International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1

Duclos and Rousseau were more severe. Duclos, fully impressed with the idea that he was a great historian, as impartial as he was passionless, judged her harshly. He feared passing for a courtier, and he was unjust, She bad attempted to attach Rousseau to herself; but the proud Genevese Republican wrote her a letter which cut short all further negotiations.17 She always esteemed him, however, in a high degree. One day, when Marshal de Mirepoix, in the course of conversation, advised her not to trouble her head about that owl, she replied,—

"It is an owl, certainly, but it is Minerva's owl."

Madame de Pompadour, with the design of still further strengthening her power at court, conceived the idea of calling in the powers of the Church to her aid. The Prince de Soubise, who was one of her most devoted courtiers, took upon himself the task of procuring an indulgent Jesuit, who would consent to confess and absolve her from all the sins she had committed at court. Père de Sacy, the priest alluded to, had, though a Jesuit, preserved in some sort the habits and feelings of a man of the world; he could, when it suited his purpose, be of his century, and would occasionally laugh a little at the severities of his order. To him, then, the Prince do Soubise proceeded. At first he showed himself rather restive.

"Recollect," said the prince to him, "from the confessional of the marchioness to the confessional of the king there is but a step."

Père de Sacy could not resist the temptation of such an attractive position; he went to the marchioness. Madame de Pompadour, proud of having for a confessor a man who had been appointed Procureur-gènèral of the Missions, received him most graciously. She had other reasons also for seeking to conciliate the Jesuit—her principal one was this:—Up to this time the Jesuitical party that had risen against her at Versailles, the queen, the dauphin, Père Griffet, Cardinal de Luynes, the Bishop of Verdun, and M. de Nicolai, had hoped to drive her from court as a miscreant. Now, once declared worthy of heaven by a Jesuit of such high standing as Père de Sacy, would she not become in some sort inviolable and sacred? With these designs, then, she put in force all her arts of seduction against her confessor; never did she display more grace, wit, or beauty. Père de Sacy, who allowed himself to be taken captive unresistingly by the battery of charms thus brought to bear upon him, visited her seven or eight times to speak of confession, without, however, coming to any conclusion upon the subject. As the good city of Paris had not at the moment any matter of graver importance wherewith to occupy its attention, it began to grow witty on the subject of this confession; a thousand chansons were composed upon the father confessor and his fair penitent. Piron arrived one evening at the Cafè Procope, exclaiming that he had news from Versailles.

"Well," inquired some one, "has the marchioness confessed?"

"No," replied Piron; "Madame de Pompadour cannot agree with Père de Sacy as to the style of confession."

The following day there was a great uproar among the Jesuits; the procureur-général of the missions was summoned before their Council of Ten, and was obliged to confess himself. He received a severe reprimand from the superior of the order, and, as the price of his absolution, was commanded to refuse his counsels to the marchioness, and to excuse himself in the best manner he could for his previous delay.

Père de Sacy accordingly presented himself for the last time before Madame de Pompadour, and the following conversation took place:—

"We cannot grant you, madame," began the holy father, "the absolution you desire; your sojourn at court far from your husband, the public scandal relative to the favor which it is alleged the king accords you, does not permit of your approaching the holy table. The priest who would sanction such a proceeding, in place of absolving you, would pronounce a double condemnation—yours and his own; whilst the public, accustomed to judge harshly the conduct of the great, would confirm the sentence beyond appeal. You have testified to me, madame, that you are desirous of fulfilling the duties of a good Christian; but example is the first of these duties, and in order to obtain and merit absolution, your first proceeding must be to return to M. d'Etioles, or at least quit the court and seek, by penitence and charity, to repair the sins you have committed against that society whose laws you have outraged, and which, declares itself scandalized at your separation, from your husband."

Madame de Pompadour heard these words with the calmness and immobility of a statue; but as soon as the priest had terminated she burst forth,—

"Père de Sacy," she exclaimed, violently, "you are a fool, an impostor, a true Jesuit. Do you understand me? You have sought to enjoy a triumph over me by witnessing the state of embarrassment in which you imagined I was placed; you would gladly, you and yours, see me far from the king: but, poor short-sighted mortals that you are! Know that I am here as powerful as you imagine me weak and tottering; and in spite of you, in spite of all the Jesuits in the world, I shall remain at court, whilst you and your pack will not only be banished from court, but driven ignominiously out of the kingdom."

From that hour the fall of the Jesuits was decreed. The holy fathers imagined that the marchioness, like Madame de Chateauroux, was but the queen of a day; but they were mistaken. To do them justice, it must be allowed they believed that nothing was to be feared from such an enemy; for it is very certain that had they seen the power of this woman, who had all the firmness and decision of character of a man, or rather of a revengeful woman, they would, beyond a doubt, have permitted her to approach the holy table, or even have canonized her had she been desirous of the honor.

Madame de Pompadour was born with noble instincts; her bitterest enemies have never denied that she possessed the most refined taste in all matters connected with the arts or letters. She sought to make of Louis XV. an artist-king; and it must be said to her praise that she ever strove to rouse him from his habitual indolence and lassitude by leading his inclinations into healthy channels. But, unfortunately, Louis XV., unlike his predecessor, could never understand that great monuments often make the glory of kings.

The petits soupers of Versailles would occasionally shed a ray of sunshine, or rather lamp light, over Louis the Fifteenth's habitual ennui. After supper, chansons, sallies, and repartee, would be the order of the night. Occasionally at these supper-parties some brilliant things would be said. One evening, when some one sang a complaint upon the misfortunes of our first father Adam, the king improvised the following couplet worthy of the best chansons of Collé:—

  Il n'eut qu'une femme avec lui,    Encor c'etait la sienne;  Ici je vois celles d'autrui,    Et ne vois pas la mienne.

Louis XV. had, as we see, his moments of poetical inspiration. Anacreon could not have sung better than this.

Madame de Pompadour, born in the ranks of the people, and seating herself unceremoniously on the throne of Blanche of Castille—Madame de Pompadour, protecting philosophers and suppressing Jesuits, treating the great powers of the earth with the same sans façon as she did artists and men of letters,—was one of the thousand causes, petty and, trifling in themselves, which eventually accelerated the great French Revolution. Madame Dubarry but imitated her predecessor when she called a noble duke a sapajou (ape). The mot is pretty well known: "Annoncez le sapajou de Madame la Comtesse Dubarry," said a great lord of the court of Louis XV. one day. It would be a curious and most amusing task to enrich the French peerage with all the sobriquets bestowed by the mistresses of Louis XV. as titles of nobility upon the courtiers of Versailles. More than one illustrious name, which has been cited by France with pride, has lost its luster in the tainted atmosphere of Versailles.

"Not only," said Madame de Pompadour; one day to the Abbé de Bernis,—"not only have I all the nobility at my feet, but even my lap-dog is weary of their fawnings." In short, Madame de Pompadour reigned so imperiously, that once at Versailles, about the conclusion of dinner, an old man approached the king, and begged him to have the goodness to recommend him to Madame de Pompadour. All present laughed heartily at this conceit; except, however, the marchioness.

Madame de Maintenon had not more difficulty in amusing Louis XIV. when grown old and devout, than had Madame de Pompadour in diverting his successor, who, though still young, seemed like a man who had exhausted all the pleasures and enjoyments of life. About the time when the marchioness used to transform herself into milkmaids and peasant girls, she commenced building a very romantic hermitage in the park of Versailles, on the outskirts of the wood near the Saint Germain's road: viewed from without it seemed a true hermitage, worthy in all points of an anchorite's abode; but within it was a dwelling more suited to some old roué of the Regency. Vanloo, Boucher, and Latour had covered the walls and ceilings with all the images of pagan art. The garden was a chef d'oeuvre; it was a grove rather than a garden; a grove peopled with statues, intersected by a multitude of winding paths and alleys, and abounding with a number of arbors, recesses, and "shady blest retreats." In the middle of the garden there was a farm—a true model-farm—with its cattle, goats, and sheep, and all the paraphernalia of husbandry. The marchioness presided daily at the construction of this hermitage.

"Where are you going, marchioness?" Louis XV. would say on seeing her going out so frequently.

"Sire," she would reply, "I am building myself a hermitage for my old age. You know I am rather devout: I shall end my days in solitude."

"Yes," replied the king, "like all those who have loved deeply, or who have been loved deeply."

About the time when spring gives place to the first advances of summer; when the trees were in leaf, and the plants in flower; when the bright greensward, enameled with its countless flowrets, carpeted the alleys of the park, Madame de Pompadour one morning begged Louis XV. to come and breakfast with her at the hermitage.

The king was conducted thither by his valet. His surprise was great. At first, before entering, at the sight of the humble thatched roof, he imagined that he was about to breakfast like a true anchorite, and began to fear seriously that the marchioness had not displayed much taste in the adornment of her retreat. He entered the court and proceeded straight to the door of the hermitage. At this instant a young peasant girl advanced to meet him; as she was well made, delicate, and pretty looking, the king began to find the hermitage more to his taste. With deep reverence his guide begged of him to follow her to the farm.

As he approached the farm, another peasant girl, more delicate still than the former, advanced to meet him, and, with a thousand reverences, presented him with a bowl of milk. At the sight of this pretty milkmaid, with her little straw hat coquettishly disposed on one side of her head, her white corset and blue petticoat, the king was charmed. Before taking the milk from her hands, he gazed at her a second time from head to foot. Her arms, which were uncovered, were white as lilies; she wore suspended from her neck a little gold cross, which seemed to lose itself in a magnificent bouquet of flowers which she wore in her bosom; but what above all astonished the king were two little stockingless feet incased in a pair of the most rustic sabots. With a motion of innocent coquetry, the pretty milkmaid drew one of her feet out of its wooden prison and placed it on the sabot. All at once the king recognized the marchioness, and avowed to her that for the first time in his life he had felt the desire of kissing a pretty foot. Madame de Pompadour returned with her royal lover to the hermitage, where he could not sufficiently admire the refined taste which had been displayed by the fair architect in the planning and arrangement of the building and grounds. This was the origin of what was afterward known as the notorious Parc-aux-cerfs.

It would be a difficult matter to study the political system of Madame de Pompadour, if, indeed, she can be said to have acted on a system. It cannot be denied that she possessed ideas, but more frequently her mind was a perfect chaos of caprices. It is well known, however, that the Duc de Choiseul, who united in his own person the portfolios of three departments of the ministry, and who disposed of all power, followed to the letter the policy of Madame de Pompadour; namely, in reversing the system of Louis XIV., in allying himself to Austria, and in forming a league, or rather a family pact, between the Bourbons of France, Italy, and Spain. The policy of Madame de Pompadour it was which annexed Corsica to France, and, consequently, Bonaparte, who was born at the decease of the marchioness, owed to her his title of French citizen.

Women look not to the future; their reign is from day to day; women of genius, who have at various epochs sought to govern the world, have never contemplated the clouds which might be gathering in the distance; they have been able to see clearly enough within a narrow circle traced around them, but have never succeeded in piercing the shadows of futurity. "Après moi le déluge," was Madame de Pompadour's motto.

The eighteenth century was a century of striking contrasts. The prime minister after Cardinal de Fleury was Madame de Pompadour. With the cardinal a blind religion protected the throne against the parliament; with the rise of the marchioness's power we perceive the first dawnings of philosophy, tormenting in turns both the clergy and the parliament. Under Madame de Pompadour's direction the king, had he been only as bold and determined as his mistress, would have become a greater king than ever. The cardinal was miserly and avaricious, the marchioness liberal to prodigality; she always said, and justly too, that money ought to flow freely from the throne like a generous stream, fertilizing and humanizing the entire State. The cardinal had been hostile to Austria, and favorable to Prussia; the marchioness made war with Frederick to humor Marie-Thérèse. The battle of Rosbach certainly belied her policy, but, to use her own words, "Had she the privilege of making heroes?"

And after all, is the historian justified in accusing this woman of all the dishonors and defeats of the reign of Louis XV.? She attained to power just as the old legitimate royalty—the royalty, as the French would call it, par la grace de Dieu—was fast giving way before the royalty of opinion. There was nothing left to be done at Versailles, simply because in Paris the power was already in the hands of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot. And so well did Madame de Pompadour comprehend this future royalty, that far from seeking to arrest its progress, she, on the contrary, sought to meet it half way. For we do not find her openly protecting and encouraging the philosophers of the day; those very men who, by the mere force of ideas, were destined to overthrow that throne on which she herself was seated! Thus we find also the various painters of the time, in their several portraits of the favorite, never failing to represent her surrounded with all the more celebrated revolutionary books of the day, such as the Encyclopaedia, the Philosophical Dictionary, the Spirit of Laws, and the Social Contract.

Madame de Pompadour, woman-like, loved revenge; and this, it must be said, was her worst vice. For a word she sent Latude to the Bastille; for a couplet she exiled the minister Maurepas. Frederick of Prussia took it into his head one day, in a moment of gayety, to call her Cotillon II., instead of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, and styled her reign of favor le régne de Cotillon; a witticism which so incensed her, that, according to some writers, we may trace to this petty cause the origin of the disastrous seven years' war.

The position of Madame de Pompadour at court as first favorite was, by all accounts, far from being an enviable one; as years rolled on she found herself necessitated to stoop to all kinds of meannesses, and to endure all sorts of humiliations, to preserve her already tottering empire. In order to make friends for herself in the parliament, she suppressed the Jesuits; and she afterward exiled the parliament in order to conciliate the clergy. Again, to prevent her royal, but most fickle minded lover, from choosing another mistress out of the ranks of the court ladies, she contrived that seraglio, the notorious Parc-aux-cerfs, "the pillow of Louis the Fifteenth's debaucheries," as Chateaubriand called it; at the last, hated and despised by all France, Madame de Pompadour said to Louis XV., "For mercy's sake, keep me near you: I protect you; I take upon myself all the hatred of France; evil times are come for kings; so soon as I am gone, all the insults which are now leveled at Madame de Pompadour will be addressed to the king."

Among the many desperate attempts which were made from time to time to dethrone her, the following is the most curious:—

M. d'Argenson and Madame d'Estrade had resolved upon raising to the throne of the favorite the young and beautiful Madame de Choiseul, wife of the court usher. The intrigue was conducted with so much art that the king granted an interview. At the hour fixed upon for the meeting a great agitation reigned in the cabinet of the minister. M. d'Argenson and Madame d'Estrade awaited the event with anxiety; Quesnai, physician to the king and to the favorite, was also present. All at once Madame de Choiseul rushed into the room; Madame d'Estrade ran to meet her with open arms.

"Well!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," replied Madame de Choiseul; "I am loved; she is going to be dismissed. He has given me his royal word on it."

A burst of joy resounded through the cabinet. Quesnai was, as we know, the friend of Madame de Pompadour; but he was at the same time the friend of Madame d'Estrade. M. d'Argenson imagined that in this revolution he would remain neuter at least, but he was mistaken.

"Doctor," said he, "nothing changes for you; we trust that you will remain with us."

"Monsieur le Comte," coldly replied Quesnai, rising from his seat, "I have been attached to Madame de Pompadour in her prosperity, and I shall remain so in her disgrace;" and so saying he left the room.

This Quesnai, of whom we have just made mention, was a man of uncouth and rustic manners, a true Danubian peasant. He inhabited a little entresol above the apartments of Madame de Pompadour at Versailles, where he would pass the whole of his time absorbed in schemes of political economy. Quesnai, however, did not want for friends, as he could boast of the esteem of all the most illustrious philosophers of the day. For those persons who did not go to court would come once a month to dine with the court physician. Marmontel, in his Memoirs, relates that he has dined there in company with Diderot, D'Alembert, Duclos, Helvetius, Turgot, and Buffon,—a goodly array of intellect. Thus on the ground floor they deliberated on peace and war, on the choice of ministers, the suppression of the Jesuits, the exile of the parliament, and the future destinies of France; while above stairs those who had not power, but who possessed ideas, labored unwittingly at the future destinies of the world. What was concocted in the rez-de-chaussée was demolished in the entresol. It would frequently happen, too, that Madame de Pompadour who could not receive the guests of Quesnai in her own apartments, would ascend to those of her physician to see and chat with them.

Every Sunday morning Madame de Pompadour received at her toilet all the artists, literary men, and great personages of the court, who had the entrée of her apartments. Marmontel relates that on the arrival of Duclos and De Bernis, who never missed a single Sunday, she would say to the first, with a light air, "Bon jour, Duclos;" to the second, with an air and voice more amiable, "Bon jour, abbé:" accompanying her words occasionally with a little tap on his cheek. Artists and men of letters were invariably better received than the titled courtiers of France; while many of the nobility were truly lords-in-waiting, the two Vanloos, De la Tour, Boucher, and Cochin, had never to remain in the antechamber. The account of her first and only interview with Crebillon is interesting. Some one had informed her that the old tragic poet was living in the Marais, surrounded by his cats and dogs, in a state of poverty and neglect. "What say you!" she exclaimed; "in poverty and neglect?" She ran to seek the king, and asked for a pension for the poet of one hundred louis a-year from her privy purse. When Crebillon came to Versailles to thank her, she was in bed. "Let him come in," she exclaimed, "that I may see the gray-headed genius." At the sight of the fine old man—Crebillon was then eighty years of age—so poor and yet so proud, she was affected to tears. She received him with so touching a grace that the old poet was deeply moved. As he leaned over the bed to kiss her hand, the king appeared. "Ah, madame," exclaimed Crebillon, "the king has surprised us! I am lost!" This sally amused Louis XV. vastly; Crebillon's success was decided.

Madame de Pompadour passed her last days in a state of deep dejection. As she was now in the decline both of her favor and of her reign, she no longer had friends; even the king himself, though still submitting to her guidance, loved her no more. The Jesuits, too, whom she had driven from court, overwhelmed her with letters, in which they strove to depict to her the terrors of everlasting punishment.18 Every hour that struck seemed to toll for her the death-knell of all her hopes and joys. On her first appearance at court, proud of her youth, her beauty, and her brilliant complexion, she had proscribed rouge and patches, saying that life was not a masked ball. She had now reached that sad period of life when she would be compelled to choose between rouge or the first wrinkles of incipient old age. "I shall never survive it," she used to say, mournfully,

One night, during the year 1760, she was seized with a violent trembling, and sitting up in bed, called Madame du Hausset.

"I am sure," she said, "I am going to die. Madame de Vintimille and Madame de Chateauroux both died as young as myself: it is a species of fatality which strikes all those who have loved the king. What I regret least is life,—I am weary of flatteries and insults, of friendships and hatreds; but I own to you that I am terrified at the idea of being cast into some ditch or other, whether it be by the clergy, by Monseigneur the Dauphin, or by the people of Paris."

Madame du Hausset took her hands within her own, and assured her that if France had the misfortune to lose her, the king would not fail to give her a burial worthy of her rank and station.

"Alas!" rejoined Madame de Pompadour, "a burial worthy of me!—when we recollect that Madame de Mailly, repenting of having been his first mistress, desired to be interred in the cemetery of the Innocents; and not only that, but even under the common water-pipe."

She passed the night in tears. On the following morning, however, she resumed a little courage, and hastened to call to her aid all the resources of art to conceal the first ravages of time; but in vain did she seek to recover that adorable smile which twenty years before had made Louis XV. forget that he was King of France.

From this time forth she showed herself in Paris no more; and at court she would only appear by candle-light, and then in the apparel of a Queen of Golconda, crowned with diamonds, her arms covered with bracelets, and wearing a magnificent Indian robe, embroidered with gold and silver. She was always the beautiful Marchioness de Pompadour, but a closer inspection would show that the lovely face of former days was now but a made-up face, still charming, but like a restored painting, showing evident symptoms of having been here and there effaced and retouched. It was in the mouth that she first lost her beauty. She had in early life acquired the habit of biting her lips to conceal her emotions, and at thirty years of age her mouth had lost all its vivid brilliancy of color.