“The more I see of the princess, the more satisfied I am. We had a public conversation, in which she said nothing, and that is saying all. Her waist is very beautiful, one might say perfect, and her modesty would please you. We supped and she did not fail in anything, and has a charming politeness to every one; but to me and my son she fails in nothing, and behaves as you might have done. She was much looked at and observed; and all present seemed in good faith to be satisfied. Her air is noble, her manners polished and agreeable; I have pleasure in telling you such good of her, for I find that, without prepossession or flattery, I can do so and that everything obliges me to do so.”
Now, shall I venture to express my thought? There is certainly a mention of modesty in one or two places in the letter; but it is of the modest air, the good effect produced, the grace that depended on it. For all the rest it is impossible to find on these pages anything other than a charming physical, external, and mundane description, without the slightest concern as to inward and moral qualities. Evidently the king is as little concerned about those as he is deeply anxious about externals. Let the princess succeed and please, let her charm and amuse, let her adorn the Court and enliven it, give her a good confessor, a sound Jesuit, and for all the rest let her be and do what pleases her; the king asks nothing else: that is the impression left upon me by that letter.
If there had entered into this letter written from Montargis even a flash of moral solicitude in the midst of the record of those external graces and perfect proprieties, Louis XIV. would not have been, after twelve years’ hourly intimacy, the odious and hard grandfather of the scene at Marly near the carp basin, to the mother of his expected heir. I send the reader for the details and the accessories of that singular scene to Saint-Simon, who in this instance is our Tacitus, the Tacitus of a king not naturally cruel, but who was so that day by force of egotism and selfishness. That first letter from Montargis, so elegant, so smiling on the outward surface, covered in its depths the vanity and egotism of a master, solicitude solely for decorum and curtseying—the scene at the basin of carp concludes it.
I shall not reproduce here the divers portraits of the Duchesse de Bourgogne; I should have to take them from many sources, but above all from Saint-Simon. She was neither handsome nor pretty, she was better than either. Each feature of her face taken separately might seem defective, even ugly, but from all these uglinesses, these defects, these irregularities arranged by the hand of the Graces, came a nameless harmony of her person, a delightful ensemble, the movement and airy whirl of which enchanted both eyes and soul. In moral qualities it was the same.
She played a part in “Athalie;” why should I not tell what she thought of that play, capricious child that she was? Apropos of its representation at Saint-Cyr, Mme. de Maintenon writes: “Here is ‘Athalie’ again breaking down. Ill-luck pursues all that I protect and care for. Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne tells me it can never succeed, that the piece is cold, that Racine regretted it, that I am the only person who likes it, and a number of other things which enable me to perceive, through the knowledge I have of this Court, that her part displeases her. She wants to play Josabeth, which she cannot play as well as the Comtesse d’Ayen.”[16] As soon as they gave her the rôle she liked, the point of view was changed in a moment; such were the coulisses of Saint-Cyr! “She is delighted,” continues Mme. de Maintenon, “and now thinks ‘Athalie’ marvellous. Let us play it, then, inasmuch as we have agreed to do so; but, in truth, it is not agreeable to mix in the pleasures of the great.” The Duchesse de Bourgogne came of that race of the great which will soon be a race departed. She deserves to remain in the vista as a true representative in her transitory life of its lightest and most seductive charm.
The letters of the duchess which have been published up to this time are mere notes, adding nothing to the idea that we form of her mind. La Fare, in his memoirs written about the year 1699, has very well remarked that after the death of Madame, Henrietta of England (grandmother of Marie-Adélaïde) in 1670, the taste for things of intellect was greatly lowered in that brilliant Court of Louis XIV. “It is certain,” he says, “that in losing that princess the Court lost the only person of her rank who was capable of liking and distinguishing real merit; since her death, nothing is seen but gambling, confusion, and impoliteness.” Towards the close of the reign of Louis XIV. a taste for matters of mind and even for the refinements of wit reappeared no doubt and found favour in the little circles of Saint-Maur and Sceaux, but the body of the Court during that period was a victim to bassette, lansquenet, and other excesses, in which wine bore its fair share. The Duchesse de Berry, daughter of the future regent, was not the only young woman to whom it happened to be drunk. The Duchesse de Bourgogne herself, entering such society, found it difficult sometimes not to fall into the vices of the day, into those nets of which lansquenet was the best known and the most ruinous. More than once the king or Mme. de Maintenon paid her debts. But she asked for pardon with such good grace and submission by letter, and by word of mouth with such pretty and coaxing ways that she was sure to obtain it.
Those who judged her with the most severity are all agreed that she corrected herself with age, and that her will, her rare spirit, her sense of the rank she was about to hold, triumphed in the end over her first impetuosity and petulance. “Three years before her death,” writes Madame, mother of the regent, honest and terrible woman who says all things bluntly, “the dauphine had entirely changed, to her great advantage; she no longer made escapades or drank too much. Instead of behaving like an intractable being, she became sensible and polite, behaved according to her rank, and no longer allowed her young ladies to be familiar with her, and put their fingers in her dish.” Uncomfortable praises, perhaps, with which we could dispense. But at this distance of time we can hear all without scruple, and, while doing homage to a person who had the gift of charm, we may dare to look on manners and customs as they were.[17] We must resolve, whatever it costs us, to leave the chamber of Mme. de Maintenon and the twilight of its sanctuary. The Duchesse de Bourgogne has been pictured to us in the garb of Saint-Cyr; it is not in that habit that she is, to my thinking, most natural or truest.
A delicate question presents itself,—more delicate than that of lansquenet: did the Duchesse de Bourgogne have weaknesses of the heart? Adored by her young husband, and knowing how to take in hand his interests under all attacks, it does not seem that she had for his person a very warm or tender liking. Hence one does not see what there was to guarantee her from some other penchant. Saint-Simon, who is in no way malevolent to the Duchesse de Bourgogne, relates with great detail and as if receiving the confidences of well-informed persons, the slight weaknesses of the princess for M. de Nangis, M. de Maulévrier, and the Abbé de Polignac. “At Marly,” he says, “the dauphine would run about the gardens with other young people till three and four o’clock in the morning. The king never knew of these nocturnal expeditions.” Nevertheless, I do not desire to do otherwise than agree with Mme. de Caylus, who, while admitting the liking of the princess for M. de Nangis, makes haste to add: “The only thing I doubt is whether the affair ever went so far as people thought; I am convinced that the whole intrigue took place in looks, and, at most, in a few letters.”
In the midst of all her levity and childish frivolity the Duchesse de Bourgogne had serious good qualities, which increased as the years went on. She said very sweetly one day to Mme. de Maintenon: “Aunt, I am under infinite obligations to you; you have had the patience to wait for my reason.” She would no doubt have proved capable of State business and politics. The manner in which she knew how to defend the prince, her husband, against the cabal of the Duc de Vendôme, the striking revenge she took upon the latter at Marly, and the back-handed stroke by which she ousted him, show us plainly what she could do that was able and persistent when a matter came close to her heart. The few letters which she wrote to the Duc de Noailles, in which she says she knows nothing of politics, go to prove, on the contrary, that, if she could have talked about them instead of writing, she would have liked very well to take part in them. There is a more serious matter, which I see no reason for disguising. According to Duclos [author of “The Secret Memoirs of the reign of Louis XIV.,” etc.], this fascinating child, so dear to the king, did, nevertheless, betray France by informing her father, the Duc de Savoie, then become our enemy, of military plans which she was able to discover when, with playful familiarity and the liberty of entering the king’s cabinet at all hours, she had the opportunity to read and learn those plans at their source. The king, adds the historian, found the proofs of this treachery, after the death of the princess, in her desk. “The little rogue,” he is reported to have said to Mme. de Maintenon, “deceived us after all.”