvétius, Hénault, Maupertuis; and the shy and retiring, but gifted Devaux was a fixture. However, Stanislas wanted more. The only disappointment to Menoux was that he found the invitation planned by himself actually issued by his rival, Madame de Boufflers. It was, of course, accepted; and the beginning of 1748 saw Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet safely arrived at Commercy.
The Lorrain Court, always bright and gay, was at that time perhaps at its very brightest. Stanislas, being permitted to play at being king, and given ample pecuniary resources for doing so, played the game in good earnest, with a due appreciation of showy externals, and with a singularly happy grace. He had at his command an apparatus which any real king might have envied. Here was Commercy, raised by Durand for the rich and tasteful Prince de Vaudémont, the friend of our William III. and of the elder Pretender, a blaze of magnificence, with gardens around it, and sheets of water, and cascades, which cast Versailles into the shade. His principal residence, however, one of the masterpieces designed by Boffrand, was the Palace of Lunéville. On seeing it Louis XV., surprised at its grandeur, exclaimed, "Mais, mon père, vous êtes mieux logé que moi." That was the
salon magnifique,
Moitié Turc et moitié Chinois,
Où le goût moderne et l'antique,
Sans se nuire, ont uni leurs lois,
of which Voltaire writes—very incongruous, but decidedly splendid and comfortable. Stanislas had added the delightful "Bosquet," laid out for him by Gervais—overloading it, it is true, with kiosks and pavilions, renaissance architecture and renaissance statuary, a hermitage, and eventually with de Tressan's "Chartreuse." Like all persons of "taste" in his day, Stanislas loved gimcrackery; he had utilized François Richard's inventive genius for embellishing his principal residence with a unique contrivance, admired by all Europe—an artificial rock with clockwork machinery setting about eighty figures in motion. You may see a picture of it still in the Nancy Museum. It must have been very ingenious and very ugly. First, there was a miller's wife opening her casement-window to answer some supposed caller; then two cronies appear on the scene, engaging in a morning chat. A shepherd playing on his musette leads his flock, tinkling with bells, across the rock. Two wethers engage in a real contest; a clockwork dog jumps up, barking, and separates them. There was a forge, with hammers beating and sparks flying. An insatiable tippler knocks at the closed door of the tavern, and is answered by the hostess with a pailful of water emptied upon his head from a window above. In the distance a pious hermit is seen telling his beads. And in the background is discovered, standing on a balcony, to crown the whole, the Queen, Catherine Opalinska, complacently looking down upon the scene, while two sentries pace solemnly up and down, occasionally presenting arms. Such were the toys of royalty in those days. Besides these two palaces Stanislas had others—Chanteheux, well in view from Lunéville, built in the Polish style: "rien de plus superbe, rien de plus irrégulier"; Einville, flat and level, disparaged by the duc de Luynes, but nevertheless grand, and possessing a "salon" famed for its magnificence throughout Europe; and lastly the historic Malgrange, close to Nancy, the "Sans souci" of Henri le Bon, in which Catherine of Bourbon had met the Roman doctors of divinity, despatched to convert her, in learned disputation, and sent them away discomfited, to the no little annoyance of her brother, Henri IV. Beyond this, Héré was at work beautifying Nancy in the Louis-Quinze style, with statuary and balustrades, gorgeous gateways, and magnificent arches; and he was building that handsome palace, which now serves as the Commanding General's quarters, in which, in 1814, when the Emperor of Austria, the last real Lorrain Duke's grandson, was lodged there, was hatched the Absolutist conspiracy of the "Holy Alliance."