The Comte de la Rochefoucauld was an amusing personage, and anything more funny than his admiration of the family to which he belonged could scarcely be met. His whole universe consisted in the grandeur of the origin of the La Rochefoucaulds, and the sole reason of his existence, as well as the only object of his thoughts, was how to persuade others to view it in the same light that he did. According to him, God came first and the La Rochefoucaulds next, and I am not quite sure whether he did not consider in his inmost thoughts that even in Heaven they ought to be awarded precedence at the banquet of Eternity over the saints of humble origin.
It is related that one day when he was in England someone mentioned the old saying, in relation to one of the most noble of the many noble houses Great Britain can boast, which speaks of “all the blood of all the Howards,” Count Aimery smiled modestly. “Yes,” he replied, “the Howards are great people, but I have known greater ones” (“Je connais mieux qu’eux”).
One can imagine how this weakness of that amiable man, for he was amiable indeed, was laughed at, but nevertheless he contrived to create for himself a unique position in Paris society, and talked so much and so constantly over his right to occupy the seat of honour at every dining-table he was asked to honour with his presence, that he succeeded in getting it,—and no one would have dreamed of denying it to him. Even when he happened to be in the same room as a Duke whose supremacy he deigned to recognise and to admit, one was very careful to award him the next best seat.
Comte Aimery was married to a charming woman, Mademoiselle de Mailly Nesle, whose house in the Rue de l’Université was for many years considered one of the most hospitable among the many hospitable ones in Paris. She was most exclusive as to the people whom she invited to it, but when once she had allowed them to cross her threshold, she never dropped them later on, or showed any difference in the way in which she welcomed them, even when she did not find them quite congenial or entirely sympathetic. She was rather stiff and certainly dull, and the parties which she used to give regularly during the spring season were anything but lively, partly because the guests felt that they ought not to think about anything else but the greatness of the La Rochefoucaulds, and the honour which was conferred upon them by their admittance under the roof of a member of that illustrious family; partly because anything that would have borne even the most remote likeness to amusement or mirth would have seemed out of place in those large rooms furnished in the seventeenth century style, where on all the walls hung solemn pictures of dead and gone ancestors of the hosts. But to be invited to attend a social function, no matter of what kind, by Madame Aimery gave one at once a position in Paris society, putting one immediately on the level of the upper ten thousand who constituted its most exclusive set, and by reason of that circumstance any new arrival or foreigner aspiring to make a position for himself, thought it his or her duty never to miss any of the receptions given at the hotel in the Rue de l’Université.
Madame Aimery de La Rochefoucauld died a year or two ago, and the hospitable gates of her house have remained closed ever since. Her only son, Comte Gabriel, is married to Mademoiselle de Richelieu, the sister of the present Duke of that name and the daughter of the widowed Duchess, who later married the Prince of Monaco. The Princesse de Monaco is a Jewess by origin, the daughter of the banker Heine, and it was a hard pill to swallow for Count Aimery when he had to consent to this union of his only son with a girl who, though charming in herself, still could not boast of the thirty-two quarterings which he considered as indispensable in such cases. He submitted, however, with better grace than he would have done had a few millions not helped him to do so, together with the consciousness that these millions would allow his heir to keep up the state which befitted his station in life. Now Count Aimery is an old man, far advanced in the sixties, if not in the seventies, and is but little seen in society, especially since the death of his wife. His greatest delight consists in being consulted in matters of etiquette, or being asked to arrange seats at a dinner table. His constant occupation is the study of the Almanach de Gotha and books of that kind. He is as happy as a man devoid of cares can be, and probably will live a good many years yet, being so forgetful of anything that does not concern the glories of the La Rochefoucauld family that he will surely even forget to die. Should he ever remember to do so, the Faubourg St. Germain will lose its greatest authority in matters of social etiquette and social precedence.
CHAPTER XVI
A Few Prominent Parisian Hostesses
Among the great ladies who began to receive society in their ancestral houses during the presidency of Marshal MacMahon can be mentioned the Duchesse de Rohan, at that time still Princesse de Léon; the Duchesse de Galliera, of whom I have already spoken; and a crowd of hostesses of minor standing within the social horizon, who hastened with more or less alacrity to follow their example. The Comtesse Mélanie de Pourtalès opened once more the doors of her hotel in the Rue Tronchet, as did the Baroness Alphonse de Rothschild her magnificent palace in the Rue St. Florentin, whilst Madame Edouard André very soon contrived, thanks to her husband’s enormous fortune and her own great talent as a painter, to introduce herself into the most select circles of Paris society, and to have all its celebrities at her receptions given in her splendid dwelling on the Boulevard Haussmann.
Little by little social life began to re-establish itself, though on an entirely different scale than formerly, and, strange to say, society became ever so much less exclusive than when a distinct line of separation existed between the Monde des Tuileries, as it was called, and the other coteries which abounded in the capital.
Madame de Galliera was one of the last representatives of the grandes dames of the time of Louis Philippe, when even great ladies got imbued with a certain tinge of middle-class leanings, which were the distinctive feature of that middle-class Court over which Queen Marie Amélie presided, where it was not considered as against etiquette to appear before the Sovereigns with an umbrella, and where the King did not hesitate to peel a fruit with a penknife. Madame de Galliera was polite and amiable, very correct in everything she did, and very much convinced of the exceptional importance which her numerous millions gave her in the world where she moved with more ease than pleasure. She belonged to a coterie composed of widely differing elements, and where rigid dames could be found together with some who posed as such, though with the heavy burden of a well-filled past upon their shoulders. Such, for instance, as the Duchesse de Dino, who in her young days had been a friend of Madame de Galliera, though considerably older than the latter.
At the time I am talking about, that descendant of the Genoese Doges and daughter of the ancient house of Brignole-Sale was affecting the most considerable devotion to the Orleans family, and had put her sumptuous house at the disposal of the Comte de Paris, who inhabited it until the decree of expulsion was enforced against him. He held there the reception on the occasion of the wedding of his daughter, the Princess Amélie, with the heir to the throne of Portugal. This reception, brought him bad luck in general, because it was the cause of a quarrel between him and his capricious hostess, who, instead of leaving him her vast fortune as she had intended, willed a considerable portion of it to the Empress Frederick of Germany, with whom she had struck up a violent friendship at the time the Emperor was struggling with the horrors of his last illness at San Remo. She left her house in Paris to the Austrian Emperor, whose Embassy has been located in it ever since.