“Princes are badly brought up,” says the Marquis d’Argenson. “Nothing flatters and nothing corrects them.” Ought not one to be indulgent toward a prince to whom his governor, Marshal Villeray, kept repeating on the balcony of the Tuileries: “Look, master, look at these people; well! they are all yours, they all belong to you.” The regent said to the little monarch: “I am here only to render you my accounts, to offer matters for your consideration, to receive and execute your orders.” The child thought himself a man already.
In 1721 they affianced him to the Infanta Marie Anne Victoire, daughter of Philip V., King of Spain. Louis XV. was not yet eleven years old; the Infanta was only three. They had all the difficulty in the world to induce the monarch to say the necessary yes. His little betrothed arrived in Paris the following year (March 22, 1722). Louis XV. went to meet her at Montrouge. All along the route the houses were decked with hangings and adorned with flowers and foliage. The next day the gazettes informed the public that the Queen—so they called the Infanta—had received from the King a doll worth twenty thousand livres. Three months later (June, 1722), Louis XV. and his betrothed established themselves at Versailles, which again became the political capital of France. The King took possession of the bedchamber of Louis XIV.,[3] which he used until 1738. The Infanta was lodged in the apartment of the Queen, and slept in the chamber[4] that had been occupied by Marie Thérèse, the Bavarian dauphiness, and the Duchess of Burgundy. She made the two youngest daughters of the regent her inseparable companions, treating them as if they were younger than herself, although they were twice her age. She kept them in leading-strings under pretext of preventing them from falling, and as she embraced them on their departure, she would say: “Little princesses, go home now and come to see me every day.”
Louis XV. was crowned at Rheims, October 25, 1722. “People remember,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “how much he resembled Love that morning, with his long coat and silver cap, in the costume of a neophyte or candidate for kingship. I have never seen anything so affecting as his figure at that time. All eyes grew moist with tenderness for this poor little prince, sole scion of a numerous family, all other members of which had perished, not without a suspicion of having been poisoned.” France idolized this little King whose beauty, of a supreme distinction, had somewhat ideal in it; the Emperor of Germany said he was the child of Europe. Having completed his thirteenth year, he was, as usual, proclaimed of age (February, 1723), and that same year, the Duke of Orleans, who had most loyally fulfilled his duties toward his pupil, assumed the functions of prime minister on the death of Cardinal Dubois. He showed profound deference toward the young sovereign, and carried his portfolio to him at five o’clock every afternoon. The King enjoyed this occupation, and always looked forward impatiently to the hour.
When the Duke of Orleans died suddenly at Versailles (December 2, 1723), Louis XV. regretted him sincerely. It was a woman who reigned under cover of the new prime minister, the Duke of Bourbon. She was one of those ambitious creatures to whom the moral sense is lacking, but who possess wit, grace, and charm; one of those enchantresses who, by dint of intrigues, end by falling into their own snares and cruelly expiate their short-lived triumphs. The Marquise de Prie, the all-powerful mistress of the Duke, was twenty-five years old. The daughter of the rich financier Berthelot de Pléneuf, she had married a nobleman whom she managed to have appointed ambassador to Turin. She led a very fast life in that city, and got herself into debt. Her father being unable to maintain her any longer, she was obliged to escape from the courts of justice, and the Marquis de Prie was recalled from his embassy. The young Marquise was not the woman to be discouraged by such reverses. She had only to show herself in order to subjugate the Duke of Bourbon, and assume a princely luxury. “She had a charming face,” says the Marquis d’Argenson, “a sharp and crafty wit, a touch of genius, ambition, and recklessness.... The Duke was madly in love with her. I knew their habits, their visits to the opera ball, their little house in the rue Sainte Apolline, their gray-looking hack, which had the appearance of a public conveyance on the outside, but was extremely magnificent within.... She played the queen just as I would make a valet-de-chambre of my lackey.”
When they were carrying the reliquary of Sainte Geneviève in procession in 1725, because the rains had spoilt the crops, she said: “The people are crazy; don’t they know that it is I who make rain and fine weather?”
Violent under an air of gentleness, insatiable for money and power beneath an exterior of careless disinterestedness, a libertine through habit rather than from passion, running after pleasure without seeking love, betraying with impunity her lover who believed what she said against the evidence of his own eyes, Madame de Prie despotically ruled both the Duke of Bourbon and France. But one thing disquieted her: the young King’s health was delicate. If he should die suddenly, the crown would revert to the Orleans branch, between which family and the Duke of Bourbon there existed a thoroughgoing enmity. In 1725 the Infanta, the betrothed of Louis XV., was only seven years old. Several years must elapse, therefore, before the marriage could be consummated. Now, there was no repose possible for the Duke and his favorite so long as the King had no direct heir. The Duke slept at Versailles in an apartment directly under that of the King. One night he thought he heard more noise and movement than usual. He rose precipitately and went up stairs in a great fright and his dressing gown. The first surgeon, Maréchal, astonished to see him appear in this guise, asked the cause of his alarm. The Duke, beside himself, could only stammer: “I heard some noise—the King is sick—what will become of me?” Somewhat reassured by Maréchal, he consented to go down again to his apartment, but he was overheard muttering to himself: “I would never get back here again. If he recovers, we must marry him.” It was resolved to send back the Infanta on account of her youth. Her father, Philip V., was indignant at such an outrage. “There is not blood enough in all Spain to avenge such an insult,” said he. At Madrid the shouting populace were allowed to drag an effigy of Louis XV. through the streets, and the shepherds of the Spanish Pyrenees came into the pasture lands of French valleys to hamstring the cattle.
Two Princesses of Orleans were then in Spain. They were both daughters of the regent, and had been sent to Madrid at the time when Marie Anne Victoire, the betrothed of Louis XV., had come to France.[5] One of them, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, born in 1709, married the Prince of the Asturias, eldest son of Philip V. The other, Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, born in 1714, was affianced to Don Carlos, brother to the Prince of the Asturias. The first was sad, cross, and whimsical; the second, on the contrary, was a delightful child, as pretty as she was intelligent. When she arrived in Spain, she was seven years old, the same age as Don Carlos, and Queen Elizabeth Farnese wrote to the Duke of Orleans: “Her little husband is in transports of joy over her, and is only too happy to have such a charming Princess.”
When Philip V. abdicated in 1724, in favor of the Prince of the Asturias (Louis I.), Mademoiselle de Montpensier became Queen. But the new King died at the end of eight months. Philip V. resumed the crown, and the widow remained without any influence at court. As soon as it was known at Madrid that Louis XV. was not to marry the Infanta, Marie Anne Victoire, it was determined by way of reprisals that the widow of King Louis and Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, the betrothed of Don Carlos, should be immediately sent back to Versailles. Spain saw the Queen, who was not at all sympathetic, depart without regret; but people were grieved at the departure of Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, who at the age of nine years was already charming, and who, appearing like a ray of light in the sombre Escurial, had made herself beloved by her little betrothed.
In France, too, the sending back of the Infanta, who was by anticipation already styled the Queen, did not occur without exciting some regret. The little Princess, now seven years old, had been confided to the care of Madame de Ventadour, the former governess of Louis XV., who loved her fondly. The great-granddaughter of Louis XIV. already knew how to nod graciously in response to the homage of the crowd, and everybody admired her pretty ways. But Louis XV., who was in his sixteenth year, and precocious, was hardly satisfied with so young a fiancée. He was pleased therefore with the breaking off of a marriage whose consummation he must have waited for so long, and, according to Voltaire’s expression, he was like a bird whose cage has been changed when he saw the Infanta depart. Beautiful presents, however, were made to the young Princess, and it was determined that her return should be accomplished with a respectful magnificence and ceremony. She left Versailles April 5, 1725, and on reaching the frontier, she was exchanged at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port for the two Princesses of Orleans (the widow of King Louis and Mademoiselle de Beaujolais). Married in 1729 to Joseph Emanuel, then Prince, afterwards King of Portugal, “she gave that sovereign,” says Voltaire, “the children she was not allowed to give to Louis XV. and was not happier on account of it.” As to the two Princesses of Orleans, their destiny was unhappy: the queen dowager of Spain, who died in 1742, lived in poverty, with a barren title and the simulacrum of a court. Her two families had but one thought,—that of ridding themselves of the support of this unfortunate young woman. Spain showed excessive negligence in the payment of her pension, and after having reigned over one of the principal kingdoms of the world, she was obliged, by economical reasons, to spend three consecutive years with the Carmelites of Paris. Still living, she was treated as if already dead. Her sister, Mademoiselle de Beaujolais, so amiable, sweet, and attractive, retained a tender memory of her former betrothed, Don Carlos (the future Charles III.), who, on his side, did not forget her. Possibly a means of renewing their engagement might have been found. But the young girl died in 1734, carrying her faithful regret with her to the tomb. She was not yet twenty.
The rupture of the marriage of Louis XV. was not a fortunate event. The Prince was only fifteen years old. He might easily have waited several years longer before marrying. His studies and his energy would both have been the gainers by it. Moreover, it was an evil thing to insult a great nation like Spain. It was not alone the Spanish people that were outraged, but the glorious memory of the Infanta’s great-grandfather, the grand King who had said: “There are no more Pyrenees.” A fatal lesson was given to the young sovereign when he was thus taught to violate sworn faith, and habituated from his adolescence to those culpable caprices, those egotistic desertions of which his reign was to afford more than one example.