The preservation of the palace where they passed their existence facilitates the renascence of the women of the court of Louis XV. It is something to be able to say: Here such an event was accomplished, such a remark uttered. Here such a personage rendered her last sigh. The sight of the rooms where so many dramas were unfolded is in itself a fruitful lesson. The theatre remains; the decorations are hardly changed. But this is not all. The dust must be shaken from the costumes; the actors and actresses must be hunted up; the play must begin anew.
There is no lack of materials for this work of reconstruction; they are even rather too abundant: memoirs by Duclos, Marais, Barbier, the Duke de Luynes, Maurepas, Villars, the Marquis d’Argenson, President Hénault, Madame du Hausset, Count de Ségur, Weber, Madame Campan;—histories by Voltaire, M. Henri Martin, Michelet, Jobez;—works by the brothers Goncourt, Sainte-Beuve, M. de Lescure, the Countess d’Armaillé, Boutaric, Honoré Bonhomme, Campardon, Capefigue, Le Roi, Barthélemy;—collections by M. Feuillet de Conches and M. d’Arneth;—the secret correspondence of Louis XV. with his secret diplomatic corps, that of Count Mercy-Argenteau with the Empress Maria Theresa, new editions of ancient books, autographs, recent publications—one is embarrassed by such a mass of riches. Not days, but months and years, are needed to become well acquainted with all these treasures. But life is so short and so preoccupied with affairs that the public, with few exceptions, has neither time nor inclination to study so many volumes. Is it not a critic’s business to spare his readers minute researches, to guide them through the labyrinth, to condense long works, to bring out saliently the most characteristic passages; in a word, to facilitate study and popularize history while scrupulously respecting truth? This is what we shall try to do for Louis XV. and the women of his court.
This much-decried monarch is one of those wavering, inconsequent, bizarre types of whom so many are found in our world of contradictions and miseries. Alas! who has not something of Louis XV. in his own soul? To see the good and do the evil; to believe and not to practise; to vainly seek a remedy for ennui in sensual pleasure; to act against conscience and know self-condemnation, but not amendment; to be dissatisfied with one’s actions and lack strength for true repentance,—is not this the common lot? How many honest citizens are mere repetitions of Louis XV., lacking his crown! They show respect for their wives and affection for their children. They blame free thinkers severely. They speak respectfully of religion. And at the same time they do not observe the maxims of morality which they preach; they keep mistresses, they are guilty of shameful debaucheries. Their life is a series of incongruities; they know neither what they are nor what they desire. Such was Louis XV. His religion was not hypocrisy. His attempts at conversion came to nothing, but they issued from the depths of his troubled conscience. He remained in the mire, but he dreamed of the light. Let us not be pitiless then. Is it graceful in demagogues to display such severity toward kings? Is there more morality under the red liberty caps than above the red-heeled slippers? Louis XV. was not a faithful husband, but he had a great veneration for his wife and a profound affection for his children. In spite of unpardonable scandals he was not so odious a character as he has been painted. Weakness is the word that best characterizes him, not malignity.
Take his favorites from the sovereign, and he might be not simply a worthy man, but a great king. He is intelligent and kindly. His people adore him. Fortune has crowned him. Voltaire goes into ecstasies over the glories of this reign, which the advocate Barbier declares to be the finest epoch in the entire history of France. What compromises, what ruins all this? The great enemy, voluptuousness.
Oh! how swift, how slippery, is the descent into vice! How one fault entails another! During several years (1725–1733) Louis XV. is a model husband. Then he mysteriously commits a first infidelity; afterwards he stops at nothing. He is timid at first; he hides himself, but by degrees he becomes bolder. He declares himself at first with the Countess de Mailly; afterwards with her sister, the Countess de Vintimille; however, he still maintains some restraint. Louis XV. is stingy with the State funds; his old preceptor, Cardinal Fleury, retains some influence over him. But Fleury dies (1743); the King has a mentor no longer; he emancipates himself; the scandal gains strength and is triumphant in the person of a third sister, the Duchess of Châteauroux. Heaven, nevertheless, sends the monarch some severe lessons; Madame de Vintimille had died in childbirth (1741); the King himself came near dying at Metz; the Duchess of Châteauroux dies of chagrin and other emotions at the close of 1744. People think Louis XV. is about to change his ways. ’Tis an error: here comes the minister in petticoats, the Marquise de Pompadour, a queen of the left hand. She, to use Voltaire’s expression, is a sort of grisette made for the opera or the seraglio, who tries to amuse this bored monarch by diversions still more preposterous than his dulness. She dies at the task, and Louis XV. has not even a tear for her. As Rochefoucauld has said: “If a man thinks he loves his mistress for love of her, he is much mistaken.” Louis XV. is growing old. The Queen dies in 1768. He regrets her, and people fancy that at last he is going to follow the wise advice of his surgeon, and not merely rein his horses up, but take them out of the traces. They are reckoning without the woman who is about to bring the slang of Billingsgate to Versailles. After great ladies the great citizeness; after her the woman of the people; the De Nesle sisters are followed by Madame de Pompadour; Madame de Pompadour by Dubarry; Dubarry, the “portiere of the Revolution.”
One thing strikes me in this series of royal mistresses; I see debauchery everywhere, but nowhere love. Love with its refinements, its disinterestedness, its spirit of sacrifice, its mysticism, its poetry—where is it? I perceive not even the least shadow of it. Ah! how right was Rochefoucauld in saying: “It is the same thing with true love as with the apparition of ghosts; everybody talks about, but very few have seen it.” Voluptuousness, on the other hand, is shameless in its cynicism, and when I contemplate this wretched King whom it degrades and corrupts and weakens, who is wearied and complains and is sad unto death, I recall a page from one of the most eloquent of men: “The intoxication once past, there remains in the soul a doleful astonishment, a bitterly experienced void. It may be filled by new agitations; but it is reproduced again vaster than before, and this painful alternation between extreme joys and profound depression, between flashes of happiness and the impossibility of being happy, begets at last a state of continual sadness.... Say no longer to the man attacked by it: See what a fine day! Say no more: Listen to this sweet music! Do not even say: I love you! Light, harmony, love, all that is good and charming can do no more than irritate his secret wound. He is doomed to the Manes, and everything appears to him as if he were in a sepulchre, stifling for want of air and crushed by the weight of marble.... There comes a moment when all the man’s satiated powers give him an invincible certainty of the nothingness of the universe. Once a fleeting smile was all the despairing man needed to open limitless perspectives before him; now the adoration of the world would not affect him. He estimates it at its true value: nothing.”[1]
Is not the profound sadness of Louis XV. a moral lesson as striking as any instruction from the preachers? Here is a sovereign privileged by destiny, handsome, powerful, victorious, surrounded by general admiration, possessor of the first throne of the universe, loved almost to idolatry by his people, having a tender and devoted wife, good and respectful children, soldiers who long to die bravely in his service to the cry of, “Long live the King!” He dwells in splendid palaces; when he pleases, he shakes off the yoke of etiquette and lives like a private gentleman in little residences which are masterpieces of grace and good taste; every one seeks to divine his wishes, his caprices; all the arts are pressed into the service of making life agreeable to him; all pleasures, all elegancies, conspire to charm and entertain him. His health is robust; boon-companion, bold horseman, indefatigable huntsman and lover, he enjoys every pleasure at his will. Well, he is plunged into the depths of ill-humor, the most dismal melancholy, and the sentiment he inspires in those who observe him closely—as every memoir of the time attests—is not envy, but pity.
What conclusion can one draw from this except that neither the dazzle of riches, the prestige of pride, the fumes of incense, the caresses of flattery, the false joys of sensual pleasure, nor the intoxications of power can make man happy! He thirsts in the middle of the fountain; he finds thorns in the crown of roses that encircles his forehead, and a gnawing worm creeps, like Cleopatra’s asp, into the odorous flowers whose perfume he inhales. The lamps of the festival grow dim, the boudoirs look like tombs, and suddenly the Manes, Tekel, Phares, appears in flaming letters on the portals of gold and marble. O King, expect neither truce to thy woes nor distraction from thine ennui, that implacable companion of thy grandeur! Thou art thine own enemy, and all will betray thee, because thou art not reconciled with thyself. Most Christian King, son of Saint Louis, thou dost suffer, and oughtest to suffer, for thou canst neither seat thyself tranquilly upon the throne nor kneel before the altar!
The end of this existence was dismal. Count de Ségur relates that as Louis XV. was going to the chase he met a funeral and approached the coffin. As he liked to ask questions, he inquired who was to be buried. They told him it was a young girl who had died of small-pox. Seized with sudden terror, he returned to his palace of Versailles and was almost instantly attacked by the cruel malady whose very name had turned him pale. Gangrene invaded the body of the voluptuous monarch. People fled from him with terror as if he were plague-stricken. His daughters alone, his daughters, models of courage and devotion, braved the contagion and would not leave his death-bed.
Study history seriously. You fancy you will encounter scandal, but you will find edification. Corrupt epochs are perhaps more fruitful in great lessons than austere ones. It is not virtue, but vice, which cries to us: Vanity, all is vanity. It is the guilty women, the royal mistresses, who issue from their tombs and, striking their breasts, accuse themselves in presence of posterity. These beauties who appear for an instant on the scene and then vanish like shadows, these unhappy favorites who wither in a day like the grass of the field, these wretched victims of caprice and voluptuousness, all speak to us like the sinful woman of the Gospel, and history is thus morality in action.