Étale en ce château sans crainte et sans effroi
La substance du peuple et la honte du Roi.”
Barbier, a lawyer and man of the world, whose journal of eight volumes gives a vivid impression of the life of that time, after remarking that the sentence was a very lenient one, [6] that the château was not so large as that of many a fermier général, and that the building thereof gave employment to many poor people, goes on to say, “As for ‘shame,’ ... if it is because the King has a mistress, why who has not? except M. le duc d’Orléans. [7]... The Comte de Clermont, Abbé de Saint-Germain-des-Près, openly keeps Mlle. le Duc, who was an opera dancer; she spends three-quarters of the year at Berny, the Abbé’s country house, where she does the honours. She has a fine house in the rue de Richelieu, where the Prince often spends a week. The fathers of the abbey who have business with him go to him there in the morning, for he does not lodge in the palace of the abbey. This goes on in sight of every one, and nobody says a word about it.
“For more than twenty years M. le Comte de Charolois has detained in captivity, against her will, Mme. de Conchamp, wife of a Maître-des-Requêtes, whom he carried off, and who would have been much happier in her own house. Fifteen out of twenty men at the court do not live with their wives but have mistresses, and even amongst private people at Paris, nothing is more frequent; therefore it is ridiculous to expect the King, who is absolutely the master, to be in a worse position than his subjects and all the kings his predecessors.”
There had, in fact, been a strong reaction against the restraint and dullness of the last few years of the reign of Louis XIV., when the magnificent, pleasure-loving King, whose victorious armies had devastated Europe, who had made princes of his illegitimate children, lavished the riches of the country upon his mistresses, and yet in his stately beauty and fascination been the idol of France; had changed into a melancholy old man, depressed and disillusioned, looking with uneasiness upon the past, with fear upon the future; while the brilliant beauties and splendid festivities of bygone days had given place to virtue, strict propriety, and Mme. de Maintenon.
When Louis XIV. died, people were very tired of this altered state of things. For some time they had been extremely dull and were eager for change and amusement.
With a King of five years old, and such a Regent as the Duke of Orléans, they were tolerably sure of both. The reign of pleasure, luxury, and licence began with enthusiasm. Never, during the life of Louis le Grand, had the atmosphere of the Court been what it became under the regency, and under his great-grandson.
The Regent Orléans was not, like the Princes of Condé, Conti, Charolois, and others of the blood royal, cruel, haughty, or vindictive; on the contrary, he was good-natured, easy, and indulgent; but he was dissipated, extravagant, and licentious to such a degree that he himself, the court, and his family were the scandal of Europe. The same frenzied pursuit of enjoyment, the same lavish, sensual, reckless, luxurious life, characterised the whole of the reign of Louis XV.
In reading the memoirs and chronicles of that time one scarcely realises the existence of the many families and households, especially among the noblesse de province [8] or country gentlemen, and the middle classes, amongst whom the principles of order and religion were observed; and of an increasing circle of literary and philosophic persons who inveighed against the crimes, vices, and abuses of the age.
Those whose ideas of France in the eighteenth century are derived only from such books as Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities,” or even from a casual acquaintance with a few of the histories and chronicles of the time, are apt vaguely to picture to themselves a nation composed partly of oppressed, starving peasants, and partly of their oppressors, a race of well-bred ruffians and frivolous, heartless women; all splendidly dressed, graceful, polite, and charming in their manners amongst themselves; but arrogant, cruel, and pitiless to those beneath them.