Том 10

                                VOLUME 10.

CHAPTER LXX

Character and Position of the Duc d'Orleans--His Manners, Talents, and

Virtues.--His Weakness.--Anecdote Illustrative Thereof.--

The "Debonnaire"--Adventure of the Grand Prieur in England.--Education

of the Duc d'Orleans.--Character of Dubois.--His Pernicious Influence.--

The Duke's Emptiness.--His Deceit.--His Love of Painting.--The Fairies at

His Birth.--The Duke's Timidity.--An Instance of His Mistrustfulness.

CHAPTER LXXI

The Duke Tries to Raise the Devil.--Magical Experiments.--His Religious

Opinions.--Impiety.--Reads Rabelais at Church.--The Duchesse d'Orleans.--

Her Character.--Her Life with Her Husband.--My Discourses with the Duke

on the Future.--My Plans of Government.--A Place at Choice Offered Me.--

I Decline the Honour.--My Reason.--National Bankruptcy.--The Duke's Anger

at My Refusal.--A Final Decision.

CHAPTER LXXII

The King's Health Declines.--Bets about His Death.--Lord Stair.--My New

Friend.--The King's Last Hunt.--And Last Domestic and Public Acts.--

Doctors.--Opium.--The King's Diet.--Failure of His Strength.--His Hopes

of Recovery.--Increased Danger.--Codicil to His Will.--Interview with the

Duc d'Orleans.--With the Cardinal de Noailles.--Address to His

Attendants.--The Dauphin Brought to Him.--His Last Words.--

An Extraordinary Physician.--The Courtiers and the Duc d'Orleans.--

Conduct of Madame de Maintenon.--The King's Death.

CHAPTER LXXIII

Early Life of Louis XIV.--His Education.--His Enormous Vanity.--His

Ignorance.--Cause of the War with Holland.--His Mistakes and Weakness in

War.--The Ruin of France.--Origin of Versailles.--The King's Love of

Adulation, and Jealousy of People Who Came Not to Court.--His Spies.--

His Vindictiveness.--Opening of Letters.--Confidence Sometimes Placed in

Him--A Lady in a Predicament.

CHAPTER LXXIV

Excessive Politeness.--Influence of the Valets.--How the  King Drove

Out.--Love of magnificence.--His Buildings. --Versailles.--The Supply of

Water.--The King Seeks for Quiet.--Creation of Marly.--Tremendous

Extravagance.

CHAPTER LXXV

Amours of the King.--La Valliere.--Montespan.--Scandalous Publicity.--

Temper of Madame de Montespan.--Her Unbearable Haughtiness.--Other

Mistresses.--Madame de Maintenon.--Her Fortunes.--Her Marriage with

Scarron.--His Character and Society.--How She Lived After His Death.--

Gets into Better Company.--Acquaintance with Madame de Montespan.--

The King's Children.--His Dislike of Widow Scarron.--Purchase of the

Maintenon Estate.--Further Demands.--M. du Maine on His Travels.--

Montespan's Ill--humour.--Madame de Maintenon Supplants Her.--Her Bitter

Annoyance.--Progress of the New Intrigue.--Marriage of the King and

Madame de Maintenon.

CHAPTER LXXVI

Character of Madame de Maintenon.--Her Conversation.--Her Narrow-

mindedness.--Her Devotion.--Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.--Its Fatal

Consequences.--Saint Cyr.--Madame de Maintenon Desires Her Marriage to be

Declared.--Her Schemes.--Counterworked by Louvois.--His Vigorous Conduct

and Sudden Death.--Behaviour of the King.--Extraordinary Death of Seron.

CHAPTER LXXVII

Daily Occupations of Madame de Maintenon.--Her Policy--How She Governed

the King's Affairs.--Connivance with the Ministers.--Anecdote of

Le Tellier.--Behaviour of the King to Madame de Maintenon.--

His Hardness.--Selfishness.--Want of Thought for Others.--Anecdotes.--

Resignation of the King.--Its Causes.--The Jesuits and the Doctors.--The

King and Lay Jesuits.

CHAPTER LXX

The reign of Louis XIV. was approaching its conclusion, so that there is

now nothing more to relate but what passed during the last month of his

life, and scarcely so much.  These events, indeed, so curious and so

important, are so mixed up with those that immediately followed the

King's death, that they cannot be separated from them.  It will be

interesting and is necessary to describe the projects, the thoughts, the

difficulties, the different resolutions, which occupied the brain of the

Prince, who, despite the efforts of Madame de Maintenon and M. du Maine,

was of necessity about to be called to the head of affairs during the

minority of the young King.  This is the place, therefore, to explain all

these things, after which we will resume the narrative of the last month

of the King's life, and go on to the events which followed his death.

But, as I have said, before entering upon this thorny path, it will be as

well to make known, if possible, the chief personage of the story, the

impediments interior and exterior in his path, and all that personally

belonged to him.

M. le Duc d'Orleans was, at the most, of mediocre stature, full-bodied

without being fat; his manner and his deportment were easy and very

noble; his face was broad and very agreeable, high in colour; his hair

black, and wig the same.  Although he danced very badly, and had but ill

succeeded at the riding-school, he had in his face, in his gestures, in

all his movements, infinite grace, and so natural that it adorned even

his most ordinary commonplace actions.  With much ease when nothing

constrained him, he was gentle, affable, open, of facile and charming

access; the tone of his voice was agreeable, and he had a surprisingly

easy flow of words upon all subjects which nothing ever disturbed, and

which never failed to surprise; his eloquence was natural and extended

even to his most familiar discourse, while it equally entered into his

observations upon the most abstract sciences, on which he talked most

perspicuously; the affairs of government, politics, finance, justice,

war, the court, ordinary conversation, the arts, and mechanics.  He could

speak as well too upon history and memoirs, and was well acquainted with

pedigrees.  The personages of former days were familiar to him; and the

intrigues of the ancient courts were to him as those of his own time.

To hear him, you would have thought him a great reader.  Not so.  He

skimmed; but his memory was so singular that he never forgot things,

names, or dates, cherishing remembrance of things with precision; and his

apprehension was so good, that in skimming thus it was, with him,

precisely as though he had read very laboriously.  He excelled in

unpremeditated discourse, which, whether in the shape of repartee or

jest, was always appropriate and vivacious.  He often reproached me, and

others more than he, with "not spoiling him;" but I often gave him praise

merited by few, and which belonged to nobody so justly as to him; it was,

that besides having infinite ability and of various kinds, the singular

perspicuity of his mind was joined to so much exactness, that he would

never have made a mistake in anything if he had allowed the first

suggestions of his judgment.  He oftentimes took this my eulogy as a

reproach, and he was not always wrong, but it was not the less true.

With all this he had no presumption, no trace of superiority natural or

acquired; he reasoned with you as with his equal, and struck the most

able with surprise.  Although he never forgot his own position, nor

allowed others to forget it, he carried no constraint with him, but put

everybody at his ease, and placed himself upon the level of all others.

He had the weakness to believe that he resembled Henry IV.  in

everything, and strove to affect the manners, the gestures, the bearing,

of that monarch.  Like Henry IV.  he was naturally good, humane,

compassionate; and, indeed, this man, who has been so cruelly accused of

the blackest and most inhuman crimes, was more opposed to the destruction

of others than any one I have ever known, and had such a singular dislike

to causing anybody pain that it may be said, his gentleness, his

humanity, his easiness, had become faults; and I do not hesitate to

affirm that that supreme virtue which teaches us to pardon our enemies he

turned into vice, by the indiscriminate prodigality with which he applied

it; thereby causing himself many sad embarrassments and misfortunes,

examples and proofs of which will be seen in the sequel.

I remember that about a year, perhaps, before the death of the King,

having gone up early after dinner into the apartments of Madame la

Duchesse d'Orleans at Marly, I found her in bed with the megrims,

and M. d'Orleans alone in the room, seated in an armchair at her pillow.

Scarcely had I sat down than Madame la Duchesse began to talk of some of

those execrable imputations concerning M. d'Orleans unceasingly

circulated by Madame de Maintenon and M. du Maine; and of an incident

arising therefrom, in which the Prince and the Cardinal de Rohan had

played a part against M. d'Orleans.  I sympathised with her all the more

because the Duke, I knew not why, had always distinguished and courted

those two brothers, and thought he could count upon them.  "And what will

you say of M. d'Orleans," added the Duchesse, "when I tell you that since

he has known this, known it beyond doubt, he treats them exactly the same

as before?"

I looked at M. d'Orleans, who had uttered only a few words to confirm the

story, as it was being told, and who was negligently lolling in his

chair, and I said to him with warmth:

"Oh, as to that, Monsieur, the truth must be told; since Louis the

Debonnaire, never has there been such a Debonnaire as you."

At these words he rose in his chair, red with anger to the very whites of

his eyes, and blurted out his vexation against me for abusing him, as he

pretended, and against Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans for encouraging me

and laughing at him.

"Go on," said I, "treat your enemies well, and rail at your friends.  I

am delighted to see you angry.  It is a sign that I have touched the sore

point, when you press the finger on it the patient cries.  I should like

to squeeze out all the matter, and after that you would be quite another

man, and differently esteemed."

He grumbled a little more, and then calmed down.  This was one of two

occasions only, on which he was ever really angry with me.

Two or three years after the death of the King, I was chatting in one of

the grand rooms of the Tuileries, where the Council of the Regency was,

according to custom, soon to be held, and M. d'Orleans at the other end

was talking to some one in a window recess.  I heard myself called from

mouth to mouth, and was told that M. d'Orleans wished to speak to me.

This often happened before the Council.  I went therefore to the window

where he was standing.  I found a serious bearing, a concentrated manner,

an angry face, and was much surprised.

"Monsieur," said he to me at once, "I have a serious complaint against

you; you, whom I have always regarded as my best of friends."

"Against me!  Monsieur!" said I, still more surprised.  "What is the

matter, then, may I ask?"

"The matter!" he replied with a mien still more angry; "something you

cannot deny; verses you have made against me."

"I--verses!" was my reply.  "Why, who the devil has been telling you such

nonsense?  You have been acquainted with me nearly forty years, and do

you not know, that never in my life have I been able to make a single

verse--much less verses?"

"No, no, by Heaven," replied he, "you cannot deny these;" and forthwith

he began to sing to me a street song in his praise, the chorus of which

was: 'Our Regent is debonnaire, la la, he is debonnaire,' with a burst of

laughter.

"What!" said I, "you remember it still!" and smiling, I added also,

"since you are revenged for it, remember it in good earnest."  He kept on

laughing a long time before going to the Council, and could not hinder

himself.  I have not been afraid to write this trifle, because it seems

to me that it paints the man.

M. d'Orleans loved liberty, and as much for others as for himself.  He

extolled England to me one day on this account, as a country where there

are no banishments, no lettres de cachet, and where the King may close

the door of his palace to anybody, but can keep no one in prison; and

thereupon related to me with enjoyment, that besides the Duchess of

Portsmouth, Charles the Second had many subordinate mistresses; that the

Grand Prieur, young and amiable in those days, driven out of France for

some folly, had gone to England to pass his exile and had been well

received by the King.  By way of thanks, he seduced one of those

mistresses, by whom the King was then so smitten, that he sued for mercy,

offered money to the Grand Prieur, and undertook to obtain his

reconciliation in France.  The Grand Prieur held firm.  Charles

prohibited him the palace.  He laughed at this, and went every day to the

theatre, with his conquest, and placed himself opposite the King.  At

last, Charles, not knowing what to do to deliver himself from his

tormentor, begged our King to recall him, and this was done.  But the

Grand Prieur said he was very comfortable in England and continued his

game.  Charles, outraged, confided to the King (Louis XIV.) the state he

was thrown into by the Grand Prieur, and obtained a command so absolute

and so prompt, that his tormentor was afterwards obliged to go back into

France.

M. d'Orleans admired this; and I know not if he would not have wished to

be the Grand Prieur.  He always related this story with delight.  Thus,

of ambition for reigning or governing, he had none.  If he made a false

move in Spain it was because he had been misdirected.  What he would have

liked best would have been to command armies while war lasted, and divert

himself the rest of the time without constraint to himself or to others.

He was, in fact, very fit for this.  With much valour, he had also much

foresight, judgment, coolness, and vast capacity.  It may be said that he

was captain, engineer, and army purveyor; that he knew the strength of

his troops, the names and the company of the officers, and the most

distinguished of each corps; that he knew how to make himself adored, at

the same time keeping up discipline, and could execute the most difficult

things, while unprovided with everything.  Unfortunately there is another

side of this picture, which it will be as well now to describe.

M. d'Orleans, by disposition so adapted to become the honour and the

master-piece of an education, was not fortunate in his teachers.  Saint-

Laurent, to whom he was first confided, was, it is true, the man in all

Europe best fitted to act as the instructor of kings, but he died before

his pupil was beyond the birch, and the young Prince, as I have related,

fell entirely into the hands of the Abbe Dubois.  This person has played

such an important part in the state since the death of the King, that it

is fit that he should be made known.  The Abbe Dubois was a little,

pitiful, wizened, herring-gutted man, in a flaxen wig, with a weazel's

face, brightened by some intellect.  In familiar terms, he was a regular

scamp.  All the vices unceasingly fought within him for supremacy, so

that a continual uproar filled his mind.  Avarice, debauchery, ambition;

were his gods; perfidy, flattery, foot-licking his means of action;

complete impiety was his repose; and he held the opinion as a great

principle, that probity and honesty are chimeras, with which people deck

themselves, but which have no existence.  In consequence, all means were

good to him.  He excelled in low intrigues; he lived in them, and could

not do without them; but they always had an aim, and he followed them

with a patience terminated only by success, or by firm conviction that he

could not reach what he aimed at, or unless, as he wandered thus in deep

darkness, a glimmer of light came to him from some other cranny.  He

passed thus his days in sapping and counter-sapping.  The most impudent

deceit had become natural to him, and was concealed under an air that was

simple, upright, sincere, often bashful.  He would have spoken with grace

and forcibly, if, fearful of saying more than he wished, he had not

accustomed himself to a fictitious hesitation, a stuttering--which

disfigured his speech, and which, redoubled when important things were in

question, became insupportable and sometimes unintelligible.  He had wit,

learning, knowledge of the world; much desire to please and insinuate

himself, but all was spoiled by an odour of falsehood which escaped in

spite of him through every pore of his body--even in the midst of his

gaiety, which made whoever beheld it sad.  Wicked besides, with

reflection, both by nature and by argument, treacherous and ungrateful,

expert in the blackest villainies, terribly brazen when detected; he

desired everything, envied everything, and wished to seize everything.

It was known afterwards, when he no longer could restrain himself, to

what an extent he was selfish, debauched, inconsistent, ignorant of

everything, passionate, headstrong, blasphemous and mad, and to what an

extent he publicly despised his master, the state, and all the world,

never hesitating to sacrifice everybody and everything to his credit, his

power, his absolute authority, his greatness, his avarice, his fears, and

his vengeance.

Such was the sage to whom M. le Duc d'Orleans was confided in early

youth!

Such a good master did not lose his pains with his new disciple, in whom

the excellent principles of Saint-Laurent had not had time to take deep

root, whatever esteem and affection he may have preserved through life

for that worthy man.  I will admit here, with bitterness, for everything

should be sacrificed to the truth, that M. le Duc d'Orleans brought into

the world a failing--let us call things by their names--a weakness, which

unceasingly spoiled all his talents, and which were of marvellous use to

his preceptor all his life.  Dubois led him into debauchery, made him

despise all duty and all decency, and persuaded him that he had too much

mind to be the dupe of religion, which he said was a politic invention to

frighten ordinary, intellects, and keep the people in subjection.  He

filled him too with his favourite principle, that probity in man and

virtue in woman, are mere chimeras, without existence in anybody except a

few poor slaves of early training.  This was the basis of the good

ecclesiatic's doctrines, whence arose the license of falsehood, deceit,

artifice, infidelity, perfidy; in a word, every villainy, every crime,

was turned into policy, capacity, greatness, liberty and depth of

intellect, enlightenment, good conduct, if it could be hidden, and if

suspicions and common prejudices could be avoided.

Unfortunately all conspired in M. d'Orleans to open his heart and his

mind to this execrable poison: a fresh and early youth, much strength and

health, joy at escaping from the yoke as well as vexation at his

marriage, the wearisomeness produced by idleness, the impulse of his

passions, the example of other young men, whose vanity and whose interest

it was to make him live like them.  Thus he grew accustomed to

debauchery, above all to the uproar of it, so that he could not do

without it, and could only divert himself by dint of noise, tumult, and

excess.  It is this which led him often into such strange and such

scandalous debauches, and as he wished to surpass all his companions, to

mix up with his parties of pleasure the most impious discourses, and as a

precious refinement, to hold the most outrageous orgies on the most holy

days, as he did several times during his Regency on Good Friday, by

choice, and on other similar days.  The more debauched a man was, the

more he esteemed him; and I have unceasingly seen him in admiration, that

reached almost to veneration for the Grand Prieur,--because for forty

years he had always gone to bed drunk, and had never ceased to keep

mistresses in the most public manner, and to hold the most impious and

irreligious discourses.  With these principles, and the conduct that

resulted from them, it is not surprising that M. le Duc d'Orleans was

false to such an extent, that he boasted of his falsehood, and plumed

himself upon being the most skilful deceiver in the world.  He and Madame

la Duchesse de Berry sometimes disputed which was the cleverer of the

two; and this in public before M. le Duc de Berry, Madame de Saint-Simon,

and others!

M. le Duc d'Orleans, following out the traditions of the Palais Royal,

had acquired the detestable taste and habit of embroiling people one with

the other, so as to profit by their divisions.  This was one of his

principal occupations during all the time he was at the head of affairs,

and one that he liked the best; but which, as soon as discovered,

rendered him odious, and caused him a thousand annoyances.  He was not

wicked, far from it; but he could not quit the habits of impiety,

debauchery, and deceit into which Dubois had led him.  A remarkable

feature in his character is, that he was suspicious and full of

confidence at the same time with reference to the very same people.

It is surprising that with all his talents he was totally without honest

resources for amusing himself.  He was born bored; and he was so

accustomed to live out of himself, that it was insufferable to him to

return, incapable as he was of trying even to occupy himself.  He could

only live in the midst of the movement and torrent of business; at the

head of an army for instance, or in the cares that arose out of the

execution of campaign projects, or in the excitement and uproar of

debauchery.  He began to languish as soon as he was without noise,

excess, and tumult, the time painfully hanging upon his hands.  He cast

himself upon painting, when his great fancy for chemistry had passed or

grown deadened, in consequence of what had been said upon it.  He painted

nearly all the afternoon at Versailles and at Marly.  He was a good judge

of pictures, liked them, and made a collection, which in number and

excellence was not surpassed by those of the Crown.  He amused himself

afterwards in making composition stones and seals over charcoal, the

fumes of which often drove me away; and the strongest perfumes, which he

was fond of all his life, but from which I turned him because the King

was very much afraid of them, and soon sniffed them.  In fact, never was

man born with so many talents of all kinds, so much readiness and

facility in making use of them, and yet never was man so idle, so given

up to vacuity and weariness.  Thus Madame painted him very happily by an

illustration from fairy tales, of which she was full.

She said, that all the fairies had been invited to his birth; that all

came, and that each gave him some talent, so that he had them all.  But,

unfortunately, an old fairy, who had disappeared so many years ago that

she was no longer remembered, had been omitted from the invitation lists.

Piqued at this neglect, she came supported upon her little wand, just at

the moment when all the rest had endowed the child with their gifts.

More and more vexed, she revenged herself by rendering useless all the

talents he had received from the other fairies, not one of which, though

possessing them all, in consequence of her malediction, was he able to

make use of.  It must be admitted, that on the whole this is a speaking

portrait.

One of the misfortunes of this Prince was being incapable of following up

anything, and an inability to comprehend, even, how any one else could do

so.  Another, was a sort of insensibility which rendered him indifferent

to the most mortal and the most dangerous offences; and as the nerve and

principle of hatred and friendship, of gratitude and vengeance, are the

same, and as they were wanting in him, the consequences were infinite and

pernicious.  He was timid to excess, knew it, and was so ashamed that he

affected to be exactly the reverse, and plumed himself upon his daring.

But the truth is, as was afterwards seen, nothing could be obtained from

him, neither grace, nor justice, except by working upon his fears, to

which he was very susceptible; or by extreme importunity.  He tried to

put people off by words, then by promises, of which he was monstrously

prodigal, but which he only kept when made to people who had good firm

claws.  In this manner he broke so many engagements that the most

positive became counted as nothing; and he promised moreover to so many

different people, what could only be given to one, that he thus opened

out a copious source of discredit to himself and caused much discontent.

Nothing deceived or injured him more than the opinion he had formed, that

he could deceive all the world.  He was no longer believed, even when he

spoke with the best faith, and his facility much diminished the value of

everything he did.  To conclude, the obscure, and for the most part

blackguard company, which he ordinarily frequented in his debauches, and

which he did not scruple publicly to call his roues, drove away all

decent people, and did him infinite harm.

His constant mistrust of everything and everybody was disgusting, above

all when he was at the head of affairs.  The fault sprang from his

timidity, which made him fear his most certain enemies, and treat them

with more distinction than his friends; from his natural easiness, from a

false imitation of Henry IV., in whom this quality was by no means the

finest; and from the unfortunate opinion which he held, that probity was

a sham.  He was, nevertheless, persuaded of my probity; and would often

reproach me with it as a fault and prejudice of education which had

cramped my mind and obscured my understanding, and he said as much of

Madame de Saint-Simon, because he believed her virtuous.

I had given him so many proofs of my attachment that he could not very

well suspect me; and yet, this is what happened two or three years after

the establishment of the Regency.  I give it as one of the most striking

of the touches that paint his portrait.

It was autumn.  M. d'Orleans had dismissed the councils for a fortnight.

I profited by this to go and spend the time at La Ferme.  I had just

passed an hour alone with the Duke, and had taken my leave of him and

gone home, where in order to be in repose I had closed my door to

everybody.  In about an hour at most, I was told that Biron, with a

message from M. le Duc d'Orleans, was at the door, with orders to see me,

and that he would not go away without.  I allowed Biron to enter, all the

more surprised because I had just quitted M. le Duc d'Orleans, and

eagerly asked him the news.  Biron was embarrassed, and in his turn asked

where was the Marquis de Ruffec (my son).  At this my surprise increased,

and I demanded what he meant.  Biron, more and more confused, admitted

that M. le Duc d'Orleans wanted information on this point, and had sent

him for it.  I replied, that my son was with his regiment at Besancon,

lodging with M. de Levi, who commanded in Franche-Comte.

"Oh," said Biron, "I know that very well; but have you any letter from

him?"

"What for?" I asked.

"Because, frankly, since I must tell you all," said he, "M. le Duc

d'Orleans wishes to see his handwriting."

He added, that soon after I had quitted M. le Duc d'Orleans, whilst he

was walking at Montmartre ma garden with his 'roues' and his harlots,

some letters had been brought to him by a post-office clerk, to whom he

had spoken in private; that afterwards he, Biron, had been called by the

Duke, who showed him a letter from the Marquis de Ruffec to his master,

dated "Madrid," and charged him, thereupon, with this present commission.

At this recital I felt a mixture of anger and compassion, and I did not

constrain myself with Biron.  I had no letters from my son, because I

used to burn them, as I did all useless papers.  I charged Biron to say

to M. le Duc d'Orleans a part of what I felt; that I had not the

slightest acquaintance with anybody in Spain; that I begged him at once

to despatch a courier there in order to satisfy himself that my son was

at Besancon.

Biron, shrugging his shoulders, said all that was very good, but that if

I could find a letter from the Marquis de Ruffec it would be much better;

adding, that if one turned up and I sent it to him, he would take care

that it reached M. le Duc d'Orleans, at table, in spite of the privacy of

his suppers.  I did not wish to return to the Palais Royal to make a

scene there, and dismissed Biron.  Fortunately, Madame de Saint-Simon

came in some time after.  I related to her this adventure.  She found the

last letter of the Marquis de Ruffec, and we sent it to Biron.  It

reached the table as he had promised.  M. le Duc d'Orleans seized it with

eagerness.  The joke is that he did not know the handwriting.  Not only

did he look at the letter, but he read it; and as he found it diverting,

regaled his company with it; it became the topic of their discourse, and

entirely removed his suspicions.  Upon my return from La Ferme, I found

him ashamed of himself, and I rendered him still more so by what I said

to him on the subject.

I learnt afterwards that this Madrid letter, and others that followed,

came from a sham Marquis de Ruffec, that is to say, from the son of one

of Madame's porters, who passed himself off as my son.  He pretended that

he had quarrelled with me, and wrote to Madame de Saint-Simon, begging

her to intercede for him; and all this that his letters might be seen,

and that he might reap substantial benefits from his imposture in the

shape of money and consideration.  He was a well-made fellow, had much

address and effrontery, knew the Court very well, and had taken care to

learn all about our family, so as to speak within limits.  He was

arrested at Bayonne, at the table of Dadoncourt, who commanded there, and

who suddenly formed the resolution, suspecting him not to be a gentleman,

upon seeing him eat olives with a fork!  When in gaol he confessed who he

was.  He was not new at the trade and was confined some little time.

CHAPTER LXXI

But to return to M. le Duc d'Orleans.

His curiosity, joined to a false idea of firmness and courage, had early

led him to try and raise the devil and make him speak.  He left nothing

untried, even the wildest reading, to persuade himself there was no God;

and yet believed meanwhile in the devil, and hoped to see him and

converse with him!  This inconsistency is hard to understand, and yet is

extremely common.  He worked with all sorts of obscure people; and above

all with Mirepoix, sublieutenant of the Black Musketeers, to find out

Satan.  They passed whole nights in the quarries of Vanvres and of

Vaugirard uttering invocations.  M. le Duc d'Orleans, however, admitted

to me that he had never succeeded in hearing or seeing anything, and at

last had given up this folly.

At first it was only to please Madame d'Argenton, but afterwards from

curiosity, that he tried to see the present and the future in a glass of

water; so he said, and he was no liar.  To be false and to be a liar are

not one and the same thing, though they closely resemble each other, and

if he told a lie it was only when hard pressed upon some promise or some

business, and in spite of himself, so as to escape from a dilemma.

Although we often spoke upon religion, to which I tried to lead him so

long as I had hope of success, I never could unravel the system he had

formed for himself, and I ended by becoming persuaded that he wavered

unceasingly without forming any religion at all.

His passionate desire, like that of his companions in morals, was this,

that it would turn out that there is no God; but he had too much

enlightenment to be an atheist; who is a particular kind of fool much

more rare than is thought.  This enlightenment importuned him; he tried

to extinguish it and could not.  A mortal soul would have been to him a

resource; but he could not convince himself of its existence.  A God and

an immortal soul, threw him into sad straits, and yet he could not blind

himself to the truth of both the one and the other.  I can say then this,

I know of what religion he was not; nothing more.  I am sure, however,

that he was very ill at ease upon this point, and that if a dangerous

illness had overtaken him, and he had had the time, he would have thrown

himself into the hands of all the priests and all the Capuchins of the

town.  His great foible was to pride himself upon his impiety and to wish

to surpass in that everybody else.

I recollect that one Christmas-time, at Versailles, when he accompanied

the King to morning prayers and to the three midnight masses, he

surprised the Court by his continued application in reading a volume he

had brought with him, and which appeared to be, a prayer book.  The chief

femme de chambre of Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, much attached to the

family, and very free as all good old domestics are, transfixed with joy

at M. le Duc d'Orleans's application to his book, complimented him upon

it the next day, in the presence of others.  M. le Duc d'Orleans allowed

her to go on some time, and then said, "You are very silly, Madame

Imbert.  Do you know what I was reading?  It was 'Rabelais,' that I

brought with me for fear of being bored."

The effect of this reply may be imagined.  The thing was too true, and

was pure braggadocio; for, without comparison of the places, or of the

things, the music of the chapel was much superior to that of the opera,

and to all the music of Europe; and at Christmas it surpassed itself.

There was nothing so magnificent as the decoration of the chapel, or the

manner in which it was lighted.  It was full of people; the arches of the

tribune were crowded with the Court ladies, in undress, but ready for

conquest.  There was nothing so surprising as the beauty of the

spectacle.  The ears were charmed also.  M. le Duc d'Orleans loved music

extremely; he could compose, and had amused himself by composing a kind

of little opera, La Fare writing the words, which was performed before

the King.  This music of the chapel, therefore, might well have occupied

him in the most agreeable manner, to say nothing of the brilliant scene,

without his having recourse to Rabelais.  But he must needs play the

impious, and the wag.

Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans was another kind of person.  She was tall,

and in every way majestic; her complexion, her throat, her arms, were

admirable; she had a tolerable mouth, with beautiful teeth, somewhat

long; and cheeks too broad, and too hanging, which interfered with, but

did not spoil, her beauty.  What disfigured her most was her eyebrows,

which were, as it were, peeled and red, with very little hair; she had,

however, fine eyelashes, and well-set chestnut-coloured hair.  Without

being hump-backed or deformed, she had one side larger than the other,

and walked awry.  This defect in her figure indicated another, which was

more troublesome in society, and which inconvenienced herself.  She had a

good deal of intellect, and spoke with much ability.  She said all she

wished, and often conveyed her meaning to you without directly expressing

it; saying, as it were, what she did not say.  Her utterance was,

however, slow and embarrassed, so that unaccustomed ears with difficulty

followed her.

Every kind of decency and decorum centred themselves in her, and the most

exquisite pride was there upon its throne.  Astonishment will be felt at

what I am going to say, and yet, however, nothing is more strictly true:

it is, that at the bottom of her soul she believed that she, bastard of

the King, had much honoured M. d'Orleans in marrying him!  M. le Duc

d'Orleans often laughed at her pride, called her Madame Lucifer, in

speaking to her, and she admitted that the name did not displease her.

She always received his advances with coldness, and a sort of superiority

of greatness.  She was a princess to the backbone, at all hours, and in

all places.  Yet, at the same time, her timidity was extreme.  The King

could have made her feel ill with a single severe look; and Madame de

Maintenon could have done likewise, perhaps.  At all events, Madame la

Duchesse d'Orleans trembled before her; and upon the most commonplace

matters never replied to either him or her without hesitation, fear

printed on her face.

M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans lived an idle, languishing,

shameful, indecent, and despised life, abandoned by all the Court.  This,

I felt, was one of the first things that must be remedied.  Accordingly,

I induced Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans to make an effort to attract

people to her table.  She did so, persevering against the coldness and

aversion she met with, and in time succeeded in drawing a tolerably

numerous company to her dinners.  They were of exquisite quality, and

people soon got over their first hesitation, when they found everything

orderly, free, and unobjectionable.  At these dinners, M. d'Orleans kept

within bounds, not only in his discourse, but in his behaviour.  But

oftentimes his ennui led him to Paris, to join in supper parties and

debauchery.  Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans tried to draw him from these

pleasures by arranging small parties at her pretty little villa, l'Etoile

(in the park of Versailles), which the King had given to her, and which

she had furnished in the most delightful manner.  She loved good cheer,

the guests loved it also, and at table she was altogether another person

--free, gay, exciting, charming.  M. le Duc d'Orleans cared for nothing

but noise, and as he threw off all restraint at these parties, there was

much difficulty in selecting guests, for the ears of many people would

have been much confused at his loose talk, and their eyes much astonished

to see him get drunk at the very commencement of the repast, in the midst

of those who thought only of amusing and recreating themselves in a

decent manner, and who never approached intoxication.

As the King became weaker in health, and evidently drew near his end, I

had continued interviews with Madame d'Orleans upon the subject of the

Regency, the plan of government to be adopted, and the policy she should

follow.  Hundreds of times before we had reasoned together upon the

faults of the Government, and the misfortunes that resulted from them.

What we had to do was to avoid those faults, educate the young King in

good and rational maxims, so that when he succeeded to power he might

continue what the Regency had not had time to finish.  This, at least,

was my idea; and I laboured hard to make it the idea of M. le Duc

d'Orleans.  As the health of the King diminished I entered more into

details; as I will explain.

What I considered the most important thing to be done, was to overthrow

entirely the system of government in which Cardinal Mazarin had

imprisoned the King and the realm.  A foreigner, risen from the dregs

of the people, who thinks of nothing but his own power and his own

greatness, cares nothing for the state, except in its relation to

himself.  He despises its laws, its genius, its advantages: he is

ignorant of its rules and its forms; he thinks only of subjugating all,

of confounding all, of bringing all down to one level.  Richelieu and his

successor, Mazarin, succeeded so well in this policy that the nobility,

by degrees, became annihilated, as we now see them.  The pen and the robe

people, on the other hand, were exalted; so that now things have reached

such a pretty pass that the greatest lord is without power, and in a

thousand different manners is dependent upon the meanest plebeian.  It is

in this manner that things hasten from one extreme to the other.

My design was to commence by introducing the nobility into the ministry,

with the dignity and authority due to them, and by degrees to dismiss the

pen and robe people from all employ not purely judicial.  In this manner

the administration of public affairs would be entirely in the hands of

the aristocracy.  I proposed to abolish the two offices of secretary of

state for the war department, and for foreign affairs, and to supply

their place by councils; also, that the offices of the navy should be

managed by a council.  I insisted upon the distinct and perfect

separation of these councils, so that their authority should never be

confounded, and the public should never have the slightest trouble in

finding out where to address itself for any kind of business.

M. le Duc d'Orleans exceedingly relished my project, which we much

discussed.  This point arrived at, it became necessary to debate upon the

persons who were to form these councils.  I suggested names, which were

accepted or set aside, according as they met his approval or

disapprobation.  "But," said M. le Duc d'Orleans, after we had been a

long time at this work, "you propose everybody and never say a word of

yourself.  What do you wish to be?"

I replied, that it was not for me to propose, still less to choose any

office, but for him to see if he wished to employ me, believing me

capable, and in that case to determine the place he wished me to occupy.

This was at Marly, in his chamber, and I shall never forget it.

After some little debate, that between equals would have been called

complimentary, he proposed to me the Presidency of the Council of

Finance.  But I had good reasons for shrinking from this office.  I saw

that disordered as the finances had become there was only one remedy by

which improvement could be effected; and this was National Bankruptcy.

Had I occupied the office, I should have been too strongly tempted to

urge this view, and carry it out, but it was a responsibility I did not

wish to take upon myself before God and man.  Yet, I felt as I said, that

to declare the State bankrupt would be the wisest course, and I am bold

enough to think, that there is not a man, having no personal interest in

the continuance of imposts, who of two evils, viz., vastly increased

taxation, and national failure, would not prefer the latter.  We were in

the condition of a man who unfortunately must choose between passing

twelve or fifteen years in his bed, in continual pain, or having his leg

cut off.  Who can doubt this?  he would prefer the loss of his leg by a

painful operation, in order to find himself two months after quite well,

free from suffering and in the enjoyment of all his faculties.

I shrunk accordingly from the finances for the reason I have above given,

and made M. le Duc d'Orleans so angry by my refusal to accept the office

he had proposed to me, that for three weeks he sulked and would not speak

to me, except upon unimportant matters.

At the end of that time, in the midst of a languishing conversation, he

exclaimed, "Very well, then.  You stick to your text, you won't have the

finances?"

I respectfully lowered my eyes and replied, in a gentle tone, that I

thought that question was settled.  He could not restrain some

complaints, but they were not bitter, nor was he angry, and then rising

and taking a few turns in the room, without saying a word, and his head

bent, as was his custom when embarrassed, he suddenly spun round upon me,

and exclaimed, "But whom shall we put there?"

I suggested the Duc de Noailles, and although the suggestion at first met

with much warm opposition from M. le Duc d'Orleans, it was ultimately

accepted by him.

The moment after we had settled this point he said to me, "And you! what

will you be?" and he pressed me so much to explain myself that I said at

last if he would put me in the council of affairs of the interior, I

thought I should do better there than elsewhere.

"Chief, then," replied he with vivacity.

"No, no! not that," said I; "simply a place in the council."

We both insisted, he for, I against.  "A place in that council," he said,

"would be ridiculous, and cannot be thought of.  Since you will not be

chief, there is only one post which suits you, and which suits me also.

You must be in the council I shall be in the Supreme Council."

I accepted the post, and thanked him.  From that moment this distinction

remained fixed.

I will not enter into all the suggestions I offered to M. le Duc

d'Orleans respecting the Regency, or give the details of all the projects

I submitted to him.  Many of those projects and suggestions were either

acted upon only partially, or not acted upon at all, although nearly

every one met with his approval.  But he was variable as the winds, and

as difficult to hold.  In my dealings with him I had to do with a person

very different from that estimable Dauphin who was so rudely taken away

from us.

But let me, before going further, describe the last days of the King, his

illness, and death, adding to the narrative a review of his life and

character.

CHAPTER LXXII

LOUIS XIV. began, as I have before remarked, sensibly to decline, and

his appetite, which had always been good and uniform, very considerably

diminished.  Even foreign countries became aware of this.  Bets were laid

in London that his life would not last beyond the first of September,

that is to say, about three months, and although the King wished to know

everything, it may be imagined that nobody was very eager to make him

acquainted with the news.  He used to have the Dutch papers read to him

in private by Torcy, often after the Council of State.  One day as Torcy

was reading, coming unexpectedly--for he had not examined the paper--upon

the account of these bets, he stopped, stammered, and skipped it.  The

King, who easily perceived this, asked him the cause of his

embarrassment; what he was passing over, and why?  Torcy blushed to the

very whites of his eyes, and said it was a piece of impertinence unworthy

of being read.  The King insisted; Torcy also: but at last thoroughly

confused, he could not resist the reiterated command he received, and

read the whole account of the bets.  The King pretended not to be touched

by it, but he was, and profoundly, so that sitting down to table

immediately afterwards, he could not keep himself from speaking of it,

though without mentioning the gazette.

This was at Marly, and by chance I was there that day.  The King looked

at me as at the others, but as though asking for a reply.  I took good

care not to open my mouth, and lowered my eyes.  Cheverny, (a discreet

man,) too, was not so prudent, but made a long and ill-timed rhapsody

upon similar reports that had come to Copenhagen from Vienna while he was

ambassador at the former place seventeen or eighteen years before.  The

King allowed him to say on, but did not take the bait.  He appeared

touched, but like a man who does not wish to seem so.  It could be seen

that he did all he could to eat, and to show that he ate with appetite.

But it was also seen that the mouthfuls loitered on their way.  This

trifle did not fail to augment the circumspection of the Court, above all

of those who by their position had reason to be more attentive than the

rest.  It was reported that an aide-decamp of Lord Stair, who was then

English ambassador to our Court, and very much disliked for his insolent

bearing and his troublesome ways, had caused these bets by what he had

said in England respecting the health of the King.  Stair, when told

this, was much grieved, and said 'twas a scoundrel he had dismissed.

As the King sensibly declined I noticed that although terror of him kept

people as much away from M. d'Orleans as ever, I was approached even by

the most considerable.  I had often amused myself at the expense of these

prompt friends; I did so now, and diverted M. d'Orleans by warning him

beforehand what he had to expect.

On Friday, the 9th of August, 1715, the King hunted the stag after dinner

in his caleche, that he drove himself as usual.  'Twas for the last time.

Upon his return he appeared much knocked up.  There was a grand concert

in the evening in Madame de Maintenon's apartment.

On Saturday, the 10th of August, he walked before dinner in his gardens

at Marly; he returned to Versailles about six o'clock in the evening, and

never again saw that strange work of his hands.  In the evening he worked

with the Chancellor in Madame de Maintenon's rooms, and appeared to

everybody very ill.  On Sunday, the eleventh of August, he held the

Council of State, walked, after dinner to Trianon, never more to go out

again during life.

On the morrow, the 12th of August, he took medicine as usual, and lived

as usual the following days.  It was known that he complained of sciatica

in the leg and thigh.  He had never before had sciatica, or rheumatism,

or a cold; and for a long time no touch of gout.  In the evening there

was a little concert in Madame de Maintenon's rooms.  This was the last

time in his life that he walked alone.

On Tuesday, the 13th of August, he made a violent effort, and gave a

farewell audience to a sham Persian ambassador, whom Pontchartrain had

imposed upon him; this was the last public action of his life.  The

audience, which was long, fatigued the King.  He resisted the desire for

sleep which came over him, held the Finance Council, dined, had himself

carried to Madame de Maintenon's, where a little concert was given, and

on leaving his cabinet stopped for the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld, who

presented to him the Duchesse de la Rocheguyon, her daughter-in-law, who

was the last lady presented to him.  She took her tabouret that evening

at the King's grand supper, which was the last he ever gave.  On the

morrow he sent some precious stones to the Persian ambassador just

alluded to.  It was on this day that the Princesse des Ursins set off for

Lyons, terrified at the state of the King as I have already related.

For more than a year the health of the King had diminished.  His valets

noticed this first, and followed the progress of the malady, without one

of them daring to open his mouth.  The bastards, or to speak exactly, M,

du Maine saw it; Madame de Maintenon also; but they did nothing.  Fagon,

the chief physician, much fallen off in mind and body, was the only one

of the King's intimates who saw nothing.  Marechal, also chief physician,

spoke to him (Fagon) several times, but was always harshly repulsed.

Pressed at last by his duty and his attachment, he made bold one morning

towards Whitsuntide to go to Madame de Maintenon.  He told her what he

saw and how grossly Fagon was mistaken.  He assured her that the, King,

whose pulse he had often felt, had had for some time a slow internal

fever; that his constitution was so good that with remedies and attention

all would go well, but that if the malady were allowed to grow there

would no longer be any resource.  Madame de Maintenon grew angry, and all

he obtained for his zeal was her anger.  She said that only the personal

enemies of Fagon could find fault with his opinion upon the King's

health, concerning which the capacity, the application, the experience of

the chief physician could not be deceived.  The best of it is that

Marechal, who had formerly operated upon Fagon for stone, had been

appointed chief surgeon by him, and they had always lived on the best of

terms.  Marechal, annoyed as he related to me, could do nothing more, and

began from that time to lament the death of his master.  Fagon was in

fact the first physician in Europe, but for a long time his health had

not permitted him to maintain his experience; and the high point of

authority to which his capacity and his favour had carried him, had at

last spoiled him.  He would not hear reason, or submit to reply, and

continued to treat the King as he had treated him in early years; and

killed him by his obstinacy.

The gout of which the King had had long attacks, induced Fagon to swaddle

him, so to say, every evening in a heap of feather pillows, which made

him sweat all night to such an extent that it was necessary in the

morning to rub him down and change his linen before the grand chamberlain

and the first gentleman of the chamber could enter.  For many years he

had drunk nothing but Burgundy wine, half mixed with water, and so old

that it was used up instead of the best champagne which he had used all

his life.  He would pleasantly say sometimes that foreign lords who were

anxious to taste the wine he used, were often mightily deceived.  At no

time had he ever drunk pure wine, or made use in any way of spirits, or

even tea, coffee, or chocolate.  Upon rising, instead of a little bread

and wine and water, he had taken for a long time two glasses of sage and

veronica; often between his meals, and always on going to bed, glasses of

water with a little orange-flower water in them, and always iced.  Even

on the days when he had medicine he drank this, and always also at his

meals, between which he never ate anything except some cinnamon lozenges

that he put into his pocket at his dessert, with a good many cracknels

for the bitches he kept in his cabinet.

As during the last year of his life the King became more and more

costive, Fagon made him eat at the commencement of his repasts many iced

fruits, that is to say, mulberries, melons, and figs rotten from

ripeness; and at his dessert many other fruits, finishing with a

surprising quantity of sweetmeats.  All the year round he ate at supper a

prodigious quantity of salad.  His soups, several of which he partook of

morning and evening, were full of gravy, and were of exceeding strength,

and everything that was served to him was full of spice, to double the

usual extent, and very strong also.  This regimen and the sweetmeats

together Fagon did not like, and sometimes while seeing the King eat, he

would make most amusing grimaces, without daring however to say anything

except now and then to Livry and Benoist, who replied that it was their

business to feed the King, and his to doctor him.  The King never ate any

kind of venison or water-fowl, but otherwise partook of everything, fete

days and fast days alike, except that during the last twenty years of his

life he observed some few days of Lent.

This summer he redoubled his regime of fruits and drinks.  At last the

former clogged his stomach, taken after soup, weakened the digestive

organs and took away his appetite, which until then had never failed him

all his life, though however late dinner might be delayed he never was

hungry or wanted to eat.  But after the first spoonfuls of soup, his

appetite came, as I have several times heard him say, and he ate so

prodigiously and so solidly morning and evening that no one could get

accustomed to see it.  So much water and so much fruit unconnected by

anything spirituous, turned his blood into gangrene; while those forced

night sweats diminished its strength and impoverished it; and thus his

death was caused, as was seen by the opening of his body.  The organs

were found in such good and healthy condition that there is reason to

believe he would have lived beyond his hundredth year.  His stomach above

all astonished, and also his bowels by their volume and extent, double

that of the ordinary, whence it came that he was such a great yet uniform

eater.  Remedies were not thought of until it was no longer time, because

Fagon would never believe him ill, or Madame de Maintenon either; though

at the same time she had taken good care to provide for her own retreat

in the case of his death.  Amidst all this, the King felt his state

before they felt it, and said so sometimes to his valets: Fagon always

reassured him, but did nothing.  The King was contented with what was

said to him without being persuaded: but his friendship for Fagon

restrained him, and Madame de Maintenon still more.

On Wednesday, the 14th of August, the King was carried to hear mass for

the last time; held the Council of State, ate a meat dinner, and had

music in Madame de Maintenon's rooms.  He supped in his chamber, where

the Court saw him as at his dinner; was with his family a short time in

his cabinet, and went to bed a little after ten.

On Thursday, the Festival of the Assumption, he heard mass in his bed.

The night had been disturbed and bad.  He dined in his bed, the courtiers

being present, rose at five and was carried to Madame de Maintenon's,

where music was played.  He supped and went to bed as on the previous

evening.  As long as he could sit up he did the same.

On Friday, the 16th of August, the night had been no better; much thirst

and drink.  The King ordered no one to enter until ten.  Mass and dinner

in his bed as before; then he was carried to Madame de Maintenon's; he

played with the ladies there, and afterwards there was a grand concert.

On Saturday, the 17th of August, the night as the preceding.  He held the

Finance Council, he being in bed; saw people at his dinner, rose

immediately after; gave audience in his cabinet to the General of the

order of Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie; passed to Madame de Maintenon's,

where he worked with the Chancellor.  At night, Fagon slept for the first

time in his chamber.

Sunday, the 18th of August, passed like the preceding days, Fagon

pretended there had been no fever.  The King held a Council of State

before and after his dinner; worked afterwards upon the fortifications

with Pelletier; then passed to Madame de Maintenon's, where there was

music.

Monday, the 19th, and Tuesday, the 20th of August, passed much as the

previous days, excepting that on the latter the King supped in his

dressing-gown, seated in an armchair; and that after this evening he

never left his room or dressed himself again.  That same day Madame de

Saint-Simon, whom I had pressed to return, came back from the waters of

Forges.  The king, entering after supper into his cabinet, perceived her.

He ordered his chair to be stopped; spoke to her very kindly upon her

journey and her return; then had himself wheeled on by Bloin into the

other cabinet.  She was the last Court lady to whom he spoke.  I don't

count those who were always near him, and who came to him when he could

no longer leave his room.  Madame de Saint-Simon said to me in the

evening that she should not have recognised the King if she had met him

anywhere else.  Yet she had left Marly for Forges only on the 6th of

July.

On Wednesday, the 21st of August, four physicians saw the King, but took

care to do nothing except praise Fagon, who gave him cassia.  For some

days it had been perceived that he ate meat and even bread with

difficulty, (though all his life he had eaten but little of the latter,

and for some time only the crumb, because he had no teeth).  Soup in

larger quantity, hash very light, and eggs compensated him; but he ate

very sparingly.

On Thursday, the 22nd of August, the King was still worse.  He saw four

other physicians, who, like the first four, did nothing but admire the

learned and admirable treatment of Fagon, who made him take towards

evening some Jesuit bark and water and intended to give him at night,

ass's milk.  This same day, the King ordered the Duc de la Rochefoucauld

to bring him his clothes on the morrow, in order that he might choose

which he would wear upon leaving off the mourning he wore for a son of

Madame la Duchesse de Lorraine.  He had not been able to quit his chamber

for some days; he could scarcely eat anything solid; his physician slept

in his chamber, and yet he reckoned upon being cured, upon dressing

himself again, and wished to choose his dress!  In like manner there was

the same round of councils, of work, of amusements.  So true it is, that

men do not wish to die, and dissimulate from themselves the approach of

death as long as possible.  Meanwhile, let me say, that the state of the

King, which nobody was ignorant of, had already changed M. d'Orleans'

desert into a crowded city.

Friday, the 23rd of August, the night was as usual, the morning also.

The King worked with Pere Tellier, who tried, but in vain, to make him

fill up several benefices that were vacant; that is to say, Pere Tellier

wished to dispose of them himself, instead of leaving them to M. le Duc

d'Orleans.  Let me state at once, that the feebler the King grew the more

Pere Tellier worried him; so as not to lose such a rich prey, or miss the

opportunity of securing fresh creatures for his service.  But he could

not succeed.  The King declared to him that he had enough to render

account of to God, without charging himself with this nomination, and

forbade him to speak again upon the subject.

On Saturday evening, the 24th of August, he supped in his dressing-gown,

in presence of the courtiers, for the last time.  I noticed that he could

only swallow liquids, and that he was troubled if looked at.  He could

not finish his supper, and begged the courtiers to pass on, that is to

say, go away.  He went to bed, where his leg, on which were several black

marks, was examined.  It had grown worse lately and had given him much

pain.  He sent for Pere Tellier and made confession.  Confusion spread

among the doctors at this.  Milk, and Jesuit bark and water had been

tried and abandoned in turns; now, nobody knew what to try.  The doctors

admitted that they believed he had had a slow fever ever since

Whitsuntide; and excused themselves for doing nothing on the ground that

he did not wish for remedies.

On Sunday, the 25th of August, no more mystery was made of the King's

danger.  Nevertheless, he expressly commanded that nothing should be

changed in the usual order of this day (the fete of St.  Louis), that is

to say, that the drums and the hautboys, assembled beneath his windows,

should play their accustomed music as soon as he awoke, and that the

twenty-four violins should play in the ante-chamber during his dinner.

He worked afterwards with the Chancellor, who wrote, under his dictation,

a codicil to his will, Madame de Maintenon being present.  She and M. du

Maine, who thought incessantly of themselves, did not consider the King

had done enough for them by his will; they wished to remedy this by a

codicil, which equally showed how enormously they abused the King's

weakness in this extremity, and to what an excess ambition may carry us.

By this codicil the King submitted all the civil and military household

of the young King to the Duc du Maine, and under his orders to Marechal

de Villeroy, who, by this disposition became the sole masters of the

person and the dwelling place of the King, and of Paris, by the troops

placed in their hands; so that the Regent had not the slightest shadow of

authority and was at their mercy; certainly liable to be arrested or

worse, any time it should please M. du Maine.

Soon after the Chancellor left the King, Madame de Maintenon, who

remained, sent for the ladies; and the musicians came at seven o'clock in

the evening.  But the King fell asleep during the conversation of the

ladies.  He awoke; his brain confused, which frightened them and made

them call the doctors.  They found his pulse so bad that they did not

hesitate to propose to him, his senses having returned, to take the

sacrament without delay.  Pere Tellier was sent for; the musicians who

had just prepared their books and their instruments, were dismissed, the

ladies also; and in a quarter of an hour from that time, the King made

confession to Pere Tellier, the Cardinal de Rohan, meanwhile, bringing

the Holy Sacrament from the chapel, and sending for the Cure and holy

oils.  Two of the King's chaplains, summoned by the Cardinal, came, and

seven or eight candlesticks were carried by valets.  The Cardinal said a

word or two to the King upon this great and last action, during which the

King appeared very firm, but very penetrated with what he was doing.  As

soon as he had received Our Saviour and the holy oils, everybody left the

chamber except Madame de Maintenon and the Chancellor.  Immediately

afterwards, and this was rather strange, a kind of book or little tablet

was placed upon the bed, the codicil was presented to the King, and at

the bottom of it he wrote four or five lines, and restored the document

to the Chancellor.

After this, the King sent for M. le Duc d'Orleans, showed him much

esteem, friendship, and confidence; but what is terrible with Jesus

Christ still upon his lips--the Sacrament he had just received--he

assured him, he would find nothing in his will with which he would not

feel pleased.  Then he recommended to him the state and the person of the

future King.

On Monday, the 26th of August, the King called to him the Cardinals de

Rohan and de Bissy, protested that he died in the faith, and in

submission to the Church, then added, looking at them, that he was sorry

to leave the affairs of the Church as they were; that they knew he had

done nothing except what they wished; that it was therefore for them to

answer before God for what he had done; that his own conscience was

clear, and that he was as an ignorant man who had abandoned himself

entirely to them.  What a frightful thunderbolt was this to the two

Cardinals; for this was an allusion to the terrible constitution they had

assisted Pere Tellier in forcing upon him.  But their calm was superior

to all trial.  They praised him and said he had done well, and that he

might be at ease as to the result.

This same Monday, 26th of August, after the two Cardinals had left the

room, the King dined in his bed in the presence of those who were

privileged to enter.  As the things were being cleared away, he made them

approach and addressed to them these words, which were stored up in their

memory:--"Gentlemen, I ask your pardon for the bad example I have given

you.  I have much to thank you for the manner in which you have served

me, and for the attachment and fidelity you have always shown for me.  I

am very sorry I have not done for you all I should have wished to do; bad

times have been the cause.  I ask for my grandson the same application

and the same fidelity you have had for me.  He is a child who may

experience many reverses.  Let your example be one for all my other

subjects.  Follow the orders my nephew will give you; he is to govern the

realm; I hope he will govern it well; I hope also that you will all

contribute to keep up union, and that if any one falls away you will aid

in bringing him back.  I feel that I am moved, and that I move you also.

I ask your pardon.  Adieu, gentlemen, I hope you will sometimes remember

me."

A short time after he called the Marechal de Villeroy to him, and said he

had made him governor of the Dauphin.  He then called to him M. le Duc

and M. le Prince de Conti, and recommended to them the advantage of union

among princes.  Then, hearing women in the cabinet, questioned who were

there, and immediately sent word they might enter.  Madame la Duchesse de

Berry, Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, and the Princesses of the blood

forthwith appeared, crying.  The King told them they must not cry thus,

and said a few friendly words to them, and dismissed them.  They retired

by the cabinet, weeping and crying very loudly, which caused people to

believe outside that the King was dead; and, indeed, the rumour spread to

Paris, and even to the provinces.

Some time after the King requested the Duchesse de Ventadour to bring the

little Dauphin to him.  He made the child approach, and then said to him,

before Madame de Maintenon and the few privileged people present, "My

child, you are going to be a great king; do not imitate me in the taste

I have had for building, or in that I have had for war; try, on the

contrary, to be at peace with your neighbours.  Render to God what you

owe Him; recognise the obligations you are under to Him; make Him

honoured by your subjects.  Always follow good counsels; try to comfort

your people, which I unhappily have not done.  Never forget the

obligation you owe to Madame de Ventadour.  Madame (addressing her), let

me embrace him (and while embracing him), my dear child, I give you my

benediction with my whole heart."

As the little Prince was about to be taken off the bed, the King

redemanded him, embraced him again, and raising hands and eyes to Heaven,

blessed him once more.  This spectacle was extremely touching.

On Tuesday, the 27th of August, the King said to Madame de Maintenon,

that he had always heard, it was hard to resolve to die; but that as for

him, seeing himself upon the point of death, he did not find this

resolution so difficult to form.  She replied that it was very hard when

we had attachments to creatures, hatred in our hearts, or restitutions to

make.  "Ah," rejoined the King, "as for restitutions, to nobody in

particular do I owe any; but as for those I owe to the realm, I hope in

the mercy of God."

The night which followed was very agitated.  The King was seen at all

moments joining his hands, striking his breast, and was heard repeating

the prayers he ordinarily employed.

On Wednesday morning, the 28th of August, he paid a compliment to Madame

de Maintenon, which pleased her but little, and to which she replied not

one word.  He said, that what consoled him in quitting her was that,

considering the age she had reached, they must soon meet again!

About seven o'clock in the morning, he saw in the mirror two of his

valets at the foot of the bed weeping, and said to them, "Why do you

weep?  Is it because you thought me immortal?  As for me, I have not

thought myself so, and you ought, considering my age, to have been

prepared to lose me."

A very clownish Provencal rustic heard of the extremity of the King,

while on his way from Marseilles to Paris, and came this morning to

Versailles with a remedy, which he said would cure the gangrene.  The

King was so ill, and the doctors so at their wits' ends, that they

consented to receive him.  Fagon tried to say something, but this rustic,

who was named Le Brun, abused him very coarsely, and Fagon, accustomed to

abuse others, was confounded.  Ten drops of Le Brun's mixture in Alicante

wine were therefore given to the King about eleven o'clock in the

morning.  Some time after he became stronger, but the pulse falling again

and becoming bad, another dose was given to him about four o'clock, to

recall him to life, they told him.  He replied, taking the mixture, "To

life or to death as it shall please God."

Le Brun's remedy was continued.  Some one proposed that the King should

take some broth.  The King replied that it was not broth he wanted, but a

confessor, and sent for him.  One day, recovering from loss of

consciousness, he asked Pere Tellier to give him absolution for all his

sins.  Pere Tellier asked him if he suffered much.  "No," replied the

King, "that's what troubles me: I should like to suffer more for the

expiation of my sins."

On Thursday, the 29th of August, he grew a little better; he even ate two

little biscuits steeped in wine, with a certain appetite.  The news

immediately spread abroad that the King was recovering.  I went that day

to the apartments of M. le Duc d'Orleans, where, during the previous

eight days, there had been such a crowd that, speaking exactly, a pin

would not have fallen to the ground.  Not a soul was there!  As soon as

the Duke saw me he burst out laughing, and said, I was the first person

who had been to see him all the day!  And until the evening he was

entirely deserted.  Such is the world!

In the evening it was known that the King had only recovered for the

moment.  In giving orders during the day, he called the young Dauphin

"the young King."  He saw a movement amongst those around him.  "Why

not?"  said he, "that does not trouble me."  Towards eight o'clock he

took the elixir of the rustic.  His brain appeared confused; he himself

said he felt very ill.  Towards eleven o'clock his leg was examined.  The

gangrene was found to be in the foot and the knee; the thigh much

inflamed.  He swooned during this examination.  He had perceived with

much pain that Madame de Maintenon was no longer near him.  She had in

fact gone off on the previous day with very dry eyes to Saint-Cyr, not

intending to return.  He asked for her several times during the day.  Her

departure could not be hidden.  He sent for her to Saint-Cyr, and she

came back in the evening.

Friday, August the 30th, was a bad day preceded by a bad night.  The King

continually lost his reason.  About five o'clock in the evening Madame de

Maintenon left him, gave away her furniture to the domestics, and went to

Saint-Cyr never to leave it.

On Saturday, the 31st of August, everything went from bad to worse.  The

gangrene had reached the knee and all the thigh.  Towards eleven o'clock

at night the King was found to be so ill that the prayers for the dying

were said.  This restored him to himself.  He repeated the prayers in a

voice so strong that it rose above all the other voices.  At the end he

recognised Cardinal de Rohan, and said to him, "These are the last

favours of the Church."  This was the last man to whom he spoke.  He

repeated several times, "Nunc et in hora mortis", then said, "Oh, my God,

come to my aid: hasten to succour me."

These were his last words.  All the night he was without consciousness

and in a long agony, which finished on Sunday, the 1st September, 1715,

at a quarter past eight in the morning, three days before he had

accomplished his seventy-seventh year, and in the seventy-second of his

reign.  He had survived all his sons and grandsons, except the King of

Spain.  Europe never saw so long a reign or France a King so old.

CHAPTER LXXIII

I shall pass over the stormy period of Louis XIV.'s minority.  At twenty-

three years of age he entered the great world as King, under the most

favourable auspices.  His ministers were the most skilful in all Europe;

his generals the best; his Court was filled with illustrious and clever

men, formed during the troubles which had followed the death of Louis

XIII.

Louis XIV. was made for a brilliant Court.  In the midst of other men,

his figure, his courage, his grace, his beauty, his grand mien, even the

tone of his voice and the majestic and natural charm of all his person,

distinguished him till his death as the King Bee, and showed that if he

had only been born a simple private gentlemen, he would equally have

excelled in fetes, pleasures, and gallantry, and would have had the

greatest success in love.  The intrigues and adventures which early in

life he had been engaged in--when the Comtesse de Soissons lodged at the

Tuileries, as superintendent of the Queen's household, and was the centre

figure of the Court group--had exercised an unfortunate influence upon

him: he received those impressions with which he could never after

successfully struggle.  From this time, intellect, education, nobility of

sentiment, and high principle, in others, became objects of suspicion to

him, and soon of hatred.  The more he advanced in years the more this

sentiment was confirmed in him.  He wished to reign by himself.  His

jealousy on this point unceasingly became weakness.  He reigned, indeed,

in little things; the great he could never reach: even in the former,

too, he was often governed.  The superior ability of his early ministers

and his early generals soon wearied him.  He liked nobody to be in any

way superior to him.  Thus he chose his ministers, not for their

knowledge, but for their ignorance; not for their capacity, but for their

want of it.  He liked to form them, as he said; liked to teach them even

the most trifling things.  It was the same with his generals.  He took

credit to himself for instructing them; wished it to be thought that from

his cabinet he commanded and directed all his armies.  Naturally fond of

trifles, he unceasingly occupied himself with the most petty details of

his troops, his household, his mansions; would even instruct his cooks,

who received, like novices, lessons they had known by heart for years.

This vanity, this unmeasured and unreasonable love of admiration, was his

ruin.  His ministers, his generals, his mistresses, his courtiers, soon

perceived his weakness.  They praised him with emulation and spoiled him.

Praises, or to say truth, flattery, pleased him to such an extent, that

the coarsest was well received, the vilest even better relished.  It was

the sole means by which you could approach him.  Those whom he liked owed

his affection for them to their untiring flatteries.  This is what gave

his ministers so much authority, and the opportunities they had for

adulating him, of attributing everything to him, and of pretending to

learn everything from him.  Suppleness, meanness, an admiring, dependent,

cringing manner--above all, an air of nothingness--were the sole means of

pleasing him.

This poison spread.  It spread, too, to an incredible extent, in a prince

who, although of intellect beneath mediocrity, was not utterly without

sense, and who had had some experience.  Without voice or musical

knowledge, he used to sing, in private, the passages of the opera

prologues that were fullest of his praises.

He was drowned in vanity; and so deeply, that at his public suppers--all

the Court present, musicians also--he would hum these self-same praises

between his teeth, when the music they were set to was played!

And yet, it must be admitted, he might have done better.  Though his

intellect, as I have said, was beneath mediocrity, it was capable of

being formed.  He loved glory, was fond of order and regularity; was by

disposition prudent, moderate, discreet, master of his movements and his

tongue.  Will it be believed?  He was also by disposition good and just!

God had sufficiently gifted him to enable him to be a good King; perhaps

even a, tolerably great King!  All the evil came to him from elsewhere.

His early education was so neglected that nobody dared approach his

apartment.  He has often been heard to speak of those times with

bitterness, and even to relate that, one evening he was found in the

basin of the Palais Royal garden fountain, into which he had fallen!  He

was scarcely taught how to read or write, and remained so ignorant, that

the most familiar historical and other facts were utterly unknown to him!

He fell, accordingly, and sometimes even in public, into the grossest

absurdities.

It was his vanity, his desire for glory, that led him, soon after the

death of the King of Spain, to make that event the pretext for war; in

spite of the renunciations so recently made, so carefully stipulated, in

the marriage contract.  He marched into Flanders; his conquests there

were rapid; the passage of the Rhine was admirable; the triple alliance

of England, Sweden, and Holland only animated him.  In the midst of

winter he took Franche-Comte, by restoring which at the peace of Aix-la-

Chapelle, he preserved his conquests in Flanders.  All was flourishing

then in the state.  Riches everywhere.  Colbert had placed the finances,

the navy, commerce, manufactures, letters even, upon the highest point;

and this age, like that of Augustus, produced in abundance illustrious

men of all kinds,-even those illustrious only in pleasures.

Le Tellier and Louvois, his son, who had the war department, trembled at

the success and at the credit of Colbert, and had no difficulty in

putting into the head of the King a new war, the success of which caused

such fear to all Europe that France never recovered from it, and after

having been upon the point of succumbing to this war, for a long time

felt the weight and misfortune of it.  Such was the real cause of that

famous Dutch war, to which the King allowed himself to be pushed, and

which his love for Madame de Montespan rendered so unfortunate for his

glory and for his kingdom.  Everything being conquered, everything taken,

and Amsterdam ready to give up her keys, the King yields to his

impatience, quits the army, flies to Versailles, and destroys in an

instant all the success of his arms!  He repaired this disgrace by a

second conquest, in person, of Franche-Comte, which this time was

preserved by France.

In 1676, the King having returned into Flanders, took Conde; whilst

Monsieur took Bouchain.  The armies of the King and of the Prince of

Orange approached each other so suddenly and so closely, that they found

themselves front to front near Heurtebise.  According even to the

admission of the enemy, our forces were so superior to those of the

Prince of Orange, that we must have gained the victory if we had

attacked.  But the King, after listening to the opinions of his generals,

some for, and some against giving battle, decided for the latter, turned

tail, and the engagement was talked of no more.  The army was much

discontented.  Everybody wished for battle.  The fault therefore of the

King made much impression upon the troops, and excited cruel railleries

against us at home and in the foreign courts.  The King stopped but

little longer afterwards in the army, although we were only in the month

of May.  He returned to his mistress.

The following year he returned to Flanders, and took Cambrai; and

Monsieur besieged Saint-Omer.  Monsieur got the start of the Prince of

Orange, who was about to assist the place, gave him battle near Corsel,

obtained a complete victory, immediately took Saint-Omer, and then joined

the King.  This contrast so affected the monarch that never afterwards

did he give Monsieur command of an army!  External appearances were

perfectly kept up, but from that moment the resolution was taken and

always well sustained.

The year afterwards the King led in person the siege of Ghent.  The peace

of Nimeguen ended this year the war with Holland, Spain, &c.; and on the

commencement of the following year, that with the Emperor and the Empire.

America, Africa, the Archipelago, Sicily, acutely felt the power of

France, and in 1684 Luxembourg was the price of the delay of the

Spaniards in fulfilling all the conditions of the peace.  Genoa,

bombarded, was forced to come in the persons of its doge and four of its

senators, to sue for peace at the commencement of the following year.

From this date, until 1688, the time passed in the cabinet less in fetes

than in devotion and constraint.  Here finishes the apogeum of this

reign, and the fulness of glory and prosperity.  The great captains, the

great ministers, were no more, but their pupils remained.  The second

epoch of the reign was very different from the first; but the third was

even more sadly dissimilar.

I have related the adventure which led to the wars of this period; how an

ill-made window-frame was noticed at the Trianon, then building; how

Louvois was blamed for it; his alarm lest his disgrace should follow; his

determination to engage the King in a war which should turn him from his

building fancies.  He carried out his resolve: with what result I have

already shown.  France was ruined at home; and abroad, despite the

success of her arms, gained nothing.  On the contrary, the withdrawal of

the King from Gembloux, when he might have utterly defeated the Prince of

Orange, did us infinite harm, as I have shown in its place.  The peace

which followed this war was disgraceful.  The King was obliged to

acknowledge the Prince of Orange as King of England, after having so long

shown hatred and contempt for him.  Our precipitation, too, cost us

Luxembourg; and the ignorance of our plenipotentiaries gave our enemies

great advantages in forming their frontier.  Such was the peace of

Ryswick, concluded in September, 1697.

This peace seemed as though it would allow France some breathing time.

The King was sixty years of age, and had, in his own opinion, acquired

all sorts of glory.  But scarcely were we at peace, without having had

time to taste it, than the pride of the King made him wish to astonish

all Europe by the display of a power that it believed prostrated.  And

truly he did astonish Europe.  But at what a cost!  The famous camp of

Compiegne--for 'tis to that I allude--was one of the most magnificent

spectacles ever seen; but its immense and misplaced prodigality was soon

regretted.  Twenty years afterwards, some of the regiments who took part

in it were still in difficulties from this cause.

Shortly afterwards,--by one of the most surprising and unheard-of pieces

of good fortune, the crown of Spain fell into the hands of the Duc

d'Anjou, grandson of the King.  It seemed as though golden days had come

back again to France.  Only for a little time, however, did it seem so.

Nearly all Europe, as it has been seen, banded against France, to dispute

the Spanish crown.  The King had lost all his good ministers, all his

able generals, and had taken good pains they should leave no successors.

When war came, then, we were utterly unable to prosecute it with success

or honour.  We were driven out of Germany, of Italy, of the Low

Countries.  We could not sustain the war, or resolve to make peace.

Every day led us nearer and nearer the brink of the precipice, the

terrible depths of which were for ever staring us in the face.  A

misunderstanding amongst our enemies, whereby England became detached

from the grand alliance; the undue contempt of Prince Eugene for our

generals, out of which arose the battle of Denain; saved us from the

gulf.  Peace came, and a peace, too, infinitely better than that we

should have ardently embraced if our enemies had agreed amongst

themselves beforehand.  Nevertheless, this peace cost dear to France, and

cost Spain half its territory--Spain, of which the King had said not even

a windmill would he yield!  But this was another piece of folly he soon

repented of.

Thus, we see this monarch, grand, rich, conquering, the arbiter of

Europe; feared and admired as long as the ministers and captains existed

who really deserved the name.  When they were no more, the machine kept

moving some time by impulsion, and from their influence.  But soon

afterwards we saw beneath the surface; faults and errors were multiplied,

and decay came on with giant strides; without, however, opening the eyes

of that despotic master, so anxious to do everything and direct

everything himself, and who seemed to indemnify himself for disdain

abroad by increasing fear and trembling at home.

So much for the reign of this vain-glorious monarch.

Let me touch now upon some other incidents in his career, and upon some

points in his character.

He early showed a disinclination for Paris.  The troubles that had taken

place there during his minority made him regard the place as dangerous;

he wished, too, to render himself venerable by hiding himself from the

eyes of the multitude; all these considerations fixed him at Saint-

Germain soon after the death of the Queen, his mother.  It was to that

place he began to attract the world by fetes and gallantries, and by

making it felt that he wished to be often seen.

His love for Madame de la Valliere, which was at first kept secret,

occasioned frequent excursions to Versailles, then a little card castle,

which had been built by Louis XIII.--annoyed, and his suite still more

so, at being frequently obliged to sleep in a wretched inn there, after

he had been out hunting in the forest of Saint Leger.  That monarch

rarely slept at Versailles more than one night, and then from necessity;

the King, his son, slept there, so that he might be more in private with

his mistress, pleasures unknown to the hero and just man, worthy son of

Saint-Louis, who built the little chateau.

These excursions of Louis XIV. by degrees gave birth to those immense

buildings he erected at Versailles; and their convenience for a numerous

court, so different from the apartments at Saint-Germain, led him to take

up his abode there entirely shortly after the death of the Queen.  He

built an infinite number of apartments, which were asked for by those who

wished to pay their court to him; whereas at Saint-Germain nearly

everybody was obliged to lodge in the town, and the few who found

accommodation at the chateau were strangely inconvenienced.

The frequent fetes, the private promenades at Versailles, the journeys,

were means on which the King seized in order to distinguish or mortify

the courtiers, and thus render them more assiduous in pleasing him.

He felt that of real favours he had not enough to bestow; in order to

keep up the spirit of devotion, he therefore unceasingly invented all

sorts of ideal ones, little preferences and petty distinctions, which

answered his purpose as well.

He was exceedingly jealous of the attention paid him.  Not only did he

notice the presence of the most distinguished courtiers, but those of

inferior degree also.  He looked to the right and to the left, not only

upon rising but upon going to bed, at his meals, in passing through his

apartments, or his gardens of Versailles, where alone the courtiers were

allowed to follow him; he saw and noticed everybody; not one escaped him,

not even those who hoped to remain unnoticed.  He marked well all

absentees from the Court, found out the reason of their absence, and

never lost an opportunity of acting towards them as the occasion might

seem to justify.  With some of the courtiers (the most distinguished), it

was a demerit not to make the Court their ordinary abode; with others

'twas a fault to come but rarely; for those who never or scarcely ever

came it was certain disgrace.  When their names were in any way

mentioned, "I do not know them," the King would reply haughtily.  Those

who presented themselves but seldom were thus Characterise: "They are

people I never see;" these decrees were irrevocable.  He could not bear

people who liked Paris.

Louis XIV. took great pains to be well informed of all that passed

everywhere; in the public places, in the private houses, in society and

familiar intercourse.  His spies and tell-tales were infinite.  He had

them of all species; many who were ignorant that their information

reached him; others who knew it; others who wrote to him direct, sending

their letters through channels he indicated; and all these letters were

seen by him alone, and always before everything else; others who

sometimes spoke to him secretly in his cabinet, entering by the back

stairs.  These unknown means ruined an infinite number of people of all

classes, who never could discover the cause; often ruined them very

unjustly; for the King, once prejudiced, never altered his opinion, or so

rarely, that nothing was more rare.  He had, too, another fault, very

dangerous for others and often for himself, since it deprived him of good

subjects.  He had an excellent memory; in this way, that if he saw a man

who, twenty years before, perhaps, had in some manner offended him, he

did not forget the man, though he might forget the offence.  This was

enough, however, to exclude the person from all favour.  The

representations of a minister, of a general, of his confessor even,

could not move the King.  He would not yield.

The most cruel means by which the King was informed of what was passing--

for many years before anybody knew it--was that of opening letters.  The

promptitude and dexterity with which they were opened passes

understanding.  He saw extracts from all the letters in which there were

passages that the chiefs of the post-office, and then the minister who

governed it, thought ought to go before him; entire letters, too, were

sent to him, when their contents seemed to justify the sending.  Thus the

chiefs of the post, nay, the principal clerks were in a position to

suppose what they pleased and against whom they pleased.  A word of

contempt against the King or the government, a joke, a detached phrase,

was enough.  It is incredible how many people, justly or unjustly, were

more or less ruined, always without resource, without trial, and without

knowing why.  The secret was impenetrable; for nothing ever cost the King

less than profound silence and dissimulation.

This last talent he pushed almost to falsehood, but never to deceit,

pluming himself upon keeping his word,--therefore he scarcely ever gave

it.  The secrets of others he kept as religiously as his own.  He was

even flattered by certain confessions and certain confidences; and there

was no mistress, minister, or favourite, who could have wormed them out,

even though the secret regarded themselves.

We know, amongst many others, the famous story of a woman of quality,

who, after having been separated a year from her husband, found herself

in the family way just as he was on the point of returning from the army,

and who, not knowing what else to do, in the most urgent manner begged a

private interview of the King.  She obtained it, and confined to him her

position, as to the worthiest man in his realm, as she said.  The King

counselled her to profit by her distress, and live more wisely for the

future, and immediately promised to retain her husband on the frontier as

long as was necessary, and to forbid his return under any pretext, and in

fact he gave orders the same day to Louvois, and prohibited the husband

not only all leave of absence, but forbade him to quit for a single day

the post he was to command all the winter.  The officer, who was

distinguished, and who had neither wished nor asked to be employed all

the winter upon the frontier, and Louvois, who had in no way thought of

it, were equally surprised and vexed.  They were obliged, however, to

obey to the letter, and without asking why; and the King never mentioned

the circumstance until many years afterwards, when he was quite sure

nobody could find out either husband or wife, as in fact they never

could, or even obtain the most vague or the most uncertain suspicion.

CHAPTER LXXIV

Never did man give with better grace than Louis XIV., or augmented so

much, in this way, the price of his benefits.  Never did man sell to

better profit his words, even his smiles,--nay, his looks.  Never did

disobliging words escape him; and if he had to blame, to reprimand, or

correct, which was very rare, it was nearly always with goodness, never,

except on one occasion (the admonition of Courtenvaux, related in its

place), with anger or severity.  Never was man so naturally polite, or of

a politeness so measured, so graduated, so adapted to person, time, and

place.  Towards women his politeness was without parallel.  Never did he

pass the humblest petticoat without raising his hat; even to chamber-

maids, that he knew to be such, as often happened at Marly.  For ladies

he took his hat off completely, but to a greater or less extent; for

titled people, half off, holding it in his hand or against his ear some

instants, more or less marked.  For the nobility he contented himself by

putting his hand to his hat.  He took it off for the Princes of the

blood, as for the ladies.  If he accosted ladies he did not cover himself

until he had quitted them.  All this was out of doors, for in the house

he was never covered.  His reverences, more or less marked, but always

light, were incomparable for their grace and manner; even his mode of

half raising himself at supper for each lady who arrived at table.

Though at last this fatigued him, yet he never ceased it; the ladies who

were to sit down, however, took care not to enter after supper had

commenced.

If he was made to wait for anything while dressing, it was always with

patience.  He was exact to the hours that he gave for all his day, with a

precision clear and brief in his orders.  If in the bad weather of

winter, when he could not go out, he went to Madame de Maintenon's a

quarter of an hour earlier than he had arranged (which seldom happened),

and the captain of the guards was not on duty, he did not fail afterwards

to say that it was his own fault for anticipating the hour, not that of

the captain of the guards for being absent.  Thus, with this regularity

which he never deviated from, he was served with the utmost exactitude.

He treated his valets well, above all those of the household.  It was

amongst them that he felt most at ease, and that he unbosomed himself the

most familiarly, especially to the chiefs.  Their friendship and their

aversion have often had grand results.  They were unceasingly in a

position to render good and bad offices: thus they recalled those

powerful enfranchised slaves of the Roman emperors, to whom the senate

and the great people paid court and basely truckled.  These valets during

Louis XIV.'s reign were not less courted.  The ministers, even the most

powerful, openly studied their caprices; and the Princes of the blood,

nay, the bastards,--not to mention people of lower grade, did the same.

The majority were accordingly insolent enough; and if you could not avoid

their insolence, you were forced to put up with it.

The King loved air and exercise very much, as long as he could make use

of them.  He had excelled in dancing, and at tennis and mall.  On

horseback he was admirable, even at a late age.  He liked to see

everything done with grace and address.  To acquit yourself well or ill

before him was a merit or a fault.  He said that with things not

necessary it was best not to meddle, unless they were done well.  He was

very fond of shooting, and there was not a better or more graceful shot

than he.  He had always, in his cabinet seven or eight pointer bitches,

and was fond of feeding them, to make himself known to them.  He was very

fond, too, of stag hunting; but in a caleche, since he broke his arm,

while hunting at Fontainebleau, immediately after the death of the Queen.

He rode alone in a species of "box," drawn by four little horses--with

five or six relays, and drove himself with an address and accuracy

unknown to the best coachmen.  His postilions were children from ten to

fifteen years of age, and he directed them.

He liked splendour, magnificence, and profusion in everything: you

pleased him if you shone through the brilliancy of your houses, your

clothes, your table, your equipages.  Thus a taste for extravagance and

luxury was disseminated through all classes of society; causing infinite

harm, and leading to general confusion of rank and to ruin.

As for the King himself, nobody ever approached his magnificence.  His

buildings, who could number them?  At the same time, who was there who

did not deplore the pride, the caprice, the bad taste seen in them?  He

built nothing useful or ornamental in Paris, except the Pont Royal, and

that simply by necessity; so that despite its incomparable extent, Paris

is inferior to many cities of Europe.  Saint-Germain, a lovely spot, with

a marvellous view, rich forest, terraces, gardens, and water he abandoned

for Versailles; the dullest and most ungrateful of all places, without

prospect, without wood, without water, without soil; for the ground is

all shifting sand or swamp, the air accordingly bad.

But he liked to subjugate nature by art and treasure.

He built at Versailles, on, on, without any general design, the beautiful

and the ugly, the vast and the mean, all jumbled together.  His own

apartments and those of the Queen, are inconvenient to the last degree,

dull, close, stinking.  The gardens astonish by their magnificence, but

cause regret by their bad taste.  You are introduced to the freshness of

the shade only by a vast torrid zone, at the end of which there is

nothing for you but to mount or descend; and with the hill, which is very

short, terminate the gardens.  The violence everywhere done to nature

repels and wearies us despite ourselves.  The abundance of water, forced

up and gathered together from all parts, is rendered green, thick, muddy;

it disseminates humidity, unhealthy and evident; and an odour still more

so.  I might never finish upon the monstrous defects of a palace so

immense and so immensely dear, with its accompaniments, which are still

more so.

But the supply of water for the fountains was all defective at all

moments, in spite of those seas of reservoirs which had cost so many

millions to establish and to form upon the shifting sand and marsh.  Who

could have believed it?  This defect became the ruin of the infantry

which was turned out to do the work.  Madame de Maintenon reigned.  M. de

Louvois was well with her, then.  We were at peace.  He conceived the

idea of turning the river Eure between Chartres and Maintenon, and of

making it come to Versailles.  Who can say what gold and men this

obstinate attempt cost during several years, until it was prohibited by

the heaviest penalties, in the camp established there, and for a long

time kept up; not to speak of the sick,--above all, of the dead,--that

the hard labour and still more the much disturbed earth, caused?  How

many men were years in recovering from the effects of the contagion!  How

many never regained their health at all!  And not only the sub-officers,

but the colonels, the brigadiers and general officers, were compelled to

be upon the spot, and were not at liberty to absent themselves a quarter

of an hour from the works.  The war at last interrupted them in 1688, and

they have never since been undertaken; only unfinished portions of them

exist which will immortalise this cruel folly.

At last, the King, tired of the cost and bustle, persuaded himself that

he should like something little and solitary.  He searched all around

Versailles for some place to satisfy this new taste.  He examined several

neighbourhoods, he traversed the hills near Saint-Germain, and the vast

plain which is at the bottom, where the Seine winds and bathes the feet

of so many towns, and so many treasures in quitting Paris.  He was

pressed to fix himself at Lucienne, where Cavoye afterwards had a house,

the view from which is enchanting; but he replied that, that fine

situation would ruin him, and that as he wished to go to no expense, so

he also wished a situation which would not urge him into any.  He found

behind Lucienne a deep narrow valley, completely shut in, inaccessible

from its swamps, and with a wretched village called Marly upon the slope

of one of its hills.  This closeness, without drain or the means of

having any, was the sole merit of the valley.  The King was overjoyed at

his discovery.  It was a great work, that of draining this sewer of all

the environs, which threw there their garbage, and of bringing soil

thither!  The hermitage was made.  At first, it was only for sleeping in

three nights, from Wednesday to Saturday, two or three times a-year, with

a dozen at the outside of courtiers, to fill the most indispensable

posts.

By degrees, the hermitage was augmented, the hills were pared and cut

down, to give at least the semblance of a prospect; in fine, what with

buildings, gardens, waters, aqueducts, the curious and well known

machine, statues, precious furniture, the park, the ornamental enclosed

forest,--Marly has become what it is to-day, though it has been stripped

since the death of the King.  Great trees were unceasingly brought from

Compiegne or farther, three-fourths of which died and were immediately

after replaced; vast spaces covered with thick wood, or obscure alleys,

were suddenly changed into immense pieces of water, on which people were

rowed in gondolas; then they were changed again into forest (I speak of

what I have seen in six weeks); basins were changed a hundred times;

cascades the same; carp ponds adorned with the most exquisite painting,

scarcely finished, were changed and differently arranged by the same

hands; and this an infinite number of times; then there was that

prodigious machine just alluded to, with its immense aqueducts, the

conduit, its monstrous resources solely devoted to Marly, and no longer

to Versailles; so that I am under the mark in saying that Versailles,

even, did not cost so much as Marly.

Such was the fate of a place the abode of serpents, and of carrion, of

toads and frogs, solely chosen to avoid expense.  Such was the bad taste

of the King in all things, and his proud haughty pleasure in forcing

nature; which neither the most mighty war, nor devotion could subdue!

CHAPTER LXXV

Let me now speak of the amours of the King in which were even more fatal

to the state than his building mania.  Their scandal filled all Europe;

stupefied France, shook the state, and without doubt drew upon the King

those maledictions under the weight of which he was pushed so near the

very edge of the precipice, and had the misfortune of seeing his

legitimate posterity within an ace of extinction in France.  These are

evils which became veritable catastrophes and which will be long felt.

Louis XIV., in his youth more made for love than any of his subjects--

being tired of gathering passing sweets, fixed himself at last upon La

Valliere.  The progress and the result of his love are well known.

Madame de Montespan was she whose rare beauty touched him next, even

during the reign of Madame de La Valliere.  She soon perceived it, and

vainly pressed her husband to carry her away into Guienne.  With foolish

confidence he refused to listen to her.  She spoke to him more in

earnest.  In vain.  At last the King was listened to, and carried her off

from her husband, with that frightful hubbub which resounded with horror

among all nations, and which gave to the world the new spectacle of two

mistresses at once!  The King took them to the frontiers, to the camps,

to the armies, both of them in the Queen's coach.  The people ran from

all parts to look at the three queens; and asked one another in their

simplicity if they had seen them.  In the end, Madame de Montespan

triumphed, and disposed of the master and his Court with an eclat that

knew no veil; and in order that nothing should be wanting to complete the

licence of this life, M. de Montespan was sent to the Bastille; then

banished to Guienne, and his wife was appointed superintendent of the

Queen's household.

The accouchements of Madame de Montespan were public.  Her circle became

the centre of the Court, of the amusements, of the hopes and of the fears

of ministers and the generals, and the humiliation of all France.  It was

also the centre of wit, and of a kind so peculiar, so delicate, and so

subtle, but always so natural and so agreeable, that it made itself

distinguished by its special character.

Madame de Montespan was cross, capricious, ill-tempered, and of a

haughtiness in everything which, readied to the clouds, and from the

effects of which nobody, not even the King, was exempt.  The courtiers

avoided passing under her windows, above all when the King was with her.

They used to say it was equivalent to being put to the sword, and this

phrase became proverbial at the Court.  It is true that she spared

nobody, often without other design than to divert the King; and as she

had infinite wit and sharp pleasantry, nothing was more dangerous than

the ridicule she, better than anybody, could cast on all.  With that she

loved her family and her relatives, and did not fail to serve people for

whom she conceived friendship.  The Queen endured with difficulty her

haughtiness--very different from the respect and measure with which she

had been treated by the Duchesse de la Valliere, whom she always loved;

whereas of Madame de Montespan she would say, "That strumpet will cause

my death."  The retirement, the austere penitence, and the pious end of

Madame de Montespan have been already described.

During her reign she did not fail to have causes for jealousy.  There was

Mademoiselle de Fontange, who pleased the King sufficiently to become his

mistress.  But she had no intellect, and without that it was impossible

to maintain supremacy over the King.  Her early death quickly put an end

to this amour.  Then there was Madame de Soubise, who, by the infamous

connivance of her husband, prostituted herself to the King, and thus

secured all sorts of advantages for that husband, for herself, and for

her children.  The love of the King for her continued until her death,

although for many years before that he had ceased to see her in private.

Then there was the beautiful Ludre, demoiselle of Lorraine, and maid of

honour to Madame, who was openly loved for a moment.  But this amour was

a flash of lightning, and Madame de Montespan remained triumphant.

Let us now pass to another kind of amour which astonished all the world

as much as the other had scandalised it, and which the King carried with

him to the tomb.  Who does not already recognise the celebrated Francoise

d'Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon, whose permanent reign did not last less

than thirty-two years?

Born in the American islands, where her father, perhaps a gentleman, had

gone to seek his bread, and where he was stifled by obscurity, she

returned alone and at haphazard into France.  She landed at La Rochelle,

and was received in pity by Madame de Neuillant, mother of the Marechale

Duchesse de Navailles, and was reduced by that avaricious old woman to

keep the keys of her granary, and to see the hay measured out to her

horses, as I have already related elsewhere.  She came afterwards to

Paris, young, clever, witty, and beautiful, without friends and without

money; and by lucky chance made acquaintance with the famous Scarron.  He

found her amiable; his friends perhaps still more so.  Marriage with this

joyous and learned cripple appeared to her the greatest and most

unlooked-for good fortune; and folks who were, perhaps, more in want of a

wife than he, persuaded him to marry her, and thus raise this charming

unfortunate from her misery.

The marriage being brought about, the new spouse pleased the company

which went to Scarron's house.  It was the fashion to go there: people of

the Court and of the city, the best and most distinguished went.  Scarron

was not in a state to leave his house, but the charm of his genius, of

his knowledge, of his imagination, of that incomparable and ever fresh

gaiety which he showed in the midst of his afflictions, that rare

fecundity, and that humour, tempered by so much good taste that is still

admired in his writings, drew everybody there.

Madame Scarron made at home all sorts of acquaintances, which, however,

at the death of her husband, did not keep her from being reduced to the

charity of the parish of Saint-Eustace.  She took a chamber for herself

and for a servant, where she lived in a very pinched manner.  Her

personal charms by degrees improved her condition.  Villars, father of

the Marechal; Beuvron, father of D'Harcourt; the three Villarceaux, and

many others kept her.

This set her afloat again, and, step by step, introduced her to the Hotel

d'Albret, and thence to the Hotel de Richelieu, and elsewhere; so she

passed from one house to the other.  In these houses Madame Scarron was

far from being on the footing of the rest of the company.  She was more

like a servant than a guest.  She was completely at the beck and call of

her hosts; now to ask for firewood; now if a meal was nearly ready;

another time if the coach of so-and-so or such a one had returned; and so

on, with a thousand little commissions which the use of bells, introduced

a long time after, differently disposes of.

It was in these houses, principally in the Hotel de Richelieu, much more

still in the Hotel d'Albret, where the Marechal d'Albret lived in great

state, that Madame Scarron made the majority of her acquaintances.  The

Marechal was cousin-german of M. de Montespan, very intimate with him,

and with Madame de Montespan.  When she became the King's mistress he

became her counsellor, and abandoned her husband.

To the intimacy between the Marechal d'Albret and Madame de Montespan,

Madame de Maintenon owed the good fortune she met with fourteen or

fifteen years later.  Madame de Montespan continually visited the Hotel

d'Albret, and was much impressed with Madame Scarron.  She conceived a

friendship for the obliging widow, and when she had her first children by

the King--M. du Maine and Madame la Duchesse, whom the King wished to

conceal--she proposed that they should be confided to Madame Scarron.  A

house in the Marais was accordingly given to her, to lodge in with them,

and the means to bring them up, but in the utmost secrecy.  Afterwards,

these children were taken to Madame de Montespan, then shown to the King,

and then by degrees drawn from secrecy and avowed.  Their governess,

being established with them at the Court, more and more pleased Madame de

Montespan, who several times made the King give presents to her.  He, on

the other hand, could not endure her; what he gave to her, always little,

was by excess of complaisance and with a regret that he did not hide.

The estate of Maintenon being for sale, Madame de Montespan did not let

the King rest until she had drawn from him enough to buy it for Madame

Scarron, who thenceforth assumed its name.  She obtained enough also for

the repair of the chateau, and then attacked the King for means to

arrange the garden, which the former owners had allowed to go to ruin.

It was at the toilette of Madame de Montespan that these demands were

made.  The captain of the guards alone followed the King there.  M. le

Marechal de Lorges, the truest man that ever lived, held that post then,

and he has often related to me the scene he witnessed.  The King at first

turned a deaf ear to the request of Madame de Montespan, and then

refused.  Annoyed that she still insisted, he said he had already done

more than enough for this creature; that he could not understand the

fancy of Madame de Montespan for her, and her obstinacy in keeping her

after he had begged her so many times to dismiss her; that he admitted

Madame Scarron was insupportable to him, and provided he never saw her

more and never heard speak of her, he would open his purse again; though,

to say truth, he had already given too much to a creature of this kind!

Never did M. le Marechel de Lorges forget these words; and he has always

repeated them to me and others precisely as they are given here, so

struck was he with them, and much more after all that he saw since, so

astonishing and so contradictory.  Madame de Montespan stopped short,

very much troubled by having too far pressed the King.

M. du Maine was extremely lame; this was caused, it was said, by a fall

he had from his nurse's arms.  Nothing done for him succeeded; the

resolution was then taken to send him to various practicians in Flanders,

and elsewhere in the realm, then to the waters, among others to Bareges.

The letters that the governess wrote to Madame de Montespan, giving an

account of these journeys, were shown to the King.  He thought them well

written, relished them, and the last ones made his aversion for the

writer diminish.

The ill-humour of Madame de Montespan finished the work.  She had a good

deal of that quality, and had become accustomed to give it full swing.

The King was the object of it more frequently than anybody; he was still

amorous; but her ill-humour pained him.  Madame de Maintenon reproached

Madame de Montespan for this, and thus advanced herself in the King's

favour.  The King, by degrees, grew accustomed to speak sometimes to

Madame de Maintenon; to unbosom to her what he wished her to say to

Madame de Montespan; at last to relate to her the chagrin this latter

caused him, and to consult her thereupon.

Admitted thus into the intimate confidence of the lover and the mistress,

and this by the King's own doing, the adroit waiting-woman knew how to

cultivate it, and profited so well by her industry that by degrees she

supplanted Madame de Montespan, who perceived, too late, that her friend

had become necessary to the King.  Arrived at this point, Madame de

Maintenon made, in her turn, complaints to the King of all she had to

suffer, from a mistress who spared even him so little; and by dint of

these mutual complaints about Madame de Montespan, Madame de Maintenon at

last took her place, and knew well how to keep it.

Fortune, I dare not say Providence, which was preparing for the

haughtiest of kings, humiliation the most profound, the most-public, the

most durable, the most unheard-of, strengthened more and more his taste

for this woman, so adroit and expert at her trade; while the continued

ill-humour and jealousy of Madame de Montespan rendered the new union

still more solid.  It was this that Madame de Sevigne so prettily paints,

enigmatically, in her letters to Madame de Grignan, in which she

sometimes talks of these Court movements; for Madame de Maintenon had

been in Paris in the society of Madame de Sevigne, of Madame de Coulange,

of Madame de La Fayette, and had begun to make them feel her importance.

Charming touches are to be seen in the same style upon the favour, veiled

but brilliant enjoyed by Madame de Soubise.

It was while the King was in the midst of his partiality for Madame de

Maintenon that the Queen died.  It was at the same time, too, that the

ill-humour of Madame de Montespan became more and more insupportable.

This imperious beauty, accustomed to domineer and to be adored, could not

struggle against the despair, which the prospect of her fall caused her.

What carried her beyond all bounds, was that she could no longer disguise

from herself, that she had an abject rival whom she had supported, who

owed everything to her; whom she had so much liked that she had several

times refused to dismiss her when pressed to do so by the King; a rival,

too, so beneath her in beauty, and older by several years; to feel that

it was this lady's-maid, not to say this servant, that the King most

frequently went to see; that he sought only her; that he could not

dissimulate his uneasiness if he did not find her; that he quitted all

for her; in fine, that at all moments she (Madame de Montespan) needed

the intervention of Madame de Maintenon, in order to attract the King to

reconcile her with him, or to obtain the favours she asked for.  It was

then, in times so propitious to the enchantress, that the King became

free by the death of the Queen.

He passed the first few days at Saint-Cloud, at Monsieur's, whence he

went to Fontainebleau, where he spent all the autumn.  It was there that

his liking, stimulated by absence, made him find that absence

insupportable.  Upon his return it is pretended--for we must distinguish

the certain from that which is not so--it is pretended, I say, that the

King spoke more freely to Madame de Maintenon, and that she; venturing to

put forth her strength, intrenched herself behind devotion and prudery;

that the King did not cease, that she preached to him and made him afraid

of the devil, and that she balanced his love against his conscience with

so much art, that she succeeded in becoming what our eyes have seen her,

but what posterity will never believe she was.

But what is very certain and very true, is, that some time after the

return of the King from Fontainebleau, and in the midst of the winter

that followed the death of the Queen (posterity will with difficulty

believe it, although perfectly true and proved), Pere de la Chaise,

confessor of the King, said mass at the dead of night in one of the

King's cabinets at Versailles.  Bontems, governor of Versailles, chief

valet on duty, and the most confidential of the four, was present at this

mass, at which the monarch and La Maintenon were married in presence of

Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, as diocesan, of Louvois (both of whom drew

from the King a promise that he would never declare this marriage), and

of Montchevreuil.  This last was a relative and friend of Villarceaux, to

whom during the summer he lent his house at Montchevreuil, remaining

there himself, however, with his wife; and in that house Villarceaux kept

Madame Scarron, paying all the expenses because his relative was poor,

and because he (Villarceaux) was ashamed to take her to his own home, to

live in concubinage with her in the presence of his wife whose patience

and virtue he respected.

The satiety of the honeymoon, usually so fatal, and especially the

honeymoon of such marriages, only consolidated the favour of Madame de

Maintenon.  Soon after, she astonished everybody by the apartments given

to her at Versailles, at the top of the grand staircase facing those of

the King and on the same floor.  From that moment the King always passed

some hours with her every day of his life; wherever she might be she was

always lodged near him, and on the same floor if possible.

What manner of person she was,--this incredible enchantress,--and how she

governed all-powerfully for more than thirty years, it behoves me now to

explain!

CHAPTER LXXVI

Madame de Maintenon was a woman of much wit, which the good company, in

which she had at first been merely suffered, but in which she soon shone,

had much polished; and ornamented with knowledge of the world, and which

gallantry had rendered of the most agreeable kind.  The various positions

she had held had rendered her flattering, insinuating, complaisant,

always seeking to please.  The need she had of intrigues, those she had

seen of all kinds, and been mixed up in for herself and for others, had

given her the taste, the ability, and the habit of them.  Incomparable

grace, an easy manner, and yet measured and respectful, which, in

consequence of her long obscurity, had become natural to her,

marvellously aided her talents; with language gentle, exact, well

expressed, and naturally eloquent and brief.  Her best time, for she was

three or four years older than the King, had been the dainty phrase

period;--the superfine gallantry days,--in a word, the time of the

"ruelles," as it was called; and it had so influenced her that she always

retained evidences of it.  She put on afterwards an air of importance,

but this gradually gave place to one of devoutness that she wore

admirably.  She was not absolutely false by disposition, but necessity

had made her so, and her natural flightiness made her appear twice as

false as she was.

The distress and poverty in which she had so long lived had narrowed her

mind, and abased her heart and her sentiments.  Her feelings and her

thoughts were so circumscribed, that she was in truth always less even

than Madame Scarron, and in everything and everywhere she found herself

such.  Nothing was more repelling than this meanness, joined to a

situation so radiant.

Her flightiness or inconstancy was of the most dangerous kind.  With the

exception of some of her old friends, to whom she had good reasons for

remaining faithful, she favoured people one moment only to cast them off

the next.  You were admitted to an audience with her for instance, you

pleased her in some manner, and forthwith she unbosomed herself to you as

though you had known her from childhood.  At the second audience you

found her dry, laconic, cold.  You racked your brains to discover the

cause of this change.  Mere loss of time!--Flightiness was the sole

reason of it.

Devoutness was her strong point; by that she governed and held her place.

She found a King who believed himself an apostle, because he had all his

life persecuted Jansenism, or what was presented to him as such.  This

indicated to her with what grain she could sow the field most profitably.

The profound ignorance in which the King had been educated and kept all

his life, rendered him from the first an easy prey to the Jesuits.  He

became even more so with years, when he grew devout, for he was devout

with the grossest ignorance.  Religion became his weak point.  In this

state it was easy to persuade him that a decisive and tremendous blow

struck against the Protestants would give his name more grandeur than any

of his ancestors had acquired, besides strengthening his power and

increasing his authority.  Madame de Maintenon was one of those who did

most to make him believe this.

The revocation of the edict of Nantes, without the slightest pretext or

necessity, and the various proscriptions that followed it, were the

fruits of a frightful plot, in which the new spouse was one of the chief

conspirators, and which depopulated a quarter of the realm, ruined its

commerce, weakened it in every direction, gave it up for a long time to

the public and avowed pillage of the dragoons, authorised torments and

punishments by which so many innocent people of both sexes were killed by

thousands; ruined a numerous class; tore in pieces a world of families;

armed relatives against relatives, so as to seize their property and

leave them to die of hunger; banished our manufactures to foreign lands,

made those lands flourish and overflow at the expense of France, and

enabled them to build new cities; gave to the world the spectacle of a

prodigious population proscribed, stripped, fugitive, wandering, without

crime, and seeking shelter far from its country; sent to the galleys,

nobles, rich old men, people much esteemed for their piety, learning, and

virtue, people well off, weak, delicate, and solely on account of

religion; in fact, to heap up the measure of horror, filled all the realm

with perjury and sacrilege, in the midst of the echoed cries of these

unfortunate victims of error, while so many others sacrificed their

conscience to their wealth and their repose, and purchased both by

simulated abjuration, from which without pause they were dragged to adore

what they did not believe in, and to receive the divine body of the Saint

of Saints whilst remaining persuaded that they were only eating bread

which they ought to abhor!  Such was the general abomination born of

flattery and cruelty.  From torture to abjuration, and from that to the

communion, there was often only twenty-four hours' distance; and

executioners were the conductors of the converts and their witnesses.

Those who in the end appeared to have been reconciled, more at leisure

did not fail by their flight, or their behaviour, to contradict their

pretended conversion.

The King received from all sides news and details of these persecutions

and of these conversions.  It was by thousands that those who had abjured

and taken the communion were counted; ten thousand in one place; six

thousand in another--all at once and instantly.  The King congratulated

himself on his power and his piety.  He believed himself to have renewed

the days of the preaching of the Apostles, and attributed to himself all

the honour.  The bishops wrote panegyrics of him, the Jesuits made the

pulpit resound with his praises.  All France was filled with horror and

confusion; and yet there never was so much triumph and joy--never such

profusion of laudations!  The monarch doubted not of the sincerity of

this crowd of conversions; the converters took good care to persuade him

of it and to beatify him beforehand.  He swallowed their poison in long.

draughts.  He had never yet believed himself so great in the eyes of man,

or so advanced in the eyes of God, in the reparation of his sins and of

the scandals of his life.  He heard nothing but eulogies, while the good

and true Catholics and the true bishops, groaned in spirit to see the

orthodox act towards error and heretics as heretical tyrants and heathens

had acted against the truth, the confessors, and the martyrs.  They could

not, above all, endure this immensity of perjury and sacrilege.  They

bitterly lamented the durable and irremediable odium that detestable

measure cast upon the true religion, whilst our neighbours, exulting to

see us thus weaken and destroy ourselves, profited by our madness, and

built designs upon the hatred we should draw upon ourselves from all the

Protestant powers.

But to these spearing truths, the King was inaccessible.  Even the

conduct of Rome in this matter, could not open his eyes.  That Court

which formerly had not been ashamed to extol the Saint-Bartholomew, to

thank God for it by public processions, to employ the greatest masters to

paint this execrable action in the Vatican; Rome, I say, would not give

the slightest approbation to this onslaught on the Huguenots.

The magnificent establishment of Saint-Cyr, followed closely upon the

revocation of the edict of Nantes.  Madame de Montespan had founded at

Paris an establishment for the instruction of young girls in all sorts of

fine and ornamental work.  Emulation gave Madame de Maintenon higher and

vaster views which, whilst gratifying the poor nobility, would cause her

to be regarded as protectress in whom all the nobility would feel

interested.  She hoped to smooth the way for a declaration of her

marriage, by rendering herself illustrious by a monument with which she

could amuse both the King and herself, and which might serve her as a

retreat if she had the misfortune to lose him, as in fact it happened.

This declaration of her marriage was always her most ardent desire.  She

wished above all things to be proclaimed Queen; and never lost sight of

the idea.  Once she was near indeed upon seeing it gratified.  The King

had actually given her his word, that she should be declared; and the

ceremony was forthwith about to take place.  But it was postponed, and

for ever, by the representations of Louvois to the King.  To this

interference that minister owed his fall, and under circumstances so

surprising and so strange, that I cannot do better, I think, than

introduce an account of them here, by way of episode.  They are all the

more interesting because they show what an unlimited power Madame de

Maintenon exercised by subterranean means, and with what patient

perseverance she undermined her enemies when once she had resolved to

destroy them.

Lauvois had gained the confidence of the King to such an extent, that he

was, as I have said, one of the two witnesses of the frightful marriage

of his Majesty with Madame de Maintenon.  He had the courage to show he

was worthy of this confidence, by representing to the King the ignominy

of declaring that marriage, and drew from him his word, that never in his

life would he do so.

Several years afterwards, Louvois, who took care to be well informed of

all that passed in the palace, found out that Madame de Maintenon had

been again scheming in order to be declared Queen; that the King had had

the weakness to promise she should be, and that the declaration was about

to be made.  He put some papers in his hand, and at once went straight to

the King, who was in a very private room.  Seeing Louvois at an

unexpected hour, he asked him what brought him there.  "Something

pressing and important," replied Louvois, with a sad manner that

astonished the King, and induced him to command the valets present to

quit the room.  They went away in fact, but left the door open, so that

they could hear all, and see all, too, by the glass.  This was the great

danger of the cabinets.

The valets being gone, Louvois did not dissimulate from the King his

mission.  The monarch was often false, but incapable of rising above his

own falsehood.  Surprised at being discovered, he tried to shuffle out of

the matter, and pressed by his minister, began to move so as to gain the

other cabinet where the valets were, and thus deliver himself from this

hobble.  But Louvois, who perceived what he was about, threw himself on

his knees and stopped him, drew from his side a little sword he wore,

presented the handle to the King, and prayed him to kill him on the spot,

if he would persist in declaring his marriage, in breaking his word, and

covering himself in the eyes of Europe with infamy.  The King stamped,

fumed, told Louvois to let him go.  But Louvois squeezed him tighter by

the legs for fear he should escape; represented to him the shame of what

he had decided on doing; in a word, succeeded so well, that he drew for

the second time from the King, a promise that the marriage should never

be declared.

Madame de Maintenon meanwhile expected every moment to be proclaimed

Queen.  At the end of some days disturbed by the silence of the King,

she ventured to touch upon the subject.  The embarrassment she caused the

King much troubled her.  He softened the affair as much as he could, but

finished by begging her to think no more of being declared, and never to

speak of it to him again!  After the first shock that the loss of her

hopes caused her, she sought to find out to whom she was beholden for it.

She soon learned the truth; and it is not surprising that she swore to

obtain Louvois's disgrace, and never ceased to work at it until

successful.  She waited her opportunity, and undermined her enemy at

leisure, availing herself of every occasion to make him odious to the

King.

Time passed.  At length it happened that Louvois, not content with the

terrible executions in the Palatinate, which he had counselled, wished to

burn Treves.  He proposed it to the King.  A dispute arose between them,

but the King would not or could not be persuaded.  It may be imagined

that Madame de Maintenon did not do much to convince him.

Some days afterwards Louvois, who had the fault of obstinacy, came as

usual to work with the King in Madame de Maintenon's rooms.  At the end

of the sitting he said, that he felt convinced that it was scrupulousness

alone which had hindered the King from consenting to so necessary an act

as the burning, of Treves, and that he had, therefore, taken the

responsibility on himself by sending a courier with orders to set fire to

the place at once.

The King was immediately, and contrary to his nature, so transported with

anger that he seized the tongs, and was about to make a run at Louvois,

when Madame de Maintenon placed herself between them, crying, "Oh, Sire,

what are you going to do?" and took the tongs from his hands.

Louvois, meanwhile, gained the door.  The King cried after him to recall

him, and said, with flashing eyes: "Despatch a courier instantly with a

counter order, and let him arrive in time; for, know this: if a single

house is burned your head shall answer for it."  Louvois, more dead than

alive, hastened away at once.

Of course, he had sent off no courier.  He said he had, believing that by

this trick the King, though he might be angry, would be led to give way.

He had reckoned wrongly, however, as we have seen.

From this time forward Louvois became day by day more distasteful to the

King.  In the winter of 1690, he proposed that, in order to save expense,

the ladies should not accompany the King to the siege of Mons.  Madame de

Maintenon, we may be sure, did not grow more kindly disposed towards him

after this.  But as it is always the last drop of water that makes the

glass overflow, so a trifle that happened at this siege, completed the

disgrace of Louvois.

The King, who plumed himself upon knowing better than anybody the

minutest military details, walking one day about the camp, found an

ordinary cavalry guard ill-posted, and placed it differently.  Later the

same day he again visited by chance the spot, and found the guard

replaced as at first.  He was surprised and shocked.  He asked the

captain who had done this, and was told it was Louvois.

"But," replied the King, "did you not tell him 'twas I who had placed

you?"

"Yes, Sire," replied the captain.  The King piqued, turned towards his

suite, and said: "That's Louvois's trade, is it not?  He thinks himself a

great captain, and that he knows everything," and forthwith he replaced

the guard as he had put it in the morning.  It was, indeed, foolishness

and insolence on the part of Louvois, and the King had spoken truly of

him.  The King was so wounded that he could not pardon him.  After

Louvois's death, he related this incident to Pomponne, still annoyed at

it, as I knew by means of the Abbe de Pomponne.

After the return from Mons the dislike of the King for Louvois augmented

to such an extent, that this minister, who was so presumptuous, and who

thought himself so necessary, began to tremble.  The Marechale de

Rochefort having gone with her daughter, Madame de Blansac, to dine with

him at Meudon, he took them out for a ride in a little 'calache', which

he himself drove.  They heard him repeatedly say to himself, musing

profoundly, "Will he?  Will he be made to?  No--and yet--no, he will not

dare."

During this monologue Louvois was so absorbed that he was within an ace

of driving them all into the water, and would have done so, had they not

seized the reins, and cried out that he was going to drown them.  At

their cries and movement, Louvois awoke as from a deep sleep, drew up,

and turned, saying that, indeed, he was musing, and not thinking of the

vehicle.

I was at Versailles at that time, and happened to call upon Louvois about

some business of my father's.

The same day I met him after dinner as he was going to work with the

King.  About four o'clock in the afternoon I learned that he had been

taken rather unwell at Madame de Maintenon's, that the King had forced

him to go home, that he had done so on foot, that some trifling remedy

was administered to him there, and that during the operation of it he

died!

The surprise of all the Court may be imagined.  Although I was little

more than fifteen years of age, I wished to see the countenance of the

King after the occurrence of an event of this kind.  I went and waited

for him, and followed him during all his promenade.  He appeared to me

with his accustomed majesty, but had a nimble manner, as though he felt

more free than usual.  I remarked that, instead of going to see his

fountains, and diversifying his walk as usual, he did nothing but walk up

and down by the balustrade of the orangery, whence he could see, in

returning towards the chateau, the lodging in which Louvois had just

died, and towards which he unceasingly looked.

The name of Louvois was never afterwards pronounced; not a word was said

upon this death so surprising, and so sudden, until the arrival of an

officer, sent by the King of England from Saint-Germain, who came to the

King upon this terrace, and paid him a compliment of condolence upon the

loss he had received.

"Monsieur," replied the King, in a tone and with a manner more than easy,

"give my compliments and my thanks to the King and Queen of England, and

say to them in my name, that my affairs and theirs will go on none the

worse for what has happened."

The officer made a bow and retired, astonishment painted upon his face,

and expressed in all his bearing.  I anxiously observed all this, and

also remarked, that all the principal people around the King looked at

each other, but said no word.  The fact was, as I afterwards learned,

that Louvois, when he died, was so deeply in disgrace, that the very next

day he was to have been arrested and sent to the Bastille!  The King told

Chamillart so, and Chamillart related it to me.  This explains, I fancy,

the joy of the King at the death of his minister; for it saved him from

executing the plan he had resolved on.

The suddenness of the disease and death of Louvois caused much talk,

especially when, on the opening of the body, it was discovered that he

had been poisoned.  A servant was arrested on the charge; but before the

trial took place he was liberated, at the express command of the King,

and the whole affair was hushed up.  Five or six months afterwards Seron,

private physician of Louvois, barricaded himself in his apartment at

Versailles, and uttered dreadful cries.  People came but he refused to

open; and as the door could not be forced, he went on shrieking all day,

without succour, spiritual or temporal, saying at last that he had got

what he deserved for what he had done to his master; that he was a wretch

unworthy of help; and so he died despairing, in eight or ten hours,

without having spoken of any ones or uttered a single name!

CHAPTER LXXVII

It must not be imagined that in order to maintain her position Madame de

Maintenon had need of no address.  Her reign, on the contrary, was only

one continual intrigue; and that of the King a perpetual dupery.

Her mornings, which she commenced very early, were occupied with obscure

audiences for charitable or spiritual affairs.  Pretty often, at eight

o'clock in the morning, or earlier, she went to some minister; the

ministers of war, above all those of finance, were those with whom she

had most business.

Ordinarily as soon as she rose, she went to Saint-Cyr, dined in her

apartment there alone, or with some favourite of the house, gave as few

audiences as possible, ruled over the arrangements of the establishment,

meddled with the affairs of convents, read and replied to letters,

directed the affairs of the house, received information and letters from

her spies, and returned to Versailles just as the King was ready to enter

her rooms.  When older and more infirm, she would lie down in bed on

arriving between seven and eight o'clock in the morning at Saint-Cyr, or

take some remedy.

Towards nine o'clock in the evening two waiting-women came to undress

her.  Immediately afterwards, her maitre d'hotel, or a valet de chambre

brought her her supper--soup, or something light.  As soon as she had

finished her meal, her women put her to bed, and all this in the presence

of the King and his minister, who did not cease working or speak lower.

This done, ten o'clock had arrived; the curtains of Madame de Maintenon

were drawn, and the King went to supper, after saying good night to her.

When with the King in her own room, they each occupied an armchair, with

a table between them, at either side of the fireplace, hers towards the

bed, the King's with the back to the wall, where was the door of the

ante-chamber; two stools were before the table, one for the minister who

came to work, the other for his papers.

During the work Madame de Maintenon read or worked at tapestry.  She

heard all that passed between the King and his minister, for they spoke

out loud.  Rarely did she say anything, or, if so, it was of no moment.

The King often asked her opinion; then she replied with great discretion.

Never did she appear to lay stress on anything, still less to interest

herself for anybody, but she had an understanding with the minister, who

did not dare to oppose her in private, still less to trip in her

presence.  When some favour or some post was to be granted, the matter

was arranged between them beforehand; and this it was that sometimes

delayed her, without the King or anybody knowing the cause.

She would send word to the minister that she wished to speak to him.  He

did not dare to bring anything forward until he had received her orders;

until the revolving mechanism of each day had given them the leisure to

confer together.  That done, the minister proposed and showed a list.  If

by chance the King stopped at the name Madame de Maintenon wished, the

minister stopped too, and went no further.  If the King stopped at some

other, the minister proposed that he should look at those which were also

fitting, allowed the King leisure to make his observations, and profited

by them, to exclude the people who were not wanted.  Rarely did he

propose expressly the name to which he wished to come, but always

suggested several that he tried to balance against each other, so as to

embarrass the King in his choice.  Then the King asked his opinion, and

the minister, after touching upon other names, fixed upon the one he had

selected.

The King nearly always hesitated, and asked Madame de Maintenon what she

thought.  She smiled, shammed incapacity, said a word upon some other

name, then returned, if she had not fixed herself there at first, to that

which the minister had proposed; so that three-fourths of the favours and

opportunities which passed through the hands of the ministers in her

rooms--and three-fourths even of the remaining fourth-were disposed of by

her.  Sometimes when she had nobody for whom she cared, it was the

minister, with her consent and her help, who decided, without the King

having the least suspicion.  He thought he disposed of everything by

himself; whilst, in fact, he disposed only of the smallest part, and

always then by chance, except on the rare occasions when he specially

wished to favour some one.

As for state matters, if Madame de Maintenon wished to make them succeed,

fail, or turn in some particular fashion (which happened much less often

than where favours and appointments were in the wind), the same

intelligence and the same intrigue were carried on between herself and

the minister.  By these particulars it will be seen that this clever

woman did nearly all she wished, but not when or how she wished.

There was another scheme if the King stood out; it was to avoid decision

by confusing and spinning out the matter in hand, or by substituting

another as though arising, opportunely out of it, and by which it was

turned aside, or by proposing that some explanations should be obtained.

The first ideas of the King were thus weakened, and the charge was

afterwards returned to, with the same address, oftentimes with success.

It is this which made the ministers so necessary to Madame de Maintenon,

and her so necessary to them: She rendered them, in fact, continual

services by means of the King, in return for the services they rendered

her.  The mutual concerns, therefore, between her and them were infinite;

the King, all the while, not having the slightest suspicion of what was

going on!

The power of Madame de Maintenon was, as may be imagined, immense.  She

had everybody in her hands, from the highest and most favoured minister

to the meanest subject of the realm.  Many people have been ruined by

her, without having been able to discover the author of their ruin,

search as they might.  All attempts to find a remedy were equally

unsuccessful.

Yet the King was constantly on his guard, not only against Madame de

Maintenon, but against his ministers also.  Many a time it happened that

when sufficient care had not been taken, and he perceived that a minister

or a general wished to favour a relative or protege of Madame de

Maintenon, he firmly opposed the appointment on that account alone, and

the remarks he uttered thereupon made Madame de Maintenon very timid and

very measured when she wished openly to ask a favour.

Le Tellier, long before he was made Chancellor, well knew the mood of the

King.  One of his friends asked him for some place that he much desired.

Le Tellier replied that he would do what he could.  The friend did not

like this reply, and frankly said that it was not such as he expected

from a man with such authority.  "You do not know the ground," replied Le

Tellier; "of twenty matters that we bring before the King, we are sure he

will pass nineteen according to our wishes; we are equally certain that

the twentieth will be decided against them.  But which of the twenty will

be decided contrary to our desire we never know, although it may be the

one we have most at heart.  The King reserves to himself this caprice, to

make us feel that he is the master, and that he governs; and if, by

chance, something is presented upon which he is obstinate, and which is

sufficiently important for us to be obstinate about also, either on

account of the thing itself, or for the desire we have that it should

succeed as we wish, we very often get a dressing; but, in truth, the

dressing over, and the affair fallen through, the King, content with

having showed that we can do nothing, and pained by having vexed us,

becomes afterwards supple and flexible, so that then is the time at which

we can do all we wish."

This is, in truth, how the King conducted himself with his ministers,

always completely governed by them, even by the youngest and most

mediocre, even by the least accredited and the least respected--yet

always on his guard against being governed, and always persuaded that he

succeeded fully in avoiding it.

He adopted the same conduct towards Madame de Maintenon, whom at times he

scolded terribly, and applauded himself for so doing.  Sometimes she

threw herself on her knees before him, and for several days was really

upon thorns.  When she had appointed Fagon physician of the King in place

of Daquin, whom she dismissed, she had a doctor upon whom she could

certainly rely, and she played the sick woman accordingly, after those

scenes with the King, and in this manner turned them to her own

advantage.

It was not that this artifice had any power in constraining the King, or

that a real illness would have had any.  He was a man solely personal,

and who counted others only as they stood in relation to himself.  His

hard-heartedness, therefore, was extreme.  At the time when he was most

inclined towards his mistresses, whatever indisposition they might labour

under, even the most opposed to travelling and to appearing in full court

dress, could not save them from either.  When enceinte, or ill, or just

risen from child birth, they must needs be squeezed into full dress, go

to Flanders or further, dance; sit up, attend fetes, eat, be merry and

good company; go from place to place; appear neither to fear, nor to be

inconvenienced by heat, cold, wind, or dust; and all this precisely to

the hour and day, without a minute's grace.

His daughters he treated in the same manner.  It has been seen, in its

place, that he had no more consideration for Madame la Duchesse de Berry,

nor even for Madame la Duchesse de Bourgogne--whatever Fagon, Madame de

Maintenon, and others might do or say.  Yet he loved Madame la Duchesse

de Bourgogne as tenderly as he was capable of loving anybody: but both

she and Madame la Duchesse de Berry had miscarriages, which relieved him,

he said, though they then had no children.

When he travelled, his coach was always full of women; his mistresses,

afterwards his bastards, his daughters-in-law, sometimes Madame, and

other ladies when there was room.  In the coach, during his journeys,

there were always all sorts of things to eat, as meat, pastry, fruit.

A quarter of a league was not passed over before the King asked if

somebody would not eat.  He never ate anything between meals himself,

not even fruit; but he amused himself by seeing others do so, aye,

and to bursting.  You were obliged to be hungry, merry, and to eat with

appetite, otherwise he was displeased, and even showed it.  And yet after

this, if you supped with him at table the same day, you were compelled to

eat with as good a countenance as though you had tasted nothing since the

previous night.  He was as inconsiderate in other and more delicate

matters; and ladies, in his long drives and stations, had often occasion

to curse him.  The Duchesse de Chevreuse once rode all the, way from

Versailles to Fontainebleau in such extremity, that several times she was

well-nigh losing consciousness.

The King, who was fond of air, liked all the windows to be lowered;

he would have been much displeased had any lady drawn a curtain for

protection against sun, wind, or cold.  No inconvenience or incommodity

was allowed to be even perceived; and the King always went very quickly,

most frequently with relays.  To faint was a fault past hope of pardon.

Madame de Maintenon, who feared the air and many other inconveniences,

could gain no privilege over the others.  All she obtained, under

pretence of modesty and other reasons, was permission to journey apart;

but whatever condition she might be in, she was obliged to follow the

King, and be ready to receive him in her rooms by the time he was ready

to enter them.  She made many journeys to Marly in a state such as would

have saved a servant from movement.  She made one to Fontainebleau when

it seemed not unlikely that she would die on the road!  In whatever

condition she might be, the King went to her at his ordinary hour and did

what he had projected; though several times she was in bed, profusely

sweating away a fever.  The King, who as I have said, was fond of air,

and feared warm rooms, was astonished upon arriving to find everything

close shut, and ordered the windows to be opened; would not spare them an

inch; and up to ten o'clock, when he went to supper, kept them open,

utterly regardless of the cool night air, although he knew well what a

state she was in.  If there was to be music, fever or headache availed

not; a hundred wax candles flashed all the same in her eyes.  The King,

in fact, always followed his own inclination, without ever asking whether

she was inconvenienced.

The tranquillity and pious resignation of the King during the last days

of his illness, was a matter of some surprise to many people, as, indeed,

it deserved to be.  By way of explanation, the doctors said that the

malady he died of, while it deadens and destroys all bodily pain, calms

and annihilates all heart pangs and agitation of the mind.

They who were in the sick-chamber, during the last days of his illness,

gave another reason.

The Jesuits constantly admit the laity, even married, into their company.

This fact is certain.  There is no doubt that Des Noyers, Secretary of

State under Louis XIII., was of this number, or that many others have

been so too.  These licentiates make the same vow as the Jesuits, as far

as their condition admits: that is, unrestricted obedience to the

General, and to the superiors of the company.  They are obliged to supply

the place of the vows of poverty and chastity, by promising to give all

the service and all the protection in their power to the Company, above

all, to be entirely submissive to the superiors and to their confessor.

They are obliged to perform, with exactitude, such light exercises of

piety as their confessor may think adapted to the circumstances of their

lives, and that he simplifies as much as he likes.  It answers the

purpose of the Company to ensure to itself those hidden auxiliaries whom

it lets off cheaply.  But nothing must pass through their minds, nothing

must come to their knowledge that they do not reveal to their confessor;

and that which is not a secret of the conscience, to the superiors, if

the confessor thinks fit.  In everything, too, they must obey without

comment, the superior and the confessors.

It has been pretended that Pere Tellier had inspired the King, long

before his death, with the desire to be admitted, on this footing, into

the Company; that he had vaunted to him the privileges and plenary

indulgences attached to it; that he had persuaded him that whatever

crimes had been committed, and whatever difficulty there might be in

making amends for them, this secret profession washed out all, and

infallibly assured salvation, provided that the vows were faithfully

kept; that the General of the Company was admitted into the secret with

the consent of the King; that the King pronounced the vows before Pere

Tellier; that in the last days of his life they were heard, the one

fortifying, the other resposing upon these promises; that, at last,

the King received from Pere Tellier the final benediction of the Company,

as one of its members; that Pere Tellier made the King offer up prayers,

partly heard, of a kind to leave no doubt of the matter; and that he had

given him the robe, or the almost imperceptible sign, as it were, a sort

of scapulary, which was found upon him.  To conclude, the majority of

those who approached the King in his last moments attributed his

penitence to the artifices and persuasions of the Jesuits, who, for

temporal interests, deceive sinners even up to the edge of the tomb, and

conduct them to it in profound peace by a path strewn with flowers.

However it is but fair to say, that Marechal, who was very trustful,

assured me he had never perceived anything which justified this idea, and

that he was persuaded there was not the least truth in it; and I think,

that although he was not always in the chamber or near the bed, and

although Pere Tellier might mistrust and try to deceive him, still if the

King had been made a Jesuit as stated, Marechal must have had sore

knowledge or some suspicion of the circumstance.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Depopulated a quarter of the realm

He liked nobody to be in any way superior to him

He was born bored; he was so accustomed to live out of himself

He was scarcely taught how to read or write

It is a sign that I have touched the sore point

Pope not been ashamed to extol the Saint-Bartholomew

Revocation of the edict of Nantes

Seeing him eat olives with a fork!

Touched, but like a man who does not wish to seem so

Unreasonable love of admiration, was his ruin

Who counted others only as they stood in relation to himself

End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Memoirs of Louis XIV. and The Regency,

v10, by the Duc de Saint-Simon

          MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XIV AND HIS COURT AND OF THE REGENCY

                        BY THE DUKE OF SAINT-SIMON