Old Court Life in France, Volume II (of 2)

The whole of France is in indescribable confusion. The south, where the reformed faith prevails, is deluged with blood. Many thousands of industrious and orderly citizens doom themselves to perpetual exile rather than abjure the Protestant faith.

Le Grand Monarque is now a lonely, melancholy old man. Defeat has dogged his armies; the elevation of his grandchild, Philip, to the throne of Spain has well-nigh brought France to destruction. Death has been busy with his family: the Dauphin is dead; his son, the Duc de Bourgogne, is dead; Adelaide de Savoie, his wife, most justly dear to Louis, is also dead; and now there only remains one little life, their son, the infant Duc d'Anjou between himself and the extinction of his direct line. The Court at Marly is as lugubrious and austere as Madame de Maintenon and the Jesuits can make it.

Yet a shadow of the pomp and etiquette of Versailles is still kept up. On certain days after dinner, which takes place at noon, his Majesty receives the royal family. The folding doors of the royal suite are thrown open, and Louis appears. His hat with overtopping feathers is on his head, one hand is placed upon the breast of his coat, the other rests upon an ormolu table. He wears a diamond star; and a blue ribbon is passed across his breast. His coat is of black velvet, his waistcoat of red satin richly wrought with gold; he wears diamonds in his shoe-buckles and in his garters. On his head is a ponderous black wig, raised high on the forehead. This black wig gives his thin, hatchet-shaped face, seamed with wrinkles, a ghastly look. Louis changes his wigs many times each day to suit various occasions. He has wigs for all emergencies. In figure he is much shrunk, and is slightly bent. As he stands, his hand resting on the table for support, every movement is studied to impose silence and awe. To the day of his death he is majestic, and has the grandest manners in the world.

The royal family, conducted through galleries and colonnades lined with exotics and orange-trees (for Louis loves orange-flowers, all other scents and essences, however, are forbidden), pass before him. They wear mantles or mantelets according to their rank. To the obeisances of those who enjoy the honour of the fauteuil his Majesty returns a decided bow. Others who occupy tabourets only, receive but a qualified acknowledgment. People who sit on pliants are not received at Marly at all.

After the reception come the visits. Those who by their rank are entitled to receive as well as to pay visits, flutter backwards and forwards, with painful activity. Madame la Duchesse or Madame la Princesse rushes out of one door and in at another, shouldering her train, to salute a royal personage and return before more company arrive to visit herself. Sometimes a call of ceremony is arranged to Saint-Germain, situated about two miles from Marly, where the unhappy James II. and his Queen, Mary of Modena, reside, as annuitants on the royal bounty. Here the question as to who should wear mantles and who mantelets, who should have fauteuils and who tabourets, complicates itself to such an extent (the etiquette of the English Court having also to be duly considered) that even his Majesty grows embarrassed. He cuts the Gordian knot by not sitting down at all. He exchanges a few casual phrases with the exiled Stuarts standing, and forthwith returns to the rural retreat of Marly.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

"THE END."

ON St. Louis day, 25th of August, 1715, the King, then seventy-seven years old, felt seriously indisposed. The disease from which he suffered was at first called sciatica. On the 15th he dined in his bedroom at one o'clock. Later he was able to rise and was carried into the saloon of Madame de Maintenon, where he met his ministers. Next day he presided at the council of state held in a room adjoining his bedroom. On the 25th he was sensibly worse. On the 28th, in consequence of fatal symptoms, his surgeon Maréchal proposed to amputate his leg. The aged King scanned the surgeon's face attentively.

"How long should I last then?" he asked.

Maréchal's hand was on Louis's wrist. His pulse did not vary while he waited for an answer.

"In that case," returned Maréchal, "your Majesty might hope to survive some days, perhaps some weeks longer."

"Then it is not worth while," was the reply in a steady voice. "How long can I live now, Maréchal? Tell me the truth."

"Till Wednesday most probably, your Majesty."

"Ah! my death is to be on Wednesday. It is well. It is not so hard to die as I had thought."

He said no more at that time. Madame de Maintenon sat beside him. Père Letellier, his confessor, and a Jesuit, hovered about his bed. In his hand was a paper concerning the Bull Unigenitus, which he urged the King to sign. So merciless was his persistence, that the attendants drove him from the room. The Duc de Maine, and his brother, the Comte de Toulouse, watched. The royal will and codicil, sealed with seven seals, making Maine virtually Regent, was walled up until the King's death. The parliament was known to be in favour of the Duc d'Orléans. It was needful to be first in the field. Maine never took his eyes off his father. There lay that father, his prominent features sharpened by approaching death, upon his bed, such as we see it now, for no other monarch has lain in it since; the tester and framework of dark wood, from which gloomy satin curtains hang, carved and gilt, and guarded by a ruelle or balustrade of gilded pillars, which none dare pass. Upon his feet lay a counterpane, worked by the pupils of Saint-Cyr. On the walls, near enough for his eye to rest upon, hung the portrait of his mother, Anne of Austria, and two other pictures – St. John, by Raphael, and David, by Domenichino. These pictures never left him, even on his shortest journeys. On the mantelpiece, near the bed, was a bust of his dead favourite, Adelaide de Savoie.

At the King's desire, Madame de Ventadour brought in the five-year old Duc d'Anjou, son of the Duc de Bourgogne, his great-grandson and successor. "Allow me to kiss him, madame," said Louis, courteous to the last. The child was laid upon the bed, and burst out crying. Madame de Ventadour took him in her arms to comfort him. "My child," said Louis, bending his dim eyes upon the rosy-cheeked boy, "you will soon be King over a great people. Give thanks to God for all you possess. Keep peace with your neighbours. I have loved war too much. Do all that I have left undone." Again and again he kissed the frightened child, ere he would let him go.

Then he desired to speak with such nobles and courtiers as waited without. "I die," he said, "in the Catholic faith. I am myself ignorant of the merits of the various schisms which divide it. I have followed such advice as was given me. If I have erred, my advisers alone are responsible, not I. I call God to witness that what I say is true. Gentlemen, I bid you all good-bye. Forget my bad example. Pray for me."

Then the dying monarch turned his face towards Madame de Maintenon, who was seated within the ruelle of the bed. "Madame," he said in a low voice, "I regret no one but you. I have not made you happy." His voice hitherto firm, now faltered. "But I have one consolation in leaving you," he added, "we shall soon meet again." He tried to look at her, but Madame de Maintenon turned from him with disgust. She shuddered.

"What a rendezvous!" she muttered half aloud. "He cares for no one but himself." Bolduc, the King's apothecary, was near, and heard her say so. That very day she left him while he dozed, and drove away to Saint-Cyr.

On Sunday, the 1st of September, Louis died. His confessor, the Jesuit Letellier, never returned. Madame de Maintenon remained at Saint-Cyr. Save the Cardinal de Rohan, and the parish priest of Versailles, all had forsaken him. No sooner had he breathed his last, than precautions were necessary to guard his body from insult.

While the first lord in waiting, standing at the central window within the royal bedchamber which overlooks the Cour de Marbre, the town of Versailles, and the forest, broke his bâton of office, shouting in a loud voice, "The King is dead! Long live the King!" blasphemous songs and brutal jests passed from group to group of low women gathered along the streets.

When the funeral procession left Versailles, almost secretly in the twilight, reaching the Bois de Boulogne and the plain of Saint-Denis by tracks and country roads, crowds followed it, bellowing horrible imprecations. Along the causeway, outside the barriers of Versailles, temporary tents were pitched, where peasants stood, glass in hand, to toast the corpse with curses. These peasants and the townsmen of Versailles had heard of millions squandered on royal mistresses, while the people starved; of war abroad and persecutions at home; of intolerance which spared no one; of ruin, exile, imprisonment, and torture. The country people and the populace did not acknowledge the dead as Louis the Great. The citizens hated him. These men neither knew nor cared that he had a sonorous voice, a measured and solemn delivery that gave weight to his smallest utterances, that leading a life of vice he observed outward decorum, that he had a majestic presence and a stately manner. These men weighed him – manners against acts, life against words – and found him wanting. Posterity readjusted the scales and pronounced them just. The great Revolution declared the balance. Louis XVI. expiated the crimes of his ancestors on the scaffold.

THE END

1

These words, spoken by the Duc de Beaufort, are the same as those of the Balafré, at Blois, before his assassination by Henry III.

2

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, favourite of James I., and of his son, Charles I., assassinated by Felton, 1628.

3

Vaux-Praslin, near Mélun, is still a superb château. It was sold by the son of the Superintendent to the Maréchal de Villars who, in his turn, sold it to the Duc de Praslin.