CHAPTER VI
Death of the Duc d’Orléans—M. de Genlis—Sillery—Coming of the Revolution—The Bastille—Anger of the Duchesse d’Orléans—Dissensions.
THE Duke of Orléans died 1785, and Mme. de Montesson, having been forbidden by Louis XVI. to put her household into mourning or assume the position of a Duchess Dowager of Orléans, retired for a few weeks into a convent and then returned to her usual life, having inherited a great fortune from the late Duke.
Philippe-Égalité was now Duc d’Orléans, and his eldest son Duc de Chartres. That young prince was about seventeen, and like all the Orléans family, except the Duchess and the Comte de Beaujolais, was thoroughly indoctrinated with the detestable spirit that prevailed at the Palais Royal.
The Maréchale d’Etrée, daughter of M. de Puisieux, died, and left all her large fortune, not to the spendthrift Marquis de Genlis, but to the Count, who, finding himself now very rich, wished to retire from the Palais Royal and live on his estates, and tried to induce his wife to accompany him. He said with truth that her proper and natural place was with him, and he tried by all means in his power to persuade her to do what one would suppose a person constantly talking of duty, virtue, self-sacrifice, and the happiness of retirement, would not have hesitated about.
That she persistently refused proves how much all these professions were worth, and this time she does in her memoirs blame herself for her conduct; in fact, she declares that she felt ever afterwards a remorse that never left her, and that would be eternal; as she considered herself the cause of the death of her husband. If she had gone with him as he entreated her to do and as she acknowledged that she ought to have done, she could have induced him to leave France with her, he had sufficient money to enable them to live comfortably abroad, and his life would have been saved.
However, she refused to leave Belle Chasse, influenced by affection for her pupils, jealous of any one who might succeed her with them, fear of losing the prestige of having educated them, as she says; and, of course, of being separated from the Duc d’Orléans, which she does not say. At any rate she took her own way, and after a journey to England where she was extremely well received, she resumed her usual occupations. The Revolution was drawing nearer and nearer, though people did not realise its approach. A few more far-seeing persons foretold troubles and dangers in the future, but nobody except the well-known Cazotte, had any notion of the fearful tempest about to break over the unhappy kingdom of France.
Meanwhile, many who would have shrunk from the crimes and horrors for which in their folly they were preparing the way as fast as possible, went on playing with fire, by encouraging the disloyalty that was in the air, sympathising with the outrageous demands put forward by the Radical leaders, circulating libels and inventing lying stories against the Queen and royal family, joining noisily in the abuse of everything that had hitherto been held sacred or respectable, and doing everything in their power to inflame the evil passions and excite the cupidity and violence of the mob.
One cannot help feeling intense satisfaction in reflecting that most of those who did all this mischief, at any rate, suffered for it, when the danger, ruin, and death they had prepared for others came upon themselves. One of the most abominable of the revolutionists, who had fallen under the displeasure of his friends and been condemned by them to be guillotined with his young son, begged to be allowed to embrace him on the scaffold; but the boy sullenly refused, saying, “No; it is you who have brought me to this.”