JEANNE D’ALBRET
There are moments when, to use the expression of Duclos, he affects to regard himself as a disgraced prince of the blood without any credit at court. One day when the Queen is complaining of the opposition made to one of her recommendations by a minister, he says: “Why don’t you do as I do? I never ask anything of those people.” In spite of his omnipotence he feels himself always under the necessity of employing subterfuges and underhand expedients. According to a man who knew him well and saw him every day, Le Roy, master of the hounds, he considered dissimulation the most needful quality for a sovereign. “His hobby,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “is to be impenetrable.” Another of his defects is to consider that very honest men are generally not very able. Hence the great number of disreputable men whom he intrusts with most important positions. With such a system he is doomed to perpetual fluctuations, to that variability which is the sign of weakness. He will hesitate between peace and war, between a Prussian and an Austrian alliance, between the Parliamentarians and their enemies, between the Jesuits and the Jansenists. He has a horror of the philosophers, and he will make Voltaire a gentleman of the chamber and lodge Quesnay in an entresol of the palace of Versailles. He sincerely believes in the truth of the Catholic religion, and he will take as his mistress, counsellor, and directress the friend of the Encyclopedists. By conviction and principle he is essentially conservative, and he will be the precursor of the Revolution.
“Oh! how well the word feebleness,” exclaims D’Argenson, “expresses the passions of certain men endowed with good nature and facility. They see and approve the best and they follow the worst. Their virility is but a prolongation of childhood. Frequently they mistake the shadow of pleasure for pleasure itself. Youthfulness, childishness, self-love without pride, their acts of firmness are but obstinacy and revolt.... With this sad character a prince thinks he governs well when he simply does not govern at all. Every one deceives him, and he is the chief of his own betrayers. He has mistresses for whom he has no predilection, and absolute ministers in whom he does not confide. All the defects of which foreigners accuse Frenchmen are found in him; contrasts everywhere, the effects of a too frivolous imagination which overmasters judgment; wasted talents, good taste which nothing can satisfy, exactness in little things, inconstancy and lack of enthusiasm in great ones ...; memory without remembrance; patience and calm, promptitude and kindness, mystery and indiscretion, avidity for new pleasures, disgust and ennui, momentary sensibility succeeded by general and complete apathy ... total, a good master without humanity.”
Having thus drawn the portrait of Louis XV., D’Argenson says in speaking of the Queen: “She attracts by certain attentions, she repels by making her friendship too common. Her rank is a rallying signal and, since the King has declared mistresses, those who inveigh against scandal attach themselves to her for the sake of displeasing the King and the favorite. Their murmurs are proportioned to the royal patience.”
In 1745 Marie Leczinska, who is the King’s senior by seven years, has arrived at the age of forty-two. When her tenth child was born, July 15, 1737, Madame Louise, who was one day to become a Carmelite, some one asked the King, who already had six living children, if the little princess should be called Madame Seventh. He answered: “Madame Last.” Thenceforward the Queen was neglected. Her husband has treated her with frigid politeness, but has always kept her at a distance; he never speaks to her except before witnesses. On New Year’s day he gives her no presents. Not the least intimacy, the slightest unconstraint. The short daily visits he pays her are matters of decorum, formalities of etiquette. The Queen eats by herself. Between her apartments and those of the King there is a barrier which she never crosses. The familiar life and the cabinet suppers are not for her. Separated from each other by the Peace Salon, the Gallery of Mirrors, and the Council Chamber, each of the spouses has a life apart.
Marie Leczinska is the only person who maintains at Versailles the ceremonious representation of the court of the great King, not through pride, but out of respect for principles. By eleven o’clock in the morning she has already heard one Mass, seen the King for an instant, received her children and the little entries; at noon the state toilette and the great entries. At one o’clock Marie Leczinska hears a second Mass. At two o’clock she dines in public,[20] served by her maid of honor and four ladies in full dress. A low balustrade separates her from a crowd, always curious to be present at this repast and to contemplate the features of a justly honored queen. Toward six in the evening she plays the game of loto then in fashion, the Cavagnole. When the King is present, she never sits down until he bids her do so, and ’tis a wonder if the pair exchange a few syllables. At ten the Queen withdraws, and after supper she sees a very restricted circle: the Duke and Duchess de Luynes, Mesdames de Villars and de Chevreuse, Minister Maurepas, Cardinals de Tencin and de Luynes, President Hénault, Moncrif, and sometimes old Fontenelle. On Sundays the presentation of ladies takes place. It is also the day chosen for the taking of tabourets. The ceremonies occur in the room called the Queen’s Salon,[21] contiguous to the sleeping-chamber. The sovereign’s chair is placed at the back of the room on a platform covered by a canopy.[22] “By a few words, a nod, a glance, a smile, Marie Leczinska knows how to encourage the lady presented, whose embarrassment soon yields to a gentle confidence as the Queen addresses to her one of those remarks which remain engraven in the heart.”[23]
To sum up, neglected as she is by her husband, the Queen is happier than he, because she has the great boon, the supreme good, which he has not: peace of heart. “What comparison is there,” says a great preacher, “between the frightful remorse of conscience, that hidden worm which gnaws incessantly, that sadness of crime which undermines and depresses, that weight of iniquity which crushes, that interior sword which pierces and which we cannot draw out, and the amiable sadness of penitence which works salvation?”[24] This expression “amiable sadness” is most applicable to the Queen. Doubtless she suffers profoundly at seeing Louis XV. throw himself down the declivity of scandal. But, far from recriminating, she offers her sufferings to God. Gentle and pious victim, she finds ineffable consolations at the foot of the altar. Instead of avenging herself on the King by reproaches and bitter speeches, she prays for him. Her calmness, resignation, charity, her Christian virtues, and exquisite affability, make her the object of universal veneration. She is called nothing but the Good Queen.
The Dauphin[25] is not less esteemed than his mother. In 1745 he is sixteen years old. He is a pious, well-taught, well-intentioned young man. He has made serious studies. His favorite reading is Plato, Cicero, Tacitus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, Juvenal. He knows by heart the finest passages of the philosophers and poets of antiquity. For him were made those magnificent editions of the Louvre, Ad usum Delphini, one of the most precious monuments of contemporary typography.
Full of respect for his father, he never speaks to him but in the tone of profound submission. He effaces himself, he holds himself in restraint. He says: “A Dauphin should employ one half his mind in concealing the other half.” Louis XV. is suspicious; it is well not to offend him.
The Dauphin marries at Versailles, February 23, 1745, an Infanta of Spain, daughter of Philip V., Marie Thérèse Antoinette Raphaelle, younger sister of that Infanta Marie Anne Victoire whom Louis XV. was to have married. The affront of sending back that princess is thus repaired. The marriage festivities are splendid; no such pomp had ever been seen. “As the King has need of money,” writes Barbier, “especially for the very considerable expenses of the Dauphin’s marriage, a great many tontines are raised.” The day that the Dauphiness arrived at Étampes, the King, who went to meet her, said: “Here is a good day’s work done.” She replied: “Sire, this is not what I dreaded most; I flattered myself you would receive me kindly. I am more afraid of to-morrow and the next day; everybody will be looking at me, and I shall perhaps find less favorable dispositions.” The new Dauphiness is not pretty, but she is sympathetic. Her amiability wins everybody. She says to Madame de Brancas that she does not understand how one can become angry, and that if any possible case arose to make it necessary, she would beg some one the day before to do so in her stead.