VOLUME 13.
CHAPTER XCVII
Anecdote of Madame de Charlus.--The
'Phillippaques'.--La Grange.--
Pere Tellier.--The
Jesuits.--Anecdote----Tellier's Banishment.--Death of
Madame de Maintenon.--Her Life at
Saint-Cyr.
CHAPTER XCVIII
Mode of Life of the Duchesse de
Berry.--Her Illness.--Her Degrading
Amours.--Her Danger Increases.--The
Sacraments Refused.--The Cure Is
Supported by the Cardinal de
Noailles.--Curious Scene.--The Duchess
Refuses to Give Way.--She Recovers, and
Is Delivered.--Ambition of Rion.
--He Marries the Duchess.--She
Determines to Go to Meudon.--Rion Sent to
the Army.--Quarrels of Father and
Daughter.--Supper on the Terrace of
Meudon.--The Duchess Again Ill.--Moves
to La Muette.--Great Danger.--
Receives the Sacrament.--Garus and
Chirac.--Rival Doctors.--Increased
Illness.--Death of the
Duchess.--Sentiments on the Occasion.--Funeral
Ceremonies.--Madame de Saint-Simon Fails
Ill.--Her Recovery.--We Move to
Meudon.--Character of the Duchesse de
Berry.
CHAPTER XCIX
The Mississippi Scheme.--Law Offers Me
Shares.--Compensation for Blaye.--
The Rue Quincampoix.--Excitement of the
Public.--Increased Popularity of
the Scheme.--Conniving of Law.--Plot
against His Life--Disagreement with
Argenson.--Their Quarrel.--Avarice of
the Prince de Conti.--His
Audacity.--Anger of the
Regent.--Comparison with the Period of Louis
XIV.--A Ballet Proposed.--The marechal
de Villeroy.--The Young King Is to
Dance.--Young Law
Proposed.--Excitement.--The Young King's Disgust.--
Extravagant Presents of the Duc
d'Orleans.
CHAPTER C
System of Law in Danger.--Prodigality of
the Duc d'Orleans.--Admissions
of Law.--Fall of His Notes.--Violent
Measures Taken to Support Them.--
Their Failure.--Increased Extravagance
of the Regent.--Reduction of the
Fervour.--Proposed Colonies.--Forced
Emigration.--Decree on the Indian
Company.--Scheming of Argenson. Attitude of the Parliament.--Their
Remonstrance.--Dismissal of Law.--His
Coolness--Extraordinary Decree of
Council of State.--Prohibition of
jewellery.--New Schemes.
CHAPTER CI
The New Edict.--The Commercial
Company.--New Edict.--Rush on the Bank.--
People Stifled in the Crowd.--Excitement
against Law.--Money of the
Bank.--Exile of the Parliament to
Pontoise.--New Operation.--The Place
Vendome.--The Marechal de
Villeroy.--Marseilles.--Flight of Law.--
Character of Him and His
Wife.--Observations on His Schemes.--Decrees of
the Finance.
CHAPTER CII
Council on the Finances.--Departure of
Law--A Strange Dialogue.--M. le
Duc and the Regent.--Crimes Imputed to
Law during His Absence.--Schemes
Proposed.--End, of the Council.
CHAPTER CIII
Character of Alberoni.--His Grand
Projects.--Plots against Him.--The
Queen's Nurse.--The Scheme against the
Cardinal.--His Fall.--Theft of a
Will.--Reception in Italy.--His
Adventures There.
CHAPTER CIV
Meetings of the Council.--A Kitten.--The
Archbishopric of Cambrai.--
Scandalous Conduct of Dubois.--The
Consecration.--I Persuade the Regent
Not to Go.--He Promises Not.--Breaks His
Word.--Madame de Parabere.--The
Ceremony.--Story of the Comte de Horn.
CHAPTER XCVII
To go back, now, to the remaining events
of the year 1719.
The Marquise de Charlus, sister of
Mezieres, and mother of the Marquis de
Levi, who has since become a duke and a
peer, died rich and old. She was
the exact picture of an "old
clothes" woman and was thus subject to many
insults from those who did not know her,
which she by no means relished.
To relieve a little the seriousness of
these memoirs, I will here relate
an amusing adventure of which she was
heroine.
She was very avaricious, and a great
gambler. She would have passed the
night up to her knees in water in order
to play. Heavy gambling at
lansquenet was carried on at Paris in
the evening, at Madame la Princesse
de Conti's. Madame de Charlus supped there one Friday,
between the
games, much company being present. She was no better clad than at other
times, and wore a head-dress, in vogue
at that day, called commode, not
fastened, but put on or taken off like a
wig or a night-cap. It was
fashionable, then, to wear these
headdresses very high.
Madame de Charlus was near the
Archbishop of Rheims, Le Tellier. She
took a boiled egg, that she cracked, and
in reaching for some salt, set
her head dress on fire, at a candle
near, without perceiving it. The
Archbishop, who saw her all in flames,
seized the head-dress and flung it
upon the ground. Madame de Charlus, in her surprise, and
indignant at
seeing her self thus uncovered, without
knowing why, threw her egg in the
Archbishop's face, and made him a fine
mess.
Nothing but laughter was heard; and all
the company were in convulsions
of mirth at the grey, dirty, and hoary
head of Madame de Charlus, and the
Archbishop's omelette; above all, at the
fury and abuse of Madame de
Charlus, who thought she had been
affronted, and who was a long time
before she would understand the cause,
irritated at finding herself thus
treated before everybody. The head-dress was burnt, Madame la Princesse
de Conti gave her another, but before it
was on her head everybody had
time to contemplate her charms, and she
to grow in fury. Her, husband
died three months after her. M. de Levi expected to find treasures;
there had been such; but they had taken
wing and flown away.
About this time appeared some verses under
the title of Philippiques,
which were distributed with
extraordinary promptitude and abundance.
La
Grange, formerly page of Madame la
Princesse de Conti, was the author,
and did not deny it. All that hell could vomit forth, true and
false,
was expressed in the most beautiful
verses, most poetic in style, and
with all the art and talent
imaginable. M. le Duc d'Orleans knew it,
and
wished to see the poem, but he could not
succeed in getting it, for no
one dared to show it to him.
He spoke of it several times to me, and
at last demanded with such
earnestness that I should bring it to
him, that I could not refuse. I
brought it to him accordingly, but read
it to him I declared I never
would.
He took it, therefore, and read it in a low tone, standing in the
window of his little cabinet, where we
were. He judged it in reading
much as it was, for he stopped from time
to time to speak to me, and
without appearing much moved. But all on a sudden I saw him change
countenance, and turn towards me, tears
in his eyes, and himself ready to
drop.
"Ah," said he, "this is
too much, this horrible poem beats me
completely."
He was at the part where the scoundrel
shows M. le Duc d'Orleans having
the design to poison the King, and quite
ready to execute his crime.
It is the part where the author
redoubles his energy, his poetry, his
invocations, his terrible and startling
beauties, his invectives, his
hideous pictures, his touching portraits
of the youth and innocence of
the King, and of the hopes he has,
adjuring the nation to save so dear a
victim from the barbarity of a murderer;
in a word, all that is most
delicate, most tender, stringent, and
blackest, most pompous, and most
moving, is there.
I wished to profit by the dejected
silence into which the reading of this
poem had thrown M. le Duc d'Orleans, to
take from him the execrable
paper, but I could not succeed; he broke
out into just complaints against
such horrible wickedness, and into
tenderness for the King; then finished
his reading, that he interrupted more than
once to speak to me. I never
saw a man so penetrated, so deeply
touched, so overwhelmed with injustice
so enormous and sustained. As for me, I could not contain myself. To
see him, the most prejudiced, if of good
faith, would have been convinced
he was innocent of the come imputed to
him, by the horror he displayed at
it.
I have said all, when I state that I recovered myself with
difficulty, and that I had all the pains
in the world to compose him a
little.
This La Grange, who was of no personal value,
yet a good poet--only that,
and never anything else--had, by his
poetry, insinuated himself into
Sceaux, where he had become one of the
great favourites of Madame du
Maine.
She and her husband knew his life, his habits, and his mercenary
villainy. They knew, too, haw to profit by it. He was arrested shortly
afterwards, and sent to the Isle de
Sainte Marguerite, which he obtained
permission to leave before the end of
the Regency. He had the audacity
to show himself everywhere in Paris, and
while he was appearing at the
theatres and in all public places,
people had the impudence to spread the
report that M. le Duc d'Orleans had had
him killed! M. le Duc d'Orleans
and his enemies have been equally
indefatigable; the latter in the
blackest villainies, the Prince in the
most unfruitful clemency, to call
it by no more expressive name.
Before the Regent was called to the head
of public affairs, I recommended
him to banish Pere Tellier when he had
the power to do so. He did not
act upon my advice, or only partially;
nevertheless, Tellier was
disgraced, and after wandering hither
and thither, a very firebrand
wherever he went, he was confined by his
superiors in La Fleche.
This tyrant of the Church, furious that
he could no longer move, which
had been his sole consolation during the
end of his reign and his
terrible domination, found himself at La
Fleche, reduced to a position as
insupportable as it was new to him.
The Jesuits, spies of each other, and
jealous and envious of those who
have the superior authority, are
marvellously ungrateful towards those
who, having occupied high posts, or
served the company with much labour
and success, become useless to it, by
their age or their infirmities.
They regard them with disdain, and
instead of bestowing upon them the
attention merited by their age, their
services, and their merit, leave
them in the dreariest solitude, and
begrudge them even their food!
I have with my own eyes seen three
examples of this in these Jesuits, men
of much piety and honour, who hid filled
positions of confidence and of
talent, and with whom I was very
intimate. The first had been rector of
their establishment at Paris, was
distinguished by excellent works of
piety, and was for several years
assistant of the general at Rome, at the
death of whom he returned to Paris;
because the rule is, that the new
general has new assistants. Upon his return to the Paris establishment
he was put into a garret, at the very
top of the house, amid solitude,
contempt, and want.
The direction of the royal conscience
had been the principal occupation
of the two others, one of whom had even
been proposed as confessor to
Madame la Dauphine. One was long ill of a malady he died of. He was not
properly nourished, and I sent him his
dinner every day, for more than
five months, because I had seen his
pittance. I sent him even remedies,
for he could not refrain from admitting
to me that he suffered from the
treatment he was subjected to.
The third, very old and very infirm, had
not a better fate. At last,
being no longer able to hold out, he
asked to be allowed to pay a visit
to my Versailles house (after having
explained himself to me), under
pretext of fresh air. He remained there several months, and died at
the
noviciate in Paris. Such is the fate of all the Jesuits, without
excepting the most famous, putting aside
a few who having shone at the
Court and in the world by their sermons
and their merit, and having made
many friends--as Peres Bordaloue, La
Rue, Gaillard--have been guaranteed
from the general disgrace, because,
often visited by the principal
persons of the Court and the town,
policy did not permit them to be
treated like the rest, for fear of
making so many considerable people
notice what they would not have suffered
without disturbance and scandal.
It was, then, in this abandonment and
this contempt that Pere Tellier
remained at La Fleche, although he had
from the Regent four thousand
livres pension. He had ill-treated everybody. When he was confessor of
the King, not one of his brethren approached
him without trembling,
although most of them were the
"big-wigs" of the company.
Even the
general of the company was forced to
bend beneath the despotism he
exercised upon all. There was not a Jesuit who did not disapprove
the
violence of his conduct, or who did not
fear it would injure the society.
All hated him, as a minister is hated
who is coarse, harsh, inaccessible,
egotistical, and who takes pleasure in
showing his power and his disdain.
His exile, and the conduct that drew it
upon him, were fresh motives for
hatred against him, unveiling, as they
did, a number of secret intrigues
he had been concerned in, and which he
had great interest in hiding. All
these things together did not render
agreeable to Tellier his forced
retirement at La Fleche. He found there sharp superiors and equals,
instead of the general terror his
presence had formerly caused among the
Jesuits.
All now showed nothing but contempt for him, and took pleasure
in making him sensible of it. This King of the Church, in part of the
State, and in private of his society,
became a common Jesuit like the
rest, and under superiors; it may be
imagined what a hell this was to a
man so impetuous and so accustomed to a
domination without reply, and
without bounds, and abused in every
fashion. Thus he did not endure it
long.
Nothing more was heard of him, and he died after having been only
six months at La Fleche.
There was another death, which I may as
well mention here, as it occurred
about the same time.
On Saturday evening, the 15th of April,
1719, the celebrated and fatal
Madame de Maintenon died at
Saint-Cyr. What a stir this event would
have
made in Europe, had it happened a few
years earlier. It was scarcely
mentioned in Paris!
I have already said so much respecting
this woman, so unfortunately
famous, that I will say but little more
now. Her life at Saint-Cyr was
divided between her spiritual duties,
the letters she received, from her
religious correspondents, and the
answers she gave to them. She took the
communion twice a-week, ordinarily
between seven and eight o'clock in the
morning; not, as Dangeau says in his
Memoires, at midnight or every day.
She was very rich, having four thousand
livres pension per month from the
Regent, besides other emoluments. She had, too, her estate at Maintenon,
and some other property. With all this wealth, too, she had not a
farthing of expense at Saint-Cyr. Everything was provided for herself
and servants and their horses, even
wood, coals, and candles. She had
nothing to buy, except dress for herself
and for her people. She kept a
steward, a valet, people for the horses
and the kitchen, a coach, seven
or eight horses, one or two others for
the saddle, besides having the
young ladies of Saint-Cyr, chambermaids,
and Mademoiselle d'Aumale to
wait upon her.
The fall of the Duc du Maine at the Bed
of justice struck the first blow
at her.
It is not too much to presume that she was well informed of the
measures and the designs of this
darling, and that this hope had
sustained her; but when she saw him
arrested she succumbed; continuous
fever seized her, and she died at
eighty-three years of age, in the full
possession of all her intellect.
Regret for her loss, which was not even
universal in Saint-Cyr, scarcely
passed the walls of that community. Aubigny, Archbishop of Rouen, her
pretended cousin, was the only man I
ever heard of, who was fool enough
to die of grief on account of it. But he was so afflicted by this loss,
that he fell ill, and soon followed her.
CHAPTER XCVII.
Madame la Duchesse de Berry was living
as usual, amid the loftiest pride,
and the vilest servitude; amid penitence
the most austere at the
Carmelite convent of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, and suppers the most
profaned by vile company, filthiness,
and impiety; amid the most
shameless debauchery, and the most
horrible fear of the devil and death;
when lo! she fell ill at the Luxembourg.
I must disguise nothing more, especially
as what I am relating belongs to
history; and never in these memoirs have
I introduced details upon
gallantry except such as were necessary
to the proper comprehension of
important or interesting matters to
which they related. Madame la
Duchesse de Berry would constrain
herself in nothing; she was indignant
that people would dare to speak of what
she did not take the trouble to
hide from them; and nevertheless she was
grieved to death that her
conduct was known.
She was in the family way by Rion, but
hid--it as much as she could.
Madame de Mouchy was their go-between,
although her conduct was as clear
as day.
Rion and Mouchy, in fact, were in love with each other, and had
innumerable facilities for indulging
their passion. They laughed at the
Princess, who was their dupe, and from
whom they drew in council all they
could.
In one word, they were the masters of her and of her household,
and so insolently, that M. le Duc and
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, who
knew them and hated them, feared them
also and temporised with them.
Madame de Saint-Simon, sheltered from
all that, extremely loved and
respected by all the household, and
respected even by this couple who
made themselves so much dreaded and
courted, only saw Madame la Duchesse
de Berry during the moments of
presentation at the Luxembourg, whence she
returned as soon as all was finished,
entirely ignorant of what was
passing, though she might have been
perfectly instructed.
The illness of Madame la Duchesse de
Berry came on, and this illness, ill
prepared for by suppers washed down by
wine and strong liquors, became
stormy and dangerous. Madame de Saint-Simon could not avoid
becoming
assiduous in her attendance as soon as
the peril appeared, but she never
would yield to the instances of M. le
Duc and Madame la Duchesse
d'Orleans, who, with all the household;
wished her to sleep in the
chamber allotted to her, and which she
never put foot in, not even during
the day.
She found Madame la Duchesse de Berry shut up in a little
chamber, which had private
entrances--very useful just then, with no one
near her but La Mouchy and Rion, and a
few trusty waiting-women. All in
attendance had free entrance to this
room. M. le Duc and Madame la
Duchesse d'Orleans were not allowed to
enter when they liked; of course
it was the same with the lady of honour,
the other ladies, the chief
femme de chambre, and the doctors. All entered from time to time, but
ringing for an instant. A bad headache or want of sleep caused them
often to be asked to stay away, or, if
they entered, to leave directly
afterwards. They did not press their presence upon the
sick woman,
knowing only too well the nature of her
malady; but contented themselves
by asking after her through Madame de
Mouchy, who opened the door to
reply to them, keeping it scarcely ajar:
This ridiculous proceeding
passed before the crowd of the Luxembourg,
of the Palais Royal, and of
many other people who, for form's sake
or for curiosity, came to inquire
the news, and became common town-talk.
The danger increasing, Languet, a
celebrated cure of Saint-Sulpice, who
had always rendered himself assiduous, spoke
of the sacraments to M. le
Duc d'Orleans. The difficulty was how to enter and propose
them to
Madame la Duchesse de Berry. But another and greater difficulty soon
appeared. It was this: the cure, like a man knowing his
duty, refused to
administer the sacrament, or to suffer
it to be administered, while Rion
or Madame de Mouchy remained in the
chamber, or even in the Luxembourg!
He declared this aloud before everybody,
expressly in presence of M. le
Duc d'Orleans, who was less shocked than
embarrassed. He took the cure
aside, and for a long time tried to make
him give way. Seeing him
inflexible, he proposed reference to the
Cardinal de Noailles. The cure
immediately agreed, and promised to
defer to his orders, Noailles being
his bishop, provided he was allowed to
explain his reasons. The affair
passed, and Madame la Duchesse de Berry
made confession to a Cordelier,
her confessor. M. le Duc d'Orleans flattered himself, no
doubt, he would
find the diocesan more flexible than the
cure. If he hoped so he
deceived himself.
The Cardinal de Noailles arrived; M. le
Duc d'Orleans took him aside with
the cure, and their conversation lasted
more than half an hour. As the
declaration of the cure had been public,
the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris
judged it fitting that his should be so
also. As all three approached
the door of the chamber, filled with
company, the Cardinal de Noailles
said aloud to the cure, that he had very
worthily done his duty, that he
expected nothing less from such a good,
experienced, and enlightened man
as he was; that he praised him for what
he had demanded before
administering the sacrament to Madame la
Duchesse de Berry; that he
exhorted him not to give in, or to
suffer himself to be deceived upon so
important a thing; and that if he wanted
further authorisation he, as his
bishop, diocesan, and superior,
prohibited him from administering the
sacraments, or allowing them to be
administered, to Madame la Duchesse de
Berry while Rion and Madame de Mouchy
were in the chamber, or even in the
Luxembourg.
It may be imagined what a stir such
inevitable scandal as this made in a
room so full of company; what
embarrassment it caused M. le Duc
d'Orleans, and what a noise it
immediately made everywhere. Nobody,
even
the chiefs of the constitution, the mass
without, enemies of the Cardinal
de Noailles, the most fashionable
bishops, the most distinguished women,
the libertines even--not one blamed the
cure or his archbishop: some
because they knew the rules of the
Church, and did not dare to impugn
them; others, the majority, from horror
of the conduct of Madame la
Duchesse de Berry, and hatred drawn upon
her by her pride.
Now came the question between the
Regent, the Cardinal, and the cure,
which should announce this determination
to Madame la Duchesse de Berry,
who in no way expected it, and who,
having confessed, expected every
moment to see the Holy Sacrament enter,
and to take it. After a short
colloquy urged on by the state of the
patient, the Cardinal and the cure
withdrew a little, while M. le Duc
d'Orleans slightly opened the door and
called Madame de Mouchy. Then, the door ajar, she within, he without,
he
told her what was in debate. La Mouchy, much astonished, still more
annoyed, rode the high horse, talked of
her merit, and of the affront
that bigots wished to cast upon her and
Madame la Duchesse de Berry, who
would never suffer it or consent to it,
and that she would die--in the
state she was--if they had the impudence
and the cruelty to tell it to
her.
The conclusion was that La Mouchy
undertook to announce to Madame la
Duchesse de Berry the resolution that
had been taken respecting the
sacraments--what she added of her own
may be imagined. A negative
response did not fail to be quickly
delivered to M. le Duc d'Orleans
through the half-opened door. Coming through such a messenger, it was
just the reply he might have
expected. Immediately after, he repeated
it
to the Cardinal, and to the cure; the
cure, being supported by his
archbishop, contented himself with
shrugging his shoulders. But the
Cardinal said to M. le Duc d'Orleans
that Madame de Mouchy, one of the
two who ought to be sent away, was not a
fit person to bring Madame la
Duchesse to reason; that it was his duty
to carry this message to her,
and to exhort her to do her duty as a
Christian shortly about to appear
before God; and the Archbishop pressed
the Regent to go and say so to
her.
It will be believed, without difficulty, that his eloquence gained
nothing.
This Prince feared too much his daughter, and would have been
but a feeble apostle with her.
Reiterated refusals determined the
Cardinal to go and speak to Madame la
Duchesse de Berry, accompanied by the
cure, and as he wished to set about
it at once, M. le Duc d'Orleans, who did
not dare to hinder him, but who
feared some sudden and dangerous
revolution in his daughter at the sight
and at the discourses of the two
pastors, conjured him to wait until
preparations could be made to receive
him. He went, therefore, and held
another colloquy through the door with
Madame de Mouchy, the success of
which was equal to the other. Madame la Duchesse de Berry flew into
fury, railed in unruly terms against
these hypocritical humbugs, who took
advantage of her state and their calling
to dishonour her by an unheard-
of scandal, not in the least sparing her
father for his stupidity and
feebleness in allowing it. To have heard her, you would have thought
that the cure and the Cardinal ought to
be kicked downstairs.
M. le Duc d'Orleans returned to the
ecclesiastics, looking very small,
and not knowing what to do between his
daughter and them. However, he
said to them that she was so weak and
suffering that they must put off
their visit, persuading them as well as
he could. The attention and
anxiety of the large company which filled
the room were extreme:
everything was known afterwards, bit by
bit, during the day.
The Cardinal de Noailles remained more
than two hours with M. le Duc
d'Orleans, round whom people gathered at
last. The Cardinal, seeing that
he could not enter the chamber without a
sort of violence, much opposed
to persuasion, thought it indecent and
useless to wait any longer. In
going away, he reiterated his orders to
the cure, and begged him to watch
so as not to be deceived respecting the
sacraments, lest attempts were
made to administer them
clandestinely. He afterwards approached
Madame
de Saint-Simon, took her aside, related
to her what had passed, and
deplored with her a scandal that he had
not been able to avoid. M. le
Duc d'Orleans hastened to announce to his
daughter the departure of the
Cardinal, at which he himself was much
relieved. But on leaving the
chamber he was astonished to find the
cure glued against the door, and
still more so to hear he had taken up
his post there, and meant to
remain, happen what might, because he
did not wish to be deceived
respecting the sacraments. And, indeed, he remained there four days and
four nights, except during short
intervals for food and repose that he
took at home, quite close to the
Luxembourg, and during which his place
was filled by two priests whom he left
there. At last, the danger being
passed, he raised the siege.
Madame la Duchesse de Berry, safely
delivered of a daughter, had nothing
to do but to re-establish herself; but
she remained firm against the cure
and the Cardinal de Noailles, neither of
whom she ever pardoned. She
became more and more bewitched by the
two lovers, who laughed at her, and
who were attached to her only for their
fortune and their interest. She
remained shut up without seeing M. and
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans,
except for a few moments; no one,
commencing with Madame de Saint-Simon,
showed any eagerness to see her, for
everybody knew what kept the door
shut.
Madame la Duchesse de Berry, infinitely
pained by the manner in which
everybody, even the people, looked upon
her malady, thought to gain a
little lost ground by throwing open the
gardens of the Luxembourg to the
public, after having long since closed
them. People were glad: they
profited by the act; that was all. She made a vow that she would give
herself up to religion, and dress in
white--that is, devote herself to
the service of the Virgin--for six
months. This vow made people laugh a
little.
Her illness had begun on the 26th of
March, 1719, and Easter-day fell on
the 9th of April. She was then quite well, but would not see a
soul. A
new cause of annoyance had arisen to
trouble her. Rion, who saw himself
so successful as the lover of Madame la
Duchesse de Berry, wished to
improve his position by becoming her
husband. He was encouraged in this
desire by his uncle, M. de Lauzun, who
had also advised him to treat her
with the rigour, harshness--nay,
brutality, which I have already
described. The maxim of M. de Lauzun was, that the
Bourbons must be ill-
used and treated with a high hand in
order to maintain empire over them.
Madame de Mouchy was as strongly in
favour of this marriage as Rion. She
knew she was sure of her lover, and that
when he became the husband of
Madame la Duchesse de Berry, all the
doors which shut intimacy would be
thrown down. A secret marriage accordingly took place.
This marriage gave rise to violent
quarrels, and much weeping. In order
to deliver herself from these
annoyances, and at the same time steer
clear of Easter, the Duchess resolved to
go away to Meudon on Easter
Monday.
It was in vain that the danger was represented to her, of the
air, of the movement of the coach, and
of the change of place at the end
of a fortnight. Nothing could make her endure Paris any
longer. She set
out, therefore, followed by Rion and the
majority of her ladies and her
household.
M. le Duc d'Orleans informed me then of
the fixed design of Madame la
Duchesse de Berry to declare the secret
marriage she had just made with
Rion.
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans was at Montmartre for a few days, and
we were walking in the little garden of
her apartments. The marriage did
not surprise me much, knowing the
strength of her passion, her fear of
the devil, and the scandal which had
just happened. But I was
astonished, to the last degree, at this
furious desire to declare the
marriage, in a person so superbly proud.
M. le Duc d'Orleans dilated upon his
troubles, his anger, that of Madame
(who wished to proceed to the most
violent extremities), and the great
resolve of Madame la Duchesse
d'Orleans. Fortunately the majority of
the
officers destined to serve against
Spain, (war with that country had just
been declared) were leaving every day,
and Rion had remained solely on
account of the illness of Madame la
Duchesse de Berry, M. le Duc
d'Orleans thought the shortest plan
would be to encourage hope by delay,
in forcing Rion to depart, flattering
himself that the declaration would
be put off much more easily in his
absence than in his presence. I
strongly approved this idea, and on the
morrow, Rion received at Meudon a
curt and positive order to depart at
once and join his regiment in the
army of the Duc de Berwick. Madame la Duchesse de Berry was all the more
outraged, because she knew the cause of
this order, and consequently felt
her inability to hinder its
execution. Rion on his side did not dare
to
disobey it. He set out, therefore; and M. le Duc
d'Orleans, who had not
yet been to Meudon, remained several
days without going there.
Father and daughter feared each other,
and this departure had not put
them on better terms. She had told him, and repeated it, that she
was a
rich widow, mistress of her own actions,
independent of him; had flown
into a fury, and terribly abused M. le
Duc d'Orleans when he tried to
remonstrate with her. He had received much rough handling from her
at
the Luxembourg when she was better; it
was the same at Meudon during the
few visits he paid her there. She wished to declare her marriage; and
all the art, intellect, gentleness,
anger, menace, prayers, and interest
of M. le Duc d'Orleans barely sufficed
to make her consent to a brief
delay.
If Madame had been listened to, the
affair would have been finished
before the journey to Meudon; for M. le
Duc d'Orleans would have thrown
Rion out of the windows of the
Luxembourg!
The premature journey to Meudon, and
quarrels so warm, were not
calculated to re-establish a person just
returned from the gates of
death.
The extreme desire she had to hide her state from the public, and
to conceal the terms on which she was
with her father ( for the rarity of
his visits to her began to be remarked),
induced her to give a supper to
him on the terrace of Meudon about eight
o'clock one evening. In vain
the danger was represented to her of the
cool evening air so soon after
an illness such as she had just suffered
from, and which had left her
health still tottering. It was specially on this account that she
stuck
more obstinately to her supper on the
terrace, thinking that it would
take away all suspicion she had been
confined, and induce the belief that
she was on the same terms as ever with
M. le Duc d'Orleans, though the
uncommon rarity of his visits to her had
been remarked.
This supper in the open air did not
succeed. The same night she was
taken ill. She was attacked by accidents, caused by the
state in which
she still was, and by an irregular
fever, that the opposition she met
with respecting the declaration of her
marriage did not contribute to
diminish. She grew disgusted with Meudon, like people
ill in body and
mind, who in their grief attribute
everything to the air and the place.
She was annoyed at the few visits she
received from M. le Duc and Madame
la Duchesse d'Orleans,-her pride,
however, suffering more than her
tenderness.
In despite of all reason, nothing could
hinder her from changing her
abode.
She was transferred from Meudon to the Muette, wrapped up in
sheets, and in a large coach, on Sunday,
the 14th of May, 1719. Arrived
so near Paris, she hoped M. le Duc and
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans would
come and see her more frequently, if
only for form's sake.
This journey was painful by the
sufferings it caused her, added to those
she already had, which no remedies could
appease, except for short
intervals, and which became very
violent. Her illness augmented; but
hopes and fears sustained her until the
commencement of July. During all
this time her desire to declare her
marriage weakened, and M. le Duc and
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans, as well as
Madame, who passed the summer at
Saint-Cloud, came more frequently to see
her. The month of July became
more menacing because of the
augmentation of pain and fever. These
ills
increased so much, in fact, that, by the
14th of July, fears for her life
began to be felt.
The night of the 14th was so stormy,
that M. le Duc d'Orleans was sent to
at the Palais Royal, and awakened. At the same time Madame de Pons wrote
to Madame de Saint-Simon, pressing her
to come and establish herself at
La Muette. Madame de Saint-Simon, although she made a
point of scarcely
ever sleeping under the same roof as
Madame la Duchesse de Berry (for
reasons which need no further
explanation than those already given),
complied at once with this request, and
took up her quarters from this
time at La Muette.
Upon arriving, she found the danger
great. Madame la Duchesse de Berry
had been bled in the arm and in the foot
on the 10th, and her confessor
had been sent for. But the malady still went on increasing. As the pain
which had so long afflicted her could
not induce her to follow a regimen
necessary for her condition, or to think
of a future state, relations and
doctors were at last obliged to speak a
language to her, not used towards
princesses, except at the most urgent
extremity. This, at last, had its
effect.
She submitted to the medical treatment prescribed for her, and
received the sacrament with open doors,
speaking to those present upon
her life and upon her state, but like a
queen in both instances. After
this sight was over, alone with her
familiars, she applauded herself for
the firmness she had displayed, asked
them if she had not spoken well,
and if she was not dying with greatness
and courage.
A day or two after, she wished to
receive Our Lord once more. She
received, accordingly, and as it
appeared, with much piety, quite
differently from the first time.
At the extremity to which she had
arrived, the doctors knew not what to
do; everybody was tried. An elixir was spoken of, discovered by a
certain Garus, which made much stir just
then, and the secret of which
the King has since bought. Garus was sent for and soon arrived. He
found Madame la Duchesse de Berry so ill
that he would answer for
nothing.
His remedy was given, and succeeded beyond all hopes. Nothing
remained but to continue it. Above all things, Garus had begged that
nothing should, on any account, be given
to Madame la Duchesse de Berry
except by him, and this had been most
expressly commanded by M. le Duc
and Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans. Madame la Duchesse de Berry continued
to be more and more relieved and so
restored, that Chirac, her regular
doctor, began to fear for his
reputation, and taking the opportunity when
Garus was asleep upon a sofa, presented,
with impetuosity, a purgative to
Madame la Duchesse de Berry, and made
her swallow it without saying a
word to anybody, the two nurses standing
by, the only persons present,
not daring to oppose him.
The audacity of this was as complete as
its villainy, for M. le Duc and
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans were close
at hand in the salon. From this
moment to that in which the patient fell
into a state worse than that
from which the elixir had drawn her,
there was scarcely an interval.
Garus was awaked and called. Seeing this disorder, he cried that a
purgative had been given, and whatever
it might be, it was poison in the
state to which the princess was now
reduced. He wished to depart, he was
detained, he was taken to Madame la
Duchesse d'Orleans. Then followed a
great uproar, cries from Garus,
impudence and unequalled hardihood of
Chirac, in defending what he had done.
He could not deny it, for the two nurses
had been questioned, and had
told all. Madame la Duchesse de Berry drew near her end
during this
debate, and neither Chirac nor Garus
could prevent it. She lasted,
however, the rest of the day, and did
not die until about midnight.
Chirac, seeing the death-agony advance,
traversed the chamber, made an
insulting reverence at the foot of the
bed, which was open, and wished
her "a pleasant journey" (in
equivalent terms), and thereupon went off to
Paris.
The marvel is that nothing came of this, and that he remained the
doctor of M. le Duc d'Orleans as before!
While the end was yet approaching,
Madame de Saint-Simon, seeing that
there was no one to bear M. le Duc
d'Orleans company, sent for me to
stand by him in these sad moments. It appeared to me that my arrival
pleased him, and that I was not
altogether useless to him in relieving
his grief. The rest of the day was passed in entering
for a moment at a
time into the sick-chamber. In the evening I was nearly always alone
with him.
He wished that I should charge myself
with all the funeral arrangements,
and in case Madame la Duchesse de Berry,
when opened, should be found to
be enceinte, to see that the secret was
kept. I proposed that the
funeral should be of the simplest,
without show or ceremonial. I
explained my reasons, he thanked me, and
left all the orders in my hands.
Getting rid of these gloomy matters as
quickly as possible, I walked with
him from time to time in the reception
rooms, and in the garden, keeping
him from the chamber of the dying as
much as possible.
The night was well advanced, and Madame
la Duchesse de Berry grew worse
and worse, and without consciousness
since Chirac had poisoned her. M.
le Duc d'Orleans returned into the
chamber, approached the head of the
bed--all the curtains being pulled back;
I allowed him to remain there
but a few moments, and hurried him into
the cabinet, which was deserted
just then. The windows were open, he leaned upon the
iron balustrade,
and his tears increased so much that I
feared lest they should suffocate
him.
When this attack had a little subsided, he began to talk of the
misfortunes of this world, and of the
short duration of its most
agreeable pleasures. I urged the occasion to say to him everything
God
gave me the power to say, with all the
gentleness, emotion, and
tenderness, I could command. Not only he received well what I said to
him, but he replied to it and prolonged
the conversation.
After we had been there more than an
hour, Madame de Saint-Simon gently
warned me that it was time to try and
lead M. le Duc d'Orleans away,
especially as there was no exit from the
cabinet, except through the
sick-chamber. His coach, that Madame de Saint-Simon had
sent for, was
ready.
It was without difficulty that I succeeded in gently moving away
M. le Duc d'Orleans, plunged as he was
in the most bitter grief. I made
him traverse the chamber at once, and
supplicated him to return to Paris.
At last he consented. He wished me to remain and give orders, and
begged, with much positiveness, Madame
de Saint-Simon to be present when
seals were put upon the effects, after
which I led him to his coach, and
he went away. I immediately repeated to Madame de
Saint-Simon the orders
he had given me respecting the opening
of the body, in order that she
might have them executed, and I hindered
her from remaining in the
chamber, where there was nothing now but
horror to be seen.
At last, about midnight, on the 21st of
July, 1819, Madame la Duchesse de
Berry died, ten days after Chirac had
consummated his crime. M. le Duc
d'Orleans was the only person
touched. Some people grieved; but not
one
of them who had enough to live upon
appeared ever to regret her loss.
Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans felt her
deliverance, but paid every
attention to decorum. Madame constrained herself but little. However
affected M. le Duc d'Orleans might be,
consolation soon came. The yoke
to which he had submitted himself, and
which he afterwards found heavy,
was severed. Above all, he was free from all annoyance on
the score of
Rion's marriage, and its results,
annoyance that would have been all the
greater, inasmuch as at the opening of
the poor princess she was found to
be again enceinte; it was also found
that her brain was deranged. These
circumstances were for the time
carefully hidden. It may be imagined
what a state Rion fell into in learning
at the army the death of Madame
la Duchesse de Berry. All his romantic notions of ambition being
overturned, he was more than once on the
point of killing himself, and
for a long time was always kept in sight
by his friends. He sold out at
the end of the campaign. As he had been gentle and polite to his
friends, they did not desert him. But he ever afterwards remained in
obscurity.
On account of this death the theatres
were closed for eight days.
On Saturday, the 22nd of July, the heart
of Madame la Duchesse de Berry
was taken to the Val-de-Grace.
On Sunday, the 23rd of July, her body
was carried in an eight-horse coach
to Saint-Denis. There was very little display; only about
forty torches
were carried by pages and guards.
The funeral service was performed at
Saint-Denis in the early part of
September. There was no funeral oration.
Madame de Saint-Simon had been forced,
as I have shown, to accept the
post of lady of honour to Madame la
Duchesse de Berry, and had never been
able to quit it. She had been treated with all sorts of
consideration,
had been allowed every liberty, but this
did not console her for the post
she occupied; so that she felt all the
pleasure, not to say the
satisfaction, of a deliverance she did
not expect, from a princess
twenty-four years of age. But the extreme fatigue of the last days of
the illness, and of those which followed
death, caused her a malignant
fever, which left her at death's portal
during six weeks in a house at
Passy.
She was two months recovering herself.
This accident, which almost turned my
head, sequestered me from anything
for two months, during which I never
left the house, scarcely left the
sick-chamber, attended to nothing, and
saw only a few relatives or
indispensable friends.
When my wife began to be re-established,
I asked M. le Duc d'Orleans for
a lodging at the new chateau at
Meudon. He lent me the whole chateau;
completely furnished. We passed there the rest of this summer, and
several other summers afterwards. It is a charming place for rides or
drives.
We counted upon seeing only our friends there, but the proximity
to Paris overwhelmed us with people, so
that all the new chateau was
sometimes completely filled, without
reckoning the people of passage.
I have little need to say anything more
of Madame la Duchesse de Berry.
These pages have already painted
her. She was a strange mixture of pride
and shamelessness. Drunkenness, filthy conversation, debauchery
of the
vilest kind, and impiety, were her
diversions, varied, as has been seen,
by occasional religious fits. Her indecency in everything, language,
acts, behaviour, passed all bounds; and
yet her pride was so sublime that
she could not endure that people should
dare to speak of her amid her
depravity, so universal and so public;
she had the hardihood to declare
that nobody had the right to speak of
persons of her rank, or blame their
most notorious actions!
Yet she had by nature a superior
intellect, and, when she wished, could
be agreeable and amiable. Her face was commanding, though somewhat
spoiled at last by fat. She had much eloquence, speaking with an ease
and precision that charmed and overpowered. What might she not have
become, with the talents she
possessed! But her pride, her violent
temper, her irreligion, and her
falsehood, spoiled all, and made her what
we have seen her.
CHAPTER XCIX
Law had established his Mississippi
Company, and now began to do marvels
with it.
A sort of language had been invented, to talk of this scheme,
language which, however, I shall no more
undertake to explain than the
other finance operations. Everybody was mad upon Mississippi Stock.
Immense fortunes were made, almost in a
breath; Law, besieged in his
house by eager applicants, saw people
force open his door, enter by the
windows from the garden, drop into his
cabinet down the chimney! People
talked only of millions.
Law, who, as I have said, came to my
house every Tuesday, between eleven
and twelve, often pressed me to receive
some shares for nothing, offering
to manage them without any trouble to
me, so that I must gain to the
amount of several millions! So many people had already gained enormously
by their own exertions that it was not
doubtful Law could gain for me
even more rapidly. But I never would lend myself to it. Law addressed
himself to Madame de Saint-Simon, whom
he found as inflexible. He would
have much preferred to enrich me than
many others; so as to attach me to
him by interest, intimate as he saw me
with the Regent. He spoke to M.
le Duc d'Orleans, even, so as to
vanquish me by his authority. The
Regent attacked me more than once, but I
always eluded him.
At last, one day when we were together
by appointment, at Saint-Cloud,
seated upon the balustrade of the
orangery, which covers the descent into
the wood of the goulottes, the Regent
spoke again to me of the
Mississippi, and pressed me to receive
some shares from Law.
The more I resisted, the more he pressed
me, and argued; at last he grew
angry, and said that I was too
conceited, thus to refuse what the King
wished to give me (for everything was
done in the King's name), while so
many of my equals in rank and dignity
were running after these shares.
I replied that such conduct would be
that of a fool, the conduct of
impertinence, rather than of conceit;
that it was not mine, and that
since he pressed me so much I would tell
him my reasons. They were,
that since the fable of Midas, I had
nowhere read, still less seen,
that anybody had the faculty of
converting into gold all he touched;
that I did not believe this virtue was
given to Law, but thought that all
his knowledge was a learned trick, a new
and skilful juggle, which put
the wealth of Peter into the pockets of
Paul, and which enriched one at
the expense of the other; that sooner or
later the game would be played
out, that an infinity of people would be
ruined; finally, that I abhorred
to gain at the expense of others, and
would in no way mix myself up with
the Mississippi scheme.
M. le Duc d'Orleans knew only too well
how to reply to me, always
returning to his idea that I was
refusing the bounties of the King.
I said that I was so removed from such
madness, that I would make a
proposition to him, of which assuredly I
should never have spoken, but
for his accusation.
I related to him the expense to which my
father had been put in defending
Blaye against the party of M. le Prince
in years gone by. How he had
paid the garrison, furnished provisions,
cast cannon, stocked the place,
during a blockade of eighteen months,
and kept up, at his own expense,
within the town, five hundred gentlemen,
whom he had collected together.
How he had been almost ruined by the
undertaking, and had never received
a sou, except in warrants to the amount
of five hundred thousand livres,
of which not one had ever been paid, and
that he had been compelled to
pay yearly the interest of the debts he
had contracted, debts that still
hung like a mill-stone upon me. My proposition was that M. le Duc
d'Orleans should indemnify me for this
loss, I giving up the warrants, to
be burnt before him.
This he at once agreed to. He spoke of it the very next day to Law: my
warrants were burnt by degrees in the
cabinet of M. le Duc d'Orleans, and
it was by this means I paid for what I
had done at La Ferme.
Meanwhile the Mississippi scheme went on
more swimmingly than ever. It
was established in the Rue Quincampoix,
from which horses and coaches
were banished. About the end of October of this year, 1817,
its business
so much increased, that the office was
thronged all day long, and it was
found necessary to place clocks and
guards with drums at each end of the
street, to inform people, at seven
o'clock in the morning, of the opening
of business, and of its close at night:
fresh announcements were issued,
too, prohibiting people from going there
on Sundays and fete days.
Never had excitement or madness been
heard of which approached this.
M. le Duc d'Orleans distributed a large
number of the Company's shares to
all the general officers and others
employed in the war against Spain.
A month after, the value of the specie
was diminished; then the whole of
the coin was re-cast.
Money was in such abundance--that is to
say, the notes of Law, preferred
then to the metallic currency--that four
millions were paid to Bavaria,
and three millions to Sweden, in
settlement of old debts. Shortly after,
M. le Duc d'Orleans gave 80,000 livres
to Meuse; and 80,000 livres to
Madame de Chateauthiers, dame d'atours
of Madame. The Abbe Alari, too,
obtained 2000 livres pension. Various other people had augmentation of
income given to them at this time.
Day by day Law's bank and his
Mississippi increased in favour. The
confidence in them was complete. People could not change their lands and
their houses into paper fast enough, and
the result of this paper was,
that everything became dear beyond all
previous experience. All heads
were turned, Foreigners envied our good
fortune, and left nothing undone
to have a share in it. The English, even, so clear and so learned in
banks, in companies, in commerce,
allowed themselves to be caught, and
bitterly repented it afterwards. Law, although cold and discreet, felt
his modesty giving way. He grew tired of being a subaltern. He hankered
after greatness in the midst of this
splendour; the Abbe Dubois and M. le
Duc d'Orleans desired it for him more
than he; nevertheless, two
formidable obstacles were in the way:
Law was a foreigner and a heretic,
and he could not be naturalised without
a preliminary act of abjuration.
To perform that, somebody must be found
to convert him, somebody upon
whom good reliance could be placed. The Abbe Dubois had such a person
all ready in his pocket, so to speak. The Abbe Tencin was the name of
this ecclesiastic, a fellow of debauched
habits and shameless life, whom
the devil has since pushed into the most
astonishing good fortune; so
true it is that he sometimes departs
from his ordinary rules, in order to
recompense his servitors, and by these
striking examples dazzle others,
and so secure them.
As may be imagined, Law did not feel
very proud of the Abbe who had
converted him: more especially as that
same Abbe was just about this time
publicly convicted of simony, of
deliberate fraud, of right-down lying
(proved by his own handwriting), and was
condemned by the Parliament to
pay a fine, which branded him with
infamy, and which was the scandal of
the whole town. Law, however, was converted, and this was a subject
which supplied all conversation.
Soon after, he bought, for one million
livres, the Hotel Mazarin for his
bank, which until then had been
established in a house he hired of the
Chief-President, who had not need of it,
being very magnificently lodged
in the Palace of the Parliament by
virtue of his office. Law bought, at
the same time, for 550,000 livres, the
house of the Comte de Tesse.
Yet it was not all sunshine with this
famous foreigner, for the sky above
him was heavy with threatening clouds. In the midst of the flourishing
success of his Mississippi, it was
discovered that there was a plot to
kill him. Thereupon sixteen soldiers of the regiment of
the Guards were
given to him as a protection to his
house, and eight to his brother, who
had come to Paris some little time
before.
Law had other enemies besides those who
were hidden. He could not get on
well with Argenson, who, as comptroller
of the finances, was continually
thrown into connection with him. The disorder of the finances increased
in consequence every day, as well as the
quarrels between Law and
Argenson, who each laid the blame upon
the other. The Scotchman was the
best supported, for his manners were
pleasing, and his willingness to
oblige infinite. He had, as it were, a finance tap in his
hand, and he
turned it on for every one who helped
him. M. le Duc, Madame la
Duchesse, Tesse, Madame de Verue, had
drawn many millions through this
tap, and drew still. The Abbe Dubois turned it on as he
pleased. These
were grand supports, besides that of M.
le Duc d'Orleans, who could not
part with his favourite.
Argenson, on the contrary, was not much
liked. He had been at the head
of the police so long that he could not
shake off the habits he had
acquired in that position: He had been
accustomed to give audiences upon
all sorts of police matters at dead of
night, or at the small hours of
the morning, and he appeared to see no
reason why he should not do the
same now that he was Keeper of the
Seals. He irritated people beyond all
bearing, by making appointments with
them at these unreasonable hours,
and threw into despair all who worked
under him, or who had business with
him.
The difficulty of the finances, and his struggles with Law, had
thrown him into ill-humour, which
extended through all his refusals.
Things, in fact, had come to such a
pass, that it was evident one or the
other must give up an administration
which their rivalry threw into
confusion.
Argenson saw the storm coming, and
feeling the insecurity of his
position, wished to save himself. He had too much sense and too much
knowledge of the world not to feel that
if he obstinately clung to the
finances he should not only lose them
but the seals also. He yielded
therefore to Law, who was at last
declared comptroller-general of the
finances, and who, elevated to this (for
him) surprising point, continued
to visit me as usual every Tuesday
morning, always trying to persuade me
into belief of his past miracles, and of
those to come.
Argenson remained Keeper of the Seals,
and skilfully turned to account
the sacrifice he had made by obtaining
through it the permission to
surrender his appointment of Chancellor
of the Order of Saint-Louis to
his eldest son, and the title,
effectively, to his younger son. His
place of Conseiller d'Etat, that he had
retained,--he also gave to his
eldest son, and made the other
lieutenant of police. The murmur was
great upon seeing a foreigner
comptroller-general, and all abandoned to a
finance system which already had begun
to be mistrusted. But Frenchmen
grow accustomed to everything, and the
majority were consoled by being no
longer exposed to the sharp humour of
Argenson, or his strange hours of
business.
But Law's annoyances were not over when
this change had been made. M. le
Prince de Conti began to be
troublesome. He was more grasping than
any
of his relatives, and that is not saying
a little. He accosted Law now,
pistol in hand, so to speak, and with a
perfect "money or your life"
manner.
He had already amassed mountains of gold by the easy humour of
M. le Duc d'Orleans; he had drawn, too,
a good deal from Law, in private.
Not content with this, he wished to draw
more. M. le Duc d'Orleans grew
tired, and was not over-pleased with
him. The Parliament just then was
at its tricks again; its plots began to
peep out, and the Prince de Conti
joined in its intrigues in order to try
and play a part indecent,
considering his birth; little fitting
his age; shameful, after the
monstrous favours unceasingly heaped
upon him.
Repelled by the Regent, he turned, as I
have said, towards Law, hoping
for more success. His expectations were deceived; prayers,
cringing
meanness (for he stopped at nothing to
get money) being of no effect, he
tried main strength, and spared Law
neither abuse nor menaces. In fact,
not knowing what else to do to injure
his bank, he sent three waggons
there, and drove them away full of
money, which he made Law give him for
paper he held. Law did not dare to refuse, and thus show the
poverty of
his metallic funds, but fearing to
accustom so insatiable a prince to
such tyranny as this, he went, directly
the waggons left, to M. le Duc
d'Orleans, and complained of what had
occurred. The Regent was much
annoyed; he saw the dangerous results,
and the pernicious example of so
violent a proceeding, directed against
an unsupported foreigner, whom
rather lightly he had just made
comptroller-general. He flew into a
violent rage, sent for the Prince de
Conti, and, contrary to his nature,
reprimanded him so severely, that he was
silenced and cried for mercy.
But annoyed at having failed, and still
more at the sharp scolding he had
received, the Prince de Conti consoled
himself, like a woman, by
spreading all sorts of reports against
Law, which caused him but little
fear, and did him still less harm, but
which did slight honour to M. le
Prince de Conti, because the cause of
these reports, and also the large
sums he had drawn from the financier,
were not unknown to the public;
blame upon him was general, and all the
more heavy, because Law had
fallen out of public favour, which a
mere trifle had changed into spite
and indignation.
This is the trifle. The Marechal de Villeroy, incapable of
inspiring the
King with any solid ideas, adoring even
to worship the deceased King,
full of wind, and lightness, and
frivolity, and of sweet recollections of
his early years, his grace at fetes and
ballets, his splendid
gallantries, wished that the King, in
imitation of the deceased monarch,
should dance in a ballet. It was a little too early to think of this.
This pleasure seemed a trifle too much
of pain to so young a King; his
timidity should have been vanquished by
degrees, in order to accustom him
to society which he feared, before
engaging him to show himself off in
public, and dance upon a stage.
The deceased King,--educated in a
brilliant Court, where rule and
grandeur were kept up with much
distinction, and where continual
intercourse with ladies, the
Queen-mother, and others of the Court, had
early fashioned and emboldened him, had
relished and excelled in these
sorts of fetes and amusements, amid a
crowd of young people of both
sexes, who all rightfully bore the names
of nobility, and amongst whom
scarcely any of humble birth were mixed,
for we cannot call thus some
three or four of coarser stuff, who were
admitted simply for the purpose
of adding strength and beauty to the
ballet, by the grace of their faces
and the elegance of their movements,
with a few dancing-masters to
regulate and give the tone to the
whole. Between this time and that I am
now speaking of was an abyss. The education of those days instructed
every one in grace, address, exercise,
respect for bearing, graduated and
delicate politeness, polished and decent
gallantry. The difference,
then, between the two periods is seen at
a glance, without time lost in
pointing it out.
Reflection was not the principal virtue
of the Marechal de Villeroy. He
thought of no obstacle either on the
part of the King or elsewhere, and
declared that his Majesty would dance in
a ballet. Everything was soon
ready for the execution. It was not so with the action. It became
necessary to search for young people who
could dance: soon, whether they
danced ill or well, they were gladly
received; at last the only question
was, "Whom can we get?"
consequently a sorry lot was obtained.
Several,
who ought never to have been admitted,
were, and so easily, that from one
to the other Law had the temerity to ask
M. le Duc d'Orleans to allow his
son, who danced very well, to join the
ballet company! The Regent,
always easy, still enamoured of Law,
and, to speak truth, purposely
contributing as much as possible to
confusion of rank, immediately
accorded the demand, and undertook to
say so to the Marechal de Villeroy.
The Marechal, who hated and crossed Law
with might and main, reddened
with anger, and represented to the
Regent what, in fact, deserved to be
said: the Regent, in reply, named
several young people, who, although of
superior rank, were not so well fitted
for the ballet as young Law; and
although the answer to this was close at
hand, the Marechal could not
find it, and exhausted himself in vain
exclamations. He could not,
therefore, resist the Regent; and having
no support from M. le Duc,
superintendent of the King's education
and a great protector of Law and
of confusion, he gave in, and the
financier's son was named for the
ballet.
It is impossible to express the public
revolt excited by this bagatelle,
at which every one was offended. Nothing else was spoken of for some
days; tongues wagged freely, too; and a
good deal of dirty water was
thrown upon other dancers in the ballet.
At last the public was satisfied. The small-pox seized Law's son, and
(on account of its keeping him from the
ballet) caused universal joy.
The ballet was danced several times, its
success answering in no way to
the Marechal de Villeroy. The King was so wearied, so fatigued, with
learning, with rehearsing, and with
dancing this ballet, that he took an
aversion for these fetes and for
everything offering display, which has
never quitted him since, and which does
not fail to leave a void in the
Court; so that this ballet ceased sooner
than was intended, and the
Marechal de Villeroy never dared to
propose another.
M. le Duc d'Orleans, either by his usual
facility, or to smooth down the
new elevation of Law to the post of
comptroller-general, bestowed a
number of pecuniary favours; he gave
600,000 livres to La Fare, captain
of his guard; 200,000 livres to
Castries, chevalier d'honneur to Madame
la Duchesse d'Orleans; 200,000 livres to
the old Prince de Courtenay, who
much needed them; 20,000 livres pension
to the Prince de Talmont; 6000
livres to the Marquise de Bellefonds,
who already had a similar sum; and
moved by cries on the part of M. le
Prince de Conti, 60,000 livres to the
Comte de la Marche his son, scarcely
three years old; he gave, also,
smaller amounts to various others. Seeing so much depredation, and no
recovery to hope for, I asked M. le Duc
d'Orleans to attach 12,000
livres, by way of increase, to my
government of Senlis, which was worth
only 1000 livres, and of which my second
son had the reversion. I
obtained it at once.
CHAPTER C
About the commencement of the new year,
1720, the system of Law
approached its end. If he had been content with his bank his bank
within
wise and proper limits--the money of the
realm might have been doubled,
and an extreme facility afforded to
commerce and to private enterprise,
because, the establishment always being
prepared to meet its liabilities,
the notes it issued would have been as
good as ready money, and sometimes
even preferable, on account of the
facility of transport. It must be
admitted, however, as I declared to M.
le Duc d'Orleans in his cabinet,
and as I openly said in the Council of
the Regency when the bank passed
there, that good as this establishment
might be in itself, it could only
be so in a republic, or in a monarchy,
like that of England, where the
finances are absolutely governed by
those who furnish them, and who
simply furnish as much or as little as
they please; but in a trivial,
changing, and more than absolute state
like France solidity necessarily
is wanting, consequently confidence (at
least of a discreet and proper
kind): since a king, and under his name,
a mistress, a minister,
favourites; still more, extreme
necessities, such as the deceased King
experienced in the years 1707-8-9 and
10,--a hundred things, in fact,
could overthrow the bank, the
allurements of which were, at once, too
great and too easy. But to add to the
reality of this bank, the chimera
of the Mississippi, with its shares, its
special jargon, its science (a
continual juggle for drawing money from
one person to give it to
another), was to almost guarantee that
these shares should at last end in
smoke (since we had neither mines, nor
quarries of the philosopher's
stone), and that the few would be
enriched at the expense of the many, as
in fact happened.
What hastened the fall of the bank, and
of the system, was the
inconceivable prodigality of M. le Duc
d'Orleans, who, without bounds,
and worse still, if it can be, without
choice, could not resist the
importunities even of those whom he
knew, beyond all doubt, to have been
the most opposed to him, and who were
completely despicable, but gave
with open hands; and more frequently
allowed money to be drawn from him
by people who laughed at him, and who
were grateful only to their
effrontery. People with difficulty believe what they have
seen; and
posterity will consider as a fable what
we ourselves look upon as a
dream.
At last, so much was given to a greedy and prodigal nation,
always covetous and in want on account
of its luxury, its disorder, and
its confusion of ranks, that paper
became scarce, and the mills could not
furnish enough.
It may be imagined by this, what abuse
had been made of a bank,
established as a resource always ready,
but which could not exist as such
without being always delicately
adjusted; and above all, kept in a state
to meet the obligations it had
contracted. I obtained information on
this point from Law, when he came to me
on Tuesday mornings; for a long
time he played with me before admitting
his embarrassments, and
complained modestly and timidly, that
the Regent was ruining everything
by his extravagance. I knew from outsiders more than he thought,
and it
was this that induced me to press him
upon his balance-sheet. In
admitting to me, at last, although
faintly, what he could no longer hide,
he assured me he should not be wanting
in resources provided M. le Duc
d'Orleans left him free. That did not persuade me. Soon after, the
notes began to lose favour; then to fall
into discredit, and the
discredit to become public. Then came the necessity to sustain them by
force, since they could no longer be
sustained by industry; and the
moment force showed itself every one
felt that all was over. Coercive
authority was resorted to; the use of
gold, silver, and jewels was
suppressed (I speak of coined money); it
was pretended that since the
time of Abraham,--Abraham, who paid
ready money for the sepulchre of
Sarah,--all the civilised nations in the
world had been in the greatest
error and under the grossest delusion,
respecting money and the metals it
is made of; that paper alone was useful
and necessary; that we could not
do greater harm to our
neighbours--jealous of our greatness and of our
advantages--than to send to them all our
money and all our jewels; and
this idea was in no way concealed, for
the Indian Company was allowed to
visit every house, even Royal houses,
confiscate all the louis d'or, and
the coins it could find there; and to
leave only pieces of twenty sous
and under (to the amount of not more
than 200 francs), for the odd money
of bills, and in order to purchase
necessary provisions of a minor kind,
with prohibitions, strengthened by heavy
punishment, against keeping
more; so that everybody was obliged to
take all the ready money he
possessed to the bank, for fear of its
being discovered by a valet. But
nobody, as may be imagined, was
persuaded of the justice of the power
accorded to the Company, and accordingly
authority was more and more
exerted; all private houses were
searched, informations were laid against
people in order that no money might be
kept back, or if it were, that the
guilty parties might be severely
punished.
Never before had sovereign power been so
violently exercised, never had
it attacked in such a manner the
temporal interests of the community.
Therefore was it by a prodigy, rather
than by any effort or act of the
government, that these terribly new
ordonnances failed to produce the
saddest and most complete revolutions;
but there was not even talk of
them; and although there were so many
millions of people, either
absolutely ruined or dying of hunger,
and of the direst want, without
means to procure their daily
subsistence, nothing more than complaints
and groans was heard.
This violence was, however, too
excessive, and in every respect too
indefensible to last long; new paper and
new juggling tricks were of
necessity resorted to; the latter were
known to be such--people felt them
to be such--but they submitted to them
rather than not have twenty crowns
in safety in their houses; and a greater
violence made people suffer the
smaller.
Hence so many projects, so many different faces in finance, and
all tending to establish one issue of
paper upon another; that is to say,
always causing loss to the holders of
the different paper (everybody
being obliged to hold it), and the
universal multitude. This is what
occupied all the rest of the government,
and of the life of M. le Duc
d'Orleans; which drove Law out of the
realm; which increased six-fold the
price of all merchandise, all food even
the commonest; which ruinously
augmented every kind of wages, and
ruined public and private commerce;
which gave, at the expense of the
public, sudden riches to a few noblemen
who dissipated it, and were all the
poorer in a short time; which enabled
many financiers' clerks, and the lowest
dregs of the people, profiting by
the general confusion, to take advantage
of the Mississippi, and make
enormous fortunes; which occupied the
government several years after the
death of M. le Duc d'Orleans; and which,
to conclude, France never will
recover from, although it may be true
that the value of land is
considerably augmented. As a last affliction, the all-powerful,
especially the princes and princesses of
the blood, who had been mixed
up, in the Mississippi, and who had used
all their authority to escape
from it without loss, re-established it
upon what they called the Great
Western Company, which with the same
juggles and exclusive trade with the
Indies, is completing the annihilation
of the trade of the realm,
sacrificed to the enormous interest of a
small number of private
individuals, whose hatred and vengeance
the government has not dared to
draw upon itself by attacking their
delicate privileges.
Several violent executions, and
confiscations of considerable sums found
in the houses searched, took place. A certain Adine, employed at the
bank, had 10,000 crowns confiscated, was
fined 10,000 francs, and lost
his appointment. Many people hid their money with so much
secrecy, that,
dying without being able to say where
they had put it, these little
treasures remained buried and lost to
the heirs.
In the midst of the embarrassments of
the finances, and in spite of them,
M. le Duc d'Orleans continued his
prodigal gifts. He attached pensions
of 6000 livres and 4000 livres to the
grades of lieutenant-general and
camp-marshal. He gave a pension of 20,000 livres to old
Montauban; one
of 6000 livres to M. de Montauban
(younger brother of the Prince de
Guemene); and one of 6000 livres to the
Duchesse de Brissac. To several
other people he gave pensions of 4000
livres; to eight or ten others,
3000 or 2000 livres. I obtained one of 8000 livres for Madame
Marechal
de Lorges; and one of 6000 livres was
given to the Marechal de Chamilly,
whose affairs were much deranged by the
Mississippi. M. de Soubise and
the Marquis Noailles had each upwards of
200,000 livres. Even Saint-
Genies, just out of the Bastille, and banished
to Beauvais, had a pension
of 1000.
Everybody in truth wanted an augmentation of income, on account
of the extreme high price to which the
commonest, almost necessary things
had risen, and even all other things;
which, although at last diminshed
by degrees, remain to this day much
dearer than they were before the
Mississippi.
The pensions being given away, M. le Duc
d'Orleans began to think how he
could reduce the public
expenditure. Persuaded by those in whose
financial knowledge he had most confidence,
he resolved to reduce to two
per cent. the interest upon all the
funds. This much relieved those who
paid, but terribly cut down the income
of those who received, that is to
say, the creditors of the state, who had
lent their money at five per
cent., according to the loan--and,
public faith and usage, and who had
hitherto peacefully enjoyed that
interest. M. le Duc d'Orleans assembled
at the Palais Royal several financiers
of different rank, and resolved
with them to pass this edict. It made much stir among the Parliament
men, who refused to register it. But M. le Duc d'Orleans would not
change his determination, and maintained
his decree in spite of them.
By dint of turning and turning around
the Mississippi, not to say of
juggling with it, the desire came to
establish, according to the example
of the English, colonies in the vast
countries beyond the seas. In order
to people these colonies, persons
without means of livelihood, sturdy
beggars, female and male, and a quantity
of public creatures were carried
off.
If this had been executed with discretion and discernment, with the
necessary measures and precautions, it
would have ensured the object
proposed, and relieved Paris and the
provinces of a heavy, useless, and
often dangerous burthen; but in Paris
and elsewhere so much violence, and
even more roguery, were mixed up with
it, that great murmuring was
excited.
Not the slightest care had been taken to provide for the
subsistence of so many unfortunate
people, either while in the place they
were to embark from, or while on the
road to reach it; by night they were
shut up, with nothing to eat, in barns,
or in the dry ditches of the
towns they stopped in, all means of
egress being forbidden them. They
uttered cries which excited pity and
indignation; but the alms collected
for them not being sufficient, still
less the little their conductors
gave them, they everywhere died in
frightful numbers.
This inhumanity, joined to the barbarity
of the conductors, to violence
of a kind unknown until this, and to the
rascality of carrying off people
who were not of the prescribed quality,
but whom others thus got rid of
by whispering a word in the ear of the
conductors and greasing their
palms; all these things, I say, caused
so much stir, so much excitement,
that the system, it was found, could not
be kept up. Some troops had
been embarked, and during the voyage
were not treated much better than
the others. The persons already collected were set at
liberty, allowed
to do what they pleased, and no more were
seized. Law, regarded as the
author of these seizures, became much
detested, and M. le Duc d'Orleans
repented having ever fallen in with the
scheme.
The 22nd of May of this year, 1720,
became celebrated by the publication
of a decree of the Council of State,
concerning the shares of the Company
of the Indies (the same as that known
under the name of Mississippi) and
the notes of Law's bank. This decree diminished by degrees, and from
month to month, the value of the shares
and the notes, so that, by the
end of the year, that value would have
been reduced one-half.
This, in the language of finance and of
bankruptcy, was to turn tail with
a vengeance: and its effect, while
remedying nothing, was to make people
believe that things were in a worse
state than was actually the case.
Argenson, who, as we have seen, had been
turned out of the finances to
make room for Law, was generally accused
of suggesting this decree out of
malice, already foreseeing all the evils
that must arise from it. The
uproar was general and frightful. There was not a rich person who did
not believe himself lost without
resource; not a poor one who did not see
himself reduced to beggary. The Parliament, so opposed to the new money
system, did not let slip this fine
opportunity. It rendered itself the
protector of the public by refusing to
register the decree, and by
promptly uttering the strongest
remonstrance against it. The public even
believed that to the Parliament was due
the sudden revocation of the
edict, which, however, was simply caused
by the universal complaining,
and the tardy discovery of the fault
committed in passing it. The little
confidence in Law remaining was now
radically extinguished; not an atom
of it could ever be set afloat
again. Seditious writings and analytical
and reasonable pamphlets rained on all
sides, and the consternation was
general.
The Parliament assembled on Monday, the
27th of May, in the morning, and
named certain of its members to go to M.
le Duc d'Orleans, with
remonstrances against the decree. About noon of the same day, M. le Duc
d'Orleans sent La Vrilliere to say to
the Parliament that he revoked that
decree, and that the notes would remain
as before. La Vrilliere, finding
that the Parliament had adjourned, went
to the Chief-President, to say
with what he was charged. After dinner the Parliamentary deputies came
to the Palais Royal, where they were
well received; M. le Duc d'Orleans
confirmed what they had already heard
from La Vrilliere, and said to them
that he would re-establish the funds of
the Hotel de Ville at two-and-a-
half percent. The deputies expected that in justice and in
goodness he
ought to raise them to at least three
per cent. M. le Duc d'Orleans
answered, that he should like not only
to raise them to three, but to
four, nay, five per cent.; but that the
state of affairs would not permit
him to go beyond two-and-a-half. On the next day was published the
counter-decree, which placed the shares
and actions as they were before
the 22nd of May. The decree of that date was therefore revoked
in six
days, after having caused such a strange
effect.
On Wednesday, the 29th, a pretty little
comedy was played. Le Blanc,
Secretary of State, went to Law, told
him that M. le Duc d'Orleans
discharged him from his office as
comptroller-general of the finances,
thanked him for the attention he had
given to it, and announced that as
many people in Paris did not like him, a
meritorious officer should keep
guard in his house to prevent any
accident that might happen to him. At
the same time, Benzualde, major of the
regiment of Swiss guards, arrived
with sixteen of his men to remain night
and day in Law's house.
The Scotchman did not in the least
expect this dismissal or this guard,
but he appeared very tranquil respecting
both, and maintained his usual
coolness. The next day he was taken by the Duc de la
Force to the Palais
Royal.
Then comedy number two was played.
M. le Duc d'Orleans refused
to see the financier, who went away
without an interview. On the day
after, however, Law was admitted by the
back stairs, closeted with the
Regent, and was treated by him as well
as ever. The comedies were over.
On Sunday, the 2nd of June, Benzualde
and his Swiss withdrew from Law's
house.
Stock-jobbing was banished at the same time from the Rue
Quincampoix, and established in the
Place Vendome. In this latter place
there was more room for it. The passers-by were not incommoded. Yet
some people did not find it as
convenient as the other. At this time
the
King gave up to the bank one hundred million
of shares he had in it.
On the 5th July, a decree of the Council
was issued, prohibiting people
from possessing jewels, from keeping
them locked up, or from selling them
to foreigners. It may be imagined what a commotion
ensued. This decree
was grafted upon a number of others, the
object of all, too visibly,
being to seize upon all coin, in favour
of the discredited paper, in
which nobody could any longer have the
slightest confidence. In vain M.
le Duc d'Orleans, M. le Duc, and his
mother, tried to persuade others, by
getting rid of their immense stores of
jewels, that is to say, by sending
them abroad on a journey--nothing more:
not a person was duped by this
example; not a person omitted to conceal
his jewels very carefully: a
thing much more easy to accomplish than
the concealment of gold or silver
coin, on account of the smaller value of
precious stones. This jewellery
eclipse was not of long duration.
CHAPTER CI
Immediately after the issue of this
decree an edict was drawn up for the
establishment of an Indian commercial
company, which was to undertake to
reimburse in a year six, hundred
millions of bank notes, by paying fifty
thousand dollars per month. Such was the last resource of Law and his
system.
For the juggling tricks of the Mississippi, it was found
necessary to substitute something real;
especially since the edict of the
22nd of May, so celebrated and so
disastrous for the paper. Chimeras
were replaced by realities--by a true
India Company; and it was this name
and this thing which succeeded, which
took the place of the undertaking
previously known as the
Mississippi. It was in vain that the
tobacco
monopoly and a number of other immense
monopolies were given to the new
company; they could not enable it to
meet the proper claims spread among
the public, no matter what trouble might
be taken to diminish them at all
hazard and at all loss.
It was now necessary to seek other
expedients. None could be found
except that of rendering this company a
commercial one; this was, under a
gentler name, a name vague and
unpretending, to hand over to it the
entire and exclusive commerce of the
country. It may be imagined how
such a resolution was received by the
public, exasperated by the severe
decree, prohibiting people, under heavy
penalties, from having more than
five-hundred livres, in coin, in their
possession, subjecting them to
visits of inspection, and leaving them
nothing but bank notes to, pay for
the commonest necessaries of daily
life. Two things resulted; first,
fury, which day by day was so embittered
by the difficulty of obtaining
money for daily subsistence, that it was
a marvel all Paris did not
revolt at once, and that the emeute was
appeased; second, the Parliament,
taking its stand upon this public
emotion, held firm to the end in
refusing to register the edict
instituting the new company.
On the 15th of July, the Chancellor
showed in his own house the draught
of the edict to deputies from the
Parliament, who remained with him until
nine o'clock at night, without being
persuaded. On the morrow, the 16th,
the edict was brought forward in the
Regency Council. M. le Duc
d'Orleans, sustained by M. le Duc, spoke
well upon it, because he could
not speak ill, however bad his
theme. Nobody said a word, and all bowed
their necks. It was resolved, in this manner, to send the
edict to the
Parliament on the morrow, the 17th of
July.
That same 17th of July, there was such a
crowd in the morning, at the
bank and in the neighbouring streets,
for the purpose of obtaining enough
money to go to market with, that ten or
twelve people were stifled.
Three of the bodies were tumultuously
carried to the Palais Royal, which
the people, with loud cries, wished to
enter. A detachment of the King's
guards at the Tuileries was promptly
sent there. La Vrilliere and Le
Blanc separately harangued the
people. The lieutenant of police came;
brigades of the watch were sent
for. The dead bodies were afterwards
carried away, and by gentleness and
cajoleries the people were at length
dispersed. The detachment of the King's guards returned
to the
Tuileries. By about ten o'clock in the morning, all
being over, Law took
it into his head to go to the Palais
Royal. He received many
imprecations as he passed through the
streets. M. le Duc d'Orleans
thought it would be well not to let him
leave the Palais Royal, and gave
him a lodging there. He sent back Law's carriage, however, the
windows
of which were smashed on the way by the
stones thrown at them. Law's
house, too, was attacked, amid much
breaking of windows. All this was
known so late in our quarter of the
Jacobins of the Saint-Dominique, that
when I arrived at the Palais Royal there
was not a vestige visible of any
disturbance. M. le Duc d'Orleans, in the midst of a very
small company,
was very tranquil, and showed that you
would not please him unless you
were so also. I did not stop long, having nothing to do or
say.
This same morning the edict was carried
to the Parliament, which refused
to register it, and sent a deputation to
M. le Duc d'Orleans with its
reasons for this, at which the Regent
was much vexed. The next morning
an ordonnance of the King was pasted all
over the town, prohibiting the
people, under heavy penalties, to
assemble, and announcing that in
consequence of the disturbances which
had taken place the previous day at
the bank, that establishment would
remain closed until further notice,
and no more money would be paid by
it. Luck supplied the place of
prudence; for people knew not how they
were to live in the meanwhile, yet
no fresh disturbance occurred fact which
shows the goodness and obedience
of the people, subjected to so many and
to such strange trials. Troops,
however, were collected at Charenton,
who were at work upon the canal of
Montargis: some regiments of cavalry and
of dragoons were stationed at
Saint-Denis, and the King's regiment was
posted upon the heights of
Chaillot. Money was sent to Gonesse to induce the
bakers to come as
usual, and for fear they should refuse
bank notes, like the Paris workmen
and shopkeepers, nearly all of whom
would no longer receive any paper,
the regiment of the guards had orders to
hold itself ready, and the
musketeers to keep within their
quarters, their horses saddled and
bridled.
As for the Parliament, M. le Duc
d'Orleans determined to punish its
disobedience by sending it to
Blois. This resolution was carried in
full
council.
The Regent hoped that the Parliamentary men, accustomed to the
comfort of their Paris homes, and to the
society there of their wives;
children, and friends, would soon grow
tired of being separated from
them, and of the extra expense they
would be put to, and would give in.
I agreed to the project, although I saw,
alas! that by this exile the
Parliament would be punished, but would
be neither conciliated nor tamed
into submission. To make matters worse, Blois was given up,
and Pontoise
was substituted for it! This latter town being close to Paris, the
chastisement became ridiculous, showed
the vacillating weakness of the
Regent, and encouraged the Parliament to
laugh at him. One thing was,
however, well done. The resolution taken to banish the Parliament
was
kept so secret that that assembly had
not the slightest knowledge of it.
On Sunday, the 21st of July, squadrons
of the guards, with officers at
their head, took possession, at four
o'clock in the morning, of all the
doors of the Palais de justice. The musketeers seized at the same time
upon the doors of the Grand Chamber,
whilst others invaded the house of
the Chief-President, who was in much
fear during the first hour. Other
musketeers went in parties of four to
all the officers of the Parliament,
and served them with the King's order,
commanding them to repair to
Pontoise within twice twenty-four
hours. All passed off very politely on
both sides, so that there was not the
slightest complaint: several
members obeyed the same day and went to
Pontoise.
Rather late in the evening M. le Duc
d'Orleans sent to the Attorney-
General 200,000 livres in coin, and as
much in bank notes of 100 livres,
and of 10 livres to be given to those
who should need them for the
journey, but not as gifts. The Chief-President was more brazen and more
fortunate; he made so many promises,
showed so much meanness, employed so
much roguery, that abusing by these
means the feebleness and easiness of
the Regent, whom he laughed at, he
obtained more than 100,000 ecus for
his expenses. The poor prince gave him the money, under the
rose, in two
or three different payments, and
permitted the Duc de Bouillon to lend
him his house at Pontoise, completely
furnished, and the garden of which,
on the banks of the river, is admirable
and immense, a masterpiece of its
kind, and had been the delight of
Cardinal Bouillon, being perhaps the
only thing in France he regretted. With such fine assistance the Chief-
President--on bad terms with his
companions, who had openly despised him
for some time--perfectly made it up with
them. He kept at Pontoise open
table for the Parliament; all were every
day at liberty to use it if they
liked, so that there were always several
tables, all equally, delicately,
and splendidly served. He sent, too, to those who asked for them,
liquors, etc., as they could
desire. Cooling drinks and fruits of all
kinds were abundantly served every
afternoon, and there were a number of
little one and two-horse vehicles always
ready for the ladies and old men
who liked a drive, besides play-tables
in the apartments until supper
time.
The result of all this magnificence was, as I have said, that the
Chief-President completely reinstated
himself in the good graces of his
companions; but it was at the expense of
the Regent, who was laughed at
for his pains. A large number of the members of the
Parliament did not
go to Pontoise at all, but took
advantage of the occasion to recreate
themselves in the country. Only a few of the younger members mounted
guard in the assembly, where nothing but
the most trivial and make-
believe business was conducted. Everything important was deliberately
neglected. Woe!
to those, therefore, who had any trial on hand. The
Parliament, in a word, did nothing but
divert itself, leave all business
untouched, and laugh at the Regent and
the government. Banishment to
Pontoise was a fine punishment!
This banishment of the Parliament to
Pontoise was followed by various
financial operations and by several
changes in the administrations. Des
Forts had the general control of the
finances and all authority, but
without the name. The disordered state of the exchequer did not
hinder
M. le Duc d'Orleans from indulging in
his strange liberalities to people
without merit and without need, and not
one of whom he could possibly
care a straw for. He gave to Madame la Grande Duchesse an
augmentation
of her pension of 50,000 livres; one of
8,000 livres to Trudaine: one of
9,000 livres to Chateauneuf; one of
8,000 livres to Bontems, chief valet
de chambre of the King; one of 6,000
livres to the Marechal de
Montesquieu; one of 3,000 livres to
Faucault; and one of 9,000 livres to
the widow of the Duc d'Albemarle, secretly
remarried to the son of
Mahoni.
All this time the public stock-jobbing
still continued on the Place
Vendome.
The Mississippi had tempted everybody.
It was who should fill
his pockets first with millions, through
M. le Duc d'Orleans and Law.
The crowd was very great. One day the Marechal de Villars traversed the
Place Vendome in a fine coach, loaded
with pages and lackeys, to make way
for which the mob of stock-jobbers had
some difficulty. The Marechal
upon this harangued the people in his
braggart manner from the carriage
window, crying out against the iniquity
of stock-jobbing, and the shame
it cast upon all. Until this point he had been allowed to say
on, but
when he thought fit to add that his own
hands were clean, and that he had
never dabbled in shares, a voice uttered
a cutting sarcasm, and all the
crowd took up the word, at which the
Marechal, ashamed and confounded,
despite his ordinary authority, buried
himself in his carriage and
finished his journey across the Place
Vendome at a gentle trot in the
midst of a hue and cry, which followed
him even beyond, and which
diverted Paris at his expense for
several days, nobody pitying him.
At last it was found that this
stock-jobbing too much embarrassed the
Place Vendome and the public way; it was
transferred, therefore, to the
vast garden of the Hotel de
Soissons. This was, in fact, its proper
place.
Law, who had remained at the Palais Royal some time, had returned
to his own house, where he received many
visits. The King several times
went to see the troops that had been
stationed near Paris; after this
they were sent away again. Those which had formed a little camp at
Charenton, returned to Montargis to work
at the canal making there.
Law, for commercial reasons, had some
time ago caused Marseilles to be
made a free port. The consequence of this was that an abundance
of
vessels came there, especially vessels
from the Levant, and from want of
precautions the plague came also, lasted
a long while, desolated the
town, province; and the neighbouring
provinces. The care and precautions
afterwards taken restrained it as much
as possible, but did not hinder it
from lasting a long time, or from
creating frightful disorders. These
details are so well known that they can
be dispensed with here.
I have a few more words to say of Law
and his Mississippi. The bubble
finally burst at the end of the year
(1720). Law, who had no more
resources, being obliged secretly to
depart from the realm, was
sacrificed to the public. His flight was known only through the eldest
son of Argenson, intendant at Mainbeuge,
who had the stupidity to arrest
him.
The courier he despatched with the news was immediately sent back,
with a strong reprimand for not having
deferred to the passport with
which Law had been furnished by the
Regent. The financier was with his
son, and they both went to Brussels
where the Marquis de Prie, Governor
of the Imperial Low Countries, received
them very well, and entertained
them.
Law did not stop long, gained Liege and Germany, where he offered
his talents to several princes, who all
thanked him; nothing more. After
having thus roamed, he passed through
the Tyrol, visited several Italian
courts, not one of which would have him,
and at last retired to Venice.
This republic, however, did not employ
him. His wife and daughter
followed him some time after. I don't know what became of them or of the
son.
Law was a Scotchman; of very doubtful
birth; tall and well made; of
agreeable face and aspect; gallant, and
on very good terms with the
ladies of all the countries he had
travelled in. His wife was not his
wife; she was of a good English family
and well connected; had followed
Law for love; had had a son and a
daughter by him, passed for his wife,
and bore his name without being married
to him. This was suspected
towards the end; after his departure it
became certain. She had one eye
and the top of one cheek covered by an
ugly stain as of wine; otherwise
she was well made, proud, impertinent in
her conversation and in her
manners, receiving compliments, giving
next to none, paying but few
visits, these rare and selected, and
exercising authority in her
household. I know not whether her credit over her
husband was great; but
he appeared full of regard, of care, and
of respect for her; at the time
of their departure they were each about
fifty and fifty-five years old.
Law had made many acquisitions of all
kinds and still more debts, so that
this tangle is not yet unravelled by the
committee of the council
appointed to arrange his affairs with his
creditors. I have said
elsewhere, and I repeat it here, that
there was neither avarice nor
roguery in his composition. He was a gentle, good, respectable man, whom
excess of credit and fortune had not
spoiled, and whose deportment,
equipages, table, and furniture could
not scandalise any one. He
suffered with singular patience and
constancy all the vexations excited
by his operations, until towards the
last, when, finding himself short of
means and wishing to meet his
difficulty, he became quick and bad-
tempered, and his replies were often
ill-measured. He was a man of
system, of calculation, of comparison,
well and profoundly instructed in
these things, and, without ever
cheating, had everywhere gained at play
by dint of understanding--which seems to
me incredible--the combinations
of cards.
His bank, as I have elsewhere said, was
an excellent thing for a
republic, or for a country like England,
where finance is as in a
republic. His Mississippi he was the dupe of, and
believed with good
faith he should make great and rich
establishments in America. He
reasoned like an Englishman, and did not
know how opposed to commerce and
to such establishments are the frivolity
of the (French) nation, its
inexperience, its avidity to enrich
itself at once, the inconvenience of
a despotic government, which meddles
with everything, which has little or
no consistency, and in which what one
minister does is always destroyed
by his successor.
Law's proscription of specie, then of
jewels, so as to have only paper in
France, is a system I have never
comprehended, nor has anybody, I fancy,
during all the ages which have elapsed
since that in which Abraham, after
losing Sarah, bought, for ready-money, a
sepulchre for her and for her
children. But Law was a man of system, and of system so
deep, that
nobody ever could get to the bottom of
it, though he spoke easily, well
and clearly, but with a good deal of
English in his French.
He remained several years at Venice,
upon very scanty means, and died
there a Catholic, having lived decently,
but very humbly, wisely, and
modestly, and received with piety the
last sacraments of the Church.
Thus terminates all I have to say of
Law. But a painful truth remains.
I have to speak of the woful disorder in
the finances which his system
led to, disorder which was not fully
known until after his departure from
France.
Then people saw, at last, where all the golden schemes that had
flooded upon popular credulity had borne
us;--not to the smiling and
fertile shores of Prosperity and Confidence,
as may be imagined; but to
the bleak rocks and dangerous sands of
Ruin and Mistrust, where dull
clouds obscure the sky, and where there
is no protection against the
storm.
CHAPTER CII
Not long after the flight of Law, that
is to say, on Sunday, the 24th of
January, of the new year, 1721, a
council was held at the Tuileries, at
four o'clock in the afternoon,
principally for the purpose of examining
the state of the finances and of Law's
Bank and India Company. It was,
in fact, high time to do something to
diminish the overgrown disorder and
confusion everywhere reigning. For some time there had been complete
stagnation in all financial matters; the
credit of the King had step by
step diminished, private fortune had
become more and more uncertain. The
bag was at last empty, the cards were
cast aside, the last trick was
played: The administration of the
finances had passed into the hands of
La Houssaye, and his first act was to
call the attention of the Regency
Council to the position of the bank and
the company. We were prepared to
hear that things were in a very bad
state, but we were scarcely prepared
to find that they so closely resembled
utter ruin and bankruptcy.
I need not relate all that passed at
this council; the substance of it is
enough.
From the statement there of M. le Duc d'Orleans, it appeared
that Law had issued 1,200,000,000 livres
of bank notes more than he ought
to have issued. The first 600,00,000 livres had not done much
harm,
because they had been kept locked up in
the bank; but after the 22nd of
May, another issue of 600,000,000 had
taken place, and been circulated
among the public, without the knowledge
of the Regent, without the
authorisation of any decree. "For this," said M. le Duc
d'Orleans, "Law
deserved to be hanged, but under the
circumstances of the case, I drew
him from his embarrassment, by an
ante-dated decree, ordering the issue
of this quantity of notes."
Thereupon M. le Duc said to the Regent,
"But, Monsieur, why, knowing
this, did you allow him to leave the
realm?"
"It was you who furnished him with
the means to do so," replied M. le Duc
d'Orleans.
"I never asked you to allow him to
quit the country," rejoined M. le Duc.
"But," insisted the Regent,
"it was you yourself who sent him his
passports."
"That's true," replied M. le
Duc, "but it was you who gave them to me to
send to him; but I never asked you for
them, or to let him leave the
realm.
I know that I have the credit for it amongst the public, and I am
glad of this opportunity to explain here
the facts of the case. I was
against the proposition for sending M.
Law to the Bastille, or to any
other prison, because I believed that it
was not to your interest to
sanction this, after having made use of
him as you had; but I never asked
you to let him leave the realm, and I
beg you, Monsieur, in presence of
the King, and before all these
gentlemen, to say if I ever did."
"'Tis true," replied the
Regent, "you never asked me; I allowed him to
go, because I thought his presence in
France would injure public credit,
and the operations of the public."
"So far was I from asking
you," said M. le Duc, "that if you had done me
the honour to demand my opinion, I
should have advised you to take good
care not to let him depart from the
country."
This strange conversation, which roused
our astonishment to an incredible
point, and which was sustained with so
much out-spoken freedom by M. le
Duc, demands a word or two of
explanation.
M. le Duc was one of those who, without
spending a farthing, had drawn
millions from Law's notes and
shares. He had had large allotments of
the
latter, and now that they had become
utterly valueless, he had been
obliged to make the best of a bad
bargain, by voluntarily giving them up,
in order to lighten the real
responsibilities of the Company. This he
had done at the commencement of the
Council, M. le Prince de Conti also.
But let me explain at greater length.
The 22nd of May, the day of the decree,
was the period at which commenced
the final decay of the Company, and of
the bank, and the extinction of
all confidence by the sad discovery that
there was no longer any money
wherewith to pay the bank notes, they
being so prodigiously in excess of
the coin. After this, each step had been but a stumble:
each operation a
very feeble palliation. Days and weeks had been gained, obscurity had
been allowed to give more chance, solely
from fear of disclosing the true
and terrible state of affairs, and the
extent of the public ruin. Law
could not wash his hands of all this
before the world; he could not avoid
passing for the inventor and instrument,
and he would have run great risk
at the moment when all was
unveiled. M. le Duc d'Orleans, who, to
satisfy his own prodigality, and the
prodigious avidity of his friends,
had compelled Law to issue so many
millions of livres of notes more than
he had any means of paying, and who had
thus precipitated him into the
abyss, could not let him run the chance
of perishing, still less to save
him, could he proclaim himself the real
criminal. It was to extricate
himself from this embarrassment that he
made Law leave the country, when
he saw that the monstrous deceit could
no longer be hidden.
This manifestation, which so strongly
interested the shareholders, and
the holders of bank notes, especially
those who had received shares or
notes as favours due to their authority,
and who could show no other
title to them, threw every one into
despair. The most important holders,
such as the Princes of the Blood, and
others, whose profits had been
immense, had by force or industry
delayed this manifestation as long as
possible. As they knew the real state of affairs, they
felt that the
moment all the world knew it also, their
gains would cease, and their
paper become worthless, that paper from
which they had drawn so much, and
which had not cost them a farthing! This is what induced M. le Duc
d'Orleans to hide from them the day of
this manifestation, so as to avoid
being importuned by them; and by a
surprise, to take from them the power
of preparing any opposition to the
measures it was proposed to carry out.
M. le Duc, when he learned this, flew
into a fury, and hence the strange
scene between him and M. le Duc
d'Orleans, which scandalised and
terrified everybody in the Council.
M. le Duc d'Orleans, who, from taste, and
afterwards from necessity,
lived upon schemes and trickery, thought
he had done marvels in saddling
M. le Duc with the passport of Law. He wished to lay the blame of Law's
departure upon M. le Duc; but as I have
shown, he was defeated by his own
weapons.
He had to do with a man as sharp as himself. M. le Duc, who
knew he had nothing to fear, would not
allow it to be supposed that he
had sanctioned the flight of the
financier. That was why he pressed M.
le Duc d'Orleans so pitilessly, and
forced him to admit that he had never
asked him to allow Law to leave the
country.
The great and terrible fact brought out
by this Council was, that Law,
without the knowledge or authority of
the Regent, had issued and
disseminated among the public
600,000,000 livres of notes; and not only
without being authorised by any edict,
but contrary to express
prohibition. But when the Regent announced this, who did
he suppose
would credit it? Who could believe that Law would have had the
hardihood
to issue notes at this rate without the
sanction and approbation of his
master?
However, to leave once and for all these
unpleasant matters, let me say
what was resolved upon by way of remedy
to the embarrassments discovered
to exist. The junction of the India Company with the bank,
which had
taken place during the previous
February, had led to transactions which
made the former debtor to the latter to
an immense amount. But the bank
being a governmental establishment, the
King became thus the creditor of
the Company. It was decreed, in fact, that the Company
should be
considered as debtor to the King. It was decided, however, that other
debtors should receive first
attention. Many private people had
invested
their money in the shares of the
Company. It was not thought just that
by the debt of the Company to the King,
these people should be ruined;
or, on the other hand, that those who
had left the Company in good time,
who had converted their shares into
notes, or who had bought them at a
low price in the market, should profit
by the misfortune of the bona fide
shareholders. Accordingly, commissioners, it was decided,
were to be
named, to liquidate all these papers and
parchments, and annul those
which did not proceed from real
purchases.
M. le Duc said, upon this, "There
are at least eighty thousand families,
the whole of whose wealth consists of
these effects; how are they to live
during this liquidation?"
La Houssaye replied, that so many
commissioners could be named, that the
work would soon be done.
And so the Council ended.
But I must, perforce, retrace my steps
at this point to many other
matters, which I have left far behind me
in going on at once to the end
of this financial labyrinth. And first let me tell what happened to that
monstrous personage, Alberoni, how he
fell from the lofty pinnacle of
dower on which he had placed himself,
and lost all consideration and all
importance in the fall. The story is mightily curious and
instructive.
CHAPTER CIII
Alberoni had made himself detested by
all Europe,--for all Europe, in one
way or another, was the victim of his
crimes. He was detested as the
absolute master of Spain, whose guides
were perfidy, ambition, personal
interest, views always oblique, often
caprice, sometimes madness; and
whose selfish desires, varied and
diversified according to the fantasy
of the moment, were hidden under schemes
always uncertain and oftentimes
impossible of execution. Accustomed to keep the King and Queen of
Spain
in chains, and in the narrowest and
obscurest prison, where he allowed
them to communicate with no one, and
made them see, feel, and breathe
through him, and blindly obey his every
wish; he caused all Spain to
tremble, and had annihilated all power
there, except his own, by the most
violent acts, constraining himself in no
way, despising his master and
his mistress, whose will and whose
authority he had utterly absorbed.
He braved successively all the powers of
Europe, and aspired to nothing
less than to deceive them all, then to
govern them, making them serve all
his ends; and seeing at last his cunning
exhausted, tried to execute
alone, and without allies, the plan he
had formed.
This plan was nothing less than to take
away from the Emperor all that
the peace of Utrecht had left him in
Italy; all that the Spanish house of
Austria had possessed there; to dominate
the Pope and the King of Sicily;
to deprive the Emperor of the help of
France and England, by exciting the
first against the Regent through the
schemes of the ambassador Cellamare
and the Duc du Maine; and by sending
King James to England, by the aid of
the North, so as to keep King George
occupied with a civil war. In the
end he wished to profit by all these
disorders, by transporting into
Italy (which his cardinalship made him
regard as a safe asylum against
all reverses) the immense treasures he
had pillaged and collected m
Spain, under pretext of sending the sums
necessary to sustain the war,
and the conquests he intended to make;
and this last project was,
perhaps, the motive power of all the
rest. The madness of these schemes,
and his obstinacy in clinging to them,
were not discovered until
afterwards. The astonishment then was great indeed, upon
discovering the
poverty of the resources with which he
thought himself capable of
carrying out these wild projects. Yet he had made such prodigious
preparations for war, that he had
entirely exhausted the country without
rendering it able for a moment to oppose
the powers of Europe.
Alberoni, abhorred in Spain as a cruel
tyrant, in France, in England, in
Rome, and by the Emperor as an
implacable and personal enemy, did not
seem to have the slightest
uneasiness. Yet he might have had some,
and
with good cause, at the very moment when
he fancied himself most powerful
and most secure.
The Regent and the Abbe Dubois, who for
a long time had only too many
reasons to regard Alberoni as their
personal enemy, were unceasingly
occupied in silently plotting his fall;
they believed the present moment
favourable, and did not fail to profit
by it. How they did so is a
curious fact, which, to my great regret,
has never reached me. M. le Duc
d'Orleans survived Dubois such a few
months that many things I should
have liked to have gained information
upon, I had not the time to ask him
about; and this was one.
All I know is, that what Alberoni always
dreaded, at last happened to
him.
He trembled, at every one, no matter of how little importance, who
arrived from Parma (the Queen of Spain,
it has not been forgotten, was of
that Duchy); he omitted nothing by the
aid of the Duke of Parma, and by
other means, to hinder the Parmesans
from coming to Madrid; and was in
terror of the few of those whose journey
he could not hinder, and whose
dismissal he could not obtain.
Among these few people there was nobody
he feared so much as the Queen's
nurse, whom he drew up with a round turn
occasionally, so to speak, but
less from policy than ill-temper. This nurse, who was a rough country-
woman of Parma, was named Donna
Piscatori Laura. She had arrived in
Spain some years after the Queen, who had
always liked her, and who made
her, shortly after her arrival, her
'assofeta', that is to say, her chief
'femme de chambre'; an office more
considerable in Spain than with us.
Laura had brought her husband with her,
a peasant in every way, seen and
known by nobody; but Laura had
intelligence, shrewdness, cleverness, and
ambitious views, in spite of the
external vulgarity of her manners, which
she had preserved either from habit, or
from policy, for make herself
less suspected. Like all persons of this extraction, she was
thoroughly
selfish.
She was not unaware how impatiently Alberoni endured her
presence, and feared her favour with the
Queen, whom he wished to possess
alone; and, more sensible to the gentle
taps she from time to time
received from him, than to his ordinary
attentions, she looked upon him
simply as a very formidable enemy, who
kept her within very narrow
limits, who hindered her from profiting
by the favour of the Queen, and
whose design was to send her back to
Parma, and to leave nothing undone
until he had carried it out.
This is all the information I have ever
been able to obtain. The
probability is, that Donna Laura was
gained by the money of the Regent
and the intrigues gained Dubois; and
that she succeeded in convincing the
Queen of Spain that Alberoni was a
minister who had ruined the country,
who was the sole obstacle in the way of
peace, and who had sacrificed
everything and everybody to his personal
views, their Catholic Majesties
included. However, as I relate only what I know, I
shall be very brief
upon this interesting event.
Laura succeeded. Alberoni, at the moment he least expected it,
received
a note from the King of Spain ordering
him to withdraw at once, without
attempting to see him or the Queen, or
to write to them; and to leave
Spain in twice twenty-four hours! An officer of the guards was to
accompany him until his departure: How
this overruling order was
received, and what the Cardinal did, I
know not; I only know that he
obeyed it, and took the road for Arragon. So few precautions had been
taken, that he carried off an immense
number of papers, money, and
jewels; and it was not until a few days
had elapsed, that the King of
Spain was informed that the original
will of Charles the Second could not
be found. It was at once supposed that Alberoni had
carried away this
precious document (by which Charles the
Second named Philippe V. King of
Spain), in order to offer it, perhaps,
to the Emperor, so as to gain his
favour and good graces. Alberoni was stopped. It was not without
trouble, the most terrible menaces, and
loud cries from him, that he
surrendered the testament, and some
other important papers which it was
perceived were missing. The terror he had inspired was so profound,
that, until this moment, no one had
dared to show his joy, or to speak,
though the tyrant was gone. But this event reassured every one against
his return, and the result was an
unexampled overflow of delight, of
imprecations, and of reports against
him, to the King and Queen, of the
most public occurrences (which they
alone were ignorant of) and of.
private misdeeds, which it was no longer
thought necessary to hide.
M. le Duc d'Orleans did not restrain his
joy, still less the Abbe Dubois;
it was their work which had overthrown
their personal enemy; with him
fell the wall of separation, so firmly
erected by Alberoni between the
Regent and the King of Spain; and (at
the same time) the sole obstacle
against peace. This last reason caused joy to burst out in
Italy, in
Vienna, in London; and peace between
France, and Spain soon resulted.
The allied princes felicitated
themselves on what had happened; even the
Dutch were ravished to be delivered of a
minister so double-dealing, so
impetuous, so powerful. M. le Duc d'Orleans dispatched the Chevalier
de
Morcieu, a very skilful and intelligent
man, and certainly in the hands
of the Abbe Dubois, to the extreme
confines of the frontiers to wait for
Alberoni, accompanying him until the
moment of his embarkation in
Provence for Italy; with orders never to
lose sight of him, to make him
avoid the large towns and principal
places as much as possible; suffer no
honours to be rendered to him; above
all, to hinder him from
communicating with anybody, or anybody
with him; in a word, to conduct
him civilly, like a prisoner under
guard.
Morcieu executed to the letter this
disagreeable commission; all the more
necessary, because, entirely disgraced
as was Alberoni, everything was to
be forced from him while traversing a
great part of France, where all who
were adverse to the Regent might have
recourse to him. Therefore it was
not without good reason that every kind
of liberty was denied him.
It may be imagined what was suffered by
a man so impetuous, and so
accustomed to unlimited power; but he
succeeded in accommodating himself
to such a great and sudden change of
condition; in maintaining his self-
possession; in subjecting himself to no
refusals; in being sage and
measured in his manners; very reserved
in speech, with an air as though
he cared for nothing; and in adapting
himself to everything without
questions, without pretension, without
complaining, dissimulating
everything, and untiringly pretending to
regard Morcieu as an
accompaniment of honour. He received, then, no sort of civility on the
part of the Regent, of Dubois, or of
anybody; and performed the day's
journeys, arranged by Morcieu, without
stopping, almost without suite,
until he arrived on the shores of the
Mediterranean, where he immediately
embarked and passed to the Genoa coast.
Alberoni, delivered of his Argus, and
arrived in Italy, found himself in
another trouble by the anger of the
Emperor, who would suffer him
nowhere, and by the indignation of the
Court of Rome, which prevailed, on
this occasion, over respect for the
purple. Alberoni for a long time was
forced to keep out of the way, hidden
and a fugitive, and was not able to
approach Rome until the death of the
Pope. The remainder of the life of
this most extraordinary man is not a
subject for these memoirs. But what
ought not to be forgotten is the last
mark of rage, despair, and madness
that he gave in traversing France. He wrote to M. le Duc d'Orleans,
offering to supply him with the means of
making a most dangerous war
against Spain; and at Marseilles, ready
to embark, he again wrote to
reiterate the same offers, and press
them on the Regent.
I cannot refrain from commenting here
upon the blindness of allowing
ecclesiastics to meddle with public
affairs; above all, cardinals, whose
special privilege is immunity from
everything most infamous and most
degrading. Ingratitude, infidelity, revolt, felony,
independence, are
the chief characteristics of these
eminent criminals.
Of Alberoni's latter days I will say but
a few words.
At the death of Clement XI., legal
proceedings that had been taken to
deprive Alberoni of his cardinalship,
came to an end. Wandering and
hidden in Italy, he was summoned to
attend a conclave for the purpose of
electing a new Pope. Alberoni was the opprobrium of the sacred
college;
proceedings, as I have said, were in
progress to deprive him of his
cardinalship. The King and Queen of Spain evidently
stimulated those
proceedings: the Pope just dead had
opposed him; but the cardinals would
not agree to his disgrace; they would
not consent to strip him of his
dignity.
The example would have been too dangerous. That a cardinal,
prince, or great nobleman, should
surrender his hat in order to marry,
the store of his house demands it; well
and good; but to see a cardinal
deprive himself of his hat by way of penitence,
is what his brethren will
not endure. A cardinal may be poisoned, stabbed, got rid
of altogether,
but lose his dignity he never can. Rome must be infallible, or she is
nothing.
It was decided, that if, at the election
of the new Pope, Alberoni were
not admitted to take part in the
proceedings, he always might protest
against them, and declare them
irregular. Therefore he was, as I have
said, admitted to the conclave. He arrived in Rome, without display, in
his own coach, and was received in the
conclave with the same honours as
all the other cardinals, and performed
all the duties of his position.
A few days after the election, he
absented himself from Rome, as though
to see whether proceedings would be
continued against him. But they fell
of themselves. The new Pope had no interest in them. The cardinals
wished only for silence. Spain felt at last the inutility of her
cries.
Dubois was in favour of throwing a veil
over his former crimes, so that,
after a short absence, Alberoni hired in
Rome a magnificent palace, and
returned there for good, with the
attendance, expense, and display his
Spanish spoils supplied. He found himself face to face with the
Cardinal
Giudice, and with Madame des
Ursins. The three formed a rare
triangle,
which caused many a singular scene in
home. After seeing them both die,
Alberoni became legate at Ferrara,
continued there a long time, little
esteemed at Rome, where he is now
living, sound in mind and body, and
eighty-six years of age.
CHAPTER CIV
The King attended the Royal Council for
the first time on Sunday, the
18th of February, 1720. He said nothing while there, or on going
away,
excepting that when M. le Duc d'Orleans,
who feared he might grow weary
of the proceedings, proposed to him to
leave, he said he would stop to
the end.
After this he did not come always, but often, invariably
remaining to the last, without moving or
speaking. His presence changed
nothing in the order of our
arrangements, because his armchair was always
there, alone, at the end of the table,
and M. le Duc d'Orleans, whether
his Majesty came or not, had but a
"stool" similar to those we all sat
upon.
Step by step this council had been so much increased, that now, by
the entry of the Duc de Berwick, it
numbered sixteen members! To say
truth, we were far too many, and we had
several among us who would have
been much better away. I had tried, but in vain, to make the Regent
see
this.
He did see at last, but it was too late; and meanwhile we were, as
I have stated, sixteen in the
council. I remember that one day, when
the
King came, a kitten followed him, and
some time after jumped upon him,
and thence upon the table, where it
began to walk; the Duc de Noailles
immediately crying out, because he did
not like cats. M. le Duc
d'Orleans wished to drive the animal
away. I smiled, and said, "Oh,
leave the kitten alone, it will make the
seventeenth."
M. le Duc d'Orleans burst out laughing
at this, and looked at the
company, who laughed also, the King as
well. His Majesty briefly spoke
of it to me on the morrow, as though
appreciating the joke, which, by the
way, immediately ran over all Paris.
The Abbe Dubois still maintained his
pernicious influence over the
Regent, and still looked forward to a
cardinalship as the reward of his
scheming, his baseness, and his
perfidy. In the meantime, the
Archbishopric of Cambrai became vacant
(by the death, at Rome, of the
Cardinal Tremoille). That is to say, the richest archbishopric,
and one
of the best posts in the Church. The Abbe Dubois was only tonsured;
150,000 livres, a year tempted him, and
perhaps this position, from which
he could more easily elevate himself to
the cardinalship. Impudent as he
might be, powerful as might be the
empire he had acquired over his
master, he was much embarrassed, and
masked his effrontery under a trick.
He said to M. le Duc d'Orleans, he had a
pleasant dream; and related to
him that he had dreamt he was Archbishop
of Cambrai! The Regent, who
smelt the rat, turned on his heel, and
said nothing. Dubois, more and
more embarrassed, stammered, and
paraphrased his dream; then, re-assuring
himself by an effort, asked, in an
offhand manner, why he should not
obtain it, His Royal Highness, by his
will alone, being able thus to make
his fortune.
M. le Duc d'Orleans was indignant, even
terrified, little scrupulous as
he might be as to the choice of bishops,
and in a tone of contempt
replied to Dubois, "What, you
Archbishop of Cambrai!" making him thus
feel his low origin, and still more the
debauchery and scandal of his
life.
Dubois was, however, too far advanced to stop on the road, and
cited examples; unfortunately these were
only too many.
M. le Duc d'Orleans, less touched by
such bad reasoning than embarrassed
how to resist the ardor of a man whom
for a long time he had not dated to
contradict, tried to get out of the
difficulty, by saying, "But you being
such a scoundrel, where will you find
another to consecrate you?"
"Oh, if it's only that!" exclaimed Dubois, "the thing is
done. I know
very well who will consecrate me; he is
not far from here."
"And who the devil is he who will
dare to do so?" asked the Regent.
"Would you like to know?"
replied the Abbe, "and does the matter rest
only upon that?"
"Well, who?" said the Regent.
"Your chief chaplain," replied
Dubois, "who is close at hand.
Nothing
will please him better; I will run and
speak to him."
And thereupon he embraces the knees of
M. le Duc d'Orleans (who, caught
thus in his own trap, had not the
strength to refuse), runs to the Bishop
of Nantes, says that he is to have
Cambrai, begs the Bishop to consecrate
him, and receives his promise to do so,
returns, wheels round, tells M.
le Duc d'Orleans that his chief chaplain
has agreed to the consecration;
thanks, praises, admires the Regent,
fixes more and more firmly the
office by regarding it as settled, and
by persuading M. le Duc d'Orleans,
who dares not say no; and in this manner
was Dubois made Archbishop of
Cambrai!
The extreme scandal of this nomination
caused a strange, stir. Impudent
as was the Abbe Dubois, he was extremely
embarrassed; and M. le Duc
d'Orleans so much ashamed, that it was
soon remarked he was humbled if
you spoke to him upon the subject. The next question was, from whom
Dubois was to receive holy orders? The Cardinal de Noailles was applied
to, but he stoutly refused to assist in
any way. It may be imagined what
an affront this was to Dubois. He never in his life pardoned the
Cardinal, who was nevertheless
universally applauded for his refusal.
But the Abbe Dubois was not a man to be
daunted by an ordinary obstacle;
he turned his glances elsewhere, and
soon went through all the
formalities necessary.
The very day he took orders there was a
Regency Council at the old
Louvre, because the measles, which were
then very prevalent, even in the
Palais Royal, hindered us from meeting
as usual in the Tuileries.
A Regency Council without the Abbe
Dubois present was a thing to marvel
at, and yet his arrival to-day caused
even more surprise than his absence
would have caused. But he was not a man to waste his time in
thanksgiving for what had just happened
to him. This was a new scandal,
which revived and aggravated the
first. Everybody had arrived in the
cabinet of the council, M. le Duc
d'Orleans also; we were scattered about
and standing. I was in a corner of the lower end, when I
saw Dubois
enter in a stout coat, with his ordinary
bearing. We did not expect him
on such a day, and naturally enough
cried out surprised. M. le Prince de
Conti, with his father's sneering
manner, spoke to the Abbe Dubois, on
his appearance among us on the very day
of taking orders, and expressed
his surprise at it with the most
pathetic malignity imaginable.
Dubois, who had not had time to reply
one word, let him say to the end;
then coldly observed, that if he had
been a little more familiar with
ancient history, he would not have found
what astonished him very
strange, since he (the Abbe) had only
followed the example of Saint-
Ambrose, whose ordination he began to
relate. I did not wait for his
recital; at the mere mention of
Saint-Ambrose I flew to the other end of
the cabinet, horror-struck at the
comparison Dubois had just made, and
fearing lest I should be tempted to say
to him, that the ordination of
Saint-Ambrose had been forced upon him
in spite of his resistance. This
impious citation of Saint-Ambrose ran
all over the town with the effect
that may be imagined. The nomination and this ordination took place
towards the end of February.
I will finish at once all that relates
to this matter, so as not to
separate it, or have to return to
it. Dubois had his bulls at the
commencement of May, and the
consecration was fixed for Sunday the 9th
of June.
All Paris and the Court were invited to it, myself excepted.
I was on bad terms with Dubois, because
I in no way spared him when with
M. le Duc d'Orleans. He on his side, fearing the power I had over
the
Regent, the liberty I enjoyed with him,
and the freedom with which I
spoke to him, did as much as he could to
injure me, and to weaken the
confidence of M. le Duc d'Orleans in
me. Dubois and I continued,
nevertheless, to be on good terms with
each other in appearance, but it
was in appearance only.
This consecration was to be magnificent,
and M. le Duc d'Orleans was to
be present at it. If the nomination and the ordination of the
Abbe
Dubois had caused much stir, scandal,
and horror, the superb preparations
for the consecration caused even more:
Great was the indignation against
M. le Duc d'Orleans. I went, therefore, to him the evening before
this
strange ceremony was to take place, to
beg him not to attend it. I
represented to him that the nomination
and ordination of the Abbe Dubois
had created frightful effect upon the
public, and that the consecration
of a man of such low extraction, and
whose manners and mode of life were
so notorious; would create more. I added, that if he attended this
ceremony, people would say it was simply
for the purpose of mocking God,
and insulting His Church; that the
effect of this would be terrible,
and always much to be feared; and that
people would say the Abbe Dubois
abused the mastery he had over him, and
that this was evidence of
dependence would draw down upon him
hatred, disdain, and shame, the
results of which were to be
dreaded. I concluded by saying, that I
spoke
to him as his disinterested servitor;
that his absence or his presence at
this consecration would change in,
nothing the fortune of the Abbe
Dubois, who would be Archbishop of
Cambrai all the same without
prostituting his master in the eyes of
all France, and of all Europe,
by compelling him to be guilty of a
measure to which it would be seen he
had been urged by force. I conjured him not to go; and to show him on
what terms I was with the Abbe Dubois, I
explained to him I was the sole
man of rank he had not invited to his
consecration; but that,
notwithstanding this circumstance, if he
would give me his word that he
would not go, I on my side would agree
to go, though my horror at doing
so would be very great.
My discourse, pronounced with warmth and
developed with freedom, was
listened to from beginning to end. I was surprised to hear the Regent
say I was right, but I opened my eyes
very wide when he embraced me, said
that I spoke like a true friend, and
that he would give me his word, and
stick to it, he would not go. We parted upon this, I strengthening him
in his resolution, promising anew I
would go, and he thanking me for this
effort.
He showed no impatience, no desire that I should go; for I knew
him well, and I examined him to the very
bottom of his soul, and quitted
him much pleased at having turned him
from a measure so disgraceful arid
so extraordinary. Who could have guessed that he would not keep
his
word?
But so it happened.
Although as I have said I felt sure of
him, yet the extreme weakness of
this prince, and the empire the Abbe
Dubois had acquired over him;
induced me to be quite certain of him
before going to the consecration.
I sent therefore the next morning to the
Palais Royal to inquire after M.
le Duc d'Orleans; keeping my carriage
all ready for a start. But I was
much confused, accustomed as I might be
to his miserable vacillation, to
hear from the person I had sent, that he
had just seen the Regent jump
into his coach, surrounded by all the
pomp usual on grand occasions,
and set out for the consecration. I had my horses put up at once, and
locked myself into my cabinet.
A day or two after I learnt from a
friend of Madame de Parabere, then the
reigning Sultana, but not a faithful
one, that M. le Duc d'Orleans had
been with her the previous night, and
had spoken to her in praise of me,
saying he would not go to the ceremony,
and that he was very grateful to
me for having dissuaded him from
going. La Parabere praised me, admitted
I was right, but her conclusion was that
he would go.
M. le Duc d'Orleans, surprised, said to
her she was then mad.
"Be it so," replied she,
"but you will go."
"But I tell you I will not
go," he rejoined.
"Yes, yes, I tell you," said
she; "you will go."
"But," replied he, "this
is admirable. You say M. de Saint-Simon
is
quite right, why then should I go?"
"Because I wish it," said she.
"Very good," replied he,
"and why do you wish I should go--what madness
is this?"
"I wish it because--," said
she.
"Oh, because," replied he,
"that's no reason; say why you wish it."
(After some dispute) "You
obstinately desire then to know? Are you
not
aware that the Abbe Dubois and I
quarreled four days ago, and that we
have not yet made it up. He mixes in everything. He will know that you
have been with me to-night. If to-morrow you do not go to his
consecration, he will not fail to
believe it is I who have hindered you;
nothing will take this idea out of his
head; he will never pardon me;
he will undermine in a hundred ways my
credit with you, and finish by
embroiling us. But I don't wish such a thing to happen, and
for that
reason you must go to his consecration,
although M. de Saint-Simon is
right."
Thereupon ensued a feeble debate, then
resolution and promise to go,
which was very faithfully kept.
As for me I could only deplore the
feebleness of the Regent, to whom I
never afterwards spoke of this
consecration, or he to me; but he was very
much ashamed of himself, and much
embarrassed with me afterwards. I do
not know whether he carried his weakness
so far as to tell Dubois what I
had said to hinder him from going to the
ceremony or whether the Abbe was
told by La Parabere, who thought thus to
take credit to herself for
having changed the determination of M.
le Duc d'Orleans, and to show her
credit over him. But Dubois was perfectly informed of it, and
never
pardoned me.
The Val de Grace was chosen for the
consecration as being a royal
monastery, the most magnificent of
Paris, and the most singular church.
It was superbly decorated; all France
was invited, and nobody dared to
stop away or to be out of sight during
the whole ceremony.
There were tribunes with blinds prepared
for the ambassadors and
Protestant ministers. There was another more magnificent for M. le
Duc
d'Orleans and M. le Duc de Chartres,
whom he took there. There were
places for the ladies, and as M. le Duc
d'Orleans entered by the
monastery, and his tribune was within,
it was open to all comers, so that
outside and inside were filled with
refreshments of all kinds, which
officers distributed in profusion. This disorder continued all day, on
account of the large number of tables
that were served without and within
for the subordinate people of the fete
and all who liked to thrust
themselves in. The chief gentlemen of the chamber of M. le
Duc
d'Orleans, and his chief officers did
the business of the ceremony;
placed distinguished people in their
seats, received them, conducted
them, and other of his officers paid
similar attentions to less
considerable people, while, all the watch
and all the police were
occupied in looking after the arrival
and departure of the carriages
in proper and regular order.
During the consecration, which was but
little decent as far as the
consecrated and the spectators were
concerned, above all when leaving the
building, M. le Duc d'Orleans evinced
his satisfaction at finding so many
considerable people present, and then
went away to Asnieres to dine with
Madame Parabere--very glad that a
ceremony was over upon which he had
bestowed only indirect attention, from
the commencement to the end. All
the prelates, the distinguished Abbes,
and a considerable number of the
laity, were invited during the
consecration by the chief officers of M.
le Duc d'Orleans to dine at the Palais
Royal. The same officers did the
honours of the feast, which was served
with the most splendid abundance
and delicacy. There were two services of thirty covers
each, in a large
room of the grand suite of apartments,
filled with the most considerable
people of Paris, and several other
tables equally well served in
adjoining rooms for people less
distinguished. M. le Duc d'Orleans gave
to the new Archbishop a diamond of great
price to serve him as ring.
All this day was given up to that sort
of triumph which draws down
neither the approbation of man nor the
blessing of God. I saw nothing of
it all, however, and M. le Duc d'Orleans
and I never spoke of it.
The Comte de Horn had been in Paris for
the last two months, leading an
obscure life of gaming and
debauchery. He was a man of
two-and-twenty,
tall and well made, of that ancient and
grand family of Horn, known in
the eleventh century among the little
dynasties of the Low Countries, and
afterwards by a long series of
illustrious generations. The Comte de
Horn in question had been made captain
in the Austrian army, less on
account of his youth than because he was
such an ill-behaved dog, causing
vast trouble to his mother and
brother. They heard so much of the
disorderly life he was leading in Paris,
that they sent there a
confidential gentleman with money to pay
his debts, to try and persuade
him to return, and failing in this, to
implore the authority of the
Regent (to whom, through Madame, the
Horns were related), in order to
compel him to do so. As ill-luck would have it, this gentleman
arrived
the day after the Comte had committed
the crime I am about to relate.
On Friday, the 22nd of March, 1720, he
went to the Rue Quincampoix,
wishing, he said, to buy 100,000 ecus
worth of shares, and for that
purpose made an appointment with a
stockbroker in a cabaret. The stock-
broker came there with his pocket-book
and his shares; the Comte de Horn
came also, accompanied, as he said, by
two of his friends; a moment
after, they all three threw themselves
upon this unfortunate stock-
broker; the Comte de Horn stabbed him
several times with a poniard, and
seized his pocket-book; one of his
pretended friends (a Piedmontese named
Mille), seeing that the stock-broker was
not dead, finished the work.
At the noise they made the people of the
house came, not sufficiently
quick to prevent the murder, but in time
to render themselves masters of
the assassins, and to arrest them. In the midst of the scuffle, the
other cut-throat escaped, but the Comte
de Horn and Mille were not so
fortunate. The cabaret people sent for the officers of
justice, who
conducted the criminals to the
Conciergerie. This horrible crime,
committed in broad daylight, immediately
made an immense stir, and
several kinsmen of this illustrious
family at once went to M. le Duc
d'Orleans to beg for mercy; but the
Regent avoided speaking to them as
much as possible, and very rightly
ordered full and prompt justice to be
done.
At last, the relatives of Horn
penetrated to the Regent: they tried to
make the Count pass for mad, saying even
that he had an uncle confined in
an asylum, and begging that he might be
confined also. But the reply
was, that madmen who carried their
madness to fury could not be got rid
of too quickly. Repulsed in this manner, they represented
what an infamy
it would be to their illustrious family,
related to nearly all the
sovereigns of Europe, to have one of its
members tried and condemned.
M. le Duc d'Orleans replied that the
infamy was in the crime, and not in
the punishment. They pressed him upon the honour the family
had in being
related to him. "Very well, gentlemen," said he,
"I will divide the
shame with you."
The trial was neither long nor
difficult. Law and the Abbe Dubois, so
interested in the safety of the
stock-jobbers (without whom the paper
must have fallen at once), supported M.
le Duc d'Orleans might and main,
in order to render him inexorable, and
he, to avoid the persecutions he
unceasingly experienced on the other
side, left nothing undone in order
to hurry the Parliament into a decision;
the affair, therefore; went full
speed, and it seemed likely that the
Comte de Horn would be broken on the
wheel.
The relatives, no longer hoping to save
the criminal, thought only of
obtaining a commutation of the
sentence. Some of them came to me, asking
me to save them: though I was not
related to the Horn family, they
explained to me, that death on the wheel
would throw into despair all
that family, and everybody connected
with it in the Low Countries,
and in Germany, because in those parts
there was a great and important
difference between the punishments of
persons of quality who had
committed crimes; that decapitation in
no way influenced the family of
the decapitated, but that death on the
wheel threw such infamy upon it,
that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and
sisters, and the three next
generations, were excluded from entering
into any noble chapter, which,
in addition to the shame, was a very
injurious deprivation, annihilating
the family's chance of ecclesiastic
preferment; this reason touched me,
and I promised to do my best with M. le
Duc d'Orleans to obtain a
commutation of the sentence.
I was going off to La Ferme to profit by
the leisure of Holy Week.
I went therefore to M. le Duc d'Orleans,
and explained to him what I had
just learnt. I said that after the detestable crime the
Comte de Horn
had committed, every one must feel that
he was worthy of death; but that
every one could not admit it was
necessary to break him on the wheel, in
order to satisfy the ends of
justice. I showed him how the family
would
suffer if this sentence were carried
out, and I concluded by proposing to
the Regent a 'mezzo termine', such as he
was so fond of.
I suggested that the decree ordering
death by the wheel should be
pronounced. That another decree should at the same time
be prepared and
kept ready signed and sealed, with only
a date to fill in, revoking the
first, and changing the punishment into
decapitation. That at the last
moment this second decree should be
produced, and immediately afterwards
the head of the Comte de Horn be cut
off. M. le Duc d'Orleans offered no
objection, but consented at once to my
plan. I said to him, by way of
conclusion, that I was going to set out
the next day, and that I begged
him not to be shaken in the
determination he had just formed, by the
entreaties of Dubois or Law, both of
whom were strongly in favour of
punishment by the wheel. He assured me he would keep firm; reiterated
the assurance; I took leave of him; and
the next day went to La Ferme.
He was firm, however, in his usual
manner. Dubois and Law besieged him,
and led the attack so well that he gave
in, and the first thing I learnt
at La Ferme was that the Comte de Horn
had been broken alive on the wheel
at the Greve, on Holy Friday; the 26th
March, 1720, about 4 o'clock in
the afternoon, and the scoundrel Mille
with him on the same scaffold,
after having both suffered torture.
The result of this was as I
anticipated. The Horn family and all the
grand nobility of the Low Countries,
many of Germany, were outraged, and
contained themselves neither in words
nor in writings. Some of them even
talked of strange vengeance, and a long
time after the death of M. le Duc
d'Orleans, I met with certain of the
gentlemen upon whose hearts the
memory of this punishment still weighed
heavily.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A cardinal may be poisoned, stabbed, got
rid of altogether
Enriched one at the expense of the other
Few would be enriched at the expense of
the many
I abhorred to gain at the expense of
others
Juggle, which put the wealth of Peter
into the pockets of Paul
Not allowing ecclesiastics to meddle
with public affairs
People with difficulty believe what they
have seen
Rome must be infallible, or she is
nothing
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext
Memoirs of Louis XIV. and The Regency,
v13, by the Duc de Saint-Simon
MEMOIRS OF LOUIS XIV AND HIS COURT AND OF THE REGENCY
BY THE DUKE OF
SAINT-SIMON